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CONQUEST BY THE ROMANS.

Previously to the year 55 before Christ, the British Islands, in common with the whole of northern and western Europe, were occupied by barbarous tribes, who bore nearly the same relation to the civilized nations of Greece and Italy, which the North American Indians of the present day bear to the inhabitants of Great Britain and the United States. The Romans, who for ages had been extending their power over their rude neighbors, had concluded the conquest of Gaul, now called France, when, in the year just mentioned, their celebrated commander, Julius Cæsar, learning from the merchants of that country that there was another fertile land on the opposite side of the narrow sea now termed the British Channel, resolved to proceed thither, and subject it also to the Roman arms. Disembarking at the place since called Deal, he soon overawed the savage natives, though they were naturally warlike, and averse to a foreign yoke. He did not, however, gain a firm footing in Britain till the succeeding year, when he employed no fewer than 800 vessels to convey his troops from Gaul. Except along the coasts, where some tillage prevailed, the British tribes lived exactly as the Indians now do, upon animals caught in hunting, and fruits which grew spontaneously. They stained and tattooed their bodies, and had no religion but a bloody idolatry called Druidism. The people of Ireland were in much the same condition.

Little was done on this occasion to establish the Roman power in Britain; but about a century afterwards—​namely, in the year of Christ 43, when the emperor Claudius was reigning at Rome—​another large army invaded the island, and reduced a considerable part of it. A British prince called Caradoc, or Caractacus, who had made a noble defense against their arms, was finally taken and sent prisoner to Rome, where he was regarded with the same wonder as we should bestow upon a North American chief who had greatly obstructed the progress of settlements in this quarter of the world. In the year 61, an officer named Suetonius did much to reduce the Britons, by destroying the numerous Druidical temples in the Isle of Anglesea; religion having in this case, as in many others since, been a great support to the patriotic cause. He soon after overthrew the celebrated British princess Boadicéa, who had raised an almost general insurrection against the Roman power.

In the year 79, Agricola, a still greater general, extended the influence of Rome to the Firths of Forth and Clyde, which he formed into a frontier, by connecting them with a chain of forts. It was his policy, after he had subdued part of the country, to render it permanently attached to Rome, by introducing the pleasures and luxuries of the Capital. He was the first to sail round the island. In the year 84, having gone beyond the Forth, he was opposed by a great concourse of the rude inhabitants of the north, under a chief name Galgacus, whom he completely overthrew at Mons Grampius, or the Grampian Mountain; a spot about which there are many disputes, but which was probably at Ardoch in Perthshire, where there are still magnificent remains of a Roman camp. Tacitus, a writer related to Agricola, gives a very impressive account of this great conflict, and exhibits the bravery of the native forces as very remarkable; but the correctness of his details cannot be much relied on.

It appears that Agricola, while on the western coast of Scotland, was desirous of making the conquest of Ireland, which he thought would be useful, both as a medium of communication with Spain, and as a position whence he could overawe Britain. He formed an acquaintance with an Irish chief, who, having been driven from his country by civil commotions, was ready to join in invading it. By him Agricola was informed that the island might be conquered by one legion and a few auxiliaries. The inhabitants, according to Tacitus, bore a close resemblance to the Britons.

It is generally allowed that the Romans experienced an unusual degree of difficulty in subduing the Britons; and it is certain that they were baffled in all their attempts upon the northern part of Scotland, which was then called Caledonia. The utmost they could do with the inhabitants of that country, was to build walls across the island to keep them by themselves. The first wall was built in the year 121, by the Emperor Hadrian, between Newcastle and the Solway Firth. The second was built by the Emperor Antoninus, about the year 140, as a connection of the line of forts which Agricola had formed between the Firths of Forth and Clyde. This boundary was not long kept, for in 210 we find the Emperor Severus fortifying the rampart between the Tyne and Solway. Roman armies, however, probably under the command of Lollius Urbicus, had penetrated far beyond the more northerly wall, although, unfortunately, no accounts of their reception are preserved. From comparing Roman remains lately discovered with ancient geographies, it is held as established that the Romans reached the north-east end of Loch Ness, near the modern town of Inverness. The number of roads and camps which they made, and the regularity with which the country was divided into stations, prove their desire to preserve these conquests. When the conquest was thus so far completed, the country was governed in the usual manner of a Roman province; and towns began to rise in the course of time—​being generally those whose names are found to end in chester, a termination derived from castra, the Latin word for camp. The Christian religion was also introduced, and Roman literature made some progress in the country.

CONQUEST BY THE SAXONS.

At length a time came when the Romans could no longer defend their own native country against the nations in the north of Europe. The soldiers were then withdrawn from Britain (about the year 440), and the people left to govern themselves. The Caledonians, who did not like to be so much straitened in the north, took advantage of the unprotected state of the Britons to pour in upon them from the other side of the wall, and despoil them of their lives and goods. The British had no resource but to call in another set of protectors, the Saxons, a warlike people who lived in the north of Germany, and the Jutes and Angles, who inhabited Denmark. The remedy was found hardly any better than the disease. Having once acquired a footing in the island, these hardy strangers proceeded to make it a subject of conquest, as the Romans had done before, with this material difference, that they drove the British to the western parts of the island, particularly into Wales, and settled, with new hordes of their countrymen, over the better part of the land. So completely was the population changed, that, excepting in the names of some of the hills and rivers, the British language was extinguished, and even the name of the country itself was changed, from what it originally was to Angle-land or England, a term taken from the Angles. The conquest required about two hundred and fifty years to be effected, and, like that of the Romans, it extended no farther north than the Firths of Forth and Clyde. Before the Britons were finally cooped up in Wales, many battles were fought; but few of these are accurately recorded. The most distinguished of the British generals were the Princes Vortimer and Aurelius Ambrosius. It is probably on the achievements of the latter that the well-known fables of King Arthur and his knights are founded.

England, exclusive of the western regions, was now divided into seven kingdoms, called Kent, Northumberland, East Anglia, Mercia, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex, each of which was governed by a race descended from the leader who had first subdued it; and the whole have since been called by historians the Saxon Heptarchy, the latter word being composed of two Greek words, signifying seven kingdoms. To the north of the Forth dwelt a nation called the Picts, who also had a king, and were in all probability the people with whom Agricola had fought under the name of Caledonians. In the Western Highlands there was another nation, known by the name of the Scots, or Dalriads, who had gradually migrated thither from Ireland, between the middle of the third century and the year 503, when they established, under a chief named Fergus, a monarchy destined in time to absorb all the rest. About the year 700 there were no fewer than fifteen kings, or chiefs, within the island, while Ireland was nearly in the same situation. In Britain, at the same time, five languages were in use, the Latin, Saxon, Welsh, the Pictish, and the Irish. The general power of the country has been found to increase as these nations and principalities were gradually amassed together.

Although three of the Saxon kingdoms, Wessex, Mercia, and Northumberland, became predominant, the Heptarchy prevailed from about the year 585 to 800, when Egbert, king of Wessex, acquired a paramount influence over all the other states, though their kings still continued to reign. Alfred, so celebrated for his virtues, was the grandson of Egbert, and began to reign in the year 871. At this time the Danes, who are now a quiet, inoffensive people, were a nation of pirates, and at the same time heathens. They used to come in large fleets, and commit dreadful ravages on the shores of Britain. For some time they completely overturned the sovereignty of Alfred, and compelled him to live in obscurity in the centre of a marsh. But he at length fell upon them when they thought themselves in no danger, and regained the greater part of his kingdom. Alfred spent the rest of his life in literary study, of which he was very fond, and in forming laws and regulations for the good of his people. He was perhaps the most able, most virtuous, and most popular prince that ever reigned in Britain; and all this is the more surprising, when we find that his predecessors and successors, for many ages, were extremely cruel and ignorant. He died in the year 901, in the fifty-third year of his age.

CONQUEST BY THE NORMANS.

The Saxon line of princes continued to rule, with the exception of three Danish reigns, till the year 1066, when the crown was in the possession of a usurper named Harold. The country was then invaded by William, Duke of Normandy, a man of illegitimate birth, attended by a large and powerful army. Harold opposed him at Hastings (October 14), and after a well-contested battle, his army was defeated, and himself slain. William then caused himself to be crowned king at Westminster; and in the course of a few years he succeeded, by means of his warlike Norman followers, in completely subduing the Saxons. His chiefs were settled upon the lands of those who opposed him, and became the ancestors of most of the present noble families of England.

Previously to this period, the Church of Rome, which was the only surviving part of the power of that empire, had established its supremacy over England. The land was also subjected to what is called the feudal system (see History of the Middle Ages), by which all proprietors of land were supposed to hold it from the king for military service, while the tenants were understood to owe them military service in turn for their use of the land. All orders of men were thus kept in a chain of servile obedience, while some of the lower orders were actually slaves to their superiors.

In the year 853, Kenneth, king of the Scots, had added the Pictish kingdom to his own, and his descendant Malcolm II, in 1020, extended his dominions over not only the south of Scotland, but a part of the north of England. Thus, putting aside Wales, which continued to be an independent country, under its own princes, the island was divided, at the time of the Norman Conquest, into two considerable kingdoms, England and Scotland, as they were for some centuries afterwards. Ireland, which had also been invaded by hordes from the north of Europe, was divided into a number of small kingdoms, like England under the Saxon Heptarchy.

EARLY NORMAN KINGS.

William, surnamed The Conqueror, reigned from 1066 to 1087, being chiefly engaged all that time in completing the subjugation of the Saxons. He is allowed to have been a man of much sagacity, and a firm ruler; but his temper was violent, and his disposition brutal. At the time of his death, which took place in Normandy, his eldest son Robert happening to be at a greater distance from London than William, who was the second son, the latter individual seized upon the crown, of which he could not afterwards be dispossessed, till he was shot accidentally by an arrow in the New Forest, in the year 1100. Towards the close of this king’s reign, the whole of Christian Europe was agitated by the first Crusade—​an expedition for the recovery of the Holy Land from the Saracens. Robert of Normandy had a high command in this enterprise, and gained much fame as a warrior; but while he was in Italy, on his return, his youngest brother Henry usurped the throne left vacant by William, so that he was again disappointed of his birthright. Henry I—​surnamed Beauclerc, from his being a fine scholar—​was a prince of some ability; but he disgraced himself by putting out the eyes of his eldest brother, and keeping him nearly thirty years in confinement. Such barbarous conduct shows that in this age might was the only right, and that men hesitated at no actions which might promise to advance their own interests.

Cotemporary with William the Conqueror in England, was Malcolm III in Scotland, surnamed Canmore, from his having a large head. This prince, after overthrowing the celebrated usurper Macbeth, married Margaret, a fugitive Saxon princess, through whom his posterity became the heirs of that race of English sovereigns. He was a good prince, and by settling Saxon refugees upon his lowland territory, did much to improve the character of the Scottish nation, who are described as having been before this time a nation in which there was no admixture of civilization. At Malcolm’s death, in 1093, the crown was contested for a while by a usurper called Donald Bane, and the elder sons of the late monarch, but finally fell to the peaceable possession of his youngest son David I, who was a prince of much superior character, apparently, to the Norman sovereigns who lived in the same age. The church of Rome having now gained an ascendancy in Scotland, David founded a considerable number of monasteries and churches for the reception of the ministers of that religion. All the most celebrated abbacies in Scotland took their rise in his time.

Henry Beauclerc of England, in order to strengthen his claim by a Saxon alliance, married Maud, the daughter of Malcolm Canmore and of Princess Margaret. By her he had an only daughter of the same name, whom he married first to the Emperor of Germany, and then to Geoffrey Plantagenet, eldest son of the Earl of Anjou, in France. This lady and her children by Plantagenet were properly the heirs of the English crown; but on the death of Henry, in 1135, it was seized by a usurper named Stephen, a distant member of the Conqueror’s family, who reigned for nineteen years, during which the country was rendered almost desolate by civil contests, in which David of Scotland occasionally joined.

On the death of Stephen, in 1154, the crown fell peacefully to Henry II, who was the eldest son of Maud, and the first of the Plantagenet race of sovereigns. Henry was an acute and politic prince, though not in any respect more amiable than his predecessors. His reign was principally marked by a series of measures for reducing the power of the Romish clergy, in the course of which some of his courtiers, in 1171 thought they could not do him a better service than to murder Thomas-à-Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been the chief obstacle to his views, and was one of the ablest and most ambitious men ever produced in England. For his concern in this foul transaction, Henry had to perform a humiliating penance, receiving eighty lashes on his bare back from the monks of Canterbury. We are the less inclined to wonder at this circumstance, when we consider that about this time the Pope had power to cause two kings to perform the menial service of leading his horse.

Henry was the most powerful king that had yet reigned in Britain. Besides the great hereditary domains which he possessed in France, and for which he did homage to the king of that country, he exacted a temporary homage from William of Scotland, the grand-son of David, a monarch of great valor, who took the surname of the Lion, and who reigned from 1166 to 1214. Henry also added Ireland to his domininions. This island had previously been divided into five kingdoms—​Munster, Leinster, Meath, Ulster, and Connaught. The people, being quite uncivilized, were perpetually quarreling among themselves; and this, with their heathen religion, furnished a flimsy pretext for invading them from England. Dermot Macmorrough, king of Leinster, having been dethroned by his subjects, introduced an English warrior, Richard, Earl of Strigul, generally called Strongbow, for the purpose of regaining his possessions. A body composed of 50 knights, 90 esquires, and 460 archers, in all 600 men, was enabled by its superior discipline to overthrow the whole warlike force that could be brought against them; and the conquest was easily completed by Henry in person, who went thither in 1172. The military leaders were left to rule over the country; but they managed their trust so ill, that the Irish never became peaceable and improving subjects of the Norman king, as the English had gradually done.

RICHARD CŒUR DE LION—​JOHN—​MAGNA CHARTA.

Henry II was much troubled in his latter years by the disobedience of his children. At his death, in 1189, he was succeeded by his son Richard, styled Cœur de Lion, or the Lion-hearted, from his head strong courage, and who was much liked by his subjects on that account, though it does not appear that he possessed any other good qualities. At the coronation of Richard, the people were permitted to massacre many thousands of unoffending Jews throughout the kingdom. Almost immediately after his accession, he joined the king of France in a second Crusade; landed in Palestine (1191) and fought with prodigious valor, but with no good result. On one occasion, being offended at a breach of truce by his opponent Saladin, he beheaded 5000 prisoners; whose deaths were immediately revenged by a similar massacre of Christian prisoners. In 1192, he returned with a small remnant of his gallant army, and being shipwrecked at Aquileia, wandered in disguise into the dominions of his mortal enemy the Duke of Austria, who, with the Emperor of Germany, detained him till he was redeemed by a ransom, which impoverished nearly the whole of his subjects. This prince spent the rest of his life in unavailing wars with Philip of France, and was killed at the seige of a castle in Limousin, in 1199, after a reign of ten years, of which he had spent only about three months in England.

John, the younger brother of Richard, succeeded, although Arthur, Duke of Bretagne, the son of an intermediate brother, was the proper heir. John, who was at once vain, cruel, and weak, alienated the affections of his subjects almost at the very first by the assassination of his nephew, which he is said to have performed with his own hands. The weakness of kings is often the means of giving increased liberties and privileges to the people. The paltry tyranny and wickedness of John caused his barons to rise against him, and the result was that, on the 19th June, 1215, he was compelled by them to sign what is called the Magna Charta, or great Charter, granting them many privileges and exemptions, and generally securing the personal liberty of his subjects. The principal point concerning the nation at large was, that no tax or supply should be levied from them without their own consent in a great Council—​the first idea of a Parliament. Some excellent provisions were also made regarding courts of law and justice, so as to secure all but the guilty.

The Pope, it appears, regarded the Magna Charta as a shameful violation of the royal prerogative, and excommunicated its authors, as being worse, in his estimation, than infidels. The opinion of a leading modern historian is very different. He says, ‘To have produced the Great Charter, to have preserved it, to have matured it, constitute the immortal claim of England on the esteem of mankind.’

HENRY III—​ORIGIN OF PARLIAMENT.

John, at his death in 1216, was succeeded by his son, Henry III, a weak and worthless prince, who ascended the throne in his boyhood, and reigned fifty six years, without having performed one worthy act of sufficient consequence to be detailed. In his reign was held the first assemblage approaching to the character of a Parliament. It was first called in 1225, in order to give supplies for carrying on a war against France. The money was only granted on condition that the Great Charter should be confirmed; and thus the example was set at the very first, for rendering supplies a check upon the prerogative of the king, and gradually reducing that power to its present comparatively moderate level. Under the earlier Norman kings, and even, it is believed, under the Saxons, an assembly called the Great Council had shared with the sovereign the power of framing laws; but it was only now that the body had any power to balance that of the sovereign, and it was not till 1265 that representatives from the inhabitants of towns were introduced.

EDWARD I AND II—​ATTEMPTED CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND.

Henry III, at his death in 1272, was succeeded by his son Edward I, a prince as warlike and sagacious as his father was the reverse. He distinguished himself by his attempts to add Wales to his kingdom, an object which he accomplished in 1282, by the overthrow and murder of Llewellen, the last prince of that country. In the meantime, from the death of William the Lion in 1214, Scotland had been ruled by two princes, Alexander II, and III, under whom it advanced considerably in wealth, civilization, and comfort. On the death of Alexandria III, in 1285, the crown fell to his granddaughter Margaret, a young girl, whose father was Eric, king of Norway. Edward formed a treaty with the Estates of Scotland for a marriage between this princess and his son, whom he styled Prince of Wales. Unfortunately, the young lady died on her voyage to Scotland; and the crown was left to be disputed by a multitude of distant relations, of whom John Baliol and Robert Bruce seem to have the best right. Edward, being resolved to make Scotland his own at all hazards, interfered in this dispute, and being appointed arbitrator among the competitors, persuaded them to own in the first place an ill-defined claim put forward by himself of the right of paramountcy or superior sovereignty over Scotland. When this was done, he appointed Baliol to be his vassal king, an honor which the unfortunate man was not long permitted to enjoy. Having driven Baliol to resistance, he invaded the country, overthrew his army, and stripping him of his sovereignty, assumed to himself the dominion of Scotland, as a right forfeited to him by the rebellion of his vassal. After he had retired, a brave Scottish gentleman, named William Wallace, raised an insurrection against his officers, and defeating his army at Stirling in 1298, cleared the whole country of its southern invaders. But in the succeeding year, this noble patriot was defeated by Edward in person at Falkirk, and the English yoke was again imposed. It may be remarked, that this could have hardly taken place if the common people, who rose with Wallace, and who were wholly of Celtic and Saxon origin, had been led and encouraged by the nobility. The grandees of Scotland, and even the competitors for the crown, being recent Norman settlers, were disposed to render obedience to the English sovereign.

Some time after the death of Wallace, while Edward was engrossed with the French wars, Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, grand son of him who had competed with Baliol, conceived the idea of putting himself at the head of the Scots, and endeavoring by their means at once to gain the crown, and to recover the independence of the kingdom. After a series of adventures, among which was the unpremeditated murder of a rival named Comyn, Bruce caused himself, in 1306, to be crowned at Scone. For some time after he had to skulk as a fugitive, being unable to maintain his ground against the English officers; but at length he became so formidable, that Edward found it necessary (1307) to lead a large army against him. The English monarch, worn out with fatigue and age, died on the coast of the Solway Firth, when just within sight of Scotland, leaving his sceptre to his son Edward II. That weak and foolish prince immediately returned to London, leaving Bruce to contest with his inferior officers.

After several years of constant skirmishing, during which the Scottish king was able to maintain his ground, Edward resolved to make one decisive effort to reduce Scotland to subjection. In the summer of 1314, he invaded it with an army of 100,000 men. Bruce drew up his troops, which were only 30,000 in number, at Bannockburn, near Stirling. Partly by steady valor, and partly by the use of stratagems, the Scots were victorious, and Edward fled ignominiously from the field. The Scottish king gained an immense booty, besides securing his crown and the independence of his country. He soon after sent his brother Edward, with a body of troops, to Ireland, to assist the native chiefs in resisting the English. This bold young knight was crowned King of Ireland, and for some time held his ground against the English forces, but was at length defeated and slain.

The weakness of Edward II was chiefly shown in a fondness for favorites, into whose hands he committed the whole interests of his people. The first was a low Frenchman, named Piers Gaveston, who soon fell a victim to the indignation of the barons. The second, Hugh Spencer, misgoverned the country for several years, till at length the Queen and prince of Wales raised an insurrection against the king, and caused him to be deposed, as quite unfit to reign. The Prince was then crowned as Edward III (1327), being as yet only about fourteen years of age; and in the course of a few months the degraded sovereign was cruelly put to death in Berkeley Castle.

During the minority of the young king, the reins of government were held by his mother and the Earl of March. Under their administration, a peace was concluded with King Robert of Scotland, of which one of the conditions was a full acknowledgement of the independence of the Scottish monarchy, which had been a matter of dispute for some ages.

EDWARD III—​RICHARD II.

Edward III, who soon after assumed full power, was destined to make good the remark prevalent at this time, that the kings of England were alternately able and imbecile. He was a warlike and sagacious monarch, and inspired by all his grandfather’s desire of conquest. In 1329, Robert Bruce died, and was succeeded by his infant son David II, to whom a young sister of the English king was married, in terms of the late treaty. Notwithstanding this connection, Edward aided a son of John Baliol in an attempt to gain the Scottish crown. Edward Baliol overthrew the Regent of Scotland at Duplin, September 1332, and for two months reigned as King of Scots, while David and his wife took refuge in France. Though now expelled, Baliol afterwards returned to renew his claims, and for many years the country was harassed by unceasing wars, in which the English took a leading part.

But for his attention being diverted to France, Edward III would have made a more formidable effort to subdue Scotland, and might have succeeded. He was led into a long course of warfare with France, in consequence of an absurd pretension which he had made to its crown. In the victories which he had gained at Cressy (August 26, 1346) and Poitiers (September 17, 1356), the national valor, his own, and that of his celebrated son, the Black Prince, were shown conspicuously; but this lavish expenditure of the resources of his kingdom, in which he was supported by his parliament, was of no permanent benefit, even to himself, for whom alone it was made. In those days, almost all men fought well, but very few had the art to improve their victories. John, king of France, who had been made captive at Poitiers, and David, king of Scotland, who had been taken in 1346, while conducting an invasion of England, were at one time prisoners in England; but no permanent advantage was ever gained over either of the states thus deprived of their sovereigns. In 1361, after about twenty years of active fighting, the English king left France with little more territory than he had previously enjoyed. Edward had invaded Scotland with a powerful army in 1356, but without making any impression. The Scots, under David’s nephew, Robert Stuart, effectually protected themselves, not only from his arms, but from a proposal which David himself basely undertook to make, that Lionel, the third son of the English king, should be acknowledged as his successor. Edward died in 1377, a year after the decease of his son the Black Prince; and notwithstanding all their brilliant exploits, the English territories in France were less than at the beginning of the reign.

England was at this time affected more than at any other by the fashions of chivalry. This was a military enthusiasm, which for some centuries pervaded all Christian Europe. It prompted, as one of its first principles, a heedless bravery in encountering all kinds of danger. Its votaries were expected to be particularly bold in behalf of the fair sex, insomuch that a young knight would sometimes challenge to mortal combat any one who denied his mistress to be the loveliest in the world. Tournaments were held, at which knights clad in complete armor would ride against each other at full speed with leveled lances, merely to try which had the greatest strength and skill; and many were killed on these occasions. It was a system full of extravagance, and tending to bloodshed; but nevertheless it maintained a certain courtesy towards females, and a romantic principle of honor, which we may be glad to admire, considering how rude was almost every other feature of the age.

Edward III was succeeded by his grandson, Richard II, then a boy of eleven years of age, and who proved to be a person of weak and profligate character. The Commons took advantage of the irregularity of his government to strengthen their privileges, which they had with difficulty sustained during the more powerful rule of his predecessor. Early in this reign they assumed the right, not only of taxing the country, but of seeing how the money was spent. Indignant at the severity of a tax imposed upon all grown-up persons, the peasantry of the eastern parts of England rose, in 1381, under a person of their own order, named Wat Tyler, and advanced, to the number of 60,000, to London, where they put to death the chancellor and primate, as evil counselors of their sovereign. They demanded the abolition of bondage, the liberty of buying and selling in fairs and markets, a general pardon, and the reduction of the rent of land to an equal rate. The king came to confer with them at Smithfield, where, on some slight pretense, Walworth, mayor of London, stabbed Wat Tyler with a dagger—​a weapon which has since figured in the armorial bearings of the metropolis. The peasants were dismayed, and submitted, and no fewer than fifteen hundred of them were hanged. Wat Tyler’s insurrection certainly proceeded upon a glimmering sense of those equal rights of mankind which have since been generally acknowledged; and it is remarkable, that at the same time the doctrines of the reformer Wickliffe were first heard of. This learned ecclesiastic wrote against the power of the Pope, and some of the most important points of the Romish faith, and also executed a translation of the Bible into English. His writings are acknowledged to have been of material, though not immediate effect, in bringing about the reformation of religion.

The country was misgoverned by Richard II till 1399, when he was deposed by his subjects under the leading of his cousin, Henry, Duke of Lancaster. This person, though some nearer the throne were alive, was crowned as Henry IV, and his predecessor, Richard, was soon after murdered. In the meantime, David of Scotland died in 1371, and was succeeded by Robert Stuart, who was the first monarch of that family. Robert I, dying in 1389, was succeeded by his son Robert II, who was a good and gentle prince. He had two sons, David and James; the former was starved to death by his uncle, the Duke of Albany; and the latter, when on his way to France for his education, was seized by Henry IV of England, and kept captive in that country for eighteen years. Robert II then died of a broken heart (1406), and the kingdom fell into the hands of the Duke of Albany, at whose death, in 1419, it was governed by his son Duke Murdoch, a very imbecile personage.

HOUSE OF LANCASTER.

Henry IV proved a prudent prince, and comparatively a good ruler. The settlement of the crown upon him by parliament was a good precedent, though perhaps only dictated under the influence of his successful arms. He was much troubled by insurrections, particularly a formidable one by Percy, Earl of Northumberland—​and one still more difficult to put down in Wales, where Owen Glendower, a descendant of the British princes, kept his ground for several years.

On the death of Henry IV in 1413, he was succeeded by his son, who was proclaimed under the title of Henry V. The young king attained high popularity, on account of his impartial administration of justice, and his zeal to protect the poor from the oppressions of their superiors. His reign is less agreeably marked by the persecutions of the Lollards, a body of religious reformers, many of whom were condemned to the flames. Being determined to use every endeavor to gain the crown of France, which he considered his by right of birth, he landed in Normandy with 30,000 men (August 1415), and gave battle to a much superior force of the French at Agincourt. He gained a complete victory, which was sullied by his afterwards ordering a massacre of his prisoners, under the apprehension that an attempt was to be made to rescue them. The war was carried on for some years longer, and Henry would have probably succeeded in making good his claim to the French crown, if he had not died prematurely of a dysentery (August 31, 1422), in the thirty-fourth year of his age, leaving the throne to an infant nine months old, who was proclaimed as Henry VI, King of France and England.

Under Henry VI, whose power was for some time in the hands of his uncle the Duke of Bedford, the English maintained their footing in France for several years, and at the battle of Verneuil, in 1424, rivaled the glory of Cressy and Poitiers. At that conflict, a body of Scotch, 7000 strong, who had proved of material service to the French, were nearly cut off. In 1428, when France seemed completely sunk beneath the English rule, the interests of the native prince were suddenly revived by a simple maiden, named Joan of Arc, who pretended to have been commissioned by Heaven to save her country; and entering into the French army, was the cause of several signal reverses to the English. By her enthusiastic exertions, and the trust everywhere reposed in her supernatural character, Charles VII was crowned at Rheims in 1430. Being soon after taken prisoner, the heroic maiden was, by the English, condemned for witchcraft, and burnt. Nevertheless, about the year 1453, the French monarch had retrieved the whole of his dominions from the English, with the exception of Calais.

Henry VI was remarkable for the extreme weakness of his character. His cousin, Richard, Duke of York, descended from an elder son of Edward III, and therefore possessed of a superior title to the throne, conceived that Henry’s imbecility afforded a good opportunity for asserting what he thought his birthright. Thus commenced the famous Wars of the Roses, as they were called, from the badges of the families of York and Lancaster—​the former of which was a white, while the latter was a red rose. In 1454, the duke gained a decisive victory over the forces of Henry, which were led by his spirited consort, Margaret of Anjou. In some succeeding engagements the friends of Henry were victorious; and at length, in the battle of Wakefield (December 24, 1460), the forces of the Duke of York were signally defeated, and himself, with one of his sons, taken and put to death. His pretensions were then taken up by his eldest son Edward, who, with the assistance of the Earl of Warwick, gained such advantages next year, that he assumed the crown. Before this was accomplished, many thousands had fallen on both sides. Henry, who cared little for the pomp of sovereignty, was confined in the Tower.

Scotland, in the meantime (1424), had redeemed her king from his captivity in England; and that prince, styled James I, had proved a great legislator and reformer, not to speak of his personal accomplishments in music and literature, which surpassed those of every cotemporary monarch. James did much to reduce the Highlands to an obedience under the Scottish government, and also to break up the enormous power of the nobles. By these proceedings, however, he excited a deep hatred in the bosoms of some of his subjects; and in 1437 he fell a victim to assassination at Perth. He was succeeded by his infant son, James II, the greater part of whose reign was spent in a harassing contention with the powerful house of Douglas, and who was finally killed, in the flower of his age, by the bursting of a cannon before Roxburgh Castle. His successor, James III, was also a minor, and, on reaching man’s estate, proved to be a weak, though not ill-meaning prince. He fell a victim, in 1488, to a conspiracy formed by his subjects, and which was led by his eldest son. The morality of princes in this age seems to have been much upon a par with that ascribed to the Turkish sovereigns of a later period. They never scrupled to destroy life, either within the circle of their own family, or out of it, when it suited their interests or their ambition to do so.

HOUSE OF YORK.

Edward, of the House of York, styled Edward IV, who commenced his reign in the nineteenth year of his age, reigned ten years, perpetually disturbed by renewed attempts of the Lancastrian party, of which he mercilessly sacrificed many thousands who fell into his hands. At length, having offended the Earl of Warwick, who had been chiefly instrumental in placing him upon the throne, that powerful nobleman raised an insurrection against him, and in eleven days was master of the kingdom, while Edward had to take refuge on the continent. Henry VI was then restored, and Warwick acquired the title of King-maker. Nine months after (1471), Edward landed with a small body of followers, and having called his partisans arround him, overthrew and killed Warwick at St. Alban’s. Margaret of Anjou, who had fought battles for her husband in almost every province of England, gathered a new army, and opposed Edward at Tewkesbury Park, where she was completely defeated. Her son and husband being taken, were murdered in cold blood, and she herself spent the remainder of her singular life in France. Edward reigned, a profligate and a tyrant, till 1483, when he died in the forty-second year of his age. He had previously caused his brother, the equally profligate Duke of Clarence, to be drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine.

During the reign of Edward IV, the plague frequently broke out in England, and carried off immense numbers of the people. It was particularly fatal in London, and in all other places where many houses were huddled closely together, with imperfect means of cleaning and ventilation. It was calculated that the disease, on one occasion in this reign, destroyed as many lives as the fifteen years’ war. The plague did not cease to occur in England, as well as in other European countries, until considerable improvements had taken place in the habits of the people, especially in point of cleanliness.

Edward V, the eldest son of Edward IV, was a boy of eleven years when he succeeded to the crown. His uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, a wicked and deformed wretch, soon after contrived to obtain the chief power, and also to cause the murder of the young king and his still younger brother in the Tower. He then mounted the throne under the title of Richard III. For two years, this disgrace to humanity continued to reign, though universally abhorred by his people. At length, in 1485, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, a connexion rather than a descendant of the Lancaster family, resolved to make an attempt upon the English crown. Having landed with about 2000 followers at Milford Haven, he advanced into the country, and speedily gained such accession of force as enabled him to meet and overthrow Richard at Bosworth Field, where the tyrant was slain, and the victorious Richmond was immediately proclaimed king, under the title of Henry VII. The new monarch soon after sought to strengthen his title by marrying Elizabeth, the daughter and heir of Edward IV, by which it was said the families of York and Lancaster were united.

HOUSE OF TUDOR—​HENRY VII.

Under Henry VII the country revived from the evils of a long civil war, in the course of which the chief nobility had been broken down, and the industry and commerce of the land interrupted. It was remarkable, nevertheless, that, during the past period, England was upon the whole an improving country. The evils of war had fallen chiefly on those who made it; the government, however disturbed by various claimants of the throne, was mild and equitable—​at least as compared with that of other countries; and the people at large throve under a system in which their own consent, by the voice of the House of Commons, was necessary to the making of every new law, and the laying on of every tax. The reign of Henry VII was much disturbed by insurrections, in consequence of his imperfect title. A baker’s boy, named Lambert Symnel, and a Jew’s son, named Perkin Warbeck, were successively set up by the York party—​the one as a son of the late Duke of Clarence, and the other as the younger brother of Edward V, but were both defeated. Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn in 1499; and nearly about the same time, Henry procured, by forms of law, the death of the Earl of Warwick, the real son of the late Duke of Clarence, a poor idiot boy, whom he had kept fifteen years in confinement, and whose title to the throne, being superior to his own, rendered him uneasy.

Henry though a cruel prince, as were most of the sovereigns of his age, was a sagacious and peaceful ruler. He paid great attention to all his affairs, and in some of his acts looked far beyond the present time. For example, by marrying his daughter Margaret to James IV of Scotland, he provided for the possibility of the future union of the two crowns. By a law allowing men of property to break entails, he insured the reduction of the great lords, and the increase of the number of small proprietors. His constant policy was to depress the chief nobles, and to elevate the clergy, lawyers, and men of new families, as most likely to be dependent on him. The greatest fault of his character was his excessive love of money, of which he amassed an immense sum. During his reign, Ireland was made more dependent on the English crown by a statute prohibiting any parliament from being held in it until the king should give his consent.

HENRY VIII.

Henry VII. died in April 1509, in the fifty-third year of his age. His eldest surviving son and successor, Henry VIII, was now in his eighteenth year. Young, handsome, and supposed to be amiable, he enjoyed at first a high degree of popularity. Some years before, he had been affianced to Catharine, a Spanish princess, who had previously been the wife of his deceased brother Arthur: he was now married to this lady, the Pope having previously granted a dispensation for that purpose. For many years the reign of Henry was unmarked by any unusual incidents. The chief administration of affairs was committed to a low-born but proud churchman, the celebrated Cardinal Wolsey. The king became much engaged in continental politics; and during a war which he carried on against France, his brother-in-law James IV, who sided with that state, made an unfortunate irruption into the north of England, and was overthrown and slain, with the greater part of his nobility (September 9, 1513), at Flodden.

About this time some changes of great importance to European society took place. Almost ever since the destruction of the Roman Empire, the nations which arose out of it had remained in subjection to the Papal See, which might be said to have inherited the universal sway of that government, but altered from an authority over the bodies of men to an empire over their minds. In the opinion of many, this authority of the Roman Catholic religion had in the course of time become much abused, while the religion itself was corrupted by many superstitious observances. So long as men had continued to be the thoughtless warriors and unlettered peasants which they had been in the middle ages, it is not probable that they would ever have called in question either the authority of the Pope or the purity of the Catholic faith. But, with knowledge, and the rise of a commercial and manufacturing class, came a disposition to inquire into the authority of this great religious empire. The art of printing, discovered about the middle of the preceding century, and which was now rendering literature accessible to most classes of the community, tended greatly to bring about this revolution in European intellect. The minds of men, indeed, seem at this time as if awaking from a long sleep; and it might well have been a question with persons who had reflection, but no experience, whether the change was to turn to evil or to good.

When men’s minds are in a state of preparation for any great change, a very small matter is required to set them in motion. At Wittemberg, in Germany, there was an Augustine monk, named Martin Luther, who became incensed at the Roman see, in consequence of some injury which he conceived to have been done to his order by the Pope having granted the privilege of selling indulgences to the Dominican order of friars. Being a man of a bold and inquiring mind, he did not rest satisfied till he had convinced himself, and many others around him, that the indulgences were sinful, and that the Pope had no right to grant them. This happened about the year 1517. Controversy and persecution gradually extended the views of Luther, till he at length openly disavowed the authority of the Pope, and condemned some of the most important peculiarities of the Catholic system of worship. In these proceedings, Luther was countenanced by some of the states in Germany, and his doctrines were speedily established in the northern countries of Europe.

THE REFORMATION.

Henry VIII, as the second son of his father, had been originally educated for the church, and still retained a taste for theological learning. He now distinguished himself by writing a book against the Lutheran doctrines; and the Pope was so much pleased with it as to grant him the title of Defender of the Faith. Henry was not destined, however, to continue long an adherent of the Roman pontiff. In the year 1527, he became enamored of a young gentlewoman named Anne Boleyn, who was one of his wife’s attendants. He immediately conceived the design of annuling his marriage with Catharine, and marrying this younger and more agreeable person. Finding a pretext for such an act in the previous marriage of Catharine to his brother, he attempted to obtain from the Pope a decree, declaring his own marriage unlawful, and that the dispensation upon which it had proceeded was beyond the powers of the former Pope to grant. The pontiff (Clement VII) was much perplexed by this request of King Henry, because he could not accede to it without offending Charles V, Emperor of Germany, one of his best supporters, and the nephew of Queen Catharine, and at the same time humbling the professed powers of the Papacy, which were now trembling under the attacks of Luther.

Henry desired to employ the influence of his minister, Cardinal Wolsey, who had now reached a degree of opulence and pride never before attained by a subject of England. But Wolsey, with all his greatness, could not venture to urge a matter disagreeable to the Pope, who was more his master than King Henry. The process went on for several years, and still his passion for Anne Boleyn continued unabated. Wolsey at length fell under the king’s displeasure for refusing to serve him in this object, was stripped of all his places of power and wealth, and in November 1530, expired at Leicester Abbey, declaring that, if he had served his God as diligently as his king, he would not thus have been given over in his gray hairs. The uncontrollable desire of the king to possess Anne Boleyn, was destined to be the immediate cause of one of the most important changes that ever took place in England—​no less than a total reformation of the national religion. In order to annul his marriage with Catharine, and enable him to marry Anne Boleyn, he found it necessary to shake off the authority of the Pope, and procure himself to be acknowledged in Parliament as the supreme head of the English church. His marriage with Anne took place in 1533, and in the same year was born his celebrated daughter Elizabeth.

In 1536, Henry became as anxious to put away Queen Anne as he had ever been to rid himself of Queen Catharine. He had contracted a passion for Jane Seymour, a young lady then of the queen’s bedchamber, as Anne herself had been in that of Catharine. In order to gratify this new passion, he accused Anne of what appears to have been an imaginary frailty, and within a month from the time when she had been an honored queen, she was beheaded (May 19) in the Tower. On the very next day he married Jane Seymour, who soon after died in giving birth to a son (afterwards Edward VI.) His daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were declared illegitimate by act of Parliament, and therefore excluded from the succession.

Hitherto, though professing independence of Rome, Henry still maintained, and even enforced, by severe and bloody laws, the most of its doctrines. He now took measures for altering this system of worship to something nearer the Lutheran model, and also for suppressing the numerous monasteries through the country. Being possessed of more despotic power, and, what is stranger still, of more popularity, than any former sovereign of England, he was able to encounter the dreadful risk of offending by these means a vastly powerful corporation, which seems moreover, to have been regarded with much sincere affection and respect in many parts of England. No fewer than 645 monasteries, 2374 chanteries and chapels, 90 colleges, and 110 hospitals, enjoying altogether a revenue of £161,000, were broken up by this powerful and unscrupulous monarch. He partly seized the revenues for his own use, and partly gave them away to the persons who most actively assisted him and who seemed most able to protect his government from the effects of such a sweeping reform. By this act, which took place in 1537, the Reformation was completed in England. Yet for many years Henry vacillated so much in his opinions, and enforced these with such severe enactments, that many persons of both religions were burnt as heretics. It was in the southern and eastern parts of England, where the commercial class at this time chiefly resided, that the doctrines of the Reformation were most prevalent. In the western and northern parts of the country, Catholicism continued to flourish; and in Ireland, which was remotest of all from the continent, the Protestant faith made little or no impression.

After the death of Jane Seymour, Henry married Anne of Cleves, a German princess, with whose person, however, he was not pleased; and he therefore divorced her by an act of Parliament. He next married Catherine Howard, niece to the Duke of Norfolk; but had not been long united to her when he discovered that she had committed a serious indiscretion before marriage. This was considered a sufficient reason for beheading the unfortunate queen, and attainting all her relations. Though Henry had thus murdered two wives, and divorced other two, and become, moreover, a monster in form as well as in his passions and mind, he succeeded in obtaining for his sixth wife (1543) Catherine Parr, widow of Lord Latimer, who, it is certain, only contrived to escape destruction by her extraordinary prudence. Almost all who ever served Henry VIII as ministers, either to his authority or to his pleasures, were destroyed by him. Wolsey was either driven to suicide, or died of a broken heart. Thomas Cromwell, who succeeded that minister, and chiefly aided the king in bringing about the Reformation—​Sir Thomas More, lord chancellor, the most virtuous, most able and most consistent man of his time—​the Earl of Surrey, who was one of the most accomplished knights of the age, and the first poet who wrote the English language with perfect taste—​all suffered the same fate with Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.

When James IV died at Flodden, in 1513, the Scottish crown fell to his infant son James V, who struggled through a turbulent minority, and was now a gay, and, upon the whole, an amiable prince. His uncle, Henry VIII, endeavored to bring him into his views respecting religion; but James, who was much in the power of the Catholic clergy, appears to have wished to become the head of the Popish party in England, in the hope of succeeding, by their means, to the throne of that country. A war latterly broke out between the two monarchs, and the Scottish army having refused to fight, from a dislike to the expedition, James died (December 1542) of a broken heart, leaving an only child, Mary, who was not above a week old. Henry immediately conceived the idea of marrying his son Edward to this infant queen, by which he calculated that two hostile nations should be united under one sovereignty, and the Protestant church in England be supported by a similar establishment in Scotland. This project, however, was resisted by the Scots, of whom very few as yet were inclined to the Protestant doctrines. Henry, enraged at their hesitation, sent a fleet and army, in 1544, to inflict vengeance upon them. The Scots endured with great patience the burning of their capital city, and many other devastations, but still refused the match. The government of Scotland was now chiefly in the hands of Cardinal Beaton, a man of bold and decisive intellect, who zealously applied himself to suppress the reforming preachers, and regarded the English match as likely to bring about the destruction of the Catholic religion.

EDWARD VI—​QUEEN MARY.

Henry died, January 28, 1547, leaving the throne to his only son, a boy of ten years of age, who was immediately proclaimed king under the title of Edward VI. The Duke of Somerset, maternal uncle to the young king, became supreme ruler under the title of Protector, and continued to maintain the Protestant doctrines. Under this reign, the church of England assumed its present form, and the Book of Common Prayer was composed nearly as it now exists. Somerset being resolved to effect, if possible, the match between Edward VI and Mary of Scotland, invaded that country in the autumn of 1547, and was met at Musselburgh by a large army under the governor, the Earl of Arran. Though the Scotch were animated by bitter animosity against the English, against their religion, and against the object of their expedition, they did not fight with their usual resolution, but were defeated, and pursued with great slaughter. Finding them still obstinate in refusing to give up their queen, Somerset laid waste a great part of the country, and then retired. Previous to this period, Cardinal Beaton had been assassinated by private enemies; but the Scotch were encouraged to persevere by the court of France, to which they now sent the young queen for protection.

In the reign of Edward VI the government was conducted mildly, until the Protector Somerset was degraded from his authority by the rising influence of Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who caused him soon after to be tried and executed. Northumberland, who was secretly a Roman Catholic, was not so mild or popular a ruler. Yet, throughout the whole reign of Edward VI which was terminated by his death on the 6th of July 1553, at the early age of sixteen, no religious party was persecuted, except those who denied the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion. It would have been well for the honor of a church which has produced many great men, and to which the modern world is indebted for the very existence of Christianity, if it had not been tempted after this period to commence a very different course of action. The crown now belonged by birthright to Mary, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII, who was a zealous Catholic. Northumberland, however, assuming the illegitimacy of that princess and her sister Elizabeth, set up as queen the Lady Jane Grey, who was descended from a younger sister of King Henry, and who had been married to a son of the Duke of Northumberland. Lady Jane was the most beautiful, most intelligent, and most amiable of all the females who appear in the history of England. Though only seventeen, she was deeply learned, and yet preserved all the unaffected graces of character proper to her interesting age. Unfortunately, her father-in-law Northumberland was so much disliked, that the Catholics were enabled to displace her from the throne in eight days, and to set up in her stead the Princess Mary. Northumberland, Lady Jane, and her husband, Guildford, Lord Dudley, were all beheaded by that savage princess, who soon after took steps for restoring the Catholic religion, and married Philip II, king of Spain, in order to strengthen herself against the Protestant interest. Mary experienced some resistance from her Protestant subjects, and being under great suspicion of her sister Elizabeth, who professed the reformed faith, but took no part against her, was almost on the point of ordering her to execution also. As soon as she had replaced the Catholic system, and found herself in possession of sufficient power, she began that career of persecution which has rendered her name so infamous. Five out of fourteen Protestant bishops, including the revered names of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, were committed to the flames as heretics; and during the ensuing part of her reign, which was closed by her death, November 17, 1558, nearly three hundred persons suffered in the same manner. These scenes did not take place without exciting horror in the minds of Englishmen in general, including even many Catholics; but the royal authority was at all times too great under this line of princes to allow of effectual resistance. Such a persecution, however, naturally fixed in the minds of the British Protestants a hereditary horror for the name of Catholic, which has in its turn been productive of many retaliatory persecutions, almost equally to be lamented. In the latter part of her reign, she was drawn by her husband into a war with France, of which the only effect was the loss of Calais, the last of the French possessions of the sovereigns of England. The natural sourness of Mary’s temper was increased by this disgraceful event, as well as by her want of children, and she died in a state of great unhappiness.

ELIZABETH—​MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS—​REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND.

A more auspicious scene opened for England in the accession of Elizabeth, a princess of great native vigor of mind, and who had been much improved by adversity, having been kept in prison during the whole reign of her sister. From the peculiar circumstances of Elizabeth’s birth, her right of succession was denied by all the Catholics at home and abroad. This party considered Mary, Queen of Scots, who was descended from the eldest sister of Henry VIII, and had been brought up in the Catholic faith at the court of France, as their legitimate sovereign. Elizabeth had no support in any quarter, except among her Protestant subjects. The Pope issued a bull, which directly or indirectly, pronounced her a usurper, and gave permission to her subjects to remove her from the throne. The court of France professed to consider the Queen of Scots, who had recently been married to the Dauphin, as the Queen of England. Under these circumstances, Elizabeth found no chance of safety except in restoring and maintaining the Protestant religion in her own country, and in seeking to support it in all others where the people were favorable to it. The Scottish nation being now engaged in a struggle with their regent, Mary of Guise, in behalf of Protestantism, Elizabeth gladly acceded to a proposal made by the nobles of that country, and sent a party of troops, by whose assistance the reformed religion was established (1560). In bringing about this change, the chief native leaders were James Stuart, a natural son of King James V, and John Knox, who had once been a friar, but was now a Protestant preacher. As a natural consequence of the obligation which the English queen had conferred upon the Scottish reformers, she acquired an influence over the country which was never altogether lost.

About the time when the Scottish Parliament was establishing the reformed religion, Mary of Guise breathed her last, leaving the country to be managed by the reforming nobles. Her daughter, the Queen of Scots, now eighteen years of age, and the most beautiful woman of her time, had in 1559 become the queen-consort of France; but in consequence of the death of her husband, she was next year left without any political interest in that country. She accordingly, in August 1561, returned to Scotland, and assumed the sovereignty of a country which was chiefly under the rule of fierce nobles, and where the people, from the difference of their religious faiths, as well as their native barbarism, were little fitted to yield her the obedience of loyal and loving subjects.

The change of religion in Scotland was of a more decisive kind than it had been in England. The English Reformation had been effected by sovereigns who, while they wished to throw off the supremacy of the Pope, and some of the Catholic rites, desired to give as little way as possible to popular principles. They therefore not only seized the supremacy of the church to themselves, but, by bishops and other dignitaries, made it an efficient instrument for supporting monarchical government. In Scotland, where the Reformation was effected by the nobles and the people, at a time when still bolder principles had sprung up, none of this machinery of power was retained. The clergy were placed on a footing of perfect equality; they were all of them engaged in parochial duties, and only a small part of the ancient ecclesiastical revenues was allowed to them. In imitation of the system established at Geneva, their general affairs, instead of being intrusted to the hands of bishops, were confided to courts formed by themselves. These courts, being partly formed by lay elders, kept up a sympathy and attachment among the community, which has never existed in so great a degree in the English church. What was of perhaps still greater importance, while a large part of the ancient revenues was absorbed by the nobles, a very considerable portion was devoted to the maintenance of parish schools, under the express control of the clergy. These at once formed regular nurseries of Protestant Christians, and disseminated the elements of learning more extensively over this small and remote country than it had ever been over any other part of the world.

Queen Mary, having little power in her own country, was obliged to govern by means of her natural brother, James Stuart, whom she created Earl of Moray, and who was the leader of the Protestant interest in Scotland. Personally, however, she was intimately connected with the great Catholic powers of the continent, and became a party, in 1564, to a coalition formed by them for the suppression of Protestantism all over Europe. She had never yet resigned her pretensions to the English throne, but lived in the hope that, when the Catholics succeeded in everywhere subduing the Protestants, she would attain that object. Elizabeth, who had only the support of the Protestant part of her own subjects, with a friendly feeling among the Scotch and other unimportant Protestant nations, had great reason to dread the confederacy formed against her. She nevertheless stood firm upon the Protestant faith, and the principles of a comparatively liberal and popular government, as the only safe position.

A series of unfortunate events threw Mary into the hands of Elizabeth. The former queen, in 1565, married her cousin Lord Darnley, and by that means alienated the affections of her brother and chief minister, the Earl of Moray, as well as of other Protestant lords, who raised a rebellion against her, and were obliged to fly into England. Soon after, the jealousy of Darnley respecting an Italian musician named Rizzio, who acted as French secretary to the queen, united him in a conspiracy with the banished Protestant noblemen for the murder of that humble foreigner, which was effected under very barbarous circumstances, March 9, 1566. Mary, who was delivered in the succeeding June, of her son James, withdrew her affections entirely from her husband, and began to confide chiefly in the Earl of Bothwell, who some months afterwards caused Darnley to be blown up by gunpowder, while he lay in a state of sickness; in which transaction it has always been suspected, but never proved, that the queen had a considerable share. Bothwell soon after forced her, in appearance, into a marriage, which excited so much indignation among her subjects, that the same Protestant lords who had effected the Reformation, and were the friends of Elizabeth, easily obtained the possession of her person, and having deposed her, crowned her infant son as king, under the title of James VI, while the regency was vested in the Earl of Moray. In May 1568, Mary escaped from her prison in Lochleven, and put herself at the head of a body of her partisans, but was defeated by the regent at the battle of Langside, and was then compelled to seek refuge in England. By placing her rival under strict confinement, and extending an effectual protection to the regents Moray, Lennox, Mar, and Morton, who successively governed Scotland, Elizabeth fortified herself in a great degree against the Catholic confederacy.

GOVERNMENT OF ELIZABETH.

It has already been seen that the liberties of the people were much favored by the frequent interruptions in the succession to the crown. Whenever one branch of the Plantagenet family displaced another, the new king, feeling himself weak, endeavored to strengthen his title by procuring a parliamentary enactment in support of it. It thus became established as a regular principle in the English government, that the people who were represented in parliament had something to say in the appointment of their king. A considerable change, however, had taken place since the accession of Henry VII. The great power acquired by that king, through his worldly wisdom and the destruction of the nobility during the civil wars, had been handed down through four successive princes, who inherited the crown by birthright, and did not require to cringe to the people for a confirmation of their title. The parliaments, therefore, were now a great deal more under the control of the sovereign than they had formerly been. From an early period of his reign, Henry VIII never permitted his parliament to oppose his will in the least. To the various changes of religion under successive sovereigns, the parliaments presented no obstacle. An idea was now beginning to arise, very much through the supremacy which the sovereigns had acquired over the church, that the right of the crown was one derived from God, and that the people had nothing to do with it, except to obey what it dictated to them. Of this notion, no one took so much advantage, or was at so much pains to impress it, as Elizabeth. No doubt her arbitrary measures were generally of a popular nature, yet this does not excuse them in principle; and their ultimate mischief is seen in the attempts of future sovereigns to pursue worse ends upon the same means. Elizabeth’s government consisted entirely of herself and her ministers, who were, from the beginning to the end of her reign, the very spirit and essence of the enlightened men of England. Her prime minister was the celebrated Lord Burleigh, by far the most sagacious man who ever acted as a minister in Britain; and all her emissaries to foreign courts were of one complexion—​circumspect and penetrating men, ardently devoted to their country, their mistress, and to the Protestant religion.

On the accession of Elizabeth, the two celebrated acts of Supremacy and Conformity were passed, for the purpose of crushing the political influence of the Popish religion; an end which they sufficiently accomplished. By the act of supremacy, all beneficed clergymen, and all holding offices under the crown, were compelled to take an oath adjuring the temporal and spiritual jurisdiction of any foreign prince or prelate, on pain of forfeiting their offices, while any one maintaining such supremacy was liable to heavy penalties. The other statute prohibited any one from following any clergyman who was not of the established religion, under pain of forfeiting his goods and chattels for the first offense, of a year’s imprisonment for the second, and of imprisonment during life for the third; while it imposed a fine of a shilling on any one absenting himself from the established church on Sundays and holidays. By means of a court of ecclesiastical commission, which the queen erected, these laws, and others of a more trifling and vexatious nature, were enforced with great severity. It may afford some idea of the barbarity of the age, and of the terror in which the church of Rome was now held, that, during the reign of Elizabeth, one hundred and eighty persons suffered death by the laws affecting Catholic priests and converts.

WAR IN THE NETHERLANDS.

For more than a century after the Reformation, religion was the real or apparent motive of the most remarkable transactions in European history. It is scarcely necessary to point out that this sentiment, though in general the purest by which human beings can be actuated, is, like all the other higher sentiments of our nature, when offended or shocked, capable of rousing the inferior sentiments into great activity. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, European society was comparatively unenlightened and barbarous; we therefore find the variances of opinion respecting religion were then productive of far fiercer feelings than they are in our own more humane age. The Protestant heresy, as it was termed by the Catholics, was also a novelty, the remote effects of which no man could foretell; it was mingled with political questions, and by some princes was supposed to forebode a general revolt against monarchical authority. We are not therefore to wonder that great cruelties were committed, either by the Catholics in seeking to support the church of Rome, or by the Protestants in endeavoring to insure themselves against a renewal of severities inflicted by the opposite party. Nor is it necessary, in the present age, that the adherents of either faith should retain any feeling of displeasure against the other, on account of barbarities which took their rise in the ignorance and rudeness of a former period, and of which the enlightened of both parties have long since disapproved.

In the Netherlands, which formed part of the dominions of Philip II of Spain, the reformed faith had made considerable advances. Philip, like other Catholic princes, entertained the idea that this new creed, besides being condemnable as a heresy and an offense against the Deity, tended to make men independent of their rulers. Finding the people obstinate in their professions, he commenced a war with the Netherlanders, for the purpose of enforcing his authority over their consciences. This war lasted about twenty years; for the Netherlanders, though a nation of no great strength, fought like desperate men, and endured the most dreadful hardships rather than submit. The chief leader in this war of liberty was William, Prince of Orange, one of the purest and most courageous patriots that ever breathed. Elizabeth could not help wishing well to the Netherlanders, though for a long time her dread of Spain, then one of the greatest powers in Europe, prevented her from openly assisting them. At the same time, about two millions of the people of France were Protestants, or, as they were then called, Huguenots, who acted also for the general Protestant cause with as much energy as the great strength of the French government would permit. Elizabeth at length, in 1578, extended an open protection to the Netherlanders, excusing herself to Philip by stating her fear that they would otherwise throw themselves into the arms of France. The northern provinces were thus enabled to assert their independence, and to constitute the country which has since been called Holland.