Arthur William Holland

“ Property necessary for one’s livelihood must not be taken. The fines must only be imposed by the oath of honest men of the neighbourhood. In the same way earls and barons must only be fined by their peers, and a similar privilege is extended to the clergy, who, moreover, were not to be fined in accordance with the value of their benefices, but only of their other property. It should be noticed that trial by one’s peers, as understood in Magna Carta, is not confined to the nobility; in every class of society an accused man is punished in accordance with the verdict of his peers, or equals. ”

“ Mazarin, however, obtained a promise from the new emperor that he would not send assistance to Spain, then at war with France, and, by joining a confederation of German princes, called the league of the Rhine, France secured a certain influence in the internal affairs of Germany. Leopold’s long reign covers one of the most important periods of European history; for nearly the whole of its forty-seven years he was pitted against Louis XIV. of France, whose dominant personality completely overshadowed Leopold. The emperor was a man of peace and never led his troops in person ”

“ At his accession the greater part of his territory was occupied by strangers and devastated by war, and in European politics Brandenburg was merely an appendage of the empire. Its army was useless; its soil was poor; its revenue was insignificant. At his death the state of Brandenburg-Prussia was a power to be reckoned with in all European combinations. Inferior to Austria alone among the states of the Empire, it was regarded as the head of the German Protestantism; while the fact that one-third of its territory lay outside the Empire added to its importance. ”

“ Among the modern Jacobite, or legitimist, societies perhaps the most important is the “Order of the White Rose,” which has a branch in Canada and the United States. The order holds that sovereign authority is of divine sanction, and that the execution of Charles I. and the revolution of 1688 were national crimes; it exists to study the history of the Stuarts, to oppose all democratic tendencies, and in general to maintain the theory that kingship is independent of all parliamentary authority and popular approval. ”

“ The ‘natural’ magistracy of the nation, was it not almost trampled under foot, under despite and contempt, by men of Levelling principles? I beseech you, for the orders of men and ranks of men, did not that Levelling principle tend to the reducing of all to an equality? ”

“ Under the guidance of William III. a powerful league, the grand alliance, was formed against France; of this the emperor was a prominent member, and in 1703 he transferred his claim on the Spanish monarchy to his second son, the archduke Charles. The early course of the war was not favourable to the imperialists, but the tide of defeat had been rolled back by the great victory of Blenheim before Leopold died on the 5th of May 1705.
In governing his own lands Leopold found his chief difficulties in Hungary, where unrest was caused partly by his desire to crush Protestantism. ”

“ They get neither political nor civil rights under Magna Carta. The traders, too, get little, while preferential treatment is meted out to the clergy and the barons. Its benefits are confined to freemen, and of the benefits the lion’s share fell to the larger landholders; the smaller landholders getting, it is true, some crumbs from the table. It did not establish freedom from arbitrary arrest, or the right of the representatives of the people to control taxation, or trial by jury, or other conceptions of a later generation. ”

“ The most important facts in the internal history of Brandenburg during the 16th century were the increase in the power of the estates, owing chiefly to the continuous pecuniary needs of the electors; the gradual decline in the political importance of the towns, due mainly to intestine feuds; and the lapse of the peasantry into servitude. These events gave a preponderance of power to the nobles, but concurrently a number of circumstances were silently preparing the way for a great increase of authority on the part of the ruler. The substitution of the elector for the pope as head of the church ”

“ The diet of Cologne discussed the question of reform in a halting fashion, but afforded the king supplies for an expedition into Hungary, to aid his ally Ladislaus, and to uphold his own influence in the East. Having established his daughter Margaret as regent for Charles in the Netherlands, Maximilian met the diet at Constance in 1507, when the imperial chamber (Reichskammergericht) was revised and took a more permanent form, and help was granted for an expedition to Italy. The king set out for Rome to secure his coronation, but Venice refused to let him pass through her territories ”

“ In February 1440 Frederick of Styria was chosen German king in succession to his kinsman Albert. He was a weak and incompetent ruler, but a stronger and abler man might have shrunk from the task of administering his heterogeneous and unruly realm. Although very important in the history of the house of Habsburg, Frederick’s long reign was a period of misfortune, and the motto which he assumed, A.E.I.O.U. (Austriae est imperare orbi universo) , seemed at the time a particularly foolish boast. ”

“ In dealing with this matter the Articles of the Barons had declared that aids and tallages must not be taken from the citizens of London and of other places without the consent of the council. This provision was omitted from Magna Carta, except so far as it related to aids from the citizens of London. This chapter does not give the people the right to control taxation. It gives to the men interested a certain control over one form of taxation, and protects one class only from arbitrary exactions, and that class the most powerful and the most wealthy. ”

“ In 1500 the diet had divided Germany into six circles, for the maintenance of peace, to which the emperor at the diet of Cologne in 1512 added four others. Having made an alliance with Christian II., king of Denmark, and interfered to protect the Teutonic Order against Sigismund I., king of Poland, Maximilian was again in Italy early in 1516 fighting the French who had overrun Milan. His want of success compelled him on the 4th of December 1516 to sign the treaty of Brussels, which left Milan in the hands of the French king, while Verona was soon afterwards transferred to Venice. ”

“ A weak king surrounded by turbulent nobles was incapable of discharging the duties of government, and only the strong man armed could hope to keep his goods in peace. A lawyer like his father, Paston spent much time in London, leaving his wife to look after his business in Norfolk; and many of the Letters were written by Margaret to her husband, detailing the progress of affairs in the county. It is during the lifetimes of John Paston and his eldest son that the Letters are most numerous and valuable, not only for family matters, but also for the history of England. ”

“ His government was costly, and to meet its many expenses he was obliged to lay heavy taxes upon the people. He offended the pope by his arrogance and pride, and both pope and emperor by his proposal to set up a new Roman empire, the sovereignty of which would rest directly upon the will of the people. In October Clement gave power to a legate to depose him and bring him to trial, and the end was obviously in sight. Taking heart, the exiled barons gathered together some troops, and war began in the neighbourhood of Rome. ”

“ THEGN, or Thane, an Anglo-Saxon word meaning an attendant, servant, retainer or official, and cognate with Gr. τέκνον, a child. From the first, however, it had a military significance, and its usual Latin translation was miles, although minister was often used. J. Bosworth (Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, new ed. by T. N. Toller) describes a thegn as “one engaged in a king’s or a queen’s service, whether in the household or in the country,” and adds, “the word in this case seems gradually to acquire a technical meaning, and to become a term denoting a class, containing, however, several degrees.” ”

“ Of more immediate consequence was an arrangement made in 1569 with the representatives of Joachim’s kinsman, Albert Frederick, duke of Prussia, after which the elector obtained the joint investiture of the duchy of Prussia from Sigismund II., king of Poland, and was assured of the succession if the duke’s family became extinct. Joachim’s luxurious habits, his partiality for adventurers, and his delight in building, led him to incur such a heavy expenditure that after pledging many of his lands and rights he was compelled in 1540 to appeal for help to the estates. ”

“ Meanwhile the free towns had been winning valuable privileges in addition to those which they already possessed, and the wealthier among them, like Lübeck and Augsburg, were practically imperia in imperio, waging war and making peace, and ruling their people without any outside interference. But they had also learned that union is strength. ”

“ In Germany the enactments of 1220 and 1231 contributed to the disintegration of the Empire and the fall of the Hohenstaufen, while conflicting interests made the government of Italy a problem of exceptional difficulty. In Sicily Frederick was more successful. He quelled disorder, and under his rule the island was prosperous and contented. His ideas of government were those of an absolute monarch, and he probably wished to surround himself with some of the pomp which had encircled the older emperors of Rome. His chief claim to fame, perhaps, is as a lawgiver. ”

“ Since the development of the constitution has been consistently in a democratic direction and the Slavs are in a great majority, the tendency has been for the German element—strong in its social status and tradition of predominance—to be swamped by what it regards as an inferior race; and a considerable number of Austrian “Germans” have learned to look not to their Habsburg rulers, but to the power of the German empire for political salvation. The tendency eastwards of the monarchy was increased when in 1878 the congress of Berlin placed Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austrian rule. ”

“ In England in August and September 1710, the Tories, the party of peace, succeeded the Whigs, the party of war and the inheritors of the tradition of William III., in the conduct of affairs. In the Empire in April 1711, the archduke Charles, Philip's rival for the throne of Spain, succeeded his brother Joseph I. as ruler of Austria and became prospective emperor, and England and the United Provinces, having waged a long and costly war to prevent the union of the crowns of France and Spain, were equally averse from seeing Spain and Austria under the same ruler. ”

“ A treaty was concluded with the Romans, who agreed that the quarrel between king and pope should be decided by a synod, and secretly bound themselves to induce Gregory to crown Henry as emperor, or to choose another pope. Gregory, however, shut up in the castle of St Angelo, would hear of no compromise; the synod was a failure, as Henry prevented the attendance of many of the pope’s supporters; and the king, in pursuance of his treaty with Alexius, marched against the Normans. The Romans soon fell away from their allegiance to the pope ”

“ In the middle ages many other places won the coveted position of a Reichsstadt. Some gained it by gift and others by purchase; some won it by force of arms, others usurped it during times of anarchy, while a number secured it through the extinction of dominant families, like the Hohenstaufen. There were many more free towns in southern than in northern Germany, but their number was continually fluctuating, for their liberties were lost much more quickly than they were gained. ”

“ Although united on free trade and in general on questions of domestic reform, a cabinet which contained Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, in addition to Aberdeen, was certain to differ on questions of foreign policy. The strong and masterful character of these and other colleagues made the task of the prime minister one of unusual difficulty, a fact which was recognized by contemporaries. ”

“ In 855 the emperor Lothair died, and was succeeded in Italy by his eldest son Louis II., and in the northern part of his kingdom by his second son, Lothair. The comparative weakness of these kingdoms, together with the disorder caused by the matrimonial troubles of Lothair, afforded a suitable opening for the intrigues of Louis and Charles the Bald, whose interest was increased by the fact that both their nephews were without male issue. Louis supported Lothair in his efforts to divorce his wife Teutberga, for which he received a promise of Alsace, while Charles opposed the divorce. ”

“ The Brandenburg troops then assisted the Swedes until after the death of Gustavus in 1632, and the Swedish defeat at Nördlingen in 1634, when the elector assented to the treaty of Prague, which was made in May 1635 between the emperor Ferdinand II. and John George I., elector of Saxony. The imperialists did nothing, however, to drive the Swedes from Brandenburg, and the unfortunate land was entirely at the mercy of the enemy. This was the principal reason why the elector was unable to annex Pomerania when its last duke, Bogislaus XIV., died in 1637. ”

“ No historical incident has more profoundly impressed the imagination of the Western world. It marked the highest point reached by papal authority, and presents a vivid picture of the awe inspired during the middle ages by the supernatural powers supposed to be wielded by the church.
Scorned by his Lombard allies, Henry left Italy to find that in his absence Rudolph, duke of Swabia, had been chosen German king; and although Gregory had taken no part in this election, Henry sought to prevent the pope’s journey to Germany, and regaining courage, tried to recover his former position. ”

“ Frederick the Great, talking less but acting more, invaded and conquered Silesia, and it seemed likely that the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy would at no long interval follow the extinction of the Habsburg race. A Wittelsbach prince, Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria, the emperor Charles VII., and not Francis Stephen, was chosen emperor in January 1742, and by the treaty of Breslau, made later in the same year, nearly all Silesia was formally surrendered to Prussia. ”