Lady Maria Callcott

“ James taught him that no power on earth had any right to find fault with the king, that the king’s power was given to him by God, and that it was a great sin to say that anything the king did was wrong. Thus he taught him to think that the people were made for nothing but to obey kings, and to labour and get money for kings to spend as they pleased, and that even the nobles were nothing but servants for kings ”

“ When King Edward came home to England, he determined to do everything he could to make the people happy: he knew they could not be happy if the laws were not obeyed; so he was determined that no wicked person should escape without punishment, and that all good people might live quietly, and do what they liked best.
I told you before that wise Simon de Montfort, who was killed in Henry the Third’s reign, had got the king to observe the custom of not taking money from the people without the consent of the parliament or of the people themselves. ”

“ It is well for England that the Danish king was good and wise. His name was Canute. When he saw how unhappy the people of England were, and how ill the Danes treated them, he was very sorry, and made laws to prevent the Danes from doing any more mischief in England, and to help the English to make themselves comfortable again. And because some of King Alfred’s good laws had been forgotten, while the wars were going on, he inquired of the old judges and the wise men how he could establish those laws again, and he made the people use them. ”

“ Two kings who had come to help the King of France, one of the king’s brothers, and more French barons, gentlemen, and common soldiers than I can tell you, were killed. But very few English indeed were slain. When the King of England met his son at night, after the great battle of Crecy was won, he took him in his arms and cried, “My brave son! Go on as you have begun! You are indeed my son, for you have behaved bravely to-day! You have shown that you are worthy to be a king.” ”

“ But I must tell you a great deal more about Lady Jane Grey, and I will begin her story at the time when she was very young indeed.
As she was only a few months older than her cousin Edward the Sixth, she had the same teachers in everything, and she was like him in gentleness, goodness, and kindness. Her masters found that she was still cleverer than the little king, and that she learned Latin and Greek too more readily than he did. She knew French, and Spanish, and Italian perfectly, and loved music and painting. ”

“ None of our kings was ever more wise, or clever, or brave, or fonder of doing justice; and even now nobody in England ever thinks of Henry the Fifth without loving him.
In the very beginning of his reign there was a war with France. The poor King of France was mad. His queen was a very wicked woman, and his son very young. All the noblemen were quarrelling with one another, and the whole together with the King of England.
So Henry made ready his army, and sailed over to France, and, after having taken a town called Harfleur, met a very large French army at a place called Agincourt. ”

“ We are come now to the end of Queen Elizabeth’s long and famous reign. She died when she had been queen forty-five years, and was very unhappy at her death. Her favourite Lord Essex behaved so ill after he came from Ireland, that the queen’s counsellors ordered him to be put to death. Now, the queen had once given him a ring, when he was her greatest favourite, and told him, that if he would send it to her whenever he was in danger, she would save his life and forgive any of his faults. ”

“ Roman Catholics were ill-treated by James, and most of the Irish were Roman Catholics.
When James died, all the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland were discontented. Poor Ireland was even worse off than ever. Scotland had been neglected, and the people affronted about their religion; and, in England, James had taken money unlawfully, and behaved so ill, both to parliament and people, that everybody disliked him as a king, and he was so silly in his private behaviour, that everybody laughed at him as a gentleman. ”

“ The nobles of England are useful to the country. As they are rich enough to live without working for themselves and their families, they have time to be always ready when the king wants advice; or when there is a parliament to make laws; or when the king wishes to send messages to other kings. And as their forefathers were made noble because of their goodness, wisdom, or bravery, they have in general followed their example; and they have always, next after the king, been the people we have loved best, and who have done us the most good. ”

“ So by the time the French and English met again in battle, the French had recovered their spirits. And when the king, and the nobles, and the people saw that young woman go in front of the army, and into every dangerous place, and fight better than any of the bravest soldiers, they would have been ashamed not to follow her; so that her bravery and her good advice did really begin to save her country. ”

“ Indeed, he and the young Prince of Wales, who was called Henry of Monmouth, were the two bravest young men in England. The king’s army met the army that Percy and Owen Glendower had raised against him near Shrewsbury, and then everybody thought a great deal about the two young Harrys, who were both so brave and handsome. The battle was fought, and the king gained the victory. Henry of Monmouth behaved as bravely as the Black Prince used to do, and he was not hurt in the battle. Harry Hotspur was equally brave, but he was killed. Oh! civil war is a sad thing. ”

“ Elizabeth, when she found how very ill Ireland was governed, wished to make it a little more like England, and to try to bring the people to live in peace. She sent a wise Governor there, called Sir Henry Sydney, and then another called Arthur Lord Grey de Wilton; but all that these good men could do was to keep the new English a little in order, and to try to do justice to the other people. By the queen’s orders they set up schools, and a college in Dublin, in hopes that the young Irishmen would learn to become more like the men of other countries. ”

“ A king’s duty is to govern his people well; he must not only see that good laws are made, but he must also take care that everybody obeys them.
A bishop’s duty is to pray and preach, and see that all the clergymen who are under him do their duty, and instruct the people properly.
A soldier’s duty is to fight the enemies of his country in war, and to obey the king, and to live quietly in peace. A judge’s duty is to tell what the law is, to order the punishment of bad people, and to prevent wickedness. A physician’s duty is to cure sick people ”

“ Besides, William was a very brave prince, and had defended his own country against that grasping man, Louis the Fourteenth, King of France, who called himself Great because his army had won a great many battles and killed thousands of people.
William and Mary agreed to govern always by means of the parliament; to do equal justice to all their subjects; to listen to their complaints; and never to let the Pope have anything to do with the government of England. ”

“ One of the very best things King Alfred did for England, was to build a great many ships. He wisely thought that the best means of keeping away the Danes, or any other enemy that could reach England by sea, was to have ships as good as theirs, and go and meet them on the water, and fight them there, instead of allowing them to land and do mischief, and carry away the goods, and sometimes even the children of the people on the sea-coast; so he built more than a hundred vessels, and he was the first king of England who had good ships of his own. ”

“ I do not think the English would have allowed Duke William to be king so easily, if he had not told them that Edward the Confessor had promised that he should be king, and persuaded them that the prince Edgar Atheling, who, as I told you, ought to have been king after Edward, was too silly ever to govern the kingdom well. ”

“ How the Yorkists beat Queen Margaret at Hexham; how the Queen and Prince escaped to Flanders; why the Earl of Warwick was called the King-maker; how Prince Edward was murdered by King Edward’s brothers; how King Henry and the Duke of Clarence were put to death. In those years, while there were two kings, nobody knew which king to obey. Few people minded the laws, and the armies of the Lancastrians and the Yorkists did a great deal of mischief in every part of the country. A great many battles were fought, and many thousands of Englishmen were killed. ”

“ In that time, a great many kings and princes, and barons, or, as they began to be commonly called, nobles, did many brave and generous deeds, and gained a great deal of honour for themselves, and glory for their country; but the poor people, both in England and France, suffered a great deal. The English parliament was so pleased that our kings should overcome the French, that they allowed the king to have such great taxes to pay the soldiers with, that the people could hardly keep enough to live upon. ”

“ Now King William knew that kings are only to be better loved and obeyed than other men when they obey God themselves, and love mercy, and do right and justice to their subjects; and that men and countries have a right to be free, and to worship God as they please: and it was because King William knew this that the English chose him to be king when they sent away James the Second, because he wished to be like Louis the Fourteenth in most things. ”

“ So now, when there was no king in England to protect these poor Jews, they fell upon them, and robbed them of their money and goods, which they pretended they meant to send to Richard. But most of the money was kept by Prince John and some of the worst of the barons, who had stayed at home; and they encouraged the people to treat the Jews very cruelly, besides robbing them, and they killed a great many. I am sure that, when you are old enough to read of the bad treatment of the Jews at York, you will be ashamed to think such cruel things could have been done in England. ”

“ King Henry loved hunting very well, but he was too wise to hunt much. He spent most of his time in going about to see what wanted mending after the sad civil war we read of in the last chapter; and he employed the cleverest men he could find to put everything in order, and made the wisest men judges; and he got some learned men to seek out all the best laws that had ever been made in England; and, as the long wars had made the people forget the laws, he ordered the judges to go to all the towns by turns several times a year, and do justice among all the English. ”

“ And in the Bible you read that the names of those men who do rightly shall be remembered. Now when a man has been made a noble, and his name is remembered because he is good, or manly, or clever, or brave, or wise, his sons will say to themselves, “Our dear father has been made a noble, because he was good or brave; we must be good or brave, or useful too, that people may see that he taught us well, and that we know how to love and honour him, by following his good example.” ”

“ This was near the end of the war. The English, Dutch, and French were equally glad to make peace.
The plague now broke out, first in Holland, then in England. Hundreds of people died every day, and it seemed shocking to be killing more men when so many were dying of that dreadful disorder.
Often when people did not know they had the plague they dropped down dead in the streets. Sometimes a friend would be talking to another and seem quite well and merry, and in a minute he would feel sick, and die before he could get home. ”

“ If strangers come to fight, and all the people of a country join to drive them away, the mischief they may have done is soon repaired; and the people of a country love one another the better because they have been defending one another.
But in a civil war, when people in the same country fight, it is not so. The very next door neighbours may take different sides, and then the mischief they may do one another will be always remembered, and they will dislike one another even after peace is made. ”

“ You have read that whenever there was any dispute about who should be king, there was always a war of some kind, and generally the worst of all, a civil war. Now, if the people had to choose who should be their new king every time an old one dies, so many men would wish to be king, that there would be disputes, and then perhaps war; and while the war was going on there would be nobody to see that the laws were obeyed, and all the mischief would happen that comes in civil wars.
Now in England, it is settled that when a king dies his eldest son shall be king next ”

“ The Earl of Warwick, who had been made Duke of Northumberland, had a son named Lord Guildford Dudley, who married the king’s good and beautiful cousin, Lady Jane Grey. These young people were both Protestants, and Northumberland hoped that the people would like to have Lady Jane for their queen, in case the young king should die, better than the Roman Catholic Princess Mary; and then he thought that, as he was the father of Jane’s husband, he might rule the kingdom in her name, and get all the power for himself. ”

“ Taxes are the money which subjects pay to the king, or to those persons who govern his kingdom for him.
I must now tell you why taxes are paid. Every man likes to live safely in his own house; he likes to know that he and his wife, and his children, may stay there without being disturbed, and that they may go to sleep safely, and not be afraid that wild beasts, or wicked men, or enemies like the old Danes, may come and kill them while they are asleep. ”

“ Now, in the time when King Richard lived, people thought a great deal more of kings who fought and conquered large kingdoms, than of those who tried to make their own people happy at home in a small kingdom. And so it was in England. People really began to forget all the good their late wise king, Henry Plantagenet, had done, and to like Richard Plantagenet better, because he told them he would go to war, and do great feats of arms at a great distance, and that he would not only make his own name famous, but that their dear England should be heard of all over the world ”

“ The Thames Tunnel was finished and opened; the Royal Exchange, which had been burnt down, was re-built, and opened by the Queen; the Great Exhibition, a vast house of glass half a mile long, was built at the suggestion of the Queen’s husband, the Prince Consort, and all the people of the world were invited to bring all the best things their countries could produce, and display them in it. The new Houses of Parliament, one of the grandest buildings in the world, have arisen; many new streets of splendid houses for the rich, and many new lodging-houses for working people have been made ”