ICTURES Ite STOFY O irr* \0;0 foufldtagffa.CeUipi e ILIII3IKAIKY • wyraq ¦-. SMWI JW^H Mlljl I I.U CHATAUQUA COLLECTION Gift of ARTHUR E. BESTOR, JR. Yale 1930 PICTURES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY, Great Historical Artists. SELECTED AND EDITED BY COLEMAN E. BISHOP. Erratum. — The quotation from Green, under Edward III., pp. 289-90, should have appeared on p. 287, as characteriz ing Edward I., instead of Edward III. WALDEN .& STOWE. PICTURES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. BY THE Gj^at Historical Artists. SELECTED AND EDITED BY COLEMAN E. BISHOP. NEW YORK: PHILLIPS & HUNT. CINCINNATI: WALDEN .& STOWE. Copyright 1883, by PHILIjIPS cfc UTTISTT, New York. INTRODUCTION, The present volume is simply a compilation prepared for the use of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. It is a gallery of pictures, by masters of pen- painting in English history, sufficiently full and graphic to interest even the tyro, and possessing literary merit enough to attract the most scholarly. Three things have been kept in mind in making this compilation : I. To give as much of the history of England as was possible in the space allotted. In order to make these particular productions parts of an unbroken chain, they are linked together by brief introductory paragraphs, while the series is supplemented by a chronological table of the important events and illustrious characters in English history. This will be found to be more than a bare table of facts and dates, for comment and inci dent are introduced to help make up a brief history of Introduction. England, or, at least, to serve as starting-points from which to prosecute further inquiry. 2. The subjects having been selected, the aim has been to choose the best authors. Here the compiler has experienced his greatest difficulty, owing to the em barrassment of riches. One cannot hope to escape criticism from every reader familiar with the wealth of word-painting in English historical and biographical literature. To one who may wonder at the judgment which omitted his favorite passages, it can only be said that decisions have been reached through a desire to secure at once specimens from as many representative writers as possible, so as to give as varied and striking a series as the space would allow. The selections in the earlier part of the book are from writers who have prepared condensed histories, and thus helped us to cover much ground in a single chapter. The later chapters will be found, if less com prehensive, more crowded with the gems and master pieces of historical literature. 3. The principal aim of the compiler has been to furnish such a tempting array of selections that the appetite of the student may be whetted for more ex- Introduction. 5 tensive reading from the authors. It is believed that the contents of these pages are in harmony with the genius of the Chautauqua work, in style and reverent tone, and that they will be found stimulating to all minds and calculated to inspire better thoughts and aims. The editor desires gratefully to acknowledge the courtesy of parties who control the copyrights, in per mitting him to use the "Norman Conquest," and two extracts from the writings of Motley. Contents CONTENTS. Page I. The Beginnings of English History. Charles Dickens. 9 II. The Saxon Conquest. Gibbon and Taint. 20 III. The Christian Conquest of Britain. Bede and Charles Knight 26 IV. Alfred the Great. Charles Dickens 33 V. Dunstan, the Politician-Priest. Rev. James White. 41 VI. The Danish Rule in England. Charles Dickens 48 VII. The Norman Conquest. C. C. Hazewell 51 VIII. The First Crusade. Charles Knight. 60 IX. The Civil Wars of Stephen and Matilda. Augustin Thierry 66 X. The Assassination of Archbishop Becket. HoUnshed. 75 XI. The Penance op Henry II. Augustin Thierry 80 XII. A Medieval Tournament. Walter Scott 84 XIII. How the Great Charter was Won. Charles Knight.. 98 XIV. Simon de Montfort. John Richard Green 103 XV. Bannockburn. Walter Scott 108 XVI. The Battle of Cressy. Canon Froissart 113 XVII. The Siege of Calais. Canon Froissart 119 XVIII. The Peasant Rising. John Richard Green 124 XIX. Wycliffe and the Lollards. Charles Knight 129 XX. Rise of England under the Plantagenets. Thomas Babington Macau-lay jg 4 XXI. The Battle of Agincourt. Charles Dickens 139 XXII. The Wars of the Roses. Henry Reed 145 XXIII. " The Last of the Barons." Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton Xr2 XXIV. Bosworth-Field. Miss Yonge 1:62 XXV. " King Richard IV." James White 166 Contents. PAGE XXVI. "The Field of the Cloth of Gold." Miss Yonge. 171 XXVII. Execution of Queen Anne Boleyn. Agnes Strickland. 175 XXVIII. The Protestant Martyrs. John Richard Green 180 XXIX. Mary and Philip. John Lothrop Motley 184 XXX. Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. James Anthony Froude 187 XXXI. The Spanish Armada. John Lothrop Motley 194 XXXII. Death and Character of Queen Elizabeth. Hume. 203 XXXIII. Execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. Isaac Disraeli. 207 XXXIV. The Roundhead Army. Thomas Babington Macaulay. 213 XXXV. Dispersion of the Rump Parliament. Thomas Carlyle. 216 XXXV]. The Plague in London. Daniel De Foe 221 XXXVII. The Deposition of James II. Bishop Burnet.. 227 XXXVIII. The South Sea Bubble. Lord Mahon 234 XXXIX. The Great Commoner During Two Reigns. Thomas Babington Macaulay 241 XL. George the Third. William Makepeace Thackeray, . . 250 XLI. The Battle of Waterloo. Victor Hugo 255 XLII. The Turning-Point at the Alma. A. W. Kinglake. 268 Chronology of English History 2/4 Appendix 327 Illustrations and Maps. Jllnsiraiifltts. Alfred in the Herdsman's Hut 35 Richard 1 84 John's Anger about Signing Magna Charta 100 Richard II 124 Tower of London 127 Henry IV 128 A Lollard at the Stake 133 Edward IV I52 Richard III i(,2 Chapel and Tomb of Henry VII 166 Henry VIII 175 Queen Elizabeth 203 Execution of King Charles.'. 216 James II 227 George 1 234 George III 250 aps Map of England Frontispiece. Britain in 597 Face page 26 The English Empire in the ioth and iith Centuries. " " 48 Dominions of the House of Anjou " " 70 The World, Showing British Possessions and Pro tectorates " •• !62 PICTURES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. i. THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH HISTORY. B. C. BS to 410 A. D. If you look at a Map of the World you will see, in the left hand upper corner of the Eastern Hemisphere, two islands lying in the sea. They are England and Scotland, and Ire land. England and Scotland form the greater part of these islands. Ireland is the next in size. The little neighboring islands, which are so small upon the map as to. be mere dots, are chiefly little bits of Scotland, broken off, I dare say, in the course of a great length of time by the power of the restless water. In the old days, a long, long while ago, before our Saviour was born on earth and lay asleep in a manger, these islands were in the same place, and the stormy sea roared round them, just as it roars now. But the sea- was not alive, then, with great ships and brave sailors, sailing to and from all parts of the world. It was very lonely. The islands lay solitary in the great expanse of water. The foaming waves dashed against their cliffs, and the bleak winds blew over their forests ; but the winds and waves brought no advent urers to land upon the islands, and the savage islanders knew nothing of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world knew nothing of them. 1* Pictures from English History. It is supposed that the Phoenicians, who were an ancient people, famous for carrying on trade, came in ships to these islands, and found that they produced tin and lead ; both very useful things, as you know, and both produced to this very hour upon the sea-coast. The most celebrated tin mines in Cornwall are still close to the sea. One of them, which I have seen, is so close to it that it is hollowed out underneath the ocean ; and the miners say that in stormy weather, when they are at work down in that deep place, they can hear the noise of the waves thundering above their heads. So the Phoenicians, coasting about the islands, would come, without much difficulty, to where the tin and lead were. The Phoenicians traded with the islander's for these metals, and gave the islanders some other useful things in exchange. The islanders were, at first, poor savages, going almost naked, or only dressed in the rough skins of beasts, and staining their bodies, as other savages do, with colored earths and the juices of plants. But the Phoenicians, sailing over to the opposite coasts of France and Belgium, and saying to the people there, " We have been to those white cliffs across the water, which you can see in fine weather, and from that country, which is called Britain, we bring this tin and lead," tempted some of the French and Belgians to come over also. These people settled themselves on the south coast of En gland, which is now called Kent; and although they were a rough people, too, they taught the savage Britons some use ful arts, and improved that part of the islands. It is prob able that other people came over from Spain to Ireland, and settled there. Thus, by little and little, strangers became mixed with the islanders, and the savage Britons grew into a wild, bold people ; almost savage still, especially in the interior of the country away from the sea, where the foreign settlers seldom went ; but hardy, brave, and strong. The whole country was covered with forests and swamps. The Beginnings of English History. ii The greater part of it was very misty and cold. There were no roads, no bridges, no streets, no houses that you would think deserving of the name. A town was nothing but a collection of straw-covered huts, hidden in the thick wood, with a ditch all round, and a low wall, made of mud, or the trunks of trees placed one upon another. The people planted little or no corn, but lived upon the flesh of their flocks and cattle. They made no coins, but used metal rings for money. They were clever in basket-work, as savage people often are ; and they could make a coarse kind of cloth, and some very bad earthenware. But in building fortresses they were much more clever. They made boats of basket-work, covered with the skins of animals, but seldom, if ever, ventured far from the shore. They made swords of copper mixed with tin ; but these swords were of an awkward shape, and so soft that a heavy blow would bend one. They made light shields, short pointed daggers, and spears — which they jerked back after they had thrown them at an enemy, by a long strip of leather fastened to the stem. The butt end was a rattle to frighten an ene my's horse. The ancient Britons, being divided into as many as thirty or forty tribes, each commanded by its own little king, were constantly fighting with one another, as savage people usually do, and they always fought with these weapons. They were very fond of horses. The standard of Kent was the picture of a white horse. They could break them in and manage them wonderfully well. Indeed, the horses (of which they had an abundance, though they were rather small) were so well taught in those days, that they can scarcely be said to have improved since, though the men are so much wiser. They understood and obeyed every word of com mand, and would stand still by themselves in all the din and noise of battle, while their masters went to fight on foot. The Britons could not have succeeded in their most remarkable 12 Pictures from English History. art without the aid of these sensible and trusty animals. The art I mean is the construction and management of war- chariots or cars, for which they have ever been celebrated in history. Each of the best sort of these chariots, not quite breast high in front and open at the back, contained one man to drive and two or three others to fight — all standing up. The horses who drew them were so well trained that they would tear, at full gallop, over the most stony ways, and even through the woods, dashing down their masters' enemies beneath their hoofs, and cutting them to pieces with the blades of swords or scythes which were fastened to the wheels and stretched out beyond the car on each side for that cruel purpose. In a moment, while at full speed, the horses would stop at the driver's command. The men within would leap out, deal blows about them with their swords like hail, leap on the horses, on the pole, spring back into the chariots any how, and as soon as they were safe the horses tore away again. The Britons had a strange and terrible religion called the Religion ofthe Druids. It seems to have been brought over, in very early times indeed, from the opposite country of France, anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up the worship of the serpent and of the sun and moon with the worship of some of the heathen gods and goddesses. Most of its ceremonies were kept secret by the priests, the Druids, who pretended to be enchanters, and who carried magicians' wands, and wore, each of them, about his neck, what he told the ignorant people was a serpent's egg in a golden case. But it is certain that the Druidical ceremonies included the sacrifice of human victims, the torture of some suspected criminals, and on particular occasions, even the burning alive, in immense wicker cages, of a number of men and animals together. The Druid priests had some kind of veneration for the' oak, and for the mistletoe — the same plant that we hang up in houses at Christmas-time now — when its white The Beginnings of English History. 13 berries grew upon the oak. They met together in dark woods which they called sacred groves ; and there they instructed in their mysterious arts young men who came to them as pupils, and who sometimes stayed with them as long as twenty years. These Druids built great temples and altars, open to the sky, fragments of some of which are yet remaining. Stone henge, on Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire, is the most extraor dinary of these. Three curious stones, called Kits Coty House, on Bluebell Hill, near Maidstone, in Kent, form an other. We know, from examination of the great blocks of which such buildings are made, that they could not have been raised without the aid of some ingenious machines, which are common now, but which the ancient Britons certainly did not use in making their own uncomfortable houses. I should not wonder if the Druids, and their pupils who stayed with them twenty years, knowing more than the rest of the Britons, kept the people out of sight while they made these buildings, and then pretended that they built them by magic. Perhaps they had a hand in the fortresses, too ; at all events, as they were very powerful and very much believed in, and as they made and executed the laws and paid no taxes, I don't wonder that they liked their trade. And, as they per suaded the people the more Druids there were the better off the people would be, I don't wonder that there were a good many of them. But it is pleasant to think that there are no Druids now, who go on in that way, and pretend to carry en chanters' wands and serpents' eggs — and, of course, there is nothing of the kind anywhere. Such was the improved condition of the ancient Britons fifty-five years before the birth of our Saviour, when the Romans, under their great general, Julius Csesar, were mas ters of all the rest of the known world. Julius Caesar had then just conquered Gaul; and hearing in Gaul a good deal about the opposite island with the white cliffs, and about the 14 Pictures from English History. bravery of the Britons who inhabited it — some of whom had been fetched over to help the Gauls in the war against him — he resolved, as he was so near, to come and conquer Briton next. So, Julius Caesar came sailing over to this island of ours, with eighty vessels and twelve thousand men. And he came from the French coast between Calais and Boulogne, " be cause thence was the shortest passage into Britain; " just for the same reason as our steam-boats now take the same track every day. He expected to conquer Britain easily ; but it was not such easy work as he supposed — for the bold Britons fought most bravely ; and what with not having his horse- soldiers with him, (for they had been driven back by a storm,) and what with having some of his vessels dashed to pieces by a high tide after they were drawn ashore, he ran great risk of being totally defeated. However, for once that the bold Britons beat him he beat them twice ; though not so soundly but that he was very glad to accept their pro posals of peace and go away. But in the spring of the next year he came back; this time with eight hundred vessels and thirty thousand men. The British tribes chose, as their general-in-chief, a Briton whom the Romans, in their Latin language, called Cassi- vellaunus, but whose British name is supposed to have been Caswallon. A brave general he was, and well he and his soldiers fought the Roman army ! So well that whenever, in that war, the Roman soldiers saw a great cloud of dust and heard the rattle of the rapid British chariots, they trem bled in their hearts. Besides a number of smaller battles, there was a battle fought near Canterbury, in Kent ; there was a battle fought near Chertsey, in Surrey; there was a battle fought near a marshy little town in a wood, the capital of that part of Briton which belonged to Cassivellaunus, and which was probably near what is now St. Albans, in Hertford shire. However, brave Cassivellaunus had the worst of it, The Beginnings of English History. 15 on the whole, though he and his men always fought like lions. As the other British chiefs were jealous of him, and were always quarreling with him, and with one another, he gave up and proposed peace. Julius Caesar was very glad to grant peace easily, and to go away again with all his remain ing ships and men. He had expected to find pearls in Britain, and he may have found a few for any thing I know ; but, at all events, he found delicious oysters, and I am sure he found tough Britons — of whom, I dare say, he made the same complaint as Napoleon Bonaparte, the great French general, did, eighteen hundred years afterward, when he said they were such unreasonable fellows that they never knew when they were beaten. They never did know, I believe, and never will. Nearly a hundred years passed on, and all that time there was peace in Britain. The Britons improved their towns and mode of life, became more civilized, traveled, and learned a great deal from the Gauls and Romans. At last the Roman emperor, Claudius, sent Aulus Plautius, a skillful general, with a mighty force, to subdue the island, and shortly after ward arrived himself. They did little ; and Ostorius Scapula, another general, came. Some of the British chiefs of tribes submitted. Others resolved to fight to the death. Of these brave men, the bravest was Caractacus, or Caradoc, who gave battle to the Romans, with his army, among the mount ains of North Wales. " This day," said he to his soldiers, " decides the fate of Britain ! Your liberty or your eternal slavery dates from this hour. Remember your brave ances tors, who drove the great Caesar himself across the sea!" On hearing these words his men, with a great shout, rushed upon the Romans. But the strong Roman swords and armor were too much for the weaker British weapons in close con flict. The Britons lost the day. The wife and daughter of the brave Caractacus were taken prisoners; his brothers delivered themselves up ; he himself was betrayed into the 16 Pictures from English History. hands of the Romans by his false and base step-mother; and they carried him and all his family in triumph to Rome. But a great man will be great in misfortune, great in prison, great in chains. His noble air, and dignified endurance of distress, so touched the Roman people who thronged the streets to see him, that he and his family were restored to freedom. No one knows whether his great heart broke, and he died in Rome, or whether he ever returned to his own dear country. English oaks have grown up from acorns, and withered away when they were hundreds of years old — and other oaks have sprung up in their places, and died, too, very aged — since the rest of the history of the brave Caracta cus was forgotten. Still the Britons would not yield. They rose again and again, and died by thousands, sword in hand. They rose on every possible occasion. Suetonius, another Roman general, came and stormed the island of Anglesey, (then called Mona,) which was supposed to be sacred, and he burned the Druids in their own wicker cages, by their own fires. But, even while he was in Britain with his victorious troops, the Britons rose. Because Boadicea, a British queen, the widow of the king of the Norfolk and Suffolk people, resisted the plunder ing of her property by the Romans who were settled in En gland, she was scourged, by order of Catus, a Roman officer; and her two daughters were shamefully insulted in her presence, and her husband's relations were made slaves. To avenge this injury, the Britons rose, with all their might and rage. They drove Catus into Gaul ; they laid the Roman possessions waste ; they forced the Romans out of London, then a poor little town, but a trading place ; they hanged, burned, crucified, and slew by the sword, seventy thousand Romans in a few days. Suetonius strengthened his army, and advanced to give them battle. They strengthened their army and desperately attacked his, on the field where it was strongly posted. Before the first charge of the Britons was The Beginnings of English History. 17 made, Boadicea, in a war-chariot, with her fair hair streaming in the wind, and her injured daughters lying at her feet, drove among the troops, and cried to them for vengeance on their oppressors, the licentious Romans. The Britons fought to the last ; but they were vanquished wilh great slaughter, and the unhappy queen took poison. Still the spirit of the Britons was not broken. When Suetonius left the country, they fell upon his troops, and re took the island of Anglesey. Agricola came, fifteen or twenty years afterward, and retook it once more, and devoted seven years to subduing the country, especially that part of it which is now called Scotland ; but its people, the Caledonians, re sisted him at every inch of ground. They fought the bloodi est battles with him; they killed their very wives and chil dren to prevent his making prisoners of them ; they fell, fighting, in such great numbers that certain hills in Scotland are yet supposed to be vast heaps of stones piled up above their graves. Hadrian came, thirty years afterward, and still they resisted him. Severus caine, nearly a hundred years afterward, and they worried his great army like dogs, and rejoiced to see them die by thousands in the bogs and swamps. Caracalla, the son and successor of Severus, did the most to conquer them for a time, but not by force of arms. He knew how little that would do. He yielded up a quantity of land to the Caledonians, and gave the Britons the same privileges as the Romans possessed. There was peace, after this, for seventy years. Then new enemies arose. They were the Saxons, a fierce sea-faring people from the countries to the north of the Rhine, the great river of Germany, on the banks of which the best grapes grow to make the German wine. They began to come, in pirate ships, to the sea-coast of Gaul and Britain, and to plunder them. They were repulsed by Carausius, a native either of Belgium or of Britain, who was appointed by the Romans to the command, and under whom the Britons first 18 Pictures from English History. began to fight upon the sea. But, after this time, they re newed their ravages. A few years more, and the Scots (which was then the name of the people of Ireland) and the Picts, a northern people, began to make frequent plundering in cursions into the south of Britain. All these attacks were repeated at intervals during two hundred years, and through a long succession of Roman emperors and chiefs; during all which length of time the Britons rose against the Romans, over and over again. At last, in the days of the Roman Honorius, when the Roman power all over the world was fast declining, and when Rome wanted all her soldiers at home, the Romans abandoned all hope of conquering Britain, and went away. And still, at last, as at first, the Britons rose against them, in their old brave manner ; for, a very little while before, they had turned away the Roman magistrates, and declared themselves an independent people. Five hundred years had passed since Julius Caesar's first invasion of the island when the Romans departed from it forever. In the course of that time, although they had been the cause of terrible fighting and bloodshed, they had done much to improve the condition of the Britons. They had made great military roads; they had built forts; they had taught them how to dress and arm themselves much better than they had ever known how to do before ; they had refined the whole British way of living. Agricola had built a great wall of earth, more than seventy miles long, extending from Newcastle to beyond Carlisle, for the purpose of keeping out the Picts and Scots ; Hadrian had strengthened it ; Severus, finding it much in want of repair, had built it afresh of stone. Above all, it was in the Roman time, and by means of Roman ships, that the Christian religion was first brought into Britain, and its people first taught the great lesson that, to be good in the sight of God, they must love their neighbors as them selves, and do unto others as they would be done by. The Druids declared that it was very wicked to believe in any The Beginnings of English History. 19 such thing, and cursed all the people who did believe in it, very heartily. But when the people found that they were none the better for the blessings of the Druids, and none the worse for the curses of the Druids, but that the sun shone and the rain fell without consulting the Druids at all, they just began to think that the Druids were mere men, and that it signified very little whether they cursed or blessed. After which, the pupils of the Druids fell off greatly in numbers, and the Druids took to other trades. Thus I have come to the end of the Roman time in En gland. It is but little that is known of those five hundred years ; but some remains of them are still found. Often, when laborers are digging up the ground to make foundations for houses or churches, they light on rusty money that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments of plates from which they ate, of goblets from which they drank, and of pavement on which they trod, are discovered among the earth that is broken by the plow, or the dust that is crumbled by the gardener's spade. Wells that the Romans sunk still yield water ; roads that the Ro mans made form part of our highways. In some battle-fields British spear-heads and Roman armor have been found min gled together in decay, as they fell in the thick pressure of the fight. Traces of Roman camps overgrown with grass, and mounds that are the burial-places of heaps of Britons, are to be seen in almost all parts of the country. Across the bleak moors of Northumberland the wall of Severus, overrun with moss and weeds, still stretches a strong ruin ; and the shepherds and their dogs lie sleeping on it in the summer weather. On Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge yet stands, a mon ument of the earlier time when the Roman name was unknown in Britain, and when the Druids, with their best magic wands, could not have written it in the sands of the wild sea-shore. Charles Dickens. Pictures from English History. II. THE SAXON CONQUEST. 410 to 397 A. D. [After the Roman soldiers withdrew from the island the Britons were incessantly warred upon by their northern neighbors, the Picts and Scots, and by Irish and Scandinavian pirates. Emigrants from the peninsula that divides the North Sea from the Baltic had long been peaceable dwell ers in Britain ; these and more of the Angles and Saxons helped drive back the invading tribes. At last the allies began quarreling, when or why we do not know ; but after centuries of desperate struggles the An glo-Saxons made secure their hold on the island, and were finally amalga mated with the Britons and remaining Roman colonists.] Under the long dominion of the emperors Britain had been insensibly molded into the elegant and servile form of a Roman province, whose safety was intrusted to a foreign power. The subjects of Honorius contemplated their new freedom with surprise and terror; they were left destitute of any civil or military constitution ; and their uncertain rulers wanted either skill, or courage, or authority to direct the public force against the common enemy. The introduction of the Jutes betrayed their internal weakness, and de graded the character both of the prince and people. Their consternation magnified the danger; the want of union diminished their resources ; and the madness of civil factions was more solicitous to accuse than to remedy the evils, which they imputed to the misconduct of their adver saries. Yet the Britons were not ignorant — they could not be ignorant — of the manufacture or the use of arms : the suc cessive and disorderly attacks of the invaders allowed them to recover from their amazement, and the prosperous or ad verse events of the war added discipline and experience to their native valor. While the continent of Europe and Africa yielded without resistance to the barbarians, the British island, alone and The Saxon Conquest. unaided, maintained a long, a vigorous, though an unsuccess ful, struggle against the formidable pirates, who, almost at the same instant, assaulted the northern, the eastern, and the southern coasts. The cities which had been fortified with skill were defended with resolution : the advantages of ground, hills, forests, and morasses were diligently improved by the inhabitants ; the conquest of each district was pur chased with blood; and the defeats of the invaders are strongly attested by the discreet silence of their annalist. Hengist might hope to achieve the conquest of Britain ; but his ambition in an active reign of thirty-five years was con fined to the possession of Kent. The monarchy ofthe West Saxons was laboriously founded by the persevering efforts of three martial generations. The life of Cerdic, one of the bravest of the children of Woden, was consumed in the conquest of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight ; and the loss which he sustained in the battle of Mount Badon reduced him to a state of inglorious repose. Kenric, his valiant son, advanced into Wiltshire ; besieged Old Sarum, at the time seated on a commanding eminence ; and vanquished an army which advanced to the relief of the city. In a subsequent battle, near Marlborough, his British enemies displayed their military science. Their troops were formed in three lines ; each line consisted of three distinct bodies ; and the cavalry, the archers, and the pikemen were distributed according to the principles of Roman tactics. The Saxons charged in one weighty column, boldly en countered with their short swords the long lances of the Britons, and maintained an equal conflict till the approach of night. Two decisive victories, the death of three British kings, and the reduction of Cirencester, Bath, and Gloucester, established the fame and power of Ceaulin, the grandson of Cerdic, who carried his victorious arms to the banks of the Severn. After a war of a hundred years, the independent Britons Pictures from English History. still occupied the whole extent of the western coast, from the Firth of Clyde to the extreme promontory of Cornwall ; and the principal cities of the inland country still opposed the arms of the barbarians. Resistance became more lan guid as the number and boldness of the assailants continually increased. Winning their way by slow and painful efforts, the Saxons, the Angles, and their various confederates ad vanced from the north, from the east, and from the south, till their victorious banners were united in the center of the island. Beyond the Severn, the Britons still asserted their national freedom, which survived the heptarchy, and even the monarchy, of the Saxons. The bravest warriors, who preferred exile to slavery, found a secure refuge in the mountains of Wales ; the reluctant submission of Cornwall was delayed for some ages, and a band of fugitives acquired a settlement in Gaul, by their own valor or the liberality of the Merovingian kings. The western angle of Armorica ac quired the new appellation of Cornwall and the Lesser Britain ; and the vacant lands of the Osismii were filled by a strange people, who, under the authority of their counts and bishops, preserved the laws and language of their an cestors. To the feeble descendants of Clovis and Charle magne the Britons of Armorica refused the customary tribute, subdued the neighboring dioceses of Vannes, Renr.es, and Nantes, and formed a powerful though vassal state which has been united to the crown of France. In a century of perpetual, or at least implacable, war, much courage and some skill must have been exerted for the de fense of Britain. Yet, if the memory of its champions is almost buried in oblivion, we need not repine ; since every age, however destitute of science or virtue, sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military renown. The tomb of Vortimer, the son of Vortigern, was erected on the margin of the sea-shore as a landmark formidable to the Jutes, whom he had thrice vanquished in the fields of Kent. The Saxon Conquest. 23 Ambrosius Aurelianus was descended from a noble family of Romans; his modesty was equal to his valor, and his valor, till the last fatal action, was crowned with splendid suc cess. But every British name is effaced by the illustrious name of Arthur, the hereditary prince of the Silures in South Wales, and the elective king or general of the nation. According to the most rational account, he defeated, in twelve successive battles, the Angles of the North and the Saxons of the West ; but the declining age of the hero was embittered by popular ingratitude and domestic misfortunes. The events of his life are less interesting than the singular revolutions of his fame. During a period of five hundred years the tradition of his exploits was preserved and rudely embellished by the obscure bards of Wales and Brittany, who were odious to the Saxons and unknown to the rest of mankind. The pride and curiosity of the Norman con querors prompted them to inquire into the ancient history of Britain ; they listened with fond credulity to the tale of Arthur, and eagerly applauded the merit of a prince who had triumphed over the Saxons, their common enemies. His romance, transcribed in the Latin of Jeffrey of Mon mouth, and afterward translated into the fashionable idiom of the times, was enriched with the various though inco herent ornaments which were familiar to the experience, the learning, or the fancy of the twelfth century. The gallantry and superstition of the British hero, his feasts and tourna ments, and the memorable institution of his Knights of the Round Table, were faithfully copied from the reigning man ners of chivalry, and the fabulous exploits of Uther's son appear less incredible than the adventures which were achieved by the enterprising valor of the Normans. Pil grimage and the holy wars introduced into Europe the specious miracles of Arabian magic. Fairies and giants, flying dragons and enchanted palaces, were blended with the more simple fictions of the West ; and the fate of Britain 24 Pictures from English History. was made to depend on the art or the predictions of Merlin. Every nation embraced and adorned the popular romance of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table: their names were celebrated in Greece and Italy, and the voluminous tales of Sir Lancelot and Sir Tristram were de voutly studied by the princes and nobles, who disregarded the genuine heroes and historians of antiquity. At length the light of science and reason was rekindled ; the talisman was broken; the visionary fabric melted into air; and by a natural, though unjust, reverse of the public opinion, the severity of historic criticism came to question the existence of Arthur. Edward Gibbon. characteristics of the saxons. Huge white bodies, cool-blooded, with fierce blue eyes, reddish flaxen hair ; ravenous stomachs, fitted with meat and cheese, heated by strong drinks ; of a cold temperament, slow to love, home-stayers, prone to brutal drunkenness : these are to this day the features which descent and climate preserve in the race, and these are what the Roman histo rians discovered in their former country. There is no living, in these lands, without abundance of solid food ; bad weather keeps people at home ; strong drinks are necessary to cheer them; the senses become blunted, the muscles are braced, the will vigorous. In every country the body of man is rooted deep into the soil of nature ; and in this instance still deeper, because, being uncultivated, he is less removed from nature. In Germany, storm-beaten, in wretched boats of hide, amid the hardships and dangers of sea-faring life, they were pre-eminently adapted for endurance and enterprise, inured to misfortune, scorners of danger. Pirates at first — of all kinds of hunting the man-hunt is most profitable and most noble — they left the care of the land and flocks to the women and slaves ; sea-faring, war, and pillage was their whole idea of a freeman's work. They dashed to sea in their The Saxon Conquest. 25 two-sailed barks, landed anywhere, killed everything; and having sacrified in honor of their gods the tithe of their prisoners, and leaving behind them the red light of their burnings, went farther on to begin again. " Lord," says a certain litany, " deliver us from the fury of the Jutes ! " " Of all barbarians these are strongest of body and heart, the most formidable " — we may add, the most cruelly fero cious. . . Under this native barbarism there were noble dispositions, unknown to the Roman world, which were destined to pro duce a better people out of its ruins. In the first place, " a certain earnestness, which leads them out of frivolous senti ments to noble ones." From their origin in Germany this is what we find them : severe in manners, with grave inclina tions and a manly dignity. They live solitary, each one near the spring or the wood which has taken his fancy. Even in villages the cottages were detached ; they must have inde pendence and free air. They had no taste for voluptuousness; love was tardy, education severe, their food simple ; all the recreation they indulged in was the hunting of the aurochs, and a dance among naked swords. Violent intoxication and perilous wagers were their weakest points ; they sought in preference, not mild pleasures, but strong excitement. In every thing, even in their rude and masculine instincts, they were men. Each in his own home, on his land and in his hut, was his own master, upright and free, in no wise re strained or shackled. If the commonweal received any thing from him, it was because he gaye it. He gave his vote in arms in all great conferences, passed judgment in the assem bly, made alliance and wars on his own account, moved from place to place, showed activity and daring. The modern Englishman existed entire in this Saxon. If he bends, it is because he is quite willing to bend ; he is no less capable of self-denial than of independence ; self-sacrifice is not un common — a man cares not for his blood or his life. In 2 26 Pictures from English History. Homer the warrior often gives way, and is not blamed if he flees. In the Sagas, in the Edda, he must be over-brave ; in Germany the coward is drowned in the mud, under a hurdle. Through all outbreaks of primitive brutality gleams obscurely the grand idea of duty, which is, the self-constraint exercised in view of some noble end. . . . Is there any people, Hindu, Persian, Greek, or Gallic, which has formed so tragic a conception of life ? Is there any which has peopled its infantine mind with such gloomy dreams ? Is there any which has so entirely banished from its dreams the sweetness of enjoyment, and the softness of pleasure? Endeavors, tenacious and mournful endeavors, an ecstasy of endeavors — such was their chosen condition. Carlyle said well, that in the somber obstinacy of an English laborer still survives the tacit rage of the Scandinavian warrior. Strife for strife's sake — such is their pleasure. With what sadness, madness, destruction, such a disposition breaks its bonds, we shall see in Shakespeare and Byron ; with what vigor and purpose it can limit and employ itself when possessed by moral ideas, we shall see in the case of the Puritans. H. A. Taine. III. THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF BRITAIN. 897 to S27 A.D. [The Germans were idolaters, worshipers of Woden, and Britain, which had been nominally Christianized by Irish missionaries, was plunged again into heathenism by the conquerors. The next effort made for the conver sion ofthe people was directed from Rome. The following account of the earliest efforts of the monk Augustine is condensed from Bede, the first ec clesiastical historian of England.] Gregory, a Roman monk, of a noble family which traced its origin from the time of the imperial Caesars, when Rome ^J? o A — . *t IN 597 Longitude West 2 from Greenwich 0 East The Christian Conquest of Britain. 27 was mistress of the world, goes one day into the slave-market, which is situated at the end of the ancient Forum. Here he is struck by the sight of some young slaves from Britain, who are publicly exposed for sale, even like the cattle that are selling in another part of the Forum or great market place. The children have bright complexions and fair long hair ; their forms are beautiful ; the innocence of their look is most touching. Gregory eagerly asks from what distant country they come, and being told that they are Angles the pious father says they would be Angels if they were but Chris tians. He throws back his cowl and stands looking at them, and the children look at him, while some slave-dealers close at hand are chaffering with their customers, or inviting purchasers by extolling the fine proportions and the beauty of the young Northern slaves. The capital of ancient Rome and the Tarpeian Rock are in full sight; the Coliseum shows its lofty walls at a short distance ; the magnificent columns of the Temple of Jupiter Stator come within the picture, and there are other ruins of a sublime character. It is but the end of the sixth century, and many ancient buildings are comparatively perfect, though destined to disappear in the course of succeeding centuries, and to leave it matter of doubt and speculation as to where stood the Temple of Con cord, where the Temple of the Penates or Household Gods, where the Temple of Victory, where the Arches of Tiberius and Severus, and where the other temples, arches, and columns that are known to have crowded the Forum and the spots surrounding it. As things are, we see the decay of Paganism, and the establishment of Christianity upon its ruins. The temples, which are entire, are converted into churches; there is a crucifix on the highest part of the Capitol; there is a procession of monks passing along the edge of the Tarpeian Rock ; the firm-set columns erected to that Jupiter whose faith could not stand are crowned with crosses — the cross of Christ shows itself every-where, on the 28 Pictures from English History. summits of temples, over the crowns of triumphal arches, and upon all of the seven hills that are in sight. Gregory quits the slave-market solemnly musing upon the means of carrying the knowledge of divine truth to the distant and savage land which gave birth to these fair children. Shortly after he determines to be himself the missionary and apostle of the Anglo-Saxons. He even sets off on the journey ; but his friends, thinking that- he is going to a certain death among barbarians, induce the pope to command his return. A few years pass away, and the monk Gregory becomes Pope Gregory, and head of the Christian world, although he will only style himself Servus Servorum Domini, or Servant of the Servants of the Lord. Men call him " The Great," and great is he in his humility and devotion and generosity of soul. He lives in as simple a style as when he was a poor monk ; he is averse to persecution, holding that heretics and even Jews are to be treated with lenity, and are to be con verted, not by persecution, but by persuasion. The wealth which begins to flow into the Roman See he employs in bettering the condition of the poor, in erecting churches, and in sending out missionaries to reclaim the heathen. He cannot go himself to the land of those fair-haired children, but now he sends Augustine, prior of the convent of St. Andrews at Rome, and forty monks as missionaries to England. Augus tine and his companions make the coast of Kent, and after many dangers and fears and misgivings — for the Anglo- Saxons had been represented to them as the most stubborn and most ferocious of the human species — they land in the isle of Thanet. Ethelbert, the king of Kent, is a pagan and worshiper of Odin, one who believes that the pleasures of heaven, or of some future state of existence, consist of fighting all day and feasting and drinking all night ; but his beautiful wife, Bertha, a native of some part of the country which we now call France, is a Christian, and has brought with her from The Christian Conquest of Britain. 29 her own country a few holy men who reprobate, but are afraid of attacking, the sanguinary Scandinavian faith and idolatry. These timid priests have built or restored a little church outside the walls of Canterbury ; but it is overshadowed by a pagan temple, wherein is the rude image, not of a God of Peace, but of a God of War and destruction ; and the for eigners fear that their humble little church will soon be de stroyed by the Pagan priests. But Augustine arrives, and in vites King Ethelbert to hear the glad tidings of salvation, the mild voice of the Gospel. The priests of bloody Odin and of the murderous Thor apprehend conjuration and magic, and advise the king to meet the missionaries, not under a roof, but in the open air, where magic spells will be less dangerous in their operation. Ethelbert, with Queen Bertha by his side, goes forth to one of the pleasant Kentish hills commanding a view of the flowing ocean which the monks have crossed : his warriors and his pagan priests stand round the king ; and there is a solemn, expectant silence until the music of many mingled harmonious voices is heard, and Augustine and his forty companions are seen advancing in solemn processional order, singing the psalms and anthems of Rome. The foremost monk in the procession carries a large silver crucifix. Another monk carries a banner on which is painted a picture of the Redeemer.' The heart of Ethelbert is touched by the music aud by the venerable, de vout aspect of the strangers. By means of an interpreter, whose heart and soul are in the office, Augustine briefly expounds to the king the nature of the Christian faith, and implores Ethelbert to receive the holiest and only true religion, and permit him to preach and teach it to his subjects. The king listens in rapt attention, never once taking his eyes from off the missionary ; the queen blesses the day and happy hour ; the priests of Odin seem perplexed and irritated ; but the stalwart warriors leaning on their long, broad swords, 30 Pictures from English History. or on their ponderous battle-axes, look for the most part as if they would inquire further and gladly hear the wonderful words of the stranger again. The Saxon king is more than half converted ; but he thinks it needful to be cautious. He says he has no thought of forsaking the gods of his fathers; but since the purposes of the strangers are good, and their promises inviting, they shall be suffered to instruct his peo ple ; none shall raise the hand of violence against them, and they shall not know want, for the land is the land of plenty, and he, the King of Kent and Bretwalda of all the Saxon princes, will supply the monks with food and drink and lodging. Upon this Augustine and his companions fall again into order of procession, and direct their steps, solemn and slow, toward the neighboring city of Canterbury, chanting their anthems as they go. They reach the ancient city, and as they enter it, in the midst of a wondering crowd, they sing, with a holy and a cheerful note, " Halleluiah ! halleluiah ! may the wrath of the Lord be turned from this city and from this holy place ! " " Forever hallowed be this morning fair, Blest be the unconscious shore on which ye tread, And blest the Silver Cross, which ye, instead Of martial banner, in procession bear ; The Cross preceding Him who floats in air, The pictured Saviour I — By Augustine led, They come — and onward travel without dread, Chanting in barbarous ears a tuneful prayer, Sung for themselves, and those whom they would free ; Rich conquest waits them : the tempestuous sea Of ignorance that ran so rough and high, And heeded not the voice of clashing swords, These good men humble by a few bare words, And calm witb fear God's divinity." — "Wordsworth. The work of conversion proceeds rapidly and smoothly. The Italians find the poor Anglo-Saxons of Kent rather gentle and docile than ferocious ; many gladly renounce a The Christian Conquest of Britain. 31 creed of blood and hatred for a religion of peace and love ; the baptisms become numerous ; and at last, on the day of Pentecost, King Ethelbert himself yields to the arguments of the missionaries and the entreaties of his wife, and is bap tized. On the ensuing Christmas ten thousand of the people follow the example of the king. Pope Gregory is transported with joy when these tidings reach Rome ; he writes an exult ing letter to Eulogius, patriarch of Alexandria, giving an account of the success of his missionaries " in the most re mote part of the world; " and he forthwith appoints Augus tine to be primate of all England as well as Archbishop of Canterbury. Such is the origin of our Church as related by the Venerable Bede. glimmerings of light. The century which saw the establishment of Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons, and the succeeding century, was a period of incessant wars. The pagan princes were some times in the ascendant ; sometimes the converted. Some times princes who had listened to the Christian teachers and had been baptized relapsed into paganism ; sometimes they enthusiastically threw away their power and became monks. Oswald, the Northumbrian, kneels before the cross in the neighborhood of Hexham, and defeats the British Ceedwalla. Penda, the fierce king of Mercia, slays Oswald on the field of Maserfelth. Then Oswin overthrows Penda, the last and most powerful upholder of Saxon heathendom, who assailed every neighboring state with remorseless cruelty. Then Wulfere, the son of Penda, regains the dominion of Mercia, and is conqueror of Wessex. Ethelbald succeeds to his power, but yields to the West Saxons, upon whom he li: •¦¦ partly imposed his yoke. Offa, who has written his nac upon the great dyke reaching from the neighborhood > Chester to the Wye, subjugates the ancient Britons, and ravages their territory ; while the whole of the Anglo-Saxon 32 Pictures from English History. states submit to his empire. Amid these changes of fortune — dire reverses and horrible triumphs — which were only par tially brought to an end when Egbert of Wessex attained something like a supremacy at the beginning of the ninth century, and England had taken a place among the Christian communities of Europe — it is consoling to turn from the out rages of barbarous chieftains to the contemplation of the learned and the pious, in their peaceful cells, keeping alive that flame of knowledge which without them might have been extinguished for ages. Out of his cloisters at Iona the light of piety and learning is first shed by Columba over the dark ness of the northern Picts. Wilfred, the bishop of York, builds churches in his diocese, and also teaches industrial arts to the South Saxons. Benedict Biscop, the abbot of Wearmouth, fills his monastery with books and pictures which he brought from Rome. Caedmon, the cowherd, sings " The Creation " and the "Fall" in strains which have ob tained for him the name of the Saxon Milton. Adhelm, whose Anglo-Latin poetry manifests his accomplishments — a minstrel as well as a poet — stands upon the bridge of Malmes bury, and, as the peasants pass to and fro, gathers a crowd to listen to some of the popular songs to the accompaniment of his harp, and gradually weaves into the verses holy words of exhortation. Bede, a monk of undoubted genius and vast learning, sits in his cell at Jarrow, and amid other worthy monuments of his piety and knowledge, gathers the obscure history of his country out of doubtful annals and imperfect traditions, weaving them into a narrative which we feel to be a conscientious one, however intermixed with stories which we, somewhat presumptuously, term superstitious. These men, and many illustrious fellow-laborers, struggled through the days of heathendom, and scarcely saw the full establish ment of Christianity in this land. But the influences of what they taught gradually wrought that change which made the English one nation under one creed. In the meantime The Christian Conquest of Britain. ^^ knowledge is leading on to general civilization. " The dark ness begins to break, and the country which had been lost to view as Britain re-appears as England." Charles Knight. IV. ALFRED THE GREAT. [The many tribal relations of the early Saxons and Britons gradually crystallized into seven distinct kingdoms, called the Saxon Heptarchy. Incessant wars reduced some of these under the lordship of the kings of others, until, in 827, Egbert became the king of all England, and the first of the early English kings. The greatest of these, and indeed one of the greatest sovereigns in history, considering the times in which they re spectively flourished, was Alfred the Great.] Alfred the Great was a young man, three-and-twenty years of age, when he became king. Twice in his childhood he had been taken to Rome, where the Saxon nobles were in the habit of going on journeys which they supposed to b^ relig ious ; and, once, he had stayed for some time in Paris. Learn ing, however, was so little cared for then that at twelve years old he had not been taught to read ; although, ofthe sons of King Ethelwulf, he, the youngest, was the favorite. But he had — as most men who grow up to be great and good are generally found to have had — an excellent mother; and, one day, this lady, whose name was Osburga, happened, as she was sitting among her sons, to read a book of Saxon poetry. The art of printing was not known until long and long after that period, and the book, which was written, was what is called " illuminated " with beautiful bright letters, richly painted. The brothers admiring it very much, their mother said, " I will give it to that one of you four princes who first learns 'to read." Alfred sought out a tutor that very day, applied hinrself to learn with great diligence, and soon won the book. He was proud of it all his life. 2* 34 Pictures from English History. This great king, in the first year of his reign, fought nine battles with the Danes. He made some treaties with them, too, by which the false Danes swore they would quit the country. They pretended to consider that they had taken a very solemn oath in swearing this upon the holy bracelets that they wore, and which were always buried with them when they died; but they cared little for it, for they thought noth ing of breaking oaths, and treaties, too, as soon as it suited their purpose, and coming back again to fight, plunder, and burn as usual. One fatal winter, in the fourth year of King Alfred's reign, they spread themselves in great numbers over the whole of England, and so dispersed and routed the king's soldiers that the king was left alone, and was obliged to dis guise himself as a common peasant, and to take refuge in the cottage of one of his cowherds who did not know his face. Here King Alfred, while the Danes sought him far and near, was left alone one day by the cowherd's wife to watch some cakes which she put to bake upon the hearth. But being at work upon his bow and arrows with which he hoped to punish the false Danes when a brighter time should come, and thinking deeply of his poor unhappy subjects whom the Danes chased through the land, his noble mind forgot the cakes, and they burnt. "What!" said the cowherd's wife, who scolded him well when she came back, and little thought she was scolding the king, " you will be ready enough to eat them by and by, and yet you cannot watch them, idle dog ! " At length, the Devonshire men made head against a new host of Danes who landed on their coast; killed their chief, and captured their flag, on which was represented the like ness of a raven — a very fit bird for a thievish army like that, I think. The loss of their standard troubled the Danes greatly, for they believed it to be enchanted — woven by three daughters of one father in a single afternoon — and they had a story among themselves that when they were victorious in battle the raven stretched his wings and seemed to fly; and §1 mam ^*S^V^0bVbvV. ¦ '-•'4«?mmim:' ««p PI m /! n i !', * Alfred In the Herdsman's Hut. Alfred the Great. 37 that when they were defeated, he would droop. He had good reason to droop now, if he could have done any thing half so sensible ; for King Alfred joined the Devonshire men, made a camp with them on a piece of firm ground in the midst of a bog in Somersetshire, and prepared for a great at tempt for vengeance on the Danes, and the deliverance of his oppressed people. But, first, as it was important to know how numerous those pestilent Danes were, and how they were fortified, King Alfred, being a good musician, disguised himself as a gleeman or minstrel, and went with his harp to the Danish camp. He played and sang in the very tent of Guthrum, the Danish leader, and entertained the Danes as they caroused. While he seemed to think of nothing but his music he was watchful of their tents, their arms, their disci pline, every thing that he desired to know. And right soon did this great king entertain them to a different tune ; for, summoning all his true followers to meet him at an appointed place, where they received him with joyful shouts and tears, as the monarch whom many of them had given up for lost or dead, he put himself at their head, marched on the Danish camp, defeated the Danes with great slaughter, and besieged them for fourteen days to prevent their escape. But, being as merciful as he was good and brave, he then, instead of killing them, proposed peace, on condition that they should altogether depart from that western part of England, and set tle in the east, and that Guthrum should become a Christian, in remembrance ofthe Divine religion which now taught his conqueror, the noble Alfred, to forgive the enemy who had so often injured him. This Guthrum did. At his baptism King Alfred was his godfather. And Guthrum was an hon orable chief, who well deserved that clemency, for ever after ward he was loyal and faithful to the king. The Danes under him were faithful, too. They plundered and burned no more, but worked like honest men. They plowed, and sowed, and reaped, and led good honest English lives. And 38 Pictures from English History. I hope the children of those Danes played many a time with Saxon children in the sunny fields ; and that Danish young men fell in love with Saxon girls, and married them ; and that English travelers, benighted at the doors of Danish cot tages, often went in for shelter until morning; and that Danes and Saxons sat by the red fire, friends, talking of King Alfred the Great. All the Danes were not like those under Guthrum ; for, after some years, more of them came over, in the old plundering and burning way — among them a fierce pirate of the name of Hastings, who had the boldness to sail up the Thames to Gravesend with eighty ships. For three years there was a war with these Danes, and there was a famine in the country, too, and a plague, both upon human creatures and beasts. But King Alfred, whose mighty heart never failed him, built large ships, nevertheless, with which to pur sue the pirates on the sea, and he encouraged his soldiers, by his brave example, to fight valiantly against them on shore. At last he drove them all away, and then there was repose in England. • As great and good in peace as he was great and good in war, King Alfred never rested from his labors to improve his people. He loved to talk with clever men and great travel ers from foreign countries, and to write down what they told him, for his "people to read. He had studied Latin after learning to read English, and now another of his labors was to translate Latin books into the English-Saxon tongue, that his people might be interested and improved by their con tents. He made just laws, that they might live more happily and freely ; he turned away all partial judges, that no wrong might be done them ; he was so careful of their property, and punished robbers so severely, that it was a common thing to say that under King Alfred garlands of golden chains and jewels might have hung across the streets, and no man would have touched one. He founded schools; he Alfred the Great. 39 patiently heard causes himself in his court of justice ; the great desires of his heart were to do right to all his subjects, and to leave England better, wiser, happier in all ways than he found it. His industry in these efforts was quite astonishing. Every day he divided into certain portions, and in each por tion devoted himself to a certain pursuit. That he might divide his time exactly, he had wax torches or candles made, which were all of the same size, were notched across at reg ular distances, and were always kept burning. Thus, as the candles burnt down, he divided the day into notches, almost accurately as we now divide it into hours upon the clock. But, when the candles were first invented, it was found that the wind and draughts of air, blowing into the palace through the doors and windows, and through the chinks in the walls, caused them to gutter and burn unequally. To prevent this, the king had them put into cases formed of wood and white horn. And these were the first lanterns ever made in En gland. All this time he was afflicted with a terrible unknown disease, which caused him violent and frequent pain that nothing could relieve. He bore it, as he had borne all the troubles of his life, like a brave, good man, until he was fifty-three years old, and then, having reigned thirty years, he died. He died in the year 901 ; but, long ago as that is, his fame and the love and gratitude with which his subjects regarded him, are freshly remembered to the present hour. Under the great Alfred, all the best points of the English- Saxon character were first encouraged, and in him first shown. It has been the greatest character among the nations ofthe earth. Wherever the descendants of the Saxon race have gone, have sailed, or otherwise made their way, even to the remotest regions of the world, they have been patient, persevering, never to be broken in spirit, never to be turned aside from enterprises on which they have resolved. In Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the whole world over; in the 40 Pictures from English History. desert, in the forest, on the sea; scorched by a burning sun, or frozen by ice that never melts, the Saxon blood remains unchanged. Wheresover that race goes, there laws and in dustry, and safety for life and property, and all the great re sults of steady perseverance, are certain to arise.- I pause to think with admiration of the noble king who, in his single person, possessed all the Saxon virtues : whom mis fortune could not subdue ; whom prosperity could not spoil ; whose perseverance nothing could shake ; who was hopeful in defeat, and generous in success ; who loved justice, free dom, truth, and knowledge ; who, in his care to instruct his people, probably did more to preserve the beautiful old Sax on language than I can imagine ; without whom the English tongue in which I tell this story might have wanted half its meaning. As it is said that his spirit still inspires some of our best English laws, so let you and I pray that it may ani mate our English hearts, at least to this — to resolve, when we see any of our fellow creatures left in ignorance, that we will do our best, while life is in us, to have them taught ; and to tell those rulers whose duty it is teach them, and who neglect their duty, that they have profited very little by all the years that have rolled away since the year 901, and that they are far behind the bright example of King Alfred the Great. Charles Dickens. Dunstan, the Politician-Priest. 41 V. DUNSTAN, THE POLITICIAN-PRIEST. [In the reign of Athelstane, grandson of Alfred the Great, rose Dunstan, the first of those ecclesiastical statesmen who at different times became practically the rulers of England. His influence, with one short interreg num, was potent in the reigns of Edmund, Edred, Edwy, Edgar, Edward, and Ethelred, called " the six boy kings," from their youth upon acces sion and their short and tragic reigns ; and so Dunstan 's rule carries us from the strong reigns of Alfred and his immediate family through to the time when the Danes got control of England — a result to which Dunstan's policy had contributed.] Dunstan was presented to King Athelstane when he had just taken the clerical habit, and soon gained his majesty's affections by the variety and excellence of his accomplish ments. He painted and carved ; he worked in gold and precious stones; he wrote' the most wonderful hand, and il lustrated books with the most beautiful designs ; and, above all, he composed the sweetest of tunes and sang the merriest of songs, accompanying himself on almost any instrument then known. Some people have supposed that he was also a ventriloquist, and availed himself of his powers of mimicry to make certain sounds appear to come from a harp which he hung up on the wall. But the deceit was found out by the enmity of the other courtiers, and Dunstan was turned out of the court. He went down to the church at Glastonbury, built a small cell, and coiled himself up in it, to the surprise of the beholders. All his gay doings were forgotten, as if they had never been. He wore hair shirts, and inflicted penances on himself, and fasted so much and slept so little that the Evil Spirit began to tempt him in hopes of inter rupting so holy a life. He put his ill-omened countenance through the little hole that gave light to the cell, and began some depreciating remarks ; but Dunstan, who happened to 42 Pictures from English History. be hammering some iron at the time, caught the visitor's nose in his red-hot tongs, and squeezed it till the enemy of mankind confessed himself defeated, and howled to be let go. Now it began to be whispered abroad that miracles had heralded the holy Dunstan's birth and surrounded him in his youth, and expectation rose high of the grandeur of his future career. Fuller than any one else of these expectations was Dun stan himself. Edmund, the king, thought so powerful a champion should not be left in so humble a position, and made him Abbot of Glastonbury. Edred would not be left behind his brother in recognizing such merits, and offered to make him a bishop. Dunstan refused, and the king did not renew the offer. Immediately there was spread a report by the holy man himself that three of the apostles had appeared to him, and rebuked him for his folly in rejecting the poor see of Crediton, and commanding him to accept it if he had the chance given him once more, and not even to say " No " if the king asked him to accept the archbishopric of Canter bury. In proof of the reality of the visit and of the serious nature of their indignation, the repentant abbot showed the marks on his back which the rods of St. Peter and the other apostles had left. Edred, moved, perhaps, by this ex traordinary manifestation of the heavenly will, sent for the abbot, and made him his guide and counselor in the affairs of state. Dunstan had only two objects in life — to introduce the new doctrine of celibacy among the clergy and spread the papal power. Up to this time the English clergy married if they chose, though the popular prejudice against matri mony was skillfully kept up by the monks and the pope. And a fortunate thing it is that they for a while succeeded in their design ; for if the powerful office-bearers of the Church had been allowed to wed, they would soon have degenerated into a hereditary priesthood, in imitation of the hereditary nobility ; and the endowments of the Church would have Dunstan, the Politician-Priest. 43 been taken from the people at large to swell the revenues of a few influential families. Madly hating marriage, and madly worshiping the pope, Dunstan determined to show his supremacy over the highest in the land when Edwy, the nephew of Edred, succeeded to the throne. The king was but sixteen years of age, and had given his hand, without consultation with the Church, to a noble maiden of the name of Elgiva. At the marriage fes tival, at which Dunstan was present, Edwy, tired of the noisy enjoyment of his nobles, retired to a room where El giva and her mother were awaiting him. Instantly the furious abbot rushed in search, tore the youth by main force back into the banqueting-hall, and made him ridiculous in the eyes of the drunken crowd. Edwy perceived the danger he incurred if the abbot and his rabble of monks were not checked in their ambition. He banished Dunstan from Britain, and turned out the re cluses of Glastonbury to make way for the married parish priests. But Dunstan had a coadjutor at home whom Edwy had not taken into account. This was Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, who entered into the quarrel with all his heart. He therefore stirred up treason against the crown, and Mer cia and Northumbria rebelled. When Edwy was weakened by the loss of the greater part of his kingdom, Odo pro ceeded more boldly. He seized the beautiful Elgiva, on pretense that she was some third or fourth cousin of her husband, and pronounced the marriage void. He then took precautions against the loveliness of his victim, which might still hold its empire over Edwy's heart, and he had her fair face scarred with hot irons till not a vestige of her faultless features remained. But youth and hope work more miracles than Dunstan, and a few months restored her cheeks to their color and her skin to its freshness. She rejoined her hus band, who never would acknowledge the divorce, and Odo kept no farther measures. The young couple were seized at 44 Pictures From English History. Gloucester. The queen was mangled beyond all hope of restoration to her former charms, and expired in the agonies of the torture. Edwy could not survive so great a sorrow, and died in a few months. Triumphing in his victory, and breathing vengeance against his foes, Dunstan came once more over the sea, and never cast a thought of pity on the victims of his zeal, who had both died before they were nineteen years of age. There was no farther opposition to the claims of the Church when Edwy's brother, Edgar, succeeded. He threw himself into the hands of Dunstan, promoted him to Wor cester first, and finally to the primacy; and the object ofthe monk's efforts was attained. The Benedictine rulers were accepted in the English monasteries, and the country became tributary to Rome. With the help of this great ally, Ed gar's authority was stretched farther than that of any of his predecessors. He summoned a meeting of his vassal kings at Chester. Eight subordinate rulers obeyed his command, and rowed him on the Dee in a boat steered by his royal hand. On this occasion he received the homage of Kenneth of Scotland, Malcolm of Cambria, Maccus of Man and the Hebrides, three chieftains of the Britons of Wales, and the kings of Galloway and Westmere, (Stirlingshire and Argyle ?) Pouring forth his treasures in the erection of monasteries and churches, blindly submissive to the orders of his spiritual adviser, there is no wonder that the Church, which was the judge of men's behavior, and the monks, who were the be- stowers of fame, were lavish in their pardons and panegyrics of so liberal a benefactor. . . . This period is the turning-point of Anglo-Saxon history. The debaucheries and crimes of Edgar, and the fierce fanat icism of Dunstan, threw the whole nation into the utmost dissolution of morals combined with the bitterest polemical disputes. The thanes, or nobles, who resided in their dis tant demesnes, sided with the parish priests to whom they Dunstan, the Politician-Priest. 45 had been accustomed; and the peasantry also were satisfied with the married clergy, whose wives and sisters were of the same rank with themselves. But Dunstan banished the un happy clergymen who preferred the mothers of their children to the revenues of their churches, and filled the parochial charges with monks who were ready to support him in what ever he proposed. It is curious to remark that the Danish populations were generally favorable to Dunstan's policy ; they were more recently Christianized, and saw less differ ence between the regulars and seculars than the Saxons of older faith ; but in other respects the men of the Danelagh felt themselves to be as English as the men of Kent or Sus sex. Great intermixtures had taken place. Odo, the arch bishop, was a Dane's son ; Edgar himself had been educated by a Danish chief ; and the two populations were more like what we should call a Danish party and a Saxon party (as we used formerly to speak of the court and country parties) than national enemies encamped on the same ground. The death of Edgar deprived Dunstan of his greatest support, and Edward, his son by his first wife, although at first accepted by the Romish party, speedily perceived that the liberties both of crown and people depended on the diminution of the Church's power. He, therefore, dispersed the monks who had been established in place of the exiled priests, and was supported by the gratitude of the men he had restored to their homes, and by the assembly of the Witan, or parliament, which he summoned to meet at Calne. Dunstan, however, was not to be daunted by a young king and a secular council ; and when the whole of the nobility and higher clergy were met in an upper chamber, and were prepared to pass resolutions against the presumptuous arch bishop, that holy man had recourse to prayer, and prayed so long and so successfully that the joists of the floor gave way at the end where his enemies were seated, and left him safe at the other corner. There were many deaths and 46 Pictures from English History. severe sufferings caused by this miraculous incident, and the monks were eloquent on the evidence it afforded of the saint- liness of their chief. Modern inquirers, however, have been inclined to believe that the early studies of the recluse in carpentering and iron work had more to do with the failure of the beams than the credulous ecclesiastics supposed. The miracle was successful for a time ; but an event which happened in the following year was not so favorable to the prelate's views, for it strengthened the hands of his enemy, the ferocious Elfrida, who had endeavored, on the death of her husband, to procure the crown for her son Ethelred, to the exclusion of his elder brother. Dunstan, at the head of the monks, had opposed her in this attempt, and probably regretted the part he took in securing the succession of Ed ward when he perceived the little infiuence he obtained over the young king's mind. Elfrida lived with her son in discontented retirement at Corfe Castle, in Dorsetshire, keep ing up a correspondence with the earls or aldermen of the various shires who were in favor of the secular or married clergy. Edward was only eighteen years of age, and Ethel red scarcely ten. The brothers had not shared in the ani mosities of their respective adherents, and loved each other with sincere affection. Edward was out hunting in the neighborhood of Ethelred's house, and rode up to the door alone. He asked for a little wine to drink his brother's health, and Elfrida, with exaggerated expressions of kind ness, gave him the cup. While he was drinking it, an attend ant of the queen, not, we may believe, without a signal from his mistress, stabbed the young monarch in the back. The horse started off alarmed. Weakened with loss of blood, the rider lost his seat, and was dragged by his stirrup a long way. When his companions tracked him by the gore upon the sand, they found him mangled almost past recognition, and the guilty hand was immediately suspected. No sus picion, however, attached to Ethelred, and in a short time Dunstan, the Politician-Priest. 47 he was crowned by the archbishop in person, who had failed in persuading a daughter of Edgar — by the nun whom he had torn from the monastery at Wilton — to leave the cell from which her mother had been forced, and mount the vacant throne. Ethelred obtained, from the enmity of the archbishop, the depreciatory name of " the Unready," and appeared to fulfill a curse which the prelate had uttered against him on his coronation day, by the calamities of which he was constantly the victim, and sometimes the cause. The public attention had been so occupied with the great ecclesiastic dispute that the defense of the nation against foreign enemies had been neglected for many years. It was now found that the tri umphs of Dunstan had so filled the land with monks, that there was a scarcity of able-bodied laymen either to fight or plow. Vast numbers had shaved their heads and sunk into the useless security of the cloister, who might have been re lied on with bow and spear when the danger, long threatened, at last drew near. The Norsemen were again upon the sea, and having established a powerful state on the opposite shore, under the name of the Dukedom of Normandy, were determined to make themselves masters of the unprotected and monk-ridden England in the same way. Rev. James White. 48 Pictures from English History. VI. THE DANISH RULE IN ENGLAND. [Ethelred was the last king of purely Saxon-Celtic blood. His reign was but thirty-five years of struggling to push back, or efforts to buy off, the Danish invasions. With the death of Ethelred, England fell over-ripe into the hands of Canute.] Was Canute to be king now ? Not over the Saxons, they said ; they must have Edmund, one of the sons of the Un ready, who was sumamed Ironside, because of his strength and stature. Edmund and Canute thereupon fell to, and fought five battles — O, unhappy England, what a fighting- ground it was ! — and then Ironside, who was a big man, pro posed to Canute, who was a little man, that they two should fight it out in single combat. If Canute had been the big man, he would probably have said Yes, but, being the little man, he decidedly said No. However, he declared that he was willing to divide the kingdom — to take all that lay north of Watling Street, as the old Roman military road from Dover to Chester was called, and to give Ironside all that lay south of it. Most men being weary of so much bloodshed, this was done. But Canute soon became sole king of En gland ; for Ironside died suddenly within two months. Some think that he was killed, and killed by Canute's orders. No one knows. Canute reigned eighteen years. He was a merciless king at first. After he had clasped the hands of the Saxon chiefs, in token of the sincerity with which he swore to be just and good to them in return for their acknowledging him, he de nounced and slew many of them, as well as many relations of the late king. " He who brings me the head of one of my enemies," he used to say, " shall be dearer to me than a brother." He was so severe in hunting down his enemies that he must have got together a pretty large family of these i\teO,°rkney Off The Danish Rule in England. 49 dear brothers. He was strongly inclined to kill Edmund and Edward, two children, sons of poor Ironside ; but, being afraid to do so in England, he sent them over to the king of Sweden, with a request that the king would be so good as to " dispose of them." If the king of Sweden had been like many, many other men of that day, he would have had their innocent throats cut ; but he was a kind man, and brought them up tenderly. Normandy ran much in Canute's mind. In Normandy were the two children of the late king — Edward and Alfred by name ; and their uncle, the duke, might one day claim the crown for them. But the duke showed so little inclination to do so now that he proposed to Canute to marry his sister, the widow of the Unready ; who, being but a showy flower, and caring for nothing so much as becoming a queen again, left her children, and was wedded to him. Successful and triumphant, assisted by the valor of the English in his foreign wars, and with little strife to trouble him at home, Canute had a prosperous reign, and made many improvements. He was a poet and a musician. He grew sorry, as he grew older, for the blood he had shed at first ; and went to Rome in a pilgrim's dress, by way of washing it out. He gave a great deal of money to foreigners on his journey ; but he took it from the English before he started. On the whole, however, he certainly became a far better man when he had no opposition to contend with, and was as great a king as England had known for some time. The old writers of history relate how that Canute was one day disgusted with his courtiers for their flattery, and how he caused his chair to be set on the sea-shore, and feigned to command the tide, as it came up, not to wet the edge of his robe, for the land was his ; how the tide came up, of course, without regarding him ; and how he then turned to his flatterers, and rebuked them, saying, what was the might of any earthly king to the might of the Creator, who could say 3 50 Pictures from English History. unto the sea, " Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther ? " We may learn from this, I think, that a little sense will go a long way in a king ; and that courtiers are not easily cured of flattery, nor kings of a liking for it. If the courtiers of Canute had not known, long before, that the king was fond of flattery, they would have known better than to offer it in such large doses. And if they had not known that he was vain of this speech, (any thing but a wonderful speech, it seems to me, if a good child had made it,) they would not have been at such great pains to repeat it. I fancy I see them all on the sea-shore together; the king's chair sinking in the sand ; the king in a mighty good humor with his own wisdom ; and the courtiers pretending to be quite stunned by it ! It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go " thus far, and no farther." The great command goes forth to all the kings upon the earth, and went to Canute in the year one thou sand and thirty-five, and stretched him dead upon his bed. Beside it stood his Norman wife. Perhaps, as the king looked his last upon her, he who had often thought distrust fully of Normandy long ago thought once more of the two exiled princes in their uncle's court, and of the little favor they could feel for either Danes or Saxons, and of a rising cloud in Normandy that slowly moved toward England. Charles Dickens. The Norman Conquest. 5 1 VII. THE NORMAN CONQUEST. [The two sons of Canute, Harefoot and Hardicanute, ruled and rioted a short time, and then Edward the Confessor, miscalled a Saxon, really a Norman, in education and sympathy, came to the throne. In the reign of Ethelred the Unready had arisen a man who was English in every in stinct — Earl Godwin. He became the first counselor, son-in-law of Canute, and his power extended into and controlled the reign of the Con fessor, making it English in spite of its head and his Norman relatives and courtiers. Upon Godwin's death Harold, his son, took up England's burden, and, upon the death of Edward the Confessor, became its elected king. William, duke of Normandy, claimed the crown hy will of the late king. In the probate of this will, by the sword, Harold laid down his life— the last of the Old English kings.] The two men who were thus arrayed in deadly opposition to each other were not unworthy of being competitors for a crown. Harold belonged to the greatest Saxon family of his time, of which he had been the head ever since the death of his father, the great Earl Godwin, which took place in 1053. Earl Godwin was one of the foremost men of the ante- Norman period of England, though his character, as Mr. St. John observes, "lies buried beneath a load of calumny; " and he quotes Dr. Hook as saying that " Godwin was the connecting link between the Saxon and the Dane, and, as the leader of the united English people, became one of the greatest men this country has ever produced, although, as is the English custom, one of the most maligned." "Calm, moderate, and dignified, reining in with wisdom the impetu osity of his nature," says Mr. St. John, " he presented to those around him the beau ideal of an Englishman, with all his pre dilections and prejudices, the warmest attachment to his native land, and a somewhat overweening contempt of for eigners. He was without question the greatest statesman of his age; and, indeed, statesmanship in England may almost be said to have commenced with him. Whether we look 52 Pictures from English History. at home or abroad, we discover no man in Christendom worthy to be ranked with him, in genius or wisdom, in peace or war. His figure towers far above all his contemporaries ; he constitutes the acme of the purely Saxon mind. No taint of foreign blood was in him. . . . Godwin's lot was cast upon evil days. The marriage of Ethelred with Emma originated a fatal connection between this country and Nor mandy, the first fruits of which, forcing themselves but too obviously on his notice, he prevented, while he lived, from growing to maturity. The efforts, public and secret, which he found it necessary to make in the performance of this patriotic task, laid him open to the charge of craft and sub tlety. Let it be granted that he deserved the imputation ; but it must be added that, if foreign invasion and conquest be an evil, from that evil England was preserved as long as his crafty and subtle head remained above ground ; and had he lived thirteen years longer, the accumulated and concen trated scoundrelism of Europe would have been dashed away in foam and blood from the English shore. Properly under stood, Godwin's whole life was one protracted agony for the salvation of his country. He had to contend with every species of deleterious influence — ferocious, drunken, disso lute, and imbecile kings, the reckless intrigues of monasticism at the instigation of Rome, and the unprincipled and in famous ambition of the Norman Bastard, who crept into En gland during this great man's exile, and fled in all haste at his return. What he had to contend with, what plots he frustrated, what malice he counteracted, what superstition and stupidity he rendered harmless, will never be known in detail. We perceive the indefinite and indistinct forms of these things floating through the mists of history, but cannot grasp and fix them for the instruction of posterity." This portraiture may be somewhat too highly colored, but it is better painting than we get from Norman writers, who were no more capable of writing justly of Godwin and The Norman Conquest. 53 Harold than Roman authors of Hannibal and Spartacus. Godwin was an abler man than his son and successor, and probably the latter would never have been able to aspire to royalty, and for a few months to wear a crown, had not the fortunes of his house been raised so high by his father. Nevertheless, Harold was worthy of his inheritance, and pos sessed rare qualities, such as made him not undeserving a throne, and of better fortune than he found at Hastings. He was patriotic, magnanimous, brave, humane, honorable, and energetic. His chief fault seems to have been a deficiency in judgment, which led him rashly to engage in undertakings that might better have been deferred. Such, at least, is the impression that we derive from his fighting the battle of Hastings when he had every thing to gain from delay, and when every day that an action was postponed was as useful to the Saxon cause as it was injurious to that of the Nor mans. Harold's rival was the illegitimate son of Robert the Devil, as he is commonly called, because he has been, though im properly, " identified with a certain imaginary or legendary hero," but who was a much better man than his diabolical sobriquet implies. William's mother was Arietta, or Herleva, daughter of a tanner of Falaise. The Conqueror never escaped the reproach of his birth, into which bastardy and plebeianism entered in equal proportions. He was always " William the Bastard," and he is so to this day. "William the Conqueror," says Palgrave, " the founder of the most noble empire in the civilized world, could never rid himself ofthe contumelious appellation which bore indelible record of his father's sin. In all history, William is the only indi vidual to whom such an epithet has adhered throughout his life and fortunes. . . . Nevertheless, and in spite of his il legitimacy, William became ruler of Normandy when he was but a child, his father abdicating the throne, and forcing the Norman baronage to accept the boy as his successor; and 54 Pictures from English History. that boy, thirty years later, founded a royal line that yet en dures in full strength, Queen Victoria being the legitimate descendant of William of Normandy. The training that Will iam received developed his faculties, and made him one of the chief men ofhis age ; and in 1066 he prepared to assert his right to the English crown. The Norman barons were at first disinclined to support their lord's claim upon England. Their tenures did not bind them to cross the ocean. But at last they were won over to the support of his cause, on the promise of receiving the lands of the English. He called upon foreigners to join his army, promising them the plunder of England. " All the adventurers and adventurous spirits of the neighboring states were invited to join his standard," and his invitation was ac cepted. "William published his ban," says Thierry, "in the neighboring countries; he offered gold and the pillage of England to every able man who would serve him with lance, sword, or cross-bow. A multitude accepted the invitation, coming by every road, far and near, from north and south. They came from Maine and Anjou, from Poitiers and Brit tany, from France and Flanders, from Aquitaine and Bur gundy, from the Alps and the banks of the Rhine. All the professional adventurers, all the military vagabonds of West ern Europe, hastened to Normandy by long marches; some were knights and chiefs of war, the others simple foot-soldiers and sergeants-of-arms, as they were then called ; some de manded money-pay, others only their passage and all the booty they might win. Some asked for land in England, a domain, a castle, a town ; others simply required some rich Saxon in marriage. Every thought, every desire of human avarice presented itself. William rejected no one, says the Norman chronicle, and satisfied every one as well as he could. He gave, beforehand, a bishopric in England to a monk of Fescamp, in return for a vessel and twenty armed men." The pope was William's chief supporter. Harold The Norman Conquest. 55 and all his adherents were excommunicated, and William re ceived a banner and a ring from Rome, the double emblem of military and ecclesiastical investiture. Of the sixty thou sand men that formed the Norman army, Normans formed the smallest portion, and most of their number were not of noble birth. William sailed on the 28th of September, and landed his army on the 29th, without experiencing any resistance. Harold was in the north, contending with and defeating the Northmen, one of whose leaders was his brother Tostig. As soon as he received intelligence of William's landing he marched south, bent upon giving immediate battle, though his mother and his brother, Gurth, and other relatives, and many of his friends, strongly counseled delay. This coun sel was good, for his force was to William's as one to four; and even a week's delay might have so far strengthened the Saxons as to have enabled them to fight on an approach to equal terms with the invaders. But Harold rejected all ad vice, and pressed forward to action so imprudently as to countenance, in a superstitious age, the notion that he was urged on by an irresistible power, which had decreed his destruction. Certainly he did not display much sagacity be fore battle, though both skill and bravery in it were not wanting on his part. The battle of Hastings was fought on the 14th of October, 1066. The Normans were the assailants; but for six hours — from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon — they were repulsed ; and had the Saxons been content to hold their ground, victory would have been theirs. But they left the position they had so valiantly maintained, to pursue the Normans, when the latter feigned to fly. Even then they fought with heroic resolution, and might have regained the day, had not Harold fallen. Soon after, the English posi tion was stormed, and the king's brother, Gurth, was slain. The combat lasted till the coming on of darkness. Fifteen 56 Pictures from English History. thousand ofthe victors are said to have fallen — a number as great as the entire English army. The issue of the battle of Hastings determined the course of English history; and when we observe how influential has been the part of England ever since it was fought, and bear in mind that the English race, great as it is, can scarcely be said to have got beyond the morning-time of its existence, we find it difficult to exaggerate the importance of a conflict by which its career for eight hundred years has been deeply and permanently colored. There is not a great event in English or American annals which is not directly traceable to what was done in the year 1066 by that buccaneering band which William the Bastard led from Normandy to England to enforce a claim that had neither a legal nor a moral foun dation, and which never could have been established had Plarold's conduct been equal to his valor, and had fortune favored the just cause. The sympathies of every fair-minded reader of the story of the Conquest must be with the Saxons ; and yet it is impossible to deny that the event at Hastings was well for the world. It is with Harold as it is with Han nibal : our feelings are at war with our judgment as we read their histories. . . . But " cool reflection " leads to other conclusions, and justifies the earthly course of Providence, against which we are so often disposed to complain. There can be no doubt, in the mind of any moral man, that the in vasion of England by Duke William was a wicked proceed ing ; but it is not the less true that much good came from William's action, and that nearly all that is excellent in En glish and American history is the fruit of that action. The part that England has had in the world's course for eight centuries, including her stupendous work of colonization, is second to nothing that has been done by any nation, not even to the doings of the Roman republic ; and to that part Saxon England never could have been equal. The battle of Hastings, therefore, was decisive of the future The Norman Conquest. 57 of England and of the British race. Saxon England disap peared. Norman England rose. The change was perfect, and quite warrants Lord Macaulay's emphatic assertion, that " the battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it, not only placed a duke of Normandy on the English throne, but gave up the whole population of England to the tyranny of the Norman race," and that " the subjugation of a nation by a nation has seldom, even in Asia, been more complete." The nation that finally was formed by a union of the Saxons and the Normans, and which was seven or eight generations in forming, was a very different nation from that which had been ruled by the Confessor. It was a nation that was ca pable of every form of action, and had little in common with the Saxons of the eleventh century. It matters nothing whether the Conqueror introduced the feudal system into England, or whether he found it there, or whether that sys tem is almost entirely an imaginary creation, as most prob ably is the fact. We know that the event called the Norman Conquest wrought great changes in England, and, through England, in the world. It is possible that the misery con sequent on the victory of the Normans has been exaggerated, though a great deal of suffering must have followed from it. But there can be no exaggeration of the general consequence of the success of the Normans. That determined the future course of the world, and will continue to determine it long after the Valley of the Amazon shall be far more thickly in habited, and better known, than to-day is the Valley of the Danube. There is one popular error with regard to the Norman Conquest which it may not be amiss to correct. It is taken for granted by most persons who have written on it that the triumph of William was the triumph of an aristocracy over a people, and we often hear the Saxons spoken of as demo crats who were subdued by aristocrats. This is an entirely erroneous view of the whole subject. So far as there was a 3* 58 Pictures from English History. contest at Hastings between aristocrats and democrats, the Normans were champions of democracy, and the Saxons of the opposite principle. The Saxon aristocracy was very powerful, and its power was steadily increasing for genera tions before the Conquest; and had there not been a foreign invasion, it is altogether probable that the English system soon would have become strictly oligarchical. One of the chief causes of Harold's failure was his inability to com mand the prompt support of some of the greatest nobles, as Earls Edwin and Morcar, who paid bitterly for their back wardness in after days. Something of this may be attributed to the weakness of his title to the crown, but the mere fact that such men could so powerfully influence events at a time when the very existence of the country was at stake, is enough to show how strong were the insular aristocrats ; and it was this selfish aristocracy that was destroyed by the Normans, most of whom were upstarts, the very scum of Europe hav ing entered William's army. We doubt if ever there was a greater triumph effected by the poor and the lowly-born over the rich and the well-born than that which was gained at Hastings, though it required some years to make it com plete. "According to the common report," says Sir F. Pal grave, " sixty thousand knights received their fees, or rather their livings, to use the old expression, from the Conqueror. This report is exaggerated as to number ; but the race of the Anglo-Danish and English nobility and gentry, the earls and the greater thanes, disappears ; and, with some excep tions, remarkable as exemplifying the general rule, all the superiorities of the English soil became vested in the Con queror's baronage. Men of a new race and order, men of strange manners and strange speech, ruled in England. There were, however, some great mitigations, and the very sufferings of the conquered were so inflicted as to become the ultimate means of national prosperity ; but they were to be gone through, and to be attended with much present The Norman Conquest. 59 desolation and misery. The process was the more painful because it was now accompanied by so much degradation and contumely. The Anglo-Saxons seem to have had a very strong aristocratic feeling — a great respect for family and dignity of blood. The Normans, or rather the host of ad venturers whom we must of necessity comprehend under the name of Normans, had comparatively little ; and not very many of the real old and powerful aristocracy, whether of Normandy or Brittany, settled in England. The great ma jority had been rude and poor and despicable in their own country — the rascallions of Northern Gaul : these, suddenly enriched, lost all compass and bearing of mind ; and no one circumstance vexed the spirit of the English more than to see the fair and noble English maidens and widows com pelled to accept these despicable adventurers as their hus bands. The Saxons were very wealthy, and the invaders obtained an amount of spoil that astonished them, the accounts of which remind the reader of what was told of the extraordi nary acquisitions made by the ruffians who formed the force of Pizarro in Peru. Years after the day of Hast ings, we are told, William " bore back with him, to his eager and hungry country, the plunder of England, which was so varied in kind, so prodigious in amount, that the awe-stricken chroniclers maintain that all the Gauls, if ransacked from end to end, would have failed to supply treasures worthy to be compared with it. The silver, the gold, the vases, vest ments, and crucifixes crested with jewels, the silken garments for men and women, the rings, necklaces, bracelets, wrought delicately in gold and resplendent in gems, inspired the Con tinental barbarians with rapture, and in their imaginations made England appear the Dorado of those times." One of the writers of that day states that " incredible treasures in gold and silver were sent from the plunder of England to the pope, together with costly ornaments, which would have 60 Pictures from English History. been held in the highest estimation even at Byzantium, then universally regarded as the most opulent city in the world." All this implies that the Saxon aristocracy were very rich, and it is far from unlikely that it was the desire to preserve their property that led them to offer so little resistance to William — a fatally mistaken course, for the invading advent urers had entered England in search of other men's property, and were not to be kept quiet by the quietness of the owners thereof. The aristocracy alone could afford such plunder as that described, and that so much of it was obtained shows how extensive must have been the spoliation, and how thoroughly Saxon nobles were stripped of their possessions by the low-born ragamuffins who were induced by William's recruiting sergeants' to enlist under his black banner. C. C. Hazewell, in Atlantic Monthly. VIII. THE FIRST CRUSADE. [Upon the death of William I., his second son, William Rufus, seized the crown of England, regardless of the claims of his elder brother, Rob ert. Constant quarrels' and frequent wars between the brothers for this contested right marked this reign. Rufus' rule was tyrannical and op pressive to his people also. In 1096 a new calling came to Robert in the First Crusade — the most remarkable event of this reign — and he mort gaged his dukedom of Normandy to Rufus for money for that expedition.] The mortgage of Normandy to William was connected with one of the most wonderful stirrings of the human heart that has been recorded in the history of mankind. The money of which William stripped his people, to pay the stipulated price to Robert for the surrender of his dominions — to raise which he even compelled the Churchmen to bring to him their golden shrines and silver chalices — this price was The First Crusade. 6i nothing compared with the property that was devoted by the people of Europe for the recovery of Jerusalem from the in fidels. "Whatever was stored in granaries or hoarded in chambers," says Malmesbury, " all was deserted." Robert of Normandy was one of the leaders of the First Crusade. " It was one of those events," writes Guizot, " which change the condition of the people." It is recorded that, on the night of the 4th of April, 1095, Gilbert, bishop of Lisieux, in Normandy, who had been chaplain and physician to William the Conqueror, observing that remarkable phenomenon of innumerable falling stars which is now familiar to us at particular seasons, interpreted the appearance as a portent of an immense emigration of people from one country to another, from which tney would never return till the stars came back to their place in the heavens. In November of the same year Pope Urban II. attended the great Council of Clermont, in Auvergne ; and from a lofty scaffold in the market-place of Clermont preached the Crusade to assembled thousands. A vast mul titude had arrived from all the surrounding districts — princes, bishops, nobles, knights, priests, burgesses, and rus tics. For a zealous missionary had gone through Italy and France, and had proclaimed in every land that the Holy Sepulcher, which Christian pilgrims had freely visited from the days of Haroun Alraschid, was now closed against them by the Turks, who had conquered Syria; and that the serv ants of the cross were massacred, plundered, sold into slavery. This was Peter of Amiens, known as Peter the Hermit. It was in the power of this man, mean of person, but gifted with that eloquence which is more potent than any physical su periority, to rouse a spirit in prince and people which had the character of universality. Before this time there was no common bond among the Christian communities of Europe — no prevailing sentiment which could unite the governments, and still less the people, 62 Pictures from English History. in any general course of action. The extension of the Mo hammedan empire was dreaded; but no state was strong enough to encounter the danger single-handed ; and no con federacy of states could be constructed amid the jealousies and hatreds of their ambitious rulers. Not only was any political unity impossible among many nations, but a common political sentiment was equally impossible among the classes of any one nation. But a vast European confederation for obtaining the freedom of Christian worship in the land which the Redeemer and his apostles had trodden was an idea that seized upon the minds of men in all countries and of all classes with a force which those only cannot comprehend who measure the character of a past age by the principles and feelings of their own age. When Pope Urban, from his lofty platform in the market-place of Clermont, called out to the chieftains and warriors, " Go, and employ, in nobler warfare, that valor and that sagacity which you have been used to waste in civil broils," he addressed himself to that love of excitement which, as much as the love of plunder, had called forth the lord from the monotony of his solitary castle, gladly to encounter the perils of " civil broils," rather than to dream away his life in wearisome idleness. None of the resources of modern society could give a relish to the existence of the feudal chief. The chase and the carousal, day by day, and year by year — the same priest at the mass ; the same wife at the distaff; the same jester at the banquet — no books, no intelligent converse, no regular communica tion with the surrounding world, no care for the education of children, no solicitude for the welfare of dependents — a dark tower for a dwelling, with neighbors whom he despised and persecuted — this was an existence for the lord of many mahors, that those who command the humblest of the mani fold conveniences and pleasures of modern times need not envy. The prospect of visiting far-off and famous lands ; of fighting against heathen miscreants ; of returning with wealth The First Crusade. 63 and glory, or of dying in the assured hope of felicity, made the Crusade as welcome to the feudal lord as the gayest tournament. Nor was it less welcome to those whom Urban addressed, not as leaders in the enterprise, but as humble followers : " Let no love of relations detain you ; for man's chiefest love is toward God. Let no attachment to your native soil be an impediment ; because, in different points of view, all the world is exile to the Christian and all the world his country." Attachment to his native soil would scarcely be an impedi ment to the lord's humble vassal ; for the produce of the soil was scanty, and what he reaped he could rarely gather into his own homestead. If he could find another country where the prince would not rob the lord, and the lord would not grind the tenant — where the earth ripened her fruits beneath warmer suns, and man required less sustenance to be earned by unremitting labor — there would he gladly go. The burgher, who crouched under the hill-castle of the proud earl, and did his servile work of smith-craft or carpentry, with small pay and heavy dues, would dream of a land where ignorant misbelievers lived in glorious mansions, rich with all the wealth of the East — for so the pilgrims told of the Asiatic cities — and that wealth might be his. The foot-soldier, before whom the mounted men — the favored of the earls — looked with contempt, would warm into a hero when the pope spake ofthe Turks, who fought at a distance with poisoned arrows — the thin-blooded people, over whom the stalwart children of the West would make an easy conquest. To the feudal lord, to the tenant of his demesne, to the burgess of his town, to the common soldier who watched upon his ramparts, the Crusade would offer the strongest incentive to the worldly-minded as well as to the enthusiastic. The mixture of motives made every crusader more or less alive to the higher influences. If wealth was not to be won, and new homes were not to be conquered, there were unearthly 64 Pictures from English History. mansions prepared for the soldiers of the cross. With one voice, therefore, the people in the market-place of Clermont shouted, " 'Deus lo volt; Deus lo volt." " It is, indeed, the will of God," said the pope. " Let that acclamation be your battle-cry. Wear the cross as your sign and your solemn pledge." The great army of the East was to be gathered together from all nations by another year. But the impatience of the people would not wait for arms or leaders. In the March of 1096 a vast multitude set forward from France, gathering fresh crowds as they proceeded. The wonderful scenes of that year have been described by eye-witnesses. The peas ant shod his oxen like horses, and, yoking them to a cart, migrated with his wife and children ; and the children, when ever they approached a town, cried out, " Is this Jerusa lem? " Lands were abandoned. Houses and chattels were sold for ready money by townsmen and husbandmen. The passion to reach Jerusalem extinguished all ordinary love of gain, and absorbed every other motive for exertion. Where Jerusalem was situate was to many a mystery. It was a far- distant land which a few pious and adventurous spirits had attained by difficult paths, over mountains and through des erts, and had returned to tell of its wonders and its dangers. It was a land where the fierce heathen kept possession of the holy seats which they despised, and where impure rites and demoniacal enchantments polluted the birthplace of the one true religion. The desire to see that land, if not to possess it, went through the most remote parts of Christian Europe. Wales, Scotland, Denmark, and Norway sent out their thousands to join the great body that were moving on to the Rhine and the Danube. As they passed through the popu lous cities of Germany the spirit of fanatical hatred which belonged to that age incited the multitude to pillage and massacre the Jews ; and the best protectors of the unhappy race were the Christian bishops. This irregular host reached The First Crusade. 65 the frontiers of Austria, and then had to traverse the vast forests and morasses of Hungary and Bulgaria. Undisci plined, ill-provided, encumbered with women and children, their numbers had gradually been wasted by hunger and fatigue. They were led in two divisions, one of which was commanded by Peter the Hermit, the other by a soldier named Walter the Penniless. They irritated the inhabitants of the wild countries through which they passed, and suffered the most terrible defeats in Bulgaria. These were not the warlike bands that followed, under renowned and able lead ers, in all the pomp and power of chivalry. In this irregu lar army there were only eight horsemen to fifteen thousand foot. At last the remnant ofthe hundred thousand that had undertaken this perilous journey reached Constantinople. The emperor would have treated them with kindness, but they began to plunder the beautiful city, and they were driven out to seek the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus. They here renewed their devastations, uncontrolled by any respect for their leader, Walter, or any care for their own safety ; and they were finally routed and cut to pieces by the Turks. The regular army of the crusaders at length approached Asia under the commanders whom history and poetry have made famous — Godfrey of Bouillon, Hugh of Vermamdois, Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders, Stephen of Char tres, Raymond of Toulouse, the ambitious Bohemond, and the accomplished Tancred. They came by different routes from their several countries. The history of their progress belongs not to our narrative. It was more than three years after Pope Urban had preached the crusade at Clermont that Jerusalem fell, and the Holy Sepulcher was free. A terrible massacre disgraced this Christian triumph ; and while the merciless conquerors knelt upon the sacred earth, they showed how little they comprehended the spirit of the relig ion whose sign they bore in that great warfare. But it is not the crimes of the fanatical warriors who won the Holy Land, 66 Pictures from English History. nor the rashness of the ignorant multitudes who preceded them, that should lead us to speak of the Crusades " as the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has ever yet appeared in any age or nation." One who looks upon history with a more extended range of vision has pointed out that " the Crusades were the continuation, the zenith, of the grand struggle which had been going on for four centuries between Christianity and Mohammedanism." Like all other great struggles of principle, they produced the most enduring influences upon the destinies of mankind ; and, marked as was their course by the display of many evil passions and many dangerous illusions, their tendency was to elevate the character of European life, and to prepare the way for the ultimate triumph of mental freedom and equal government. Charles Knight. IX. THE CIVIL WARS OF STEPHEN AND MATILDA. [On the death of Henry I., Stephen, count of Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror and nephew of the late king, seized the crown; notwith standing that Henry had willed it to his daughter Matilda and imposed on all his nobles an oath to support her succession. Stephen soon found some of his Norman subjects in England refractory, and, worse than that, quarreled with the bishops and the pope, and laid heavy hands on the Church possessions in England. The enemies of Stephen soon invited Matilda to England to try for the crown, and the civil wars were begun.] Having been invited into England by her friends, Matilda disembarked on the 22d of September, in the year 1139, threw herself into Arundel Castle, on the coast of Sussex, and from thence reached Bristol Castle, which was held by her illegitimate brother, Robert, earl of Gloucester. At the news of the arrival of the pretendress, many secret discon- The Civil Wars of Stephen and Matilda. 67 tents and intrigues came to light. The greater part of the nobles of the north and west made a solemn renunciation of their homage and allegiance to Stephen of Blois, and re newed the oath that they had taken to the daughter of King Henry. The whole Norman race in England seemed to have been divided, in one moment, into two factions, who regarded each other with defiance, before coming to an en gagement. " Suspicion," says the historian of that time, " was roused in the breast of each man, even of his neigh bor, his friend, or his brother." Fresh bands of Brabanion soldiers, engaged by one or other of the rival parties, came with arms and baggage, by different ports and various roads, to the gathering points fixed by the king or by Matilda ; each side promised them, for their pay, the lands of the opposite faction. In order to bear the costs of this civil war the Normans sold and under sold their domains, their villages, and their townships, to gether with the inhabitants and their possessions. Several of them made incursions on the domains of their adversaries, and carried off the horses, the oxen, the sheep, and the En glish, whom they seized even in the villages, and took away in chains. The general terror was such, that if the inhabit ants of any city or town saw three or four horsemen ap proaching in the distance, they immediately took flight. This extreme alarm arose from the horrible reports which were spread of the fate of the men whom the Normans had seized and imprisoned in their castles. " They carried off," says the Saxon chronicle, " all who they thought possessed any property, men and women, by day and by night ; and while they kept them imprisoned, they inflicted on them tor tures, such as no martyr ever underwent, in order to obtain gold and silver from them. Some were suspended by their feet, their heads hanging over smoke ; others were hung by their thumbs, with fire under their feet ; they pressed the heads of some with a cord, so tight as to force in the skull ; 68 Pictures from English History. others were thrown into pits full of snakes, toads, and all kinds of reptiles ; others were placed in the chambre-a-crucir, the name that was given, in the Norman language, to a short, narrow kind of chest, very shallow, and lined with sharp stones, in which the sufferer was pressed until his limbs were all dislocated. " In most of the castles they kept a set of chains so heavy that two or three men could hardly lift them ; the unhappy being upon whom they were laid was held up by an iron collar fixed in a post, and could neither sit, lie down, nor sleep. They killed many thousands of persons by hunger. They imposed tribute after tribute upon the towns and vil lages, calling this, in their tongue, tenserie. When the citizens had nothing more to give them they plundered and burned their town. You might have traveled a whole day without finding a single soul in the towns, or a cultivated field. The poor died of hunger, and those who had formerly been well- off now begged their bread from door to door. Whoever had it in his power to leave England did so. Never was a coun try delivered up to so many miseries and misfortunes ; even in the invasion of the pagans it suffered less than now. Neither the cemeteries nor the churches were spared ; they seized all they could, and then set fire to the church. To till the ground was useless. It was openly reported that Christ and his saints were sleeping." The greatest terror reigned in the environs of Bristol, where the Empress Matilda and her Angevins had established their head-quarters. All the day through there were being brought into the town men bound and gagged, either with a piece of wood or with a notched iron bit. There as constantly went out troops of soldiers in disguise, who, concealing their arms and their language under the English habit, scattered them selves over the populous districts, and mixed with the crowd in the markets and in the streets; suddenly they would seize any one who seemed from their appearance to be in easy The Civil Wars of Stephen and Matilda. 69 circumstances, and carry them to their head-quarters to set a ransom on them. King Stephen led his army first against Bristol ; this town, which was strong and well-defended, re sisted the royal army, and the soldiers, in revenge, devas tated and burnt the environs. The king then attacked, one by one, and with more success, the Norman castles situated on the borders of Wales, nearly all the lords of which had declared against him. While he was engaged in this long and harassing war an insurrection broke out on the eastern side ; the fens of Ely, which had served as a refuge to the last of the free Saxons, became a camp for the Normans of the Anjou faction. Baldwin de Revier and Lenoir, bishop of Ely, raised in trenchments of stone and cement against Stephen, in the very place where Hereward had erected a fort of wood against King William. This locality, always formidable to the Norman authorities on account of the facilities which it afforded for union and defense, had been placed by Henry I. under the control of a bishop, who was to aid the count and viscount in their superintendence of the province. The first bishop of the new diocese of Ely was that Herve whom the Welsh had expelled from Bangor ; the second was Lenoir, or Nigel, who frustrated the great conspiracy of the English in 1 137. It was not for any personal zeal for King Stephen, but in a spirit of patriotism, as a Norman, that he then served the king against the Saxons, and as soon as the Normans de clared against Stephen, Lenoir joined them, and undertook to make the islands in his diocese a gathering-place for Ma tilda's partisans. Stephen attacked his enemies in this camp, in the same manner that the Conqueror had formerly attacked the Saxon refugees in that place. He constructed bridges of boats, over which his cavalry passed, and completely routed the soldiers of Baldwin of Reviers and Bishop Lenoir. The bishop fled to Gloucester, where the daughter of Henry I. 70 Pictures from English History. then was, with her principal adherents. All her party in the west, encouraged by the king's absence, repaired the breaches in their castles ; or, converting the towers of the great churches into fortresses, filled them with engines of war ; they dug trenches round, in the church-yards even, so that the corpses were uncovered and the bones of the dead scattered about. The Norman bishops did not scruple to take part in these military operations ; nor were they less active than others in torturing the English to extract ransom from them. They were seen, as in the first years of the conquest, mounted on war-horses, completely armed, with a lance or baton in their hands, superintending the works and the attacks, or drawing lots for a share of the booty. The bishops of Chester and of Lincoln distinguished them selves among the most warlike. The latter rallied the troops dispersed at the camp of Ely, and formed another army in the eastern coast, which King Stephen attacked, but with less success than the first ; his troops, victorious at Ely, were routed near Lincoln ; abandoned by all around him, the king defended himself single-handed for some time, but was at last obliged to surrender; he was taken to Gloucester, the quarters of the Countess of Anjou, who, by the advice of her council of war, had him imprisoned in the dungeon of Bristol Castle. This defeat was a death-blow to the royal cause. Stephen's Norman partisans, seeing him vanquished and a captive, went over in crowds to Matilda's side. His own brother, Henry, bishop of Winchester, declared for the victorious faction ; and the Saxon peasants, who detested both parties equally, took advantage of the misfortunes of the conquered side to plunder and maltreat them in their rout. The granddaughter of the conqueror made her triumphal entry into Winchester ; Bishop Henry received her at the gates, at the head of the clergy of all the churches. She took possession of the regalia, as well as the treasure belonging to DOMINIONS OF THE HOUSE OF ANJOU The Civil Wars of Stephen and Matilda. 71 Stephen, and convoked a great council of Norman prelates, counts, barons, and knights. The assembly made Matilda queen, and the bishop who presided pronounced the follow ing form : " Having first, as is our duty, invoked the assist ance of Almighty God, we elect as lady of England and Nor mandy the daughter of the glorious, rich, good, and pacific King Henry, and promise to render her fealty and support." But Queen Matilda's good fortune soon made her disdainful and arrogant; she ceased to take the advice of her old friends, and treated harshly such of her adversaries who de sired to be at peace with her. The authors of her elevation often met with a refusal to any request they might make, and if they bowed down before her, says an old historian, she did not rise to them. This conduct chilled the zeal of her most devoted adherents, and the greater number withdrew from her, without, however, declaring for the dethroned king, passively awaiting the final issue of events. From Winchester the new queen proceeded to London. She was the daughter of a Saxon, and the Saxon citizens, from a kind of national sympathy, regarded her presence in their city with greater favor than that of the king, who was of entirely foreign descent ; but the good- will of these men, en slaved by the conquest, made little impression on the proud heart of the wife of the Count of Anjou, and her first notice of the people of London was the demand of an enormous poll-tax. The citizens, whom the devastations of war and Stephen's exactions had reduced to such a state of distress that they were in immediate fear of a famine, implored the queen to have pity on them, and to delay the imposition of fresh taxes until they were relieved from their present misery. "The king has left us nothing," the deputies of the citizens said to her, in a submissive tone. " I understand," replied the daughter of Henry I., with a disdainful air, "you have given all to my adversary, you have conspired with him against me, and you expect me to spare you." The citizens 72 Pictures from English History. of London being forced to pay the tax, took this opportunity of making a humble request to the queen. "Restore to us," was their demand, " the good laws of thy great uncle, Ed ward, in the place of those of thy father, King Henry, which are bad and too harsh for us." But, as though she were ashamed of her maternal ancestors, and had abjured her Saxon descent, Matilda was enraged at this request, treated those who had thus dared to address her as if they had been guilty of the greatest insolence, and uttered terrible menaces against them. Wounded to the depths of the heart, but dis sembling their vexation, the citizens returned to their hall of council, where the Normans, less suspicious than formerly, now allowed them to assemble, to arrange between them selves, by common accord, the sharing of the taxes ; for the government had adopted the custom of levying a general tax on each town, without troubling themselves as to the mode in which the demand was met by individual contributors. Queen Matilda was awaiting in full security, either in the Conqueror's tower or in William Rufus' palace, at West minster, the return of the citizen's deputies, to offer her on their knees the sacks of gold that she had demanded from them, when suddenly the bells of the town sounded an alarm, and the streets and squares were filled with crowds of people. From each house sallied a man armed with the first warlike instrument on which he could lay his hand. An ancient writer compares the multitude which tumultuously gathered together to bees issuing from the hive. The queen and her Norman and Angevin men-at-arms, seeing themselves sur rounded, and not daring to risk, in the narrow, crooked streets, a conflict in which superiority of arms and military science could be of no use to them, quickly mounted horse and fled. They had scarcely passed the last houses in the suburb, when a troop of English hastened to the apartments which they had inhabited, forced open the doors, and, not finding them there, plundered all that they had left. The The Civil Wars of Stephen and Matilda. 73 queen galloped towards Oxford, with her barons and knights, who at intervals detached themselves, one by one, from the cortege, to make their escape with greater safety, alone, by cross-roads and by-ways. Matilda entered Oxford, accompanied by her brother, the Earl of Gloucester, and the small number of those who had found this road the most convenient for themselves, or who had overlooked their own safety in consideration for hers. In fact, there was little danger ; for the inhabitants of Lon don, satisfied with having chased the new queen of England from their walls, did not attempt to pursue her. Their in surrection, the result of an outbreak of indignation, with no previously concerted plan, and unconnected with any other movement, was not the first step of a national insurrection. The expulsion of Matilda and her adherents did not turn to the advantage of the English people, but to that of Stephen's partisans. The latter quickly re-entered London, occupied the city, and filled it with their troops, under the pretense of an alliance with the citizens. The wife of the captive king repaired to London, and took up her quarters there ; and all that the citizens then gained was the privilege of enlisting to the number of a thousand men, with casques and hau berks, among the troops that assembled in the name of Stephen of Blois, and of serving as auxiliaries of the Nor mans under William and Roger de la Chesnage. The Bishop of Winchester, seeing his brother's party re gaining some strength, deserted the opposite side, and de clared again for the prisoner at Bristol ; he set up Stephen's banner on Windsor Castle, and on his episcopal residence, which he had fortified and embattled like a castle. Robert of Gloucester and the partisans of Matilda came and laid siege to it. The garrison of the castle, built in the middle of the town, set fire to the houses to annoy the besiegers ; and, at the same time, the army of London, attacking -them unawares, obliged them to take refuge in the churches, which 4 74 Pictures from English History. were then set fire to, in order to drive them out. Robert of Gloucester was taken prisoner, and his followers dispersed. Barons and knights, throwing away their arms, and marching on foot, in order not to be recognized, traversed the towns and villages under false names. But besides the partisans of the king, who pressed them closely, they encountered other enemies on their road, the Saxon peasants and serfs, who were as remorseless to them in their defeat as they had for merly been to the opposite faction. They arrested the prog ress of these proud Normans, who, in spite of their attempts at disguise, were betrayed by their language, and drove them along with whips. The Bishop of Canterbury, some other bishops, and numbers of great lords were maltreated in this manner, and stripped of their clothing. Thus this war was to the English a cause both of misery and of joy, of that frantic joy which is experienced in the midst of suffering, by rendering evil for evil. The grandson of a man slain at Hastings would feel a moment's pleasure when he found the life of a Norman in his power, and the Englishwomen, who had plied the distaff in the service of the high Norman ladies, joyfully recounted the story of the sufferings of Queen Matilda on her departure from Oxford: how she fled, ac companied only by three men-at-arms, in the night, on foot, through the snow, and how she had passed, in great alarm, close to the enemy's posts, hearing the voice of the sentinels, and the sound of the military signals. Augustin Thierry. The Assassination of Archbishop Becket. 75 THE ASSASSINATION OF ARCHBISHOP BECKET. [Upon the accession of Henry II. he began the work of political re form and the restoration of order and justice, so necessary after Stephen's chaotic reign. In this work he was assisted by a very able man, Thomas Becket, whom he made chancellor. To bring the clergy under civil law in criminal cases was one of Henry's reforms, in furtherance of which he made Becket Archbishop of Canterbury. But upon coming to the head of the English Church Becket opposed these changes, and long and bitter quarrels between him and the king ensued. This ended in the banish ment of Becket, in a partial reconciliation, and his return to his see, when he again began reprisals on the friends of the king, who was at the time in Normandy.] The Archbishop of York, the two Bishops of London and Salisbury, being offended with his doings, sailed over into Normandy and there complained to King Henry of injuries done to them by Archbishop Thomas, grievously accusing him that he went about to take away their liberty of priest hood, to destroy, corrupt, and finally to abolish both the laws of God and man, together with the ancient decrees and statutes of their elders ; insomuch that he took upon him to exclude bishops at his pleasure from the company of Chris tian men, and so, being excluded, to banish them forever : to derogate things merely prejudicial to the king's royal pre rogative; and finally to take away from all men the equity of laws and civil orders. The king, giving ear to their complaint, was so displeased in his mind against Archbishop Thomas, that in open au dience of his lords, knights, and gentlemen, he said these or the like words : " In what miserable state am I, that cannot be in rest within mine own realm, by reason of one only priest. Neither is there any of my folks that will help to deliver me out of such troubles." There were some that stood about the king which guessed 76 Pictures from English History. by these words that his mind was to signify how he would have some man to dispatch the archbishop out of the way. The king's displeasure against the archbishop was known well enough, which caused men to have him in no reverence at all, so that (as it was said) he chanced on a time that he came to Stroud, in Kent, where the inhabitants meaning to do something to his infamy, being thus out of the king's favor and despised of the world, cut off his horse's tail. There were some also of the king's servants that thought after another manner of sort to revenge the displeasure done to the king's majesty, as Sir Hugh Morville, Sir William Tracy, Sir Richard Brito, and Sir Reginald Fitzurse, knights, who, taking advice together, and agreeing in one mind and will, took shipping and sailed over into England, landed at a place called Dogs-haven, near Dover. Now the first night they lodged in the castle of Saltwood, which Randolph de Broe had in keeping. The next morning being the 29th of December, and fifth day of Christmas, which as that year came about fell upon a Tuesday, having gotten together certain soldiers in the country thereabouts, came to Canterbury, and first entering into the court of the Abbey of St. Augustine, they talked with Clarenbald, the elect abbot of that place ; and after conference had with him they proceeded in their business as followeth. The first knight, Sir Reginald Fitzurse, came to him about the eleventh hour of the day, as the archbishop sat in his chamber, and sitting down at his feet upon the ground with out any manner of greeting or salutation, at length began with him thus : " Being sent of our sovereign lord the king from beyond the seas, we do here present unto you his grace's commandments, to wit, that you should go to his son the king, to do unto him that which appertaineth unto you to do unto your sovereign lord, and to do your fealty unto him in taking an oath, and further to amend that wherein you have offended his majesty." Whereunto the archbishop answered : The Assassination of Archbishop Becket. 77 " For what cause ought I to confirm my fealty unto him by oath ; or wherein am I guilty in offending the king's maj esty ? " Sir Reginald said : " For your barony, fealty is de manded of you with an oath, and another oath is required of those clerks which you have brought with you, if they mean to continue within the land." The archbishop an swered : " For my barony I am ready to do to the king whatsoever law or reason shall allow : but let him for certain hold that he shall not get any oath either of me or of my clerks." " We knew that," said the knight, " that you would not do any of these things which we proposed unto you. Moreover, the king commandeth you to absolve those bishops that are excommunicated by you without his license." Whereunto he said : " The bishops are excommunicated, not by me, but by the pope, who hath thereto authority from the Lord. If, indeed, he hath revenged the injury done to my Church, .1 confess that I am not displeased therewith." " Then," said the knight, " sith that such things in despite ofthe king do please you, it is to be thought that you would take from him his crown, and be called and taken for king yourself, but you shall miss of your purpose surely therein." The archbishop answered : " I do not aspire to the name of a king ; rather would I knit three crowns unto his crown if it lay in my power." At length, after these and such words, the knights, turn ing them to the monks, said, " In the behalf of our sovereign lord the king, we command you, that in any wise ye keep this man safe, and present him to the king when it shall please his grace' to send for him." The archbishop said, "Do ye think that I will run away ; I came not to run away, but to look for the outrage and malice of wicked men." " Truly," said they, " you shall not run away," and herewith went out with noise and threatenings. Then Master John of Salisbury, his chancellor, said unto him : " My lord, this is a wonderful matter that you will take no man's counsel ; had it not been 78 Pictures from English History. meet to have given them a more meek and gentle answer ? " But the archbishop said, " Surely I have already taken all the counsel that I will take. I know what I ought to do." Then said Salisbury, " I pray God it may be good." Now the knights departing out of the place, and going about to put on their armor, certain came to the archbishop and said, " My lord, they arm themselves." "What forceth it," said he, " let them arm themselves." Now when they were armed, and many other about them, they entered into the archbishop's palace.- Those that were about the archbishop cried upon him to flee, but he sat still and would not once remove, till the monks brought him even by force and against his will into the church. The coming of the armed men being known, some of the monks continued singing of even song, and some sought places where to hide themselves, other came to the archbishop, who was loth to have entered into the church, and when he was within he would not yet suffer them to make fast the doors, so that there was a great stir among them, but chiefly when they per ceived that the armed men went about to seek for the archbishop, by mean whereof their even song was left unfinished. At length the knights with their servants, having sought the palace, came rushing into the church by the cloister door with their swords drawn, some of them asking for the trai tor, and some of them for the archbishop, who came and met them, saying, " Here am I, no traitor, but the arch bishop." The foremost ofthe knights said unto him, "Flee, thou art but dead." To whom the archbishop said, "I will not flee." The knight stepped to him, taking him by the sleeve, and with his sword cast his cap beside his head, and said, " Come hither, for thou art a prisoner." " I will not," said the archbishop; " do with me here what thou wilt," and plucked his sleeve with a mighty strength out of the knight's hand. Wherewith the knight stepped back two or three The Assassination of Archbishop Becket. 79 paces. Then the archbishop, turning to one of the knights, said to him, " What meaneth this, Reginald ? I have done unto thee many great pleasures, and comest thou now unto me into the church armed ? " Unto whom the knight pres ently answered and said, " Thou shalt know anon what is meant, thou art but dead ; it is not possible for thee any longer to live." Unto whom the archbishop answered, " I am ready to die for my God, and for the defense of his justice and the liberty of the Church ; gladly do I embrace death, so that the Church may purchase peace and liberty by the shedding of my blood." And herewith taking another of the knights by the habergeon, he flung him from him with such violence that he had almost thrown him down to the ground. This was Sir Will. Tracy, as he after confessed. Then the archbishop inclined his head after the manner of one that would pray, pronouncing these his last words : " To God, to St. Mary, and to the saints that are patrons of this church, and to St. Denis, I commend myself and the Church's cause." Therewith Sir Reginald Fitzurse striking a full blow at his head, chanced to light upon the arm of a clerk named Edward of Cambridge, who cast up his arm to save the archbishop ; but when he was not able to bear the weight Of the blow he plucked his arm back, and so the stroke stayed upon the archbishop's head in such wise that the blood ran down by his face. Then they stroke at him one after another, and though he fell to the ground at the second blow, yet they left him not till they had cut and pushed out his brains and dashed them about upon the church pavement. All this being done, they rifled his house, spoiled his goods and took them to their own uses, suppos ing it lawful for them, being the king's servants, so to do. Holinshed. 80 Pictures from English History. XI. THE PENANCE OF HENRY II. [Henry professed, no doubt honestly, deep sorrow and wrath at this assassination. Troubles accumulated on his head during the rest of his reign. His subjects in England and on the continent were in chronic rebellion, inspired by his inveterate enemy of France, and aided by Scot land. Worst of all, his wife and sons made common cause with his ene mies for his overthrow; while "on the altars of Canterbury were kept alive the smoldering fires of Saxon resentment." To conciliate his Saxon subjects, and gain a support against all his enemies, he resolved on the dexterous stroke of state-craft described below.] He had scarcely arrived in Normandy when he learnt that his eldest son and the Earl of Flanders, having collected a great naval armament, were preparing to make a descent on England. This news determined him to embark for that country ; he carried with him, as prisoners, his wife Eleanor, and his son's wife, Margaret, daughter of the French king. From Southampton, where he disembarked, the king pro ceeded toward Canterbury, and as soon as he came in sight of the metropolitan church, that is to say, at three miles dis tance from the town, he descended from his horse, laid aside his silk apparel, took off his boots, and set off walking bare foot along the flinty and muddy road. When he arrived in the church which contained the tomb of Thomas a Becket, he prostrated himself, with his face to the earth, crying and weeping, in presence of all the people of the town, who had been assembled by the sound of the bells. The Bishop of London, that same Gilbert Foliot, who had persecuted Thomas throughout his whole life, and who, after his death, had wished that his corpse might be thrown into a ditch, mounted the pulpit, and addressing himself to the congre gation, said : " All you here present, know that Henry, king of England, calling on God and the holy martyr for the sal vation of his soul, protests before you, that he neither com- The Penance of Henry II. manded, nor willed, nor willingly caused, nor desired in his heart the death of the martyr. But as it is possible that the murderers may have taken advantage of some words im prudently uttered by him, he declares that he implores his penance from the bishops here assembled, and consents to submit his naked flesh to the discipline of rods." Accordingly the king, accompanied by a great number of Norman bishops and abbots, and by all the Norman and Sax on monks of the chapter of Canterbury, descended to the crypt, where, two years before, they had been obliged to shut up the corpse of the archbishop as in a fort, to defend it from the insults of the royal officers and soldiers. There, kneeling on the stone of the tomb, and divesting himself of all his clothing, he placed himself, with his back bare, in the same attitude in which his justiciaries had on a former occasion caused those Englishmen to be placed, who had been public ly flogged for having welcomed Thomas on his return from exile, or for having honored him as a saint. Each of the bishops, whose part in the ceremony had been arranged beforehand, took one of the whips with several lashes which were used in monasteries to inflict ecclesiastical corrections, and which were therefore called disciplines : each one gave three or four stripes with this upon the shoulders of the prostrate king, saying : " As the Redeemer was scourged for the sins of men, so be thou for thy own sins." From the hands of the bishops the discipline passed into that of the monks, who were very numerous, and for the most part of the English race. The sons of those who had been made serfs by the Conquest imprinted the stripes of a whip upon the flesh of the Conqueror's grandson, and this was not without a secret joy, as is betrayed by some bitter pleasantries which we meet with in the recitals of that time. But the momentary joy and triumph could not be produc tive of any good to the English population ; on the contrary, this people was made the dupe of this ignoble scene of 4* Pictures from~~English History. hypocrisy which was performed before them by the Angevin king. Henry II., finding almost all his continental subjects opposed to him. had felt his need of the support of the Anglo- Saxons ; he thought that a few stripes of discipline would be a trifling thing if it would render him the same service with this people, whom he had despised in his fortunate days, as promises and false vows had formerly rendered his grand father, Henry I. Ever since the murder of Thomas h Becket, love for this pretended martyr had become the passion, or rather, the madness, of the English people. The adoration of the memory of the archbishop had replaced that of the old laws, hitherto so much regretted ; all recollections of ancient liberty were effaced by the more recent impression of the nine years during which a primate of the Saxon race had been the object of the hopes, the vows, and the conversation of every Saxon. A striking testimony of sympathy with this popular sentiment was then the best bait that the king could at that time hold out to the men of the English race, to at tract them to his cause, and to render them, in the words of an old historian, manageable with curb and harness. Such was the true motive of Henry II. 's pilgrimage to the tomb of him whom he had first loved as his boon companion, and then mortally hated as his political enemy. " After having been thus scourged by his own free-will," says the contemporary historian, " he continued his orisons before the holy martyr all the day and all night, took no nourishment, and did not leave the spot for any occasion whatever, but as he came so he remained, and did not allow any carpet, or any thing of the kind, to be placed beneath his knees. After matins he made the circuit of the higher church, prayed before all the altars and all the relics, then returned to the vault of the saint. On Saturday, when the sun was risen, he asked for and heard mass, then having drunk holy water of the martyr, and having filled a flask with it, he departed joyfully from Canterbury." The Penance of Henry II. 83 This comedy was entirely successful; and there was great enthusiasm among the Anglo-Saxon serfs of the town and the neighboring country on the day when it was announced in the churches that the king had made his reconciliation with the blessed martyr by penitence and tears. It chanced, at this time, that William, king of Scotland, who had made a hostile incursion upon the English territory, was vanquished and made prisoner near Alnwick, in Northumberland. The Saxon population, enthusiastic for the honor of St. Thomas, believed that they sa.w in this victory an evident sign of the martyr's good-will and protection, and from this day they in clined to the cause of the king whom the new saint seemed to favor. In consequence of this superstitious impulse, the English enrolled themselves in crowds under the royal ban ner, and fought with ardor against the abettors of the revolt of Henry the younger and his two brothers. Poor and despised though they were, they formed the great mass of the inhabitants, and nothing could resist such a force when organized. The Norman malcontents were defeated in every county, their castles taken by assault, and a great number of earls and barons made prisoners. " So many were taken," says a contemporary, "that there was difficulty in finding cords sufficient to bind them, and prisons to contain them." This rapid train of successes put an end to the project of a descent upon England, formed by Henry the younger and the Earl of Flanders. Augustin Thierry. S4 Pictures from English History. XII. A MEDI/EVAL TOURNAMENT. [Richard, who succeeded his father, Henry II., stayed in England only long enough to extort from the realm money for his crusade. In Palestine he quarreled with his allies, King Philip of France and the Duke of Austria, and they returned home. Richard was shipwrecked en route homeward, and made prisoner by the insulted Duke of Austria. Al though his enemy, King Philip, and his brother Prince John, in England, plotted against it, he was at last ransomed and released. This was the halcyon time of chivalry. The following sketch, which is abridged from three chapters of " Ivanhoe," illustrate the condition of the people and manners of the time, as well as the sports of chivalry.] The condition ofthe English na tion was at this time sufficiently miserable. King Richard was absent, a prisoner, and in the power of the perfidious and cruel Duke of Austria. Even the very place of his captivity was un certain, and his fate but very imperfectly known to the gener ality of his subjects, who were, in the meantime, a prey to every species of subaltern oppression. Prince John, in league with Philip of France, Coeur de Lion's mortal enemy, was using every species of influence with the Duke of Austria, to prolong the captivity of his brother Richard, to whom he stood indebted for so many favors. In the meantime he was strengthening his own fac tion in the kingdom, of which he proposed to dispute the succession, in case of the king's death, with the legitimate heir, Arthur, duke of Brittany, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, the elder brother of John. This usurpation, it is well known, he afterward effected. His own character being light, profli- R.ICHARD I. A Mediaeval Tournament. 85 gate, and perfidious, John easily attached to his person and faction, not only all who had reason to dread the resentment of Richard for criminal proceedings during his absence, but also the numerous class of "lawless resolutes,'' whom the Crusades had turned back on their country, accomplished in the vices of the East, impoverished in substance, and hard ened in character, and who placed their hopes of harvest in civil commotion. To these causes of public distress and apprehension must be added the multitude of outlaws, who, driven to despair by the oppression of the feudal nobility, and the severe exercise ofthe forest laws, banded together in large gangs, and, keep ing possession of the forests and the wastes, set at defiance the justice and magistracy of the country. The nobles them selves, each fortified within his own castle, and playing the petty sovereign over his own dominions, were the leaders of bands scarce less lawless and oppressive than those of the avowed depredators. To maintain these retainers, and to support the extravagance and magnificence which their pride induced them to affect, the nobility borrowed sums of money from the Jews at the most usurious interest, which gnawed into their estates like consuming cankers, scarce to be cured unless when circumstances gave them an opportunity of get ting free by exercising upon their creditors some act of un principled violence. Under the various burdens imposed by this unhappy state of affairs, the people of England suffered deeply for the "pres ent, and had yet more dreadful cause to fear the future. To augment their misery, a contagious disorder of a dangerous nature spread through the land ; and, rendered more virulent by the uncleanness, the indifferent food, and the wretched lodging of the lower classes, swept off many whose fate the j-'urvivors were tempted to envy, as exempting them from the evils which were to come. Yet amid these accumulated distresses, the poor as well as 86 Pictures from English History. the rich, the vulgar as well as the noble, in the event of a tournament, which was the grand spectacle of that age, felt as much interested as the half-starved citizen of Madrid, who has not a real left to buy provisions for his family, feels in the issue of a bull-fight. Neither duty nor infirmity could keep youth or age from such exhibitions. The Passage of Arms, as it was called, which was to take place at Ashby, in the County of Leicester — as champions of the first renown were to take the field in the presence of Prince John himself, who was expected to grace the lists — had attracted universal attention, and an immense confluence of persons of all ranks hastened upon the appointed morning to the place of combat. The scene was singularly romantic. The ground, as if fashioned on purpose for the martial display which was intended, sloped gradually down on all sides to a level bottom, which was in closed for the lists with strong palisades, forming a space of a quarter of a mile in length, and about half as broad. The form of the inclosure was an oblong square, save that the corners were considerably rounded off, in order to afford more convenience for the spectators. The openings for the entrance of the combatants were at the northern and southern extremi ties of the lists, accessible by strong wooden gates, each wide enough to admit two horsemen riding abreast. At each of these portals were stationed two heralds, attended by six trumpets, as many pursuivants, and a strong body of men-at- arms for maintaining order, and ascertaining the quality of the knights who propose to engage in this martial game. On a platform beyond the southern entrance, formed by a natural elevation of the ground, were pitched five magnificent pavilions, adorned with pennons of russet and black, the chosen colors of the five knights challengers. The cords of the tents were of the some color. Before each pavilion was suspended the shield of the knight by whom it was occupied, and beside it stood his squire, quaintly disguised as a salvage or silvan man, or in some other fantastic dress, according to A Medieval Tournament. 87 the taste of his master and the character he was pleased to assume during the game. The central pavilion, as the place of honor, had been assigned to Brian de Bois Guilbert, whose renown in all games of chivalry, no less than his connection with the knights who had undertaken this Passage of Arms, had occasioned him to be eagerly received into the company of the challengers, and even adopted as their chief and lead er, though he had so recently joined them. On one side of his tent were pitched those of Reginald Front-de-Boeuf and Richard de Malvoisin, and on the other was the pavilion of Hugh de Grantmesnil, a noble baron in the vicinity, whose ancestor had been Lord High Steward of England in the time of the Conqueror, and of his son William Rufus. Ralph de Vipont, a knight of St. John of Jerusalem, who had some ancient possessions at a place called Heather, near Ashby- de-la-Zouche, occupied the fifth pavilion. From the entrance into the lists, a gently sloping passage, ten yards in breadth, led up to the platform on which the tents were pitched. It was strongly secured by a palisade on each side, as was the esplanade in front of the pavilions, and the whole was guarded by men-at-arms. The northern access to the lists terminated in a similar entrance of thirty feet in breadth, at the extremity of which was a large inclosed space for such knights as might be dis posed to enter the lists with the challengers, behind which were placed tents containing refreshments of every kind for their accommodation, with armorers, farriers, and other at tendants in readiness to give their services wherever they might be necessary. The exterior of the lists was in part occupied by temporary galleries, spread with tapestry and carpets, and accommodated with cushions for the convenience of those ladies and nobles who were expected to attend the tournament. A narrow space, between these galleries and the lists, gave accom modation for yeomanry and spectators of a better degree 88 Pictures from English History. than the mere vulgar, and might be compared to the pit of a theater. The promiscuous multitude arranged themselves upon large banks of turf prepared. for the purpose, which, aided by the natural elevation of the ground, enabled them to overlook the galleries, and obtain a fair view into the lists. Besides the accommodation which these stations afforded, many hundreds had perched themselves on the branches of the trees which surrounded the meadow ; and even the steeple of a country church, at some distance, was crowded with spectators. It only remains to notice respecting the general arrange ment that one gallery in the very center of the eastern side of the lists, and consequently exactly opposite to the spot where the shock of the combat was to take place, was raised higher than the others, more richly decorated, and graced by a sort of throne and canopy, on which the royal arms were emblazoned. Squires, pages, and yeomen in rich liveries waited around this place of honor, which was designed for Prince John and his attendants. Opposite to this royal gal lery was another, elevated to the same height, on the western side of the lists; and more gayly, if less sumptuously deco rated, than that destined for the prince himself. A train of pages and of young maidens, the most beautiful who could be selected, gayly dressed in fancy habits of green and pink, surrounded a throne decorated in the same colors. Among pennons and flags bearing wounded hearts, burning hearts, bleeding hearts, bows and quivers, and all the commonplace emblems of the triumphs of Cupid, a blazoned inscription in formed the spectators that this seat of honor was designed for La Reyne de la Beaut'e, et des Amours. But who was to repre sent the Queen of Beauty and of Love on the present occa sion no one was prepared to guess. Gradually the galleries became filled with knights and nobles, in their robes of peace, whose long and rich-tinted mantels were contrasted with the gayer and more splendid A Mediaeval Tournament. 89 habits of the ladies, who, in a greater proportion than even the men themselves, thronged to witness a sport, which one would have thought too bloody and dangerous to afford their sex much pleasure. The lower and interior space was soon filled by substantial yeomen and burghers, and such of the lesser gentry, as, from modesty, poverty, or dubious title, durst not assume any higher place. It was, of course, among these that the most frequent disputes for precedence occurred. Prince John at that moment entered the lists, attended by a numerous and gay train, consisting partly of laymen, and partly of churchmen, as light in their dress and as gay in their demeanor as their companions. Attended by this gal lant equipage, himself well mounted and splendidly dressed in crimson and in gold, bearing upon his hand a falcon, and having his head covered by a rich fur bonnet adorned with a circle of precious stones, from which his long curled hair escaped and overspread his shoulders, Prince John, upon a gray and high-mettled palfrey, caracoled within the lists at the head of his jovial party, laughing loud with his train, and eying with all the boldness of royal criticism the beauties who adorned the lofty galleries. The prince, assuming his throne, and being surrounded by his followers, gave signal to the heralds to proclaim the laws of the tournament. It was announced that, on the second day, there should be a general tournament, in which all the knights present, who were de sirous to win praise, might take part ; and being divided into two bands of equal numbers, might fight it out manfully, until the signal was given by Prince John to cease the com bat. The elected Queen of Love and Beauty was then to crown the knight, whom the prince should adjudge to have borne himself best in this second day, with a coronet com posed of thin gold plate, cut into the shape of a laurel crown. On this second day the knightly games ceased. But on that which was to follow, feats of archery, of bull-baiting, and other popular amusements were to be practiced, for the more 90 Pictures from English History. immediate amusement of the populace. In this manner did Prince John endeavor to lay the foundation of a popularity, which he was perpetually throwing down by some incon siderate act of wanton aggression upon the feelings and prejudices of the people. The lists now presented a most splendid spectacle. The sloping galleries were crowded with all that was noble, great, wealthy, and beautiful in the northern and midland parts of England; and the contrast of the various dresses of these dignified spectators rendered the view as gay as it was rich, while the interior and lower space, filled with the substantial burgesses and yeomen of merry England, formed, in their more plain attire, a dark fringe, or border, around this circle of brilliant embroidery, relieving, and, at the same time, set ting off its splendor. Meantime the inclosed space at the northern extremity of the lists, large as it was, was now completely crowded with knights, desirous to prove their skill against the challengers, and, when viewed from the galleries, presented the appear ance of a sea of waving plumage, intermixed with glistening helmets, and tall lances, to the extremities of which were, in many cases, attached small pennons of about a span's breadth, which, fluttering in the air as the breeze caught them, joined with the restless motion of the feathers to add liveliness to the scene. At length the barriers were opened, and five knights, chosen by lot, advanced slowly into the area; a single champion riding in front, and the other four following in pairs. As the procession entered the lists, the sound of a wild barbaric music was heard from behind the tents of the challengers, where the performers were concealed. It was of Eastern origin, having been brought from the Holy Land; and the mixture of the cymbals and bells seemed to bid welcome at once, and defiance, to the knights as they advanced. With the eyes of an immense concourse of spectators fixed upon A Mediaeval Tournament. 91 them, the five knights advanced up the platform upon which the tents of the challengers stood, and there separating them selves, each touched slightly, and with the reverse of his lance, the shield of the antagonist to whom he wished to op pose himself. [The individual encounters, in response to the challenges of the five champions, comprising the sports of the first day, left a disguised and anonymous opponent of theirs the champion of the lists. He went by the name of The Disinherited Knight. The general tournament of the sec ond day was between two parties of fifty knights each ; one led by the Disinherited Knight, and the other by Brian de Bois-Guilbert, the Templar, who had been his stoutest opponent pn the first day. The struggle, the peril of the Disinherited Knight, and the sudden appearance of King Richard in the lists to his rescue are thus described.] The heralds then proclaimed silence until the laws of the tourney should be rehearsed. These were calculated in some degree to abate the dangers of the day ; a precaution the more necessary, as the conflict was to be maintained with sharp swords and pointed lances. Having announced these precautions, the heralds concluded with an exhortation to each good knight to do his duty, and to merit favor from the Queen of Beauty and of Love. This proclamation having been made, the heralds with drew to their stations. The knights entering at either end of the lists in long procession, arranged themselves in a double file, precisely opposite to each other, the leader of each party being in the center of the foremost rank, a post which he did not occupy until each had carefully ar ranged the ranks of his party and stationed every one in his place. It was a goodly, and at the same time an anxious, sight to behold so many gallant champions, mounted bravely and armed richly, stand ready prepared for an encounter so for midable, seated on the war-saddles like so many pillars of iron, and awaiting the signal of encounter with the same 92 Pictures from English History. ardor as their generous steeds, which, by neighing and paw ing the ground, gave signal of their impatience. As yet the knights held their long lances upright, their bright points glancing to the sun, and the streamers with which they were decorated fluttered over the plumage ofthe helmets. Thus they remained while the marshals of the field surveyed their ranks with the utmost exactness, lest either party had more or fewer than the appointed number. The tale was found exactly complete. The marshals then with drew from the lists, and William de Wyvil, with a voice of thunder, pronounced the signal words — Laissez alter ! The trumpets sounded as he spoke — the spears of the champions were at once lowered and placed in the rests — the spurs were dashed in the flanks of the horses, and the two foremost ranks of either party rushed upon each other in full gallop, and met in the middle of the lists with a shock, the sound of which was heard at a mile's distance. The rear rank of each party advanced at a slower pace to sustain the defeated, and follow up the success of the victors of their party. The consequences of the encounter were not instantly seen, for the dust raised by the trampling of so many steeds darkened the air, and it was a minute ere the anxious spec- ' tators could see the effect of the encounter. When the fight became visible, half the knights on each side were dismounted, some by the dexterity of their adversary's lance — some by the superior weight and strength of opponents, which had borne down both horse and man — some lay stretched on the earth as if never more to rise — some had already gained their feet, and closing hand to hand with those of their antagonists who were in the same predicament — and several on both sides, who had received wounds by which they were disabled, were stopping their blood with, their scarfs, and endeavoring to extricate themselves from the tumult. The mounted knights, whose lances had been almost all broken by the fury of the encounter, were now closely engaged with their swords, A Mediaeval Tournament. 93 shouting their war-cries and exchanging buffets, as if honor and life depended on the issue of the combat. The tumult was presently increased by the advance of the second rank on either side, which, acting as a reserve, now rushed on to aid their companions. The followers of Brian de Bois-Guilbert shouted, " Ha! Beau-seant! Beau-seant! For the Temple — for the Temple ! " The opposite party shouted in answer, " Desdichado ! Desdichado ! " which watch-word they took from the motto upon their leader's shield. Meantime the clang of the blows and the shouts of the combatants mixed fearfully with the sound of trumpets, and drowned the groans of those who fell, and lay rolling de fenseless beneath the feet of the horses. The splendid armor of the combatants was now defaced with dust and blood, and gave way at every stroke of the sword and battle- ax. The gay plumage, shorn from the crests, drifted upon the breeze like snow-flakes. All that was beautiful and graceful in the martial array had disappeared, and what was now visible was only calculated to awake terror or com passion. Yet, such is the force of habit, that not only the vulgar spectators, who are naturally attracted by sights of horror, but even the ladies of distinction who crowded the galleries, saw the conflict with a thrilling interest certainly, but without a wish to withdraw their eyes from a sight so terrible. Here and there, indeed, a fair cheek might turn pale, or a faint scream might be heard, as a lover, a brother, or a husband was struck from his horse. But, in general, the ladies around encouraged the combatants, not only by clapping their hands and waving their veils and kerchiefs, but even by exclaiming, " Brave lance ! " " Good sword ! " when any successful thrust or blow took place under their observation. And between every pause was heard the voice of the heralds exclaiming, " Fight on, brave knights ! Man dies, but glory lives ! 94 Pictures from English History. Fight on : death is better than defeat ! Fight on, brave knights ! for bright eyes behold your deeds ! " But when the field became thin by the numbers on either side, who had yielded themselves vanquished, had been com pelled to the extremity of the lists, or been otherwise ren dered incapable of continuing the strife, the Templar and the Disinherited Knight at length encountered hand to hand, with all the fury that mortal animosity, joined to rivalry of honor, could inspire. Such was the address of each in par rying and striking that the spectators broke forth into a unanimous and involuntary shout, expressive of their delight and admiration. But at this moment the party of the Disinherited Knight had the worst, the gigantic arm of Front-de-Bceuf on the one flank, and the ponderous strength of Athelstane on the other, bearing down and dispersing those immediately ex posed to them. Finding themselves freed from their imme diate antagonists, it seems to have occurred to both of these knights at the same instant, that they would render the most decisive advantage to their party by aiding the Templar in his contest with his rival. Turning their horses, therefore, at the same moment, the Norman spurred against the Disin herited Knight on the one side, and the Saxon on the other. It was utterly impossible that the object of this unequal and unexpected assault could have sustained it, had he not been warned by a general cry from the spectators, who could not but take interest in one exposed to such disadvantage. " Beware ! beware ! Sir Disinherited ! " was shouted so universally, that the knight became aware of his dahger; and, striking a full blow at the Templar, he reined back his steed in the same moment, so as to escape the charge of Athelstane and Front-de-Boeuf. These knights, therefore, their aim being thus eluded, rushed from opposite sides be tween the object of their attack and the Templar, almost running their horses against each other ere they could stop A Mediaeval Tournament. 95 their career. Recovering their horses, however, and wheel ing them round, the whole three pursued their united pur pose of bearing to the earth the Disinherited Knight. The masterly horsemanship of the Disinherited Knight, and the activity of the noble animal which he mounted, enabled him for a few minutes to keep at sword's point his three an tagonists, turning and wheeling with the agility of a hawk upon the wing, keeping his enemies as far separate as he could, and rushing now against the one, now against the other, dealing sweeping blows with his sword, without wait ing to receive those which were aimed at him in return. But although the lists rang with the applauses of his dexter ity, it was evident that he must at last be overpowered. An unexpected incident changed the fortune of the day. There was among the ranks of the Disinherited Knight a champion in black armor, mounted on a black horse, large of size, tall, and to all appearance powerful and strong, like the rider by whom he was mounted. This knight, who bore on his shield no device of any kind, had hitherto evinced very little interest in the event of the fight, beating off with seeming ease those combatants who attacked him, but neither pursuing his advantages nor himself assailing any one. In short, he had hitherto acted the part rather of a spectator than of a party in the tournament, a circumstance which pro cured him among the spectators the name of Le Noir Faineant, or the Black Sluggard. At once this knight seemed to throw aside his apathy, when he discovered the leader of his party so hard bestead ; for, setting spurs to his horse, which was quite fresh, he came to his assistance like a thunder-bolt, exclaiming in a voice like a trumpet-call, " Desdichado to the rescue ! " It was high time ; for, while the Disinherited Knight was pressing upon the Templar, Front-de-Bceuf had got nigh to him with his uplifted sword ; but ere the blow could de scend the Sable Knight dealt a stroke on his head, which, 96 Pictures from English History. glancing from the polished helmet, lighted with violence scarcely abated on the chamfron of the steed, and Front-de- Boeuf rolled on the ground, both horse and man equally stunned by the fury of the blow. Le Noir Faineant then turned his horse upon Athelstane of Coningsburgh ; and, his own sword having been broken in his encounter with Front- de-Boeuf, he wrenched from the hand of the bulky Saxon the battle-ax which he wielded, and, like one familiar with the use of the weapon, bestowed him such a blow upon the crest, that Athelstane also lay senseless on the field. Having achieved this double feat, for which he was the more highly applauded that it was totally unexpected from him, the knight seemed to resume the sluggishness of his character, returning calmly to the northern extremity of the lists, leav ing his leader to cope as he best could with Brian de Bois- Guilbert. This was no longer matter of so much difficulty as formerly. The Templar's horse had bled much, and gave way under the shock of the Disinherited Knight's charge. Brian de Bois-Guilbert rolled on the field, encumbered with the stirrup, from which he was unable to draw his foot. His antagonist sprang from horseback, waved his fatal sword over the head of his adversary, and commanded him to yield himself; when Prince John, more moved by the Tem plar's dangerous situation than he had been by that of his rival, saved him the mortification of confessing himself vanquished by casting down his warder and putting an end to the conflict. Thus ended the memorable field of Ashby-de-la-Zouche, one of the most gallantly contested tournaments of that age ; for although only four knights, including one who was smoth ered by the heat of his armor, had died upon the field, yet upward of thirty were desperately wounded, four or five of whom never recovered. Several more were disabled for life; and those who escaped best carried the marks of the conflict to the grave with them. Hence it is always mentioned in A Mediaeval Tournament. 97 the old records as the Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms of Ashby. It being now the duty of Prince John to name the knight who had done best, he determined that the honor ofthe day remained with the knight whom the popular voice had termed Le Noir Faineant. To the surprise of all present, however, the knight thus preferred was nowhere to be found. He had left the lists immediately when the conflict ceased, and had been observed by some spectators to move down one of the forest glades with the same slow pace and listless and indifferent manner which had procured him the epithet of the Black Sluggard. After he had been summoned twice by the sound of trumpet and proclamation of the heralds, it became necessary to name another to receive the honors which had been assigned to him. Prince John had now no further excuse for resisting the claim of the Disinherited Knight, whom, therefore, he named the champion of the day. Prince John had proceeded thus far, and was about to give the signal for retiring from the lists, when a small billet was put into his hand. " From whence ? " said Prince John, looking at the person by whom it was delivered. " From foreign parts, my lord, but from whence I know not," replied his attendant. "A Frenchman brought it hither, who said he had ridden night and day to put it into the hands of your highness." The prince looked narrowly at the superscription and then at the seal, placed so as to secure the flox-silk with which the billet was surrounded, and which bore the impression of three fleurs-de-lis. John then opened the billet with appar ent agitation, which visibly and greatly increased when he had perused the contents, which were expressed in these words : " Take heed to yourself , for the devil is unchained! " 5 98 Pictures from English History. The prince turned as pale as death, looked first on the earth and then to heaven, like a man who has received news that sentence of execution has been passed upon him. " It means," he added, in a faltering voice, " that my brother Richard has obtained his freedom." " This may be a false alarm or a forged letter," said De Bracy. " It is France's own hand and seal," replied Prince John. Walter Scott. XIII. HOW THE GREAT CHARTER WAS WON. [Upo» the death of Richard, his brother John made away with the legitimate successor, Arthur, son of the elder brother, Geoffry, and seized the crown. John was the epitome of all that is vile in man and unfit in a ruler. His tyranny and licentiousness brought him, in time, into antag onism against all classes of his subjects, and united the nation in a demand for that guarantee of the subject's rights and definition of the limitations of the crown — Magna Charta.] There were now two eminent persons, among many other bold and earnest Churchmen and laity, who saw that the time was come when no man should be " king and lord in England " with a total disregard of the rights of other men ; a time when a king should rule in England by law instead of by force, or rule not at all. Stephen Langton, the arch- How the Great Charter was Won. 99 bishop, and William, Earl of Pembroke, were the leaders, and at the same time moderators, in the greatest enterprise that the nation had yet undertaken. It was an enterprise of enormous difficulty. The pope was now in friendship with the king, and this might influence the great body of ec clesiastics. The royal castles were in possession of the mer cenary soldiers. The craft of John was as much to be dreaded as his violence. But there was no shrinking from the duty that was before these patriots. They moved on steadily in the formation of a league that would be strong to enforce their just demands, even if the issue were war between the crown and the people. The bishops and barons were the great council of the nation. Parliament, including the Commons, was not as yet, though not far distant. The memorable meeting of Runnymede was preceded by a more solemn meeting ; when upon the altar at Saint Ed- mundsbury the barons, on the 20th of November, 12 14, solemnly swore to withdraw their allegiance from John if he should resist their claims to just government. They had not only public wrongs to redress, but the private outrages of the king's licentiousness were not to be endured by the class of high-born knights whom he insulted through their wives and daughters. From Saint Edmundsbury the barons marched to London, where the king had shut himself up in the Tem ple. When their deputies came into his presence he first despised their claims, and then asked for delay. The Arch bishop of Canterbury, the Earl of Pembroke, and the Bishop of Ely guaranteed that a satisfactory answer should be given before Easter. The king employed the time in the endeavor to propitiate the Church by promising a free election of bishops. He took the cross, and engaged to wage war with the infidels. He sent to Rome to implore the aid of the pope in his quarrel. And the pope came to his aid, and commanded Langton to exercise his authority to bring back the king's vassals to their allegiance. Pictures from English History. At Easter the barons, with a large force, assembled at Stamford. John was at Oxford, and Langton and Pembroke were with him. They were sent by the king to ascertain the demands of their peers ; and these messengers, or mediators, brought back the written articles which the king signed at Runnymede. As the archbishop solemnly repeated these demands, John went into a furious passion, and declared that he would never grant liberties which would make himself a slave. The archbishop and the earl took back his refusal. " The army of God and Holy Church," as the barons pro claimed themselves, then advanced upon London, which they entered on the 22d of May. The citizens had previously agreed to make common cause with them. There is a curious document, dated the 20th of May, which exhibits the anger of John at this circumstance, and the pettiness of his re venge : " The king to all his bailiffs and faithful people who may view these letters. Know ye, that the citizens of Lon don in common have seditiously and deceitfully withdrawn themselves from our service and fealty ; and, therefore, we command you that when they or their servants or chattels pass through your districts, ye do offer them all the re proaches in your power, even as ye would to our enemies; and in testimony hereof we send you these our letters- patent." On this 20th of May John was at Winchester. He then journeyed to Windsor, where he remained from the 31st of May to June 3. He then returned to Winchester. On the ioth of June he is again at Windsor, which is his abiding place for a fortnight. On Monday, the 15th of June, he goes from the adjacent castle to Runnymede. The time and place of meeting was by solemn appointment. The great business of the assembly was accomplished on that day ; but we find John at Runnymede on six subsequent days, be tween the 15th and the 23d of June. The castle of Windsor was not then on the spot where the flag of England still waves over the proud keep of Edward III. It was on that John's Anger, about signing Magna Charta How the Great Charter was Won. ioi western side, where a bold tower of the twelfth century now rises up proudly upon the modern street, and where the fortress, protected by its ditch, then looked down upon the broad meadows watered by the Thames, which, flowing round the base of the chalk hill, gave the beautiful name of Win- dleshora to the beautiful locality. From that fortress goes forth King John. From London has marched the army of the barons. That long, low plain of Runnymede, bounded on one side by the Thames, on the other by a gentle line of hills — the island in the river where some hold that the Charter was signed — the gentle aspect of the whole scene — this famous spot speaks only of peace and long tranquillity. In this council-meadow — for Rune-med means the mead of council — king and earl had often met in solemn witan, before the Norman planted his foot on the island. A great mixed race had preserved the old traditions of individual liberty, which belonged to the days before the Conquest. The spirit of the ancient institutions had blended with the feudal princi ples, and in their joint facility of adaptation to varying states of society, would, practically, be the inheritance of generation after generation. To that great meeting of Run nymede came some citizens of London with the mailed knights. Perhaps there were some servile tenants among the crowd, who wondered if for them any blessing would arise out of the differences between the king and their lords. Yet the iron men who won this Charter of liberties dreamed not of the day when a greater power than their own — the power of the burgher and the villain — would maintain what prelate and baron had sworn to win upon the altar of Saint Edmundsbury. Another order of men, who gradually worked their way out of that state in which they were despised or neglected, have kept, and will keep, God willing, what they of the pointed shield and mascled armor won on the 15th day of June, in the year of grace 1215. Pictures from English History. Magna Charta, the Great Charter of Liberties, is com monly regarded as the basis of English freedom. This is, to some extent, a misconception. It was a code of laws, expressed in simple language, embodying two principles — the first, such limitations of the feudal claims of the king as would prevent their abuse ; the second, such specification of the general rights of all freemen as were derived from the ancient laws of the realm, however these rights had been neglected or perverted. It contained no assertion of abstract principles of freedom or justice, but met unquestionable evils by practical remedies. To imagine that this Charter contained any large views of government that were not con sistent with the condition of society at the time of its enact ment, is to believe that the men who enforced it, with their swords in their hands, were, to use a modern expression, before their age. If they had been before their age, by any fortuitous possession of greater wisdom, foresight, and liber ality than belonged to their age, that charter would not have stood up against the regal power which again and again assailed it. It was built, as all English freedom has been built, upon. something which had gone before it. It was not a revolution. It was a conservative reform. It demanded no limitation of the regal power which had not been ac knowledged, in theory, by every king who had taken the coronation oath. It made that oath, which had been re garded as a mere form of words, a binding reality. It de fined, in broad terms of practical application, the essential difference between a limited and a despotic monarchy. The barons of England did the work which was called for in their generation ; and they left to their successors in the battle for liberty, whether they were noble or plebeian, to carry on the same work in the same practical and temperate spirit. " From this era a new soul was infused into the peo ple of England." The principle was rooted in our English earth, like the Ankerwyke Yew, which was a vigorous tree How the Great Charter was Won 103 on the opposite bank of the Thames, when " the army of God and Holy Church " stood upon Runnymede, and which still bears its green leaf after six hundred and fifty winters. Charles Knight. XIV. SIMON DE MONTFORT. [The efforts of John, after the signing of the Magna Charta, and of his son, Henry III., who succeeded him, were directed to the annulling of that declaration of rights. Henry many times took oath to obey it, but as often broke it. His bad faith and lawlessness, and the prodigality of his foreign courtiers at last precipitated an appeal to arms by king and barons. The barons, led by Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, defeated the king's forces at Lewes, took the king and his son, Prince Edward, prisoners. Earl Simon used his power to fortify the people's prerogatives ; to which end his chief act was to constitute a Parliament composed of elected representatives of boroughs and cities — the act on which his fame rests. But strife broke out among the patriots themselves ; most of the nobles forsook the earl ; and Prince Edward, having escaped his guards, gathered an army and marched against him. Earl Simon was expecting the coming of re- enforcements under his son to strengthen the weak force about him, when Edward, who had already surprised the son's force and cut it to pieces, fell upon De Montfort's army at Evesham, defeated it and killed its leader.] The victory of Lewes placed Earl Simon at the head of the state. "Now England breathes in the hope of liberty," sang a poet of the time : " the English were despised like dogs, but now they have lifted up their head, and their foes are vanquished." But the moderation ofthe terms agreed upon in the Mise of Lewes, a convention between the king and his captors, shows Simon's sense of the difficulties of his po sition. . . . Triumphant as he was, indeed, Earl Simon's difficulties thickened every day. The queen, with Arch bishop Boniface, gathered an army in France for an invasion ; Roger Mortimer, with the border barons, was still in arms, 104 Pictures from English History. and only held in check by Llewelyn. It was impossible to make binding terms with an imprisoned king, yet to release Henry without terms was to renew the war. The imprison ment, too, gave a shock to public feeling which thinned the earl's ranks. In the new Parliament, which he called at the opening of 1265, the weakness of the patriotic party among the baronage was shown in the fact that only twenty-three earls and barons could be found to sit beside the hundred and twenty ecclesiastics. But it was just this sense of his weakness which prompted Earl Simon to an act that has done more than any incident of this struggle to immortalize his name. Had the strife been simply a strife for power between the king and the baronage, the victory of either would have been equally fatal in its re sults. The success of the one would have doomed England to a royal despotism, that of the other to a feudal aristocracy. Fortunately for our freedom the English baronage had been brought too low by the policy of the kings to be able to with stand the crown single-handed. From the first moment of the contest it had been forced to make its cause a national one. The summons of two knights from each county, elected in its county court, to a Parliament in 1254, even before the opening of the struggle, was a recognition of the political weight of the country gentry which was confirmed by the summons of four knights from every county to the Parlia ment assembled after the battle of Lewes. The Provisions of Oxford, in stipulating for attendance and counsel on the part of twelve delegates ofthe "commonalty," gave the first indication of a yet wider appeal to the people at large. But it was the weakness of his party among the baronage at this great crisis which drove Earl Simon to a constitutional change of mighty issue in our history. As before, he sum moned two knights from every county. But he created a new force in English politics when he summoned to sit be side them two citizens from every borough. The attendance Simon de Montfort. 105 of delegates from the towns had long been usual in the county courts when any matter respecting their interest was in question ; but it was the writ issued by Earl Simon that first summoned the merchant and the trader to sit beside the knight ofthe shire, the baron, and the bishop in the Parlia ment of the realm. It is only this great event, however, which enables us to understand the large and prescient nature of Earl Simon's designs. Hardly a few months had passed away since the victory of Lewes when the burghers took their seats at West minster, yet his government was tottering to its fall. . . . The earl met the dangers from without with complete success. In September, 1264, a general muster of the national forces on Barham Down and a contrary wind put an end to the projects of invasion entertained by the mercenaries whom the queen had collected in Flanders ; the threats of France died away ; the papal legate was forbidden to cross the Channel, and his bulls of excommunication were flung into the sea. But the difficulties at home grew more formidable every day. The restraint upon Henry and Edward jarred against the national feeling of loyalty, and estranged the mass of Englishmen who always side with the weak. Small as the patriotic party among the barons had been from the first, it grew smaller as dissensions broke out over the spoils of victory. The earl's justice and resolve to secure the public peace told heavily against him. John Gifford left him be cause he refused to allow him to exact ransom from a pris oner, contrary to the agreement made after Lewes. A great danger opened when the young Earl of Gloucester, though enriched with the estates of the foreigners, held him self aloof from the Justiciar, and resented Leicester's pro hibition of a tournament. . . . He withdrew to his own rands in the west, and secretly allied himself with Roger Mortimer and the Marcher barons. Earl Simon soon fol lowed him to the west, taking with him the king and 5* 106 Pictures from English History. Edward. He moved along the Severn, securing its towns, ad vanced westward to Hereford, and was marching at the end of June along bad roads into the heart of South Wales to attack the fortresses of Earl Gilbert in Glamorgan when Ed ward suddenly made his escape from Hereford and joined Gloucester at Ludlow. The moment had been skillfully chosen, and Edward showed a rare ability in the movements by wliich he took advantage of the earl's position. Moving rapidly along the Severn he seized Gloucester and the bridges across the river, destroyed the ships by which Leicester strove to escape across the Channel to Bristol, and cut him off altogether from England. By this movement, too, he placed himself between the earl and his son Simon, who was advancing from the east to his father's relief. Turning rapidly on this second force Edward surprised it at Kenil- worth, and drove it with heavy loss within the walls of the castle. But the success was more than compensated by the oppor tunity which his absence gave to the earl of breaking the line of the Severn. Taken by surprise, and isolated as he was, Simon had been forced to seek for aid and troops in an avowed alliance with Llewelyn, and it was with Welsh re- enforcements that he turned to the east. But the seizure of his ships and of the bridges of the Severn held him a pris oner in Edward's grasp, and a fierce attack drove him back, with broken and starving forces, into the Welsh hills. In utter despair he struck northward to Hereford, but the ab sence of Edward now enabled him, on the 2d of August, to throw his troops in boats across the Severn below Worcester. The news drove Edward quickly back in a fruitless counter march to the river, for the earl had already reached Evesham, by a long night march, on the morning of the 4th, while his son, relieved in turn by Edward's counter-march, had pushed, in the same night, to the little town of Alcester. The two armies were now but some ten miles apart, and Simon de Montfort. 107 their junction seemed secured. But both were spent with long marching, and while the earl, listening reluctantly to the request of the king, who accompanied him, halted at Eves ham for mass and dinner, the army of the younger Simon halted for the same purpose at Alcester. " Those two din ners doleful were, alas ! " sings Robert of Gloucester ; for through the same memorable night Edward was hurrying back from the Severn, by country cross-lanes, to seize the fatal gap that lay between them. As morning broke, his army lay across the road that led northward from Evesham to Alcester. Evesham lies in a loop of the river Avon where it bends to the south ; and a height on which Edward ranged his troops closed the one outlet from it save across the river. But a force had been thrown over the river, under Mortimer, to seize the bridges, and all retreat was thus finally cut off. The approach of Edward's army called Simon to the front, and for a moment he took it for his son's. Though the hope soon died away, a touch of soldierly pride moved him as he recognized in the orderly advance of his enemies a proof of his own training. " By the arm of St. James," he cried, " they come on in wise fashion, but it was from me that they learnt it." A glance, however, satisfied him of the hopless- ness of a struggle ; it was impossible for a handful of horse men with a mob of half-armed Welshmen to resist the dis ciplined knighthood of the royal army. "Let us commend our souls to God," Simon said to the little group around him, " for our bodies are the foe's." He bade Hugh Dispenser and the rest of his comrades fly from the field. " If he died," was the noble answer, "they had no will to live." In three hours the butchery was over. The Welsh fled at the first onset like sheep, and were cut ruthlessly down in the corn fields and gardens where they sought refuge. The little group of knights around Simon fought desperately, falling one by one till the earl was left alone. So terrible were his sword-strokes that he had all but gained the hill-top when a 108 Pictures from English History. lance-thrust brought his horse to the ground, but Simon still rejected the summons to yield till a blow from behind felled him mortally wounded to the ground. Then, with a last cry of " It is God's grace," the soul of the great patriot passed away. John Richard Green. XV. BANNOCKBURN. [Edward I. attempted the conquest of Scotland, and died in the midst of an uncompleted campaign, leaving the task to his son, Edward II. This prince made but one effort in that direction, and was disastrously defeated in the battle of Bannockburn by the Scots under Robert Bruce.] Bruce studied how he might supply, by address and strata gem what he wanted in numbers and strength. He knew the superiority of the English, both in their heavy-armed cavalry, which were much better mounted and armed than that of the Scots, and in their archers, who were better trained than any others in the world. Both these advantages he resolved to provide against. With this purpose he led his army down into a plain near Stirling, called the Park, near which, and beneath it, the English army must needs pass through a boggy country, broken with water-courses, while the Scots occupied hard dry ground. He then caused all the ground upon the front of his line of battle, where cavalry were likely to act, to be dug full of holes, about as deep as a man's knee. They were filled with light brushwood, and the turf was laid on the top, so that it appeared a plain field, while in reality it was as full of these pits as a honey-comb is of holes. He also, it is said, caused steel spikes, called calthrops, to be scattered up and down in the plain, where the English cavalry were most likely to advance, trusting in that manner to lame and destroy their horses. When the Scottish army was drawn up, the line stretched Bannockburn. 109 north and south. On the south it was terminated by the banks of the brook called Bannockburn, which are so rocky that no troops could attack them there. On the left, the Scottish line extended near to the town of Stirling. Bruce reviewed his troops very carefully ; all the useless servants, drivers of carts, and such like, of whom there were very many, he ordered to go behind a height, afterward, in mem ory of the event, callied the Gillies' hill, that is, the Servants' hill. He then spoke to the soldiers, and expressed his de termination to gain the victory, or to lose his life on the field of battle. He desired that all those who did not propose to fight to the last should leave the field before the battle be gan, and that none should remain except those who were determined to take the issue of victory or death, as God should send it. When the main body of his army was thus placed in order, the king posted Randolph, with a body of horse, near to the church of St. Ninian's, commanding him to use the utmost diligence to prevent any succors from being thrown into Stirling castle. He then dispatched James of Douglas and Sir Robert Keith, the mareschal of the Scottish army, in or der that they might survey, as nearly as they could, the En glish force, which was now approaching from Falkirk. They returned with information that the approach of that vast host was one of the most beautiful and terrible sights which could be seen — that the whole country seemed covered with men- at-arms on horse and foot — that the number of standards, banners, and pennons (all flags of different kinds) made so gallant a show, that the bravest and most numerous host in Christendom might be alarmed to see King Edward moving against them. It was upon the 23d of June (1314) the King of Scotland heard the news that the English army were approaching Stirling. He drew out his army, therefore, in the order which had been resolved on. After a short time Bruce, who Pictures from English History. was looking out anxiously for the enemy, saw a body of English cavalry trying to get into Stirling from the eastward. This was the Lord Clifford, who, with a chosen body of 800 horse, had been detached to relieve the castle. " See, Ran dolph," said the king to his nephew, " there is a rose fallen from your chaplet." By this he meant that Randolph had lost some honor by suffering the enemy to pass where he had been stationed to hinder them. Randolph made no reply, but rushed against Clifford with little more than half his number. The Scots were on foot. The English turned to charge them with their lances, and Randolph drew up his men in close order to receive the onset. He seemed to be in so much danger, that Douglas asked leave of the king to go and assist him. The king refused him permission. "Let Randolph," he said, "redeem his own fault; I cannot break the order of battle for his sake." Still the danger appeared greater, and the English horse seemed entirely to encompass the small handful of Scottish infantry. " So please you," said Douglas to the king, " my heart will not suffer me to stand idle and see Randolph perish — I must go to his assist ance." He rode off accordingly ; but long before they had reached the place of combat they saw the English horses galloping off, many with empty saddles. " Halt ! " said Douglas to his men, " Randolph has gained the day ; since we were not soon enough to help him in the battle, do not let us lessen his glory by approaching the field." Now, that was nobly done, especially as Douglas and Ran dolph were always contending which should rise highest in the good opinion of the king and the nation. The van of the English army now came in sight, and a number of their bravest knights drew near to see what the Scots were doing. They saw King Robert dressed in his armor, and distinguished by a gold crown, which he wore over his helmet. He was not mounted on his great war- horse, because he did not expect to fight that evening. But Bannockburn. he rode on a little pony up and down the ranks of his army, putting his men in order, and carried in his hand a sort of battle-ax made of steel. When the king saw the English horsemen draw near he advanced a little before his own men, that he might look at them more nearly. There was a knight among the English, called Sir Henry de Bohun, who thought this would be a good opportunity to gain great fame to himself, and put an end to the war, by killing King Rob ert. The king being poorly mounted and having no lance, Bohun galloped on him suddenly and furiously, thinking, with his long spear and his tall, powerful horse, easily to bear him down to the ground. King Robert saw him, and permitted him to come very near, then suddenly turned his pony a little to one side, so that Sir Henry missed him with the lance-point, and was in the act of being carried past him by the career of his horse. But, as he passed, King Robert rose up in his stirrups and struck Sir Henry on the head with his battle-ax so terrible a blow, that it broke to pieces his iron helmet as if it had been a nut-shell, and hurled him from his saddle. He was dead before he reached the ground. This gallant action was blamed by the Scot tish leaders, who thought Bruce ought not to have exposed himself to so much danger when the safety of the whole army depended on him. The king only kept looking at his weapon, which was injured by the force of the blow, and said, " I have broken my good battle-ax." The next morning, being the 24th of June, at break of day, the battle began in terrible earnest. The English, as they advanced, saw the Scots getting into line. The Abbot of Inchaffray walked through their ranks barefooted, and ex horted them to fight for their freedom. They kneeled down as he passed and prayed to heaven for victory. King Ed ward, who saw this, called out, " They kneel down — they are asking forgiveness." " Yes," said a celebrated English baron, called Ingelram de Umphraville, " but they ask it from God, Pictures from English History. not from us — these men will conquer, or die upon the field." The English king ordered his men to begin the battle. The archers then bent their bows and began to shoot so closely together that the arrows fell like flakes of snow on a Christmas day. They killed many of the Scots, and might, as at Falkirk and other places, have decided the victory ; but Bruce, as I told you before, was prepared for them. He had in readiness a body of men-at-arms, well mounted, who rode at full gallop among the archers, and, as they had no weapon save their bows and arrows, which they could not use when they were attacked hand to hand, they were cut down in great numbers by the Scottish horsemen, and thrown into total confusion. The fine English cavalry then advanced to support their archers and to attack the Scottish line. But coming over the ground which was dug full of pits, the horses fell into these holes, and the riders lay tumbling about without any means of defense, and unable to rise from the weight of their armor. The Englishmen began to fall into general disorder, and the Scottish king, bringing up more of his forces, attacked and pressed them still more closely. On a sudden, while the battle was obstinately maintained on both sides, an event happened which decided the victory. The servants and attendants on the Scottish camp had, as I told you, been sent behind the army to a place afterward called the Gillies' hill. But when they saw that their mas ters were likely to gain the day, they rushed from their place of concealment with such weapons as they could get, that they might have their share in the victory and in the spoil. The English, seeing them come suddenly over the hill, mis took this disorderly rabble for a new army coming up to sustain the Scots, and, losing all heart, began to shift every man for himself. Edward himself left the field as fast as he could ride. A valiant knight, Sir Giles de Argentine, much Bannockburn. 1T., renowned in the wars of Palestine, attended the king till he got him out of the press of the combat. But he would re treat no farther. " It is not my custom," he said, " to fly." With that he took leave of the king, set spurs to his horse, and calling out his war-cry of "Argentine! Argentine!" he rushed into the thickest of the Scottish ranks and was killed. Walter Scott. XVI. THE BATTLE OF CRESSY. [Edward II. was weak, but there was a strong Edward after him as there had been one before him. Edward III. was as warlike as the first of that name, and more successful. He was in almost continuous war with France and Scotland, and gained great advantages over the former. The battle of Cressy, (1346,) siege of Calais, (1347,) and battle of Poitiers, (1356,) were among the more decisive and brilliant successes — the first and last having been fought at odds of six or eight to one. Edward invaded France in 1346, and after ravaging unopposed to near Paris, he was con fronted by King Philip and a force, of about 60,000 French and allies. A rapid retreat down the. river Somme, and a lucky crossing thereof into Ponthieu, an English province, only succeeded in giving Edward a favor able strategic position at Cressy. We take up Froissart's contemporary narrative the night before the battle.] That night the English king lay in the fields with his host, and made a supper to all his chief lords.^ of his host and made them good cheer. And when they were all departed to take their rest, then the king entered into his oratory, and kneeled down before the altar, praying God devoutly that if he fought the next day, that he might achieve the journey to his honor. Then, about midnight, he laid him down to rest, and in the morning he rose betimes, and heard mass, and the prince, his son (the Black Prince) with him, and the most part of his company were confessed and houseled. And, after the mass said, he commanded every man to be armed, ii4 Pictures from English History. and to draw to the field, to the same place before appointed. Then the king caused a park to be made by the wood-side, behind his host, and there was set all carts and carriages, and within the park were all their horses, for every man was afoot ; and into this park there was but one entry. After ar ranging the army in three battalions, the king leapt on a hob by, with a white rod in his hand, one of his marshals on the one hand, and the other on the other hand ; he rode from rank to rank, desiring every man to take heed that day to his right and honor; he spake it so sweetly, and with so good countenance and merry cheer, that all such as were dis comfited took courage in the seeing and hearing of him. And when he had thus visited all his battles (battalions) it was then nine of the day: then he caused every man to eat and drink a little, and so they did at their leisure ; and after ward they ordered again their battles. Then every man lay down on the earth, and by him his salet and bow, to be more fresher when their enemies should come. It was in C .gOUTHAMPTOJ** THE BATTLF. OF CRESSY. The Battle of Cressy. 115 this position that they were found by the tumultuous French army, which came rushing on, crying " Down with them," " Let us slay them," in such a manner, that, says Froissart, there was no man, though he were present at the journey, that could imagine or show the truth of the evil order that was among them. The day of this meeting was Saturday, August 6, 1346. The Englishmen, who were in three battles, lying on the ground to rest them, as soon as they saw the Frenchmen ap proach, they rose upon their feet, fair and easily, without any haste, and arranged their battles : the first, which was the prince's battle; the archers there stood in the manner of a herse (harrow), and the men-of-arms in the bottom of the battle. The Earl of Northampton and the Earl of Arundel, with the second battle, were on a wing in good order, ready to comfort the prince's battle, if need were. The lords and knights of France came not to the assembly together in good order; for some came before, and some came after, in such haste and evil order that one of them did trouble another. When the French king saw the Englishmen, his blood changed, and (he) said to his marshals, " Make the Genoese go on before, and begin the battle in the name of God and St. Denis." There were of the Genoese cross-bows about fifteen thousand ; but they were so weary of going a-foot that day a six league, armed with their cross-bows, that they said to their constables, "We be not well ordered to fight this day, for we be not in the case to do any great deed of arms, as we have more need of rest." These words came to the Duke of Alencon, who said, "A man is well at ease to be charged with such a sort of rascals, to be faint and fail now at most need." Also at the same season there fell a great rain and eclipse, with a terrible thunder ; and before the rain there came flying over both battles a great number of crows, for fear of the tempest coming. Then anon the air began to wax clear and the sun to shine fair and bright, the which was n6 Pictures from English History. right in the Frenchmen's eyes and on the Englishmen's backs. When the Genoese were assembled together, and be gan to approach, they made a great leap and cry to abash the Englishmen, but they stood still, and stirred not for all that. Then the Genoese again the second time made another leap, and a fell cry, and stept forward a little, and the Englishmen removed not one foot ; thirdly, again they leaped and cried, and went forth till they came within shot, then they shot fiercely with their cross-bows. Then the English archers stept forth one pass, (pace,) and let fly their arrows so wholly, and so thick, that it seemed snow. When the Genoese felt the arrows pressing through heads, arms, and breasts, many of them cast down their cross-bows, and did cut their strings, and returned discomforted. When the French king saw them flee away, he said, "Kill me these rascals; for they shall lett (hinder) and trouble us without reason." Then ye should have seen the men-of-arms dash in among them, and kill a great number of them ; and ever still the Englishmen shot whereas they saw thickest press ; the sharp arrows ran into the men-of-arms and into their horses, and many fell, horse and men, among the Genoese ; and when they were down, they could not relyne again, the press was so thick that one overthrew another. And also among the English men there were certain rascals that went on foot, with great knives, and they went in among the men-of-arms, and slew and murdered many as they lay on the ground, both earls, barons, knights, and squires, whereof the King of England was after displeased, for he had rather they had been taken prisoners. The valiant King of Bohemia, called Charles of Luxen bourg, son to the noble Emperor Henry of Luxenbourg, for all that he was nigh blind, when he understood the order of the battle, he said to them about him, " Where is the Lord Charles, my son ? " His men said, " Sir, we cannot tell, we think he be fighting." Then he said, " Sirs, ye are my men, The Battle of Cressy. 117 my companions and friends in this journey; I require you bring me so forward that I may strike one stroke with my sword." They said they would do his commandment ; and to the intent that they might not lose him in the press, they tied all the reins of their bridles each to other, and set the king before to accomplish his desire, and so they went on their enemies. The Lord Charles of Bohemia, his son, who wrote himself king of Bohemia, and bare the arms, he came in good order to the battle ; but when he saw that the matter went awry on their party, he departed, I cannot tell you which way. The king, his father, was so far forward, that he struck a stroke with his sword, ,yea, and more than four, and fought valiantly, and so did his company, and they ad ventured themselves so forward that they were all slain, and the next day they were found in the place about the king, and all their horses tied to each other. The prince's battalion at one period was very hard pressed ; and they with the prince sent a messenger to the king, who was on a little windmill-hill ; then the knight said to the king, " Sir, the Earl of Warwick, and the Earl of Ox ford, Sir Reynold Cobham, and others, such as be about the prince, your son, are fiercely fought withal, and are sore handled, wherefore they desire you that you and your battle will come and aid them, for if the Frenchmen increase, as they doubt they will, your son and they will have much ado." Then the king said, " Is my son dead or hurt, or on the earth felled?" "No, sir," quote the knight, "but he is hardly matched, wherefore he hath need of your aid." ''Well," said the king, " return to him and to them that sent you hither, and say to them, that they send no more to me for any adventure that faileth, as long as my son is alive ; and also say to them, that they suffer him this day to win his spurs, for if God be pleased, I will this journey be his, and the honor thereof, and to them that be about him." Then the knight returned again to them, and showed the king's words, n8 Pictures from English History. the which greatly encouraged them, and they repined in that they had sent to the king as they did. The King of France stayed till the last. It was not until the evening that he could be induced to acknowledge that .all was lost. Then, when he had left about him no more than a threescore per sons, one and other, whereof Sir John of Reynault was one, who had remounted once the king — for his horse was slain with an arrow — then he said to the king, " Sir, depart hence, for it is time ; lose not yourself willfully ; if ye have loss this time, ye shall recover it again another season ; " and so he took the king's horse by the bridle and led him away in a manner per force. Then the king rode till he came to the castle of La Broyes ; the gate was closed, because it was by that time dark ; then the king called the captain, who came to the walls, and said, " Open your gate quickly, for this is the fortune of France." The captain knew then it was the king, and opened the gate and let down the bridge ; then the king entered, and he had with him but five barons, Sir John of Reynault and four others. The unhappy king, however, could not rest there, but drank and departed hence about midnight. The recorded results of the battle would seem exagger ations but that they are so well authenticated. Besides the King of Bohemia, there perished the Duke of Lorraine, the Earl of Alengon, whose overweening pride and impetuosity had so much contributed to the fatal result, the Count of Flanders, eight other counts, two archbishops, several other noblemen, and, it is said, twelve hundred knights and thirty thousand common persons. Such was the cost to humanity of one day's proceedings in the endeavor to conquer France. Canon Froissart. The Siege of Calais. 119 XVII. THE SIEGE OF CALAIS. [This entrepot of France, after a valiant defense for a year by Sir John Vienne, was obliged to treat for capitulation.] They within Calais saw well how their succor failed them, for the which they were in great sorrow. Then they desired so much their captain, Sir John of Vienne, that he went to the walls of the town and made a sign to speak with some of the host. When the king heard thereof he sent thither Sir Walter of Manny and Sir Basset. Then Sir John of Vienne said to them : " Sirs, ye be right valiant knights in deeds of arms, and ye know well how the king my master hath sent me and others to this town, and commanded us to keep it to his behoof, in such wise that we take no blame, nor to him no damage ; and we have done all that lieth in our power. Now our succors hath failed us, and we be sO sore strained that we have not to live withal, but that we must all die, or else enrage for famine, without the noble and gentle king of yours will take mercy on us, and to let us go and depart as we be, and let him take the town and castle and all the goods that be therein, the which is great abundance." Then Sir Walter of Manny said : " Sir, we know somewhat of the intention of the king our master, for he hath showed it unto us. Surely know we for truth it is not his mind that ye nor they within the town should depart so, for it is his will that ye all should put yourselves into his pure will to ransom all such pleaseth him, and to put to death such as he list ; for they of Calais had done him such contraries and despites, had caused him to dispend so much goods and lost many of his men, that he is sore grieved against them." Then the captain said : " Sir, this is too hard a matter to us ; we are here within, a small sort (company) of knights and squires, who have truly served the king our master, as well as Pictures from English History. ye serve yours in like case, and we have endured much pain and unease ; but we shall yet endure as much pain as ever knights did rather than to consent that the worst lad in the town should have any more evil than the greatest of us all ; therefore, sir, we pray you that of your humility, yet that ye will go and speak to the King of England, and desire him to have pity of us, for we trust in him so much gentleness, that, by the grace of God, his purpose shall change." Sir Walter of Manny and Sir Basset returned to the king and declared to him all that had been said. The king said he would none otherwise, but that they should yield them up simply to his pleasure. Then Sir Walter said : " Sir, saving your displeasure in this, ye may be in the wrong, for ye shall give by this an evil example ; if ye send any of us your servants into any fortress, we will not be very glad to go if ye put any of them in the town to death after they be yielded, for in likewise they will deal with us if the case fell like ; " the which words divers other lords that were there present sustained and maintained. Then the king said : " Sirs, I will not be alone against you all ; therefore, Sir Walter of Manny, ye shall go and say to the captain that all the grace that he shall find now in me is, that they let six of the chief burgesses of the town come out bare-headed, bare footed, and bare-legged, and in their shirts, with halters about their necks, with the keys of the town and castle in their hands, and let them six yield themselves purely to my will, and the residue I will take to mercy." Then Sir Walter returned, and found Sir John of Vienne still on the wall, abiding of an answer. Then Sir Walter showed him all the grace that he could get of the king. " Well," quoth Sir John, " sir, I require you tarry here a cer tain space till I go into the town and show this to the com mons of the town who sent me thither." Then Sir John went into the market-place and sounded the common bell ; then incontinent men and women assembled there. Then The Siege of Calais. the captain made report of all that he had done, and said, " Sirs, it will be none otherwise, therefore take advice and make a short answer." Then all the people began to weep and make such sorrow, that there was not so hard a heart, if they had seen them, but that would have had great pity of them : the captain himself wept piteously. At last the most rich burgess of all the town, called Eustace de St. Pierre, rose up and said openly : " Sirs, great and small, great mischief it should be to suffer to die such people as be in this town, either by famine or otherwise, when there is a mean to save them. I think he or they should have great merit of our Lord God that might keep them from such mis chief. As for my part, I have so good trust in our Lord God, that if I die in the quarrel to save the residue, that God would pardon me ; wherefore, to save them I will be the first to put my life in jeopardy." When he had thus said every man worshiped him, and divers kneeled down at his feet with sore weeping and sore sighs. Then another honest burgess rose and said, " I will keep company with my gossip Eustace." He was called Jehan d'Aire. Then rose up Jacques de Wisant, who was rich in goods and heritage. He said also that he would hold company with his two cousins in likewise ; so did Peter of Wisant, his brother ; and then rose two other ; they said they would do the same. Then they went and appareled them as the king desired. Then the captain went with them to the gate. There was great lamentation made of men, women, and children at their departing. Then the gate was opened and he issued out with the six burgesses, and closed the gate again ; so they were between the gate and the barriers. Then he said to Sir Walter of Manny : " Sir, I deliver here to you, as captain of Calais, by the whole consent of all the people of the town, these six burgesses, and I swear to you truly that they be, and were to-day, most honorable, rich, and most notable bur gesses of all the town of Calais ; wherefore, gentle knight, I 6 122 Pictures from English History. require you pray the king to have mercy on them, that they die not." Quoth Sir Walter, " I cannot say what the king will do, but I shall do for them the best I can." Then the barriers were opened, the burgesses went toward the king, and the captain entered again into the town. When Sir Walter presented these burgesses to the king they kneeled down and held up their hands and said : " Gen tle king, behold here we six, who were burgesses of Calais and great merchants. We have brought the keys of the town and of the castle, and we submit ourselves clearly into your will and pleasure, to save the residue of the people of Calais, who have suffered great pain. Sir, we beseech your grace to have mercy and pity on us through your high nobles." Then all the earls and barons and other that were there wept for pity. The king looked felly [savagely or vindic tively] on them, for greatly he hated the people of Calais for the great damage and displeasures they had done him on the sea before. Then he commanded their heads to be stricken off. Then every man required the king for mercy, but he would hear no man in that behalf. Then Sir Walter of Manny said : " Ah, noble king, for God's sake refrain your courage ; ye have the name of sov ereign noblesse ; therefore, now do not a thing that should blemish your renown, nor to give a cause to some to speak of you villainously ; every man will say it is a great cruelty to put to death such honest persons, who by their own wills put themselves into your grace to save their company." Then the king wryed away from him, and commanded to send for the hangman, and said, " They of Calais have caused many of my men to be slaine, wherefore these shall die in likewise." Then the queen, being great with child, kneeled down, and, sore weeping, said : " Ah, gentle sir, sith I passed the sea in great peril I have desired nothing of you ; therefore, The Siege of Calais. 123 now I humbly require you, in the honor of the Son of the Virgin Mary, and for the love of me, that ye will take mercy of these six burgesses." The king beheld the queen, and stood still in a study a space, and then said : " Ah, dame, I would ye had been as now in some other place ; ye make such request to me that I cannot deny you, wherefore I give them to you to do your pleasure with them." Then the queen caused them to be brought into her chamber, and made the halters to be taken from their necks, and caused them to be new clothed, and gave them their dinner at their leisure, and then she gave each of them six nobles, and made them to be brought out of the host in safe-guard, and set at their liberty. Canon Froissart. 124 Pictures from English History. XVIII. THE PEASANT RISING. [The last years of Edward III.'s reign were as ignominious and troubled as its zenith had been glorious and successful ; and his grandson, Rich ard II., a boy of eleven, succeeded to a State impoverished by long wars, ground under taxation, and a court divided by unscrupulous cabals. At an unfortunate moment, in these evil times, a poll-tax was ordered on every man and woman, and every child above the age of 14 ; an unequal burden, and one that was unequaDy and ruthlessly collected. During all these times a class of open-air preachers had gone about declaring new doctrines of popular rights. In 1381, under all these influences, the vil leins and laborers rose in the Peasant Revolt.] As the spring went by quaint rhymes passed through the coun try, and served as a summons to revolt. " John Ball," ran one, " greeteth you all, and doth for to understand he hath rung your bell. Now right and might, will and skill, God speed every dele." " Help truth," ran another, " and truth shall help you ! Now reigneth pride in price, and cov- etise is counted wise, and lechery withouten shame, and gluttony withouten blame. Envy reigneth with treason, and sloth is take in great season. God do bote, for now is tyme ! " We recognize Ball's hand in the yet more stirring missives of " Jack the Miller " and " Jack the Carter." " Jack Miller asketh help to turn his mill aright. He hath grounden small, small : the King's Son of Heaven he shall pay for all. Look thy mill go aright with the four sailes, and the post stand with steadfastness. With right and with might, with skill and with will ; let might help right, and skill go before will, and right before might, so RICHARD II. The Peasant Rising. 125 goeth our mill aright.'' " Jack Carter," ran the companion missive, " prays you all that ye make a good end of that ye ha/e begun, and do well, and aye better and better: for at the even men heareth the day." " Falseness and guile," sang Jack Trewman, " have reigned too long, and truth hath been set under a lock, and falseness and guile reigneth in every stock. No man may come truth to, but if he sing ' si dedero.' True love is away that was so good, and clerks for wealth work them woe. God do bote, for now is time." In the rude jingle of these lines began for England the litera ture of political controversy ; they are the first predecessors of the pamphlets of Milton and of Burke. Rough as they are, they express clearly enough the mingled passions which met in the revolt of the peasants ; their longing for a right rule, for plain and simple justice ; their scorn of the immo rality of the nobles and the infamy of the court ; their resent ment at the perversion of the law to the cause of oppression. From the eastern and midland counties the restlessness spread to all England south of the Thames. But the grounds of discontent varied with every district. The actual out break began on the 5th of June at Dartford, where a tiler killed one of the collectors of the poll-tax in vengeance for a brutal outrage on his daughter. The county at once rose in arms. Canterbury, where " the whole town was of their mind," threw open its gates to the insurgents who plundered the archbishop's palace and dragged John Ball from prison. A hundred thousand Kentishmen gathered around Walter Tyler of Essex and John Hales of Mailing to march upon London. Their grievance was mainly a political one. Vil lainage was unknown in Kent. As the peasants poured to ward Blackheath indeed every lawyer who fell into their hands was put to death ; " not till all these were killed would the land enjoy its old freedom again," the Kentishmen shouted, as they fired the houses of the stewards, and flung the rolls of the manor-courts into the flames. But this action 126 Pictures from English History. can hardly have been due to any thing more than sym pathy with the rest of the realm — the sympathy which in duced the same men, when pilgrims from the north brought news that John of Gaunt was setting free his bondmen, to send to the duke an offer to make him lord and king of En gland. Nor was their grievance a religious one. Lollardry can have made little way among men whose grudge against the Archbishop of Canterbury sprang from his discouragement of pilgrimages. Their discontent was simply political ; they demanded the suppression of the poll-tax, and better govern ment ; their aim was to slay the nobles and wealthier clergy, to take the king into their own hands, and pass laws which should seem good to the Commons of the realm. The whole population joined the Kentishmen as they marched along, while the nobles were paralyzed with fear. The young king — he was but a boy of sixteen — addressed them from a boat on the river ; but the refusal of his coun cil, under the guidance of Archbishop Sudbury, to allow him to land kindled the peasants to fury, and with cries of "Treason" the great mass rushed on London. On the 13th of June its gates were flung open by the poorer artisans within the city, and the stately palace of John of Gaunt at the Savoy, the new inn of the lawyers at the Temple, the houses ofthe foreign merchants, were soon in a blaze. But the insurgents, as they proudly boasted, were " seekers of truth and justice, not thieves or robbers," and a plunderer found carrying off a silver vessel from the sack of the Savoy was flung with his spoil into the flames. Another body of insurgents encamped at the same time to the east of the city. In Essex and the eastern counties the popular discontent was more social than political. The demands of the peas ants were that bondage should be abolished, that tolls and imposts on trade should be done away with, that "no acre of land which is held in bondage or villainage be held at higher rate than four pence a year;" in other words, for a money Tower of London. The Peasant Rising. 127 commutation of all villain services. Their uprising had been even earlier than that of the Kentishmen. Before Whit suntide an attempt to levy the poll-tax gathered crowds of peasants together, armed with clubs, rusty swords, and bows. The royal commissioners who were sent to repress the tumult were driven from the field, and the Essex men marched upon London on one side of the river as the Kentishmen marched on the other. The evening of the 13th of June, the day on which Tyler entered the city, saw them encamped with out its walls at Mile-end. At the same moment Highbury and the northern heights were occupied by the men of Hertfordshire and the villains of St. Albans, where a strife between abbot and town had been going on since the days of Edward II. The royal Council, with the young king, had taken refuge in the Tower, and their aim seems to have been to divide the forces of the insurgents. On the morning of the 14th, therefore, Richard rode from the Tower to Mile-end to meet the Essex men. " I am your king and lord, good people," the boy began, with a fearlessness which marked his bearing throughout the crisis, " what will you ? " " We will that you free us forever," shouted the peasants, " us and our lands; and that we be never named nor held for serfs ! " " I grant it," replied Richard ; and he bade them go home, pledging himself at once to issue charters of freedom and am nesty. A shout of joy welcomed the promise. Throughout the day more than thirty clerks were busied writing letters of pardon and emancipation, and with these the mass of the Essex men and the men of Hertfordshire withdrew quietly to their homes. But while the king was successful at Mile-end a terrible doom had fallen on the councilors he left behind him. Richard had hardly quitted the Tower when the Kentishmen, who had spent the night within the city, ap peared at its gates. The general terror was shown ludicrous ly enough when they burst in, and taking the panic-stricken 128 Pictures from English History. knights of the royal household in rough horse-play by the beard promised to be their equals and good comrades in the days to come. But the horse-play changed into dreadful earnest when they found that Richard had escaped their grasp, and the discovery of Archbishop Sudbury and other ministers in the chapel changed their fury into a cry for blood. The primate was dragged from his sanctuary and be headed. The same vengeance was wreaked upon the treas urer and the chief commissioner for the levy of the hated poll-tax, the merchant Richard Lyons who had been im peached by the Good Parliament. Richard meanwhile had ridden round the northern wall ofthe city to the Wardrobe, near Blackfriars, and from this new refuge he opened his negotiations with the Kentish in surgents. Many of these dispersed at the news of the king's pledge to the men of Essex, but a body of thirty thousand still surrounded Wat Tyler when Richard, on the morning of the 15th, encountered that leader, by a mere chance, at Smithfield. Hot words passed between his train and the peasant chieftain, who advanced to confer with the king, and a threat from Tyler brought on a brief struggle in which the Mayor of London, William Walworth, struck him with his dagger to the ground. "Kill! kill!" shouted the crowd, " they have slain our captain ! " But Richard faced the Kentishmen with the same cool courage with which he faced the men of Essex. "What need ye, my masters ? " cried the boy-king, as he rode boldly up to the front of the bow-men. " I am your captain and your king ; follow me ! " The hopes of the peasants centered in the young sovereign ; one aim of their rising had been to free him from the evil counselors who, as they believed, abused his youth ; and at his word they followed him with a touching loyalty and trust till he entered the Tower. His mother welcomed him within its walls with tears of joy. " Rejoice and praise God," Richard answered, " for I have recovered to-day my heritage which The Peasant Rising. 129 was lost and the realm of England ! " But he was compelled to give the same pledge of freedom to the Kentishmen as at Mile-end, and it was only after receiving his letters of pardon and emancipation that the yeomen dispersed to their homes. John Richard Green. XIX. WYCLIFFE AND THE LOLLARDS. [Richard was dethroned by his cousin, Henry of Lancaster, who became Henry IV., the first of the House of Lancaster, Richard being the last Plantagenet. During these two reigns Wycliffe lived and laid the seeds of reformation ; Chaucer wrote his stinging satires on the corruptions of the Church ; and the sect of Lollards flourished. Henry had purchased the aid ofthe Church for his usurpation by promising to suppress this sect, and his reign is balefully distinguished by the beginning of religious per secutions in England.] In 1356 Wycliffe began his ca reer as an ecclesiastical reformer, by writing his treatise called " The Last Ages of the Church." In 1365 the pope having de manded the arrears of the trib ute known as " Peter's pence," it was refused by the Parliament, and Wycliffe strenuously sup ported this resistance to the de mand. But there was something more formidable to the papal authority, and to the system which was founded upon it, than the acts of the legislature. There was a public opinion forming, which, before the circulation of books by printing, and with the imperfect communication of one district with another, was diffused in a very remarkable way through the HENRY IV. 130 Pictures from English History. country. A general feeling began to spread that the Church dignitaries and the religious orders were more intent upon their own aggrandizement and the gratification of their own luxury, than the upholding of the faith and duties of the Gospel. The mass of the people were ignorant of the essen tials of religion, though they bowed before its forms. In the universities there were young men who were like Chaucer's clerk : " Sounding in moral virtue was his speech, And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach." To such the covert licentiousness of the monks and the open profligacy of the mendicant orders was a deep humiliation. They went forth, each to his small country cure, to speak of a holier religion than belonged to the worship of relics or the purchase of indulgences. The sumptnours, who were the ministers of the extortions of the ecclesiastical courts, and the pardoners, who hawked about dispensations for sin, were their especial aversion. The satire of Chaucer was a reflec tion ofthe prevailing estimate of the monk, "full, fat, and in good point ; " of the friar, " a wanton and a merry ; " of the sumptnour, who thought " a man's soul was in his purse ; " of the pardoner, with his wallet " full of pardon come from Rome all hot.'' In their sermons secular priests now freely quoted the Holy Scriptures in the common tongue ; and they looked forward to the work which their great leader, Wycliffe, the honored professor of theology at Oxford, was preparing — the translation into English of Christ's Testament. His citation for heresy in the last year of Edward III. was the tribute to his importance. In a few years the preaching of Wycliffe and his disciples would go through the land, scattering the cor ruptions of the Church with a power that for a time seemed likely to shake the whole fabric of society. The age was not ripe for the great Reformation that then seemed impending. But out of Wycliffe 's rectory of Lutterworth seeds were to be Wycliffe and the Lollards. 131 borne upon the wind which would abide in the earth till they sprang up into the stately growth of other centuries. . . . Within a few months after the accession of Richard II. , the Rector of Lutterworth, in consequence of letters from the pope, was summoned before the Archbishop of Canterbury • and the Bishop of London, to answer for his opinions. He defended his doctrines, and was dismissed, with a direction to be cautious for the future. After the insurrection of 1381 had been quelled, a synod of divines was called, in which many of Wycliffe's opinions were censured as heretical, er roneous, and of dangerous tendency. . . . He was at last com pelled to submit himself to the judgment of his ordinary, and he withdrew to his rectory. But he had accomplished a work which no ecclesiastical censure could set aside. He had translated the Scriptures into the English language. Whenever he and his disciples were assailed by the higher ecclesiastics, he had appealed to the Bible. His translation of the Bible was now multiplied by the incessant labor of transcribers. The texts of the Bible were in every mouth as they were re-echoed in the sermons of his preachers in churches and open places. The poor treasured up the words of comfort for all earthly afflictions. The rich and great meditated upon the inspired sentences which so clearly pointed out a more certain road to salvation than could be found through indulgences and pilgrimages. During the re maining years of the fourteenth century the principles ofthe Lollards took the deepest root in the land. Wycliffe died in 1384, but his preaching never died. His Bible was pro scribed; his votaries were imprisoned and burned, but the sacred flame was never extinguished. The first English re former appeared in an age when civil freedom asserted itself with a strength which was never afterward subdued or mate rially weakened. He fought a brave fight for religious free dom with very unequal forces against a most powerful hie rarchy. But such contests are not terminated in a few years. 132 Pictures from English History. The reforms which in the eternal laws are willed to be permanent are essentially of slow growth. When the " poor preachers " had slept for a century and a half their day of triumph was at hand. . . . The execrable laws against the preachers of the " new doctrines " had not prevented the tenets of Wycliffe from spreading through the nation and beyond the narrow bounds of our island. It was a period of alarm for popes and prel ates, and for all those who considered that the Church was properly built upon a foundation of worldly riches and do minion. John Huss, a Bohemian priest, had become ac quainted with the writings of Wycliffe, and he boldly preached the same doctrines as early as 1405. In 1414 the Council of Constance held its first sitting, and Huss was summoned be fore it to declare his opinions. The brave man knew that he went at the risk of his life. He died at the stake in 1415. The same council decreed that the body of Wycliffe should be " taken from the ground, and thrown far away from the burial of any church." It was thirteen years before this miserable vengeance was carried into effect, by disinterring and burning our first English reformer's body, throwing his ashes into a brook. " The brook did convey his ashes into Avon ; Avon into Severn ; Severn into the narrow seas ; they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all the world over." But in the first year of Henry V. the prelates sought to strike a more effectual terror into the followers of Wycliffe than could be accomplished by any insult to his memory. They resolved to take measures against one of the most powerful supporters of the Lollards, Sir John Oldcastle, called Lord Cobham. He had been the private friend of the king when prince of Wales ; and Henry in the honest de sire, as we may believe, to avert the consequences of ecclesi astical vengeance, tried to induce Oldcastle to recant. He was Wycliffe and the Lollards. •33 inflexible ; and the king then caused him to be arrested. On the 25th of September the undaunted knight was brought be fore the synod, and there pleaded his cause with a vigor and abil ity which have made him mem orable among the martyrs of the Reformation. He was con demned as a heretic, and was handed over to the secular power. The king granted his ancient friend a respite of fifty days from the fiery penalty which awaited him, and during that period Oldcastle escaped from his prison in the Tower. The danger to which their leader had been exposed, and the severities which appeared preparing for those who held to their consci entious opinions, precipitated the Lollards into a movement which made the State as anxious for their suppression as was the Church. Rumors went forth of a fearful plot to destroy all re ligion and law in England ; and, in the overthrow of king, lords, and clergy to make all prop erty in common. Within a few months a pardon was pro claimed to all the Lollards for the conspiracy, excepting Oldcastle and eleven others. Still prosecutions went on ; and it is remarkable that the king pardoned many so prose cuted, after they had been convicted. The general body of Lollards were grievously punished for the indiscretion of some of their number. A new statute was passed, giving all judges and magistrates power to arrest all persons suspected A LOLLARD AT THE STAKE. 134 Pictures from English History. of Lollardism, binding them by oath to do their utmost to root up the heresy, and enacting that in addition to capital punishment the lands and goods of such convicted heretics should be forfeited to the king. It was three years before the vengeance of the Church fell upon Oldcastle. He was taken in 1418, while Henry was in France, and was burned, under the declaration of the archbishop and his provincial synod that he was an incorrigible heretic. Charles Knight. XX. RISE OF ENGLAND UNDER THE PLANTAGENETS. [The following summary of the development of the English people is one of the finest productions of Macaulay's graphic pen.] Had the Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely, suc ceeded in uniting all France under their government, it is probable that England would never have had an independent existence. Her princes, her prelates, her lords, would have been men differing in race and language from the artisans and the tillers of the earth. The revenues of her great proprietors would have been spent in festivities and diver sions on the banks of the Seine. The noble language of Milton and Burke would have remained a rustic dialect, without a literature, a fixed grammar, or a fixed orthogra phy, and would have been contemptuously abandoned to the use of boors. No man of English extraction would have risen to eminence, except by becoming in speech and habits a Frenchman. England owes her escape from such calamities to an event which her historians have generally represented as disas trous. Her interest was so directly opposed to the interest of her rulers, that she had no hope but in their errors and Rise of England Under the Plantagenets. 135 misfortunes. The talents and even the virtues of her first six French kings were a curse to her. The follies and vices of the seventh were her salvation. Had John inherited the great qualities of his father, of Henry Beauclerc, or of the Conqueror, nay, had he even possessed the martial courage of Stephen or of Richard, and had the King of France at the same time been as incapable as all the other successors of Hugh Capet had been, the house of Plantagenet must have risen to unrivaled ascendency in Europe. But, just at this conjuncture, France, for the first time since the death of Charlemagne, was governed by a prince of great firmness and ability. On the other hand, England, which, since the battle of Hastings, had been ruled generally by wise states men, always by brave soldiers, fell under the dominion of a trifler and a coward. From that moment her prospects brightened. John was driven from Normandy. The Nor man nobles were compelled to make their election between the island and the continent. Shut up by the sea with the people whom they had hitherto oppressed and despised, they gradually came to regard England as their country, and the English as their countrymen. The two races, so long hostile, soon found that they had common interests and common enemies. Both were alike aggrieved by the tyranny of a bad king. Both were alike indignant at the favor shown by the court to the natives of Poitou and Aquitaine. The great- grandsons of those who had fought under William and the great-grandsons of those who had fought under Harold be gan to draw near to each other in friendship, and the first pledge of their reconciliation was the Great Charter, won by their united exertions, and framed for their common benefit. Here commences the history of the English nation. The history of the preceding events is the history of wrongs in flicted and sustained by various tribes, whieh, indeed, all dwelt on English ground, but which regarded each other with aversion, such as has scarcely ever existed between 136 Pictures from English History. communities separated by physical barriers ; for even the mutual animosity of countries at war with each other is lan guid when compared with the animosity of nations which, morally separated, are yet locally intermingled. In no coun try has the enmity of race been carried farther than in En gland. In no country has that enmity been more completely effaced. The stages of the process by which the hostile ele ments were melted down into one homogeneous mass are not accurately known to us. But it is certain that, when John became king, the distinction between Saxons and Nor mans was strongly marked, and that before the end of the reign of his grandson it had almost disappeared. In the time of Richard I. the ordinary imprecation of a Norman gentleman was, " May I become an Englishman ! " His or dinary form of indignant denial was, " Do you take me for an Englishman ? " The descendants of such a gentleman, a hundred years later, was proud of the English name. The sources of the noblest rivers, which spread fertility over continents, and bear richly-laden fleets to the sea, are to be sought in wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in maps, and rarely explored by travelers. To such a tract the history of our country during the thirteenth century may not unaptly be compared. Sterile and obscure as is that portion of our annals, it is there that we must seek for the origin of our freedom, our prosperity, and our glory. Then it was that the great English people was formed, that the national character began to exhibit those peculiarities which it has ever since retained, and that our fathers became emphatically islanders ; islanders not merely in geographical position, but in their politics, their feelings, and their man ners. Then first appeared with distinctness that Constitu tion which has ever since, through all changes, preserved its identity ; that Constitution of which all the other free con stitutions in the world are copies, and which, in spite of some defects, deserves to be regarded as the best under Rise of England Under the Plantagenets. 137 which any great society has ever yet existed during many ages. Then it was that the House of Commons, the arche type of all the representative assemblies which now meet, either in the Old or in the New World, held its first sittings. Then it was that the common law rose to the dignity of a science, and rapidly became a not unworthy rival of the im perial jurisprudence. Then it was that the courage of those sailors who manned the rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of England terrible on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient colleges which still exist at both the great national seats of learning were founded. Then was formed that language, less musical, indeed, than the languages of the South, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the ora tor, inferior to that of Greece alone. Then, too, appeared the first faint dawn of that noble literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the many glories of England. Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of the races was all but complete ; and it was soon made manifest by signs not to be mistaken, that a people inferior to none existing in the world had been formed by the mixture of three branches of the great Teutonic family with each other and with the aboriginal Britons. There was, indeed, scarcely any thing in common between the England to which John had been chased by Philip Augustus, and the England from which the armies of Edward III. went forth to conquer France. A period of more than a hundred years followed, during which the chief object of the English was to establish, by force of arms, a great empire on the Continent. . . . The greatest victories recorded in the history of the Middle Ages were gained at this time, against great odds, by the English armies. Victories indeed they were of which a nation may justly be proud ; for they are to be attributed to the moral 138 Pictures from English History. superiority of the victors, a superiority which was most strik ing in the lowest ranks. The knights of England found wor thy rivals in the knights of France. Chandos encountered an equal foe in Du Guesclin ; but France had no infantry that dared to face the English bows and bills. A French king was brought prisoner to London. An English king was crowned at Paris. The banner of Saint George was carried far beyond the Pyrenees and the Alps. On the south of the Ebro the English won a great battle which, for a time, de cided the fate of Leon and Castile ; and the English compa nies obtained a terrible pre-eminence among the bands of warriors who let out their weapons for hire to the princes and commonwealths of Italy. Nor were the arts of peace neglected by our fathers during that stirring period. While France was wasted by^ war till she at length found in her own desolation a miserable defense against invaders, the English gathered in their harvests, adorned their cities, pleaded, traded, and studied in security. Many of our noblest architectural monuments belong to that age. Then rose the fair chapels of New College and of Saint George, the nave of Winchester and the choir of York, the spire of Salisbury and the majestic towers of Lincoln. A copious and forcible language, formed by an infusion of Norman-French into German, was now the common property of the aristocracy and of the people. Nor was it long be fore genius began to apply that admirable machine to worthy purposes. While English battalions, leaving behind them the devastated provinces of France, entered Valladolid in tri umph and spread terror to the gates of Florence, English poets depicted in vivid tints all the wide variety of human manners and fortunes, and English thinkers aspired to know, or dared to doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and to believe. The same age which produced the Black Prince and Derby, Chandos and Hawkwood, produced also Geoffrey Chaucer and John Wycliffe. Rise of England Under the Plantagenets. 139 In so splendid and imperial a manner did the English people, properly so-called, first take place among the nations of the world. Thomas Babington Macaulay. XXI. THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT. [The reign of Henry IV. was a continued struggle against domestic foes. His son, Henry V., preferred to unite England by a foreign war, and he revived the old quarrel with France. On the 14th of August, 1414, his army landed at the mouth of the Seine.] With an army in all of thirty thousand men he besieged the town of Harfleur, both by sea and land, for five weeks ; at the end of which time the town surrendered, and the inhab itants were allowed to depart with only fivepence each and a part of their clothes. All the rest of their possessions were divided among the English army. But that army suffered so much, in spite of its successes, from disease and privation, that it was already reduced one half. Still, the king was determined not to retire until he had struck a greater blow. Therefore, against the advice of all his counselors, he moved on with his little force toward Calais. When he came up to the river Somme he was unable to cross, in consequence of the ford being fortified ; and, as the English moved up the left bank of the river, looking for a crossing, the French, who had broken all the bridges, moved up the right bank, watching them, and waiting to attack them when they should try to pass it. At last the English found a crossing, and got safely over. The French held a council of war at Rouen, resolved to give the English battle, and sent heralds to King Henry to know by which road he was going. " By the road 140 Pictures from English History. that will take me straight to Calais ! " said the king, and sent them away with a present of a hundred crowns. The English -moved on until they beheld the French, and then the king gave orders to form in line of battle. The French not coming on, the army broke up after remaining in battle array till night, and got good rest and refreshment at a neighboring village. The French were now all lying in another village, through which they knew the English must pass. They were resolved that the English should begin the battle. The English had no means of retreat, if their king had any such intention ; and so the two armies passed the night close together. To understand these armies well, you must bear in mind that the immense French army had, among its notable persons, almost the whole of that wicked nobility whose debauchery had made France a desert; and so besotted were they by pride and by contempt for the common people, that they had scarcely any bowmen (if, indeed, they had any at all) in their whole enormous number, which, compared with the En glish army, was at least as six to one. For these proud fools had said that the bow was not a fit weapon for knightly hands, and that France must be defended by gentlemen only. We shall see, presently, what hand the gentlemen made of it. Now, on the English side, among the little force, there was a good proportion of men who were not gentlemen by any means, but who were good stout archers for all that. Among them in the morning — having slept little at night, while the French were carousing and making sure of victory — the king rode on a gray horse, wearing on his head a helmet of shining steel, surmounted by a crown of gold, sparkling with precious stones, and bearing over his armor, embroidered together, the arms of England and the arms of France. The archers looked at the shining helmet and the crown of gold and the sparkling jewels, and admired them all; but what The Battle of Agincourt. 141 they admired most was the king's cheerful face and his bright blue eye, as he told them that, for himself, he had made up his mind to conquer there or to die there, and that England should never have a ransom to pay for him. There was one brave knight who chanced to say that he wished some of the many gallant gentlemen and good soldiers who were then idle at home in England, were there to increase their numbers. But the king told him that, for his part, he did not wish for one more man. " The fewer we have," said he, " the greater will be the honor we shall win ! " His men, being now all in good heart, were refreshed with bread and wine, and heard prayers, and waited quietly for the French. The king waited for the French because they were drawn up thirty deep (the little English force was only three deep) on very difficult and heavy ground, and he knew that, when they moved, there must be confusion among them. As they did not move he sent off two parties : one to lie concealed in a wood on the left of the French, the other to set fire to some houses behind the French after the battle should be begun. This was scarcely done when three ofthe proud French gentlemen, who were to defend their country without any help from the base peasants, came riding out, calling upon the English to surrender. The king himself warned those gentlemen to retire with all speed if they cared for their lives, and ordered the English banners to advance. Upon that Sir Thomas Erpingham, the great English general, who commanded the archers, threw his truncheon into the air joyfully ; and all the Englishmen, kneeling down upon the ground, and biting it as if they took possession of the country, rose up with a great shout and fell upon the French. Every archer was furnished with a great stake tipped with iron, and his orders were to thrust this stake into the ground, to discharge his arrow, and then fall back when the French horsemen came on. As the haughty French gentlemen, who 142 Pictures from English History. were to break the English archers and utterly destroy them with their knightly lances, came riding up, they were re ceived with such a blinding storm of arrows that they broke and turned. Horses and men rolled over one another, and the confusion was terrific. Those who rallied and charged the archers got among the stakes on slippery and boggy ground, and were so bewildered that the English archers — who wore no armor, and even took off their leathern coats to be more active — cut them to pieces, root and branch. Only three French horsemen got within the stakes, and were instantly dispatched. All this time the dense French army, being in armor, were sinking knee-deep into the mire, while the light English archers, half naked, were as fresh and active as if they were fighting on a marble floor. But now the second division of the French, coming to the relief of the first, closed up in a firm mass ; the English, headed by the king, attacked them ; and the deadliest part of the battle began. The king's brother, the Duke of Clar ence, was struck down, and numbers of the French sur rounded him ; but King Henry, standing over the body, fought like a lion until they were beaten off. Presently came up a band of eighteen French knights, bearing the banner of a certain French lord, who had sworn to kill or take the English king. One of them struck him such a blow with a battle-ax that he reeled and fell upon his knees ; but his faithful men, immediately closing round him, killed every one of those eighteen knights, and so that French lord never kept his oath. The French Duke of Alencon, seeing this, made a desper ate charge, and cut his way close up to the royal standard of England. He beat down the Duke of York, who was standing near it ; and, when the king came to his rescue, struck off a piece of the crown he wore. But he never struck another blow in this world ; for, even as he was in the act of saying who he was, and that he surrendered to the The Battle of Agincourt. 143 king, and even as the king stretched out his hand to give him a safe and honorable acceptance of the offer, he fell dead, pierced by innumerable wounds. The death of this nobleman decided the battle. The third division of the French army, which had never struck a blow yet, and which was, in itself, more than double the whole English power, broke and fled. At this time of the fight the English, who as yet had made no prisoners, began to take them in immense numbers, and were still occupied in doing so, or in killing those who would not surrender, when a great noise arose in the rear of the French— their flying banners were seen to stop — and King Henry, supposing a great re- enforcement to have arrived, gave orders that all the prisoners should be put to death. As soon, however, as it was found that the noise was only occasioned by a body of plundering peasants, the terrible massacre was stopped. Then King Henry called to him the French herald and asked him to whom the victory belonged. The herald replied, " To the King of England." " We have not made this havoc and slaughter," said the king. "It is the wrath of heaven on the sins of France. What is the name of that castle yonder ? " The herald answered him, " My lord, it is the castle of Azincourt." Said the king, " From henceforth this battle shall be known to posterity by the name of the battle of Azincourt." Our English historians have made it Agincourt ; but, under that name, it will ever be famous in English annals. The loss upon the French side was enormous. Three dukes were killed, two more were taken prisoners ; seven counts were killed, three more were taken prisoners, and ten thousand knights and gentlemen were slain upon the field. The English loss amounted to sixteen hundred men, among whom were the Duke of York and .the Earl of Suffolk. War is a dreadful thing ; and it is appalling to know how i44 Pictures from English History. the English were obliged, next morning, to kill those prison ers mortally wounded who yet writhed in agony upon the ground ; how the dead upon the French side were stripped by their own countrymen and countrywomen, and afterward buried in great pits ; how the dead upon the English side were piled up in a great barn, and how their bodies and the barn were all burned together. It is in such things, and in many more much too horrible to relate, that the real desola tion and wickedness of war consist. Nothing can make war otherwise than horrible. But the dark side of it was little thought of, and soon forgotten ; and it cast no shade of trouble on the English people, except on those who had lost friends or relations in the fight. They welcomed their king home with shouts of rejoicing, and plunged into the water to bear him ashore on their shoulders, and flocked out in crowds to welcome him in every town through which he passed, and hung rich carpets and tapestries out of the windows, and strewed the streets with flowers, and made the fountains run with wine, as the great field of Agincourt had run with blood. Charles Dickens. The Wars of the Roses. 145 XXII. . THE WARS OF THE ROSES. [The sudden death of Henry V., in the midst ofhis French wars, left the succession to his infant of nine months, and under the regency of rival noble men during his minority the realm was torn and distracted, while all the French conquests were lost, except Calais. Henry VI., when he came to maturity, was weak to imbecility. This impotent and chaotic rule would naturally invite the assaults of ambitious men upon a dynasty itself of usurped authority, and the Duke of York, who was descended from an older son of Edward III., than was the Lancastrian Henry VI., aspired to the throne. The struggle between these two lines is " The Wars of the Roses."] You begin to hear the first sounds that give signal of the coming convulsion that is to shake the whole fabric of the realm ; you discover the premonitions of the political pesti lence that is to devastate England. Popular tumult is the first eruption of the disease, and just such an insurrection as that which was headed by Jack Cade, is the form the tumult is apt to take. It is licentiousness proclaiming freedom by the destruction of all rule and order ; it is ruffian ignorance taking advantage of popular discontent by promising absurd and impracticable reformations. Wat Tyler's rebellion, some seventy years before, seems to me to have been a much more reputable insurrection than Cade's. Then the populace rose because the power of government was oppressive upon them, and now because they felt that the authority of law was too feeble to preserve subordination. The people were estranged from the sovereign ; they had, in their discontent, a restless desire for change — they knew not what it should be ; and a low demagogue started them — to flatter them with promises. " There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny ; the three-hooped pots shall have ten hoops ; and I will make it a felony to drink small beer ; all the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass." 1 146 Pictures from English History. Whether or no Cade's rebellion was fomented by the Duke of York, for the purpose of promoting his own aggrandizement out of the increased confusion, is one of the multitude of uncertainties of the history. York's claim to the crown is not made ; but the troubles of the reign next take the form of the feud between York and the Lancastrian chief, the Duke of Somerset. It is a dispute between them that Shakespeare has made the subject of the scene in the Temple garden, in which the origin of the adoption of the respective badges of the two great parties is accounted for. The scene, however, is a purely dramatic creation, without historic authority, as far as is known ; and I am not aware that his tory gives any explanation of the adoption of the white and red roses as the emblems of the Yorkists and Lancastrians respectively. In that scene, York, being unable to obtain an oral expression of opinion respecting his hereditary rights, is represented saying : " Let him that is a true-born gentleman, And stands upon the honor of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this briar pluck a white rose with me." Somerset adds : " Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer, But dare maintain the purity of the truth, Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me." The angry scene closes with Warwick's prediction : " This brawl to-day, Grown to this faction, in the Temple garden, Shall send, between the red rose and the white, A thousand souls to death and deadly night." Before the claim of the Duke of York to the throne was openly asserted, the thoughts of the nation were, during some years, habituated to look to him as the future sovereign in due course of inheritance, he being the heir presumptive, and The Wars of the Roses. 147 Henry VI. being then childless. The Duke of York became still more prominent in connection with royalty, by being made protector during the disability of the king. To the eyes of the nation, and to his own, the crown was visible as his future possession, until the birth of the Prince of Wales, the son of Henry VI. , changed the prospect, and the throne could be reached by the family of York only by a revo lutionary change. The battle of St. Albans, which is regarded as the begin ning of the civil war, appears to have been an unpremeditated conflict. The Yorkists gained the battle, and the king fell into their power. The fact of the battle is quite intelligible ; but immediately after it, all that the triumphant Yorkists ask is pardon ; they renew their oaths of fealty to King Henry, and appear perfectly satisfied, simply because Somerset was killed in the battle. Soon afterward the gentle king recon ciled the contending parties, and a solemn procession to St. Paul's Cathedral took place, in which the leaders of the two parties made a beautiful show of concord by walking hand-in-hand with each other. It was a fine spectacle, but it was nothing more than a spectacle. The reconciliation endured but a little while, and then came another battle, the Yorkists again victorious ; but to the great perplexity of the historical student, the victory is scarcely completed before the fortunes of the conquerors are suddenly depressed, one can hadly tell how or why ; the Yorkist army disbands itself, and the leaders flee away to their strongholds. It was then that the fortunes of the faction were retrieved by perhaps the most remarkable personage in this war — Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, " The King-maker," as his successful prowess well entitled him to be styled. Warwick turned, rallied the disbanded army of the Yorkists, gained the battle of Northampton, drove the queen into exile, and brought his sovereign, helpless King Henry, captive to Lon don, the victorious nobleman all the while paying the show 148 Pictures from English History. of respectful homage to his prisoner-king. Professions of al legiance were still studiously continued. It was a civil war, and not yet a war of succession. But now another change comes over the character of the contest, for while the Parlia ment was in session for the purpose of harmonizing the dis sensions, the Duke of York walked into Westminster Hall, and moving on to the throne, he placed his hand upon it, and stood silent in that attitude. Every voice was hushed. The Primate of England, after a short pause, inquired whether he would visit the king, and the answer was, " I know of no one in this realm who ought not rather visit me." These words, and the significant gesture, proclaimed for the first time, and in the presence of the assembled Parliament, that Richard Plantagenet laid claim to the throne of England. The claim was soon formally submitted to Parliament ; and then was pre sented, for the first and the last time in English history, the extraordinary spectacle of a king reigning and a king claim ing confronted, as it were, and maintaining their rights in the presence of the great council of the realm. When the subject was first stated to King Henry, he said, with a simplicity and earnestness that were impressive, "My father was king, his father was also king ; I have worn the crown forty years from my cradle ; you have all sworn fealty to me as your sovereign, and your fathers have done the like to my fathers. How, then, can my right be disputed ? " The decision of the lords in Parliament was the timid and unsatisfactory result of com promise — that process by which men, in their dread of en countering either one of two dangers, bring both upon them selves. Henry's possession of the crown was confirmed ; but on his death, to the exclusion of his son, the Duke of York and his heirs were to succeed. This wretched bargain was the occasion of another solemn procession of amity to St. Paul's. It is at this crisis of the war that we may best turn to the character of Queen Margaret; for upon her was the cause of the Lancastrian succession now dependent. From Shake- The Wars of the Roses. 149 speare and the chroniclers we receive a very harsh impres sion of the character of Margaret of Anjou, for they present her in repulsive, if not hideous, colors. She is portrayed un feminine, arbitrary, revengeful, licentious ; and even her energy and fortitude are distorted into unnatural ferocity and obduracy. Margaret came to England a Frenchwoman, to be the queen of England, just at the time when English pride was exasperated by French victories ; and, moreover, she was soon placed in the unnatural attitude of supplying, by her character, the feebleness of her husband's rule. But one is still entitled to contemplate Queen Margaret, not as a vulgar and hideous Amazon, but as a woman under the dire necessity of mingling in scenes of war. After the parlia mentary compromise, in which the succession of her son was sacrificed, we can behold her as an heroic matron warring for the rights of her child, when the father's feeble hand could not defend them. She gathers an army, which the Duke of York contemptuously encountering, pays a bloody penalty for the folly of rashly despising an enemy. He was slain at the battle of Wakefield ; and in as short a time as two months after he had walked in procession to St. Paul's, as the newly- declared heir-apparent, his gory head, insulted with a paper crown, was set upon the gates of York. After such a catastrophe, the reader of history naturally looks for the establishment of Lancastrian supremacy; but no — the rights of the Duke of York, and the feudal inherit ance of vengeance for his death, pass to his son, the Earl of March, a youth of nineteen years of age; and from this time the war becomes more ferocious than ever, and with a deeper thirst for revenge. The warlike queen pursues her success by the rescue of her husband from captivity ; but the young Duke of York enters London, and is proclaimed King Ed ward IV. There were now two kings in the land, Henry VI. and Edward IV. ; and the battle that soon followed between the two royal armies, shows, more impressively, perhaps, than 150 Pictures from English History. any other in the war, to what fearful issues of carnage and bloodshed the passions of faction and civil war can drive men of the same kindred and the same homes. No for eigner shared in the strife ; there were none but Englishmen present, and of them more than one hundred thousand were drawn up, in no very unequal divisions, in hostile array on the field of Towton. Both sovereigns were present, King Edward and King Henry, or, perhaps we had better say, Queen Margaret. Proclamation had been made that no quarter should be given ; and faithfully and fiercely was the order obeyed, so that it proved probably the bloodiest battle in British history. The dreadful conflict lasted more than a day ; and some idea may be formed of the slaughter, when it is said the number of Englishmen slain exceeded the sum of those who fell at Vimeira, Talavera, Albuera, Salamanca, Vittoria — five great battles of the Peninsular War — and at Waterloo, combined. This enormous shedding of English blood was by English hands. The battle ended in the total rout of the Lancastrians, and the crown was firmly placed on the brow of Edward IV. So decided a victory, one would imagine, must have closed the contest ; but no — for ten perilous years was the struggle continued, chiefly by the indomitable energy of Queen Mar garet. Poor King Henry took refuge in the secluded regions of the north of England, but was betrayed and committed prisoner in the Tower of London ; while his queen, eluding her enemies, is with difficulty followed in her rapid and un wearied movements, at one time rallying her English parti sans and risking battle, again seeking alliance and help from the King of France. Perils by land and perils by sea making up the wild story of her adventures, we hear of her at one time shipwrecked, and, at another, falling into the hands of a band of roving banditti. She struggled to the last — as long as she had a husband or a child whose rights were to be contended for. The Wars of the Roses. 151 The later years of the war are no less perplexed than the beginning ; and I do not know that, in the events that follow, there is to be discovered any thing especially characteristic of the age, or expressive of the spirit of the times, except the conduct of that great feudal lord, the Earl of Warwick. It was chiefly by him that Edward IV. had been helped to the throne ; and, when " The King-maker " found cause of quarrel with the monarch, he turned his allegiance away, and the greatest of the Yorkist chieftains was afterward an adherent of the Lancastrians. King Edward became the prisoner of the proud nobleman, and one of the extraordinary spectacles which England exhibited in this war, was that of two rival kings, each confined in prison, and at the same time. " The King-maker " was strong enough to lift up the prostrate Lan caster. Edward IV. fled from the palace and the kingdom ; and his imprisoned rival was led forth from the Tower to hear the streets of London resounding once more with the name of King Henry. This surprising restoration gave, however, but a brief respite to the Lancastrian family before its final overthrow. The fugitive Edward returned to re cover the crown, and, as it proved, to extinguish the oppos ing dynasty. Henry Reed. *52 Pictures from English History. XXIII. "THE LAST OF THE BARONS.' [Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, called by Hume " the Last of the Great Barons," and known in history as " The King-maker," upon the re turn of Edward hastened to Queen Margaret and her son, Richard Plantag enet, in France, and offered them his sword. He returned to England, raised a large force in her cause — his own vassals and retainers once num bered 60,000 — and cast all on a single die in the battle of Barnet, April 30, 1471. On one side, under Earl Warwick, commanded the Marquis of Mon tagu, his brother, the Earl of Oxford, Duke of Somerset, Duke of Exeter. On the other, King Edward was aided by his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, (afterward Richard III.,) Hastings, Lords D'Eyncourt, Say, and Duke Clarence, brother of the king and son-in-law of Earl Warwick — against whom he turned at the last moment. The battle was fought in a dense fog, and at first went in favor of Warwick. Oxford had routed the right' wing of the royal army. In returning from the pursuit to position, the friendly emblem of Oxford, a silver Star, was mistaken by Warwick's forces for the silver Sun of the king's banner and friends fought in the fog, and the day was turned.] It was now scarcely eight in the morning, though the battle had endured three hours ; and as yet victory so inclined to the earl that naught but some dire mis chance could turn the scale. Montagu had cut his way to Warwick, Somerset had re-es tablished his array. The fresh vigor brought by the earl's re serve had well-nigh completed his advantage over Gloucester's The new infantry under Hilyard, the inexhausted under Sir John Coniers and his knightly com- were dealing fearful havoc as they cleared the EDWARD rv. wing. riders peers, "The Last of the Barons." 153 plain ; and Gloucester, fighting inch by inch, no longer out numbering, but outnumbered, was driven nearer and nearer toward the town, when suddenly a pale, sickly, and ghost like ray of sunshine, rather resembling the watery gleam of a waning moon than the radiance of the Lord of Light, broke through the mists, and showed to the earl's eager troops the banner and badges of a new array hurrying to the spot. " Behold," cried the young Lord Fitzhugh, " the standard and the badge of the usurper — a silver Sun; Edward him self is delivered into our hands ! Upon them — bill and pike, lance and brand, shaft and bolt ! Upon them, and crown the day ! " The same fatal error was shared by Hilyard as he caught sight of the advancing troop, with their silvery cognizance. He gave the word, and every arrow left its string. At the same moment, as both horse and foot assailed the fancied foe, the momentary beam vanished from the heaven, the two forces mingled in the sullen mists, when, after a brief con flict, a sudden and horrible cry of " Treason ! treason ! " re sounded from either band. The shining Star of Oxford, retiring from the pursuit, had been mistaken for Edward's cognizance of the Sun. Friend was slaughtering friend, and when the error was detected, each believed the other had deserted to the foe. In vain, here Montagu and Warwick, and there Oxford and his captains, sought to dispel the con fusion, and unite those whose blood had been fired against each other. While yet in doubt, confusion, and dismay, rushed full into the center Edward of York himself, with his knights and riders ; and his tossing banners, scarcely even yet distin guished from Oxford's starry ensigns, added to the general incertitude and panic. Loud in the midst rose Edward's trumpet voice, while through the mist, like one crest of foam upon a roaring sea, danced his plume of snow. Hark ! again, again — near and nearer — the tramp of steeds, the clash 154 Pictures from English History. of steel, the whiz and hiss of arrows, the shout of " Hast ings to the onslaught ! " Fresh, and panting for glory and for blood, came on King Edward's large reserve : from all the scattered parts of the field spurred the Yorkist knights, where the uproar, so much mightier than before, told them that the crisis of the war was come. Thither, as vultures to the carcass, they flocked and wheeled; thither D'Eyncourt, and Lovell and Cromwell's bloody sword, and Say's knotted mace ; and thither, again rallying his late half-beaten myrmidons, the grim Gloucester, his helmet bruised and dinted, but the boar's teeth still gnashing wrath and horror from the grisly crest. But direst and most hateful of all in the eyes of the yet undaunted earl, thither, plainly visible, riding scarce a yard before him, with the cognizance of Clare wrought on his gay mantle, and in all the pomp and bravery of a holiday suit, came the perjured Clarence. Conflict now it could scarce be called. As well might the Dane have rolled back the sea from his footstool as Warwick and his disordered troop (often and aye dazzled here by Oxford's Star, there by Edward's Sun, dealing random blows against each other) have resisted the general whirl and torrent of the surround ing foe. To add to the rout, Somerset and the on-guard of his wing had been marching toward the earl at the very time that the cry of " treason " had struck their ears, and Ed ward's charge was made. These men, nearly all Lancas trians, and ever doubting Montagu, if not Warwick, with the example of Clarence and the Archbishop of York fresh be fore them, lost heart at once — Somerset himself headed the flight of his force. " All is lost ! " said Montagu, as, side by side with War wick, the brothers fronted the foe, and for one moment stayed the rush. " Not yet," returned the earl. " A band of my northern archers still guard yon wood — I know them — they will fight to the last gasp ! Thither, then, with what men we may. "The Last of the Barons." 155 You so marshal our soldiers, and I will make good the re treat. Bold Nephew Fitzhugh, and ye brave riders round me — so, we are fifty knights ! Haste thou, Montagu, to the wood ! the wood ! " So noble in that hero age was the Individual MAN, even amid the multitude massed by war, that history vies with ro mance in showing how far the sword of the single, or the few, could redress the scale of war. While Montagu, with rapid dexterity, and a voice yet promising victory, drew back the remnant of the lines, and in serried order retreated to the outskirts of the wood, Warwick and his band of knights protected the movement from the countless horsemen who darted forth from Edward's swarming and momently thick ening ranks. Now dividing and charging singly — now re joining — and breast to breast, they served to divert, and per plex, and harass the eager enemy. And never, in all his wars, in all the former might of his indomitable arm, had Warwick so excelled, as in that eventful and crowning hour, the martial chivalry of his age. Thrice, almost alone, he penetrated into the very center of Edward's body-guard, literally felling to the earth all before him. Then perished by his battle-ax Lord Cromwell and the redoubted Lord of Say — then, no longer sparing even the old affection, Glou cester was hurled to the ground. The last time he pene trated even to Edward himself, smiting down the king's standard-bearer, unhorsing Hastings, who threw himself in his path ; and Edward, setting his teeth in stern joy as he saw him, rose in his stirrups, and for a moment the mace of the king, the ax of the earl, met as thunder encounters thunder ; but then a hundred knights rushed in to the res cue, and robbed the baffled avenger of his prey. Thus charging and retreating, driving back, with each charge, far and farther the mighty multitude hounding on to the lion's death, this great chief and his devoted knights, though ter ribly reduced in number, succeeded at last in covering 156 Pictures from English History. Montagu's skillful retreat ; and when they gained the outskirts of the wood, and dashed through the narrow opening between the barricades, the Yorkshire archers approved their lord's trust, and, shouting as to a marriage feast, hailed his coming. But few, alas ! of his fellow-horsemen had survived that marvelous enterprise of valor and despair. Of the fifty knights who had shared its perils eleven only gained the wood ; and though, in this number, the most eminent (save Sir John Coniers, either slain or fled) might be found, their horses, more exposed than themselves, were for the most part wounded and unfit for further service. At this time the sun again, and suddenly as before, broke forth — not now with a feeble glimmer, but a broad and almost a cheerful beam, which sufficed to give a fuller view than the day had yet afforded of the state and prospects of the field. To the right and to the left, what remained of the cavalry of Warwick were seen flying fast — gone the lances of Oxford, the bills of Somerset. Exeter, pierced by the shaft of Al- wyn, was lying cold and insensible, remote from the contest, and deserted even by his squires. In front of the archers, and such men as Montagu had saved from the sword, halted the immense and murmuring multitude of Edward, their thousand banners glittering in the sudden sun ; for as Edward beheld the last wrecks of his foe stationed near the covert his desire of consummating victory and revenge made him cautious, and, fearing an ambush, he had abruptly halted. When the scanty followers of the earl thus beheld the im mense force arrayed for their destruction, and saw the extent of their danger and their loss — here the handful, there the multitude — a simultaneous exclamation of terror and dismay broke from their ranks. "Children!" cried Warwick, "droop not! Henry, at Agincourt, had worse odds than we ! " "The Last of the Barons." iS7 While thus the scene on the eminence of Hadley, Edward, surrounded by Hastings, Gloucester, and his principal cap tains, took advantage of the unexpected sunshine to scan the foe and its position, with the eye of his intuitive genius for all that can slaughter man. " This day," he said, " brings no victory, assures no crown, if Warwick escape alive. To you, Lovell and Ratcliffe, I intrust two hundred knights ; your sole care — the head of the rebel earl ! " And a few minutes afterward Warwick and his men saw two parties of horse leave the main body — one for the right hand, one the left — followed by long detachments of pikes, which they protected ; and then the central array marched slowly and steadily on toward the scanty foe. The design was obvious — -to surround on all sides the enemy, driven to its last desperate bay. But Montagu and his brother had not been idle in the breathing pause ; they had planted the greater portion of the archers skillfully among the trees. They had placed their pikemen on the verge of the barri cades, made by sharp stakes and fallen timber ; and where their rampart was unguarded by the pass which had been left free for the horsemen, Hilyard and his stoutest fellows took their post, filling the gap with breasts of iron. And now as, with horns and clarions, with a sea of plumes, and spears, and pennons, the multitudinous deathsmen came on, Warwick, towering in the front, not one feather on his eagle crest despoiled or shorn, stood, dismounted, his visor still raised, by his renowned steed. Some of the men had, by Warwick's order, removed the mail from the destrier's breast, and the noble animal, relieved from the weight, seemed as unexhausted as its rider; save where the. champed foam had bespecked his glossy hide, not a hair was turned, and the on-guard of the Yorkists heard his fiery snort as they moved slowly on. This figure of horse and horseman stood prominently forth amid the little band. He kissed the des trier on his frontal, and Saladin, as if conscious of the coming 158 Pictures from English History. blow, bent his proud crest humbly, and licked his lord's steel-clad hand. So associated" together had been horse and horseman, that, had it been a human sacrifice, the by-standers could not have been more moved. And when, covering the charger's eyes with one hand, the earl's dagger descended, bright and rapid, a groan went through the ranks. But the effect was unspeakable ! The men knew at once that to them, and them alone, their lord trusted his fortunes and his life, they were nerved to more than mortal daring. No es cape for Warwick ; why, then, in Warwick's person they lived and died ! Upon foe as upon friend, the sacrifice pro duced all that could tend to strengthen the last refuge of despair. Even Edward, where he rode in the van, beheld and knew the meaning of the deed. Victorious Touton rushed back upon his memory with a thrill of strange terror and remorse. " He will die as he has lived," said Gloucester, with ad miration. " If I live for such a field, God grant me such a death." As the words left the duke's lips, and Warwick, one foot on his dumb friend's corpse, gave the mandate, a murderous discharge from the archers in the covert rattled against the line of the Yorkists, and the foe, still advancing, stepped over a hundred corpses to the conflict. Despite the vast preponderance of numbers, the skill of Warwick's archers, the strength of his position, the obstacle to the cavalry made by the barricades, rendered the attack perilous in the ex treme. But the orders of Edward were prompt and vigor ous. He cared not for the waste of life, and, as one rank fell, another rushed on. High before the barricades stood Montagu,' Warwick, and the rest of that indomitable chiv alry, the flower of the ancient Norman heroism. As idly beat the waves upon a rock as the ranks of Edward upon that serried front of steel. The sun still shone in heaven, and still Edward's conquest was unassured. Nay, if Mar- "The Last of the Barons." 159 maduke could yet bring back, upon the rear of the foe, the troops of Somerset, Montagu and the earl felt that the vic tory might be for them. And often the earl paused to hearken for the cry of "Somerset" on the gale, and often Montagu raised his visor to look for the banners and spears of the Lancastrian duke. And ever, as the earl listened and Montagu scanned the field, larger and larger seemed to spread the armament of Edward. While here the conflict became fierce and doubtful, the right wing, led by D'Eyn- court, had pierced the wood, and, surprised to discover no ambush, fell upon the archers in the rear. The scene was now inexpressibly terrific ; cries and groans, and the ineffable roar and yell of human passion, resounded demon-like through the shade of the leafless trees. And at this moment the provident and rapid generalship of Edward had moved up one ofhis heavy bombards. Warwick and Montagu, and most of the knights, were called from the barricades to aid the archers thus assailed behind but an instant before that defense was shattered into air by the explosion of the bom bard. In another minute horse and foot rushed through the opening. And amid all the din was heard the voice of Ed ward, " Strike ! and spare not ; we win the day ! " " We win the day! victory! victory!" repeated the troops behind. At that time this space was rough forest ground, and where now, in the hedge, rise two small trees, types of the diminutive offspring of our niggard and ignoble civilization, rose then two huge oaks, coeval with the warriors of the Norman Conquest. They grew close together, yet, though their roots interlaced — though their branches mingled — one had not taken nourishment from the other. They stood, equal in height and grandeur, the twin giants of the wood. Before these trees, whose ample trunks protected them from the falchions in the rear, Warwick and Montagu took their last post. In front rose, literally, mounds of the slain, whether of foe or friend ; for round them te the last had 160 Pictures from English History. gathered the brunt of war, and they towered now, almost solitary in valor's sublime despair, amid the wrecks of battle and against the irresistible march of Fate. As side by side they had gained this spot, and the vulgar assailants drew back, leaving the bodies of the dead their last defense from death, they turned their visors to each other, as for one latest farewell on earth. For a moment their hands clasped, and then all was grim silence. Wide and far, behind and before, in the gleam of the sun stretched the victorious armament, and that breath ing pause sufficed to show the grandeur of their resistance — the grandest of all spectacles, even in its hopeless extrem ity — the defiance of brave hearts to the brute force of the many. Where they stood they were visible to thousands, but not a man stirred against them. The memory of Warwick's past achievements — the consciousness of his feats that day — all the splendor of his fortunes and his name, made the mean fear to strike and the brave ashamed to murder. The gal lant D'Eyncourt sprang from his steed and advanced to the spot. His followers did the same. "Yield, my lords— yield! Ye have done all that men could do." " We yield not, Sir Knight," answered the marquis in a calm tone. Seven points might the shadow have traversed on the dial, and before Warwick's ax and Montagu's sword seven souls had gone to judgment. In that brief crisis, amid the general torpor and stupefaction and awe of the by-standers, round one little spot centered still a war. But numbers rushed on numbers, as the fury of the con flict urged on the lukewarm. Montagu was beaten to his knee — Warwick covered him with his body — a hundred axes resounded on the earl's stooping casque — a hundred blades gleamed round the joints of his harness : a simultaneous cry was heard : over the mounds of the slain, through the "The Last of the Barons." 161 press into the shadow of the oaks, dashed Gloucester's charger. The conflict had ceased — the executioners stood mute in a half circle. Side by side, ax and sword still griped in their iron hands, lay Montagu and Warwick. The young duke, his visor raised, contemplated the fallen foes in silence. Then dismounting, he unbraced with his own hand the earl's helmet. " So," muttered the dark and musing prince, unconscious of the throng : " so perishes the Race of Iron ! Low lies the last Baron who could control the throne and command the people. The Age of Force expires with knighthood and deeds of arms. And over this dead great man I see the New Cycle dawn." Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton. 162 Pictures from English History. XXIV. BOSWORTH-FIELD. [With the death of Warwick, of Henry VI. who "was murdered in the Tower, the imprisonment of Margaret, and the death of her son and heir, the domestic dissensions of Edward IV.'s reign ended. Upon his death, his brother Richard, duke of Gloucester, usurped the crown, having in some way disposed of the two young princes, children of Edward, the rightful successors. His triumph was short ; for Henry, earl of Richmond, a lineal descendant of Edward III., invaded England, and in 1485, upon Bosworth-Field, overthrew the usurper, and with him the lines of both York and Lancaster, and was crowned Henry VII., being the first of the Tudors.] Richard had ridden out of Leicester in the same state and splendor in which he had entered it, wearing his crown on the hel met of a rich suit of steel armor that he had first worn at Tewkes bury ; and passing on to Mirwall Abbey, encamped upon a hill called Anbeam, overlooking a broad extent of open ground, called Redmoor, not far from the town of Market-Bosworth. Richard was to the west, Henry to the east. Restless and distrustful, Richard rose at midnight, wandered alone-through his outposts, found a sentinel slumbering, and stabbed him to the heart as he lay, then returned to endeavor to recruit himself by sleep for the next day ; but he was awake again, long before the chaplains were ready to say mass, or the at tendants to bring breakfast ; and he told his servants of the sentry's fate, grimly saying, " I found him asleep, and have left him as I found him." No thought of mercy was in the mind of the man bold in civil war, whose early recollections were of Wakefield and Towton, and whose maiden sword RICHARD III. " A power to wliich, for purposes -of foreign conquest and subjuga-' tion, Rome, in the height of her glory, is not to be compared ; a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her posses sions and military posts, whose "morning drum-beat, iollowing the sun and keeping company with __.. hours, circles the earth with one con tinuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England."— Daniel Webster. Bosworth-Field. 163 had been fleshed at Barnet. He only said that, go the battle as it might, England would suffer ; " from Lancaster to Shrewsbury he would leave none alive, knight or squire; and from Holyhead to St. David's, where were castles and towers should all be parks and fields. All should repent that ever they rose against their king; and if Richmond triumphed, the Lancastrians would, of course, take a bloody vengeance." Anxious tidings kept on coming in. The Duke of Nor folk brought in a paper he had found pinned to his tent, in the morning, bearing the lines : "Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, For Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold ; '' and when, thus rendered even more anxious, Richard sent to command the personal attendance of Lord Stanley and his brother William, they flatly refused to come. Thereupon he gave instant orders to strike off young Stanley's head ; but the opposite army already showed signs of movement, and the execution was deferred. Richard then arrayed his men. His army seems to have numbered about 16,000, and he decided on extending the vanguard to the utmost, so as if possible to outflank and en wrap the enemy. In their center he placed a dense body of archers, and among them sevenscore guns called sargents, chained and locked in a row, behind a trench, with the men who knew how to use harquebuses and morris-pikes also stationed around them, all guarded by a trench. This was under the command of Norfolk ; the second line under that of Northumberland ; and Richard himself took charge of a body of troops formed into a dense square, with wings of horsemen. Henry, meantime, was almost as uneasy about the Stanleys as Richard himself, for neither did they obey his summons ; and without their 8,000, his force was no more than 5,000. He formed this little troop into three 164 Pictures from English History. lines, spreading them as far as possible, giving the center to the experienced Earl of Oxford, the right wing to Sir Gilbert Talbot, the left to Sir John Savage. He rode through the army, giving them comfortable words — entirely armed, all save his helmet ; and the long golden hair, that witnessed to his Plantagenet ancestry, flowing down to his shoulders. The soldiers closed their helmets and shook their bills ; the archers strung their bows and " frushed " their arrows. Each side stood ready for the last of the hundred battles of the Plantagenets. Richmond moved first, so as to bring the right flank of his army alongside of the swamp, and prevent Richard's long line from closing upon, that side, and besides so as to bring the August sun on the backs instead of the faces of his men. They seem to have waited for a charge from the ene my ; but as none was made, Oxford resolved to make a sud den and furious dash at the center, wliere Norfolk was in command. The fighting was hot and vehement, and the small band of the Lancastrians must have been beaten off but that the Earl of Northumberland, in the second line, never stirred to the aid of Norfolk. The duke went down, his son, the Earl of Surrey, surrendered ; and the Mowbray banner was down. Richard, maddened at the sight, and seeing half his army standing inactive, determined to make a desperate charge down the hill upon Henry himself; but fevered with the thirst of agitation of this desperate crisis, he flung himself down, and took a long draught from a spring that still goes by the name of Dick's Well. Then he put his lance in the rest, and together with his most attached adherents — Lovell, Catesby, Ratcliffe, Brackenbury, Lord Ferrers, and Sir Ger- voise Clifton, and their nearest followers, putting their lances in rest, rode headlong upon Richmond, as indeed the last hope now lay in the destruction of the individual rival. Small and slender as Richard was, he did wonders-- >>* BoSWORTH-FlELD. 165 drove his lance through the armpit of Sir William Brandon, the standard-bearer ; and as Sir John Cheyney, a man of gigantic frame, threw himself in front of Henry, he unhorsed him at the first shock. But others had closed in between the two rivals ; and at that moment a knight — Catesby, as it is said — pointed out to the king that Sir William Stanley, hitherto inactive, was moving with his 3,000 men to crush him completely, and tendering to him a swift and fresh horse, advised him to save himself by flight, saying, " I hold it time for ye to fly. Yonder Stanley, his dints be so sore, against them no man may stand. Here is thy horse ; another day ye may worship again." "Never!" cried Richard. " Not one foot will I fly so long as breath bides within my breast. Here will I end all my battles or my life. I will die King of England." Down came cautious Stanley, and the fray thickened. The charge had been but just in time to save Henry, but when it came it was overpowering. " Treason ! treason ! treason! " cried Richard at every blow; but his followers fell around him, his standard-bearer clinging to his standard and waving it even till his legs were cut from under him, and then he still grasped and waved it till his last gasp. Richard, after fighting like a lion, and hewing down what ever came within the sweep of his sword, was falling under the weight of numbers, and loud shouts proclaimed his fall. His party turned and fled, and were pursued closely for about fifty minutes, during which toward a thousand men were slain, and tradition declares that the mounds along the track are their graves. At last a steep rising ground, after about two miles, slackened the pursuit, for Henry had no desire to fulfill Richard's bloody prophecy. His uncle, Jasper, earl of Pembroke, and Aubrey de Vere, earl of Ox ford, victorious at last after their many piteous defeats, and Lord Stanley, halted with him ; and Sir Reginald Bray came up with the crown that Richard had so proudly worn, and 166 Pictures from Engxish History. which he had found hanging on a hawthorn bush, dinted and battered ; but such as it was the Lord Stanley set it on Henry's head, and shouts of " God save King Harry' " rang throughout the field. Crown Hill became the name of the eminence, and Henry adopted as his badge the crown in the may-bush. He knelt down and returned thanks for his victory- Miss Yonge. XXV. " KING RICHARD IV." [Though the reign of Henry VII. was free from important wars, he was harassed by a succession of strange pretenders to the crown. One of these was Lambert Simnel, a baker's son, who pretended to be Edward, earl of Warwick, son of Clarence, brother of Henry IV. and Richard III.[ He got many followers, though the real Warwick was alive in London, but was soon captured and made a scullion in the king's kitchen. Next arose a young man who claimed to be Richard of York, one of the infant sous whom Richard, duke of Gloucester, had imprisoned in the Tower when he usurped the throne. The writers of the Tudor dynasty represent him to have been Perkin Warbeck, a Flemish trader's son, a putative illegiti mate child of Henry IV.] The long and curious romance of Perkin Warbeck had be gun. It looked as if the exploded pretense of Lambert Simnel had been got up to throw ridicule on any future claim ; but if so it was of no avail, for all that the baker's son had begun in the year i486 was carried through, with a princely dignity and consistency of behavior, which won many to his cause, by the son of a merchant of Tournay, of the name of Warbeck. First he arrived, as his predecessor had done, on the shores of Ireland ; but he was not con tented with being the helpless Warwick, the nephew of Ed ward IV., but was Richard of York, who had managed to escape from the Tower when his elder brother, Edward V., was murdered by Forest and Dighton. He was not yet VHllilli:! ¦¦'¦If HM' mmm-MJm Chapel and Tomb of Henry VII. "King Richard IV." 167 twenty years of age, was very beautiful and fascinating in his manners, and threw himself entirely on the gallantry of the Irish nation. The chieftains, from hatred to Henry, and the people from their natural generosity and kindness, gave in their adhesion at once ; but, before he could avail himself of their support, he received an invitation from the French king, who wished to have a standing menace to his rival in his hands, and was accepted by all the lords and ladies of Paris as the true heir of England, and treated with royal honors. Charles found the maintenance of a royal claimant a con siderable expense, and the disappointed adventurer made his way to the Duchess of Burgundy. That princess, who was sister, be it remembered, of Edward IV., and hated Henry with all her heart, was apparently doubtful at first ; but on some secret communication, and yielding to the voice of nature, she at last recognized her nephew, and again the per severing Perkin was recognized as the English king. The duchess would, probably, have been equally happy to recog nize him in any other character that might have been equally injurious to the detested Richmond. But the force of her example was great. Many of the English residents in Flan ders acknowledged his claim ; the old Yorkist party at home sent over an emissary, who reported that he was the right and lawful prince ; and Margaret received him at court at tended by his body-guard of faithful subjects, and presented him as her beloved nephew, the White Rose of England. But Henry had emissaries, too.' They brought back re ports of the young man's birth and education which alto gether overthrew his claims. He was traced in his travels to many lands in the character of servant or dependent of one of the families whom Henry, on his accession, had banished. His parents were named, and certificates of their conversion from Judaism produced ; but nothing was of any use in de stroying the pretender's story. Henry was in the unfortu- 168 Pictures from English History. nate position of having told so many lies that no one wouI when she had already been a year and a half on the throne, that the opposition of her councilors was at last mastered, and the persecution began. In February the de prived Bishop of Gloucester, Hooper, was burned in his cathedral city, a London vicar, Lawrence Saunders, at Coy- entry, and Rogers, a prebendary of St. Paul's, at London. Ferrar, the deprived bishop of Su David's, who was burned at Caermarthen, was one of eight victims who suffered in March. Four followed in April and May, six in June, eleven in July, eighteen in August, eleven in September. In Octo ber, Ridley, the deprived bishop of London, was drawn with Latimer from their prison at Oxford. " Play the man, Mas ter Ridley!" cried the old preacher of the Reformation, as the flames shot up around him; "we shall this day light up such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." If the Protestants had not known how to govern, indeed they knew how to die ; and the cause which prosperity had ruined revived in the dark hour of persecution. The mem ory of their violence and greed faded away as they passed unwavering to their doom. Such a story as that of Rowland Taylor, the vicar of Hadleigh, tells us more of the work which was now begun, and of the effect it was likely to produce, than pages of historic dissertation. Taylor, who as a man of mark had been one of the first victims chose for execution, was arrested in London, and condemned to suffer in his own parish. His wife, " suspecting that her husband should that night be carried away," had waited through the darkness with her children in the porch of St. Botolph's-beside-Ald- gate. " Now when the sheriff and his company came against St. Botolph's Church, Elizabeth cried, saying, ' O, my dear father! Mother! mother! here is my father led away!' 1 82 Pictures from English History-. Then cried his wife, 'Rowland, Rowland, where art thou?' for it was a very dark morning, that the one could not see the other. Dr. Taylor answered, ' I am here, dear wife,' and stayed. The sheriff's men would have led him forth, but the sheriff said, ' Stay a little, masters, I pray you, and let him speak to his wife.' Then came she to him, and he took his daughter Mary in his arms, and he and his wife and Eliza beth knelt down and said the Lord's Prayer : at which sight the sheriff wept apace, and so did divers others of the company. After they had prayed, he rose up and kissed his wife and shook her by the hand, and said, ' Farewell, my dear wife, be of good comfort, for I am quiet in my con science ! God shall still be a father to my children.' . . . Then said his wife, ' God be with thee, dear Rowland ! I will, with God's grace, meet thee at Hadleigh.' " All the way Dr. Taylor was merry and cheerful as one that accounted himself going to a most pleasant banquet or bridal. . . . Coming within two miles of Hadleigh he desired to light off his horse, which done, he leaped and set a frisk or twain as men commonly do for dancing. 'Why, Master Doctor,' quoth the sheriff, ' how do you now ? ' He answered, 'Well, God be praised, Master Sheriff; never better, for now I know that I am almost at home. I lack not past two stiles to go over, and I am even at my Father's house ! ' The streets of Hadleigh were beset on both sides with men and women of the town and country who waited to see him whom, when they beheld so led to death, with weeping eyes and lamentable voices, they cried, ' Ah, good Lord ! there goeth our good shepherd from us ! ' " The journey was at last over. " ' What place is this,' he asked, ' and what meaneth it that so much people are gathered together ? ' It was answered. ' It is Oldham Common, the place where you must suffer, and the people are come to look upon you.' Then said he, ' Thanked be God, 1 am even at home ! ' But when the people saw his reverend and ancient face, with a long The Protestant Martyrs. 183 white beard, they burst out with weeping tears, and cried, saying, ' God save thee, good Dr. Taylor ; God strengthen thee, and help thee; the Holy Ghost comfort thee!' He wished, but was not suffered, to speak. When he had prayed, he went to the stake and kissed it, and set himself into a pitch-barrel which they had set for him to stand on, and so stood with his back upright against the stake, with his hands folded together and his eyes toward heaven, and so let him self be burned." One of his executioners cruelly cast a fag ot at him, which hit upon his head, and brake his face that the blood ran down his visage. Then said Dr. Taylor, " O, friend, I have harm enough, what needed that? " One more act of brutality brought his sufferings to an end. " So stood he still without either crying or moving, with his hands folded together, till Soyce, with a halberd, struck him on the head that the brains fell out, and the dead corpse fell down into the fire." The terror of death was powerless against men like these. Bonner, the bishop of London, to whom, as bishop of the diocese in which the Council sate, its victims were generally delivered for execution, but who, in spite of the nickname and hatred which his official prominence in the work of death earned him, seems to have been naturally a good-humored and merciful man, asked a youth who was brought before him whether he thought he could bear the fire. The boy at once held his hand without flinching in the flame of a candle that stood by. Rogers, a fellow-worker with Tyndale in the translation of the Bible, and one of the foremost among the Protestant preachers, died bathing his hands in the flame, " as if it had been in cold water." Even the commonest lives gleamed for a moment into poetry at the stake. " Pray for me," a boy, William Brown, who had been brought home to Brentwood to suffer, asked of the by-standers. " I will pray no more for thee," one of them replied, " than I will pray for a dog." " ' Then,' said William, ' Son of God, shine 184 Pictures from English History. upon me ; ' and immediately the sun in the elements shone out of a dark cloud so full in his face that he was constrained to look another way ; whereat the people mused because it was so dark a little time before." Brentwood lay within a district on which the hand of the queen fell heavier than elsewhere. The persecution was mainly confined to the more active and populous parts of the country, to London, Kent, Sussex, and the eastern counties. Of the two hundred and eighty whom we know to have suffered during the last three years and a half of Mary's reign more than .forty were burned in London, seventeen in the neighboring village of Stratford- le-Bow, four in Islington, two in Southwark, and one each at Barnet, St. Albans, and Ware. Kent, at that time a home of mining and manufacturing industry, suffered as heavily as London. In the midland counties, between the Thames and the Humber, only twenty- four suffered martyr dom. North of the Humber we find the names of but two Yorkshiremen, burned at Bedale. John Richard Green. XXIX. MARY AND PHILIP. [To still further identify her reign with the cause of Rome, and to strengthen it on the Continent, Mary entered into the " Spanish marriage" with Philip of Spain.] If congeniality of tastes could have made a marriage happy, that union should have been thrice blessed. To maintain the supremacy of the Church seemed to both the main object of existence ; to execute unbelievers the most sacred duty imposed by the Deity upon anointed princes; to convert their Mary and Philip. 185 kingdoms into a hell the surest means of winning heaven for themselves. It was not strange that the conjunction of two such wonders of superstition in one sphere should have seemed portentous in the eyes of the English people. Phil ip's mock efforts in favor of certain condemned reformers, and his pretended intercessions in favor of the Princess Elizabeth, failed entirely of their object. The Parliament refused to confer upon him more than a nominal authority in England. His children, should they be born, might be sovereigns ; he was but husband of the queen — of a woman who could not atone by her abject but peevish fondness for himself, and by her congenial bloodthirstiness toward her subjects, for her eleven years' seniority, her deficiency in at tractions, and her incapacity to make him the father of a line of English monarchs. It almost excites compassion, even for Mary Tudor, when her passionate efforts to inspire him with affection are contrasted with his impassiveness. Tyrant, bigot, murderess though she was, she was still a woman, and she lavished upon her husband all that was not ferocious in her nature. Forbidding prayers to be said for the soul of her father, hating her sister and her people, burning bishops, bathing herself in the blood of heretics, to Philip she was all submissiveness and feminine devotion. It was a most singular contrast, Mary the queen of En gland, and Mary the wife of Philip. Small, lean, and sickly, painfully near-sighted, yet with an eye of fierceness and fire ; her face wrinkled by the hands of care and evil passions I more than by Time ; with a big man's voice, whose harshness made those in the next room tremble ; yet feminine in her tastes, skillful with her needle, fond of embroidery work, striking the lute with a touch remarkable for its science and feeling, speaking many languages, including Latin, with flu ency and grace ; most feminine, too, in her constitutional sufferings, hysterical of habit, shedding floods of tears daily at Philip's coldness, undisguised infidelity, and frequent 1 86 Pictures from English History. absences from England — she almost awakens compassion and causes a momentary oblivion of her identity. Her subjects, already half maddened by religious persecu tion, were exasperated still further by the pecuniary burdens which she imposed upon them to supply the king's exigencies, and she unhesitatingly confronted their frenzy in the hope of winning a smile from him. When at last her chronic maladies had assumed the memorable form which caused Philip and Mary to unite in a letter to Cardinal Pole, an nouncing, not the expected, but the actual, birth of a prince, but judiciously leaving the date in blank, the momentary satisfaction and delusion of the queen was unbounded. The false intelligence was transmitted every-where. Great were the joy and the festivities in the Netherlands, where people were so easily made to rejoice and keep holiday for anything. " The regent being in Antwerp," wrote Sir Thomas Gres ham, to the lords of council, " did cause the great bell to ringe to give all men to understand that the news was trewe. The queen's highness' mere merchants caused all our Inglishe ships to shoote off with much joy and triumph, as by men's arts and pollicy could be devised — and the regent sent our Inglishe maroners one hundred crowns tq drynke." If bell-ringing and cannon-firing could have given England a Spanish sov ereign, the devoutly-wished consummation would have been reached. When the futility of the royal hopes could no longer be concealed, Philip left the country, never to return till his war with France made him require troops, subsidies, and a declaration of hostilities from England. John Lothrop Motley. Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. 187 XXX. EXECUTION OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. [Elizabeth was as devotedly Protestant as her sister Mary had been Romish, and she restored the religion of their father, Henry VIII. A succession of Catholic plots against her throne and life in England, Scot land and Spain agitated her reign. Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, her cousin, granddaughter of Henry VII., having been driven from her throne (1568) in consequence of her re-introduction of Catholicism, took refuge in England, and was imprisoned as a pretender to the throne of England. In 1586 the Babington conspiracy between Mary and English Catholics for the assassination of Elizabeth and the seizure of the crown having been discovered, Mary was tried and sentenced to death. The following de scription of the oft-told scene is one of Froude's finest word-pictures.] The end had come. She had long professed to expect it, but the clearest expectation is not certainty. The scene for which she had affected to prepare she was to encounter in its dread reality, and all her busy schemes, her dreams of vengeance, her visions of a revolution, with herself ascend ing out of the convulsion and seating herself on her rival's throne — all were gone. She had played deep, and the dice had gone against her. . . . Her last night was a busy one. As she said herself, there was much to be done, and the time was short. A few lines to the King of France were dated two hours after midnight. They were to insist, for the last time, that she was innocent of the conspiracy, that she was dying for religion, and for having asserted her right to the crown ; and to beg that, out of the sum which he owed her, her servants' wages might be paid and masses provided for her soul. After this she slept for three or four hours, then rose, and with the most elaborate care prepared to encounter the end. At eight in the morning the provost-marshal knocked at the outer door which communicated with her suite of apart ments. It was locked, and no one answered. He went Pictures from English History. back in some trepidation lest the fears might prove true which had been entertained the preceding evening. On his returning with the sheriff, however, a few minutes later, the door was open, and they were confronted with the tall, majestic figure of Mary Stuart standing before them in splendor. The plain, gray dress had been exchanged for a robe of black satin ; her jacket was of black satin also, looped and slashed, and trimmed with velvet. Her false hair was arranged studiously with a coif, and over her head, and fall ing down over her back, was a white veil of delicate lawn. A crucifix of gold hung from her neck. In her hand she held a crucifix of ivory, and a number of jeweled paternos ters was attached to her girdle. Led by two of Paulet's gentlemen, the sheriff walking before her, she passed to the chamber of presence in which she had been tried, where Shrewsbury, Kent, Paulet, Drury, and others were waiting to receive her. Andrew Melville, Sir Robert's brother, who had been master of her household, was kneeling in tears. " Melville," she said, "you should rather rejoice than weep that the end of my troubles is come. Tell my friends I die a true Catho lic. Commend me to my son. Tell him I have done noth ing to prejudice his kingdom of Scotland, and so, good Melville, farewell." She kissed him, and turning, asked for her chaplain, Du Preau. He was not present. There had been a fear of some religious melodrama which it was thought well to avoid. Her ladies, who had attempted to follow her, had been kept back also. She could not afford to leave the account of her death to be reported by enemies and Puritans, and she required assistance for the scene which she meditated. Missing them, she asked the reason of their absence, and said she wished them to see her die. Kent said he feared they might scream or faint, or attempt, perhaps, to dip their handkerchiefs in her blood. She un dertook that they should be quiet and obedient. " The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. 189 queen," she said, "would never deny her so slight a re quest ; " and when Kent still hesitated, she added, with tears, " You know I am cousin to your queen, of the blood of Henry VII., a married Queen of France, and anointed Queen of Scotland ! " It was impossible to refuse. She was allowed to take six of her own people with her, and select them' herself. She chose her physician, Burgoyne, Andrew Melville, the apothecary Gorion, and her sur geon, with two ladies, Elizabeth Kennedy and Curie's young wife, Barbara, Mowbray whose child she had bap tized. " A lions done," she then said, " let us go," and passing out attended by the earls, and leaning on the arm of an officer of the guard, she descended the great staircase to the hall. The news had spread far through the country. Thousands of people were collected outside the walls. About three hun dred knights and gentlemen of the county had been admit ted to witness the execution. The tables and forms had been removed, and a great wood-fire was blazing in the chimney. At the upper end of the hall, above the fire-place, but near it, stood the scaffold, twelve feet square and two feet and a half high. It was covered with black cloth ; a low rail ran round it covered with black cloth also, and the sheriff's guard of halberdiers were ranged on the floor below on the four sides, to keep off the crowd. On the scaffold was the block, black like the rest ; a square black cushion was placed behind it, and behind the cushion a black chair ; on the right were two other chairs for the earls. The ax leant against the rail, and two masked figures stood like mutes on either side at the back. The Queen of Scots, as she swept in, seemed as if coming to take a part in some solemn pa geant. Not a muscle of her face could be seen to quiver ; she ascended the scaffold with absolute composure, looked round her smiling, and sat down. Shrewsbury and Kent followed and .took their places, the sheriff stood at her left 190 Pictures from English History. hand, and Beale then mounted a platform and read the war rant aloud. In all the assembly Mary Stuart appeared the person least interested in the words which were consigning her to death. " Madam," said Lord Shrewsbury to her, when the reading was ended, " you hear what we are commanded to do." " You will do your duty," she answered, and rose as if to kneel and pray. The Dean of Peterborough, Dr. Fletcher, approached the rail. " Madam," he began, with a low obeisance, " the queen's most excellent majesty — " " Madam, the queen's most excellent majesty — " Thrice he commenced his sen tence, wanting words to pursue it. When he repeated the words a fourth time she cut him short. " Mr. Dean," she said, " I am a Catholic, and must die a Catholic. It is useless to attempt to move me, and your prayers will avail me but little." " Change your opinion, madam," he cried, his tongue being loosed at last ; " repent of your sins, settle your faith in Christ, by him to be saved." "Trouble not yourself further, Mr. Dean," she answered; " I am settled in my own faith, for which I mean to shed my blood." "I am sorry, madam," said Shrewsbury, "to see you so addicted to popery." "That image of Christ you hold there," said Kent, "will not profit you if he be not engraved in your heart." She did not reply, and, turning her back on Fletcher, knelt for her own devotions. He had been evidently instructed to impair the Catholic complexion of the scene, and the Queen of Scots was determined that he should not succeed. When she knelt he commenced an extempore prayer, in which the assembly joined. As his voice sounded out in the hall she raised her own, reciting with powerful, deep-chested tones the penitential psalms in Latin, introducing English sentences at intervals, that the audience might know what she was Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. 191 saying, and praying with especial distinctness for her holy father, the pope. From time to time, with conspicuous vehemence she struck the crucifix against her bosom, and then, as the dean gave up the struggle, leaving her Latin, she prayed in English wholly, still clear and loud. She prayed for the Church which she had been ready to betray, for her son whom she had disinherited, for the queen whom she had endeavored to murder. She prayed God to avert his wrath from England — that England which she had sent a last message to Philip to beseech him to invade. She forgave her enemies, whom she had invited Philip not to forget, and then, praying to the saints to intercede for her with Christ, and kissing the cru cifix and crossing her own breast, " Even as thy arms, O Jesus,'' she cried, " were spread upon the cross, so receive me into thy mercy and forgive my sins." With these words she rose. The black mutes stepped forward, and in the usual form begged her forgiveness. " I forgive you," she said, " for now I hope you shall end all my troubles." They offered their help in arranging her dress. " Truly, my lords," she said, with a smile, to the earls, " I never had such grooms waiting on me before." Her ladies were allowed to come up upon the scaffold to assist her ; for the work to be done was considerable, and had been prepared with no common thought. She laid her crucifix on her chair. The chief executioner took it as a perquisite, but was ordered instantly to lay it down. The lawn vail was lifted carefully off, not to disturb the hair, and was hung upon the rail. The black robe was next removed. Below it was a petticoat of crimson velvet. The black jacket followed, and under the jacket was a body of crimson satin. One of her ladies handed her a pair of crimson sleeves, with which she hastily covered her arms ; and thus she stood on the black scaffold with the black figures all around her, blood-red from head to foot. Her 192 . Pictures from English History. reasons for adopting so extraordinary a costume must be left to conjecture. It is only certain that it must have been care fully studied, and that the pictorial effect must have been appalling. The women, whose firmness had hitherto borne the trial, began now to give way, spasmodic sobs bursting from them which they could not check. " Ne criez vous" she said; " fai promis pour vous," (" Do not cry ; I have promised for you.") Struggling bravely, they crossed their breasts again and again, she crossing them in turn and bidding them pray for her. Then she knelt on the cushion. Barbara Mowbray bound her eyes with a handkerchief. "Adieu," she said, smiling for the last time, and waving her hand to them, "Adieu, au revoir." They stepped back from off the scaf fold, and left her alone. On her knees she repeated the psalm, " In te, Domine, confido," (" In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust.") Her shoulders being exposed, two scars be came visible, one on either side, and, the earls being now a little behind her, Kent pointed to them with his white wand and looked inquiringly at his companion. Shrewsbury whis pered that they were the remains of two abscesses from which she had suffered while living with him at Sheffield. When the psalm was finished she felt for the block, and, laying down her head, muttered, " In manus, Domine tuas, commendo animam meam." The hard wood seemed to hurt her, for she placed her hands under her neck. The execu tioners gently removed them, lest they should deaden the blow, and then, one of them holding her slightly, the other raised the ax and struck. The scene had been too trying even for the practiced headsman of the Tower. His arm wandered. The blow fell on the knot of the handkerchief and scarcely broke the skin. She neither spoke nor moved. He struck again, this time effectively. The head hung by a shred of skin, which he divided without withdrawing the ax; and at once a metamorphosis was witnessed strange as was Execution of Mary Queen of Scots? 193 ever wrought by wand of fabled enchanter. The coif fell off, and the false plaits. The labored illusion vanished. The lady who had knelt before the block was in the maturity of grace and loveliness. The executioner, when he raised the head, as usual, to show it to the crowd, exposed the withered features of a grizzled, wrinkled old woman. " So perish all enemies of the queen ! " said the Dean of Peterborough. A loud " Amen ! " rose over the hall. " Such end," said the Earl of Kent, rising and standing over the body, " to the queen's and the Gospel's enemies ! " Orders had been given that every thing which she had worn should be immediately destroyed, that no relics should be carried off to work imaginary miracles. Sentinels stood at the doors, who allowed no one to pass out without permis sion ; and after the first pause, the earls still keeping their places, the body was stripped. It then appeared that a fa vorite lap-dog had followed its mistress unperceived, and was concealed under her clothes. When discovered it gave a short cry, and seated itself between the head and the neck, from which the blood was still flowing. It was carried away and carefully washed, and then beads, paternoster, handker chief — each particle of dress which the blood had touched — with the cloth on the block and on the scaffold, was burnt in the hall-fire in the presence of the crowd. The scaffold it self was next removed; a brief account ofthe execution was drawn up, with which Henry Talbot, Lord Shrewsbury's son, was sent to London, and then every one was dismissed. Silence settled down on Fotheringay, and the last scene of the life of Mary Stuart, in which tragedy and melodrama were so strangly intermingled, was over. James Anthony Froude. 194 Pictures from English History. XXXI. THE SPANISH ARMADA. [In her later years Elizabeth had to struggle against Philip of Spain. Philip was eager to crush Protestantism in Western Europe, and this could only be done by crashing England. He was still more anxious to keep Englishmen out of the seas of the New World, which he claimed as his own. Philip resolved to make an effort for the complete conquest of En gland, and gathered a great fleet in the Tagus and an army in Flanders for that purpose. The Armada, as the fleet was called, was ordered to sail through the Channel to the Flemish coast to join the army there, and pro tect its crossing to England.] On Friday, the 29th of July, 1588, off the Lizard, the Span iards had their first glimpse of the land of promise presented them by Pope Sixtus V., of which they had at last come to take possession. On the same day and night the blaze and smoke of ten thousand beacon-fires, from the Land's End to Margate, and from the Isle of Wight to Cumberland, gave warning to every Englishman that the enemy was at last upon them. . . . On Saturday, 30th July, the wind was very light at south-west, with a mist and drizzling rain, but by three in . the afternoon the two fleets could descry and count each other through the haze. By nine o'clock, 31st July, about two miles from Looe, on the Cornish coast, the fleets had their meeting. There were 136 sail of the Spaniards — of which 90 were large ships — and 67 of the English. It was a solemn mo ment. The long-expected Armada presented a pompous, almost a theatrical, appearance. The ships seemed arranged for a pageant in honor of a victory already won. Disposed in form of a crescent, the horns of which were seven miles asunder, those gilded, towered, floating castles, with their gaudy standards and their martial music, moved slowly along the Channel with an air of indolent pomp. Their captain- general, the Golden Duke, stood in his private shot-proof The Spanish Armada. i9S fortress on the deck of his great galleon, the " Saint Martin," surrounded by generals of infantry and colonels of cavalry, who knew as little as he did himself of naval matters. The English vessels, on' the other hand — with a few exceptions, light, swift, and easily handled — could sail round and round those unwieldy galleons, hulks, and galleys rowed by fettered slave-gangs. The superior seamanship of free Englishmen, commanded by such experienced captains as Drake, Fro- bisher, and Hawkins — from infancy at home on blue water — was manifest in the very first encounter. They obtained the weather-gage at once, and cannonaded the enemy at intervals with considerable effect, easily escaping at will out of range of the sluggish Armada, which was incapable of bearing sail in pursuit, although provided with an armament which could sink all its enemies at close quarters. " We had some small fight with them that Sunday afternoon," said Hawkins. Medina-Sidonia hoisted the royal standard at the fore, and the whole fleet did its utmost, which was little, to offer general battle. Il was in vain. The English, following at the heels of the enemy, refused all such invitations, and at tacked only the rear-guard of the Armada, where Recalde commanded. That admiral, steadily maintaining his post, faced his nimble antagonists, who continued to teaze, to maltreat, and to elude him, while the rest "bf the fleet pro ceeded slowly up the Channel, closely followed by the enemy. And thus the running fight continued along the coast, in full view of Plymouth, whence boats with re-enforce ments and volunteers were perpetually arriving to the En glish ships, until the battle had drifted quite out of reach of the town. Already in this first " small fight " the Spaniards had learned a lesson, and might even entertain a doubt of their invincibility. But before the sun set there were more serious disasters. Much powder and shot had been expended by 196 Pictures from English History. the Spaniards to very little purpose, and so a master-gunner on board Admiral Oquendo's flag-ship was reprimanded for careless ball-practice. The gunner, who was a Fleming, en raged with his captain, laid a train to the powder-magazine, fired it, and threw himself into the sea. The two decks blew up. The great castle at the stern rose into the clouds, carrying with it the paymaster-general of the fleet, a large portion of treasure, and nearly two hundred men. The ship was a wreck, but it was possible to save the rest of the crew. So Medina-Sidonia sent light vessels to remove them, and wore with his flag-ship to defend Oquendo, who had already been fastened upon by his English pursuers. But the Span iards, not being so light in hand as their enemies, involved themselves in much embarrassment by this maneuver; and there was much falling foul of each other, entanglement of rigging, and carrying away of yards. Oquendo's men, however, were ultimately saved, and taken to other ships. Meantime, Don Pedro de Valdez, commander of the Andalusian squadron, having got his galleon into collision with two or three Spanish ships successively, had at last carried away his foremast close to the deck, and the wreck had fallen against his mainmast. He lay crippled and help less, the Armada was slowly deserting him, night was coming on, the sea was running high, and the English, ever hovering near, were ready to grapple with him. In vain did Don Pedro fire signals of distress. The captain-general — even as though the unlucky galleon had not been connected with the Catholic fleet — calmly fired a gun to collect his scattered ships, and abandoned Valdez to his fate. " He left me comfortless in sight of the whole fleet," said poor Pedro, " and greater inhumanity and unthankfulness I think was never heard of among men." Yet the Spaniard comported himself most gallantly. Fro- bisher, in the largest ship of the English fleet, the "Tri umph," of 1,100 tons, and Hawkins in the "Victory," of 800, The Spanish Armada. 197 cannonaded him at a distance, but, night coming on, he was able to resist ; and it was not till the following morning that he surrendered to the "Revenge." Drake then received the gallant prisoner on board his flag ship — much to the disgust and indignation of Frobisher and Hawkins, thus disappointed of their prize and ransom-money — treated him with much courtesy, and gave his word of honor that he and his men should be treated fairly, like good prisoners of war. This pledge was redeemed, for it was not the English, as it was the Spanish custom, to convert cap tives into slaves, but only to hold them for ransom. Valdez responded to Drake's politeness by kissing his hand, em bracing him, and overpowering him with magnificent com pliments. He was then sent on board the lord-admiral, who received him with similar urbanity, and expressed his regret that so distinguished a personage should have been so cooly deserted by the Duke of Medina. Don Pedro then returned to the " Revenge," where, as the guest of Drake, he was a witness to all subsequent events up to the ioth of August, on which day he was sent to London with some other officers, Sir Francis claiming his ransom as his lawful due. Here certainly was no very triumphant beginning for the Invincible Armada. On the very first day of their being in presence of the English fleet — then but sixty-seven in number, and vastly their inferior in size and weight of metal — they had lost the flag-ships of the Guipuzcoan and of the Anda- lusian squadrons, with a general-admiral, 450 officers and men, and some 100,000 ducats of treasure. They had been out-maneuvered, out-sailed, and thoroughly maltreated by their antagonists, and they had been unable to inflict a single blow in return. [Throughout a whole week the running fight went on, the Armada slowly making its way along the Channel, the English ships hanging on its flanks and rear. Many Spanish ships were sunk or taken ; but the great fleet still 198 Pictures from English History. remained formidable when, in spite of its enemies, it at last reached the Flemish coast If it was to be prevented from embarking the army which was destined for the invasion of England, a general engagement was now necessary ; and the English seamen resolved to close with the enemy.] The lord-admiral, who had been lying off and on, now bore away with all his force in pursuit of the Spaniards. The Invincible Armada, already sorely crippled, was stand ing N. N. E. directly before a fresh topsail breeze from the S. S. W. The English came up with them soon after nine o'clock A. M. off Gravelines, and found them sailing in a half-moon, the admiral and vice-admiral in "the center, and the flanks protected by the three remaining galeasses and by the great galleons of Portugal. Seeing the enemy approaching, Medina-Sidonia ordered his whole fleet to luff to the wind, and prepare for aetion. The wind, shifting a few points, was now at W. N. W., so that the English had both the weather-gage and the tide in their favor. A general combat began at about ten, and it was soon obvious to the Spaniards that their adversaries were in tending warm work. Sir Francis Drake in the " Revenge," followed by Frobisher in the " Triumph," Hawkins in the " Victory," and some smaller vessels, made the first attack upon the Spanish flag-ships. Lord Henry in the " Rainbow," Sir Henry Palmer in the " Antelope," and others, engaged with three of the largest galleons of the Armada, while Sir William Winter in the "Vanguard," supported by most of his squadron, charged the starboard wing. . . . The battle lasted six hours long, hot and furious ; for now there was no excuse for retreat on the part of the Spaniards, but, on the contrary, it was the intention of the captain- general to return to his station off Calais — from which he had been driven the day before by English fire-ships — if it were within his power. Nevertheless the English still partially maintained the tactics which had proved so successful, and resolutely refused the fierce attempts of the Spaniards to lay The Spanish Armada. 199. themselves alongside. Keeping within musket-range, the well-disciplined English mariners poured broadside after broadside against the towering ships of the Armada, which afforded so easy a mark ; while the Spaniards, on their part, found it impossible, while wasting incredible quantities of powder and shot, to inflict any severe damage on their ene mies. Throughout the action, not an English ship was destroyed, and not a hundred men were killed. On the other hand, all the best ships of the Spaniards were riddled through and through, and the masts and yards shattered, sails and rigging torn to shreds, and a north-west wind still drifting them toward the fatal sand-banks of Holland, they labored heavily in a chopping sea, firing wildly, and receiving tremendous punishment at the hands of Howard, Drake, Seymour, Winter, and their followers. Not even master- gunner Thomas could complain that day of " blind exercise " on the part of the English, with "little harm done" to the enemy. There was scarcely a ship in the Armada that did not suffer severely ; for nearly all were engaged in that mem orable action off the sands of Gravelines. The captain- general himself, Admiral Recalde, Alonzo de Leyva, Oquendo, Diego Flores de Valdez, Bertendona, Don Fran cisco de Toledo, Don Diego de Pimentel, Telles Enriquez, Alonzo de Luzon, Garibay, with most of the great galleons and galleasses, were in the thickest of the fight, and one after the other each of those huge ships was disabled. Three sank before the fight was over, many others were soon drift ing helpless wrecks toward a hostile shore, and, before five o'clock in the afternoon, at least sixteen of their best ships had been sacrificed, and from four to five thousand soldiers killed. Nearly all the largest vessels of the Armada, therefore, having been disabled or damaged — according to a Spanish eye-witness — and all their small shot exhausted, Medina-Si donia reluctantly gave orders to retreat. The captain-general 200 Pictures from English History. was a bad sailor, but he was a chivalrous Spaniard of ancient Gothic blood, and he felt deep mortification at the plight of his invincible fleet, together with undisguised resentment against Alexander Farnese, [the prince of Parma, who com manded the Spanish army in Flanders, and who had not succeeded in joining the Armada,] through whose treachery and incapacity he considered the great Catholic cause to have been so foully sacrificed. Crippled, maltreated, and diminished in number as were his ships, he would have still faced the enemy, but the winds and currents were fast driv ing him on the lee-shore, and the pilots, one and all, assured him that it would be inevitable destruction to remain. After a slight and ineffectuaj attempt to rescue Don Diego de Pim- entel in the " St. Matthew " — who refused to leave his dis abled ship — and Don Francisco de Toledo, whose great gal leon, the " St. Philip," was fast driving, a helpless wreck, toward Zeeland, the Armada bore away N.N.E. into the open sea, leaving those who could not follow to their fate. The " St. Matthew," in a sinking condition, hailed a Dutch fisherman, who was offered a gold chain to pilot her into Newport. But the fisherman, being a patriot, steered her close to the Holland fleet, where she was immediately as saulted by Admiral Van der Does, to whom, after a two hours' bloody fight, she struck her flag. Don Diego, marshal of the camp to the famous legion of Sicily, brother of the Marquis of Tavera, nephew of the Viceroy of Sicily, uncle to the Viceroy of Naples, and numbering as many titles, dignities, and high affinities as could be expected of a grandee of the first-class, was taken, with his officers, to the Hague. " I was the means," said Captain Borlase, "that the best sort were saved, and the rest were cast overboard and slain at our entry. He fought with us two hours, and hurt divers of our men, but at last yielded." John Van der Does, his captor, presented the banner of the " St. Matthew," to the great church of Leyden, where — such was its prodigious length — The Spanish Armada. 201 it hung from ceiling to floor without being entirely unrolled ; and there it, hung, from generation to generation, a worthy companion to the Spanish flags which had been left behind when Valdez abandoned the siege of that heroic city fifteen years before. The galleon " St. Philip," one of the four largest ships in the Armada, dismasted and foundering, drifted toward New port, where Camp-marshal Don Francisco de Toledo hoped in vain for succor. La Motte made a feeble attempt at rescue, but some vessels from the Holland fleet, being much more active, seized the unfortunate galleon, and carried her into Flushing. The captors found forty-eight brass cannon and other things of value on board, but there were some casks of Ribadavia wine which were more fatal to her enemies than those pieces of artillery had proved. For while the rebels were refreshing themselves, after the fatigues of the capture, with large draughts of that famous vintage, the " St. Philip," which had been bored through and through with English shot, and had been rapidly filling with water, gave a sudden- lurch, and went down in a moment, carrying with her to the bottom three hundred of those convivial Hollanders. A large Biscay galleon, too, of Recalde's squadron, much disabled in action, and now, like many others, unable to follow the Armada, was summoned by Captain Cross, of the " Hope," forty-eight guns, to surrender. Although foundering, she resisted, and refused to strike her flag. One of her offi cers attempted to haul down her colors, and was run through the body by the captain, who, in his turn, was struck dead by a brother of the officer thus slain. In the midst of this quarrel the ship went down with all her crew. Six hours and more, from ten till nearly five, the fight had lasted — a most cruel battle, as the Spaniards declared. There were men in the Armada who had served in the action of Lepanto, and who declared that famous encounter to have been far surpassed in severity and spirit by this fight off 9* 202 Pictures from English History. Gravelines. " Surely every man in our fleet did well," said Winter, " and the slaughter the enemy received was great." Nor would the Spaniards have escaped even worse punish ment, had not, most unfortunately, the penurious policy of the queen's government rendered her ships useless at last, even in this supreme moment. They never ceased cannon ading the discomfited enemy until the ammunition was ex hausted. " When the cartridges were all spent," said Winter, " and the munitions in some vessels gone altogether, we ceased fighting, but followed the enemy, who still kept away." And the enemy — although still numerous, and seem ing strong enough, if properly handled, to destroy the whole English fleet — fled before them. There remained more than fifty Spanish vessels, above six hundred tons in size, besides sixty hulks and other vessels of less account ; while in the whole English navy were but thirteen ships of or above that burden. " Their force is wonderful great and strong," said Howard, " but we pluck their feathers by little and little." . For Medina-Sidonia had now satisfied himself that he should never succeed in boarding those hard-fighting and swift-sailing craft, while, meantime, the horrible panic of Sunday night and the succession of fights throughout the following day had completely disorganized his followers. Crippled, riddled, shorn, but still numerous, and by no means entirely vanquished, the Armada was flying with a gentle breeze before an enemy who, to save his existence, could not have fired a broadside. John Lothrop Motley. Death and Character of Queen Elizabeth. 203 XXXII. DEATH AND CHARACTER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. [The Earl of Essex was a young nobleman who, by his merit and ac complishments, had gained veiy high favor with the queen ; but he after ward fell into disgrace, in consequence of misconduct during an expedition against the revolted Irish, (1599.) Disappointed in obtaining a pardon from the queen, he entered into a plot to raise an insurrection against her, but failed in this, and, with his accomplices, was arrested and tried for treason, convicted, and finally beheaded, (1601.)] Some incidents happened which revived the queen's tenderness for Essex, and filled her with sorrow for the consent which she had un warily given to his execution. The Earl of Essex, after his return from the unfortunate expedition against Cadiz, observing the in crease of the queen's fond attach- nrr.ts ll!/ ment toward him, took occasion to regret that the necessities of her services required him often to be absent from her person, and exposed him to all those ill offices which his enemies, more assiduous in their attendance, could employ against him. She was moved with this tender jealousy, and making him the present of a ring, desired him to keep that pledge of her affection, and assured him that into whatever disgrace he should fall, whatever prejudices she might be induced to entertain against him, yet if he sent her that ring she should immediately upon sight of it recall her former tenderness, would afford him a patient hearing, and would lend a favor able ear to his apology. Essex, notwithstanding all his mis fortunes, reserved this precious gift to the last extremity ; 204 Pictures from English History. but after his trial and condemnation he resolved to try the experiment, and he committed the ring to the Countess of Nottingham, whom he requested to deliver it to the queen. The countess was prevailed on by her husband, the mor tal enemy of Essex, not to execute the commission ; and Elizabeth, who still expected that her favorite would make this last appeal to her tenderness, and who ascribed the neg lect of it to his invincible obstinacy, was, after much delay and many internal combats, pushed by resentment and policy to sign the warrant for his execution. The Countess of Nottingham, falling into sickness and affected with the near approach of death, was seized with remorse for her conduct, and, having obtained a visit from the queen, she craved her pardon, and revealed to her the fatal secret. The queen, astonished with this incident, burst into a fu rious passion ; she shook the dying countess in her bed, and, crying to her that God might pardon her, but she never could, she broke from her, and thenceforth resigned herself over to the deepest and most incurable melancholy. She rejected all consolation ; she even refused food and suste nance ; and, throwing herself on the floor, she remained sullen and immovable, feeding her thoughts on her afflictions, and declaring life and existence an insufferable burden to her. Few words she uttered, and they were all expressive of some inward grief which she cared not to reveal ; but sighs and groans were the chief vent which she gave to her despond ency, and which, though they discovered her sorrows, were never able to ease or assuage them. Ten days and nights she lay upon the carpet, leaning on cushions which her maids brought her ; and her physicians could not persuade her to allow herself to be put to bed, much less to make trial of any remedies which they prescribed to her. Her anxious mind at last had so long preyed on her frail body that her end was visibly approaching, and the council, being assembled, sent the keeper, admiral, and Death and Character of Queen Elizabeth. 205 secretary to know her will with regard to her successor. She answered, with a faint voice, that as she had held a regal scepter, she desired no other than a royal successor. Cecil requesting her to explain herself more particularly, she subjoined that she would have a king to succeed her; and who should that be but her nearest kinsman, the King of Scots? Being then advised by the Archbishop of Can terbury to fix her thoughts upon God, she replied that she did so, nor did her mind in the least wander from him. Her voice soon after left her, her senses failed, she fell into a lethargic slumber, which contined for some hours, and she expired gently, without further struggle or convulsion, (March 24, 1603,) in the seventieth year of her age, and the forty-fifth of her reign. So dark a cloud overcast the evening of that day which had shone out with a mighty luster in the eyes of all Europe. There are few great personages in history who have been more exposed to the calumny of enemies and the adulation of friends than Queen Elizabeth ; and yet there is scarcely any whose reputation has been more certainly determined by the unanimous consent of posterity. The unusual length of her administration and the strong features of her character were able to overcome all prejudices, and obliging her de tractors to abate much of their invectives, and her admirers somewhat of their panegyrics, have at last, in spite of polit ical factions, and, what is more, of religious animosities, produced a uniform judgment with regard to her conduct. Her vigor, her constancy, her magnanimity, her penetra tion, vigilance, and address are allowed to merit the highest praises, and appear not to have been surpassed by any per son that ever filled a throne ; a conduct less rigorous, less imperious, more sincere, more indulgent to her people, would have been requisite to form a perfect character. By the force of her mind she controlled all her more active and stronger qualities, and prevented them from running to 206 Pictures from English History. excess; her heroism was exempt from temerity, her frugality from avarice, her friendship from partiality, her active tem per from turbulency and vain ambition ; she guarded not herself with equal care or equal success from lesser infirmi ties — the rivalship of beauty, the desire of admiration, the jealousy of love, and the sallies of anger. Her singular talents for government were founded equally on her temper and on her capacity. Endowed with a great command over herself, she soon obtained an uncontrolled ascendant over her people ; and while she merited all their esteem by her real virtues, she also engaged their affections by her pretended ones. Few sovereigns of England suc ceeded to the throne in more difficult circumstances ; and none ever conducted the government with such uniform success and felicity. Though unacquainted with the prac tice of toleration — the true secret for managing religious factions — she preserved her people, by her superior prudence, from those confusions in which theological controversy had involved all the neighboring nations ; and though her ene mies were the most powerful princes of Europe, the most active, the most enterprising, the least scrupulous, she was able, by her vigor, to make deep impressions on their states; her own greatness meanwhile remaining untouched and unimpaired. Hume. Execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. 207 XXXIII. EXECUTION OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH. [Sir Walter Raleigh, who had been a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, was feared and distrusted by her successor, James I. He was accused of trea son, and, after many years' imprisonment in the Tower, was put to death, mainly at the instigation of the King of Spain.] The close of the life of Sir Walter Raleigh was as extraordi nary as many parts of his varied history ; the promptitude and sprightliness of his genius, his carelessness of life, and equanimity of this great spirit in quitting the world, can only be paralleled by a few other heroes and sages. Raleigh was both! . . . Raleigh one morning was taken out of his bed in a fit of fever, and unexpectedly hurried, not to his trial, but to a sentence of death. The story is well-known. Yet pleading with " a voice grown weak by sickness and an ague he had at that instant on him," he used every means to avert his fate; he did, therefore, value the life he could so easily part with. His judges there, at least, respected their state criminal, and they addressed him in a tone far different from that which he had fifteen years before listened to from Coke. Yelverton, the attorney-general, said, " Sir Walter Raleigh hath been as a star at which the world have gazed ; but stars may fall — nay, they must fall when they trouble the sphere where they abide." And the lord chief-justice noticed Raleigh's great work : " I know that you have been valiant and wise, and I doubt not but you retain both these virtues, for now you shall have occasion to use them. Your book is an admirable work. I would give you counsel, but I know you can apply unto yourself far better than I am able to give you." But the judge ended by saying, " execution is granted." It was stifling Raleigh with roses ! The heroic sage felt as if listening to fame from the voice of Death. He declared 208 Pictures from English History. that now, being old, sickly, and in disgrace, and certain, were he allowed to live, to go to it again, life was wearisome to him, and all he entreated was to have leave to. speak freely at his farewell, to satisfy the world that he was ever loyal to the king, and a true lover of the commonwealth, for this he would seal with his blood. Raleigh, on his return to prison, while some were deploring his fate, observed, "That the world itself is but a larger prison out of which some are daily selected for execution." That last night of his existence was occupied by writing what the letter-writer calls " a remembrancer, to be left with his lady to acquaint the world with his sentiments, should he be denied their delivery from the scaffold, as he had been at the bar of the King's Bench." His lady visited him that night, and, amid her tears, acquainted him that she had obtained the favor of disposing of his body; to which he answered, smiling, " It is well, Bess, that thou mayst dispose of that dead, thou hadst not always the disposing of when it was alive." At midnight he entreated her to leave him. It must have been then, that, with unshaken fortitude, Raleigh sat down to compose those verses on his death, which, being short, the most appropriate may be repeated : " Even such is Time, that takes on trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with age and dust ; Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days." On the same night Raleigh wrote this distich on the candle burning dimly : " Cowards fear to die ; but courage stout, Rather than live in snuff, will be put out." Raleigh's cheerfulness was so remakable, and his fearless ness of death so marked, that the Dean of Westminster, who Execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. 209 attended him, at first wondering at the hero, reprehended the lightness of his manner, but Raleigh gave God thanks that he had never feared death, for it was but an opinion and an imagination ; and, as for the manner of death, he would rather die so than of a burning fever ; and that some might have made shows outwardly, but he felt the joy within. The dean says he made no more of his death than if he had been to take a journey. " Not," said he, " but that I am a great sinner, for I have been a soldier, a seaman, and a courtier." On the morning of his death he smoked, as usual, his fa vorite tobacco, and when they brought him a cup of excellent sack, being asked how he liked it, Raleigh answered, "As the fellow that, drinking of St. Giles' bowl as he went to Tyburn, said, ' That it was a good drink if a man might tarry by it.' " The day before, in passing from Westminster Hall to the gate-house, his eye had caught Sir Hugh Beeston in the throng, and, calling on him, Raleigh requested that he would see him die to-morrow. Sir Hugh, to secure himself a seat on the scaffold, had provided himself with a letter to the sheriff, which was not read at the time, and Sir Walter found his friend thrust by, lamenting that he could not get there. " Farewell ! " exclaimed Raleigh. " I know not what shift you will make, but I am sure to have a place." In going from the prison to the scaffold, among others who were pressing hard to see him, one old man, whose head was bald, came very forward, insomuch that Raleigh noticed him and asked "Whether he would have aught of him? " The old man answered, " Nothing but to see him, and to pray to God for him." Raleigh replied, " I thank thee, good friend, and I am sorry I have no better thing to return thee for thy good-will." Observing his bald head, he continued, "but take this night-cap " — which was a very rich wrought one that he wore — " for thou hast more need of it now than I." His dress, as was usual with him, was elegant, if not rich. Oldys describes it, but mentions that " he had a wrought 210 Pictures from English History. night-cap under his hat ; this we have otherwise disposed of; he wore a ruff-band, a black wrought velvet night-gown over a hare-colored satin doublet, and a black wrought waistcoat, black cut taffety breeches, and ash-colored silk stockings. He ascended the scaffold with the same cheerfulness as he had passed to it, and, observing the lords seated at a dis tance, some at windows, he requested they would approach him, as he wished that they should all witness what he had to say. The request was complied with by several. When he finished he requested Lord Arundel that the king would not suffer any libels to defame him after death. "And now I have a long journey to go, and must take my leave." " He embraced all the lords and other friends with such courtly compliments, as if he had met them at some feast," says a letter-writer. Having taken off his gown he called to the headsman to show him the ax, which not being instantly done, he repeated, " I prithee let me see it ; dost thou think that I am afraid of it ? " He passed the edge lightly over his finger, and, smiling, observed to the sheriff, " This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases," and kissing it laid it down. Another writer has, "This is that, that will cure all sorrows." After this he went to three several cor ners of the scaffold, and, kneeling down, desired all the people to pray for him, and recited a long prayer to himself. When he began to fit himself for the block, he first laid himself down to try how the block fitted him ; after rising up, the executioner kneeled down to ask his forgiveness, which Ra leigh with an embrace gave, but entreated him not to strike until he should give a token by lifting up his hand, "And then fear not, but strike home! " When he laid his head down to receive the stroke, the executioner desired him to lay his face toward the east. " It was no great matter which way a man's head stood, so that the heart lay right," said Raleigh, but these were not his last words. He was once more to speak in this world with the same intrepidity he had lived in Execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. 211 it, for, having lain for some minutes on the block in prayer, he gave the signal ; but the executioner, either unmindful or in fear, failed to strike, and Raleigh, after once or twice putting forth his hands, was compelled to ask him, "Why dost thou not strike ? Strike, man ! " In two blows he was beheaded; but from the first his body never shrunk from the spot by any discomposure of his posture, which, like his mind, was immovable. " In all the time he was upon the scaffold and before," says one of the MS. letter-writers, "there appeared not the least alteration in him either in his voice or countenance, but he seemed as free from apprehension as if he had been come thither rather to be a spectator than a sufferer; nay, the be holders seemed much more sensible than he did, so that he hath purchased here in the opinion of men such honor and reputation, as it is thought his greatest enemies are they that are most sorrowful for his death, which they see is like to turn so much to his advantage." The people were deeply affected at the sight, and so much that one said that " we had not such another head to cut off," and another " wished the head and brains to be on Secretary Naunton's shoulders." The observer suffered for this. He was a wealthy citizen and great newsmonger, and one who haunted Paul's Walk. Com plaint was made, and the citizen was summoned to the privy council. He pleaded that he meant no disrespect to Mr. Secretary, but only spoke in reference to the old proverb that " Two heads are better than one." . . . The sunshine of his (Raleigh's) days was in the reign of Elizabeth. From a boy always dreaming of romantic con quests — for he was born in an age of heroism — and formed by nature for the chivalric gallantry of the court of a maiden queen, from the moment when he, with such infinite art, cast his rich mantle over the miry spot, his life was a progress of glory. All about Raleigh was as splendid as the dress he wore. His female sovereign, whose eyes loved to dwell on Pictures from English History. men who might have been fit subjects for the " Faerie Queen" of Spenser, penurious of reward, only recompensed her fa vorites by suffering them to make their own fortunes on sea and land ; and Elizabeth listened to the glowing projects of her hero, indulging that spirit which would have conquered the world to have laid the toy at the feet of the sovereign. This man, this extraordinary being, who was prodigal of his life and fortune on the Spanish Main, in the idleness of peace could equally direct his invention to supply the domestic wants of every-day life in his project of "An office for ad dress." Nothing was too high for his ambition nor too hum ble for his genius. Pre-eminent as a military and a naval commander, as a statesman and a student, Raleigh was as intent on forming the character of Prince Henry as that prince was studious of molding his own aspiring qualities by the genius of the friend whom he contemplated. Yet the active life of Raleigh is not more remarkable than his contemplative one. He may well rank among the founders of our literature, for, composing on a subject exciting little interest, his fine genius has sealed his unfinished volume with immortality. For magnificence of eloquence and massiveness of thought, we must still dwell on his pages. Such was the man who was the adored patron of Spenser, whom Ben Jonson, proud of calling other favorites " his sons," honored by the title of " his father," and who left political instructions which Milton deigned to edit. Isaac Disraeli. The Roundhead Army. 213 XXXIV. THE ROUNDHEAD ARMY. [The corruptions of King James, and the lawlessness and bad faith of his son, Charles I., caused the long Parliamentary struggle, and at last (1642) civil war. At first the Parliamentary, or " Roundhead," cause was worsted by the superior soldiership of the king's " Cavaliers," but Oliver Cromwell's genius reversed all that.] Cromwell made haste to organize the whole army on the same principles on which he had organized his own regi ment. As soon as this process was complete, the event of the war was decided. The Cavaliers had now to encounter natural courage equal to their own, enthusiasm stronger than their own, and discipline such as was utterly wanting to them. It soon became a proverb that the soldiers of Fairfax and Cromwell were men of a different breed from the soldiers of Essex. At Naseby took place the first great encounter be tween the Royalists and the remodeled army of the Houses. The victory of the Roundheads was complete and decisive. It was followed by other triumphs in rapid succession. In a few months the authority of the Parliament was fully es tablished over the whole kingdom. Charles fled to the Scots, and was by them, in a manner which did not much exalt their national character, delivered up to his English subjects. . . . Thirteen years followed, during which En gland was, under various names and forms, really governed by the sword. Never before that time or since that time was the civil power in our country subjected to military dictation. The army of the Long Parliament was raised for home service. The pay of the private soldier was much above the wages earned by the great body of the people ; and, if he distinguished himself by intelligence and courage, he might hope to attain high commands. The ranks were ac- 214 Pictures from English Hrtory. cordingly composed of persons superior in station and edu cation to the multitude. These persons, sober, moral, dili gent, and accustomed to reflect, had been induced to take up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by the love of novelty and license, not by the arts of recruiting officers, but by religious and political zeal, mingled with the desire of dis tinction and promotion. The boast of the soldiers, as we find it recorded in their solemn resolutions, was, that they had not been forced into the service, nor had enlisted chiefly for the sake of lucre ; that they were no janizaries, but free born Englishmen, who had, of their own accord, put tbeir lives in jeopardy for the liberties and religion of England, and whose right and duty it was to watch over the welfare of the nation which they had saved. A force thus composed might, without injury to its effi ciency, be indulged in some liberties which, if allowed to any other troops, would have proved subversive of all discipline. In general, soldiers who should form themselves into polit ical clubs, elect delegates, and pass resolutions on high ques tions of state would soon break loose from all control, would cease to form an army, and would become the worst and most dangerous of mobs. Nor would it be safe, in our time, to tolerate in any regiment religious meetings, at which a corporal versed in Scripture should lead the devotions ofhis less-gifted colonel and admonish a backsliding major. But such was the intelligence, the gravity, and the self-command of the warriors whom Cromwell had trained, that in their camp a political organization and a religious organization could exist without destroying military organization. The same men who, off duty, were noted as demagogues and field-preachers, were distinguished by steadiness, by the spirit of order, and by prompt obedience on watch, on drill, and on the field of battle. In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn courage characteristic ofthe -English -peaple was, by the ^ys- The Roundhead Army. 215 tem of Cromwell, at once regulated and stimulated. Other leaders have maintained order as strict ; other leaders have inspired their followers with a zeal as ardent ; but in his camp alone the most rigid discipline was found in company with the fiercest enthusiasm. His troops moved to victory with the precision of machines, while burning with the wild est fanaticism of crusaders. From the time when the army was remodeled to the time when it was disbanded, it never found, either in the British islands or on the Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset. In England, Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often surrounded by difficulties, sometimes contending against threefold odds, not only never failed to conquer, but never failed to destroy and break in pieces whatever force was opposed to them. They at length came to regard the day of battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the most renowned battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence. Turenne was startled by the shout of stern exultation with which his English allies advanced to the combat, and expressed the delight ofa true soldier when he learned that it was ever the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen to rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy ; and the banished Cavaliers felt an emo tion .of national pride when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered by foes and abandoned by allies, drive before it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage into a counterscarp which had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the marshals of France. But that which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from other armies was the austere morality and the fear of God which pervaded all ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists that, in that singular camp, no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that, during the long dominion of the soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizen and the honor of woman were held 216 Pictures from English History. sacred. If outrages were committed, they were outrages of a very .different kind from those of which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant-girl complained of the rough gallantry of the red-coats ; not an ounce of plate was taken from the shops of the goldsmiths ; but a Pelagian sermon, or a window on which the Virgin and Child were painted, pro duced in the Puritan ranks an excitement which it required the utmost exertions of the officers to quell. One of Crom well's chief difficulties was to restrain his pikemen and dragoons from invading by main force the pulpits of minis ters whose discourses, to use the language of that time, were not savory ; and too many of our cathedrals still bear the marks of the hatred with which those stern spirits regarded every vestige of popery. Macaulay. XXXV. DISPERSION OF THE RUMP PARLIAMENT. [After Charles had been executed and the Presbyterian members of Parlia ment had been expelled by Colonel Pride, (" Pride's Purge,") the remainder, ("Rump Parliament,") under Cromwell and the army, governed Eng'and. In 1653 Cromwell and the generals of the army having presented a re quest to Parliament to disband, the latter set about passing an act making the presentation of such petitions high treason, whereupon Cromwell acted promptly and summarily.] My lord-general, accordingly, is in his reception-room this morning, [April 20, 1653,] " in plain black clothes and gray worsted stockings " — he, with many officers ; but few mem bers have yet come, though punctual Bulstrode and certain others are there. Some waiting there is; some impatience that the members would come. The members do not come ; instead of members, comes a notice that they are busy get ting on with their bill in the House, hurrying it double-quick Execution of King Charles. Dispersion of the Rump Parliament. 217 through all the stages. Possible ? New message, that it will be law in a little while, if no interposition takes place ! Bul strode hastens off to the House ; my lord-general, at first incredulous, does now also hasten off — nay, orders that a company of- musketeers of his own regiment attend him. Hastens off with a very high expression of countenance, I think — saying or feeling : " Who would have believed it of them ! It is not honest ; yea, it is contrary to common hon esty ! " My lord-general, the big hour is come ! Young Colonel Sidney, the celebrated Algernon, sat in the House this morning — a House of some fifty-three. Al gernon has left distinct note of the affair; less distinct we have from Bulstrode, who was also there, who seems in some points to be even willfully wrong. Solid Ludlow was far off in Ireland, but gathered many details in after years, and faithfully wrote them down, in the unappeasable indignation 'ofhis heart. Combining these three originals, we have, after various perusals and collations and considerations, obtained the following authentic, moderately-conceivable account : The Parliament sitting as usual, and being in debate upon the bill with the amendments, which it was thought would have been passed that day, the Lord-General Cromwell came into the House, clad in plain black clothes and gray worsted stockings, and sat down, as he used to do, in an ordinary place. For some time he listens to this interesting debate on the bill ; beckoning once to Harrison, who came over to him, and answered dubitatingly. Whereupon the lord-gen eral sat still for about a quarter of an hour longer. But now the question being to be put, " That this bill do now pass," he beckons again to Harrison, says, " This is the time ; I must do it ! " — and so rose up, put off his hat, and spake. At the first, and for a good while, he spake to the com mendation of the Parliament for their pains and care of the public good ; but afterward he changed his style, told them of their injustice, delays of justice, self-interest, and other 10 218 Pictures from English History. faults, rising higher and higher, into a very aggravated style indeed. An honorable member, Sir Peter Wentworth by name, not known to my readers, and by me better known than trusted, rises to order, as we phrase it, says, " It is a strange language, this ; unusual within the walls of Parliament, this ! And from a trusted servant, too ; and one whom we nave so highly honored ; and one — " " Come, come ! " exclaims my lord-general in a very high key, '' we have had enough of this " — and in fact my lord- general, now blazing all up into clear conflagration, exclaims, " I will put an end to your prating," and steps forth into the floor of the House, and "clapping on his hat," and occasion ally " stamping the floor with his feet," begins a discourse which no man can report ! He says — Heavens ! he is heard saying : " It is not fit that you should sit here any longer ! You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing lately. You shall now give place to bet-. ter men ! Call them in ! " adds he briefly to Harrison, in word of command ; and some twenty or thirty grim mus keteers enter, with bullets in their snaphances, [muskets,] grimly prompt for orders, and stand in some attitude of carry-arms there. Veteran men ; men of might and men of war, their faces are as the faces of lions, and their feet are as swift as the roes upon the mountains ; not beautiful to honorable gentlemen at this moment ! "You call yourselves a Parliament," continues my lord- general in clear blaze of conflagration ; " You are no Par liament ; I say you are no Parliament ! Some of you are drunkards," and his eye flashes on poor Mr. Chaloner, an official man of some value, addicted to the bottle ; " some of you are — " and he glares into Harry Marten, and the poor Sir Peter who rose to order, lewd livers both, "living in open contempt of God's commandments ; following your own greedy appetites, and the devil's commandments." " Corrupt unjust persons," and here I think he glanced " at Dispersion of the Rump Parliament. 219 Sir Bulstrode Whitlocke, one of the commissioners of the great seal, giving him and others very sharp language, though he named them not : " " Corrupt, unjust persons ; scandal ous to the profession of the Gospel : how can you be a Par liament for God's people ? Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God— go ! " The House is, of course, all on its feet — uncertain almost whether not on its head : such a scene as was never seen before in any House of Commons. History reports with a shudder that my lord-general, lifting the sacred mace itself, said, " What shall we do with this bauble ? Take it away ! " and gave it to a musketeer. And now — " Fetch him down ! " says he to Harrison, flashing on the speaker. Speaker Lenthall, more an ancient Roman than any thing else, de clares he will not come till forced. " Sir," said Harrison, " I will lend you a hand ; " on which Speaker Lenthall came down and gloomily vanished. They all vanished ; flooding gloomily, clamorously out to their ulterior businesses and respective places of abode. The Long Parliament is dissolved ! " It's you that have forced me to this," exclaims my lord- general. " I have sought the Lord night and day that he would rather slay me than put me upon the doing of this work." At their going out some say the lord-general said to young Sir Harry Vane, calling him by his name, " That he might have prevented this ; but that he was a juggler, and had not common honesty." " O, Sir Harry Vane, thou with thy subtle casuistries and abstruse hair-splittings, thou art other than a good one, I think ! The Lord deliver me from thee, Sir Harry Vane ! " All being gone out, the door of the House was locked, and the key with the mace, as I heard, was carried away by Colonel Otley — and it is all over, and the unspeakable catastrophe has come and remains. Such was the destructive wrath of my Lord-General Crom well against the nominal Rump Parliament of England — Pictures from English History. wrath which innumerable mortals since have accounted ex tremely diabolic ; which some now begin to account partly divine. Divine or diabolic, it is an indisputable fact, left for the commentaries of men. The Rump Parliament has gone its ways ; and truly, except it be in their own, I know not in what eyes are tears at their departure. They went very softly, softly as a dream, say all witnesses. " We did not hear a dog bark at their going!" asserts my lord- general elsewhere. It is said my lord-general did not, on his entrance into the House, contemplate quite as a certainty this strong measure ; but it came upon him like an irresistible impulse, or inspiration, as he heard their parliamentary eloquence proceed. " Perceiving the Spirit of God so strong upon me, I would no longer consult flesh and blood." He has done it, at all events, and is responsible for the results it may have — a responsibility which he, as well as most of us, knows to be awful — but he fancies it was in answer to the English nation and to the Maker of the English nation and of him ; and he will do the best he may with it. Thomas Carlyle. [The following portrait of Cromwell, drawn by the hand of his admirer, Carlyle, is too graphic to be omitted.] A rather likely figure, I think, stands some five feet ten or more ; a man of strong solid stature, and dignified, now partly military, carriage. The expression of him, valor and devout intelligence — energy and delicacy on a basis of sim plicity. Fifty-four years old gone April last ; ruddy fair complexion, bronzed by toil and age ; light brown hair and mustache, all getting streaked with gray. A figure of suf ficient impressiveness — not lovely to the man-milliner species, nor pretending to be so. Massive stature, big massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect, evident work-shop and store house of a vast treasury of natural parts. Wart above the Dispersion of the Rump Parliament. 221 right eyebrow ; nose of considerable blunt aquiline propor tions; strict yet copious lips, full of all tremulous sensibili ties, and also, if need were, of all fierceness and rigors ; deep, loving eyes, call them grave, call them stern, looking from under those craggy brows as if in life-long sorrow, and yet not thinking it sorrow, thinking it only labor and endeavor — on the whole, a right noble lion-face and hero-face, and, to me, royal enough. XXXVI. THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. [Upon Cromwell's death a state of anarchy ensued, which was terminated by the peaceful restoration of Charles II. During his reign many calamities of misgovernment, oppression, war, and plague beset England — the Great Plague in London being one of these. The history of this fearful event was written by Daniel De Foe. Sir Walter Scott remarked, that "had he not been the author of ' Robinson Crusoe,' De Foe would have deserved im mortality for the genius which he has displayed in this work." The fol lowing extracts from it will serve to give some idea of the work as well as of the terrible event which it describes.] In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several months before the plague, as there did the year after, a little before the great fire ; the old women and the weak-minded portion of the other sex, whom I could almost call old women too, remarked — especially afterward, though not till both those judgments were over — that those two comets passed directly over the city, and that so very near the houses, that it was plain they imported something peculiar to the city alone. . . . Some were so enthusiastically bold, as to run about the streets with their oral predictions, pretending they were sent to preach to the city ; and one, in particular, who like Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the streets : " Yet forty days, 222 Pictures from English History. and London shall be destroyed." I will not be positive whether he said, "Yet forty days," or, "Yet a few days." Another ran about naked, except a pair of drawers about his waist, crying day and night. As a man that Josephus men tions, who cried, "Woe to Jerusalem!" a little before the destruction of that city; so this poor naked creature cried, " O, the great and the dreadful God ! " and said no more, but repeated these words continually, with a voice and counte nance full of horror, a swift pace ; and nobody could ever find him to stop, or rest, or take any sustenance, at least, that ever I could hear of. I met this poor creature several times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he would not enter into conversation with me, or any one else, but held on his dismal cries continually. These things terrified the people to the last degree. I had in my family only an ancient woman, that managed the house, a maid-servant, two apprentices, and myself; and the plague beginning to increase about us, I had many sad thoughts about what course I should take, and how I should act. The many dismal objects which happened every-where, as I went about the streets, had filled my mind with a great deal of horror, for fear of the distemper itself, which was in deed very horrible itself, and in some more than others. The swellings which were generally in the neck or groin, when they grew hard and would not break, grew so painful that it was equal to the most exquisite torture ; and some, not able to bear the torment, threw themselves out at windows, or shot themselves, or otherwise made themselves away; and I saw several dismal objects of this kind. Others, unable to con tain themselves, vented their pain by incessant roarings, and such lamentable cries were to be heard, as they walked along the streets, that would pierce -the very heart to think of, especially when it was considered that the same dreadful scourge might be expected every moment to seize upon our selves. The Plague in London. 223 It was now the beginning of August, and the plague grew very violent and terrible in the place where I lived; and Dr. Heath coming to visit me, and finding that I ventured so often out in the streets, earnestly persuaded me to lock my self up and my family, and not to suffer any of us to go out of doors ; to keep all our windows fast, shutters and curtains close, and never to open them ; but first to make a very strong smoke in the room, when the window or door was to be opened, with rosin- and pitch, brimstone and gunpowder, and the like, and we did this for some time ; but as I had not laid in a store of provision for such a retreat, it was impos sible that we could keep within doors entirely. And here I must observe again, that this necessity of- going out of our houses to buy provisions was, in a great measure, the ruin of the whole city ; for the people catched the distemper, on these occasions, one of another, and even the provisions themselves were often tainted, at least I had great reason to believe so. However, the poor people could not lay up pro visions, and there was a necessity that they must go to market to buy, and others to send servants or their children ; and, as this was a necessity which renewed itself daily, it brought abundance of unsound people to the markets, and a great many that went thither sound brought death home with them. It is true people used all possible precaution ; when any one bought a joint of meat in the market, they would not take it out of the butcher's hand, but took it off the hooks themselves. On the other hand, the butcher would not touch the money, but have it put into a pot full of vinegar, which he kept for that purpose. The buyers carried always small money to make up any odd sum, that they might take no change. They carried bottles for scent and perfumes in their hands, and all the means that could be used were em ployed; but, then, the poor could not 'do even these things, and they went at all hazards. Innumerable dismal stories we heard every day on this 224 Pictures from English History. very account. Sometimes a man or woman dropped down dead in the very market ; for many people that had the plague upon them knew nothing of it till the inward gangrene had affected their vitals, and they died in a few moments- this caused that many died frequently in that manner in the street suddenly without any warning. Others, perhaps, had time to go to the next bulk or stall, or to any door or porch, and just sit down and die, as I have said before. These ob jects were so frequent in the streets, that, when the plague grew to be very raging on one side, there was scarce any passing by the streets but that several dead bodies would be lying here and there upon the ground ; and, in those cases, the corpse was always left till the officers had notice to come and take them away, or till night, when the bearers attending the dead-cart would take them up and carry them away. Nor did those undaunted creatures, who performed these offices, fail to search their pockets, and sometimes strip off their clothes if they were well dressed, as sometimes they were, and carry off what they could get. . . . Much about the same time I walked out into the fields toward Bow ; for I had a great mind to see how things were managed on the river, and among the ships; and as I had some concern in shipping, I had a notion that it had been one of the best ways of securing one's self from the infection to have retired into a ship ; and musing how to satisfy my curiosity in that point, I turned away over the fields, from Bow to Bromley, and down to Blackwall, to the stairs that are there for landing or taking water. Here I saw a poor man walking on the bank or sea-wall, as they call it, by him self. I walked awhile also about, seeing the houses all shut up; at last I fell into some talk, at a distance, with this poor man. First I asked him how people did thereabouts. " Alas ! sir," says he, " almost desolate, all dead or sick ; here are very few families in this part, or in that village," pointing at Poplar, " where half of them are dead already, The Plague in London. 225 and the rest sick." Then he, pointing to one house, " They are all dead," said he, " and the house stands open, nobody dares go into it. A poor thief," says he, " ventured in to steal something, but he paid dear for his theft, for he was carried to the church-yard, too, last night." Then he pointed to several other houses. " There," says he, " they are all dead, the man and his wife and five children. There," says he, "they are shut up, you see a watchman at the door; and so of other houses." "Why," says I, " what do you do here alone?" "Why," says he, "I am a poor desolate man; it hath pleased God I am not yet visited, though my family is, and one of my children dead." " How do you mean, then," said I, "that you are not visited?" "Why," says he, " that is my house," pointing to a very little, low-boarded house, "and there my poor wife and two children live," said he, "if they may be said to live ; for my wife and one of the children are visited, but I dare not come at them." And with that word I saw the tears run very plentifully down his face ; and so they did down mine, too, I assure you. "Well," says I, "honest man, how do you live, then ? and how are you kept from the dreadful calamity that is now upon us all ? " " Why, sir," says he, " I am a waterman, and there is my boat," says he, "and the boat serves me for a house; I work in it in the day, and I sleep in it in the night, and what I get I lay it down upon that stone," says he, showing me a broad stone on the other side of the street, a good way from his house; "and then," says he, "I halloo, and call to them till I make them hear, and they come and fetch it." "Well, friend," says I, "but how can you get money as a waterman ? Does any body go by water these times?" "Yes, sir," says he, "in the way I am employed, there does. Do you see there," says he, " five ships lie at anchor," pointing down the river, a good way below the town; "and do you see," says he, "eight or ten ships lie at the Chain there, and at anchor yonder ? " — pointing above to 10* 226 Pictures from English History. ^ the town. " All those ships have families on board, of their merchants and owners, and such like, who have locked them selves up, and live on board, close shut in, for fear of the infection ; and I tend on them to fetch things for them, carry letters, and do what is absolutely necessary, that they may not be obliged to come on shore ; and every night I fasten my boat on board one of the ship's boats, and there I sleep by myself, and, blessed be God ! I am preserved hither to. .. . I seldom come on shore here ; and I came only now to call my wife, and hear how my little family do, and give them a little money which I received last night. ... I have called, and my wife has answered that she cannot come out yet, but in half an hour she hopes to come, and I am waiting for her. Poor woman ! " says he, " she is brought sadly down ; she has had a swelling, and it is broke, and I hope she will recover, but I fear the child will die ; but it is the Lord ! — " Here he stopped and wept very much. "Well, honest friend," said I, "thou hast a sure comforter, if thou hast brought thyself to be resigned to the will of God; he is dealing with us all in judgment." " O, sir," says he, " it is infinite mercy if any of us are spared ; and who am I to repine ? " " Sayest thou so," said I ; " and how much less is my faith than thine ? " And here my heart smote me, sug gesting how much better this poor man's foundation was, on which he stayed in the danger, than mine ; that he had no where to fly ; that he had a family to bind him to attendance, which I had not ; and mine was mere presumption, his a true dependence, and a courage resting on God ; and yet, that he used all possible caution for his safety. I turned a little way from the man while these thoughts engaged me ; for, indeed, I could no more refrain from tears than he. Daniel De Foe. The Deposition of James II. 227 XXXVII. THE DEPOSITION OF JAMES II. [The treacherous and tyrannical conduct and the reactionary religious policy of James II. at length drove England into revolt, and some of the principal nobles invited William, prince of Orange, and his wife, Mary, daughter of James II., to the throne jointly. William gathered a fleet and army in Holland, and in 1688 set sail for the invasion of England. The subjoined account is by an eye-witness.] On the 1st of November, O. S., we sailed out with the evening tide ; but made little way that night, that so our fleet might come out, and move in order. We tried next day till noon if it was possi ble to sail northward ; but the wind was so strong and full in the east that we could not move that way. About noon the signal was given to steer westward. This wind not only diverted us from that unhappy course, but it kept the English fleet in the river ; so that it was not possi ble for them to come out, though they were come down as far as to the Gunfleet. By this means we had the sea open to us, with a fair wind and a safe navigation. On the 3d we passed between Dover and Calais, and before night came in sight of the Isle of Wight. The next day being the day in which the prince was both born and married, he fancied if he could land that day it would look auspicious to the army, and animate the soldiers. But we all, who considered that the day following being gunpowder-treason day, our landing that day might have a good effect on the minds of the En glish nation, were better pleased to see that we could land no sooner. Torbay was thought the best place for our great JAMES II. 228 Pictures from English History. fleet to lie in ; and it was resolved to land the army where it could be best done near it, reckoning that being at such a distance from London we could provide ourselves with horses and put every thing in order before the king could march his army toward us, and that we should lie some time at Exeter for the refreshing our men. I was in the ship, with the prince's other domestics, that went in the van of the whole fleet. At noon on the 4th Russel came on board us with the best of all the English pilots that they had brought over. He gave him the steering of the ship, and ordered him to be sure to sail so that next morning we should be short of Dartmouth ; for it was intended that some of the ships should land there, and that the rest should sail into Torbay. The pilot thought he could not be mis taken in measuring our course, and believed that he certainly kept within orders, till the morning showed us we were past Torbay and Dartmouth. But while Russel was in no small disorder, after he saw the pilot's error, (upon which he bade me go to my prayers, for all was lost,) and as he was ordering the boat to be cleared to go aboard the prince, on a sudden, to all our wonder, it calmed a little. And then the wind turned into the south, and a soft and happy gale of wind carried in the whole fleet in four hours' time into Torbay. Immediately as many landed as conveniently could. As soon as the prince and Marshal Schomberg got to shore they were furnished with such horses as the village of Broxholme could afford, and rode up to view the grounds, which tliey found as convenient as could be imagined for the foot in that season. It was not a cold night, otherwise the soldiers, who had been kept warm aboard, might have suffered much by it. As soon as I landed I made what haste I could to the place where the prince was, who took me heartily by the hand and asked me if I would not now believe predestination. I told him I would never forget that providence of God which had appeared so signally on this occasion. He was cheerfuller The Deposition of James II. 229 than ordinary. Yet he returned soon to his usual gravity. The prince sent for all the fishermen of the place and asked them which was the properest place for landing his horse, which all apprehended would be a tedious business, and might hold some days. But next morning he was showed a place, a quarter of a mile below the village, where the ships could be brought very near the land, against the shore, and the horses would not be put to swim above twenty yards. This proved to be so happy for our landing, though we came to it by mere accident, that, if we had ordered the whole island round to be sounded we could not have found a prop- erer place for it. There was a dead calm all that morning, and in three hours' time all our horses were landed, with as much baggage as was necessary till we got to Exeter. The artillery and heavy baggage were left aboard, and ordered to Topsham, the sea-port to Exeter. All that belonged to us was so soon and so happily landed that by the next day at noon we were in full march, and marched four miles that night. We had from thence twenty miles to Exeter, and we resolved to make haste thither. But, as we were now happily landed and marching, we saw new and unthought-of characters of a favorable providence of God watching oyer us. We had no sooner got thus dis engaged from our fleet than a new and great stOTm blew from the west, from which our fleet, being covered by the land, could receive no prejudice ; but the king's fleet had got out as the wind calmed, and in pursuit of us was come as far as the Isle of Wight when this contrary wind turned upon them. They tried what they could to pursue us ; but they were so shattered by some days of this storm that they were forced to go into Portsmouth, and were no more fit for serv ice that year. This was a greater happiness than we were then aware of; for the Lord Dartmouth assured me some time after, that, whatever stories we had heard and believed, either of officers or seamen, he was confident they would all 230 Pictures from English History. have fought very heartily ; but now, by the immediate hand of Heaven, we were masters of the sea without a blow. I never found a disposition to superstition in my temper; I was rather inclined to be philosophical upon all occasions ; yet I must confess that this strange ordering of the winds and seasons, just to change as our affairs required it, could not but make deep impressions on me as well as on all that observed it. The prince made haste to Exeter, where he stayed ten days, both for refreshing his troops and for giv ing the country time to show their affections. . . . The king wanted support, for his spirits sunk extremely. His blood was in such fermentation that he was bleeding much at the nose, which returned oft upon him every day. He sent many spies over to us. They all took his money and came and joined themselves to the prince, none of them returning to him. So that he had no intelligence brought him of what the prince was doing, but what common reports brought him, which magnified our numbers, and made him think we were coming near him while we were still at Exeter. He heard that the city of London was very unquiet. News was brought him that the Earls of Devonshire and Danhy, and the Lord Lumley, were drawing great bodies together, and that both York and Newcastle had declared for the prince. The Lord Delamere had raised a regiment in Cheshire. And the body of the nation did every-where dis cover their inclinations for the prince so evidently, that the king saw he had nothing to trust to but his army. And the ill disposition among them was so apparent that he reckoned he could not depend on them ; so that he lost both heart and head at once. But that which gave him the last and most confounding stroke was that the Lord Churchill and the Duke of Grafton left him, and came and joined the prince at Axminster, twenty miles on that side of Exeter. After this he could not know on whom he could depend. These things put the king in an unexpressible confusion. The Deposition of James II. 231 He saw himself now forsaken, not only by those whom he had trusted and favored most, but even by his own children. And the army was in such distraction that there was not any one body that seemed entirely united and firm to him. A foolish ballad was made at that time, treating the papists, and chiefly the Irish, in a very ridiculous manner, which had a burden, said to be Irish words, lero, lero, lilibulero, that made an impression on the army that cannot be well imag ined by those who saw it not. The whole army, and at last all people both in city and country, were singing it perpett ually. And perhaps never had so slight a thing so great an effect. The queen took up a sudden resolution of going to France with the child. The midwife, together with all who were assisting at the birth, were also carried over, or so disposed of that it could never be learned what became of them after ward. The queen prevailed with the king, not only to con sent to this, but to promise to go quickly after her. He was only to stay a day or two after her, in hope that the shadow of authority that was still left in him might keep things so quiet that she might have an undisturbed passage. So she went to Portsmouth, and from thence, in a man-of-war, she went over to FranGe, the king resolving to follow her in disguise. Care was also taken to send all the priests away. . . . The king stayed long enough to get the prince's answer; and when he had read it he said he did not expect so good terms. He ordered the lord chancellor to come to him next morning. But he had called secretly for the great seal, and the next morning, being the ioth of December, about three in the morning, he went away in disguise with Sir Edward Hales, whose servant he seemed to be. They passed the river and flung the great seal into it, which was some months after found by a fisherman near Fox-Hall. The king went down to a miserable fisher-boat that Hales had provided for carrying them over to France. 232 Pictures from English History. Thus a great king, who had yet a good army and a strong fleet, did choose rather to abandon all than either to expose himself to any danger with that part of the army that was still firm to him, or to stay and see the issue ofa Parliament. Some put this mean and unaccountable resolution on a want of courage ; others thought it was the effect of an ill con science and of some black thing under which he could not now support himself. And they who censured it the most moderately said that it showed that his priests had more re gard to themselves than to him, and that he considered their interests more than his own ; and that he chose rather to wander abroad with them, and try what he could do by a French force to subdue his people, than to stay at home and be shut up within the bounds of law, and be brought under an incapacity of doing more mischief, which they saw was necessary to quiet those fears and jealousies for which his bad government had given so much occasion. It seemed very unaccountable, since he was resolved to go, that he did not choose rather to go in one of his yachts or frigates than to expose himself in so dangerous and ignominious a man ner. It was not possible to put a good construction on any part of the dishonorable scene which he then acted. With this his reign ended ; for this was a plain deserting his people and the exposing the nation to the pillage of an army, which he had ordered the Earl of Feversham to disband. And the doing this without paying them was the letting so many armed' men loose upon the nation, who might have done much mischief if the execution of those orders that he left behind him had not been stopped. As soon as it was known at London that the king was gone the 'prentices and the rabble, who had been a little quieted when they saw a treaty on foot between the king and the prince, now broke out again upon all suspected houses where they believed there were either priests or pa pists. They made great havoc of many places, not sparing The Deposition of James II. 233 the houses of embassadors. But none were killed, no houses burnt, nor were any robberies committed. Never was so much fury seen under so much management. Jeffreys, find ing the king was gone, saw what reason he had to look to himself, and, apprehending that he was now exposed to the rage of the people whom he had provoked with so particular a brutality, he had disguised himself to make his escape. But he fell into the hands of some who knew him. He was insulted by them with as much scorn and rudeness as they could invent. And, after many hours tossing him about, he was carried to the lord mayor, whom they charged to com mit him to the Tower, which the Lord Lucas had seized, and in it had declared for the prince. The lord mayor was so struck with the terror of this rude populace, and with the disgrace of a man who had made all people tremble before him, that he fell into fits upon it, of which he died soon after. Bishop Burnet. 234 Pictures from English History. XXXVIII. THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE [During the reigns of William and Mary, of Anne, and of George I., England made great progress in foreign conquest and territorial aggran dizement, wilh a corresponding expansion of commercial enterprise and domestic prosperity. Dazzling visions of glory to the nation and wealth to every body took possession ; speculations of the most extraordinary char acter were entered into, which culminated in the "South Sea Bubble," in 1720.] As soon as the South Sea Bill had received the royal assent in April, the directors proposed a subscription of one million, which was so eagerly taken that the sum subscribed exceeded two. A second subscription was quick ly opened, and no less quickly filled. The most exaggerated hopes were raised and the most groundless rumors set afloat; such as that Stanhope had re ceived overtures at Paris to exchange Gibralter and Port Mahon for some places in Peru ! The South Sea trade was again vaunted as the best avenue to wealth. Objections were unheard or overruled, and the friends of Lord Oxford might exult to see his visions adopted by his opponents. In August the stocks which had been 130 in the winter, rose to 1,000 ! Such general infatuation would have been happy for the directors had they not themselves partaken of it. They opened a third and even a fourth subscription, larger than the former; they passed a resolution that from Christmas next their yearly dividend should not be less than fifty per cent. ; they assumed an arrogant and overbearing tone. GEORGE I. The South Sea Bubble. 235 " We have made them kings," says a member of Parliament, "and they deal with every body as such." But the public delusion was not confined to the South Sea scheme ; a thousand other mushroom projects sprung up in that teeming soil. This evil had been foreseen, and, as they hoped, guarded against by the ministers. On the very day Parliament rose they had issued a royal proclamation against "such mischievous and dangerous undertaking, especially the presuming to act as a corporate body, or raising stocks or shares without legal authority." But how difficult to en force that prohibition in a free country ! How impossible, when almost immediately on the king's departure,- the heir- apparent was induced to publish his name as a governor of the Welsh Copper Company ! In vain did the speaker and Walpole endeavor to dissuade him, representing that he would be attacked in Parliament, and that " the Prince of Wales' bubble " would be cried in Change Alley. It was not till the company was threatened with prosecution and exposed to risk, that his royal highness prudently withdrew, with a profit of ^40,000. Such an example was tempting to follow; the Duke of Chandos and the Earl of Westmoreland appeared likewise at the head of bubbles, and the people at large soon discovered that to speculate is easier than to work. Change Alley be came a new edition of the Rue Quincampoix.* The crowds were so great within doors that tables with clerks were set in the streets. In this motley throng were blended all ranks, all professions, all parties, churchmen and dissenters, whigs and tories, country gentlemen and brokers. An eager strife of tongues prevailed in this second Babel ; new reports, new subscriptions, new transfers, fled from mouth to mouth, and the voice of ladies — for even many ladies had turned gam blers — rose loud and incessant, above the general din. A foreigner would no longer have complained of the English * Where John Law's Mississippi scheme was carried on. 236 Pictures from English History. taciturnity. Some of the companies hawked about were for the most extravagant objects. " Wrecks to be fished for on the Irish coast ; insurances of horses and other cattle (two millions;) insurances of losses by servants; to make salt water fresh, etc., etc.; for building of ships against pirates; for making of oil from sunflower-seeds; for improving of malt liquors ; for recovering of seamen's wages ; for extract ing of silver from lead ; for the transmuting of quicksilver into a malleable and fine metal; for making of iron with pit coal ; for importing a number of large jackasses from Spain ; for trading in human hair ; for fattening of hogs ; for a wheel for perpetual motion." But the most strange of all, perhaps, was, " For an undertaking which shall in due time be re vealed ! " Each subscriber was to pay down two guineas, and hereafter to receive a share of one hundred with a dis closure of the object; and so tempting was the offer that 2,000 of these subscriptions were paid the same morning, with which the projector set off in the afternoon. Amid these real follies, I can scarcely see any difference or exag geration in a mock proposal which was circulated at the time in ridicule of the rest : " For the invention of melting down sawdust and chips, and casting them into clean deal boards without cracks or flaws." Such extravagances might well provoke laughter ; but, un happily, though the farce came first, there was a tragedy be hind. When the sums intended to be raised had grown altogether, it is said, to the enormous amount of three hun dred millions, the first check to the public infatuation was given by the same body whence it had first sprung. The South Sea directors, craving for fresh gains, and jealous of other speculators, obtained an order from the lords-justices, and writs of scire facias against several of the new bubble companies. These fell, but in falling drew down the whole fabric with them. As soon as distrust was excited all men became anxious to convert their bonds into money, and then The South Sea Bubble. 237 at once appeared the fearful disproportion between the paper promises and the coin to pay. Early in September the South Sea stock began to decline; its fall became more rapid from day to day, and in less than a month it sunk below 300. In vain was money drained from all the distant counties and brought up to London. In vain were the goldsmiths applied to, with whom large quantities of stock were pawned. Most of them broke or fled. In vain was Walpole summoned from Houghton to use his influence with the bank ; for that body, though it entered into negotiations, would not proceed in them, and refused to ratify a contract drawn up and pro posed by the minister. Once lost, the public confidence. could not be restored ; the decline progressively continued, and the news of the crash in France* completed ours. Thousands of families were reduced to beggary ; thousands more were threatened with the same fate, and the large for tunes made, or supposed to be made, by a few individuals served only by comparison to aggravate the common ruin. Those who had sported most proudly on the surface of the swollen waters were left stranded and bare by the ebbing of that mighty tide. The resentment and rage were universal. "I perceive," says a contemporary, "the very name of a South Sea man grows abominable in every county." And a cry was raised, not merely against the ministry, but against the royal family, against the king himself. Most of the statesmen of the time had more or less dabbled in those funds. Lord Sunderland lost considerably ; Walpole, with more sagacity, was a great gainer ; the Duke of Portland, Lord Lonsdale, and Lord Irwin were reduced to solicit West India governments, and it is mentioned, as an exception, that "neither Lords Stanhope, Argyle, nor Roxburgh have been in the stocks." Townshend, I believe, might also be excepted. But the public indignation was pointed chiefly against Sir John Blunt, as projector, and against Sunderland * The failure of John Law's scheme. 238 Pictures from English History. and Aislabie, as heads of the treasury, and it was suspected how truly will afterward appear, that the king's mistresses and several of his ministers, both English and German, had received large sums in stock to recommend the project. In short, as England had never yet undergone such great dis appointment and confusion, so it never had so loudly called for confiscation and blood. . . . On the 8th of December Parliament met in a mood like the people's, terror-stricken, bewildered, and thirsting for vengeance. ... It was in the midst of this general storm that Walpole, on the 21st December, brought forward his remedy. A short Christmas recess had no effect in allaying animosities. Immediately afterward a bill was brought in by Sir Joseph Jekyll, restraining the South Sea directors from going out of the kingdom, obliging them to deliver upon oath the strict value of their estates, and offering re wards to discoverers or informers against them. The di rectors petitioned to be heard by counsel in their defense, the common right, they said, of British subjects — as if a South Sea director was still entitled to justice ! Their re quest was rejected, and the bill was hurried through both houses. A secret committee of inquiry was next appointed by the Commons, consisting chiefly of the most vehement opponents of the South Sea scheme, such as Molesworth, Jekyll, and Brodrick, the latter of whom they selected for their chairman. This committee proceeded to examine Mr. Knight, the cashier of the company and the agent of its most secret transactions. But this person, dreading the consequences, soon after his first examination, escaped to France, connived at, as was suspected, by some persons in power, and carrying with him the register of the company. His escape was re ported to the House on the 23rd of January, when a strange scene of violence ensued. The Commons ordered the doors to be locked, and the keys to be laid on the table. General The South Sea Bubble. 239 Ross then stated that '" the committee, of which he was a member, had discovered a train of the deepest villainy and fraud that hell ever contrived to ruin a nation." No proof beyond this vague assertion was required, four of the direct ors, members of Parliament, were immediately expelled the house, taken into custody, and their papers seized. Meanwhile the lords had been examining other directors at their bar, and on the 24th they also ordered five to be tak en into custody. Some of the answers indicated that large sums in South -Sea stock had been given to procure the pass ing of the act last year ; upon which Lord Stanhope immedi ately rose, and expressing his indignation at such practices, moved a resolution, that any transfer of stock, without a valuable consideration, for the use of any person in the ad ministration, during the pendency of the South Sea Act, was a notorious and dangerous corruption. He was seconded by Lord Townshend, and the resolution passed unanimously. On the 8th of February the House, continuing their exami nations, had before them Sir John Blunt, who, however, re fused to answer, on the ground that he had already given his evidence before the secret committee of the Commons. How to proceed in this matter was a serious difficulty, and a debate which arose upon it soon branched into more general topics. Aislabie, finding it impossible to stem the popular torrent, resigned his office, which was conferred upon Walpole. But this resignation was far from contenting the public or abating their eagerness for the report of the secret committee. That committee certainly displayed no want of activity ; it sat every day from nine in the morning to eleven at night, being resolved, as the chairman expressed it, " to show how the horse was curried." At length, on the 16th of February, their first report was presented to the House. It appeared that they had experienced obstacles from the escape of Knight, from the taking away of some books, and from the defacing of others ; but that the cross-examination of the 240 Pictures from English History. directors and accountants had supplied the deficiency. A scene of infamous corruption was then disclosed. It was found that last year above half a million of fictitious South Sea stock had been created, in order that the profit upon that sum might be disposed of by the directors to facilitate the passing of the bill. The Duchess of Kendal had ^10,000 ; another of the king's favorites, Madame de Platen, with laudable impartiality, had the same sum; nor were the two nieces of the latter forgotten. Against these ladies no steps were, nor, perhaps, could be, taken. But those persons in the administration accused of similar peculation were Secretary Craggs, his father, the postmaster-general, Mr. Charles Stanhope, secretary of the treasury, Mr. Aislabie, and the Earl of Sutherland ; and the report added the various evidence in the case of each. On the very day when this report was read in the Com mons died one of the statesmen accused in it, James Craggs, secretary of state. His illness was the small-pox, then very prevalent, joined, no doubt, to anxiety of mind. But the fate of his father was still more lamentable. A few weeks after ward, when the accusation was pressing upon him, he swal lowed poison and expired. The next case was Aislabie's. It was so flagrant that scarce any member ventured to defend him, and none to di vide the House ; he was unanimously expelled, and sent to the Tower, and afterward great part of his property seized. So great was the rejoicing on Aislabie's conviction that there were bonfires that night in the city. Lord Sunderland now remained. He was charged with having received, through Knight, ^50,000 stock without pay ment, and the public outcry against him was fierce and loud, but, as I believe, unfounded. The charge rested entirely on hearsay testimony, on words which Sir John Blunt said that Knight had said to him ; there was collateral evidence to shake it, and the character of Blunt himself was that of a The South SeA Bubble. 241 dishonest and now ruined and desperate man. It is also remarkable that Sunderland had in fact lost considerably by the South Sea scheme, and that one of his bitterest enemies then accused him, not of having confederated with the directors, but of being their dupe and victim. So strong seemed these considerations, that a large majority (233 against 172) declared the minister innocent. But, notwith standing this acquittal, the popular ferment was too strong for Sunderland to continue at the head of the treasury ; he resigned, and was succeeded by Walpole. His influence at court, however, still continued, and he obtained the appoint ment of Lord Carteret in the room of Secretary Craggs. Lord Mahon\ XXXIX. THE GREAT COMMONER DURING TWO REIGNS. [The reigns of George II. and George III. were characterized by foreign wars. The most brilliant of England's successes in war and diplomacy were won under the ministry of William Pitt, known in history as " The Great Commoner."] Pitt desired power — and he desired it, we really believe, from high and generous motives. He was, in the strict sense of the word, a patriot. He had no general liberality, none of that philanthropy which the great French writers of his time preached to all the nations of Europe. He loved England as an Athenian loved the City of the Violet Crown —as a Roman loved the " maxima rerum Roma." He saw his country insulted and defeated. He saw the national spirit sinking. Yet he knew what the resources of the em pire, vigorously employed, could effect ; and he felt that he was the man to employ them vigorously. " My lord," he said to the Duke of Devonshire, " I am sure that I can save this country, and that nobody else can." 11 242 Pictures from English History. Desiring, then, to be in power, and feeling that his abili ties and the public confidence were not alone sufficient to keep him in power against the wishes of the court and of the aristocracy, he began to think of a coalition with Newcastle. Newcastle was equally disposed to a reconciliation. He, too, had profited by his recent experience. He had found that the court and the aristocracy, though powerful, were not every thing in the state. A strong oligarchical connection, a great borough interest, ample patronage, and secret-service- money might, in quiet times, be all that a minister needed; but it was unsafe to trust wholly to such support in time of war, of discontent, and of agitation. The composition of the House of Commons was not wholly aristocratical ; and, whatever be the composition of large deliberative assemblies, their spirit is always in some degree popular. Where there are free debates eloquence must have admirers and reason must make converts. Where there is a free press the gov ernors must live in constant awe of the opinions of the governed. Thus these two men, so unlike in character, so lately mor tal enemies, were necessary to each other. Newcastle had fallen in November for want of that public confidence which Pitt possessed, and of that parliamentary support which Pitt was better qualified than any man of his time to give. Pitt had fallen in April for want of that species of influence which Newcastle had spent his whole life in acquiring and hoarding. Neither of them had power enough to support himself. Each of them had power enough to overturn the other. Their union would be irresistible. Neither the king nor any party in the state would be able to stand against them. Under these circumstances Pitt was not disposed to pro ceed to extremities against his predecessors in office. Some thing, however, was due to consistency ; and something was The Great Commoner During Two Reigns. 243 necessary for the preservation of his popularity. He did little ; but that little he did in such a manner as to pro duce great effect. He came down to the House in all the pomp of gout, his legs swathed in flannels, his arm dangling in a sling. He kept his seat through several fatiguing days, in spite of pain and languor. He uttered a few sharp and vehement sentences, but during the greater part of the dis cussion his language was unusually gentle. During eleven weeks England remained without a minis try, and in the meantime Parliament was sitting and a war was raging. The prejudices of the king, the haughtiness of Pitt, the jealousy, levity, and treachery of Newcastle, delayed the settlement. Pitt knew the duke too well to trust him without security. The duke loved power too much to be inclined to give security. While they were haggling the king was in vain attempting to produce a final rupture be tween them, or to form a government without them. At one time he applied to Lord Waldegrave, an honest and sensible man, but unpracticed in affairs. Lord Waldegrave had the courage to accept the treasury, but soon found that no ad ministration formed by him had the smallest chance of standing a single week. At length the king's pertinacity yielded to the necessity of the case. After exclaiming with great bitterness, and with some justice, against the whigs, who ought, he said, to be ashamed to talk about liberty while they submitted to be the footmen of the Duke of Newcastle, he notified submission. The influence of the Prince of Wales prevailed on Pitt to abate a little, and but a little, of his high demands ; and all at once, out of the chaos in which parties had for some time been rising, falling, meeting, separating, arose a government as strong at home as that of Pelham, as successful abroad as that of Godolphin. The first measures of the new administration were char acterized rather by vigor than by judgment. Expeditions 244 Pictures from English History. were sent against different parts of the French coast with little success. The small island of Aix was taken, Roche- fort threatened, a few ships burned in the harbor of St. Maloes, and a few guns and mortars brought home as trophies from the fortifications of Cherbourg. But before long conquests of a very different kind filled the kingdom with pride and rejoicing. A succession of victories undoubt edly brilliant, and, as it was thought, not barren, raised to the highest point the fame of the minister to whom the con duct ofthe war had been intrusted. In July, 1758, Louis- bourg fell. The whole island of Cape Breton was reduced ; the fleet to which the court of Versailles had confided the defense of French America was destroyed. The captured standards were borne in triumph from Kensington Palace to the city, and were suspended in St. Paul's Church amid the roar of guns and kettle-drums and the shouts of an immense multitude. Addresses of congratulation came in from all the great towns of England. Parliament met only to decree thanks and monuments, and to bestow, without one murmur, supplies more than double of those which had been given during the war of the Grand Alliance. The year 1759 opened with the conquest of Goree. Next fell Guadaloupe, then Ticonderoga, then Niagara. The Tou lon squadron was completely defeated by Boscawen off Cape Lagos. But the greatest exploit of the year was the achieve ment of Wolfe on the heights of Abraham. The news ofhis glorious death and of the fall of Quebec reached London in the very week in which the Houses met. All was joy and triumph ; envy and faction were forced to join in the general applause. Whigs and tories vied with each other in extolling the genius and energy of Pitt. His colleagues were never talked of or thought of. The House of Commons, the na tion, the colonies, our allies, our enemies, had their eyes fixed on him alone. Scarcely had Parliament voted a monument to Wolfe when The Great Commoner During Two Reigns. 245 another great event called for fresh rejoicings. The Brest fleet, under the command of Conflans, had put out to sea. It was overtaken by an English squadron under Hawke. Conflans attempted to take shelter close under the French coast. The shore was rocky — the night was black — the wind was furious — the Bay of Biscay ran high. But Pitt had infused into every branch of the service a spirit which had long been unknown. No British seaman was disposed to err on the same side with Byng. The pilot told Hawke that the attack could not be made without the greatest dan ger. " You have done your duty in remonstrating," an swered Hawke ; " I will answer for every thing. I com mand you to lay me alongside the French admiral." The result was a complete victory. The year 1760 came; and still triumph followed triumph. Montreal was taken ; the whole province of Canada was subjugated ; the French fleets underwent a succession of disasters in the seas of Europe and America. In the meantime conquests equaling in rapidity, and far surpassing in magnitude, those of Cortes and Pizarro, had been achieved in the East. In the space of three years the English had founded a mighty empire. The French had been defeated in every part of India. Chandernagore had surrendered to Clive, Pondicherry to Coote. Throughout Bengal, Bahar, Orissa, and the Carnatic, the authority of the East India Company was more absolute than that of Acbar or Aurungzebe had ever been. On the continent of Europe the odds were against En gland. We had but one important ally, the King of Prussia, and he was attacked, not only by France, but also by Rus sia and Austria. Yet even on the Continent the energy of Pitt triumphed over all difficulties. Vehemently as he had condemned the practice of subsidizing foreign princes, he now carried that practice further than Carteret himself would have ventured to do. The active and able sovereign of 246 Pictures from English History. Prussia received such pecuniary assistance as enabled him to maintain the conflict on equal terms against his powerful enemies. On no subject had Pitt ever spoken with so much eloquence and ardor as on the mischiefs of the Hanoverian connection. He now declared, not without much show of reason, that it would be unworthy of the English people to suffer their king to be deprived of his electoral dominions in an English quarrel. He assured his countrymen that they should be no losers, and that he would conquer America for them in Germany. By taking this line he conciliated the king, and lost no part of his influence with the nation. In Parliament, such was the ascendency which his eloquence, his success, his high situation, his pride, and his intrepidity had obtained for him, that he took liberties with the House of which there had been no example, and which have never since been imitated. No orator could there venture to re proach him with inconsistency. One unfortunate man made the attempt, and was so much disconcerted by the scornful demeanor of the minister that he stammered, stopped, and sat down. Even the old tory country gentlemen, to whom the very name of Hanover had been odious, gave their hearty ayes to subsidy after subsidy. In a lively contemporary satire — much more lively, indeed, than delicate — this remark able conversion is not unhappily described : "No more they make a fiddle-faddle About a Hessian horse or saddle. No more of continental measures ; No more of wasting British treasures. Ten millions and a vote of credit — 'Tis right. He can't be wrong who did it." The success of Pitt's continental measures was such as might have been expected from their vigor. When he came into power Hanover was in imminent danger, and before he had been in office three months the whole electorate was in The Great Commoner During Two Reigns. 247 the hands of France. But the face of affairs was speedily changed. The invaders were driven out. An army, partly English, partly Hanoverian, partly composed of soldiers fur nished by the petty princes of Germany, was placed under the command of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. The French were beaten in 1758 at Crevelt. In 1759 they re ceived a still more complete and humiliating defeat at Minden. In the meantime the nation exhibited all the signs of wealth and prosperity. The merchants of London had never been more thriving. The importance of several great commercial and manufacturing towns — of Glasgow in par ticular — dates from this period. The fine inscription on the monument of Lord Chatham in Guildhall records the gen eral opinion of the citizens of London, that under his ad ministration commerce had been " united with and made to flourish by war." It must be owned that these signs of prosperity were in some degree delusive. Even as a war minister, Pitt is scarcely entitled to all the praise which his contemporaries lavished on him. We, per haps from ignorance, cannot discern in his arrangements any appearance of profound or dexterous combination. Several of his expeditions, particularly those which were sent to the coast of France, were at once costly and absurd. Our Indian conquests, though they add to the splendor of the period dur ing which he was at the head of affairs, were not planned by him. He had undoubtedly great energy, great determination, great means at his command. His temper was enterprising; and, situated as he was, he had only to follow his temper. The wealth of a rich nation, the valor of a brave nation, were ready to support him in every attempt. In one respect, however, he deserved all the praise that he has ever received. The success of our arms was perhaps owing less to the skill of his dispositions than to the national resources and the national spirit. But that the national spirit rose to the emergency — that the national resources were 248 Pictures from English History. contributed with unexampled cheerfulness — this was un doubtedly his work. The ardor of his spirit had set the whole kingdom on fire. It inflamed every soldier who dragged the cannon up the heights of Quebec, and every sailor who boarded the French ships among the rocks of Brittany. The minister, before he had been long in office, had imparted to the commanders whom he employed his own im petuous, adventurous, and defying character. They, like him, were disposed to risk every thing — to play double or quits to the last — to think nothing done while any thing re mained — to fail rather than not to attempt. For the errors of rashness there might be indulgence. For over-caution, for faults like those of Lord George Sackville, there was no mercy. In other times, and against other enemies, this mode of warfare might have failed. But the state of the French government and of the French nation gave every advantage to Pitt. The fops and intriguers of Versailles were appalled and bewildered by his vigor. A panic spread through all ranks of society. Our enemies soon considered it a settled thing that they were always to be beaten. Thus victory begat victory ; till at last, wherever the forces of the two nations met, they met with disdainful confidence on the one side and a craven fear on the other. The situation which Pitt occupied at the close of the reign of George II. was the most enviable ever occupied by any public man in English history. He had conciliated the king; he domineered over the House of Commons; he was adored by the people; he was admired by all Europe. He was the first Englishman of his time, and he had made En gland the first country in the world. The " Great Com moner " — the name by which he was often designated — might look down with scorn on coronets and garters. The nation was drunk with joy and pride. The Parliament was as quiet as it had been under Pelham. The old party dis tinctions were almost effaced ; nor was their place yet sup- The Great Commoner During Two Reigns. 249 plied by distinctions of a still more important kind. A new generation of country squires and rectors had arisen who knew not the Stuarts. The Dissenters were tolerated ; the Catholics not cruelly persecuted. The Church was drowsy and indulgent. The great civil and religious con flict which began at the Reformation seemed to have ter minated in universal repose. Whigs and Tories, Churchmen and Puritans, spoke with equal reverence of the constitution, and with equal enthusiasm of the talents, virtues, and serv ices of the ministers. A few years sufficed to change the whole aspect of affairs. A nation convulsed by faction, a throne assailed by the fiercest invective, a House of Commons hated and despised by the nation, England set against Scotland, Britain set against America, a rival Legislature sitting beyond the At lantic, English blood shed by English bayonets, our armies capitulating, our conquests wrested from us, our enemies hastening to take vengeance for past humiliation, our flag scarcely able to maintain itself in our own seas — such was the spectacle which Pitt lived to see. But the history of-this great revolution requires far more space than we can at present bestow. We leave the " Great Commoner " in the zenith of his glory. Lord Macaulay. 11* 250 Pictures from English History. XL. GEORGE THE THIRD. [George III. died in 1820, after a reign of sixty years— the longest in English history. No period, perhaps, in the world's history has been more crowded with momentous events. The following sketch is taken from one ofthe lectures delivered by Thackeray on the "Four Georges."] We have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To read the mere catalogue of char acters who figured during that long period would occupy our al lotted time, and we should have all text and no sermon. England has to undergo the revolt of the American colonies ; to submit to defeat and separation ; to shake under the volcano of the French Revolution ; to grapple and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy, Napoleon ; to gasp and rally after that tre mendous struggle. The old society, with its courtly splendors, has to pass away ; generations of statesmen to rise and disappear ; Pitt to follow Chatham to the tomb ; the memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson's and Wellington's glory ; the old poets who unite us to Queen Anne's time to sink into their graves; Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise; Garrick to delight the world with his dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean to leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished theater. Steam has to be invented ; kings to be beheaded, banished, deposed, restored ; Napoleon to be but an episode, and George III. is to be alive through all these varied changes, to accompany his people through all GEORGE III. George the Third. 251 these revolutions of thought, government, society — to survive out of the old world into ours. . . . His mother's bigotry and hatred George inherited with the courageous obstinacy of his own race ; but he was a firm believer where his fathers had been freethinkers, and a true and fond supporter of the Church of which he was the titular defender. . Like other dull men, the king was all his life sus picious of superior people. He did not like Fox ; he did not like Reynolds ; he did not like Chatham, Burke ; he was testy at the idea of all innovations, and suspicious of all innovators. He loved mediocrities — Benjamin West was his favorite painter; Beattie was his poet. The king lamented, not with out pathos, in his after-life, that his education had been neg lected. He was a dull lad brought up by narrow-minded people. The cleverest tutors in the world could have done little, probably, to expand that small intellect, though they might have improved his tastes, and taught his perceptions some generosity. . . . George married the Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg Strelitz, and for years they led the happiest, simplest lives, sure, ever led by married couple. It is said the king winced when he first saw his homely little bride ; but, however that may be, he was a true and faithful husband to her, as she was a faithful and loving wife. They had the simplest pleasures — the very mildest and simplest — little country dances, to which a dozen couples were invited, and where the honest king would stand up and dance for three hours at a time to one tune; after which delicious excitement they would go to bed without any supper, (the court people grumbling sadly at that absence of supper,) and get up quite early the next morning, and perhaps the next night have another dance ; or the queen would play on the spinnet — she played pretty well, Haydn said; or the king would read to her a paper out of the "Spectator," or perhaps one of Ogden's sermons. O, Arcadia ! what a life it must have been ! . . . 2S2 Pictures from English History. The theater was always his delight. His bishops and clergy used to attend it, thinking it no shame to appear where that good man was seen. He is said not to have cared for Shakespeare, or tragedy, much ; farces and pantomimes were his joy ; and especially when the clown swallowed a carrot or a string of sausages, he would laugh so outrageously that the lovely princess by his side would have to say, " My gracious, monarch, do compose yourself." But he continued to laugh, and at the very smallest farces, as long as his poor wits were left him. "George, be a king! " were the words which his mother was forever croaking in the ears of her son ; and a king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried to be. He did his best — he walked according to his lights ; what virtue he knew he tried to practice ; what knowledge he could master he strove to acquire. . . . But, as one thinks of an office almost divine performed by any mortal man; of any single being pretending to control the thoughts, to direct the faith, to order the implicit obedience of brother millions; to compel them into war at his offense or quarrel ; to command, "In this way you shall trade; in this way you shall think; these neighbors shall be your allies, whom you shall help — these others your enemies, whom you shall slay at my orders; in this way you shall worship God " — who can wonder that when such a man as George took such an office on himself, punishment and humiliation should fall upon people and chief? Yet there is something grand about his courage. The battle of the king with his aristocracy remains yet to be told by the historian who shall view the reign of George more justly than the trumpery panegyrists who wrote immediately after his decease. It was he, with the people to back him, that made the war with America ; it was he and the people who refused justice to the Roman Catholics ; and on both questions he beat the patricians. He bribed, he bullied, he George the Third. 2 5.? darkly dissembled on occasion ; he exercised a slippery perse verance and a vindictive resolution, which one almost admires as one thinks his character over. His courage was never to be beat. It trampled North under foot; it beat the stiff neck of the younger Pitt; even his illness never conquered that indomitable spirit. As soon as his brain was clear it resumed the scheme only laid aside when his reason left him ; as soon as his hands were out of the strait-waistcoat, they took up the pen and the plan which had engaged him up to the moment of his malady. I believe it is by persons believing themselves in the right that nine tenths of the tyranny of this world has been perpetrated. And so with respect to old George, even Americans, whom he hated and who conquered him, may give him credit for having quite honest reasons for oppressing them. . . . Of little comfort were the king's sons to the king; but the pretty Amelia was his darling, and the little maiden, prattling and smiling in the fond arms of that old father, is a sweet image to look on. . . . The princess wrote verses herself, and there are some pretty plaintive lines attributed to her which are more touching than better poetry : " Unthinking, idle, wild, and young, I laughed, and danced, and talked, and sung J And proud of health, of freedom vain, Dreamed not of sorrow, care, or pain ; Concluding, in these hours of glee, That aU the world was made for me. "• But when the hour of trial came, When sickness shook this trembling frame, When folly's gay pursuits were o'er, And I could sing and dance no more — It then occurred how sad 'twould be Were this world only made for me." The poor soul quitted it, and, ere yet she was dead, the agonized father was in such a state that the officers round 254 Pictures from English History. about him were obliged to set watchers over him ; and from November, 1810, George III. ceased to leign. All the world knows the story of his malady ; all history presents no sadder figure than that of the old man, blind and deprived of rea son, wandering through the rooms of his palace, addressing imaginary parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly courts. I have seen his picture, as it was taken at this time, hanging in the apartments of his daughter, the Landgravine of Hesse Hombourg, amid books and Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over his breast — the star of his famous Order still shining on it. He was not only sightless — he be came utterly deaf. All light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God were taken away from him. Some slight lucid moments he had ; in one of which the queen, desiring to see him, entered the room, and found him singing a hymn and accompanying himself at the harpsichord. When he had finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding with a prayer for himself, that it might please God to avert his heavy calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to submit. He then burst into tears, and his reason again fled. What preacher need moralize on this story; what words save the simplest are requisite to tell it ? It is too terrible for tears. The thought of such a misery smites me down ip submission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch Supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Dis penser of life, death, happiness, victory. " 0 brothers ! " I said to those who heard me first in America — " O brothers ! speaking the same dear mother tongue — O comrades ! ene mies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by the royal corpse, and call a truce to battle ! Low George the Third. 255 he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest ; dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne, buffeted by rude hands, with his children in revolt, the darling of his old age killed before him untimely, our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, ' Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little ! ' ' Vex not his ghost — O, let him pass — he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer !' Hush, Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave ! Sound, Trumpets, a mournful march ! Fall, Dark Curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy ! " William Makepeace Thackeray. XLI. THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. [Full as the long reign of George III. was of signal events, not one of them had so great an influence on the history of Europe as the over throw of Napoleon Bonaparte, after fifteen years of struggle, in which En gland was ever the moving spirit, and generally the leading actor. This wonderful sketch of the closing act of the bloody drama is condensed from Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables."] If it had not rained on the night between the 17th and 18th of June, 1815, the future of Europe would have been changed : a few drops of rain, more or less, made Napoleon oscillate. In order to make Waterloo the end of Austerlitz, Providence only required a little rain, and a cloud crossing the sky at a season when rain was not expected was sufficient to overthrow an empire. The battle of Waterloo could not begin till half-past eleven, and that gave Blucher time to come up. Why ? Because the ground was moist, and it was necessary for it to become firmer that the artillery might 256 Pictures from English History. maneuver. Napoleon was an artillery officer, and always showed himself one : all his battle plans are made for pro jectiles. Making artillery converge on a given point was his key to victory. He treated the strategy of the opposing general as a citadel, and breached it ; he crushed the weak point under grape-shot, and he began and ended his battles with artillery. Driving in squares, pulverizing regiments, breaking lines, destroying and dispersing masses, all this must be done by striking, striking, striking incessantly, and he confided the task to artillery. It was a forminable method, and, allied to genius, rendered this gloomy pugilist of war invincible for fifteen years. On June 16, 1815, he counted the more on his artillery because he held the numerical superiority. Wellington had only one hundred and fifty-nine guns, while Napoleon had two hundred and forty. Had the earth been dry and the artillery able to move, the action would have begun at six A. M. It would have been won and over by two P. M., three hours before tbe Prussian interlude. Those who wish to form a distinct idea of the battle of Waterloo need only imagine a capital A laid on the ground. The left leg of the A is the Nivelles road, the right one the Genappe road, while the string of the A is the broken way running from Ohaine to Braine l'Alleud. The top of the A is Mont St. Jean, where Wellington is ; the left lower point is Hougomont, where Reille is with Jerome Bonaparte ; the right lower point is la Belle Alliance, where Napoleon is. A little below the point where the string of the A meets and cuts the right leg is La Haye Sainte ; and in the center of this string is the exact spot where the battle was concluded. It is here that the lion is placed, the involuntary symbol of the heroism of the old Guard. The triangle comprised at the top of the A between the two legs, and the string, is the plateau of Mont St. Jean ; the dispute for this plateau was the whole battle. The Battle of Waterloo. 257 At about four o'clock P. M. the situation of the English army was serious. The Prince of Orange commanded the center, Hill the right, and Picton the left. The Prince of Orange, wild and intrepid, shouted to the Dutch Belgians : " Nassau Brunswick, never yield an inch ! " Hill, fearfully weakened, had just fallen back on Wellington, while Picton was dead. At the very moment when the English took from the French the flag of the 105th line regiment, the French killed General Picton with a bullet through his head. The battle had two bases for Wellington, Hougomont and La Haye Sainte. Hougomont still held out, though on fire, while La Haye Sainte was lost. Wellington, restless but impassive, was mounted, and re mained for the whole day in the same attitude, a little in front ofthe old mill of Mont St. Jean, which still exists, and under an elm-tree, which an Englishman, an enthusiastical Vandal, afterward bought for two hundred francs, cut down, and carried away. Wellington was coldly heroic ; there was a shower of cannon-balls, and his aid-de-camp, Gordon, was killed by his side. Lord Hill, pointing to a bursting shell, said to him, " My lord, what are your instructions, and what orders do you leave us, if you are killed ? " " Do as I am doing," Wellington answered. To Clinton he said, laconically, "Hold out here to the last man." The day was evidently turning out badly, and Wellington cried to his old comrades of Vittoria, Talavera, and Salamanca, " Boys, can you think of giving way ? Remember old England!" About four o'clock the English line fell back all at once ; nothing was visible on the crest of the plateau but artillery and sharpshooters ; the rest had disappeared. The regi ments, expelled by the French shell and cannon-balls, fell back into the hollow, which at the present day is intersected by the lane that runs to the farm of Mont St. Jean. A re trograde movement began ; the English front withdrew. 258 Pictures from English History. Wellington was recoiling. " It is the beginning of the re treat," Napoleon cried. Napoleon hurriedly turned and sent off a messenger at full speed to Paris to announce that the battle was gained. Na poleon was one of those geniuses from whom thunder issues, and he had just found his thunder-stroke ; he gave Milhaud's cuirassiers orders to carry the plateau of Mont St. Jean. They were three thousand five hundred in number, and formed a front a quarter of a league in length ; they were gigantic men mounted on colossal horses. They formed twenty-six squadrons, and had behind them, as a support, Lefebvre Desnouette's division, composed of the one hun dred and six gendarmes, the chasseurs of the Guard, eleven hundred and ninety-seven sabers, and the lancers of the Guard, eight hundred and eighty lances. They wore a hel met without a plume, and a cuirasse of wrought steel, and were armed with pistols and a straight saber. In the morn ing the whole army had admired them when they came up, at nine o'clock, with bugles sounding, while all the bands played, "Veillons au sainte de V Empire,'' in close column, with one battery on their flank, the others, in their center, and deployed in two ranks, and took their place in that pow erful second line so skillfully formed by Napoleon, which having at its extreme left Kellermann's cuirassiers and on its extreme right Milhaud's cuirassiers, seemed to be en dowed with two wings of steel. The aid-decamp, Bernard, carried to them the emperor's order. Ney drew his saber and placed himself at their head, and the mighty squadron started. Then a formidable spec tacle was seen ; the whole of this cavalry, with raised sabers, and standards flying, and formed in columns of division, de scended, with one movement and as one man, with the pre cision of a bronze battering-ram opening a breach, the hill of the Belle Alliance. They entered the formidable valley in which so many men had already fallen, disappeared in the The Battle of Waterloo. 259 smoke, and then, emerging from the gloom, reappeared on the other side of the valley, still in a close, compact column, mounting at a trot, under a tremendous canister fire, the frightful muddy incline of the plateau of Mont St. Jean. They ascended it, stern, threatening, and imperturbable ; between the breaks in the artillery and musketry fire the colossal tramp could be heard. As they formed two divis ions they were in two columns. Wathier's division was on the right, Delord's on the left. At a distance it appeared as if two immense steel lizards were crawling toward the crest of the plateau ; they traversed the battle-field like a flash. Nothing like it had been seen since the capture of the great redoubt of the Moskova by the heavy cavalry ; Murat was missing, but Ney was there. It seemed as if the mass had become a monster, and had but one soul ; each squadron undulated and swelled like the rings of a polype. This could be seen through a vast smoke which was rent asunder at intervals ; it was a pell-mell of helmets, shouts, and sabers, a stormy bounding of horses among cannon, and a disci plined and terrible array; while above it all flashed the cuirasses like the scales of the dragon. Such narratives seemed to belong to another age ; something like this vision was doubtless traceable in the old Orphean epics describing the men-horses, the ancient hippanthropists, those Titans with human faces and equestrian chest, whose gallop esca- laded Olympus — horrible, sublime, invulnerable beings, gods and brutes. It was a curious numerical coincidence that twenty-six battalions were preparing to receive the charge of these twenty-six squadrons. Behind the crest of the plateau, in the shadow of the masked battery, thirteen En glish squares, each of two battalions and formed two deep, with seven men in the first lines and six in the second, were waiting, calm, dumb, and motionless, with their muskets, for what was coming. They did not see the cuirassiers, and the cuirassiers did not see them ; they merely heard this tide of 260 Pictures from English History. men ascending. They heard the swelling sound of three thousand horses, the alternating and symmetrical sound of the hoof, the clang of the cuirasses, the crash of the sabers, and a species of great and formidable breathing. There was a long and terrible silence, and then a long file of raised arms, brandishing sabers, and helmets and bu. gies and standards, and three thousand heads with great mustaches, shouting, " Long live the Emperor ! " appeared above the crest. The whole of this cavalry debouched on the plateau, and it was like the commencement of an earthquake. All at once, terrible to relate, the head of the column of cuirassiers facing the English left reared with a fearful clamor. On reaching the culminating point of the crest, furious and eager to make their exterminating dash on the English squares and guns, the cuirassiers noticed between them and the English a trench — a grave. It was the hollow road of Ohain, It was a frightful moment — the ravine was there, unexpected, yawning, almost precipitous, beneath the horses' feet, and with a depth of twelve feet between its two sides. The second rank thrust the first into the abyss ; the horses reared, fell back, slipped with all four feet in the air, crushing and throwing their riders. There was no means of escaping ; the entire column was one huge projectile. The force acquired to crush the English crushed the French, and the inexorable ravine would not yield till it was filled up. Men and horses rolled into it pell-mell, crushing each other, and making one large charnel-house of the gulf, and when this grave was full of living men the rest passed over them. Nearly one third of Dubois's brigade rolled into this abyss. This commenced the loss of the battle. Other fatalities were yet to arise. Was it possible for Napoleon to win the battle ? We answer in the negative. Why? On account of Wellington, on account of Blucher? No : on account of God. Bonaparte, victor at Waterloo, The Battle of Waterloo. 261 did not harmonize with the law of the nineteenth century. It was time for this vast man to fall ; his excessive weight in human destiny disturbed the balance. This individual alone was of more account than the universal group : such ple thoras of human vitality concentrated in a single head — the world mounting to one man's brain — would be mortal to civ ilization if they endured. The moment had arrived for the incorruptible supreme equity to reflect, and it is probable that the principles and elements on which the regular gravitations of the moral order as of the material order depend, complained. Streaming blood, overcrowded grave- yards, mothers in tears, are formidable pleaders. When the earth is suffering from an excessive burden there are mysterious groans from the shadow which the abyss hears. Napoleon had been de nounced in infinitude, and his fall was decided. Waterloo is not a battle, but a transformation of the universe. The battery was unmasked simultaneously with the ravine •-sixty guns and thirteen squares thundered at the cui rassiers at point-blank range. The intrepid General Delord gave a military salute to the English battery. The whole of the English field artillery had entered the squares at a gal lop, the cuirassiers had not even a moment for reflection. The disaster of the hollow way had decimated but not dis couraged them ; they were of that nature of men whose hearts grow large when their number is diminished. Waither's column alone suffered in the disaster ; but De- lord's column, which he had ordered to wheel to the left, as if he suspected the trap, arrived entire. The cuirassiers rushed at the English squares at full gallop, with hanging bridles, sabers in their mouths, and pistols in their hands. There are moments in a battle when the soul hardens a man, so that it changes the soldier into a statue, and all flesh be comes granite. The English battalions, though fiercely as sailed, did not move. Then there was a frightful scene. All the faces of the English squares were attacked simulta- 262 Pictures from English History. neously, and a frenzied whirl surrounded them. But the cold infantry remained impassive ; the front rank kneeling received the cuirassiers on their bayonets, while the second fired at them ; behind the second rank the artillerymen loaded the guns, the front of the square opened to let an eruption of canister pass, and then closed again. The cui- raissiers responded by attempts to crush their foe; their great horses reared, leaped over bayonets, and landed in the center of the four living walls. The cannon-balls made gaps in the cuirassiers, and the cuirassiers made breaches in the squares. Files of men disappeared, trampled down by the horses, and bayonets were buried in the entrails of these cen taurs. Hence arose horrible wounds, such as were probably never seen elsewhere. The squares, where broken by the impetuous cavalry, contracted without yielding an inch of ground ; inexhaustible in canister, they produced an explo sion in the midst of the assailants. The aspect of this com bat was monstrous ; these squares were no longer battalions but craters ; these cuirassiers were no longer cavalry, but a tempest — each square was a volcano attacked by a storm, the lava combatted the lightning. The extreme right square, the most exposed of all, as it was in the air, was nearly annihilated in the first attack. It was formed of the 75th Highlanders ; the piper in the cen ter, while his comrades were being exterminated around him, was seated on a drum, with his pibroch under his arm, and playing mountain airs. These Scotchmen died, thinking of Ben Lothian, as the Greeks did, remembering Argos. A cuirassier's saber, by cutting through the pibroch and the arm that held it, stopped the tune by killing the player. The cuirassiers, relatively few in number, and reduced by the catastrophe of the ravine, had against them nearly the whole English army ; but they multiplied themselves, and each man was worth ten. Some Hanoverian battalions, how ever, gave way ; Wellington saw it, and thought of his cav- The Battle of Waterloo. 263 airy. Had Napoleon at this moment thought of his infantry the battle would have been won, and this forgetfulness was his great and fatal fault. All at once the assailers found themselves assailed ; the English cavalry were on their backs, before them the squares, behind them Somerset with the one thousand four hundred Dragoon Guards. Somerset had on his right Dornberg with the German chevau-legers, and on his left Trip with the Belgian carbineers. The cuirassiers, attacked in the flank and in front, before and behind, by in fantry and cavalry, were compelled to make a front on all sides. But what did they care ? They were a whirlwind — their bravery became indescribable. In addition, they had behind them the still thundering battery, and it was only in such a way that these men could be wounded in the back. One of these cuirasses with a hole through the left scapula is in the Waterloo Museum. For such Frenchmen nothing less than such Englishmen was re quired. It was no longer a melee, it was a headlong fury, a hurricane of flashing swords. In an instant the one thousand four hundred dragoons were only eight hundred f and Fuller, their lieutenant-colonel, was dead. Ney dashed up with Lefebvre Desnouette's lancers and chasseurs ; the plateau of Mont St. Jean was taken and retaken, and taken again. The cuirassiers left the cavalry to attack the infantry, or, to speak more correctly, all these men collared each other and did not lose their hold. The squares still held out after twelve assaults. Ney had four horses killed under him, and one half of the cuirassiers remained on the plateau. This strug gle lasted two hours. The English army was profoundly shaken ; and there is no doubt that, had not the cuirassiers been weakened in their attack by the disaster of the hollow way, they would have broken through the center and decided the victory. This extraordinary cavalry petrified Clinton, who had seen Talavera and Badajoz. Wellington, three parts vanquished, admired heroically ; he said in a low 264 Pictures from English History. voice, "Splendid!" The cuirassiers annihilated seven squares out of thirteen, captured or spiked sixty guns, and took six English regimental flags, which three cuirassiers and three chasseurs of the Guard carried to the emperor before the farm of la Belle Alliance. Wellington's situation had grown worse. This strange battle resembled a fight between two savage wounded men who constantly lose their blood while continuing the strug gle. Which would be the first to fall ? The combat for the plateau continued. Wellington felt himself giving way, and the crisis was close at hand. The cuirassiers had not suc ceeded, in the sense that the English center had not been broken. Every body held the plateau, and nobody held it ; but, in the end, the greater portion remained in the hands of the English. Wellington had the village and the plain ; Ney, only the crest and the slope. Both sides seemed to have taken root in this mournful soil. But the weakness of the English seemed irremediable, for the hemorrhage of this army was horrible. Kempt, on the left wing, asked for re- enforcements. " There are none." Wellington replied. Al most at the same moment, by a strange coincidence which depicts the exhaustion of both armies, Ney asked Napoleon for infantry, and Napoleon answered, " Infantry ? where does he expect me to get them ? Does he think I can make them ? " The Iron Duke remained firm, but his lips blanched. The Austrian commissioner, Vincent, and the Spanish commis sioner, Alava, who were present at the battle, thought the duke lost. At five o'clock Wellington looked at his watch, and could be heard muttering, " Blucher, or night." It was this moment that a distant line of bayonets glis tened on the heights on the side of Frischemont. This was the climax of the gigantic drama. Every body knows Napoleon's awful mistake ; Grouchy expected, BlucheT coming up, death instead of life. Destiny The Battle of Waterloo. 265 has such turnings as this : men anticipate the throne of the world, and perceive St. Helena. Had the action begun two hours sooner it would have been over at four o'clock, and Blucher would have fallen upon the battle gained by Napo leon. The rest is known — the irruption of a third army ; the battle dislocated ; eighty-six cannon thundering simulta neously ; a new battle rushing at night-fall on the weakened French regiments ; the whole English line resuming the of fensive, and pushed forward ; the gigantic gap made in the French army by the combined English and Prussian batter ies ; the extermination, the disaster in front, the disaster on the flank, and the guard forming line amid this fearful con vulsion. As they felt they were going to death they shouted, '' Long live the Emperor ! " History has nothing more strik ing than this death-rattle breaking out into acclamations. The sky had been covered the whole day, but at this very moment, eight o'clock in the evening, the clouds parted in the horizon, and the sinister red glow of the setting sun was visible through the elms on the Nivelles road. It had been seen to rise at Austerlitz. Each battalion of the Guard, for this denouement, was com manded by a general ; Friant, Micheh Roguet, Harlot, Mal let, and Pont de Morvan were there. When the tall bearskins of the grenadiers of the Guard with the large eagle device appeared, symmetrical in line, and calm in the twilight of this fight, the enemy felt a respect for France ; they fancied they saw twenty victories entering the battle-field with out stretched wings, and the men who were victors, esteeming themselves vanquished, fell back ; but Wellington shouted, " Up, Guards, and take steady aim." The red regiment of English Guards, which had been lying down behind the hedges, rose ; a storm of canister rent the tricolor flag waving above the heads of the French ; all rushed forward, and the supreme carnage commenced. The Imperial Guard felt in the darkness the army giving way around them, and the vast 12 266 Pictures from English History. staggering of the rout ; they heard the cry of " Sauve qui peut!" substituted for the "Vive I'Empereur!" and with flight behind them they continued to advance, hundreds fall ing at every step they took. None hesitated or evinced timidity ; the privates were as heroic as the generals, and not one attempted to escape suicide. Ney, wild, and grand in the consciousness of accepted death, offered himself to every blow in this combat. He had his fifth horse killed under him here. Bathed in perspira tion, with a flame in his eye and foam on his lips, his uniform unbuttoned, one of his epaulettes half cut through by the saber-cut of a horse-guard, and his decoration of the great eagle dinted by a bullet — bleeding, muddy, magnificent, and holding a broken sword in his hand, he shouted, " Come and see how a Marshal of France dies on the battle-field ! " But it was in vain — he did not die. He was haggard and indig nant, and hurled at Drouet d'Erlon the question, "Are you not going to get yourself killed ? " He yelled amid the roar of all this artillery crushing a handful of men, " O ! there is nothing for me ! I should like all these English cannon- balls to enter my chest ! " You were reserved for French bullets, unfortunate man. The rout of the rear of the Guard was mournful ; the army suddenly gave way on all sides simultaneously, at Hougo mont, La Haye Sainte, Papelotte, and Plancenoit. The cry of " treachery " was followed by that of " Sauve qui peut! " An army which disbands is like a thaw — all gives way, cracks, floats, rolls, falls, comes into collision, and dashes forward. Ney borrows a horse, leaps on it, and, without hat, stock, or sword, dashes across the Brussels road, stopping at once En glish and French. He tries to hold back the army, he recalls it, he insults it, he clings wildly to the rout to hold it back. The soldiers fly from him, shouting, " Long live Marshal Ney ! " In vain does Napoleon build a wall of what is left of the Guard ; in vain does he expend his own special squad- The Battle of Waterloo. 267 rons in a final effort. Guyot, who led the emperor's squadrons to the charge, falls beneath the horses of English dragoons. Napoleon gallops along the line of fugitives, harangues, urges, threatens, and implores them ; all the mouths that shouted "Long live the Emperor!" in the morning, remained wide open ; they hardly knew him. The Prussian cavalry, who had come up fresh, dash forward, cut down, kill, and exter minate. The artillery horses dash forward with the guns ; the train soldiers unharness the horses from the caissons and escape on them ; wagons overthrown, and with their four wheels in the air, block up the road and supply opportunities for massacre. Men crush each other, and trample over the dead and over the living. A multitude wild with terror fill the roads, the paths, the bridges, the plains, the hills, the valleys, and the woods, which are thronged by this flight of forty thousand men. Cries, desperation ; knapsacks and muskets cast into the wheat ; passages cut with the edge of the sabers ; no comrades, no officers, no generals recognized — an indescribable terror. Ziethen sabering France at his ease. The lions become kids. Such was this fight. Alas ! and who was it flying in this way ? The grand army. Did this vertigo, this terror, this overthrow of the greatest bravery that ever astonished history take place without a cause ? No. The shadow of a mighty right hand is cast over Waterloo ; it is the day of destiny, and the force which is above man produced that day. Hence the terror, hence all those great souls laying down their swords. Those who had conquered Europe fell crushed, having nothing more to say or do, and feeling a terrible presence in the shadow. On that day the perspective of the human race was changed, and Waterloo is the hinge of the nineteenth century. The disappearance of the great man was necessary for the advent of the great age, and He who cannot be answered undertook the task. The panic of the heroes admits of explanation ; 268- Pictures from English History. in the battle of Waterloo there is more than a storm ; there is a meteor. At night-fall Bernard and Bertrand seized by the skirt of his coat, in a field near Genappes, a haggard, thoughtful, gloomy man, who, carried so far by the current of the rout, had just dismounted, passed the bridle over his arm, and was now, with wandering eye, returning alone to Waterloo. It was Napoleon, the mighty somnambulist of the shattered dream, still striving to advance. Victor Hugo. XLII. THE TURNING-POINT AT THE ALMA. [England and France became the allies of Turkey against Russia in the beginning of 1854, and the Crimean War began. The object of the ex pedition was to attack Sebastopol, the great Russian stronghold. The allies landed at Eupatoria, on the west coast of the Crimea, on September 14. A week later they reached the river Alma, and found fifty thousand Russians under Prince Menschikoff posted on the rocky heights of its south bank, and prepared to dispute their passage. The battle, September 25, 1854, was hotly contested. Not till after three hours' hard fighting did the allies succeed in forcing the passage of the river. Then the scaling of the southern heights was commenced. After giving orders for the general advance, Lord Raglan, accompanied only by his staff, rode across the Alma at a point between the English and the French armies, mounted the opposite slope, and took up his position on a knoll far in advance of either of the allied armies, and in the very heart of the enemy's position. From this spot he commanded a view of nearly the whole ground destined to be the scene of the English attack. The writer was beside Lord Raglan on the knoll.] Lord Raglan looked upon that part of the Russian army which confronted ours ; he saw it in profile ; he saw down into the flank of the Causeway batteries, which barred the mouth ofthe pass; and, beyond, he saw into the shoulder of the Great Redoubt, then about to be stormed by Codrington's The Turning-Point at the Alma. 269 brigade. Above all, he saw, drawn up with splendid pre cision, the bodies of infantry which the enemy held in Kourgand o HUl. t 1 T3 ei 0) o Russian I I Reserves. Russian Right. ^^.^.River Alma. Causewayt t t t Batteries. Lord Raglan. English Army. Russian I I Reserves. i — t Russian Left. French Army. reserve. They were massed in two columns. The formation of each mass looked close and perfect, as though it had been made of marble and cut by rule and plumb-line. These troops, being in reserve, were, of course, some way in the rear of the enemy's batteries and his foremost bat talions, but they were only nine hundred yards from the eye of the English general ; for it was Lord Raglan's strange and happy destiny to have ridden almost into the rear of the positions, and to be almost as near to the enemy's reserves as he was to the front of their array. All this — now told with labor of words — Lord Raglan saw at a glance ; and at the same moment he divined the fatal perturbation which would be inflicted upon the enemy by the mere appearance of our head-quarter staff in this part of the field. The knoll, though much lower than the summit of the telegraph height, stood out bold and plain above the pass. It was clear that even from afar the enemy would make out that it was crowned by a group of plumed officers. It would not, Lord Raglan thought, occur to any Russian general that fifteen or twenty staff officers, whether French or English, could have reached the knoll without having thousands of 270 Pictures from English History. troops close at hand. The enemy's generals would, therefore, infer that a large proportion of the allied force had won its way into the heart of the Russian position. This was the view which Lord Raglan's mind had seized when at the very mo ment of crowning the knoll, he looked round and said, "Our presence here will have the best effect." Then, glancing down as he spoke into the flank of the Cause way batteries, and carry ing his eye round to the enemy's infantry re serves, Lord Raglan said, " Now, if we had a couple of guns here!" His wish was instantly seized by Colonel Dick son and one or two other officers. They rode off in all haste. The rest of the group which had followed Lord Raglan remained with him upon the summit of the knoll, and every one, facing eastward and taking out his glass, began to scan the ground destined to be assailed by the English troops. The Light Division had not then begun to emerge from the thick ground and the channel of the river, but presently some small groups, and afterward larger gatherings, of the red-coats appeared upon the top of the river's bank, on the Russian side ; and at length, seen in profile by Lord Raglan, The Turning-Point at the Alma. 271 there began the tumultuous onset of Codrington's brigade against the Great Redoubt. Lord Raglan knew that the distance between him and the scene of the struggle at the Redoubt was too great to allow of his then tampering with it; for any order that he might send would lose its worth in the journey, and tend to breed confusion. And it was not in his way to assuage his im patience by making impotent efforts. Watching the onslaught of Codrington's brigade, Lord Raglan had seen the men ascend the slope and rush up over the parapet of the Great Redoubt. Then moments, then whole minutes— precious minutes— elapsed, and he had to bear the anguish of finding that the ground where he longed to see the supports marching up was still left bare. Then — a too sure result of that default — he had to see our soldiery re linquishing their capture and retreating in clusters down the hill. This was the condition of things when, having been hurried down to the ford, and dragged through the river, and up over steep rugged ground, the two guns for which Lord Raglan had prayed were brought up at length to the summit of the knoll. They were guns belonging to Turner's battery, and they were already crossing the river when Dickson came upon them. The two pieces were soon unlimbered, and one of them— for the artillerymen had not all been able to keep pace — was worked by Dickson, with his own hands. The guns were pointed upon the flank of the Causeway batteries. Every one watched keenly for the result of the first shot. The first shot failed. Some one said, " Allow a little more for the wind ; " and the words were not spoken as though they were a quotation from " Ivanhoe," but rather in a way showing that the speaker knew something of artillery practice. The next shot, or the next" shot but one, took effect upon the Causeway batteries. It struck, they say, a tumbril which stood just in the rear of the guns. 272 Pictures from English History. It presently became a joyful certainty that the Causeway batteries exposing their flank to the fire from the knoll could not hold their ground ; and in a few moments a keen-eyed officer, who was one of the group around Lord Raglan, cried out, with great joy, " He is carrying off his guns ! " And this was true. The field-pieces which formed the Causeway batteries were rapidly limbered up, and dragged to another ground far up in the rear. With the two great columns of infantry, which constituted the enemy's reserves, it fared no better. After not more than two failures, the gunners got their range, and our nine-pound ers plowed through the serried masses of the two Russian columns, cutting lanes through and through them. Yet for some minutes the columns stood firm. And even when the still increasing havoc at length overruled the punctilio of those brave men, it seemed to be in obedience to orders, and not under the stress of any confusing terror, that the two great columns gave way. They retreated in good order. Our gunners then tried their pieces upon the Vladimir battalions, and although the range was too great to allow of their striking the column, they impressed the Russian com mander with a contrary belief. He was sure that these troops were reached by the guns on the knoll ; and it will be seen by and by that this his belief was one of the causes which helped to govern his movements. This was the time when the great column of the Oughtz corps— being fired, it seemed, with a vehement spirit— was still marching down from the Kourgane Hill, with a mind to support the Vladimir battalions and enable them to press the retreat of our soldiery, then coming down in clusters from the Great Redoubt; but the disasters which Lord Raglan had that moment inflicted upon the enemy, by the aid of the two guns on the knoll, made it natural for the Russian gener als, who saw what was done, to stop short in any forward movement. The Turning-Point at the Alma. 273 The Ouglitz column, as we have seen, was stopped in the midst of its eager advance ; and, for want of the support which these troops had been going to lend, the triumphant Vladimir column was brought to a halt on the site of the Great Redoubt. So, here was the spell which now for several minutes had been governing the battle. The apparition of a score of plumed horsemen on this knoll may have had more or less to do with the resolve which led the Russian general to dis mantle the Great Redoubt ; but, at all events, this apparition and the fire of Lord Raglan's two guns had enforced the withdrawal of the Causeway batteries, had laid open the entrance of the pass, had shattered the enemy's reserves, had stopped the onward march of the Ouglitz battalions, and had chained up the high-mettled Vladimir in the midst of its triumphant advance. A. W. Kinglake. 12* 27 i Pictures from English History. CHRONOLOGY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. [Note. — The figures in parenthesis refer to the page in the body of the work on which the event or person is further mentioned. Names of English sovereigns are in bold-faced type.] I. THE ROMAN PERIOD. 55 B. C. to 410 A. D. 55 B. C. — First invasion of Britain by the Romans under Julius Csesar. (14.) 54 B. C. — Second invasion by Caesar. Overthrow of King Cassi vellaunus in battle. (14.) 43 A.D. — Roman reconquest and settlement. 50. — King Caractacus defeated, and taken captive to Rome. (15.) When he saw the wealth of Rome he exclaimed, " Can a people possessed of such magnificence at home envy me my humble cot tage in Britian ! " 61. — Queen Boadicea, after inflicting much injury on the Romans, is defeated, and commits suicide rather than fall into Roman hands. (16.) The Christian religion first preached in Britain. In the reign of Nero, Boadicea had been taken prisoner, and scourged in the presence of the Roman army. She took fearful revenge in the destruction of several Roman plantations and 70,000 Roman colonists. 78. — Agricola completes the conquest of Britain, and much im proves the island. (17.) 121. — Roman Emperor Adrian visits Britain, and builds the wall from the Tyne to the Solway, to repel the invasions of the Picts. 210. — The Emperor Severus visits Britain, and constructs the great northern wall across the island. (17, 18.) The wall of Severus was constructed of cemented stone, was 68 miles long, 12 feet high, and 8 feet thick. It long served the purpose for which it was built, and traces of it still remain. 286. — The Roman General Carausius becomes independent sov ereign of Britain ; is assassinated after seven years. Chronology. 275 j06. The Emperor Constantius, father of Constantine the Great, dies at York. 410. — Rome, divided, weakened, and hastening to her fall, aban dons Britain. (18.) The Britons frequently appealed to Rome for help. One of these appeals was thus: "To Actius, thrice Consul. The groan of the Britons. — The barbarians drive us into the sea; the sea throws us back on the barbarians ; so that we have nothing left to us but the wretched choice of being either drowned or butchered." II. ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD. 410 TO 827 A. D. 410 to 449. — Britain ruled by native kings. (17, 18.) 449. — First immigration of the Saxons. (21.) 455. — War breaks out between Saxons and Britons. 467.-— Arthur, king of Britons, successfully resists the invaders. Slain in 542. (23, 24.) 495.— Cerdic, the great Saxon leader, arrives; crowned King of Wessex, 521 ; and becomes founder of the line of early English kings. (21.) 457 to 586. — Seven kingdoms, at various dates, established ; called The Heptarchy. 570.— Death of Gildas, first British historian. 597. — The spiritual conquest of Britain begins in the landing of missionaries from Rome under Augustine. (26-31.) A Christian Church had existed in Britain long before this. Eusebius mentions the apostles having preached in the British Isles. The martyrdom of St. Alban in England took place A. D. 286. The missionaries from Rome, indeed, found a Christian Church there, acknowledging allegiance to the Irish Church, and suppressed it with bloody hands. 680.— Caedmon, the first English poet, dies. (32.) 688. — Ina, king of Wessex. First code of Saxon laws in 709. 735-— Death of " The Venerable Bede," author of " An Ecclesi astical History of England." (26, 32.) 787.— First arrival of Danes in England. 824.— Termination of the Saxon Heptarchy ; and 827.— Egbert becomes first king of all England. 276 Pictures from English History. III. EARLY ENGLISH KINGS. 827 TO IO13. 827. — Egbert. 832-834. — Wars with Danish invaders. 838— Ethelwolf. 851. — Severe battles with the Danes. 857.— Ethelbald. Renewed Danish invasions. 860. — Ethelbert. Renewed Danish invasions. 866. — Ethelred. Edmund, the under-king of East Anglia, murdered by the Danes, for refusing to renounce Christianity. Ethelred fights nine great battles with the Danes. 871.— Alfred the Great. (33-38.) " There is no other name in history to compare with his." — Free man. Alfred the Truth-Teller — A great mind, a great character, a great opportunity, and a great career. 877. — Alfred hiding from the Danes in a cowherd's cottage at Athelney. (34.) 878. — Overthrow of the Danes by Alfred. Guthrum, their leader, and other chiefs, baptized, and settled in North England on the Danelagh. (37.) 880.— Alfred builds the first English fleet, and, in 882 and 885, gains great naval victories over the Danes, and drives the invaders away, 893-897. — Last Danish attacks on Alfred, under Hastings, de feated. Hastings and his family taken prisoners, kindly treated, and released. (38.) 901. — Edward I. (the Elder) is acknowledged as over-lord by the King of Scotland. 924. — Athelstan. A brave and a wise king. " The culmination of the glory and power of Saxon England.'' 937. — Battle of Brunanburgh ; defeat of a great alliance by Athel stan ; five kings slain. Dunstan, the politician-priest, rises. (41-45.) 941. — Edmund. (42.) 946. — The king murdered, at a banquet, by an outlaw. 946. — Edred. The first who was styled " King of Great Brit ain." Dunstan made Abbot of Glastonbury. (42.) Chronology. 277 055. — Edwy. Insult offered by Dunstan to Edwy and his bride, at their wedding-feast. Dunstan banished. The dominant clergy tort ure and put to death the queen. Edwy dies broken-hearted. (43.) 959. Edgar (the Peaceable.) 960.— Dunstan recalled and made Archbishop of Canterbury. (44.) 973. — Eight tributary kings row Edgar's barge upon the river Dee. (44.) Edgar causes the extirpation of wolves by offering bounties. 975.— Edward (the Martyr.) (45, 46.) 975-978. — Contests between the regular and secular clergy. Arch bishop Dunstan enforces celibacy. Rise of the Benedictine monks in England ; Dunstan in absolute power. 978. — Edward murdered by his stepmother, while drinking a cup of wine at her door. (46.) 978.— Ethelred (the Unready.) (47.) 991. — First land-tax in England. Figures of arithmetic introduced. 991-1013. — Repeated invasions of the Danes. Large tributes paid to induce them to depart, called " Danegelt," (Danes'-money.) 1012. — General massacre of the Danes resident in England. 1013. — Sweyn, the Danish sovereign, triumphs in England, and proclaims himself its king. Ethelred flees to Normandy. 1014, — Ethelred returns, and dies. 1016— Edmund Ironsides divides the rule with Canute ; and, the next year, is assassinated. IV. THE DANISH LINE. IOI3 TO 1041. 1613-1016.— Sweyn, Danish, versus Ethelred, Saxon. 1016-1035.— Canute, (Knut,) Danish, versus Edmund Ironsides. (48.) 1019.— Earl Godwin (Celt) rises. Distinguishes himself in war in Denmark ; marries Canute's daughter. (51, 52.) 1036.— Harold Barefoot. "A hard-drinking, misbelieving Dane." 1039.— Hardicanute. A distinguished drunkard in a nation of sots. The first act of his reign he dug up his brother's body, cut off the head, and threw the remains in the Thames. Reimposes the " Danegelt." Drops dead in the midst of a debauch, and ends the Danish line, in 1042. 278 Pictures from English History. V. SAXON-ENGLISH KINGS RESTORED. IO41 TO 1066. Edward, (the Confessor,) son of Ethelred the Unready and Emma, sister of the Duke of Normandy, seated by the influence of Earl Godwin, marries the earl's daughter Edith. (No issue.) Acces sion 1042, death 1066, reign 24 years. Edward was called " The Confessor" from his austere piety and his munificent founding of Westminster Abbey. His piety did not prevent his maltreating his wife Edith, whose gentle manners and virtues inspired praise from the Norman monks, who hated her father. " As the thorn is the parent of the rose, so is Godwin the father of Edith," ran one of these sonnets. 1049. — Banishment of Earl Godwin, and confiscation ofhis estates through Norman influence. William, duke of Normandy, visits En gland, and obtains a promise of the reversion of the crown to himself. 1050. — Return of Godwin and expulsion of the Norman courtiers. 1052. — Death of Godwin. His son Harold succeeds to the earl dom. (53.) 1054. — Usurpation ofthe throne of Scotland by Macbeth, and his subsequent overthrow by Siward, earl of Northumberland, and Mac duff and Malcolm. (See Shakespeare's play, " Macbeth.") 1063. — Harold conquers the Welsh, who decapitate their renowned King Griffith. 1065. — Harold is wrecked on the French coast ; the Duke of Nor mandy compels him to swear on the sacred relics to support his (William's) claim to the English crown, and releases him. Tostig, Harold's brother, earl of Northumberland, is disinherited and ban ished for cruelty and tyranny with his subjects. 1066. — Edward the Confessor dies January 5, and is buried in Westminster Abbey, which he built. 1066. — ISarold II. chosen king bythe Witanagemot. Accession Jan. 5, 1066; slain in battle Oct. 24, 1066; reign 9 months. (51-53.) Duke of Normandy demands the English crown. Refused. Sept. 25. — Tostig and Hardraada, king of Norway, invade North umberland. Harold defeats the invaders at Stamford Bridge, near York. Tostig and Hardraada slain. (55.) Chronology. 279 Just before this engagement Harold offered his brother peace and restoration to his earldom. " And what terms for my ally, Har draada ? " asked Tostig. " Six feet of earth, or, as he is tall, perhaps a little more." Tostig declared he would not desert his friend, and ordered the battle to begin. " Who would have thought," says Scott, " that Harold within a few brief days would himself possess no more ofhis kingdom than the share which he allotted, in his wrath, to the Norwegian invader ? " Sept. 28. — William of Normandy with 60,000 men lands at Pevin- sey, near Hastings. (55.) Oct. 24. — The battle of Hastings, or Senlac : Harold slain, and the Norman invasion successful. (55-60.) " They [the Normans] boasted of fighting well and talking with ease ; methodical and persevering conquerors, and fond of scribbling on paper." — TAINE. TI. THE NORMAN KINGS OF ENGLAND. Four Kings. 1066 to 1154. 88 Years. William I. (the Conqueror.) Accession 1067, death 1087, reign 20 years. (53.) A learned and powerful prince ; at the age of eight he could read Cassar's Commentaries, and " at the age of fifteen he wielded the most redoubtable sword in Christendom." 1068. — The tax of Danegelt reimposed. Ringing of the curfew- bell instituted. 1069. — The lands, treasures, preferments, and women of England distributed among the Norman soldiers ; several insurrections created thereby. (54. 58. 59.) " There was splendid plunder going, and it was splendidly given away." 1070.— The feudal system introduced ; all lands held by tenures or fiefs from the crown. 1072.— William, having overrun England, invades Scotland, and subdues Malcolm III. 1073.— Great insurrection in the north, under Hereward. The English " camp of refuge," in the Island of Ely. Northumberland laid waste, so that for sixty years it remained wild. 280 Pictures from English History. 1077-79. — Rebellion of William's eldest son, Robert, who demands Normandy. Robert wounds his father in battle at Gerberoy, Nor mandy. Reconciliation. " When summoned to abdicate in favor qf his sons, William re plied, grimly, ' I am not wont to undress till I go to bed.' " 1080. — Doomsday Book began. A survey to facilitate the complete dispossession of the English, and to give the king control over the property and feudal service in arms of the whole people. It was seven years in finishing. " It was the Doomsday Book which, binding this young society in a rigid discipline, made of the Saxons the Englishman of our day." — TaiNE. 1085. — William lays waste the greater portion of Hampshire, includ ing sixty villages, to make a hunting-ground called the New Forest. The cruel forest laws enacted. 1087. — William fatally injured by a fall of his horse in the siege of Nantes, Normandy ; dies at Rouen, Sept. 9. " He conquered, cajoled, crushed, pacified, ruled absolutely : En gland was first Normanized, then Williamized." William II., (Rufus,) son of William the Conqueror. Acces sion 1087, shot in New Forest 1100, reign 13 years. Insurrection in favor of Robert of Normandy, headed by Odo, bishop of Bayeaux, his uncle, suppressed by William aided by En glish recruits. 1089. — Archbishop Lanfranc, William's tutor, a very learned prelate and statesman, died. William seized the revenues of the vacant see, 1091. — War in Normandy between the brothers: Rufus retains many towns. Malcolm III. and his son, of Scotland, killed at the siege of Alnwick Castle. 1096. — Robert resigns Normandy to Rufus for money. 1 100. — Rufus slain in the New Forest of his father, August 1, by an arrow shot by Sir Walter Tyrrell. Peter the Hermit preached the Crusades during this reign. (60-66.) Henry I., (Beauclerc,) son of William I. Accession 1100, death 1 135, reign 35 years. Marries Matilda of Scotland, of the old Saxon line, and thus unites the English and Norman blood. "His abilities were high even for one of the acute Normans." Chronology. i loo. — " The Charter of Liberties " granted by Henry ; afterward becomes the model of the Great Charter of John. noi. — Rebellion of Norman barons in England; Beauclerc over throws them by the aid of 30,000 English volunteers. 1 106. — Battle of Tenchbray, Normandy. Beauclerc overcomes his brother Robert, and consigns him to a twenty-eight years' imprison ment in Cardiff Castle, where he dies in 1134. "Poor, generous, brave, dissolute, heedless, trusting Robert." — ¦ Dickens. 1 109. — Archbishop Anselm, the peer and companion of Lanfranc, died. 1 1 20.— Loss of the "White Ship " off the coast of France, and death of Prince William, only son of Beauclerc. Henry makes his nobles swear fealty to his daughter Matilda as his successor. " He never smiled again." 1127. — Matilda marries (second alliance) Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou ; from which sprang the dynasty of Plantagenets, so called because of the count wearing a tuft of broom-plant in his hat. (Fr., Planta Genesta.) 1 135. — Henry dies in Normandy, leaving his possessions to his daughter Matilda. Henry received the title Beauclerc (Fine Scholar) from his early love of study, and from his having made a translation ofvEsop's Fables. He abolished the curfew laws. Stephen, of Blois, grandson of William I. by his daughter Adele, seizes the throne in the absence of Matilda. Accession 1 135, death 11 54, reign 19 years. " His complaisance of manner and his readiness to sit and regale with low people made him popular." 1 137. —Robert, earl of Gloucester, and David, king of Scotland, uncles of Matilda, rise in her favor. Beginning of 16 years' war of succession. (66-74.) 1 1 38.— Battle of the Standards, at Northallerton; King David beaten. Geoffiey of Monmouth, 4he famous chronicler, died. 1 1 39.— Matilda lands in England; surprised and captured in Arundel Castle ; released. Stephen defeats the barons at Ely and other places. (69.) 1 140.— Stephen defeated and taken prisoner at the battle of Lincoln. (70.) Matilda declared Queen of England. Stephen's queen, Maud, 282 Pictures from English History. drives Queen Matilda from London, and besieges her at Oxford. She escapes over the snow in white garments. Gloucester and oth er of Matilda's adherents captured by Queen Maud. Stephen ex changed for Gloucester, and the war goes on. At the battle of Lincoln, Stephen was left almost alone in the field, gnashing his teeth with rage, and so fierce that no man dared to ap proach him. He drove back all his assailants with his battle-ax, " to the eternal renown of his courage." At length his trusty weapon snapped, and then he drew his sword which was soon shivered with the violence of his strokes. He was thrown on his knees by a blow from a large stone which had been hurled at him, but even in this extremity he refused to give up his sword to any but the Earl of Gloucester. 1 147. — Gloucester dies, and Matilda quits England. 1 143. — William of Malmsbury, another noted chronicler, dies. 1 1 52. — Henry Plantagenet, son of Matilda, invades England for his own rights. 1 1 53. — Peace of Wallingford: Stephen to rule during life; Henry to succeed him. 1 1 54. — Oct. 25, Death of Stephen. VII. THE PLANTAGENETS. Eight Kings. 1154 to 1399. 245 Years. Henry II. First Plantagenet. Grandson of Henry I. Acces sion 1 1 54, death 11 89, reign 35 years. "He was of middle stature, so that among little men he was not over much, nor among tall men looked he little. His head, round in token of great wit, his curly hair clipped short, shows a lionous vis age. High insteps, he has legs able in riding. Long champion arms and broad breast. His court is a school for well-lettered men, and in his conversation with them he is ever discussing questions. None is more truthful than our king in speaking, nor in alms more bountiful." — Peter of Blois. 1 156. — Thomas & Becket made chancellor. 1157. — Henry subdues the Welsh. 1 1 59. — War with France. Nicholas Breakspear becomes Pope Adrian IV., the only Englishman who ever sat on the pontifical throne. Chronology. 283 1 162. — Becket made Archbishop of Canterbury to bring the clergy more under royal authority. The king and Becket quarrel regarding Church and State authority. 1 164.— The Constitutions of Clarendon, defining clerical subjection to civil laws, adopted by the Council of Clarendon, and signed by Becket and the clergy. Becket subsequently recants, and the pope condemns the articles. November 2, Becket is condemned by the Council, and flees to Rome. 1 169. — Partial reconciliation between Henry and Becket, in Nor mandy. Becket returns to England. During Becket's absence the king had caused his son Henry to be crowned King of England and his successor. The king, who was an over-fond parent, himself served his son at the table, and re marked, " My son, there is no prince in Europe who has such a serving-man at table." " No great condescension," sneered the prince, in allusion to his father's parent, the Earl of Anjou, "for the son of an earl to wait on the son of a king." When Becket returned to England he broke the truce between himself and the king by ex pelling all the clergy who had assisted at the coronation of the prince without his consent as primate of the English Church. (75.) 1 1 70.— Murder of Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. (75-79.) Two years after his death Becket was canonized by the pope and the anniversary ofhis death set apart as the festival of" St Thomas of Canterbury." In 1220 Henry III. set his bones in jewels and de posited them in a splendid shrine, which for three centuries continued to be the object of one ofthe great pilgrimages of Christendom, and of offerings of immense value. These pilgrimages still live in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," literature having proved more enduring than superstition. At the Reformation Henry VIII. broke up the shrine, and caused Becket's bones to be burned and scattered to the winds. 1 171.— All Ireland, except Ulster, subjected to England. 1 173-— Revolt of the queen and four sons of Henry, (Henry, Rich ard, Geoffrey, and John,) who join France against him. " All Europe saw with astonishment the best and most indulgent of parents at war with his whole family." 1 174.— Penance and scourging of King Henry at the tomb of Becket to secure popularity. (80-83.) Ranulph de Glanville, by a bold dash, captures the King of Scotland and sixty knights invadine England. (83.) S 1181.— Codification of Laws by De Glanville, C.-J. 284 Pictures from English History. 1185-87. — Renewed rebellion of the princes, aided by France. King Henry once caused to be painted and sent to his sons a picture of a nest of young eagles picking out the eyes of their parent. 1 1 89. — Henry dies of grief at Chinon, Normandy, during a cam paign against " the Rebellious Eaglets," cursing them. On his sick-bed the list of his allied enemies was read to him. The name of his favorite son, John, was first of these. Turning his face to the wall he exclaimed, " Now let every thing go as it will! I care no more for the world or myself." And muttering, " Shame, shame on a conquered king ! " he passed sullenly away. Richard I., ("Cceur de Lion,") son of Henry II. Accession 1189, death 1199, reign 10 years. " A strong, restless, burly man with one idea always in his head, and that the very troublesome one of breaking the heads of other men."— DICKENS. " Heart of steel and hand of iron, proud of heart, loose of life, bloody of hand." " A fighter and nothing more." " That magnificent warrior." 1 1 89. — Massacre of Jews at Richard's coronation. By extortion and simony Richard raises money for the Crusade. " The modes by which the lion-hearted king raised money appear to combine the attributes of the tryant and the swindler." — Knight. ugo. — Richard, King Philip of France, the Duke of Austria, and other princes go upon the Third Crusade. 1 191.— Richard and Philip quarrel, and Philip returns to France. John, Richard's brother, plots his deposition from the English throne. (84.) 1 1 92.— Returning homeward Richard is wrecked in Austria and held for ransom by the duke. (84.) Richard was captured disguised as a turnspit in an inn kitchen. A costly signet ring betrayed him. The cause of Duke Leopold's enmity against Richard was this : During the Crusade, upon a cer tain occasion, Askelon had to be hastily fortified against the Saracens, every body working. The Duke of Austria declined to help, declaring contemptuously that he was no stone-mason. Whereupon the duke was incontinently kicked by King Richard until he took hold with the rest. He remembered the kicks and the enforced toil. 1 1 94. — Great sums raised in England, and Richard is liberated; pardons John. " I will try to forget my injuries as soon as John will forget my pardon." Chronology. 285 1 198.— Richard takes revenge on King Philip in the battle of Gisors, France. ngg, — Richard fatally wounded in an assault on a castle in Li moges. Robin Hood and his merry foresters flourished. (85.) " He was a national hero — Saxon in the first place, and waging war against bishops and archbishops, whose sway was so heavy." His feats survived in rude ballads for four hundred years. John, son of Henry II., brother of Richard I. Accession 11 99, death 1216, reign 17 years. "Foul as it is, hell is defiled by the presence of John." " Licen tious, superstitious, cowardly, blood-thirsty, treacherous, and cor rupt." 1200. — John deserts his own wife and abducts the wife of the Count de Ia Marche. 1202.— Prince Arthur, John's nephew, rightful heir to the throne, captured and soon after put to, death. (See Shakespeare's play, " King John.") 1203.— General revolt against John in Normandy ; he flees to En gland ; his barons refuse to support his cause ; his continental pos sessions fall away to France. 1207. — John disputes with the pope the right of appointing bishops. He defies the pope, and the kingdom is laid under an interdict. John confiscates the livings and goods of all the clergy who obey the inter dict; some of them put to death by torture. 1209. — John is excommunicated. 1210. — Heavy taxes laid on the clergy by John. 121 1. — The pope absolves John's subjects from their allegiance. 1212. — The pope declares John deposed, and gives his crown to the French king. A French fleet to enforce the claim destroyed by the English. 1213. — John yields when strongest, surrenders his crown to the pope's legate, who wears it three days and then bestows it on John as feoff of the pope, at a yearly tribute of 1,000 marks. 1 2 14. — John attempts to punish his barons for refusing support ; they league together for new guarantees, under Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury. (98.) 1 21 5. — Jan. The barons demand the Great Charter. May 24. The 286 Pictures from English History. barons occupy London. John agrees to their terms. June 15. Magna Charta signed at Runnymede. (100-102.) John employs foreign mercenaries to make war on his subjects. The crown offered to Prince Louis of France by the confederated barons. 1216.- — Louis brings a French army to England. The barons swear fealty. John dies of fever during the hostilities. One ac count is that he was given poison in a dish of peaches by monks at Newark. Sterling money first coined, and chimneys first used during this reign. Henry III., of Winchester, son of John. Accession 1216, death 1272, reign 56 years. Meek, profligate, and faithless, his failings, like John's, contributed to England's advancement. 1216. — Oct. 26. Henry crowned ; aged nine years. 1217. — May 20. Louis defeated at Lincoln by the English barons. Aug. 24. French re-enforcements for Louis overwhelmed in the Channel by Hubert de Burgh. Sept. 14. Louis abandons England and his pretensions. 1227. — Henry infringes the charter: determined opposition of barons. Beginning of struggles between king and Parliament regarding royal spending-money and the observance of the charter. In order to obtain grants from Parliament he took oaths to support the charter as many as thirty times, and as often broke them. The barons did indeed push the king and court hard for money. In the year 1249 the king and court were so indigent that they were obliged to invite themselves to the tables of wealthy citizens, and even to beg contributions of bread and meat from subjects. Never theless, any grant of money was speedily squandered in court dissipa tions. Henry on one occasion caused his royal warrant to be served on Lord Clifford for some misdemeanor, who not only refused to ap pear, but forced the king's officer to eat the writ, parchment, seal, and all. A general state of lawlessness and disorder prevailed. 1238. — Rise of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester; marries the king's sister. The people called him " Sir Simon the Righteous." The founder of the English Parliament ; a gallant soldier and wise statesman. (103.) Chronology. 287 1252. — Henry and De Montfort quarrel, and De Montfort leads the barons' defense of the charter. " The Mad Parliament," at Oxford. Barons meet, armed, and ap point a committee of government to supervise the acts of the king. Henry swears to support their acts. 1260. — Matthew Paris, chronicler, died. 1261. — Henry dismisses the Committee of Government, and breaks his oath. 1262. — " The Barons' War " begins. There were high scenes between king and nobles. He said to the Earl of Norfolk, " Sir earl, remember whose vassal you are. I could issue my royal warrant to thresh out all your corn." "Do," retorted the earl, defiantly, "and I will send you the heads of the threshers." The queen made herself unpopular by her extravagance and by trying to levy a tax, called "Queen's-hithe," on all goods un laden at London wharves. Her barges was mobbed on the Thames with all sorts of missiles, and cries of " Down with the witch ! Drown her ! " She barely escaped with her life. She soon after retired to France. 1264.— May 12. The battle of Lewes. Henry, his brother, King of the Romans, and Prince Edward taken prisoners by Simon de Mont fort. The treaty called " The Mise of Lewes " practically supersedes the king in authority. 1265.— The first representative Parliament summoned by Simon de Montfort. (103-105.) Aug. 4. The battle of Evesham ; barons defeated, and De Montfort slain. (106-108.) 1270.— Prince Edward sails for the Holy Land. 1272.— Henry dies during his son's absence. Coal first used for firing ; linen sheets introduced by the Flems and the manners compass from the East ; distilling learned from the Moors; gunpowder invented. Westminster Abbey was rebuilt by Henry III. Roger Bacon, called " Friar Bacon " and " the Ad mirable Doctor," the founder of English philosophy, rose. (Born 1214, died 1292.) v Edward I., son of Henry III. Accession 1272, death 1307, reign 35 years. "The Last ofthe Crusaders." "The English Justinian." " The Hammer of the Scots," His true motto was " I keep faith." The best beloved of the Plantagenets. 1272.— A regency appointed during Edward's absence, 288 Pictures from English History. 1274. — Coronation of Edward and his queen. 1282. — Conquest and annexation of Wales. King Llewellyn slain. During this campaign Edward's first son was born in Wales, and presented to the native chiefs as "a prince born in Wales, and who could not speak English," which they had demanded. The heir-ap parent of the British crown has since been called the Prince' of Wales. 1289. — Final expulsion of the Jews from England, with great cruelty. 1292. — Edward, chosen umpire of a disputed succession to the throne of Scotland, declares himself over-lord of Scotland, and " sentences Baliol to a degraded throne." 1295. — Scotland and France at war with England. First House of Commons meets. 1296.— Battle of Dunbar; capture of Berwick, and massacre of its inhabitants by Edward. He removes the sacred " Stone of Scone " from Scotland to Westminster Abbey. The Stone of Scone was reputed to have been the pillow on which Abraham rested his head in the vision of heaven, and to have been brought to Scotland by the first Christian missionaries from Ireland. The kings of Scotland were long crowned sitting on it, and it was believed the rule of her kings should extend wherever the stone was taken. Since Edward's time it has remained in Westminster Abbey, and all his successors have been crowned sitting in the chair of which it forms a part. 1297. — Rise of Wallace, the Scottish patriot; he defeats the En glish at Sterling. Edward forced by the barons to the "Confirma tion ofthe Charters," another step in the advance of constitutional freedom. The barons were as high-stomached with Edward as they had been with his father. The king summoned them as vassals to go with him to the invasion of France, which they refused to do. To the Earl of Norfolk he said, angrily, " By the Lord, sir earl, you shall either go or hang." " By the Lord, sir king, I will neither go nor hang," retorted the earl. And he did neither. 1298. — Battle of Falkirk ; Scottish defeat and loss of 15,000 men. 1301. — Parliament denies the authority of the pope in temporal matters. 1 304. Betrayal and capture of Wallace ; is executed as a traitor, Aug. 23, 1305, his body cut in pieces and sent to different parts of the kingdom. Chronology. 289 I3o6.— Rise of Robert Bruce. Crowned King of Scotland. 1307.— May 10. Battle of Loudon Hill ; Bruce defeats the English. July 7. Edward dies in the midst of the campaign. The dying king enjoined on his son, it is s.iid, not to inter the father's remains until the conquest of Scotland should have been completed, and directed his bones to be carried at the head of the army until that consummation. Though this injunction was dis regarded, his body lay unburied for some months, and once in two years, until 1771, the coffin was opened and the cerements renewed. But no Plantagenet ever ruled over Scotland. Windmills, spectacles, and paper introduced in this reign. Edward IL, son of Edward I. Accession 1307, deposed 1327, reign 20 years. A weak, innocent, and unfortunate prince. 1308.— Order of Knights Templar suppressed. ^n .__« Ordinances of Westminster" banishing the king's favorite, Gaveston, and giving more power to the barons ; Gaveston returns in 1312, and is beheaded. 1314,— June 23. Battle of Bannockburn. (108-113.) Scarcely had the nation recovered from the fearful shock of Ban nockburn when it was attacked by both pestilence and famine. The harvests failed and murrain broke out among the cattle. The king and his family found difficulty in obtaining bread for the royal table. Corn rose to ten times its previous value, and the people were com pelled to subsist on roots, horses, dogs, and loathsome animals, and sometimes on human flesh. The country was overrun by robbers, and the kingdom was a scene of violence, the court torn by cabals and treasonable factions. 1322. — Battle of Boroughbridge ; rebellious barons under the Earl of Lancaster defeated ; the earl and several other noblemen executed. 1326. — Treason of Queen Isabella and her paramour, Mortimer ; the king deposed and afterward murdered in Berkeley Castle. Edward III., son of Edward II. Accession 1327, death 1377, reign 50 years. "Every yeoman throughout his realm was drawn closer to the king, who wept bitterly at the news of his father's death, though it gave him a crown ; whose fiercest burst of vengeance was called out by an insult to his mother ; whose crosses rose as memorials of his love and sorrow at every spot where his wife's bier rested. " I loved her tenderly in her life-time," wrote Edward to Eleanor's friend, the 13 290 Pictures from English History. Abbot of Clugny ; " I do not cease to love her now she is dead." Few scenes in our history are more touching than that which closes the long contest over the Charter, when Edward stood face to face with his people in Westminster Hall, and, with a sudden burst of tears, owned himself frankly in the wrong. His life was pure, his piety manly and sincere. — Green. 1330. — Coup d'etat ; Edward, taking control into his own hands, seizes and beheads Mortimer, and sends his mother into retirement. Edward and a few knights made their way by night through a secret under-ground passage into the castle of Nottingham, and seized Mor timer and his guards. The queen, en deshabille, rushed in screaming, " Spare Mortimer ! Have pity on my gentle Mortimer ! " 1333. — The Scots defeated at Halidon Hill. " Outbreaking of war with France saved Scotland, by drawing the strength of England across the Channel." 1339. — Beginning of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. 1340.— Edward, claiming the Fr,ench crown by right of his mother, Isabella of France, wins a great naval victory off Sluys, Flanders. 1346.— Battle of Cressy ; signal defeat of the French by an inferior force of English. (11 3-1 18.) Battle of Neville's Cross ; King Da vid, of Scotland, taken prisoner by Edward's Queen, Philippa. 1 347 .—Capitulation of Calais after a year's siege. (119-123.) 1349.— Brilliant festivities in England over the victories ; the Order of the Garter established ; the Black Death puts an end to the re joicing, and carries off a third of the population of England and of Europe. 1356.— Battle of Poitiers, France; French defeated; King John and his son taken prisoners by the Black Prince. Although no hope of victory remained, King John continued fight ing in the thickest of the melee, until he found himself almost alone, and surrounded by dense masses of his enemies. At this juncture the Prince of Wales, nearly fainting from fatigue, dispatched the Earl of Warwick to obtain intelligence of the king's fate; and this nobleman was but just in time to rescue the unhappy monarch from a crowd of Gascon and English soldiers who surrounded him, and were contending about the right to his ransom. John was then con ducted to the pavilion of the Prince of Wales, who treated his illus trious captive with every consideration. He even waited upon him at supper, stood behind his chair, and entertained him with soothing and consolatory discourse. Chronology. 291 1360. — Treaty of Bretigny ; by it Edward renounces his preten sions to the crown of France in consideration of territorial cession. 1369. — The reform tenets of Wycliffe first promulgated. 1376. — Death of the Black Prince. 1377. — Duke of Lancaster supports Wycliffe ; riot in London, Lan caster's palace ransacked. Cannon first used at Cressy ; cloth-weaving introduced from Flan ders ; pleadings at law ordered to be made in English, not in French ; the Lords and Commons first sat in different chambers in this reign ; Sir John Froissart, a graphic chronicler, flourished Richard IL, grandson of Edward III. Accession 1377, de posed 1399, reign 22 years. An unfortunate prince, the victim of cabals and baronial disorder. " Brilliant abilities marred by fitful inconstancy and a mean spirit of revenge." 1381. — Wat Tyler's insurrection. (124-129.) 1388. — Battle of Chevy Chase; Harry Hotspur defeated by the Scots under Douglas ; the subject of the fine old ballad which Sir Philip Sidney declared "more stirred his blood than a trumpet-call." Contest between Richard and the confederate lords, ending in 1389. — Richard's ascendency over the regents, his uncles. One day in May, at a sitting of the Lords Appellant, Richard turned suddenly to Gloucester, his uncle, and said : " Uncle, how old am I ? " " Your majesty is in his twenty-second year," replied the unsuspecting duke. "Then,", said Richard, " I must be old enough to manage my own affairs. I have served a longer tutelage than any ward in my kingdom. I thank you, my lords all, for the trouble you have taken in my behalf thus far, but I shall not require your services any longer." He demanded the great seal and keys, made up a new ministry, and soon came out a full-fledged tyrant. 1398. — The Earl of Norfolk and Henry of Bolingbroke, earl of Lancaster, banished on charges of treason. 1399. — Henry of Lancaster returns from banishment, deposes the king, and is acknowledged King Henry IV. End of the Plantagenet line. (I34-I39-) Richard had rebuilt Westminster Hall, and the first sitting of Par liament therein was to decree his dethronement and ruin. 292 Pictures from English History. VIII. THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER AND YORK. Five Kings. 1399 to 1485. S6 Years The following titles to " Hall's Chronicle " form an epitome of the history of the eight succeeding reigns : " I. The Unquiet Time of King Henry the Fourth." " II. The Victorious Acts of King Henry the Fifth." " III. The Troublous Season of King Henry the Sixth." " IV. The Prosperous Reign of King Edward the Fourth." " V. The Pitiful Life of King Edward the Fifth." " VI. The Tragical Doings of King Richard the Third." " VII. The Politic Governance of King Henry the Seventh." " VIII. The Triumphant Reign of King Henry the Eighth." Henry IV. Accession 1399, death 1413, reign 14 years. " One of the coldest, hardest, most unamiable, but most energetic and useful of our kings." — White. " Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," Shakespeare makes him say. 1400.— The ex-King Richard murdered in Pontefract Castle. 1401. — Statute for burning heretics passed; Rev. W. Sawtre, the first English martyr, burned. Welsh rebellion under Owen Glen- dower. 1402. — Battle of Homildon Hill ; Scdtch defeat ; Douglas captured. 1403. — Insurrection of the Percies in. Northumberland ; Harry Hotspur killed in the battle of Shrewsbury. 1405. — Another insurrection in Northumberland ; the Archbishop of York and others captured and beheaded. 1408. — Battle of Barnham Moor; the Earl of Northumberland and others slain, and the last insurrection against Henry terminated. 1413-^Death of Henry IV. in Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey. " I, sinful wretch, by the grace of God king of England and of France, and lord of Ireland, bequeath to Almighty God my sinful soul and the life I have misspended, whereof I put me wholly at his grace and mercy." So wrote King Henry IV. in his last will, when the frightful reality of leprosy had disenchanted the rapturous dream of usurpation. Chronology. 293 Henry V., son of Henry IV. Accession 1413, death 1422, reign 9 years. "The conqueror of his enemies and of himself." "Harsh and cruel." "Attained an austere piety unusual among his predeces sors." 1414. — Persecution ofthe Lollards ; several burned. (132, 133.) 141 5. — Invasion of France; battle of Agincourt, October 25, in which 10,504 English defeat 50,000 French. (139-144.) 1417. — Second invasion of France; civil discords and anarchy in France aid English conquest ; Sir John Oldcastle burned for heresy. (132O 1419. — Treaty of Troves; King Charles of France acknowledges Henry as his heir in succession to the French crown, and gives him his daughter Catherine in marriage. 1422. — Henry enters Paris in triumph, and shortly after dies in camp. " Huns ie the heavens with Mack, yield day to night 1 Comets, importing change ot times and states, Brandish your crystal tresses in the skv, And with them scourge the bad revolting stars That have consented unto Henry's death I England ne'er lost a king ol so much worth." In this reign London was first lighted by lanterns ; John Huss and Jerome of Prague, German reformers, were burned ; Sir Richard Whittington was Lord Mayor of London and a famous architect. Henry VL, son of Henry V., crowned King of both England aud France 1422, deposed 1461, murdered in the Tower 1471. "A poor, pale shadow of a king." Pious, weak, imbecile, a calamity to his realm. This age produced two French girls, his superiors in all manly qualities, viz., his wife, Margaret of Anjou, and loan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans. 1424-29.— Continued successes of the English in France. 1429.— Rise of Jeanne d'Arc, " the Maid of Orleans," and deliver ance of France. I431-— Jeanne d'Arc burned by the English for heresy. Henry crowned in Paris. 1450.— Jack Cade's insurrection fomented by the Duke of York. (H5.) 1455- — Rebellion ofthe Duke of York, and beginning of the Wars of the Roses ; Yorkists, white rose ; Lancastrians, red rose. (146.) 294 Pictures from English History. First battle of St. Albans ; Yorkists victorious, King Henry taken prisoner. (147.) 1459. — Battle of Bloreheath ; Yorkist victory. Rise of Warwick, " The King-maker." (147.) " The man whose hand built a throne, and whose word dispersed an army." 1460. — June. Battle of Northampton ; Yorkist victory. (147, 148.) Treaty providing that York should succeed to the throne on the death of Henry VI. (148.) Dec. 31. Battle of Wakefield Green; Lancastrians win ; York is slain. (149.) 1461. — Feb. 1. Battle of Mortimer's Cross ; Yorkist victory. Feb. 17. Second battle of St. Albans; Lancastrian victory; King Henry delivered from his captors. Mar. 4. York enters London, and is de clared King Edward IV. (149.) Mar. 28. Battle of Towton ; York ists win ; King Henry, Queen Margaret, and Prince Edward fly to Scotland. (150.) June 29. Edward IV. crowned. In this reign printing was invented. " The Hundred Years' War," begun in 1346 by Edward III., for his right to the French throne by his mother's title, terminated in the final abandonment of the claim by Henry VI., in 1453. Edward IV. Accession 1461, death 1483, reign 22 years. " He had some good points, but he was selfish, careless, sensual, and cruel." "Had the sole redeeming virtue of personal courage." " The founder of The New Monarchy." " Profound political ability." 1464. — Lancastrians defeated at Hedgley Moor and Hexham. 1469. — Quarrels between Edward and Warwick. Edward virtu ally a prisoner in Warwick's castle. Reconciliation. (151.) 1470. — Rising of Lancastrians, and fresh quarrels between Ed ward and Warwick. Warwick flees to Normandy, takes sides with Queen Margaret, and invades England. Edward flees to Flanders. Henry VI. released from the Tower, and restored to the throne. 1471. — Return of Edward; battle of Barnet, April 30; Warwick defeated and slain ; King Henry again sent to the Tower. (152—161.) May 4. Battle of Tewksbury ; Lancastrians defeated ; Queen Mar garet and the Prince of Wales taken ; the prince murdered. May 22. King Henry murdered in the Tower. 1478. — Duke of Clarence murdered in the Tower. 1483.— Death of Edward IV. Printing introduced into England by Caxton. Chronology. 295 [From the preface of the first book printed in England by William Caxton :] " Forasmuch as in the writing of the same my pen is worn, my hand weary and not steadfast, mine eyes dimmed with overmuch looking on the white paper, and my courage not so prone and ready to labor as it hath been, and that age creepeth on me daily and feebleth all the body, and also because I have promised divers gentle men and to my friends to address to them, as hastily as I might, the said book, therefore I have practiced and learned at my great charge and dispense to ordain this said book in print, after the manner and form as ye may see, and is not written with pen and ink as other books be, to the end that every man may have them at once ; for all the books of this story here emprynted as ye see, were begun in one day, and also finished in one day." Richard III., brother of Edward IV., wrested the scepter from Edward V., infant son of Edward IV., July 6, 1483 ; killed on Bos- worth-Field 1485, reign 2 years. " Harsh and vindictive in his relations to the great, liberal and benevolent to the masses of the people." " Most of the stories of his heinous crimes became current during the reign of his successor, whose object was to strengthen his own weak claim to the throne by blacking the character of his predecessor." 1483. — Lancastrian uprising suppressed. Buckingham beheaded. 1485. — Henry, earl of Richmond, invades England, defeats and kills Richard on Bosworth-Field, and is proclaimed King Henry VII. End of the Wars of Roses and of the royal lines of Lancaster and York. (162-166.) IX. THE HOUSE OF TUDOR. Five Sovereigns. 1485 to 1603. 118 Years. Henry VII., descended from Edward III. by John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster ; married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., and so united the houses of York and Lancaster. Accession 1485, death 1509, reign 24 years. " His temper silent, jealous, but essentially commonplace. He looked with dread and suspicion on the revival of letters." " The destroyer of chivalry, of freedom, of public honor, and private inde pendence." " Combination of tyranny and meanness, a royal swind ler." 296 Pictures from English History. i486. — Lambert Simnel, the pretender, personates Edward, earl of Warwick ; is crowned in Dublin " King Edward VI. ; " defeated and made prisoner in the battle of Stoke, June 16, 1487 ; made scullion in the king's kitchen. (166.) 1491. — Perkin Warbeck's pretension. Claims to be Richard, duke of York, second son of Edward IV., and takes the title " Richard IV." (166-170;) in 1493 is acknowledged by the King of France and by the Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV., as rightful King of England ; in 1496 King James of Scotland acknowledges " Richard IV. ; " gives him his cousin, Lady Gordon, in marriage, and invades England in his behalf fruitlessly ; in 1497 " Richard IV." invades England, is repulsed and captured. 1492. — Discovery of America. 1497. — Cabot discovers Newfoundland under the auspices of Henry VII. 1498. — De Gama doubles the Cape of Good Hope. 1499. — "Richard IV." and the imbecile boy, Earl of Warwick, ex ecuted for treason. 1 504. — Henry's eldest daughter, Margaret, married to James IV. of Scotland, whence sprang the Stuart dynasty, and occurred the union of the two kingdoms. 1507. — Extortions of Henry through his emissaries, Simpson and Dudley. As an instance of the miserly habits of King Henry VII., the fol lowing letter from the widowed princess, Catharine of Arragon, wife of Henry's eldest son, deceased, to her father is given : " Since I came to England I have not had a single maravedi, except a certain sum which was given me for food, and this is such a sum that it did not suffice without my having many debts in London ; and that which troubles me most is to see my servants and maidens at such loss that they have not wherewith to get clothes." Henry VIII., son of Henry VII. Accession 1509, death 1547, reign 38 years. " The most tyrannical of kings, and the most bloodthirsty of hus bands." " He was a most intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood and grease on the history of England." Sir Walter Raleigh says, " If all the patterns of a merciless tyrant had been lost to the world, they might have been found in this prince." Chronology. 297 1513. — " The battle of the Spurs," in France ; Louis XII. defeated. Battle of Flodden-Field ; James IV. and most of the Scotch nobility slain. 1 517. — The Reformation begun in Germany by Martin Luther: 1520. — Meeting of Henry and Francis I. in "The Field of the Cloth of Gold." (1 71-174.) Great ascendency of Cardinal Wolsey in England. 1521. — Henry styled "Defender of the Faith" by the pope, for writing a book against Luther. 1 526. — The pope refuses to divorce Henry from Catherine of Ara gon ; the beginning of the breach between England and Rome. T530. — Henry divorced by Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury. Fall and death of Wolsey. To such enormous wealth, and to such a pinnacle of splendid power had Wolsey arrived by the year 1518, that his expenditure was lavish in the extreme, his establishment consisting of eight hundred individuals. As representative of the pope, whenever he went abroad, the ensigns of his dignity were borne before him ; he was surrounded by noblemen and prelates, and followed by a long train of mules, bearing coffers on their backs, covered with crimson cloths. He built Hampton Court Palace, and, when it was completed and furnished to his taste, presented it to Henry. At Oxford he endowed seven lectureships, and founded the splendid College of Christ Church, which still remains a monument of his munificence. He erected also a college at his native town of Ipswich. Wolsey even aspired to the papal dignity, but all his intrigues and lavish bribes were useless, for three times was he rejected by the Sacred College. 1533. — Henry marries Anne Boleyn. 1534. — Supremacy of the pope in England abolished, and Henry declared Supreme Head ofthe Church in England. 1535. — Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More behead ed for denying the spiritual supremacy of Henry. 1536. — Suppression ofthe monasteries to the number of 3,219, and confiscation of their property and livings. Religious insurrections, among them " The Pilgrimage of Grace." Queen Anne executed for treason, May 19. (175-180.) Henry marries Jane Seymour, May 20. Death of William Tyndale, translator of the New Testament. 1537. — The Bible published in English; Death of Jane Seymour. She died in giving birth to a prince. The king was so distressed for the loss of the mother of his heir that he actually assumed a mourning garb, which he wore for six months. This he had not 13* 298 Pictures from English History. done previously, nor did he so on a future occasion. We might, there fore, infer that his affection for Jane Seymour was sincere ; but in a month after her death Henry sought another wife. 1539. — The Six Articles, or Bloody Statute, passed, under which Protestants are burned as heretics for denying, and Catholics as traitors for refusing to acknowledge, Henry's supremacy. 1 540. — Jan. 5. Henry marries Anne of Cleves. July 9. He is di vorced from her. Aug. 8. Henry marries Catharine Howard. Crom well beheaded. " The figure of Cromwell is the most terrible in our history." 1542. — Queen Catharine beheaded for treason. Defeat of the Scots at Solway Moss. 1 543. — Henry marries Catharine Parr. 1547. — Execution of the Earl of Surrey, the earliest writer of En gUsh blank verse, Jan. 13. Jan. 28. Henry VIII. dies. It is stated in Hollinshed's " Chronicles " that no less than seventy- two thousand persons were executed on the gibbet in this reign. Edward VI., son of Henry VIII. by Jane Seymour. Accession 1547, death 1553, reign 6 years. " He was an amiable boy, of ven' good qualities, and had nothing coarse or brutal in his disposition, which in the son of such a father is rather surprising," 1547.— Duke of Somerset made protector of the king, now nine years of age. Somerset signally defeats the Scotch at Pinkie Field. Popish images burned. English Catechism published by Cranmer. 1 549.— Acts passed allowing marriage of clergy and establishing the use of reformed liturgy. 1552.— Execution of Somerset for felony. The Book of Common Prayer ordained. 1553.— Edward appoints Lady Jane Grey his heir and successor, and dies at the age of fifteen. Mary, daughter of Henry VIII. by his first wife, Catharine. Accession 1553, death 1558, reign 5 years. " As bloody Queen Mary she will ever be justly remembered with horror and detestation in Great Britain. The stake and fire were the fruits of this reign."— (Her character by Motley, p. 185.) Chronology. zyg 1553.— The Romish religion restored in England. The Book of Common prayer and English Catechism suppressed. 1554.— Rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt against the projected mar riage, of Mary to Philip of Spain. Lady Jane Grey and her husband beheaded. The Princess Elizabeth, afterward queen, sent to the Tower. Mary and Philip married. (l84r-i86.) It was Mary's dearest wish to convert her sister Elizabeth to the Roman Catholic religion, and the fear of death for a time induced her outwardly to conform to the Roman ritual. Still her sincerity was doubted, and the queen caused her to be catechized relative to the doctrine of transubstantiation, or the actual presence of Christ in the sacramental bread and wine. Elizabeth, who was no mean poet, replied thus : " Christ was the word that spake It, He took the bread and break it, And what His word did make it, That I believe and take it." 1555. — Beginning ofthe Marian persecutions, during which nearly three hundred Protestant martyrs were burned, including Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer, John Rogers, Hooper, and others. (180-184.) 1557. — Proposed establishment ot the Inquisition in England. 1558. — England and Spain declare war against France; Calais taken bythe French after remaining in English hands 210 years; death of Mary, Nov. 17. As the English were marching out of Calais a French officer tauntingly asked an English veteran, " When do you intend to visit France again ? " " When your national crimes exceed ours," was the reply. It is said that Mary felt this disgrace to her arms so se verely that on her death-bed she declared if her breast were opened after her demise, the word Calais would be found engraven on her heart. Coaches were first used in England, and the use of starch dis covered. In this age, before the invention of carpets, it was customary to strew the floor with a layer of green rushes. Layer on layer of rushes was added, without any attempt to remove the accumulated dirt. Erasmus says : " As to the floors, they were usually made of clay, covered with rushes that grow in fens. These are so little dis turbed that the lower mass remains for twenty years together, and in it a collection of every kind of filth ; hence, upon a change of weather, a vapor is exhaled most pernicious to the human body." Doubtless to this custom the frequent visitations of pestilence are partly to be attributed. 300 Pictures from English History. Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII. by Anne Boleyn. Acces sion 1558, death 1603, reign 45 years. " Not half so good as she has been made out, not half so bad as she has been made out." " Had all the faults of a vain young woman long after she was an old one." " A nature hard as steel, a tem per purely intellectual ; a bold horsewoman, a good shot, a graceful dancer, a skillful musician, and an accomplished scholar. Her polit ical tact was unerring. " " A life so great, so strange, so lonely in its greatness." 1559. — The Protestant religion re-established, and the " Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity " passed ; Francis II., of France, and Mary Queen of Scots, his wife, assume the titles of " King and Queen of France, England, and Scotland." 1560. — Treaty of Berwick, between Elizabeth and the Scottish Protestants, against French pretensions. 1562. — The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England ratified. 1563. — Rise of Leicester, Elizabeth's favorite, 1565-67. — Marriage of Lord Darnley to Mary Queen of Scots, at the suggestion of Elizabeth; Darnley assassinated Feb. 10, 1567; Mary marries Both well May 15; resigns the Scotch throne July 24. 1568. Mary attempts to regain the crown of Scotland; her forces defeated at Langside, May 14 ; flies to England and is imprisoned. 1569. — Catholic insurrections ; mass celebrated in Durham Cathe dral, and the Book of Prayer and the Bible burned. 1572.— Execution of the Duke of Norfolk for conspiring to marry Mary and depose Elizabeth. The Duke of Norfolk was one of a commission sent by Elizabeth to inquire into the cause of the imprisoned queen, and, having formed a romantic attachment for her, his desire to free her from captivity induced him to enter into negotiations with Fenelon, the French'embassador, and the Duke of Alva, the Spanish viceroy in the Netherlands. Fenelon provided money, which was sent to Nor folk in a bag. The man who acted the part of carrier, suspecting all was not right, delivered the bag to the council, and, being opened, it was found to contain letters which explained. Massacre of St. Bartholomew, France. 1577. — Sir Francis Drake's voyage of exploration and plunder; circumnavigates the globe, and returns to England in 1580. 1 584. — Virginia discovered by Sir Walter Raleigh. Chronology. 301 1585. — Death of Sir Philip Sidney in the attack on Zutphen, Neth erlands. This admirable gentleman, known to all future ages as " The Flower of Chi valrie," received his death wound at the battle of Zut phen, fought between the Protestant allies and the Spanish Catholics of the Netherlands. In his agony he prayed a bystander to give him some water to quench his burning thirst, and just as he was raising the cup to his lips a wounded soldier turned on him an appealing glance. " Give it to him," said the dying hero ; " his necessity is greater than mine." 1586. — Babington's conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth discov ered; Mary tried for complicity and (February 8, 1587) beheaded. (187-193.) 1587. — Ravages of Sir Francis Drake on Spanish shipping. 1588. — -The Spanish Armada, sent to re-establish Catholicism in England, dispersed by a storm, and defeated by Howard, Drake, and other captains. (194-202.) 1590-96. — Naval operations against Spain by Raleigh, Drake, Hawkins, and others. 1 598. — Tyrone's rebellion in Ireland, lasting eight years ; death of Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth's great minister. " It became evident that the great minister of the great queen was passing to his end. His agonies were intense ; and when the power no longer remained to him of raising his hand to his mouth Elizabeth herself tended him with the solicitude of a mother, and even took the food from the attendants to serve him with her own hands. Harrington, the queen's godson, says, after Burleigh's death : ' The queen's highness doth speak of him in tears, and turns aside when he is discoursed of; nay, even forbiddeth his name to be mentioned.' Thus deeply did Elizabeth regret the loss of this faithful and veteran minister, who had piloted her and her people through so many shoals and quicksands." 1601.— Quarrel of Elizabeth with Lord Essex, her favorite ; his treasonable conspiracy ; he is tried and executed. (203, 204.) Eliz abeth abolishes trade monopolies and patents, which had grown oppressive. 1603. — Death of Elizabeth, March 24. (203-206.) William Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist, 1 564-1616; Chris topher Marlowe, dramatist, 1 563-1 597; Edmund Spenser, poet, author of "The Faerie Queen," 1553-1599, flourished. The African slave-trade began (1562) ; watches introduced from Germany (1577) ; Pictures from English PIistory. paper-mills built in England (1588) ; potatoes and tobacco brought from Virginia by Raleigh ; the East India Company established and the Poor Law act passed, (1601.) X. THE HOUSE OF STUART. Eight Sovereigns. 1603 to 1714. in Years. lames I., son of Mary Queen of Scots. Accession 1603, death 1625, reign 22 years. " He was ugly, awkward, and shuffling both in mind and body. His tongue was much too large for his mouth, his legs were much too weak for his body, and his dull goggle-eyes stared and rolled like an idiot's. He was cunning, covetous, wasteful, idle, drunken, greedy, dirty, cowardly, a great swearer, and the most conceited man on earth." — Dickens. " Under this ridiculous exterior lay a man of much natural ability, a ripe scholar, with a considerable fund of shrewdness, of mother wit and ready repartee." — Green. 1603. — Plot to place Lady Arabella Stuart on the throne ; Lord Cobham and others executed. Sir Walter Raleigh imprisoned and, in 1618, executed. (207-212.) 1604. — James was the first who was styled " King of Great Britain." 1605. — Gunpowder Plot discovered ; Catesby, Digby, and Guy Fawkes executed. The conspirators— Catholics smarting under persecutions for their religion — mined beneath the hall of Parliament from a neighboring cellar, and deposited a magazine of explosives for the purpose of de stroying both Houses and the king, royal family, and court when all should be assembled at the opening of Parliament, Nov. 5. One of the conspirators sent a letter to his friend, Lord Monteagle, warning him not to attend the session, as a great blow was to be struck, and yet those who suffered would not see who struck them. This started the inquiry that resulted in the discovery of the magazine, and the arrest of Guy Fawkes therein equipped with matches and tinder-box. 1607. — Hudson's Bay discovered by the navigator of that name. 161 1. — Authorized translation ofthe Bible published. 1619. — Circulation of the blood discovered by Harvey. 1620.- -Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Chronology. 303 1621. — Disputes between James and Parliament about monopo lies ; James tears out of the Parliamentary records its assertion of the right of free speech. 1622. — Weekly newspaper published. Ben Jonson, poet, 1 574-1637 ; Beaumont and Fletcher, dramatists, 1586-1615 ; Francis Bacon, jurist, statesman, philosopher, 1561-1626, flourished. King James himself was something of a literary aspir ant, and produced several essays. His " Counterblast " is a violent tirade against tobacco, the use of which he tried to show was directly inspired by the devil. Charles I., son of James I. Accession 1625, beheaded 1649, reign 24 years. Able, scholarly, pure of life, infatuated with the idea of " the right divine of kings to govern wrong;" treacherous and tyrannical. " Faithlessness was the chief cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory." He reaped the baleful crops which both Tudors and Stuarts had sowed. 1625. — First Parliament of Charles refuses supplies and is dis solved. 1626. — Second Parliament impeaches Buckingham, Charles' favor ite, and is dissolved. The king raises supplies by a tax called " ship money," and other illegal means. 1628. — Third Parliament passes the " Petition of Right," enacting, (1) no tax without consent of Parliament ; (2) no person imprisoned without due process of law ; (3) martial law not to be proclaimed. Parliament dissolved ; Buckingham assassinated ; unsuccessful cam paign against France increases taxes and popular discontent. 1629-40. — Charles for eleven years rules without Parliament, by the aid of Strafford and Archbishop Laud, oppressively and illegally. 1634-38. — Imposition of "ship money" bravely resisted by the people, led by John Hampden. In place of obtaining grants of money from Parliament, Charles resorted to forced levies on the country. Ports and sea-coast towns were required to furnish an allotted number of ships, armed and manned, for the royal navy ; and inland counties were required to compound for the vessels by an equivalent money aid, called " ship money." This requirement set sparks to the inflammable public feeling. John Hampden, a country gentlemen, was imprisoned and suffered much for opposing these illegal exactions. 304 Pictures from English History. 1639. — Scotch Presbyterians (" Covenanters ") resist the introduc tion of Church of England Liturgy, and form the " National Cove nant." 1640. — Fourth Parliament convened, and dissolved after three weeks. Scots invade England and defeat the royal troops at New- burn. The "Long Parliament" assembles; abolishes the Star Cham ber and High Commission ; votes ship-money illegal ; attaints Straf ford and Laud, and sentences Strafford to death ; and in 1641 — Parliament passes the "Great Remonstrance,'' and obtains command of the royal army. Catholic insurrection in Ireland, and massacre of Protestants. 1642. — Charles -precipitates civil war by attempting to arbitrarily arrest the " Five Members " of Parliament. The " Five Members " were Hampden, Pym, Holes, Strode, and Haselrig. The king proceeded in person to the House and de manded their impeachment — in itself a violation of law and Parlia mentary privilege. He demanded the surrender of the members to his custody. The House refused to deliver them or to disclose their whereabouts, and as the king withdrew loud cries of " Privilege ! Privilege ! " rang through the hall. He attempted afterward, un successfully, to arrest them from Guildhall, where they were sitting in Parliamentary committee. Menacing cries followed the king, and a placard was handed into the royal coach inscribed, " To your tents, O Israel ! " The outcome of this crowning act of tyranny was — 1642, — Oct. 22, Battle of Edgehill, Warwickshire, between the " Roundheads," (Parliamentarians,) under Lord Essex, and the " Cavaliers," (Royalists,) under King Charles ; both claim the victory. At the battle of Edgehill young Prince Charles and the Duke of York were left, unattended by guards, in the charge of the eminent Dr. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. He withdrew with the princes to the cover of a hedge, and there sat reading, oblivious of the battle raging near, until a cannon-ball whizzed near his head. Arousing and withdrawing to a greater dis tance, he resumed his studies while the fate of a dynasty was being decided. 1643. — June 18. Encounter at Chalgrove Field; John Hampden slain ; 346 victims ; Cavaliers, under Prince Rupert, nephew of the king, successful. First battle of Newbury, Berkshire ; indecisive. Hampden's death was caused by the bursting of his pistol in his hand. The weapon belonged to Sir Robert Pye, who had ordered his servant to see that his weapons were charged every morning ; Chronology. 305 the result was the pistols were found loaded to the muzzle, and this caused the bursting. Macaulay says that for sobriety, self-command, perfect soundness of judgment, perfect rectitude of intention, history furnishes a parallel to Hampden in Washington alone. 1644. — July 2. Battle of Marston Moor, Yorkshire ; Roundheads and Scotch Covenanters, under Oliver Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax, defeat the Cavaliers, under Prince Rupert. Oct. 27. Second battle of Newbury ; Roundhead success. The clogged obstinacy of Cromwell's " Ironsides " decided the battle of Marston Moor when it was already lost to the Parliamentarians. (213.) 1645. — Parliament passes the " Self-denying Ordinance,'' forbid ding members of Parliament holding military offices. Archbishop Laud beheaded for his share in the abuses of Charles' reign. Battle of'Naseby, Northamptonshire, June 14 ; Cromwell and Fairfax anni hilate the king's army, and finish the war ; Charles surrenders to the Scots. In despair the king placed himself at the head of his Guards, and prepared to charge ; but his impetuosity was restrained by a Cavalier, who seized the bridle of the king's horse, exclaiming, with an oath : "Will you go upon your certain death in an instant?" and then turned his horse abruptly aside. The Royalists, on seeing this, be lieved Charles was preparing to retreat. The panic spread, and in a moment the regiment turned its back to the enemy. 1647. — Charles surrendered to Parliament by the Scots upon the payment of $2,000,000. Charles was at Newcastle when this base compact was entered into. The information was conveyed to him as he was playing a game of chess. Without exhibiting the slightest emotion, although his attendants were horror-struck, the king quietly finished his game by checkmating his opponent, and answered, with dignity, that on the arrival of the commissioners appointed to receive him he would make his pleasure known. When told of the commissioners' arrival, the king, on hearing that he was about to be surrendered to them, ex claimed, " I am bought and sold ! " Even the Scottish general was ashamed ofthe hideous business. 1648. — The Scots, taking up arms for the king, are defeated by Cromwell at the battle of Preston. " Pride's Purge ; " Presbyterian members excluded from Parliament by Col. Pride for favoring Charles ; the remaining fifty members called " The Rump Par liament." 306 Pictures from English History. 1649. — Charles brought to trial by the House of Commons alone, as a " tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy of the Common wealth." January 30. Charles beheaded in front of his palace at Whitehall. King Charles met death with Christian resignation and coolness. Addressing the executioner, he said : " When I put out my hands this way, then — " A few more minutes having been passed in med itation, Charles knelt and laid his head on the block. " Stay for the sign," he remarked, hastily, thinking the headsman was about to strike. " I will, and please your majesty," was the reply. Another instant and the sign was given. The glittering ax descended, and a moment later the head was held aloft by the executioner, who ex claimed, " Behold the head of a traitor ! " THE COMMOXWEAETH. 1649 to 1660. An Interregnum of ii Years. 1649. — Royalty abolished and England declared a Commonwealth by Parliament ; Cromwell defeat the Royaiists in Ireland and restores order. 1650. — Prince Charles proclaimed Charles II. by the Scots upon his signing the covenant ; they are defeated by Cromwell at Dunbar, Sept. 3. 1651. — Charles invades England ; is totally defeated at Worcester, Sept. 3 ; escapes to France. 1652. — Naval war with the Dutch ; Blake defeated by Van Tromp off Dover. 1653. — Expulsion of the Long Parliament after thirteen years' sit ting, and assembling of Cromwell's " Barebones Parliament." (219.) Cromwell made " Lord Protector " of the Commonwealth ; several naval engagements with the Dutch end in Van Tromp being killed. In the beginning of these naval battles Van Tromp had come out with a broom nailed to his mast-head, and swept the English from the Channel. Blake gathered more ships, fixed a horsewhip to his mast-head, and flogged the Dutch off the seas. Since that day every British ship of war carries the semblance of Blake's horsewhip inthe narrow pennant at the mast-head. 1655. — Conquest of Jamaica, W. I., and triumph of British arms abroad every-where. 1657. — Cromwell invited to become king; refuses; Blake attacks Chronology 307 and destroys a Spanish fleet in the harbor of Cadiz, Spain ; Oliver Cromwell dies Sept. 3. 1658. — Richard Cromwell, son of Oliver, proclaimed Lord Protector ; the Spaniards defeated by the allied English and French in the battle of the Dunes ; Dunkirk occupied by the English. 1659. — Richard Cromwell resigns the protectorate after eight months' occupancy ; Parliament dispersed by Gen. Lambert ; the army officers seize the reins of government. 1660. — Gen. Monk enters London and restores the Presbyterian members to Parliament ; a new Parliament meets and restores the Stuarts with Charles II. Richard Cromwell, after a period of exile at the Restoration, re turned to England and lived in peace half a century. In the reign of Queen Anne the ex-protector became involved in a lawsuit tried in the Court of Queen's Bench. His venerable appearance and other recollections excited the deepest interest in the audience, by whom Richard was treated with great respect. He gained his cause, and the queen applauded the kindness of the judge on this occasion. While the trial was pending Richard was induced to wander into the House of Lords. A gentleman, in the course of conversation, asked him if he had in his life ever beheld such an imposing scene. Point ing to the throne, Richard replied, " Never, sir, since I sat in that chair." Richard Cromwell died at his farm at Cheshunt in 1712, at the advanced age of eighty-six. His last words to his daughter were, " Live in love ; for I am going to the God of love." RESTORATION OF THE STUARTS. Charles II., son of Charles I. Accession 1660, death 1685, reign 25 years. " Addicted beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond of saun tering and of frivolous amusements, incapable of self-denial and of exertion, without faith in human virtue or human attachment, without desire of renown, and without sensibility to reproach." — Macaulay. 1660. Trial and execution of several of the regicides ; the remains of Cromwell, Pride, and other deceased Parliamentarians dug up and hanged at Tyburn ; repressive acts passed. The Corporation Act (1661) and Test Act (1673) prevented Catholics and Dissenters hold ing any office ; these acts were not repealed until 1828. The Act of 308 Pictures from English History. Uniformity (1662) compelled all clergymen to subscribe to the Book of Common Prayer ; 2,000 clergymen refused, and were deprived of their offices and livings. The Conventicle Act (1664) prohibited public meeting for worship by Dissenters. 1665. — Great plague ; 100,000 died in London. (221-226.) Sec ond Dutch war ; great English naval victory off Lowestoft ; the En glish capture New Amsterdam, (New York,) and the Dutch take Jamaica. 1666. — Greater part of London burned during three days. The origin of this fire was attributed to the Catholics on suspicion, and, when the monument to commemorate that event was erected on Fish-street Hill, an inscription was placed upon its base saying that the city had been burned down by the papists. In reference to that inscription Pope wrote — "Where London's column, pointing at the skies, Like a tall bully, lilts the head, and lies." It was only as lately as the year 1831 that this false and scandalous libel was removed. 1667. — Dutch sail up English rivers and ravage the country. 1668. — "The Triple League" — England, Holland, and Sweden — against France. 1670. — The Cabal Ministry, and universal misrule and court de bauchery. 1672.— Third Dutch War. 1678. — Pretended Popish Plot ; perjuries of Titus Oates and Dan- gerfield. Oates was a clergyman who had been deposed for his dissolute and profane life. He swore to the most absurd stories of the designs of the pope on the liberties of England and the lives of the royal family and nobles. An anti-Catholic panic seized all classes. The jails were crowded with Catholics whom Oates and other informers had accused ; blood flowed like water. London was fortified and armed as in a state of siege. Suspicion even implicated the queen and the Duke of York, (afterward King James II.,) and he was obliged to flee the kingdom. 1679.— The Habeas Corpus Act passed. Insurrection of the Cov enanters ; their defeat at Bothwell Bridge. 1683.— The Rye House plot ; Lord William Russell and Algernon Sidney executed for alleged conspiracy to assassinate the king. The Rye House plot was formed for the assassination of the king and Duke of York as they should pass Rye House on their way to the Chronology. 309 races at Newmarket. There was another scheme, entered into by many noblemen and members of Parliament, to secure the passage ofthe Exclusion Act, which debarred the king's brother, James, from the succession ; he was generally feared as a Catholic and unscru pulous man, with good reason, as subsequently appeared. Many who engaged in this legitimate undertaking were accused of complicity in the Rye House plot, Russell and Sidney being of the number. 1685. — Death of King Charles. On the morning of his death the king asked the time, and being told that it was six o'clock, said, " Open the curtains that I may once more see the day." As long as his power of utterance remained, he was heard calling upon the name of God, and asking pardon for his sins. It is stated that even as death approached, Charles' politeness and good humor did not desert him ; that he said to his weeping at tendants : " He was sorry for the trouble he was giving them, and hoped they would pardon him for being such an unconscionable time dying." Rochester once affixed the following verse to the door of the king's bed-chamber : " Here rests our sovereign lord the king, Whose word no one relies on, He never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one." Charles expressed no anger on reading it, but remarked it was perfectly true, for while his language was his own, his acts were those'of his ministers. John Milton, poet, 1608-1674; Samuel Butler, satirist, author of " Hudibras," died 1680 ; Jeremy Taylor, divine, author of " Holy Liv ing and Dying," 1613-1667, flourished. Janies II., son of Charles I., brother of Charles II. Accession 1685, deposed 1688, reign 3 years. The one object of his short reign was to re-establish the Catholic religion in England. " Diligent, methodical, and fond of authority and business ; his understanding was singularly slow and narrow, and his temper obstinate, harsh, and unforgiving." 1685. — Insurrection of Monmouth and Argyle ; both executed. Judge Jeffries' " Bloody Assize." In the Bloody Assize the king's revenge was wreaked for the Mon mouth uprising, and Jeffries' cruelty aided much the final overthrow of the king. Jeffries made his boast that he had hanged more trai tors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest. Over three hundred were hanged on this circuit, and eight hundred were 310 Pictures from English History. sold into slavery in the West Indies, to the profit of the king's court iers ; one hundred were awarded to the queen, and the profit she made on them was computed at 1,000 guineas. Great sums were realized by Jeffries and others from the sale of pardons. Twenty- four young girls of Taunton, who had presented flowers to the Duke of Monmouth when he entered their town, were arrested and given to the maids of honor of the court as their share of the spoils ; two thousand pounds were paid for their escape. 1686. — Sir Isaac Newton discovers the law of gravitation. 1687. — Declaration of Indulgence to Roman Catholics and Dissent ers ; resisted by the clergy ; trial of the Seven Bishops for opposing it ; great rejoicing over their acquittal. 1688. — Invasion of England by the Prince of Orange, at the invita tion of the nobility and Church. (227.) James was naturally ill at ease on hearing that his son-in-law, William of Orange, the champion of Protestantism in Germany, had set out to invade the English dominions. He caused a large weather- vane to be erected on the roof of Whitehall, immediately opposite his private apartments, so that he might tell which way the wind blew, and thus know whether it wafted the Dutch fleet hitherward or not. If favorable to himself, he called it a Popish wind, and if otherwise, then he said it was a Protestant wind. This weather-vane may still be seen on the north end ofthe Banqueting House, ornamented with a cross. , 1688. — James abdicates the throne, destroys the great seal, and flees the kingdom, (227-233,) and " The Revolution of 1688 " is peaceably effected. "It is because we had a preserving revolution in the seventeenth centuiy that we have not had a destroying revolution in the nine teenth. For the authority of law, for the security of property, for the peace of our streets, for the happiness of our homes, our grati tude is due, under Him who raises and pulls down nations at his pleasure, to the Long Parliament, to the Convention, [see below,] and to William of Orange." — Macaulay, close of second volume of " History of England." William III., (grandson of Charles I.,) and Mary II., (daugh ter of James II.) Accession 1689, death of Mary 1694, joint reign 5 years; William died 1702, reign 13 years. " Silent, wary, self-contained, grave in temper, cold in demeanor, blunt and even repulsive in address, weak and sickly from his cradle. But beneath this cold and sickly presence lay a fiery and command- Chronology. 311 ing temper, an immovable courage, and a political ability ofthe high est order," — Green. (For a complete and graphic portraiture of William of Orange, see Macaulay's " History," chapter 8.) {Interregnum from Dec. 11, 1688, to Feb. 13, 1689, during which the Council and lords administer affairs. Jan 22. 1689, a Convention of the States of the Realm, irregularly convened, pass the Declaration of Rights, doing away with absolute prerogatives, defining the limit ations of royal power and the rights of the people, declaring the throne vacant and calling William and Mary to it. " Greater things were done in those two months than in any period of our history,'' says White.] 1689. — The Toleration Act, granting religious toleration to Protest ant Dissenters. 1690. — Battle ofthe Boyne; James and his Catholic adherents de feated by William of Orange, his adherents called " Orangemen." 1690. — Allied English and Dutch squadron defeated by the French off Beachy Head. 1692. — French squadron defeated, off La Hogue, by English and Dutch. Greenwich Hospital, for aged and wounded seamen, founded by Mary in commemoration of the victory. Massacre of Glencoe ; the whole tribe of Macdonald butchered in bed by the English. 1694. — Death of Mary from small-pox. When Archbishop Tenison informed the queen of her extreme danger, she replied, calmly: " I thank God I have always carried this in my mind, that nothing was to be left to the last hour. I have nothing now to do but to look up to God, and submit to his will." When the Archbishop of Canterbury paused, with tears in his eyes, on coming to the commendatory prayer in the Office for the Sick, she said to him : " My lord, why do you not go on ? I am not afraid to die ! " There was estrangement between William and Mary in the early years of their marriage. Burnet, a mutual friend, detected the cause of it, and one day he explained to her that, by the laws of England, her title to the crown being prior, in case of her accession to the throne of England, her husband would occupy a second place, and be in fact a subject of his own wife. Mary's course was instantly de cided upon. Burnet told her to consider well before she came to a resolution. " I want no time for consideration," she replied; "bring the prince to me, that I may tell him my mind." The memorable interview took place on the following day, and then Mary said : " I did not know until yesterday that there was such a difference between the laws of England and the laws of God. But 1 now promise you 312 Pictures from English History. that you shall always bear rule, and in return I ask only this, that, as I shall observe the precept which enjoins wives to obey their hus bands, you will observe that which enjoins husbands to love their wives." So generous a speech removed the cloud which had so long overshadowed the wedded life of these illustrious persons; and from that time till the sad day when he was carried away in fits from her dying bed, there was an entire friendship and confidence between them." William III. Sole reign from 1694 to 1702, 8 years. 1695. — Namur, Flanders, captured by William. The press freed from censorship. 1696. — Assassination plots fomented by James II. and his English adherents. 1697. — Peace of Ryswick between England and France. 1698. — England and France agree upon the division of Spain. 1701. — The Act of Settlement, providing for succession to the throne, William being childless, and prohibiting any but a Church of England ruler. Death of James II. ; his son recognized by France as King of England ; William prepares for war. 1702. — Grand alliance of England, Austria, and Holland against France. Death of William, resulting from a fall from his horse. John Locke, the philosopher, 1632-1704; Sir Isaac Newton, 1642- 1727 ; Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral and of other London churches, 1632-1713, flourished. Peter the Great, of Russia, worked in English ship-yards. The national debt was begun ; the cabinet ministry first fonned. The Bank of England incorporated in this reign. Anne, daughter of James II. Accession 1702, death 1714, reign 12 years. Anne, with the feeblest abilities and no personal spirit, had the good fortune to live in the period when literature first began to be - important as an instrument of power, and when Marlborough carried our military fame to a height it had never reached. — WHITE. 1702. — War of the Spanish Succession; Louis XIV., of France, puts his grandson, Philip, on the throne of Spain ; the " Grand Alli ance " of England, Austria, and Holland declare in favor of Arch duke Charles of Austria for the succession ; the Duke of Marl borough, in command of the allied forces, wins the victories of .Blenheim, Austria, 1704; Ramillies, 1706; Oudenaarde, 1708; Mal- Chronology. 313 plaquet, 1709. In 1705 the Earl of Peterborough's brilliant campaign in Spain resulted in the capture of Barcelona. 1702. — Sir George Rooke destroys a French fleet in the port of Vigo. 1703. — Naval victories of Admiral Dilkes. 1704. — Capture of Gibraltar by Rooke. 1707. — Articles of Union between England and Scotland ratified. Disastrous defeat of the English and Germans at Almanza, Spain. 1711.- — Ministerial revolution caused by the intrigues of Mrs. Masham, Anne's favorite ; fall of Marlborough. 1713. — Treaty of Utrecht ; Hudson's Bay, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Gibraltar, and the island of St. Kitts, W. I., and Minorca ceded to England. 17 14. — Death of Queen Anne. Joseph Addison, essayist, 1672-1719; Steele, with Addison, pub lished " The Spectator " and " The Tatler." Government first man aged the post-office. Steam-engine invented. XI. THE HOUSE OF HANOVER. The Line of Hanover. — 1714 to the Present Time. George I., grandson of James I. Accession 1714, death 1727, reign 1 3 years. " A character as nearly approaching insignificance as it was pos sible for human nature to approach it." — Green. 171 5. — Rebellion of Jacobites in favor of the Pretender, son of James II. ; defeated in the battles of Sheriffmuir and Preston. 1718. — Alliance of England, France, Holland, and Austria against Spain. Naval victory of Admiral Byng off Cape Passaro. Spain obliged to make terms. 1720. — "The South Sea Bubble," a great speculation devised to pay the national debt, impoverishes thousands. (234-241.) 1721.— Rise of Sir Robert Walpole. Habeas Corpus Act suspended in apprehension of revolutionary plots of Jacobites. Walpole was a man of small attainments but of strong natural qualities, the chief being energy, shrewdness, boldness, and indomi- 14 314 Pictures from English History. table will. He is said to have been the author of the saying, "Every man has his price," and to have controlled men by bribery. His policy was to avoid foreign wars, and under his ministry England had peace and prosperity while all Europe was torn. "Fifty thou sand men have been killed this year, in Europe, and not one of them an Englishman," he boasted. He ruled England absolutely for twenty- one years. 1727. — Confederations against England ; war with Spain ; unsuc cessful siege of Gibraltar by Spain. George II., son of George I. Accession 1727, death 1760, reign 33 years. "There was an openness and honesty about his personal dealings which gained his subjects' respect. He was blind to the charms of what, in his German accent, he called feinting and Poetry, but he was unambitious ; he did not trick nor quibble, and was more useful and infinitely more safe, in those days of loose political morality and un principled selfishness, than if he had had greater abilities with more unscrupulous desires." — White. 1739. — War with Spain. 1740. — War of the Austrian Succession ; George supports Maria Theresa against Frederick the Great, of Prussia, and France. 1742. — Downfall of Walpole and triumph ofthe war party. 1743. — Battle of Dettingen ; English defeat the French. 1745. — Quadruple alliance of England, Austria, Holland, and Sax ony. Battle of Fontenoy, (1748;) English defeated. Rebellion in Scotland in favor of Charles Edward, " the Young Pretender," sur vivor of the deposed house of Stuarts ; royal forces defeated at Preston Pans, 1745, and Falkirk, 1746 ; complete overthrow of "The Pretender" at Culloden, 1746. 1747. — Battle of Lauffeldt; English, under Cumberland, defeated by Marshall Saxe. English naval successes over the French at Finis- terre and Bellisle. 1748. — Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ; England deprived of benefits of the war. 1752. — Change of the Calendar, omitting eleven days to correct it, and making the year begin January 1, instead of March 25, as pre viously. 1756- — "The Seven Years' War " conducted by the elder Pitt; England and Prussia against Austria and France. French capture Chronology. 315 Minorca, and defeat Admiral Byng's fleet ; Byng tried and executed for cowardice. 1757. — General Clive wins the battle of Plassy, India, takes Cal cutta, and conquers Bengal. (245.) 1758. — Destruction of Cherbourg. (244.) English take Fort Louis and the Island of Gorce, Africa, and Cape Breton and Prince Ed ward's Island, America. 1759. — Battle of Minden ; French defeated. (247.) Battle of the Heights of Abraham, Quebec, and death of General Wolfe. (244.) Floating down the St. Lawrence the night previous to the engage ment, Wolfe repeated, in a low tone to the officers by his side, "Gray's Elegy, written in a Country Church-yard;" and ended by saying: "Gentlemen, I would rather be the author of that poem, than have all the glory 1 feel sure of to-morrow." The young general dwelt with more than ordinary pathos on the verse : " The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that honor, all that wealth, ere gave, Await alike the inevitable hour : The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 1760. — Montreal taken and Canada conquered. (245.) Alexander Pope, poet, 1688-1744; Jonathan Swift, pamphleteer, politician, and satirist, 1667-1745 ; Daniel De Foe, author of " Rob inson Crusoe," 1661-1731 ; Dr. Isaac Watts, writer of hymns, 1674- 1748, flourished. British Museum established, 1753 ; Benjamin Frank lin drew electricity from the clouds ; 146 persons perished of suffoca tion in the "Black Hole of Calcutta." George III., grandson of George II. Accession 1760, death 1820, reign 60 years. (250-255.) 1763. — Peace of Fontainebleau terminates the seven years' war. Canada ceded to England. Arrest of John Wilkes for libel of the king, on a " general warrant ; " much excitement about personal lib erty and freedom of the press. " Letters of Junius " published. The peace was made against the advice of Pitt, and he resigned the ministry to Lord Bute, an unpopular man. Pitt declaimed against the peace, and the press lampooned the ministry unmerci fully. John Wilkes, in his paper, the " North Briton," assailed the ministry so savagely that he was signaled out for punishment. "A general warrant," a process of court signed in blank, allowed the arrest of any number of persons, in the discretion ol the officers, on suspicion of complicity with the alleged offense. Wilkes, though a member of Parliament, was imprisoned, but was soon released by the 316 Pictures from English History. courts ; again arrested, and delivered from the authorities by the mob ; he was expelled from Parliament, and his paper condemned to be burned by the hangman. Violent riots broke out, attended by cries of " Wilkes and Liberty ! " Lord Bute was burned in effigy, dared not appear in public, and was finally driven to resign. The " Letters of Junius " are the most polished and merciless political satires ever written. The authorship of them is to this day unknown. 1764. — Capt. Byron's explorations in the South Seas. Discovery of the longitude. 1765. — American Stamp Act passed ; resisted by colonists and the next year repealed, under a change of ministry. " During the first half of the century the cotton trade had only risen from the value of twenty to that of forty thousand pounds ; but three successive inventions — that of the spinning-machine, in 1768, by the barber, Arkwright ; ofthe spinning-jenny, 1764, by the weaver, Har- graves ; ofthe mule by the weaver, Compton, in 1776 — turned Lan cashire into a hive of industry. The value of coal as a means of producing mechanical force was revealed in the discovery by which Watt, in 1765, transformed the steam-engine." — Green. 1767. — Duties on tea, glass, and paper, levied in the American colonies, resisted. Hargraves invents the spinning-jenny and Ark wright the spinning-frame. 1769. — -Repeal of all taxes on American colonists, save that on tea ; Captain Cook's discoveries in the Pacific. 1770. — Lord North's ministry, of unfortunate memory; Black- friar's bridge completed. !773- — Tea thrown into Boston Harbor by a mob; popular out break in America. 1775. — Battles of Concord and Lexington, "where the embattled fanners stood and fired the shots heard round the world," and of Bunker Hill ; beginning of the American Revolutionary War. 1776. — Declaration of American Independence. 1777- — Surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga. The elder Pitt, Lord Chatham, vehemently opposed all the acts against the American colonies. His denunciation precipitated the change of ministry in '67. In '77 Chatham was carried to the House of Lords to oppose the government policy. He looked, as he was, a dying man. He began, with eyes lifted toward heaven, saying : " I thank God that I have been enabled to come here this day to per form my duty. I am old and infirm — have one foot, more than one foot, in the grave — I am risen from my bed to stand up in the cause Chronology. 3i7 of my country — perhaps never again to speak iii this House." By an extraordinary effort, suffering great agony, he made one of his grand est orations ; after which, the stimulus of excitement being gone, he fell into the arms of his son, William Pitt, and Lord Mahon, his son- in-law, and was borne insensible home. A month later he died. 1778-79. — League between France and Spain and America ; war with France and Spain ; siege of Gibraltar by the Spaniards ; its ob stinate and successful defense during three years. 1780. — Rodney defeats the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent. The Gordon, or " No Popery," riots in London. [For a graphic account of these riots, see Dickens' " Barnaby Rudge."] 1 78 1. — Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. 1782. — Independent Irish Parliament formed. 1783. Treaty of Paris, acknowledging the independence of the American colonies. 1783. — The treaty of Versailles and general European peace. The war had added five hundred millions of dollars to England's debt, cost many lives, much sacrifice of honor and pride, and the loss of her American colonies, and reduced the nation to a state of ex haustion. The accruing advantages secured by the treaty were felt to be totally unequal to her sacrifices, and a storm of indignation swept the ministry from power. In the new government that rose first comes into power — 1783 — William Pitt, the younger, aged twenty-five, and begins the long and bitter rivalry between him and Fox. 1786. — Prince of Wales and Mrs. Fitzherbert scandals ; beginning of a long career of shame and disgrace. 1787. — Power-loom invented. Trial of Warren Hastings for high misdemeanors in the government of India ; terminated, after seven years, in acquittal. 1788.— Settlement of Australia. 1789. — French Revolution begun ; Bastile forced ; Tuileries sacked ; royal family imprisoned and France declared a Republic, 1791 ; Louis XVI., Maria Antoinette, and many of the nobles exe cuted, 1793. 1794. — War with France caused by French revolutionary agitations in England, attended by outbreaks, and by French discriminations against English commerce ; F'rench generally successful ; Lord Howe defeats the French fleet off Brest. I795-— War with Holland for her alliance with France ; Cape of 318 Pictures from English History. Good Hope and Dutch East Indies captured ; riotous demonstrations against the government on account of the taxes and unpopularity of the anti-republican French war ; attempt to assassinate King George. :797- — The Spanish fleet defeated off Cape St. Vincent and the Dutch fleet off Camperdown ; rise of Napoleon Bonaparte ; projected invasion of England ; terrible strain upon England ; Bank of England stops payment ; general distress. 1798. — Irish Rebellion ; mutiny of the fleet at Spithead and the Nore ; war with Napoleon ; victory of the Nile. The French were rivals of the English for the control of the East, and Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt was to open a new road of em pire to the Indies. The fleet which carried the French army to Egypt was attacked in Aboukir Bay, at the mouth of the Nile, by Nelson's fleet. Nelson, saying, " Before this time to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey," attacked recklessly at 3 P. M., Aug. 1, 1798. The French had 1,196 guns and 11,230 men ; the English only 1,012 guns and 8,068 men. In two hours it was plain that victory was inclining toward the English. About half-past nine the French flag-ship, " L'Orient," blew up with such a terrific explosion that for some minutes the fighting was suspended. All night long that terrible action continued, and the whole French fleet was destroyed or captured, with the exception of four ships, which contrived to escape. 1799. — Seringapatam, India, taken, and Tippoo Saib killed. 1800. — Union with Ireland ; Malta taken from the French ; armed neutrality of the northern powers against England. 1801. — Battle of Copenhagen ; Danish fleet destroyed ; victory of Alexandria ; Sunday-school mission of Robert Raikes. 1802. — Treaty of Amiens, "The Short Peace;" Bonaparte de clared Consul for life. The Peace of Amiens, while it left France in possession of most of her conquests, contained scarcely an article in favor of the compensa tion of England for all the sacrifices she had endured, and for the millions upon millions of money she had expended. 1803. — War renewed with France ; fall of Delhi, India, 1805. — War with Spain ; battle of Trafalgar, and death of Nelson. The battle of Trafalgar was fought seven miles off Cape Trafalgar. The British fleet was 31 vessels, the French and Spanish fleet 40. Nelson ran up the signal, " England expects every man TO DO His duty," and said, " We must trust to the great Disposer of Chronology. 319 all events and the justice of our cause. I thank God for this great opportunity to do my duty." The fight was very desperate and well managed on both sides. Nelson was a vain man, and, covering himself with all his decorations and bright uniform, paced his deck, a conspicuous object to the enemy's rifles, though remonstrated with on the peril. He was mortally wounded early in the action. His last words were : " Thank God ! I have done my duty." 1806— Death of Pitt and Fox. "Love of peace, immense industry, dispatch of business, knowl edge of finance, a policy of active reform, wide humanity," are the qualities Green ascribes to the younger Pitt. " Had none of the usual passions or weaknesses of the great," says Allison. " The fame of Mr. Pitt," said Chateaubriand, " seems to derive fresh luster from every vicissitude of fortune." " Austerlitz killed Pitt," wrote Wilberforce. " Roll up that map ! " Pitt said, pointing to the map of Europe. " It will not be wanted these ten years." Such was his disappointment — hopelessness for the future of Europe. "Alas, my country ! " were his last words. " What grave contains such a fa ther and such a son ? " exclaimed Lord Wellesley. Charles Fox was at heart a democrat, and sympathized with the French revolutionists. Gibbon said of him, " I admired the powers of a superior man as they were blended in his attractive character with the simplicity of a child." " A man made to be loved," said Burke. " Dissipated and irregular in private life ; having ruined his fortune at the gaming-table. He was the greatest debater the En glish Parliament ever produced," says Allison. Sir Walter Scott wrote a beautiful poem on the death of Nelson, Pitt, and Fox. 1807. — Bombardment of Copenhagen and surrender of Danish fleet ; slave-trade abolished. 1808-13. — The Peninsular War ; Wellington finally drives Marshal Soult out of Spain and invades France, 1814. 1811. — Insanity of King George, (254;) the Prince of Wales made regent ; Java surrendered to the British. The prince, afterward George IV., was a foul blot on England ; a roue, a sot, a gambler, a profligate, a trifler, and a coward, an undu- tiful son and worse husband. He prided himself on being " the first gentleman of Europe," and was its worst rake. In 1795 he married the Princess Caroline of Brunswick — a very suitable match, as she was coarse in manners, filthy in person, and indelicate in life. When they first met the royal groom-elect was so much disgusted that he cut the introduction short, called for brandy with an oath, and went immediately and got drunk ; while the bride-elect astonished every 320 Pictures from English History. body by the equal coarseness of her language regarding the prince. He was in liquor when married. During his father's insanity, when the nation was in mourning over its losses in war and staggering under its burdens, the prince regent gave a festival of great magnifi cence and prodigality. He was always ready to shed tears on the slightest provocation. He wept bitterly because Beau Brummel found fault with the cut of his coat. In 1817 public indignation brought down on the regent a mob ; his carriage was stoned, and he had been dragged out and perhaps killed had not the Life Guards rescued him. 1 81 2. — Assassination of Percival, prime minister; war with the United States ; Bonaparte's disastrous Russian campaign ; burning of Moscow. 1813. — European confederacy against France ; Bonaparte driven out of Germany. 1814. — The allied sovereigns enter Paris ; abdication of Napoleon and his banishment to Elba ; general peace in Europe and America. The close of the war left every country in Europe in a state of ex traordinary exhaustion. In England the Budget for 181 5 amounted to ninety millions of pounds sterling ; the national debt had increased from two hundred and twenty-eight to eight hundred millions ; while trade and commerce were frightfully depressed by the actual inabi lity of foreign nations to purchase English manufactures. 1815. — Bonaparte escapes from Elba ; battle of Waterloo, (255— 263.) Second abdication and exile of Napoleon on St. Helena. 1816. — Bombardment of Algiers, in consequence of the refusal of the dey to give up piracy and enslavement of Christian captives ; he is reduced to compliance. 1819. — Numerous meetings on parliamentary reform. The basis of representation in Parliament, the suffrage qualifica tion, the " pocket boroughs " and " rotten boroughs," were features in which reform was demanded. For many years the bitterest feel ings were excited and most violent scenes were enacted. The lead ers of the movement were continually summoning monster meetings in different parts of the kingdom, frequently leading to riots which were not suppressed without loss of life. In Derby disturbances oc curred which were not quelled until the ringleaders were captured and made to suffer the penalties of high treason. At Manchester a peaceable meeting was set upon by the military, and so many were killed and injured that it is remembered as " the Manchester massa cre." Prosecutions were directed against the more violent pam phleteers of the time. Chronology. 321 Edmund Burke, author, statesman, and orator, 1730-1797 ; Wedge- wood, improver of English earthenware, 1 730-1 795 ; Sir William Herschel, astronomer, 1738-1822 ; Sir Humphrey Davy, chemist, in ventor of the " safety lamp," 1778-1829; Samuel Johnson, lexicogra pher and author, 1709-1784 ; Oliver Goldsmith, poet and essayist, 1728-1774; David Hume, 1711-1776; Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794; W. Robertson, 1721-1783, historians ; Tobias Smollett, novelist, 1721-1771 ; Robert Burns, 1759-1796 ; E. Young, author of •* Night Thoughts," 1684-1765 ; T. Gray, author ofthe "Elegy," 1716—1771, poets; Sir Joshua Reynold, painter, 1723-1792 ; Richard Brinsley Sheridan, orator and playwright, 1784-1816 ; Sir Philip Frances, supposed author of the " Letters of Junius," 1740-1818; John Wes ley, founder of Methodism, 1703-1791, were among the great names of this long reign. George IV., eldest son of George III. Accession 1820, died 1830, leaving no issue ; reign, as regent, 9 years, as king, 10 years. 1820. — Trial of Queen Caroline. This was in the nature of proceedings for divorce before Parlia ment. The princess had resided abroad for many years, and pro posed to return when her husband succeeded to the throne. Every effort was made by the Government to deter her, in vain. The populace expressed its resentment against the king by taking up the queen's quarrel ; two hundred thousand people gave her an ovation on her arrival in London, and guarded her temporary residence — for she was not allowed in royal apartments. The progress of the bill in Parliament was attended by such riotous demonstrations that the ministry at last abandoned it. London was illuminated for three nights, and extravagant demonstrations were made in all large places ; it was treated as a popular victory over king and ministry. A disgraceful scene took place the next year at the coronation of George IV. She demanded to be crowned as queen, but this was denied ; then to take part in the ceremonies, which was also refused. She went in great force to Westminster Abbey, and endeavored to force her way in, but was repulsed. From that moment she lost all the confidence which had sustained her during the long years of her sorrows, and within a few weeks she breathed her last. The mistak en policy of ministers in attempting to prevent the passage of the queen's remains through the principal streets of the metropolis caused a riot, in which two persons lost their lives. The government was forced to recede from its efforts to insult her in death, and the body was borne by a partisan mob in triumph through the city— one of the most disgraceful episodes that ever stained the character of English gentlemen. The disaffection in Scotland nearly amounted to a rebellion. 14* 322 Pictures from English History. 1820.— The Cato Street conspiracy, for the assassination of the ministry and the establishment of a republic, detected ; execution and transportation of participants. 1820. — Rise of Lord John Russell, George Canning, and Robert Peel, leaders in reform legislation. 1822. — Famine and agrarian disturbances in Ireland. Distress iri England ; taxes remitted. 1825-26. — Financial panics, drought, riots throughout the king dom. Daniel O'Connell's great agitation of Ireland for the repeal of the Union, and Catholic emancipation. 1827. — Death of Canning. 1829. — Removal of political disabilities from Roman Catholics. First steam-boats ran in this reign. Lord Byron, 1788-1824, and Keats, 1795-1821, poets, flourished. William IV., son of George III. Accession 1830, death 1837, reign 7 years. " A sailor king." Plain, bluff, honest, virtuous, and a friend of popular reforms, but timorous and vacillating. His last act was the signing, with his own hand, the pardon of a condemned criminal. 1830. — First railway opened by George Stephenson. 1832. — The Reform Bill at last passed. By this bill fifty-six rotten boroughs were deprived of the right to elect 143 members of Parliament, and these representatives were given to cities and towns which had theretofore been unrepresented ; the elective franchise was also enlarged. Riots occurred in many places, on the first bill being thrown out by the Lords. The Duke of Wellington's windows were broken ; in memory of which he put up iron shutters, which he retained always afterward as a silent re proach to the people, whose very existence as a free nation he had saved, for their ungrateful violence. At Nottingham the rioters set fire to the castle. At Bristol the riots lasted three days, and were of a very serious character; the prisons were broken open, and the prisoners set free ; a hundred houses were burned clown, and prop erty to the value of half a million destroyed. Before order could be restored by the military, a hundred men were killed and wounded. Twenty-two of the ringleaders were transported ; four were hanged. Preparations were made for a march of 200,000 men from Birming ham to London, to demand franchise reform, when the Lords yielded. Ignorant people were taught to believe that a perfect millennium was about to dawn for them, on the passage of the bill. It was said that rent and taxes would altogether cease, and that property would be Chronology. 323 universal ; that wages would be doubled, and the price of necessaries of life reduced to one half. Sidney Smith, himself a strenuous re former, thus wittily describes the furore; " All young ladies imagine that, as soon as this bill is carried, they will be instantly married ; school-boys believe that gerunds and supines will be abolished, and that currant-tarts must ultimately come down in price ; the corporal and sergeant are sure of double pay ; bad poets expect a demand for their epics ; and fools will be disappointed as they always are." 1832. — Fearful ravages of cholera in England ; 6,000 deaths in London. 1833. — Slavery abolished throughout the British colonies ; 800,000 slaves freed ; government indemnifying slave-owners in $100,000,000 ; triumph of the life-work of William Wilberforce. 1834-35— Various Reform Acts passed. William Wilberforce, abolitionist, 1 795-1 833; Samuel Taylor Cole ridge, poet, 1772-1834; Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832, flourished. Victoria, granddaughter of George III. Accession 1837, now (1883) in th* 47th year of her reign. " Worthy of earth's proudest throne. Nor less, by excellence of nature, fit Beside the unadorned hearth to sit, Domestic queen where grandeur is unknown." Queen Victoria's reign of forty-six years is longer by a year than Elizabeth's, and exceeded in length only by those of Henry III., Edward III., and George III. During her reign the world has gained cheap newspapers, cheap postage, telegraphs, transatlan tic steamers, and a score of revolutionizing inventions and discov eries. The queen scarcely ever misses a book of note that comes from the press in England, and is fond of George Eliot's works, and keeps a set at hand. A lady in waiting reads the newspapers, and marks what she thinks will interest her mistress. 1837. — Rebellion in Canada ; conciliation and repression, and re form of evils ; the two provinces united in 1840. 1838. — "Chartist" and " Corn-Law Repeal " agitations. "The Anti-Corn-Law League " formed. The Chartists demanded universal suffrage ; vote by ballot, instead of viva voce • annual Parliaments ; remuneration of members of Par liament, so that poor men could serve ; and abolition of the property qualification. Only one of these reforms is as yet adopted. Scarcity of wheat caused general demand for abolition of the import tax on grain and bread. The food question was really at the bottom of all 324 Pictures from English History. the agitation. A Chartist petition bearing over a million signatures went up to Parliament, which refused to even receive it. Serious outbreaks occurred in many cities. At Newport the military fired on the Chartists, and killed or wounded twenty. The leaders were transported. It took eight years for Sir Robert Peel to secure the repeal. 1839. — War with China, to compel her to take opium of British traders, called The Opium War ; Hongkong ceded to England. 1840. — The Penny Post instituted. It not only cheapened but equalized postage, so that all subjects stood equal as to postage. There had been great abuse of franking by wealthy and titled classes. Sir Rowland Hill was the father of " Post-office Reform." He advocated the principle that to cheapen postage would increase the revenue, and it proved so, against the predictions of most of the leading men. 1840. — The queen marries Prince Albert, of Saxe-Cobourg Gotha. 1842. — The Afghan War; massacre of English in Khyber Pass; Cabul retaken by General Pollok. War in Scinde ; Scinde and the Punjaub annexed to Great Britain, (in 1849.) 1846. — Famine in Ireland ; Sir Robert Peel breaks from his party, and moves the repeal of the Corn Laws as a measure of relief, loses power and popularity, and immortalizes his name. 1850. — Death of Peel. 1 85 1. — " Crystal Palace " World's Exhibition. 1854.— The Crimean War. Battles ofthe Alma, (268,) Balaklava, and Inkerman ; siege of Sebastopol. England, France, and Turkey, allied to resist the designs of Russia upon Turkey. Owing to the wretched organization of the English army-service, the commissariat and quartermasters' departments broke down. The army suffered for food and clothing, and great mortality ensued. Great indignation in England; large sums subscribed, and Florence Nightingale or ganized the volunteer nurse corps to go out to the relief of the depleted troops. A ministerial crisis was precipitated by the mis management of the war. Half a million lives were lost in this war, and vast treasures. The treaty of Paris, 1856, secured the evacuation of the Crimea and the reduction of Sebastopol, Turkish territorial integrity, limitation of Russian naval power in the Black Sea, neu trality of the Dardanelles, and reformed the international law of warfare, as to blockades, privateering, etc. Chronology. 325 1857-58. — The Indian Mutiny; massacres at Cavvnpore, Lucknow, and Delhi by the Sepoys ; relief of Lucknow by Sir Colin Campbell ; destruction of the ancient native dynasty of Hindustan ; the King of Delhi executed, but the fate of Nana Sahib was never known. The war was marked by savage butchery of white men, women, and chil dren, and almost equally savage retaliation, when the English got the upper hand, by deeds of great valor and endurance and many thrilling adventures. 1858. — Jewish disabilities removed. 1861. — Famine in India ; death of Albert, prince consort, an event the queen has never ceased to mourn. 1865. — The Fenian conspiracy. 1867. — Disraeli ministry ; second reform bill passed, enlarging the elective franchise ; Abyssinian War ; suicide of King Theodoras on the approach of the English ; release of the Christian captives of the Abyssinians. 1868. — First ministry of Mr. Gladstone; he passes the act dises tablishing the Irish Church, and (in 1870) new measures for popular education. 1874. — Second ministry of Disraeli ; the title of " Empress of In dia" added to the queen, 1876. 1877. — War between Turkey and Russia. All the powers take a hand in settling it in the Treaty of Berlin ; England gets Cyprus ; height of Disraeli's power. 1879. — Zulu War. War in Afghanistan ; massacre of English at Cabul ; Gen. Roberts retakes Cabul ; Afghanistan abandoned by the English, (1881.) 1880. — Second Gladstone ministry. 1881. — Death of Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield ; war with the Boers, South Africa ; Gladstone's brave concession of their rights against popular clamor. 1881-83. — Irish Land League agitation ; outrages. Boycotting, etc., notwithstanding which Gladstone passes Irish Land Bill, Arrears of Rent Act, and other measures for the relief of Ireland, together with severely repressive measures, (1882.) Murder of Lord Frederick Cav endish and Mr. Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin ; five conspirators detected and hung, and others transported for the crime, in 1883. Detection and punishment of Irish dynamite conspiracy. Egyptian War; rebellion of Arabi against the Khedive suppressed by the 326 Pictures from English History. English ; Alexandria bombarded and Arabi's forces captured ; Arabi banished ; English protectorate over Egppt. A few of the great names of this memorable reign: Generals: Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, 1769-1852, prime minister 1828-30; Sir C. J. Napier, 1782-1852, historian of the Peninsular War; Lord Clyde, Sir Colin Campbell, 1792-1866, distinguished in India and the Crimea. Statesmen: Sir Robert Peel, 1799-1869; Earl Derby, 1799-1869, thrice prime minister; Lord Palmerston, 1785—1865, thrice prime minister; Lord Brougham, 1788-1868, scholar and fine orator; Richard Cobden, 1804-1865, great apostle of free trade ; Lord Russell, Benjamin Disraeli, (Lord Beaconsfield,) John Bright, W. E. Gladstone. Men of science: George Stephen son, 1781-1848, constructor of the first railway; Sir M. I. Brunei, constructor of the Thames Tunnel ; Sir David Brewster, natural philosopher ; M. Faraday, chemist ; John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, political philosophers ; John Tyndall, Charles Darwin, and T. H. Huxley, scientists. Authors : William Wordsworth, Robert Southey, Thomas Moore, Alfred Tennyson, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poets ; Henry Hallam, James Anthony Froude, Lord (T. B.) Macaulay, J. R. Green, historians ; Charles Dickens, W. M. Thackeray, Lord (Sir E. B.) Lytton, Mrs. Lewes, (" George Eliot,") novelists ; Thomas Hood, humorist and poet ; Thomas Carlyle, essayist. Appendix. 327 APPENDIX. THE STUDENT'S MEMORANDA. The reader of this volume may increase the value of his reading by filling the blanks on the following pages. The time and effort required to do this will be well-spent, as the exercise may be the very thing that will secure fruits of the reading by stamping clear impressions indelibly on the memory. It is what we remember, of that which we read, that benefits us. Recalling what we have read, and putting that knowledge in one's own language, is the best way to thus fasten the impression ; and when one also writes an opinion of what he has read he has created a thought, and some one says, " He who can think, and think, and think, is great." It is a good beginning of thinking to merely com pare things you have read. To be able to say, " This is good, this is better, that is best, these I do not like," and to be able to give one good reason for the choice, is going a step farther in criticism, in the formation of literary taste, and the development of mental power. Therefore, if you can do nothing more, state one fact — a date, a name, a place in each blank, and so nail that there ; if you can add a thought of your own — approbation or dissent, it makes no difference — do that. In this way you will make this Appendix the most valu able and the most living part of the book — renowned and brilliant as are the contributions of genius which it contains- The work may be done any time; but it is suggested that a good time would be soon after reading a " Picture " and the contemporaneous " Chronology," while the whole is still fresh in mind. If it is done at once, it will be the more likely not to be left undone after waiting. 328 Pictures from English History. Record. — Began reading this book 188.. Finished it. . A^Ctyb. , i88# (OO Name.. . LSiO?<1&<&. G%. . Residence , A Statement. — The object of this book ; An Outline. — The contents of book stated in few words ; Appendix. 329 A Selection. — Name, in order of your preference, the three " Pictures " that best satisfy you : Give, if you can, one or more reasons for your first choice — as style, subject, moral, interest in author or persons described, etc, : Biographical. — Name, in order of preference, three char acters in this history whom you most admire : 330 Pictures from English History. Give, if you can, reasons for first choice, as grandeur of his career, high character, sympathy for sufferings or death, influence on humanity, etc., etc. : Give as many facts as you can regarding each of the fol lowing persons, so far as you have learned them from this book, including your own observations on his time, character, and acts : Alfred the Great : Queen Anne ; Augustine Appendix. 3<3i Becket : Boadicea : Anne Boleyn : Black Prince : Bruce : Bede: 332 Pictures from English History. Bulwer ; Caroline, wife of George IV. : Caractacus : Carlyle : Canute : Lord Chatham, the elder Pitt : Oliver Cromwell ; Appendix. Cobden : De Foe Dickens : Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield Simon De Montfort : Edward I. : Edward II. 333 334 Pictures from English History. Edward III. : Edward IV. : Elizabeth ; Froissart Fox : Froude ; J. R. Green : Appendix. George I. : George II. : George III. : George IV. Gladstone : Harold : 33. Tyler's, Wat, insurrection, 124. Tyrone's rebellion, 301. Union of England and Scotland, 313. Union of England and Ireland, 318. Van Tromp's broom, 306. Victoria, Queen, 323. Wallace, 288. Walpole, Horace, 237, 313. Warbeck, Perkin, 166, 296. claims crown from Henry VII., loo. executed, 170. Wars of the Roses, 145, 294. Warwick, Earl, ''the King-maker, 14,, 152. at Barnet, 155. death of, 160. Wellington, Duke of, at Waterloo, «!57, 264. Westminster Abbey, 278, 287. White, Rev. James, 47, 170. Wilberforce, Wm., 323. Wilkes, John, 315. William I., (the Conqueror,) 53, 279. invades England, 55. death, 280. 35° William IL, (Rufus,) 60, 280. William III., of Orange, 227, 310. invades England, 228, 310. deposes James IL, 232, 310. accidental death, 312. William IV., 322. Wolsey, Cardinal, 297. Wyatt's Rebellion, 299. Index. Wycliffe, 129, 291. York and Lancaster, Wars of, 145. York, Duke of, claims the crown, 148. executed, 149. Second duke of, made Henry IV., 149, Yonge, Miss, 174. Zulu War, 325. THE END. ill |||li ¦te