CHAPTER I_The Rise of the Democracy

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THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY

JOSEPH CLAYTON

Author of "Leaders of the People" "Bishops as Legislators," etc. etc.

With Eight Full-Page Plates

Cassell and Company, Ltd.

London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne

1911

[Illustration: KING JOHN GRANTING MAGNA CHARTA

From the Fresco in the Royal Exchange, by Ernest Normand.

_By permission of Messrs. S. Hildesheimer & Co., Ltd._]

PREFACE

This short account of the rise of political democracy is necessarily but an

outline of the matter, and while it is not easy to define the exact limits,

there is no difficulty in noting omissions. For instance, there is scarcely

any reference to the work of poets or pamphleteers. John Ball's rhyming

letters are quoted, but not the poems of Langland, and the political songs

of the Middle Ages are hardly mentioned. The host of political pamphleteers

in the seventeenth century are excluded, with the exception of Lilburne and

Winstanley, whose work deserves better treatment from posterity than it

received from contemporaries. Defoe's vigorous services for the Whigs are

unnoticed, and the democratic note in much of the poetry of Burns, Blake,

Byron and Shelley is left unconsidered, and the influence of these poets

undiscussed. The anti-Corn Law rhymes of Ebenezer Eliot, and the Chartist

songs of Ernest Jones were notable inspirations in their day, and in our

own times Walt Whitman and Mr. Edward Carpenter have been the chief singers

of democracy. But a whole volume at least might be written on the part the

pen has played in the struggle towards democracy.

Again, there is no mention of Ireland in this short sketch. A Nationalist

movement is not necessarily a democratic movement, and the Irish

Nationalist Party includes men of very various political opinions, whose

single point of agreement is the demand for Home Rule. In India and Egypt

the agitation is for representative institutions. Ireland might, or might

not, become a democracy under Home Rule--who can say?

The aim of the present writer has been to trace the travelled road of the

English people towards democracy, and to point out certain landmarks on

that road, in the hope that readers may be turned to examine more closely

for themselves the journey taken. For the long march teems with adventure

and spirited enterprise; and, noting mistakes and failures in the past, we

may surely and wisely, and yet with greater daring and finer courage,

pursue the road, not unmindful of the charge committed to us in the

centuries left behind.

J.C.

HAMPSTEAD,

_September, 1911._

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The British Influence--"Government of the People, by the People, for the

People"--The Foundations of Democracy--British Democracy Experimental not

Doctrinaire--Education to Democracy

CHAPTER I

THE EARLY STRUGGLES AGAINST THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE CROWN

The Great Churchmen--Archbishop Anselm and Norman Autocracy--Thomas à

Becket and Henry II.--Stephen Langton and John--The Great Charter