The attempt here made to combine a bibliography of English history with
some account of the progress of English historical writing is beset with
some difficulty. The evidential value of what a writer says is quite
distinct from the literary art with which he says it; the real sources
of history are not the works of historians, but records and documents
written with no desire to further any literary purpose. Domesday Book is
unique as a source of medieval history, but it does not count in the
development of English historical writing. That is quite a secondary
consideration; for there was much English history before any Englishman
could write; and even after he could write, his compositions constitute
a minor part of the evidence.
Our earliest information about the land and its people is derived from
geological, ethnological and archaeological studies, from the remains in
British barrows and caves, Roman roads, walls and villas, coins,
place-names and inscriptions. The writings of Caesar and Tacitus, and a
few scattered notices in other Roman authors, supplement this evidence.
But the scientific accuracy of Tacitus' _Germania_ is not beyond
dispute, and that light fails centuries before the Anglo-Saxon conquest
of Great Britain. The history of that conquest itself is mainly
inferential; there is the _flebilis narratio_ of Gildas, vague and
rhetorical, moral rather than historical in motive, and written more
than a century after the conquest had begun, and the narrative of the
Welsh Nennius, who wrote two and a half centuries after Gildas, and
makes no critical distinction between the deeds of dragons and those of
Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons themselves could not write until
Christian missionaries had reintroduced the art at the end of the 6th
century, and history was not by any means the first purpose to which
they applied it. It was first used to compile written statements of
customs and dooms which were their nearest approach to law, and these
codes and charters are the earliest written materials for Anglo-Saxon
history. The remarkable outburst of literary culture in Northumbria
during the 7th and 8th centuries produced a real historian in Bede;
Bede, however, knows little or nothing of English history between 450
and 596, and he is valuable only for the 7th and early part of the 8th
centuries. Almost contemporary is the _Vita Wilfridi_ by Eddius, but
more valuable are the letters we possess of Boniface and Alcuin. The
famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was probably started under the influence of
Alfred the Great towards the end of the 9th century. Its chronology is
often one, two or three years wrong even when it seems to be a
contemporary authority, and the value of its evidence on the conquest
and the first two centuries after it is very uncertain. But from
Ecgbert's reign onwards it supplies a good deal of apparently
trustworthy information. For Alfred himself we have also Asser's
biography and the _Annals of St Neots_, a very imaginative compilation,
while most of the stories which have made Alfred's name a household word
are fabulous. Even the Chronicle becomes meagre a few years after
Alfred's death, and its value depends largely upon the ballads which it
incorporates; nor is it materially supplemented by the lives of St
Dunstan, for hagiologists have never treated historical accuracy as a
matter of moment; and our knowledge of the last century of Anglo-Saxon
history is derived mainly from Anglo-Norman writers who wrote after the
Norman Conquest. Some collateral light on the Danish conquest of England
is thrown by the _Heimskringla_ and other materials collected in
Vigfusson and Powell's _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_, and for the reign of
Canute and his sons there is the contemporary _Encomium Emmae_, which is
a dishonest panegyric on the widow of AEthelred and Canute. For Edward
the Confessor there is an almost equally biased biography.
For the Norman Conquest itself strictly contemporary evidence is
extremely scanty, and historians have exhausted their own and their
readers' patience in disputing the precise significance of some phrases
about the battle of Hastings used by Wace, a Norman poet who wrote
nearly a century after the battle. One version of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle goes down to 1079 and another to 1154, but their notices of
current events are brief and meagre. The Bayeux tapestry affords,
however, valuable contemporary evidence, and there are some facts
related by eye-witnesses in the works of William of Poitiers and William
of Jumieges. A generation of copious chroniclers was, moreover,
springing up, and among them were Florence of Worcester, Henry of
Huntingdon, Simeon of Durham and William of Malmesbury. Their ambition
was almost invariably to write the history of the world, and they
generally begin with the Creation. They only become original and
contemporary authorities towards the end of their appointed tasks, and
the bulk of their work is borrowed from their predecessors. Frequently
they embody materials which would otherwise have perished, but their
transcription is marred by an amount of conscious or unconscious
falsification which seriously impairs their value. All the
above-mentioned writers lived in the half-century immediately following
the Norman Conquest, but their critical acumen and their literary art
vary considerably. William of Malmesbury, Eadmer and Ordericus Vitalis
attain a higher historical standard than had yet been reached in England
by any one, with the possible exception of Bede. They are not mere
annalists; they practise an art and cultivate a style; history has
become to them a form of literature. They have also their philosophy and
interpretation of history. It is mainly a theological conception, blind
to economic influences, and attaching excessive importance to the
effects of the individual action of emperors and popes, kings and
cardinals. Even their characters are painted in different colours
according to their action on quite irrelevant questions, as, for
instance, their benefactions to the monastery, to which the historian
happens to belong, or to rival houses; and the character once determined
by such considerations, history is made to point the moral of their
fortunes, or their fate. It is regarded as the record of moral judgments
and the proof of orthodox doctrine, and it is long before ecclesiastical
historians expel the sermon from their text.
The line of monastic historians stretches out to the close of the middle
ages. Most of the great monasteries had their official annalists, who
produced such works as the Annals of Tewkesbury, Gloucester, Burton,
Waverley, Dunstable, Bermondsey, Oseney, Winchester (see _Annales
Monastici_, 5 vols., ed. Luard, and other volumes in the Rolls series).
Some of them are mainly local chronicles; others are almost national
histories. In particular, St Albans developed a remarkable school of
historians extending over nearly three centuries to the death of
Whethamstede in 1465 (see _Chronica Monasterii S. Albani_, Rolls series,
7 vols., ed. Riley). Only a few of the 235 volumes published under the
direction of the master of the Rolls, and called the Rolls series, can
here be mentioned. Other medieval writers have been edited for the
earlier English Historical Society; some of them have been re-edited
without being superseded in the Rolls series. For the reign of Stephen
we have the anonymous _Gesta Stephani_ in addition to the writers
already mentioned, several of whom continue into Stephen's reign. For
Henry II. we have William of Newburgh, who reaches the highest point
attained by historical composition in the 12th century; the so-called
Benedict of Peterborough's _Gesta Henrici_, which Stubbs tentatively and
without sufficient authority ascribed to Richard Fitznigel; Robert of
Torigni; and seven volumes of "Materials for the History of Thomas
Becket," which contain some of the best and worst samples of
hagiological history. For Richard and John the chronicles of Roger of
Hoveden, Ralph de Diceto (Diss), Gervase of Canterbury, Ralph of
Coggeshall, and a later continuation of Hoveden, known under the name of
Walter of Coventry, are the best narrative authorities.
With the accession of Henry III., Roger of Wendover, the first of the St
Albans school whose writings are extant, becomes our chief authority. He
was re-edited and continued after 1236 by Matthew Paris, the greatest of
medieval historians. His work, which goes down to 1259, is picturesque,
vivid, and marked by considerable breadth of view and independence of
judgment. The story is carried on by a series of jejune compilations
known as the _Flores historiarum_ (ed. Luard). Better authorities for
Edward I. are Rishanger, Trokelowe and Blaneforde, Wykes, Walter of
Hemingburgh, Nicholas Trevet, Oxnead and Bartholomew Cotton, and others
contained in Stubbs's _Chronicles of Edward I. and Edward II._ In the
14th century there is a significant deterioration in the monastic
chroniclers, and their place is taken by the works of secular clergy
like Adam Murimuth, Geoffrey the Baker, Robert of Avesbury, Henry
Knighton and the anonymous author of the _Eulogium historiarum_.
Monastic history is represented by Higden's voluminous _Polychronicon_,
which succeeds the _Flores historiarum_. A brief revival of the St
Albans school towards the end of the century is seen in the _Chronicon
Angliae_ and the works of T. Walsingham, which continue into the reign
of Henry V. For Richard II. we have also Malverne and the Monk of
Evesham; for the early Lancastrians, Capgrave, Elmham, Otterbourne, Adam
of Usk; and for Henry VI., Amundesham, Whethamstede, William of
Worcester and John Hardyng, as well as a number of anonymous briefer
chronicles, edited, though not in the Rolls series, by J. Gairdner, C.
L. Kingsford, N. H. Nicolas and J. S. Davies.
These are the principal English historical writers for the middle ages;
but as the connexion between England and the continent grew closer, and
international relations developed, an increasing amount of light is
thrown on English history by foreign writers. Of these authorities one
of the earliest is the _Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois
d'Angleterre_ (ed. Michel); briefer are the _Chronique de l'Anonyme de
Bethune_ and the _Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal_. A large number of
French and Flemish chronicles illustrate the history of the Hundred
Years' War, by far the most important being Froissart (best edition by
Luce, though Lettenhove's is bigger). Next come Jehan le Bel, Waurin's
_Recueil_, Monstrelet, Chastellain, Juvenal des Ursins, and more limited
works such as Creton's _Chronique de la traison et mort de Richard II_.
Chronicles, however, grow less important as sources of history as time
goes on. Their value is always dependent upon the absence of the more
satisfactory materials known as records, and these records gradually
become more copious and complete. They develop with the government, of
whose activity and policy they are the real test and evidence. Perhaps
the most important thing in history is the evolution of government, the
development of consciousness and a will on the part of the state. This
will is expressed in records; and, as the state progresses from infancy
through the stage of tutelage under the church to its modern
"omnicompetence," so its will is expressed in an ever widening and
differentiating series of records. The first need of a government is
finance; the earliest organized machinery for exerting its will is the
exchequer; and the earliest great record in English history is Domesday
Book. It is followed by a series of exchequer records, called the Pipe
Rolls, which begin in the reign of Henry I., and dating from that of
Henry II. is the _Dialogus de scaccario_, which explains in none too
lucid language the intricate working of the exchequer system. It was
Henry II. who gave the greatest impetus to the development of the
machinery for expressing the will of the state. He began with finance
and went on to justice, recognizing that _justitia magnum emolumentum_,
the administration of justice was a great source of revenue. So national
courts of law are added to the national exchequer, and by the end of the
12th century legal records become an even more important source of
history than financial documents. The judicial system is described by
Glanvill at the end of the 12th, and by Bracton and Fleta in the 13th
century (for the exchequer see the _Testa de Nevill_ and the _Red Book
of the Exchequer_). During that period the Curia Regis threw off three
offshoots--the courts of exchequer, king's bench and common pleas; and
records of their judicial proceedings survive in the Plea Rolls and Year
Books, some of which have been edited for the Rolls series, the Selden
and other societies. Numerous other classes of legal and administrative
records gradually develop, the Patent and Close Rolls (first calendared
by the Record Commission, and subsequently treated more adequately under
the direction of the deputy keeper of the Records), Charters (which were
first grants to individuals, then to collective groups, monasteries or
boroughs, then to classes, and finally expanded--as in Magna Carta--into
grants to the whole nation), Escheats, Feet of Fines, Inquisitiones post
mortem, Inquisitiones ad quod damnum, Placita de Quo Warranto, and
others for which the reader is referred to S. R. Scargill-Bird's _Guide
to the Principal Classes of Documents preserved in the Record Office_
(3rd ed., 1908). Every branch of administration comes to be represented
in records almost as soon as it is developed. The evolution of the army
which won Crecy and Poitiers is accompanied by the accumulation of a
mass of indentures and other military documents, the value of which has
been illustrated in Dr Morris's _Welsh Wars of Edward I_. and George
Wrottesley's _Crecy and Calais from the Public Records_. The growth of
naval organization is reflected in the _Black Book of the Admiralty_;
the growth of taxation in the _Liber custumarum_ and _Subsidy Rolls_;
the rise of parliament in the _Parliamentary Writs_ (ed. Palgrave), in
the _Rotuli parliamentorum_, in the _Official Return of Members of
Parliament_, and in the _Statutes of the Realm_; that of Convocation in
David Wilkins's _Concilia_. The register of the privy council does not
begin until later in the 14th century, and then is broken off between
the middle of the 15th and 1539.
Local as well as central government begets records as it grows. From the
_Extenta manerii_ of the 12th century we get to the _Manorial Rolls_ of
the 13th, when also we have _Hundred Rolls_, records of forest courts,
of courts leet and of coroners' courts, and a variety of municipal
documents, for which the reader is referred to Dr C. Gross's
_Bibliography of British Municipal History_ and to Mrs J. R. Green's
more popular _Town Life in the Fifteenth Century_. The municipal records
of London, its hustings court and city companies, are too multifarious
to describe; some classes of these documents have been exemplified in
the works of Dr R. R. Sharpe. Ecclesiastical records are represented by
the episcopal registers (for the most part still unpublished), monastic
cartularies, and other documents rendered comparatively scarce by the
spoliation of the monasteries, and scattered proceedings of
ecclesiastical courts. (See also the article RECORD.)
Documents, other than records strictly so called, begin to grow with the
habit of correspondence and the necessity of communication. A few
letters survive from the time of the Norman kings, but the earliest
collection of English royal letters is the _Letters of Henry III_.
(Rolls series). Contemporary are the _Letters of Grosseteste_, and a
little later come the _Letters of Archbishop Peckham_ and Raine's
_Letters from Northern Registers_ (all in the Rolls series). Private
correspondence appeared earlier in the voluminous epistles of Peter of
Blois, archdeacon of Bath (ed. Giles). This is a somewhat intermittent
source of history until we come to the 15th century, when the well-known
_Paston Letters_ (ed. Gairdner) begin a stream which never fails
thereafter and soon becomes a torrent. The most important series of
official correspondence is the _Papal Letters_, calendared from 1198 to
1404 in 4 vols. (ed. Bliss, Johnson and Twemlow). Subsidiary sources are
the _Political Songs_ (ed. Wright), treatises like those of John of
Salisbury, Gerald of Wales, and, later, Wycliffe's works, Netter's
_Fasciculi Zizaniorum_, Gascoigne's _Loci e libro veritatum_, Pecock's
_Repressor_, and the literary writings of Chaucer, Langland, Gower,
Richard Rolle and others.
During the 15th century the transition, which marks the change from
medieval to modern history, affects also the character of historical
sources and historical writing. In the first place, history ceases to be
the exclusive province of the church; monastic chronicles shrink to a
trickle and then dry up; the last of their kind in England is the
_Greyfriars Chronicle_ (Camden Society), which ends in 1554. Their place
is taken by the city chronicle compiled by middle-class laymen, just as
the Renaissance was not a revival of clerical learning, but the
expression of new intellectual demands on the part of the laity.
Secondly, the definite disappearance of the medieval ideas of a
cosmopolitan world and the emergence of national states begat diplomacy,
and with it an ever-swelling mass of diplomatic material. Diplomacy had
hitherto been occasional and intermittent, and embassies rare; now we
get resident ambassadors carrying on a regular correspondence (see
DIPLOMACY). The mercantile interests of Venice made it the pioneer in
this direction, though its representatives abroad were at first
commercial rather than diplomatic agents. The _Calendar of Venetian
State Papers_ goes back to the 14th century, but does not become copious
till the reign of Henry VII., when also the Spanish Calendar begins.
Resident French ambassadors in England only begin in the 16th century,
and later still those from the emperor, the German and Italian states
other than Venice. In the third place, the development of the new
monarchy involved an enormous extension of the activity of the central
government, and therefore a corresponding expansion in the records of
its energy.
The political records of this energy are the State Papers, a class of
document which soon dwarfs all others, and renders chroniclers,
historians and the like almost negligible quantities as sources of
history; but in another way their value is enhanced, for these hundreds
of thousands of documents provide a test of the accuracy of modern
historians which is imperfect in the case of medieval chroniclers and
almost non-existent in that of ancient writers. These state papers are
either "foreign" or "domestic," that is to say, the correspondence of
the English government with its agents abroad, or at home. There is also
the correspondence of foreign ambassadors resident in England with their
governments. This last class of documents exists in England mainly in
the form of transcripts from the originals in foreign archives, which
have been made for the purpose of the Venetian and Spanish Calendars of
state papers. The Venetian Calendar had by 1909 been carried well into
the 17th century; the Spanish (which includes transcripts from the
Habsburg archives at Vienna, Brussels and Simancas) covered only the
reigns of Henry VII. and VIII. and Queen Elizabeth. No attempt had yet
been made to calendar the French correspondence in a similar way, though
the French Foreign Office published some fragmentary collections, such
as the _Correspondance de MM. de Castillon et de Marillac_ and that of
Odet de Selve. There are other collections too numerous to enumerate,
such as Lettenhove's edition of Philip II.'s correspondence relating to
the Netherlands, Diegerick and Mueller's, Teulet's and Alberi's
collections, the French _Documents inedits_ and the Spanish _Documentos
ineditos_, all containing state papers relating to England's foreign
policy in the 16th century. The Scottish and Irish state papers are
calendared in separate series and without much system. Thus for Scottish
affairs there are four series, the Border Papers, the Hamilton Papers,
Thorp's Calendar, and, more recent and complete, Bain's Calendar. For
Ireland, besides the regular Irish state papers, there are the Carew
Papers, almost as important. Anarchy, indeed, pervades the whole method
of publication. For the reign of Henry VII. we have, besides the
Venetian and Spanish Calendars, only three volumes--Gairdner's _Letters
and Papers of Richard III. and Henry VII._ and Campbell's _Materials_ (2
vols., Rolls series). Then with the reign of Henry VIII. begins the
magnificent and monumental _Letters and Papers of Henry VIII._, the one
modern series for which the Record Office deserves unstinted praise.
This is not limited to state papers, domestic and foreign, nor to
documents in the Record Office; it calendars private letters, grants,
&c., extant in the British Museum and elsewhere. It extends to 21
volumes, each volume consisting of two or more parts, and some parts (as
in vol. iv.) containing over a thousand pages; it comprises at least
fifty thousand documents. Its value, however, varies; the earlier
volumes are not so full as the later, the documents are not so well
calendared, and some classes are excluded from earlier, which appear in
the later, volumes.
After 1547 a different plan is adopted, though not consistently
followed. Only state papers are calendared, and as a rule only those in
the Record Office; and the domestic are separated from the foreign. The
great fault is the neglect of the vast quantities of state papers in the
British Museum. The Domestic Calendar (the first volume of which is very
inadequate) extended in 1909 in a series of more than seventy volumes
nearly to the end of the 17th century; the mass of MSS. calendared
therein may be gathered from the fact that for the reign of Elizabeth
the Domestic state papers fill over three hundred MS. volumes. The
Foreign Calendar had only got to 1582, but it occupied sixteen printed
volumes against one of the Domestic Calendar. For the masses of MSS.
uncalendared in the British Museum there is no guide except the
imperfect indexes to the Cotton, Harleian, Lansdowne, Additional and
other collections. Hardly less important than the calendars are the
reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission and the appendices
thereto, which extend to over a hundred volumes; twelve are occupied by
Lord Salisbury's 16th-century MSS. at Hatfield House. The dispersion of
these state papers is due to the fact that they were in those days
treated not as the property of the state, but as the private property of
individual secretaries.
State papers represent only one side of the activity of the central
government. The register of the privy council, extending with some
lacunae from 1539 to 1604, has been printed in thirty-two volumes. The
_Rotuli parliamentorum_ end with Henry VII., but in 1509 begin the
journals of the House of Lords, and in 1547 the journals of the House of
Commons. These are supplemented by private diaries of members of
parliament, several of which were used in D'Ewes's _Journals_. Legal
history can now be followed in a continuous series of law reports,
beginning with Keilway, Staunford and Dyer, and going on with Coke and
many others; documentary records of various courts are exemplified in
the _Select Cases_ from the star chamber, the court of requests and
admiralty courts, published by the Selden Society; and there are
voluminous records of the courts of augmentations, first-fruits, wards
and liveries in the Record Office. For Ireland, besides the state
papers, there are the Calendars of Patents and of Fiants, and for
Scotland the Exchequer Rolls and Registers of the Privy Council and of
the Great Seal, both extending to many volumes.
Unofficial sources multiply with equal rapidity, but it is impossible to
enumerate the collections of private letters, &c., only a few of which
have been published. The chronicles, which in the 15th century are
usually meagre productions like Warkworth's (Camden Society), get
fuller, especially those emanating from London. Fabyan is succeeded by
Hall, an indispensable authority for Henry VIII., and Hall by Grafton.
Other useful books are Wriothesley's _Chronicle_ and Machyn's _Diary_,
and they have numerous successors; some of their works have been edited
for the Camden Society, which now takes the place of the Rolls series.
The most important are Holinshed, Stow and Camden; and gradually, with
Speed and Bacon, the chronicle develops into the history, and early in
the 17th century we get such works as Lord Herbert's _Reign of Henry
VIII._, Hayward's _Edward VI._, and, on the ecclesiastical side, Heylyn,
Fuller, Burnet and Collier's histories of the church and Reformation.
Foxe, who died in 1587, included a vast and generally accurate
collection of documents in his _Acts and Monuments_, popularized as the
_Book of Martyrs_, though his own contributions have to be discounted as
much as those of Sanders, Parsons and other Roman Catholic
controversialists. Two other great collections are the Parker Society's
publications (56 vols.), which contain besides the works of the
reformers a considerable number of their letters, and Strype's works (26
vols.). The naval epic of the period is Hakluyt's _Navigations_,
re-edited in 12 vols. in 1902, and continued in Purchas's _Pilgrims_.
In the 17th century the domestic and foreign state papers eclipse other
sources almost more completely than in the 16th. The colonial state
papers now become important and extensive, those relating to America and
the West Indies being most numerous (18 vols. to 1700). Parliamentary
records naturally expand, and the journals of both houses become more
detailed. Parliamentary diarists like D'Ewes, Burton and Walter Yonge,
only a fragment of whose shorthand notes in the British Museum has been
published (Camden Society), elucidate the bare official statements; and
from 1660 the series of parliamentary debates is fairly complete, though
not so full or authoritative as it becomes with Hansard in the 19th
century. Social diarists of great value appear after the Restoration in
Pepys, Evelyn, Reresby, Narcissus Luttrell and Swift (_Journal to
Stella_), and political writing grows more important as a source of
history, whether it takes the form of Bacon's (ed. Spedding) or Milton's
treatises, or of satires like Dryden's and political pamphlets like
Halifax's and then Swift's, Defoe's and Steele's. Clarendon's _Great
Rebellion_ and Burnet's _History of My Own Time_ are the first modern
attempts at contemporary history, as distinct from chronicles and
annals, in England, although it is difficult to exclude the work of
Matthew Paris from the category. The innumerable tracts and newsletters
are a valuable source for the Civil Wars and Commonwealth period (see J.
B. Williams, _A History of English Journalism_, 1909), while Thurloe's,
Clarendon's and Nalson's collections of state papers deserve a mention
apart from the Domestic Calendar. There is a still more monumental
collection--the Carte Papers--on Irish affairs in the Bodleian Library,
where also the Tanner MSS. and other collections have only been very
partially worked. The volumes of the Historical MSS. Commission are of
great value for the later Stuart period, notably the House of Lords MSS.
For the 18th century the only calendars are the Home Office Papers and
the Treasury Books and Papers, the further specialization of government
having made it necessary to differentiate domestic state papers into
several classes. But it need hardly be said that the bulk of
correspondence in the Record Office does not diminish. Outside its walls
the most important single collection is perhaps the duke of Newcastle's
papers among the Additional MSS. in the British Museum; the Stuart
papers at Windsor, Mr Fortescue's at Dropmore, Lord Charlemont's (Irish
affairs), Lord Dartmouth's (American affairs) and Lord Carlisle's, all
calendared by the Historical MSS. Commission, are also valuable.
Chatham's correspondence with colonial governors has been published (2
vols., 1906), as have the _Grenville Papers_, _Bedford Correspondence_,
Malmesbury's _Diaries_, Auckland's _Journals and Correspondence_,
Grafton's _Correspondence_, Lord North's _Correspondence with George
III._, and other correspondence in _The Memoirs of Rockingham_, and the
duke of Buckingham's _Court and Cabinets of George III._ Mention should
also be made of Gower's _Despatches_, the _Cornwallis Correspondence_,
Rose's _Correspondence_ and Lord Colchester's _Correspondence_. Of
special interest is the series of naval records, despatches to and from
naval commanders, proceedings of courts-martial, and logs in the Record
Office which have never been properly utilized.
Among unofficial sources the most characteristic of the 18th century are
letters, memoirs and periodical literature. Horace Walpole's _Letters_
(Clarendon Press, 16 vols.) are the best comment on the history of the
period; his _Memoirs_ are not so good, though they are superior to
Wraxall, who succeeds him. Periodical literature becomes regular in the
reign of Queen Anne, chiefly in the form of journals like the
_Spectator_; but several daily newspapers, including _The Times_, were
founded during the century. _The Craftsman_ provided a vehicle for
Bolingbroke's attacks on Walpole, while the _Gentleman's Magazine and
Annual Register_ begin a more serious and prolonged career. Both contain
occasional state papers, and not very trustworthy reports of
parliamentary proceedings. The publication of debates was not authorized
till the last quarter of the century; parliamentary papers begin
earlier, but only slowly attain their present portentous dimensions.
Political writing is at its best from Halifax to Cobbett, and its three
greatest names are perhaps Swift, "Junius" and Burke, though Steele,
Defoe, Bolingbroke and Dr Johnson are not far behind, while Canning's
contributions to the _Anti-Jacobin_ and Gillray's caricatures require
mention.
The sources for 19th-century history are somewhat similar to those for
the 18th. Diaries continue in the _Creevey Papers_, Greville's Diary,
and lesser but not less voluminous writers like Sir M. E. Grant-Duff.
The most important series of letters is Queen Victoria's (ed. Lord Esher
and A. C. Benson, 1908), and the correspondence of most of her prime
ministers and many of her other advisers has been partially published.
Of political biographies there is no end. The great bulk of material,
however, consists of blue-books, Hansard's _Parliamentary Debates_, and
newspapers--which are better as indirect than direct evidence. The real
truth is not of course revealed at once, and many episodes in
19th-century history are still shrouded by official secrecy. In this
respect English governments are more cautious or reactionary than many
of those on the continent of Europe, and access to official documents is
denied when it is granted elsewhere; even the lapse of a century is not
considered a sufficient salve for susceptibilities which might be
wounded by the whole truth.
Meanwhile the 19th century witnessed a great development in historical
writing. In the middle ages the stimulus to write was mainly of a moral
or ecclesiastical nature, though the patriotic impulse which had
suggested the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was perhaps never entirely absent,
and the ecclesiastical motive often degenerated into a desire to
glorify, sometimes even by forgery, not merely the church as a whole,
but the particular monastery to which the writer belonged. As
nationalism developed, the patriotic motive supplanted the
ecclesiastical, and stress is laid on the "famous" history of England.
Insular self-glorification was, however, modified to some extent by the
Renaissance, which developed an interest in other lands, and the
Reformation, which gave to much historical writing a partisan
theological bias. This still colours most of the "histories" of the
Reformation period, because the issues of that time are living issues,
and the writers of these histories are committed beforehand by their
profession and their position to a particular interpretation. In the
17th century political partisanship coloured historical writing, and
that, too, remained a potent motive so long as historians were either
Whigs or Tories. Histories were often elaborate party pamphlets, and
this race of historians is hardly yet extinct. Macaulay is not greatly
superior in impartiality to Hume; Gibbon and Robertson were less open to
temptation because they avoided English subjects. Hallam deliberately
aimed at impartiality, but he could not escape his Whig atmosphere.
Nevertheless, the effort to be impartial marks a new conception of
history, which is well expressed in Lord Acton's admonition to his
contributors in the _Cambridge Modern History_. Historians are to serve
no cause but that of truth; in so far even as they desire a line of
investigation to lead to a particular result, they are not, maintains
Professor Bury, real historians. S. R. Gardiner perhaps attained most
nearly this severe ideal among English historians, and Ranke among
Germans. But, even when all conscious bias is eliminated, the
unconscious bias remains, and Ranke's history of the Reformation is
essentially a middle-class, even _bourgeois_, presentment. Stubbs's
medievalist sympathies colour his history throughout, and still more
strongly does Froude's anti-clericalism. Freeman's bias was peculiar; he
is really a West Saxon of Godwine's time reincarnated, and his Somerset
hatred of French, Scots and Mercian foreigners sets off his robust
loyalty to the house of Wessex. Lecky and Creighton are almost as
dispassionate as Gardiner, but are more definitely committed to
particular points of views, while democratic fervour pervades the
fascinating pages of J. R. Green, and an intellectual secularism, which
is almost religious in its intensity and idealism, inspired the genius
of Maitland.
The latest controversy about history is whether it is a science or an
art. It is, of course, both, simply because there must be science in
every art and art in every science. The antithesis is largely false;
science lays stress on analysis, art on synthesis. The historian must
apply scientific methods to his materials and artistic methods to his
results; he must test his documents and then turn them into literature.
The relative importance of the two methods is a matter of dispute. There
are some who still maintain that history is merely an art, that the best
history is the story that is best told, and that what is said is less
important than the way in which it is said. This school generally
ignores records. Others attach little importance to the form in which
truth is presented; they are concerned mainly with the principles and
methods of scientific criticism, and specialize in palaeography,
diplomatic and sources. The works of this school are little read, but in
time its results penetrate the teaching in schools and universities, and
then the pages of literary historians; it is represented in England by a
fairly good organization, the Royal Historical Society (with which the
Camden Society has been amalgamated), and by an excellent periodical,
_The English Historical Review_ (founded in 1884), while some sort of
propaganda is attempted by the Historical Association (started in 1906).
Its standards have also been upheld with varying success in great
co-operative undertakings, such as the _Dictionary of National
Biography_, the _Cambridge Modern History_, and Messrs Longmans'
_Political History of England_.
These 19th-century products require some sort of classification for
purposes of reference, and the chronological is the most convenient.
Lingard's, J. R. Green's and Messrs Longmans' histories are the only
notable attempts to tell the history of England as a whole, though
Stubbs's _Constitutional History_ (3 vols.) covers the middle ages and
embodies a political survey as well (for corrections and modifications
see Petit-Dutaillis, _Supplementary Studies_, 1908), while Hallam's
_Constitutional History_ (3 vols.) extends from 1485 to 1760 and
Erskine May's (3 vols.) from 1760 to 1860. Sir James Ramsay's six
volumes also cover the greater part of medieval English history. There
is no work on a larger scale than Lappenberg and Kemble, dealing with
England before the Norman Conquest, though J. R. Green's _Making of
England_ and _Conquest of England_ deal with certain portions in some
detail, and Freeman gives a preliminary survey in his _Norman
Conquest_ (6 vols.). For the succeeding period see Freeman's _William
Rufus_, J. H. Round's _Feudal England_ and _Geoffrey de Mandeville_,
and Miss Norgate's _England under the Angevins and John Lackland_.
From 1216 we have nothing but Ramsay, Stubbs, Longmans' _Political
History_ and monographs (some of them good), until we come to Wylie's
_Henry IV_. (4 vols.); and again from 1413 the same is true
(Gairdner's _Lollardy and the Reformation_ being the most elaborate
monograph) until we come to Brewer's _Reign of Henry VIII_. (2 vols.;
to 1530 only), Froude's _History_ (12 vols., 1529-1588) and R. W.
Dixon's _Church History_ (6 vols., 1529-1570). From 1603 to 1656 we
have Gardiner's _History_ (England, 10 vols.; Civil War, 4 vols.;
Commonwealth and Protectorate, 3 vols.), and to 1714 Ranke's _History
of England_ (6 vols.; see also Firth's _Cromwell_ and _Cromwell's
Army_, and various editions of texts and monographs). For Charles II.
there is no good history; then come Macaulay, and Stanhope and Wyon's
_Queen Anne_, and for the 18th century Stanhope and Lecky (England, 7
vols.; Ireland, 5 vols.). From 1793 to 1815 is another gap only
partially filled. Spencer Walpole deals with the period from 1815 to
1880, and Herbert Paul with the years 1846-1895.
A few books on special subjects deserve mention. For legal history see
Pollock and Maitland's _History of English Law_ (2 vols. to Edward
I.), Maitland's _Domesday Book and Beyond_, and Anson's _Law and
Custom of the Constitution_; for economic history, Cunningham's
_Growth of Industry and Commerce_, and Ashley's _Economic History_;
for ecclesiastical history, Stephens and Hunt's series (7 vols.); for
foreign and colonial, Seeley's _British Foreign Policy_ and _Expansion
of England_, and J. A. Doyle's books on the American colonies; for
military history, Fortescue's _History of the British Army_, Napier's
and Oman's works on the _Peninsular War_, and Kinglake's _Invasion of
the Crimea_; and for naval history, Corbett's _Drake and the Tudor
Navy, Successors of Drake, English in the Mediterranean_ and _Seven
Years' War_, and Mahan's _Influence of Sea-Power on _History_ and
_Influence_ of Sea-Power upon the French Revolution and Empire_.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BIBLIOGRAPHIES.--The sources for the middle ages have
been enumerated in C. Gross's _Sources and Literature of English
History ... to about 1485_ (London, 1900), but there is nothing
similar for modern history. G. C. Lee's _Source Book of English
History_ is not very satisfactory. More information can be obtained
from the bibliographies appended to the volumes in Longmans'
_Political History_, or the chapters in the _Cambridge Modern
History_, or to the biographical articles in the _D.N.B._ and _Ency.
Brit._ A series of bibliographical leaflets for the use of teachers is
issued by the Historical Association. For MSS. sources see
Scargill-Bird's _Guide to the Record Office_, and the class catalogues
in the MSS. Department of the British Museum. Lists of the state
papers and other documents printed and calendared under the direction
of the master of the Rolls and deputy keeper of the Records are
supplied at the end of many of their volumes. (A. F. P.)