The island of Great Britain in the remotest times bore the name of
_Albion_. From a very early period it was visited by Phœnicians,
Carthaginians, and Greeks, for the purpose of obtaining tin.
=Roman Period.=--Cæsar’s two expeditions, 55 and 54 B. C., made it known
to the Romans, by whom it was generally called _Britannia_; but it was
not till the time of Claudius, nearly a hundred years after, that the
Romans made a serious attempt to convert Britain into a Roman province.
Some forty years later, under Agricola, the ablest of the Roman
generals in Britain, they had extended the limits of the Provincia
Romana as far as the line of the Forth and the Clyde.
Here the Roman armies came into contact with the Caledonians of the
interior, described by Tacitus as large-limbed, red-haired men. After
defeating the Caledonians, Agricola marched victoriously northward as
far as the Moray Firth, establishing stations and camps, remains of
which are still to be seen. But the Romans were unable to retain their
conquests in the northern part of the island, and were finally forced to
abandon their northern wall and forts between the Clyde and the Forth
and retire behind their second wall, built in 120 A. D. by Hadrian,
between the Solway and the Tyne. Thus the southern part of the island
alone remained Roman, and became specially known as Britannia, while the
northern portion was distinctly called Caledonia.
The capital of Roman Britain was York (Eboracum). Under the rule of the
Romans many flourishing towns arose. Great roads were made, traversing
the whole country and helping very much to develop its industries.
Christianity was also introduced, and took the place of the Druidism of
the native British. Under the tuition of the Romans the useful arts and
even many of the refinements of life found their way into the southern
part of the island.
=Creation of England and Scotland.=--From the time of the Roman
conquest, and still more decidedly after the Saxon invasions in the
fifth century, the history of Britain branches off into a history of the
southern part of the island, afterwards known as England, and a history
of the northern part of the island, afterwards named Scotland. It was
not till the union of the crowns in 1603 that the destinies of England
and Scotland began again to unite; and it was not till the final union
of the parliaments in 1707 that the histories of the two countries may
be said to merge into one.
=The Anglo-Saxon Period.=--In 411 Honorius abandoned Britain, whose
inhabitants, finding it impossible to defend themselves against the
Picts, called to their aid the Saxons, who, in 449, assisted them so
effectually that they took possession of the country and founded the
four kingdoms of Essex, Wessex, Sussex, and Kent. The Angles, who
followed them, established three other kingdoms, _viz._, East Anglia,
Deira, and Mercia, 540-584. All these kingdoms ended by being reduced to
one, under Egbert, the Saxon king of Wessex, in 827.
After 835 the Danes ravaged England from time to time, but in 871 Alfred
the Great forced them to desist, and from thence till near the end of
his reign in 900, the Danes left the island in peace. Returning in 981,
the Danes succeeded, in 1013, in putting their king, Sweyn, on the
throne, which was not recovered by the Saxon dynasty till 1041.
=Norman Conquest.=--When William of Normandy landed in England to claim
the crown which Edward the Confessor had bequeathed to him, he found
that the people had raised to the throne Harold, the son of a popular
nobleman. The resources of the Saxons, however, had been wasted in
domestic conflicts before the attack of William; and the battle of
Hastings, in 1066 A. D., gave England with comparative ease to the
Normans. The next twenty years saw the conquest completed, and nearly
all the large landed estates of the Saxons pass, on every pretext except
the true one, into the hands of the Normans. In the course of time the
Normans were absorbed among the Saxons, their very language
disappearing, though leaving many traces. From this union arose the
English people and the English language as they now exist. The union of
the Normans with the Saxons was not fully effected so long as the
Normans retained their foreign possessions. In King John’s reign the
whole of these were lost excepting Guienne and Poitou.
In the reign of Stephen occurred the civil war between the Empress Maud,
daughter of Henry I., and Stephen; she finally retired to France, and
concluded a peace with her adversary. The great struggles of the
successors of William were with the ecclesiastics and with the barons.
Sometimes in these the popular sympathies were with, and sometimes
against, the crown. The Conqueror himself and his immediate successors
had no difficulty in maintaining the superiority of the courts of
justice over the ecclesiastics; but even a sovereign so bold and
skillful as Henry II. was forced, after the outcry occasioned by the
murder of Thomas à Becket (1170 A. D.) to yield the point. The right to
nominate the higher ecclesiastics was also secured by the popes.
=The Plantagenets.=--Under the Plantagenets an era of progress,
generally, opened for England. The reign of Henry II. gave to the
country the constitution of Clarendon; Ireland was conquered, 1172;
England was divided into six circuits for the better administration of
justice, and a digest of the laws was made by Glanville about 1181.
Richard I. did little for the internal good of the land, his chief
exploits occurring on the field of battle in foreign lands.
=Magna Charta.=--Under John two important events occurred: Magna Charta
was obtained, and the French possessions were nearly all lost--both
unmitigated blessings; but otherwise John’s influence was cast against
progress and reform. The degradation of the English monarchy was at its
lowest when he consented (1213 A. D.) to hold the crown as a gift from
Rome. From Henry II. something similar to the Great Charter had already
been gained; but it was the Magna Charta of John which firmly
established two great English principles--that no man should suffer
arbitrary imprisonment, and that no tax should be imposed without the
consent of the council of the nation.
During the reign of Henry III., England obtained her first regular
parliament, and gold money was first coined in 1257. Edward I. was
crowned 1272, and almost the first event of his reign was the conquest
of Wales; Scotland also was subdued, but revolted again in 1297.
The reign of Edward II. was disastrous to himself and to England. The
barons rose against his favorites, and Edward was murdered by the
connivance of his wife. A new and vigorous era began with the reign of
Edward III. The Scots were defeated at Halidon Hill; important victories
were gained in France; the Order of the Garter was instituted, and, most
important of all, law pleadings were ordered to be in English, instead
of in the Norman-French tongue which had hitherto prevailed. Richard II.
was crowned in 1377, and with his death in 1385, ended the line of the
Plantagenets.
=House of Lancaster.=--Henry IV. was the first sovereign under this
ill-fated house. His reign was disturbed by an insurrection of the Welsh
under the Percies, but was otherwise peaceful. Henry V. invaded France
and won the famous battle of Agincourt, and gained the French crown,
1420; but during the reign of his successor, Henry VI., all the French
possessions were lost save Calais. He was deposed by Warwick the
kingmaker, and the first representative of the House of York, Edward
IV., was placed on the throne. The Wars of the Roses ensued, which
continued through the two succeeding reigns of Edward V. and Richard
III, ending with the death of Richard on Bosworth field, the coronation
of Henry VII., 1485, and his marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of Edward
IV.
=The Tudors.=--The union of the houses of York and Lancaster under Henry
VII. begins a new period in English history. Under him England entered
on her career of maritime discovery. He died, 1599, and was succeeded by
his second son, Henry VIII. Henry VIII. succeeded under the most
favorable auspices. He found the alliance of his now important country
courted by both of his contemporaries, Francis I., of France, and
Charles V., of Germany. But the interest of the foreign complications of
the reign merges in the courts of England and of Rome. Henry was
frequently engaged in hostilities with foreign countries, and the great
victory of Flodden was won by one of his generals over James IV. of
Scotland, husband of his sister Margaret. He threw off his allegiance to
the pope, and became head of the church in England. He was six times
married, and two of his wives were beheaded and two were repudiated. In
his reign the scaffold was occupied by victims from every class of
society. He died January 28, 1547, and was succeeded by his only son,
Edward VI., whose mother was Jane Seymour, Henry’s third wife.
Edward was in his tenth year, and the government was vested in a
regency. In this reign the church of England was established, and the
nation placed on the Protestant side in the struggle then going on in
Europe. When Edward VI. died, July 6, 1553, Lady Jane Grey, to whom
Edward had bequeathed the crown, was queen for ten days, when her party
was dispersed, and Mary, eldest daughter of Henry VIII., ascended the
throne.
The marriage of Mary with Philip II. of Spain led to war between England
and France, and an English army joined the Spanish force that invaded
France. Mary was a devout Catholic, and caused Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley,
and about three hundred other Protestants to be burned. Her death,
November 17, 1558, left the throne to Elizabeth, who sided with the
Protestants.
=Elizabethan Period.=--The reign of Elizabeth, which lasted nearly
forty-five years, is one of the most brilliant in English history. She
triumphed over her enemies, and raised her kingdom to the first place in
Europe. She ruled over Scotland in fact, and put the queen of that
country, the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, to death, after having
held her in captivity nearly nineteen years. The Huguenots of France and
Henry IV. received aid from her, and but for the assistance which she
gave the Dutch they would have sunk under the power of Spain. She
invited the Turks to join her in attacking the pope and Phillip II.; and
over both those potentates she achieved a great triumph in 1588, when
the Spanish armada was destroyed. The enterprise of Englishmen led them
to circumnavigate the globe, to attempt colonization, to extend
commerce, and to inaugurate trade relations with India. Elizabeth died
March 24, 1603, and with her terminated the Tudor dynasty, after an
existence of nearly one hundred and eighteen years.
=House of Stuart.=--Elizabeth was succeeded by James VI. of Scotland,
the son of her victim, Mary Stuart, and first king of England of the
Stuart line, who inherited the English crown in virtue of his descent
from Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VII., who had married his
great-grandfather, James IV. The new king, under the title James I., was
hailed with much satisfaction by the English; but he was a pedant and a
tyrant, and soon lost his popularity. His first parliament, 1604, in
reply to his assertion that all their privileges were derived from him,
asserted all those principles for which the English constitutionalists
contended as facts not to be questioned.
Then began that civil contest which lasted down to 1689 in full force,
and which was not utterly at an end till 1746. The foreign policy of
James was as vicious as his home policy, and England sank in the
estimation of Europe. He died in 1625, and was succeeded by his son
Charles I.
For eleven years (1629-1640) this ruler called no parliament, and
England was ruled as despotically as France. His chief instruments were
Wentworth, afterward earl of Strafford, and Laud, archbishop of
Canterbury. Laud sought to fasten the English church policy on Scotland.
War between the Scotch people and the English government followed, and
Charles was compelled to call a parliament April, 1640, which was
dissolved in a few days, and became known as the “short parliament.” Six
months later assembled the famous “long parliament,” which proceeded to
divest the king of much of his power.
=Period of the Commonwealth.=--The contest between the king and
parliament under the lead of Vane, Cromwell and others, led to the
great English Civil war, which began in the latter part of 1642.
Cromwell was everywhere victorious in the field. The army became the
source of all power. The king was tried, condemned and executed. Ireland
was conquered by Cromwell, who was almost equally successful in
Scotland. The battle of Worcester, September 3, 1651, crushed the
royalists for nearly nine years. In 1653 Cromwell dissolved the
parliament by force, and was master of England for five years, as Lord
Protector. After his death, in 1658, the military and civil republicans
quarreled.
=Restoration of the House of Stuart.=--Richard, the son and successor of
the great Protector, resigned, and the restoration of the Stuarts was
effected in the person of Charles II., 1660, whose reign in law dates
from the time of his father’s execution, January 30, 1649. The king’s
popularity soon declined, mainly on account of his foreign policy. An
unnecessary war with the Dutch produced much disgrace. The triple
alliance with Sweden and Holland for a brief interval stayed the course
of Louis XIV., but the king’s forces assisted in the war on Holland made
by Louis, and afterward assistance was sent to the Dutch.
The peace of 1678 was followed by the excitement caused by the alleged
popish plot. Parliament after parliament was elected, met, set itself in
decided opposition to the government, and was dissolved. The leading
object of the opposition was the exclusion of the duke of York, Charles’
brother, from the line of succession. Charles II. died in February,
1685, and his brother James II., an avowed Roman Catholic, came to the
throne.
James II. was bent on the establishment of a despotism, by the
destruction of the constitution in church and state. He punished
Monmouth’s rebellion with excessive vindictiveness. The king prorogued
parliament in November, 1685, and that body never met again. For three
years he governed despotically, and a perpetual contest was waged
between him and his people.
In June, 1688, it was announced that the king’s second wife had given
birth to a prince, who was afterwards known as the pretender. It was
generally believed that a supposititious child had been placed in the
position of heir apparent.
In November, William, prince of Orange, who was the king’s nephew and
had married his eldest daughter Mary, heir apparent to the British
crown, landed in England at the head of an army. James fled, and William
and Mary were proclaimed sovereigns.
War was declared against France in 1689, and was ended in 1697. Ireland
was subdued. Mary died in 1694, and left William III. sole monarch till
his death in March, 1702, when the succession passed to Anne, second
daughter of James II.
In May war was declared against France, and after splendid victories
achieved by Marlborough, it was ended by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713.
The union of England and Scotland was effected in 1707. Anne died August
1, 1714, and the crown passed to the house of Hanover in the person of
George I.
=House of Hanover under the Four Georges.=--The rebellion of 1715 in
behalf of the Stuarts proved a failure. The bursting of the “South sea
bubble” in 1720 placed Robert Walpole in control of the government,
which he retained under George II. (who ascended the throne in 1727)
till 1742. His fall was occasioned by a war with Spain, to which one
with France was soon added, growing out of the question of the Austrian
succession. In 1746 the contest between the reigning dynasty and the
remains of the Stuart party was brought to an end at Culloden where the
duke of Cumberland defeated Charles Edward. The treaty of
Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 restored peace to Europe for a few years.
The Whigs continued to rule, headed by Henry Pelham, and after his death
in 1754 by his brother, the duke of Newcastle. The renewal of the war
with France in 1755 was followed by the formation in 1757 of the
celebrated Pitt-Newcastle ministry, which carried on the contest with
great vigor; so that when George II. died, October 25, 1760, his fleets
and armies were everywhere triumphant. The foundation of the East Indian
empire of England was laid at Plassey June 23, 1757. French America was
conquered at Quebec, September 13, 1759.
The new king, George III. (the first English-born king of his house),
grandson of George II., was by nature and education as despotic as the
worst of the Stuarts. The attempt to tax the American colonies led to
the American revolution. The English in the last years of the war had to
fight the Americans, the French, the Spaniards, and the Dutch. The peace
of 1783 left England in a low condition.
When France became convulsed by the revolution, England engaged in the
war against her that soon followed, which lasted, with two brief
intervals, till 1815, ending in the complete triumph of England and her
allies. The legislative union between Ireland and Great Britain went
into effect January 1, 1801. The exertions made by England, beginning
with the administration of Pitt, were vast. Her fleets, chiefly under
Nelson, achieved splendid victories over the French and Spaniards, and
in the last years of the war her armies were greatly distinguished under
the lead of Wellington, who, at Waterloo, inflicted the final defeat on
Napoleon in 1815.
In 1810 George III. lost his reason finally, and his eldest son was
prince regent till 1820 when he became king as George IV.
In 1812 England became involved in a war with the United States, growing
out of the impressment and right of search questions. The contest was
virtually terminated by the treaty of Ghent, December 24, 1814. In 1829
the Catholic emancipation act was passed, under a ministry headed by
Wellington and Peel. George IV. died in 1830, and was succeeded by his
brother, the duke of Clarence, as William IV.
In March, 1831, a bill for parliamentary reform was introduced into the
house of commons by Lord John Russell, and after long debates in
parliament and intense excitement in the country, caused by the
opposition of the house of lords, a bill making extensive changes in the
constitution of the house of commons finally passed in June, 1832, under
the ministry of Earl Grey.
The first reformed parliament, which met January 29, 1833, contained an
overwhelming majority of reformers. Lord Grey retired from office in
1834, and was succeeded by Lord Melbourne. Toward the close of the same
year the government was committed to Sir Robert Peel, who formed a
conservative ministry. Peel continued in office until April 8, 1835,
when he retired, having been repeatedly beaten on Irish church
questions. Lord Melbourne returned to office, with many of his old
colleagues. The king died on June 20, 1837, and was succeeded by his
niece Victoria, the only child of Edward, duke of Kent, fourth son of
George III.
=The Victorian Period.=--The accession of Victoria led to the separation
of the crowns of England and Hanover, which had been worn by the same
persons since 1714. In 1841 Melbourne resigned, and the conservatives
under Peel came into power. In 1846 the Peel ministry brought forward an
act to protect life in Ireland, but it was defeated in the commons on
the same day that the Corn Laws were repealed, and the ministry came to
an end, being succeeded by one at the head of which was Lord John
Russell. The Russell ministry went out of office in 1852, and for
several months the tories, led by Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, were at
the head of affairs. This ministry was followed by one composed of the
coalesced Whigs and Peelites, headed by Lord Aberdeen.
=Crimean War.=--In 1853 the troubles on the Turkish question began, and
war was declared against Russia by France and England in March, 1854.
Large fleets and armies were sent to the East, and fleets to the Baltic.
The Crimea was invaded, the victory of the Alma won by the allies, and
Sebastopol partially invested. On September 8 Sebastopol was reduced,
the French storming the Malakhoff, and peace was restored by a congress
of the powers at Paris in March, 1856.
=Indian Mutiny and Final Absorption of the Indian Empire.=--Early in
1857 a formidable revolt broke out in England’s great Bengal army of
sepoys. Delhi fell into the hands of the rebels, and the nominal Mogul
emperor found himself once more a sovereign in reality. The mutiny
spread rapidly, and in a short time the whole Bengal army had become
hostile to the English. The military reputation of England was greatly
raised by the successes of her armies in India, achieved under the lead
of Sir Henry Havelock, Sir Colin Campbell, and others. In eight months
after the breaking out of the mutiny there were nearly seventy thousand
effective English troops there, and new native corps had replaced the
sepoys. By the end of 1858 the revolt was totally suppressed. The
rebellion resulted in the transfer of the immediate government of India
from the East India company to the crown, the old directory sitting for
the last time September 1, 1858.
In February, 1858, the Palmerston ministry was driven from office, and a
new conservative ministry was formed, with the earl of Derby as premier,
and Mr. Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer. This ministry soon
resigned and Lord Palmerston resumed office in June, 1859. On May 13,
1861, Great Britain recognized the belligerency of the Confederacy
during the American Civil war and the blockade of their ports, and
proclaimed neutrality.
In 1868 Disraeli became Prime Minister in succession to Lord Derby, but
was defeated in the general election of that year and resigned before
the end of the year.
Disraeli was succeeded by Gladstone, who, during the five years of his
ministry passed more measures than almost any previous one. Education
became compulsory. Trade unions were legalized, the Ballot Act was
passed. The Irish Church Act and a Land Act for Ireland were passed, and
the state of Ireland at the time also necessitated Coercion Acts.
In 1874 Gladstone resigned, and the Conservatives were returned to
power, having for the first time since 1841 a real majority in the House
of Commons. The ministry formed by Disraeli was a brilliant one, and the
Opposition was for a time weakened by the withdrawal into private life
of Gladstone. The great question of Home Rule was gradually forcing
itself to the front, and the Irish tactics in the House became
obstructive. It was at this time that Disraeli put forward his imperial
policy, and the ministry is chiefly noticeable for its attitude on
foreign and imperial affairs.
From 1879 to the present time Irish agitation has been for Great Britain
a source of serious disquiet. In 1882 Mr. Gladstone adopted a policy of
conciliation, but the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and of Mr.
Burke caused its abandonment and the immediate passing of a coercion law
which virtually placed Ireland under martial law. In 1882 the Egyptian
army, under the leadership of Arabi Bey, having revolted from the
khedive’s authority, Great Britain sent a large naval expedition to
Egypt, bombarded Alexandria, and defeated the rebellious forces. Since
that date the Egyptian government has been under British suzerainty, and
in 1896, a British expedition was sent up the Nile with the purpose of
regaining the provinces of Egypt held by the mahdist forces.
Within the past quarter of a century Great Britain has largely extended
its territory in Africa, bringing great areas in the south and east of
the continent under its protection. During the same interval several
subjects of dispute have arisen with the United States, which have all
been peacefully settled. An imposing festival took place in London in
June, 1897, on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Queen
Victoria’s accession, in which all sections of the empire took part.
=Boer War.=--October 11, 1899, war was declared by the Boers of the
Transvaal and Orange Free State, the aim being the destruction of the
British paramountcy in South Africa. This led to the annexation of those
states by the British, after a fierce contest, in 1900. In 1900, a new
parliament was elected, which again supported the Conservative
ministry, with a slightly increased majority.
=House of Saxe-Coburg.=--Victoria died January 22, 1901, and was
succeeded by her eldest son, Edward VII., who proved himself to be an
active promoter of peaceful relations with other countries.
The Boer war was concluded in the middle of 1902 by the treaty of
Vereeniging, and almost immediately afterward Lord Salisbury retired
from office, being succeeded in the premiership by his nephew, Mr. A. J.
Balfour. The education act of 1902 did away with school boards where
they existed, bringing the voluntary and former board schools alike
under education committees in England and Wales, and the same change was
made in London in 1903. The Irish land act of 1903 was a measure of the
first importance, its object, being to transfer practically all the
agricultural land of Ireland to farmers or peasant proprietors. In the
autumn of 1903 Mr. Chamberlain resigned office in order to be free to
advocate a change in the country’s fiscal policy, intended to unite the
colonies more closely with the mother country--a change which many have
regarded as meaning a return to protection.
In 1905 the Liberal party returned to power under the leadership of Sir
Henry Campbell Bannerman, who was succeeded after his death in 1908 by
H. H. Asquith.
On May 5, 1910, the illness of King Edward was announced, followed by
that of his death the next day. His son, George V., succeeded to the
throne May 6, 1910.
A lengthy battle had begun to be waged against the hereditary
prerogatives of the House of Lords, to which the death of the king
caused a temporary cessation, but, in August, 1911, the Upper House was
finally shorn of its permanent veto. In September, 1910, the fisheries
dispute with the United States, which had remained unsettled for more
than a hundred years, was decided at the Hague.
Early in 1913 the Irish home rule question became the dominant issue and
a bill favoring it was passed by the House of Commons by a large
majority, only to be overwhelmingly rejected in the House of Lords. In
February, 1914, King George urged mutual concessions in the controversy,
and in the same year the Home Rule bill became a law without the
approval of the Lords, but practically non-operative. Today (1917) home
rule for Ireland is still the great unsolved problem of British domestic
policy.
The year 1914 also marked the entrance of Great Britain into the great
European war that has since engulfed practically the whole of Europe and
one-third of the civilized world. England’s history since has been
almost wholly bound up with the diplomatic, economic, and military
aspects of that titanic struggle, the real facts of which it will
require more than a generation of dispassionate minds to verify, sift
and assess at their true values. An attempt is made to give the leading
features of this war, and the parts played in it by the various nations
involved, under a separate heading.