History of England

“ In every inch of England you can find the history of England. You find it very typically here. The growth of that leisured class which we still enjoy—the class that in the seventeenth century destroyed the central government of the Crown, penetrated and refreshed the universities, acquired for its use and reformed the endowed primary education of the English, and began a thorough occupation of our public land—the growth of that leisured class is nowhere more clearly to be seen than in the history of the Fens, since the Fens had their faith removed from them. ”

“ Certainly there is nothing like England, and there never has been anything like England in the world. Her wonderful history, her wonderful literature, the beauty of her architecture, the historic and poetic associations which cluster about every street and river and mountain and valley, her vigorous life, the sweetness and beauty of her women, the superb manhood of her men, her navy, her gracious hospitality, her courage and her lofty pride—although some single race of people may have excelled here in a single particular—make up a combination never equalled in the world. ”

“ As its title imports, this History will primarily deal with politics, with the History of England and, after the date of the union with Scotland, Great Britain, as a state or body politic; but as the life of a nation is complex, and its condition at any given time cannot be understood without taking into account the various forces acting upon it, notices of religious matters and of intellectual, social, and economic progress will also find place in these volumes. ”

“ The History of England, or, as the children call it, History, ignoring the fact that there is any other history than that of England, has hitherto been presented to young people as "outlines of dates and facts, or as collections of romantic stories, with little coherence and less result on the fortunes of the country." ”

“ England, as early as the eighteenth century, was already a land of citizens. At a time when there was to be found on the Continent acute mockery of what was old and outworn, conjoined with the most enthusiastic and joyous faith in the future, the great and wealthy England had established herself in the van of the new age. ”

“ When the intelligence reached England, that the nation whose tongue was classic, whose statuary was regarded with despairing wonder, whose records formed one of the finest pages of history, was, after centuries of subjugation, striving to obtain freedom, a genuine enthusiasm pervaded English society. ”

“ When, in the eighth and ninth centuries, we begin to see a little into the darkness, we find that England has become a purely English country, with a purely English and rather absurd system of law, and a purely English language ”

“ How admirable are the care, the energy, and the perseverance with which Nature works, through centuries, at the formation of the nations which she has destined to civilise certain territories! We have here an example with which it is impossible not to be struck. In the designs of God, in the progress of the human race, it is written that England shall play a great part in the development of Western civilisation. For this purpose a people must be formed—I was going to say, must be wrought—whose powerful constitution shall be capable of fulfilling the great task. ”

“ Change began with the Creation, and ages of momentous development are shrouded from our eyes. The land and the people are the two foundations of English history; but before history began, the land had received the insular configuration which has largely determined its fortune; and the various peoples, who were to mould and be moulded by the land, had differentiated from the other races of the world. Several of these peoples had occupied the land before its conquest by the Anglo-Saxons, some before it was even Britain. ”

“ There was not any country in the universe in which so much happiness, so much prosperity, and so much comfort, were diffused amongst all the various classes of society; none in which so many and such large properties, both public and private, were to be found as in England. ”

“ Looking at England, however, as England was, the young King saw 'all things out of order.' 'Farming gentlemen and clerking knights,' neglecting their duties as overseers of the people, 'were exercising the gain of living.' 'They would have their twenty miles square of their own land or of their own farms.' Artificers and clothiers no longer worked honestly ”

“ But it is especially in the matter of the Middle Ages that the popular histories trample upon the popular traditions. In this respect there is an almost comic contrast between the general information provided about England in the last two or three centuries, in which its present industrial system was being built up, and the general information given about the preceding centuries, which we call broadly mediæval. ”

“ Turning, then, to the tenure of land—for if we would understand the condition of the people, it is to this point that our first attention must be directed we find that through the many complicated varieties of it there was one broad principle which bore equally upon every class, that the land of England must provide for the defence of England. ”

“ T is not without some feeling of humiliation and regret that the historian finds England so badly off for a sovereign as to be obliged to borrow one from abroad, and her throne in the seventeenth century, like her stage of the nineteenth, to be indebted for its support to foreign adaptations. ”

“ Those who most strongly felt its influence speedily formed themselves into societies, by whose means, in conjunction it seems pretty certain with assistance from the French themselves, writings and pamphlets, pointing out every flaw in the condition of England, and often using language which was certainly seditious, were spread broadcast among the people, and even among the soldiers. ”

“ In England the period begins with wars, unrest, and almost chaos; it concludes with a settled dynasty, a reformed religion, and a people united and progressive. Abroad, as well as in England, there is apparent the broad intellectual flood known as the Renaissance, running deep and strong: the renewed desire for knowledge, changes in religious ideals, the discovery of new worlds, both geographical and literary, and the enormous quickening of heart and mind. In England the scene is being prepared for the great age to follow. ”

“ But with the transition from medieval to modern history, the conditions were altered in England's favour. The geographical expansion of Europe made the outposts of the Old World the entrepôts for the New; the development of navigation and sea-power changed the ocean from the limit into the link of empires; and the growth of industry and commerce revolutionized the social and financial foundations of power. ”

“ The rest of the country was almost independent of England, being in the hands of no less than ninety chieftains—thirty of English origin, and the rest native—who exercised a wild and lawless kind of sway, and made war on each other at will. ”

“ It seemed, however, that England, after its numerous wars of succession, which had formed a long succession of wars, was resolved upon putting up with anything for peace and quietness—a contented disposition of which we have long experienced the blessings, inasmuch as it has given us a family of sovereigns under whose constitutional sway the country has enjoyed an unexampled degree of prosperity and happiness. ”

“ When at length the influence of the Revolution became irresistible, England was in a position abroad to take a leading part in the European opposition to its principles, and at home social changes had occurred which rendered such a course of policy inevitable. ”

“ We believe that our firm stand by the truths of the Bible, and the spirit of liberty and law which is their direct result, is the reason why the Almighty has seen fit to place us at the head of nations, and to give to the language, the institutions, the dominion, and the glory of England a pre-eminence and an expanse such as no nation ever before enjoyed ”

“ In reviewing the constitutional progress during the period wa have passed through in the late reigns, we cannot do better than commence with an inquiry into the origin and composition of the English people, which, according to our French neighbour, has grown to such greatness, and to the exercise of so transcendent an influence on human destiny. ”

“ We take up for instance, the history of our own country, and then, when we have spent months in mastering the mere outline of those great events which, in the slow course of revolving centuries, have made England what she is, her earlier ages seem so far removed from our own times that they appear to belong to a hoary and most remote antiquity. ”

“ England, it must be remembered, had become, thanks to the long series of dynastic and colonial wars that filled the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the chief commercial nation of the world: she had a larger number of citizens who made their living as ship-owners, sailors, and traders than any other country in the world. ”

“ The towns of England were of natural and accidental growth, accumulations of men who had gathered for purposes of self-defence or convenience, living in accordance with the ordinary habits of the country, in the same position, in fact, with regard to the king and their lords as any other society of men—citizens originally by right of the possession of land, and as the system of lordship established itself, bound to customary duties to their lord, just as the inhabitants of the country were. ”

“ Taking England as a whole, we may say that the southeastern half, that is, what was then the richest part of England, with London and most of the other large towns, was against the King, and that the southwestern half, with most of the North, was for him. (See map opposite.) Each side made great sacrifices in carrying on the war. The Queen sold her crown jewels, and the Cavaliers melted down their silver plate to provide money to pay the King's troops. ”

“ The great Frenchmen of the eighteenth century being stimulated by the example of England into a love of progress, naturally came into collision with the governing classes, among whom the old stationary spirit still prevailed. ”

“ The strength of England is in part due to its wonderful mixture of peoples— Britons, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Northmen, to mention only the more important earlier peoples which have been welded together to form the English people. ”

“ When we talk of the England and other countries of Europe of former ages, we are scarcely aware of what extremely different countries they were, both in regard to the cultivation of their lands, the arts, aspects, and habits of their cities, their general knowledge, their polish of speech, and their amount of population. ”

“ Otherwise the reign is a mere interlude, and it is with the succeeding one that we find the new national tendency yet further developed. The great French wars, in which England won so much glory, were opened by Edward III., and grew more and more nationalist. ”

“ On the lower or southeast side of the line there will be a comparatively level surface of rich agricultural land, and most of the fine old cathedral cities with their historic associations; in a world, the England of the past as contrasted with modern and democratic England, that part which has grown up since the introduction of steam. ”

“ That the political institutions of England were, at this early period, regarded by the English with pride and affection, and by the most enlightened men of neighbouring nations with admiration and envy, is proved by the clearest evidence. ”

“ In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a German chieftain had become a Roman Emperor. Now in the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognised as King of England.
Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining? ”

“ To us, we will own, nothing is so interesting and delightful as to contemplate the steps by which the England of Domesday Book, the England of the Curfew and the Forest Laws, the England of crusaders, monks, schoolmen, astrologers, seifs, outlaws, became the England which we know and love, the classic ground of liberty and philosophy, the school of all knowledge, the mart of all trade. ”

“ I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history, if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors. ”

“ If, not contenting ourselves with so general a verdict, we look more closely at the European view of England as expressed in its literature, it seems that we have been generally adjudged unreliable, proud, selfish, and quarrelsome. ”

“ To the contemplative stranger who permits himself not only to talk sentimental nonsense, but to think it, it seems as if, somehow, all England had been gathered up into such a place—-as if nothing less than her glorious past, her wealth, her power, her honour, her uninvaded centuries, had been needed to produce it. ”