CHAPTER II ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS
CHAPTER III ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED
CHAPTER IV ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS
CHAPTER V ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE
CHAPTER VI ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, AND EDWARD THE CONFESSOR
CHAPTER VII ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND CONQUERED BY THE NORMANS
CHAPTER VIII ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE NORMAN CONQUEROR
CHAPTER IX ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED RUFUS
CHAPTER X ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIRST, CALLED FINE-SCHOLAR
CHAPTER XI ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN
CHAPTER XII ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SECOND
CHAPTER XIII ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE FIRST, CALLED THE LION-HEART
CHAPTER XIV ENGLAND UNDER KING JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND
CHAPTER XV ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE THIRD, CALLED, OF WINCHESTER
CHAPTER XVI ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIRST, CALLED LONGSHANKS
CHAPTER XVII ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SECOND
CHAPTER XVIII ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE THIRD
CHAPTER XIX ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE SECOND
CHAPTER XX ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FOURTH, CALLED BOLINGBROKE
CHAPTER XXI ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIFTH
CHAPTER XXII ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTH
CHAPTER XXIII ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FOURTH
CHAPTER XXIV ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIFTH
CHAPTER XXV ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE THIRD
CHAPTER XXVI ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH
CHAPTER XXVII ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH, CALLED BLUFF KING HAL AND BURLY KING HARRY
CHAPTER XXVIII ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH
CHAPTER XXIX ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SIXTH
CHAPTER XXX ENGLAND UNDER MARY
CHAPTER XXXI ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH
CHAPTER XXXII ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE FIRST
CHAPTER XXXIII ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST
CHAPTER XXXIV ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL
CHAPTER XXXV ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, CALLED THE MERRY MONARCH
CHAPTER XXXVI ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER I
ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS
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 Ireland. England and Scotland form the
greater part of these Islands. Ireland is the next in size. The little
neighbouring 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 adventurers 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.
It is supposed that the Phœnicians, 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 Phœnicians, coasting about the
Islands, would come, without much difficulty, to where the tin and lead
were.
The Phœnicians traded with the Islanders 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
coloured earths and the juices of plants. But the Phœnicians, 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 England, which is now called Kent; and, although they
were a rough people too, they taught the savage Britons some useful
arts, and improved that part of the Islands. It is probable 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 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 a 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 enemy’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 command; 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 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 anyhow; and, as soon as they were safe,
the horses tore away again.
The Britons had a strange and terrible religion, called the Religion of
the 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 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. Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, in
Wiltshire, is the most extraordinary of these. Three curious stones,
called Kits Coty House, on Bluebell Hill, near Maidstone, in Kent, form
another. 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
persuaded 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 Enchanters’ 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 Cæsar, were masters of all the rest of the known
world. Julius Cæsar had then just conquered Gaul; and hearing, in Gaul,
a good deal about the opposite Island with the white cliffs, and about
the 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 Britain next.
So, Julius Cæsar 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, ‘because 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 proposals 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 Cassivellaunus, 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 trembled 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 Britain which belonged to Cassivellaunus, and which was
probably near what is now Saint Albans, in Hertfordshire. However,
brave Cassivellaunus had the worst of it, on the whole; though he and
his men always fought like lions. As the other British chiefs were
jealous of him, and were always quarrelling with him, and with one
another, he gave up, and proposed peace. Julius Cæsar was very glad to
grant peace easily, and to go away again with all his remaining ships
and men. He had expected to find pearls in Britain, and he may have
found a few for anything 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 afterwards, 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
civilised, travelled, and learnt a great deal from the Gauls and
Romans. At last, the Roman Emperor, Claudius, sent Aulus Plautius, a
skilful general, with a mighty force, to subdue the Island, and shortly
afterwards 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 mountains 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 ancestors, who drove
the great Cæsar himself across the sea!’ On hearing these words, his
men, with a great shout, rushed upon the Romans. But the strong Roman
swords and armour were too much for the weaker British weapons in close
conflict. 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 hands of the Romans by his false and
base stepmother: 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 Caractacus 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 burnt 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 plundering of her
property by the Romans who were settled in England, 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, burnt, 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 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 with 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 retook the Island of
Anglesey. Agricola came, fifteen or twenty years afterwards, 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, resisted him at every inch of ground. They
fought the bloodiest battles with him; they killed their very wives and
children, 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 afterwards, and still they resisted him. Severus came,
nearly a hundred years afterwards, 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 began to fight upon the sea.
But, after this time, they renewed their ravages. A few years more, and
the Scots (which was then the name for the people of Ireland), and the
Picts, a northern people, began to make frequent plundering incursions
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 Cæsar’s first invasion of
the Island, when the Romans departed from it for ever. 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 neighbours as themselves, and do unto others as
they would be done by. The Druids declared that it was very wicked to
believe in any such thing, and cursed all the people who did believe
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 England. It is but
little that is known of those five hundred years; but some remains of
them are still found. Often, when labourers 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 plough, or
the dust that is crumbled by the gardener’s spade. Wells that the
Romans sunk, still yield water; roads that the Romans made, form part
of our highways. In some old battle-fields, British spear-heads and
Roman armour have been found, mingled together in decay, as they fell
in the thick pressure of the fight. Traces of Roman camps overgrown
with grass, and of 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 monument 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.