Prodyuced by Anne Soulard, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE
A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ENGLAND
BY
MARY PARMELE
PREFACE.
Will the readers of this little work please bear in mind the
difficulties which must attend the painting of a very large picture,
with multitudinous characters and details, upon a very small canvas!
This book is mainly an attempt to trace to their sources some of the
currents which enter into the life of England to-day; and to indicate
the starting-points of some among the various threads--legislative,
judicial, social, etc.--which are gathered into the imposing strand of
English Civilization in this closing 19th Century.
The reader will please observe that there seem to have been two things
most closely interwoven with the life of England. RELIGION and MONEY
have been the great evolutionary factors in her development.
It has been, first, the resistance of the people to the extortions of
money by the ruling class, and second, the violating of their religious
instincts, which has made nearly all that is vital in English History.
The lines upon which the government has developed to its present
Constitutional form are chiefly lines of resistance to oppressive
enactments in these two matters. The dynastic and military history of
England, although picturesque and interesting, is really only a
narrative of the external causes which have impeded the Nation's growth
toward its ideal of "the greatest possible good to the greatest
possible number."
M. P.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Ancient Britain--Caesar's Invasion--Britain a Roman Province--Boadicea
--Lyndin or London--Roman Legions Withdrawn--Angles and Saxons--
Cerdic--Teutonic Invasion--English Kingdoms Consolidated
CHAPTER II.
Augustine--Edwin--Caedmon--Baeda--Alfred--Canute--Edward the
Confessor--Harold--William the Conqueror
CHAPTER III.
"Gilds" and Boroughs--William II.--Crusades--Henry I.--Henry II.--
Becket's Death--Richard I.--John--Magna Charta
CHAPTER IV.
Henry III.--Roger Bacon--First True Parliament--Edward I.--Conquest of
Wales--of Scotland--Edward II.--Edward III.--Battle of Crecy--Richard
II.--Wickliffe
CHAPTER V
House of Lancaster--Henry IV.--Henry V.--Agincourt--Battle of Orleans--
Wars of the Roses--House of York--Edward IV.--Richard III.--Henry VII.
--Printing Introduced
CHAPTER VI
Henry VIII--Wolsey--Reformation--Edward VI--Mary
CHAPTER VII
Elizabeth--East India Company Chartered--Colonization of Virginia--
Flodden Field--Birth of Mary Stuart--Mary Stuart's Death--Spanish
Armada--Francis Bacon
CHAPTER VIII
James I--First New England Colony--Gunpowder Plot--Translation of
Bible--Charles I--Archbishop Laud--John Hampden--_Petition of Right_--
Massachusetts Chartered--Earl Strafford--_Star Chamber_
CHAPTER IX
Long Parliament--Death of Strafford and Laud--Oliver Cromwell--Death
of Charles I.--Long Parliament Dispersed--Charles II.
CHAPTER X
Act of Habeas Corpus--Death of Charles II.--Milton--Bunyan--James II.
--William and Mary--Battle of Boyne
CHAPTER XI.
Anne--Marlborough--Battle of Blenheim--House of Hanover--George I.--
George II.--Walpole--British Dominion in India--Battle of Quebec--John
Wesley
CHAPTER XII.
George III.--Stamp Act--Tax on Tea--American Independence Acknowledged
--Impeachment of Hastings--War of 1812--First English Railway--George
IV.--William IV.--Reform Bill--Emancipation of the Slaves
CHAPTER XIII.
Victoria--Famine in Ireland--War with Russia--Sepoy Rebellion--Massacre
at Cawnpore
CHAPTER XIV.
Atlantic Cable--Daguerre's Discovery--First World's Fair--Death of
Albert--Suez Canal--Victoria Empress of India--Disestablishment of
Irish Branch of Church of England--Present Conditions
HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
The remotest fact in the history of England is written in her rocks.
Geology tells us of a time when no sea flowed between Dover and Calais,
while an unbroken continent extended from the Mediterranean to the
Orkneys.
Huge mounds of rough stones called Cromlechs, have yielded up still
another secret. Before the coming of the Keltic-Aryans, there dwelt
there two successive races, whose story is briefly told in a few human
fragments found in these "Cromlechs." These remains do not bear the
royal marks of Aryan origin. The men were small in stature, with
inferior skulls; and it is surmised that they belonged to the same
mysterious branch of the human family as the Basques and Iberians,
whose presence in Southern Europe has never been explained.
When the Aryan came and blotted out these races will perhaps always
remain an unanswered question. But while Greece was clothing herself
with a mantle of beauty, which the world for two thousand years has
striven in vain to imitate, there was lying off the North and West
coasts of the European Continent a group of mist-enshrouded islands of
which she had never heard.
Obscured by fogs, and beyond the horizon of Civilization, a branch of
the Aryan race known as Britons were there leading lives as primitive
as the American Indians, dwelling in huts shaped like beehives, which
they covered with branches and plastered with mud. While Phidias was
carving immortal statues for the Parthenon, this early Britisher was
decorating his abode with the heads of his enemies; and could those
shapeless blocks at Stonehenge speak, they would, perhaps, tell of
cruel and hideous Druidical rites witnessed on Salisbury Plain, ages
ago.
[Sidenote: Caesar's Invasion, 55 B.C. Britain a Roman Province, 45 A.D.
Boadicea 61 A.D.]
Rumors of the existence of this people reached the Mediterranean three
or four hundred years before Christ, but not until Caesar's invasion of
the Island (55 B.C.) was there any positive knowledge of them.
The actual conquest of Britain was not one of Caesar's achievements.
But from the moment when his covetous eagle-eye viewed the chalk-cliffs
of Dover from the coast of Northern Gaul, its fate was sealed. The
Roman octopus from that moment had fastened its tentacles upon the
hapless land; and in 45 A.D., under the Emperor Claudius, it became a
Roman province. In vain did the Britons struggle for forty years. In
vain did the heroic Boadicea (during the reign of Nero, 61 A.D.), like
Hermann in Germany, and Vercingetorix in France, resist the destruction
of her nation by the Romans. In vain did this woman herself lead the
Britons, in a frenzy of patriotism; and when the inevitable defeat
came, and London was lost, with the desperate courage of barbarian she
destroyed herself rather than witness the humiliation of her race.
The stately Westminster and St. Paul's did not look down upon this
heroic daughter of Britain. London at that time was a collection of
miserable huts and entrenched cattle-pens, which were in Keltic speech
called the "Fort-on-the-Lake"--or "Llyndin," an uncouth name in Latin
ears, which gave little promise of the future London, the Romans
helping it to its final form by calling it Londinium.
But the octopus had firmly closed about its victim, whose struggles,
before the year 100 A.D., had practically ceased. A civilization which
made no effort to civilize was forcibly planted upon the island. Where
had been the humble village, protected by a ditch and felled trees,
there arose the walled city, with temples and baths and forum, and
stately villas with frescoed walls and tessellated floors, and hot-air
currents converting winter into summer.
So Chester, Colchester, Lincoln, York, London, and a score of other
cities were set like jewels in a surface of rough clay, the Britons
filling in the intervening spaces with their own rude customs, habits,
and manners. Dwelling in wretched cabins thatched with straw and
chinked with mud, they still stubbornly maintained their own uncouth
speech and nationality, while they helplessly saw all they could earn
swallowed up in taxes and tributes by their insatiate conquerors. The
Keltic-Gauls might, if they would, assimilate this Roman civilization,
but not so the Keltic-Britons.
The two races dwelt side by side, but separate (except to some extent
in the cities), or, if possible, the vanquished retreated before the
vanquisher into Wales and Cornwall; and there to-day are found the only
remains of the aboriginal Briton race in England.
The Roman General Agricola had built in 78 A.D. a massive wall across
the North of England, extending from sea to sea, to protect the Roman
territory from the Picts and Scots, those wild dwellers in the Northern
Highlands. It seems to us a frail barrier to a people accustomed to
leaping the rocky wall set by nature between the North and the South;
and unless it were maintained by a line of legions extending its entire
length, they must have laughed at such a defence; even when duplicated
later, as it was, by the Emperor Hadrian, in 120 A.D.; and still twice
again, first by Emperor Antoninus, and then by Severus. For the swift
transportation of troops in the defensive warfare always carried on
with the Picts and Scots, magnificent roads were built, which linked
the Romanized cities together in a network of splendid highways.
There were more than three centuries of peace. Agriculture, commerce,
and industries came into existence. "Wealth accumulated," but the
Briton "decayed" beneath the weight of a splendid system, which had not
benefited, but had simply crushed out of him his original vigor.
Together with Roman villas, and vice, and luxury, had also come
Christianity. But the Briton, if he had learned to pray, had forgotten
how to fight,--and how to govern; and now the Roman Empire was
perishing. She needed all her legions to keep Alaric and his Goths out
of Rome.
[Sidenote: Roman Legions Withdrawn, 410 A.D.]
In 410 A.D. the fair cities and roads were deserted. The tramp of Roman
soldiers was heard no more in the land, and the enfeebled native race
were left helpless and alone to fight their battles with the Picts and
Scots;--that fierce Briton offshoot which had for centuries dwelt in
the fastnesses of the Highlands, and which swarmed down upon them like
vultures as soon as their protectors were gone.
In 446 A.D. the unhappy Britons invited their fate. Like their cousins,
the Gauls, they invited the Teutons from across the sea to come to
their rescue, and with result far more disastrous.
When the Frank became the champion and conqueror of Gaul, he had for
centuries been in conflict or in contact with Rome, and had learned
much of the old Southern civilizations, and to some extent adopted
their ideals. Not so the Angles and Saxons, who came pouring into
Britain from Schleswig-Holstein. They were uncontaminated pagans. In
scorn of Roman luxury, they set the torch to the villas, and temples
and baths. They came, exterminating, not assimilating. The more
complaisant Frank had taken Romanized, Latinized Gaul just as he found
her, and had even speedily adopted her religion. It was for Gaul a
change of rulers, but not of civilization.
But the Angles and Saxons were Teutons of a different sort. They
brought across the sea in those "keels" their religion, their manners,
habits, nature, and speech; and they brought them for _use_ (just as
the Englishman to-day carries with him a little England wherever he
goes). Their religion, habits, and manners they stamped upon the
helpless Britons. In spite of King Arthur, and his knights, and his
sword "Excalibar," they swiftly paganized the land which had been for
three centuries Christianized; and their nature and speech were so
ground into the land of their adoption that they exist to-day wherever
the Anglo-Saxon abides.
From Windsor Palace to the humblest abode in England (and in America)
are to be found the descendants of these dominating barbarians who
flooded the British Isles in the 5th Century. What sort of a race were
they? Would we understand England to-day, we must understand them. It
is not sufficient to know that they were bearded and stalwart, fair and
ruddy, flaxen-haired and with cold blue eyes. We should know what sort
of souls looked out of those clear cold eyes. What sort of impulses and
hearts dwelt within those brawny breasts.
Their hearts were barbarous, but loving and loyal, and nature had
placed them in strong, vehement, ravenous bodies. They were untamed
brutes, with noble instincts.
They had ideals too; and these are revealed in the rude songs and epics
in which they delighted. Monstrous barbarities are committed, but
always to accomplish some stern purpose of duty. They are cruel in
order to be just. This sluggish, ravenous, drinking brute, with no
gleam of poetry, no light-hearted rhythm in his soul, has yet chaotic
glimpses of the sublime in his earnest, gloomy nature. He gives little
promise of culture, but much of heroism. There is, too, a reaching
after something grand and invisible, which is a deep religious
instinct. All these qualities had the future English nation slumbering
within them. Marriage was sacred, woman honored. All the members of a
family were responsible for the acts of one member. The sense of
obligation and of responsibility was strong and binding.
Is not every type of English manhood explained by such an inheritance?
From the drunken brawler in his hovel to the English gentleman "taking
his pleasures sadly," all are accounted for; and Hampden, Milton,
Cromwell, John Bright, and Gladstone existed potentially in those
fighting, drinking savages in the 5th Century.
Their religion, after 150 years, was exchanged for Christianity. Time
softened their manners and habits, and mingled new elements with their
speech. But the Anglo-Saxon _nature_ has defied the centuries and
change. _A strong sense of justice_, and a _resolute resistance
to encroachments upon personal liberty_, are the warp and woof of
Anglo-Saxon character yesterday, to-day and forever. The steady
insistence of these traits has been making English History for
precisely 1,400 years, (from 495 to 1895,) and the history of the
Anglo-Saxon race in America for 200 years as well.
Our ancestors brought with them from their native land a simple, just,
Teutonic structure of society and government, the base of which was the
_individual free-man_. The family was considered the social unit.
Several families near together made a township, the affairs of the
township being settled by the male freeholders, who met together to
determine by conference what should be done.
This was the germ of the "town-meeting" and of popular government. In
the "witan," or "wise men," who were chosen as advisers and adjusters
of difficult questions, exist the future legislature and judiciary,
while in the king, or "alder-mann" ("Ealdorman") we see not an
oppressor, but one who by superior age and experience is fitted to
lead. Cerdic, first Saxon king, was simply Cerdic the "Ealdorman" or
"Alder-mann."
They were a free people from the beginning. They had never bowed the
neck to yoke, their heads had never bent to tyranny. Better far was it
that Roman civilization, built upon Keltic-Briton foundation, should
have been effaced utterly, and that this strong untamed humanity, even
cruel and terrible as it was, should replace it. Roman laws, language,
literature, faith, manners, were all swept away. A few mosaics, coins,
and ruined fragments of walls and roads are all the record that remains
of 300 years of occupation.
And the Briton himself--what became of him? In Ireland and Scotland he
lingers still; but, except in Wales and Cornwall, England knows him no
more. Like the American Indian, he was swept into the remote,
inaccessible corners of his own land. It seemed cruel, but it had to
be. Would we build strong and high, it must not be upon _sand_. We
distrust the Kelt as a foundation for nations as we do sand for our
temples. France was never cohesive until a mixture of Teuton had
toughened it. Genius makes a splendid spire, but a poor corner-stone.
It would seem that the Keltic race, brilliant and richly endowed, was
still unsuited to the world in its higher stages of development. In
Britain, Gaul, and Spain they were displaced and absorbed by the
Germanic races. And now for long centuries no Keltic people of
importance has maintained its independence; the Gaelic of the Scotch
Highlands and of Ireland, the native dialect of the Welsh and of
Brittany, being the scanty remains of that great family of related
tongues which once occupied more territory than German, Latin, and
Greek combined. The solution of the Irish question may lie in the fact
that the Irish are fighting against the inevitable; that they belong to
a race which is on its way to extinction, and which is intended to
survive only as a brilliant thread, wrought into the texture of more
commonplace but more enduring peoples.
It was written in the book of fate that a great nation should arise
upon that green island by the North Sea. A foundation of Roman cement,
made by a mingling of Keltic-Briton, and a corrupt, decayed
civilization, would have altered not alone the fate of a nation, but
the History of the World. Our barbarian ancestors brought from
Schleswig-Holstein a rough, clean, strong foundation for what was to
become a new type of humanity on the face of the earth. A Humanity
which was not to be Persian nor Greek, nor yet Roman, but to be
nourished on the best results of all, and to become the standard-bearer
for the Civilization of the future.
[Sidenote: Teutonic Invasion, 449 A.D.]
The Jutes came first as an advance-guard of the great Teuton invasion.
It was but the prologue to the play when Hengist and Horsa, in 449
A.D., occupied what is now Kent, in the Southeast extremity of England.
It was only when Cerdic and his Saxons placed foot on British soil(495
A.D.) that the real drama began. And when the Angles shortly afterward
followed and occupied all that the Saxons had not appropriated (the
north and east coast), the actors were all present and the play began.
The Angles were destined to bestow their name upon the land (Angle-
land), and the Saxons a line of kings extending from Cerdic to
Victoria.
[Sidenote: English Kingdoms Consolidated.]
Covetous of each other's possessions, these Teutons fought as brothers
will. Exterminating the Britons was diversified with efforts to
exterminate one another. Seven kingdoms, four Anglian and three Saxon,
for 300 years tried to annihilate each other; then, finally submitting
to the strongest, united completely,--as only children of one household
of nations can do. The Saxons had been for two centuries dominating
more and more until the long struggle ended--behold, Anglo-Saxon
England consolidated English under one Saxon king! The other kingdoms--
Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Sussex, and Essex--surviving as
shires and counties.
In 802 A.D., while Charlemagne was welding together his vast and
composite empire, the Saxon Egbert (Ecgberht), descendant of Cerdic
(the "Alder-mann"), was consolidating a less imposing, but, as it has
proved, more permanent kingdom; and the History of a United England had
begun.
While Christianity had been effaced by the Teuton invasion in England,
it had survived among the Irish-Britons. Ireland was never paganized.
With fiery zeal, her people not alone maintained the religion of the
Cross at home, but even drove back the heathen flood by sending
missionaries among the Picts in the Highlands, and into other outlying
territory about the North Sea.
Pope Gregory the Great saw this Keltic branch of Christendom, actually
outrunning Latin Christianity in activity, and he was spurred to an act
which was to be fraught with tremendous consequences.