John Cassell

“ Taking these facts as they stand, without reference to persons, parties, or countries, we must say that in no portion of the world's history, in no age however dark and degraded, do we find deeds more stamped with infamy. Here is a king who sets all laws of heaven or earth, of justice and honour, all sentiments of decorum, affection, and humanity, at defiance; who binds and unbinds, contracts the most sacred unions and breaks them; who plays with lives and souls, with all their rights and feelings, as he would with bowls. ”

“ Though he hurled his fiercest terms against those who claimed a universal liberty which he intended only for himself, he had broken the mighty spell of ages—a power and a mystery before which the world had bowed in impotent awe; and no chains which he could forge, no creed which he could set up, no hierarchy which he could frame, could possess more than the strength of the fire-scorched flax against the will of the enfranchised people. ”

“ The contempt of the aristocracy, compelling them to sit apart, was the deciding cause of their becoming a distinct house—the House of the Commons; and this House of Commons has risen, in about four centuries and a half—though still too neglectful of its great powers—to the noblest position of any senate which the world ever saw, its words listened to by the proudest kings as most potent for peace or war, and felt in every region of the earth as the hope of the enslaved, the terror of the despot, the central citadel of civilisation and freedom. ”

“ Like the horse which pushes against the knife held to its breast, or the bull-dog which plucked the kettle from the fire because it spurted a boiling drop upon him, and died in a deadly scalding struggle with it, the courage of Charles rose doggedly, unchangeably, against all opposition and auguries, and would have been admirable had it not been exerted to annihilate the liberties of the nation for ever, to triumph over Magna Charta. ”

“ I know that I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart of a king, and a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma, or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm: to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms—I myself will be your general—the judge and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. ”

“ Close on the skirts of the romantic and inspiriting transactions of the American War of Independence rises the sombre and sublime story of the French Revolution,—the most peculiar and awfully interesting of all human events. From the midst of this tragic condition rolls forth, like a torrent of burning lava from a blazing volcano, the great European War, convulsing all nations, overturning nearly all thrones, devastating almost the whole surface of Europe, and presenting to our astonished gaze the lurid career of the most surprising conqueror in the world's history. ”

“ The nobles, who had shown such utter and contemptible imbecility, who had shrunk before the strong men of the people into a most pitiable and abject spectacle, and had been voted as useless, and extinguished as a body, once more reappeared in their pride, as if they had saved the throne instead of falling headlong with it; bishops, swearing and drinking cavaliers, hosts of greedy adventurers eager to fix themselves like leeches on the fat sides of the nation, pimps, panders, and courtesans in shoals rushed on and filled the palace and all the houses around it. ”

“ A people any purer and more humane could not, in truth, have existed amid the daily spectacles which surrounded them: the heads of traitors stuck on gate and bridge, the bloody execution of queens and nobles, the crowds of wretches Jangling from a thousand gibbets, the flaming stake, the branding-iron, the scourge, and the stocks, were the most familiar objects to a people who required a Shakespeare to interlard his finest tragedies with harlequins and fools. ”

“ This was the last great operation of the reign of Henry IV. By a singular combination of tact, cool calculation, vigilant watchings of every movement around him, and a purpose which was delayed through no conscientious scruples, nor weakened by a single tender feeling, he had put down all his foes. He was at peace at home and abroad. Not a man was left alive who dared to tell him that he was a usurper, except the undaunted Glendower, who was too far off amid his mountains to be heard. He was the most sagacious and successful monarch in Europe, and perhaps its most miserable man. ”

“ The judges, who, like every one else under this monster of a king, had lost all sense of honour and justice in the fears for their own safety, replied that it was a nice question, and one that no inferior tribunal could entertain, but that Parliament was supreme, and that an attainder by Parliament would be good in law! Such a bill was accordingly passed through the servile Parliament, condemning the whole to death without any form of trial whatever. To such a pass was England come—its whole constitution, its Magna Charta, its very right and privilege, thrown down before this cruel despot. ”

“ From the date of the battle of Worcester the career of Cromwell was decided; he felt that he must embrace the republic in his own person. Friends and foes saw and felt that ultimatum. His enemies had long declared that he was in all but name "a king;" and both civil and military authorities addressed him in terms all but royal. By universal consent he stood before the nation the ruling spirit of the time. From the army, from the parliament, and from the people he was appealed to in language of the profoundest deference and flattery. ”

“ The genius of Jonson is most conspicuous in his masques and court pageants, which were the delight of James's queen, Anne of Denmark, and the whole court. In them the spirits of the woods seem to mingle with those of courts and cities; and fancy and a hue of romance give to royal festivities the impressions of Arcadian life. But the living poetry of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," or of "Comus," are yet wanting to touch them with perfection. ”

“ She was the very apple of discord which the most calculating enemy would have thrown into the centre of the teeming mass of resentments, wounded conscience, crushed hopes, and political abasement. Elizabeth had fixed her there herself by her perfidious and relentless detention, and she now reaped the punishment in perpetual plots and alarms of treason amid her very Court. All the disaffected looked still to the Duke of Norfolk as worthy, by his rank—being nearly connected in blood with the crown—by his sufferings and affection for the Queen of Scots, to be their head. ”

“ To the remotest shores it carries knowledge, commerce, the arts of life, the hope of heaven; and, though not without stain, it has seldom failed to oppose force to wrong, and to uphold the cause of justice. Blow high, blow low, it passes on its way unscathed; and storm of wind or rage of man beats vainly against the flag which, with its kindred banner of America, bears within its folds the future of the world. ”

“ We might have expected that the return to established tranquillity under restored monarchy would have caused a now spring of genius. But monarchy came back drenched and dripping with the foetid stews of the continent; and the vile spirit and loathsome sensuality of the court rapidly infected the regions of literature. In no reign in this country, and in no country except France, have debauchery and the most hideous grossness so defiled the productions of poetry and the drama. ”

“ Is it possible to conceive a people more thoroughly enslaved—tied up hand, foot, tongue, and pen, for the press at the same time was under the strictest censorship? Is it possible to depict or imagine a monarch more absolutely master of all the laws and liberties of a nation than this same Charles, whom Mr. Hallam declares to have been so tender of the national freedom, so moderate in the exercise of the prerogative? But what is more astonishing is to find "Knight's Pictorial History "—a history generally so impartial and judicious—echoing and extending this most palpable fallacy. ”

“ It must be given to England, as the portion of its eternal fame, to avenge the scorn and sufferings of the fallen hosts of patriots; to assert the rights, not of cities, but of nations; not of nations, but of mankind. Royalty had long enough lorded it over patriotism—patriotism should now rule, arraign, and condemn royalty. The people of England had erected its tribunal in the face of Heaven and of all nations, formally to impeach, try, condemn, and punish absolutism in the person of one of its most earnest and most determined champions. ”

“ With us the name of Dane has come down as a fierce and sanguinary savage—the scourge of our ancestors; to the French the English of these ages must stand in their history in the same characters of savagery and wanton cruelty. As we have said, nothing could be so insane as this wholesale carnage and ruin inflicted on the French and Scotch if conquest were the object. But the ideas so plain and prominent to us do not seem to have entered the conception of men of those times, that to win a land you must win the people, and to win a people you must conciliate them ”

“ Bacon had managed to make his way from an obscure position to the highest honours of the state. He was not only lord chancellor of the kingdom, and a baron, but of late was become lord viscount St. Albans. Besides this elevation, he possessed a far higher one in the fame of his philosophical works; and had he possessed as much real greatness of mind as talent, might have stood in the admiration of posterity as Milton does—poor, but glorious beyond the tinsel glory of courts; and it might have been said of him as of the great poet—
His soul was like a star and dwelt apart. ”

“ Was over a man on earth a bearer of such sorrow as I shall be, when I shall report that my good and gracious queen and mistress was beheaded in England?" This was all that his emotion would allow him to utter, and Mary said, "Good Melville, cease to lament. Thou hast cause to joy rather than mourn, for thou shalt see the end of Mary Stuart's troubles. Know that this world is but vanity, subject to more sorrow than an ocean of tears can bewail. But I pray thee report that I die a true woman to my religion, to Scotland, and to France. ”

“ No sooner was the body of Warwick, stripped of its armour and covered with wounds, discovered on the field, than his forces gave way, and fled amain. Thus fell the great king-maker, who so long had kept alive the spirit of contention, placing the crown first on one head and then on another. With him perished the power of his faction and the prosperity of his family. On the field with him lay all the great lords who fought on his side, except the Earl of Oxford and the Duke of Somerset, who escaped into Wales, and joined Jasper Tudor, the Earl of Pembroke, who was in arms for Henry. ”

“ The king is there, with jewelled crown and panoply of state, surrounded by all the splendour which the earth could give to minister to mortal pride, the man before whom his fellows are content to bow and offer service. Noble ladies are there, gentle and beautiful, but with a courage and strength uncommon to their sex, induced by a life of danger and adventure. We see them joining in the chase; eagerly looking on at the tournament, where their applause is the prize of the victor; defending the castle of their lord in his absence, or even following him to the wars. ”

“ And here is a primate of England, a man professedly aiming to reform the Church, to restore corrupted religion, to break the power of the Pope, to establish independence of spirit and opinion, who crouches before this monster, this incarnation of cruelty, lust, and libertinism, and seems to lick the very dust of dishonour and dishonesty from beneath his feet. There is not a more revolting spectacle than that of Henry at this period—there is not a more humiliating and melancholy one than that of Cranmer. ”

“ Tacitus has recorded the harangue of the leader of the Caledonians; it is bold, energetic, and worthy of the chief of a nation which—whatever its other defects—was, at least, impressed with an indomitable love of freedom and undoubted courage.
"We have no other resource but to conquer," said Galgacus; "and that is my principal hope; for battle, the glorious choice of brave men, is here the only safety for cowards. Behind us is the ocean and the Roman fleet; before us the Romans—brigands, devastators of the world, who, when they can no longer find land to ravage, search the seas. ”

“ The King of France looked on this densely armed position with despair, and after vainly challenging King Edward to come out and fight in the open field, he withdrew. The starving people of Calais, who, on seeing the approach of the vast royal host, had hung out their banners on the walls, lighted great bonfires, and sounded all their instruments of martial music for joy, now changed their joyous acclamations into shrieks and groans of despair. ”

“ On the other hand, the history of this country, as of all others, presents a corrective to that national pride and self-sufficiency which it may at first seem to engender. We, too, have come forth from the dark ages dyed with their superstitions and their crimes. We have lingered long indeed upon the threshold of this more exalted time. We can boast no great, unbroken unity of race, religion, and polity, as the Jew of other days might boast with justice. The Reformation found us as it found others, and did not find us first. ”

“ To make him more fitting for the companion of his son, James had raised him to the rank of duke since his departure. His extravagance, his amours, his haughty bearing, and unceremonious treatment of both his own prince and the grandees of Spain, astonished all Madrid. He introduced the very worst people, men and women, into the palace, and would sit with his hat on when the prince himself was uncovered. His behaviour in the presence of the king of Spain was just as irreverent, and the minister Olivarez was so incensed at his insolence that he detested him. ”

“ Once my dear uncle, his father, on whom the Lord have mercy, would have put him to death for his treason and villany. God of Paradise! I rode all night to save him, and his father delivered him to me to do with him as I pleased. How true is the saying, that we have no greater enemy than the man whom we have preserved from the gallows! Another time he drew his sword on me, in the chamber of the queen, on whom God have mercy! He was also the accomplice of the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Arundel; he consented to my murder, to that of his father, and of all my council. ”

“ For all the civilising and angelising influences of religion—resistance to slavery, oppression, war, priestcraft, world-worship, and mammon-worship—which are the divine and eternal essence of the Gospel, the philosophy and the theology of George Fox asserted the independence and universality, and these principles, now adopted into nearly all creeds, are silently but perceptibly at work to leaven the whole mass of society, and in the course of ages to throw down every tyranny, every cruelty, every abomination, on every side of the globe. ”

“ We have lived, my lords, happily to ourselves at home; we have lived gloriously abroad in the world; let us be content with what our fathers have left us; let not an ambition carry us to be more learned than they were in these killing and destructive acts. My lords, be pleased to give that regard to the peerage of England, as never to expose yourselves to such moot points, such constructive interpretations of law. If there must be a trial of wits, let the subject matter be of somewhat else than the lives and honours of peers. ”

“ To the people of the Continent it was a sight not every day to be had, to behold the King and Queen of England, and all its collected nobility in their highest grandeur; and foreign princes and princesses and nobility flocked thither from all parts, as they flock now-a-days to the coronation of a Russian emperor, and either were entertained by the proud and prodigal English king, or swelled the crush in the little town of Guisnes. ”

“ Then James condescended to lift the weight of fear from their hearts, for he meant to give the puritans a sound flagellation: the truth could no longer be disguised. He avowed to them that he was a sincere convert to the church of England, and thanked God who had brought him to the promised land, to a country where religion was purely professed, and where he sate among grave, reverend, and learned men; not as before, elsewhere, a king without state, without honour, and without order, and braved to his face by beardless boys under the garb of ministers. ”

“ Great actors and great thinkers come upon the sight, and for a moment nothing else is seen. How all these pressed on, or modified, or retarded the destiny of the nation is matter of difficult but most instructive research. How the various units of the great mass, which history can seek out, acted under the changing circumstances of the time, and moved under the diverse influences of events, of passion, and of principle, is matter pregnant with instruction to each of us. Nor is there instruction for the head alone. The whole of the complex nature of man is wrought upon. ”

“ We had thus a libidinous, utterly effeminate, and traitor king; a debauched court and aristocracy; a slavish parliament; a persecuting church; our arms used at home to destroy and enslave our countrymen; our fleets disgraced on the ocean—such was England under Charles II. of merry memory. Well did Rochester describe him in the impromptu epigram which he one day in sport wrote on his chamber-door, and at which, so far from resenting it, the king laughed, and said it was quite true:— Here lies our sovereign lord the king, ⁠Whose word no man relies on; Who never said a foolish thing-. ”

“ But Margaret allowed her enthusiasm in endeavouring to maintain the throne for her husband and her son, a noble ambition, to carry her into the most unfeminine cruelty, and into deeds of national mischief; to say nothing of conjugal failings attributed to her, which marred all her virtues, and still alienate from her the sympathy of posterity.
Still, so long as she could raise a man, there must be war to the death; and in Edward she had now to encounter an antagonist who would give blow for blow, shed blood for blood, without a moment's hesitation or a passing pang. ”

“ Had their ancient lords been disposed to compel them to renew their slavery, they were now too prodigiously decimated themselves to possess the power. Thousands of estates had lost their owners, many fell to the crown, and others passed over to their enemies. While one-half of the aristocracy had fallen, the power of the other half over their villeins must have been destroyed. That race of arrogant and turbulent barons and princes of the blood, which for a century or two back had overshadowed the throne, had shaken it by their ambition and their jealousies, was now entirely cut down. ”

“ Valentine's day, the marriage took place in Whitehall chapel. Both king and queen were present, the king in a splendid black suit, the queen in white satin. It was the first royal marriage celebrated according to the form of the book of common prayer, and the whole court was in a blaze of splendour. The king, queen, and prince appeared literally covered with the crown jewels; no one under a baron was permitted to it. Elizabeth wore a robe of silver tissue, with a coronet of gold on her head, and her hair flowing in rich luxuriance down her back as low as her knees. ”