Kings of England

“ It is quite possible that a succession of kings of England who made that realm and its interests the primary objects of their policy might have created from this beginning a permanent connexion growing constantly closer, and have saved these two nations, related in so many ways, the almost civil wars of later years. ”

“ Nor is it likely they will ever think, that Kingdom of brambles which some men seek [page 258] to erect (at once weak, sharp, and fruitlesse, either to God or man) is like to thrive till watered with the Royal bloud of those, whose right the Kingdom is.
Well, Gods will be done, I doubt not but my Innocencie will finde him both my Protector and my Advocate, who is my only Judg; whom I own as King of Kings, not onely for the eminency of his Power and Majestie above them; but also for that singular care and protection which he hath over them ”

“ And when our kings have the same warrant as they had, whether it be to sit upon the throne of their fathers, or to destroy the house of the preceding sovereign, they will then, and not before, possess the crown of England by a right like theirs, immediately derived from heaven. ”

“ 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 whatever kings might have been here or elsewhere a thousand years ago, or in whatever manner the ruling dynasties of England or France may have begun, the king of Great Britain is, at this day, king by a fixed rule of succession according to the laws of his country ”

“ Henry VII., the founder of the house of Tudor, sat on the throne, and was successful in suppressing the power of the feudal nobility, and in increasing the royal authority. Kings, in the (p. 031) fifteenth century, were the best protectors of the people, and aided them in their struggles against their feudal oppressors. England, however, had made but little advance in commerce or manufactures, and the people were still rude and ignorant. ”

“ Every generation takes about thirty-six years; every reign is, one with the other, about twenty. Thirty kings of England have swayed the sceptre from William the Conqueror to George I., the years of whose reigns added together amount to six hundred and forty-eight years; which, being divided equally among the thirty kings, give to every one a reign of twenty-one years and a half very near. Sixty-three kings of France have sat upon the throne ”

“ The power of a king of England is not to be compared with an ideal absoluteness, but with that which could be enjoyed in the actual state of society by the same person in a less bounded monarchy.
The descendants of William the Conqueror on the English throne, down to the end of the seventeenth century, have been a good deal above the average in those qualities which enable or at least induce, kings to take on themselves a large share of the public administration ”

“ The noblemen made King John do justice to the people, and give them the good laws written in the Great Charter. The noblemen prevented the foolish Kings Henry the Third and Richard the Second from doing a great deal of mischief, and they helped our good Kings Henry the Second, Edward the First, and Edward the Third to do all the good and useful things I have told you of. So you see that noblemen have been of great use in England. ”

“ Royalty has its dangers, and mankind has suffered much from kings and emperors, but the greatness of England during the last sixty years has chiefly been due to the mutual esteem and love of her people and their sovereign. The world will know henceforth one at least of the secret springs of England’s health and wealth and strength—namely, the true sympathy that for 288years has knitted ruler and ruled together. England has had great ministers and counsellors, but ask those ministers, who for years has been their truest and most trusted counsellor, and they will not hesitate in their answer. ”

“ Yes, the nobility of England is always more closely allied to the people than to their kings, as regards whom they have always maintained a strict independence, in which they differ entirely from the French aristocracy. ”

“ But whereas in the common historie of England, the succession of kings ought to be kept, so oft as it chanceth in the same that there is not anie to fill the place, then one while the Romane emperors are placed in their steads, and another while their lieutenants, and are said to be created kings of the Britains, as though the emperors were inferiors vnto the kings of Britaine, and that the Romane lieutenants at their appointments, and not by prescript of the senat or emperours, administred the prouince. ”

“ England was at the mercy of the body of feudal nobles whose aim throughout the last seventy years had been to break through the checks placed upon their action by the Conqueror and his sons, and to master the power of the Crown and the control of the state for their own private interests, as the French feudataries had striven in an earlier time to master the Crown of France. ”

“ More than a hundred and sixty years have now elapsed since the English people have by force subverted a government. During the hundred and sixty years which preceded the union of the Roses, nine Kings reigned in England. ”

“ England was, as she is still, a deeply conservative country; our people were slow at taking up new ideas, and too much in love with money. They wanted kings who would give them peace and order, knock down the great nobles, restrict or even abolish the Pope's power. But they did not at first want ‘heresy’ or wish to break with the Catholic Church of their fathers.
Henry VII, 1485–1509; his task;Henry VII was a king admirably suited to carry out some of these wishes. If you gave him a name you would call him ‘Henry the Prudent’. ”

“ In the new king, whatever may have been the clouds overhanging his birth, or the difficulties attending his accession, we have a more splendid type of English royalty than has yet been displayed even by the great330 kings of Northumbria. ”

“ The power of the kings in Norman England.S0 at last there was going to be a real government in this country, and it was going to do its duty. Few kings in the Middle Ages had any high idea of their ‘duty towards their people’ such as a great Roman Emperor had, or such as King George V has. They chiefly thought of their country as a property, or ‘estate’, which they were going to cultivate mainly for their own benefit. ”

“ He was the first English ruler since the Conquest who loved his people with a personal love and craved for their love back again. To his trust in them we owe our Parliament, to his care for them the great statutes which stand in the forefront of our laws. Even in his struggles with her England understood a temper which was so perfectly her own, and the quarrels between king and people during his reign are quarrels where, doggedly as they fought, neither disputant doubted for a moment the worth or affection of the other. ”

“ For if the King had been a man to be trusted, and if he had frankly accepted the army programme of free religion, a free Parliament, and responsible advisers, there is little doubt that he might have kept his crown and his Anglican ritual--at least for his own worship--and might yet have concluded his reign prosperously as the first constitutional King of England. ”

“ If France were esteemed a more polished country, and her language and manners were adopted by the Plantagenet kings, who were French nobles as well as independent sovereigns of the ruder Saxons, so, again, England was the model of courtesy and refinement to the earlier Scottish kings, who, in the right of inheritance from St. ”

“ Every day, however, some grasping English noblemen, to whom the King’s protection of his people from their avarice and oppression had given offence, deserted him and joined the Princes. Every day he heard some fresh intelligence of the Princes levying armies against him; of Prince Henry’s wearing a crown before his own ambassadors at the French Court, and being called the Junior King of England; of all the Princes swearing never to make peace with him, their father, without the consent and approval of the Barons of France. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In other countries such a vassal owed fealty to his lord against all foes, be they king or no. By the usage however which William enacted in England each sub-tenant, in addition to his oath of fealty to his lord, swore fealty directly to the Crown, and loyalty to the King was thus established as the supreme and universal duty of all Englishmen. ”

“ Amidst the attacks of so many and so powerful enemies, the King of England ever has stood by that see with sword and pen, with voice and with authority. Yet he alone is to reap no benefit from his labours. He has saved the Papacy from ruin, that others might enjoy the fruits of the life which he has preserved for it. ”

“ The stroke of the hatchet which decapitated Charles I. is an encroachment, not on the king, but on the peers, and it was well to place on the gibbet the carcass of Cromwell. The lords have power. Why? Because they have riches. Who has turned over the leaves of the Doomsday Book? It is the proof that the lords possess England. It is the registry of the estates of subjects, compiled under William the Conqueror; and it is in the charge of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. ”

“ Let them look upon the Prince of Wales, and fight for him, their fellow-soldier, who was now to share their fortune on the field; and who, once in possession of his rights, would not forget those to whose courage he owed the throne. The kingdom of England should be their inheritance, to be divided among them; the wealth of the rebellious cities should be their spoil; they should be rewarded for their devotion with all those titles which their enemies now proudly wore; and, above all, they should enjoy lasting fame and honor throughout the realm. ”

“ It was as the leader of the nobility that Henry IV. first rose into importance in the reign of Richard II., and subsequently obtained the crown. The limitation of the franchise in the reign of Henry VI., and the consequent subserviency of Parliament, were steps towards the elevation of an aristocratical influence, which, had it grown till its suppression by the Crown was rendered necessary, would have reproduced in England the historical phenomena visible in France. Fortunately the nobility were not at one among themselves. ”

“ Had the late reigns, before the accession of the great William and Mary, to the throne of England, but taken the measures of them, and her present majesty, in depressing vice, and advancing the union and wealth, and encouraging the prowice and bravery of the nation, they might by this time have been capable to have given laws to any monarch on earth ”

“ And thus he cried, "May God grant long life to Henry, by the grace of God King of France and of England, our sovereign lord!"
"LONG LIVE THE KING!"
Then, when an infant ten months old had been proclaimed King over two of the greatest kingdoms in Europe, the sergeants-at-arms and ushers turned their maces, and shouted together, "Long live the King! long live the King!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ We meet with this passage in Sir John Davis’s Question concerning impositions, (p. 161:) “Thus we see, by this comparison, that the king of England doth lay but his little finger upon his subjects, when other princes and states do lay their heavy loins upon their people. What is the reason of this difference? from whence cometh it? assuredly not from a different power or prerogative; for the king of England is as absolute a monarch as any emperor or king in the world, and hath as many prerogatives incident to his crown.” ”

“ Under the Tudors, England was governed according to the will of her monarchs. In the succeeding seventeenth and eighteenth centuries we were managed by our landed gentry and aristocracy, the lovers of freedom. ”

“ Nor has England ever seen a nobility in the true sense, the sense which the word bears in every continental land, a body into which men may be raised by the king, but from which no man may come down, a body which hands on to all its members, to the latest generations, some kind of privilege or distinction, whether its privileges consist in substantial political power, or in bare titles and precedence. In England there is no nobility. ”

“ Thus England’s peace begins in Henry’s reign, And bloody wars are closed with happy league. Let England live but true within itself, And all the world can never wrong her state. Lewis, thou shalt be bravely shipped to France, For never Frenchman got of English ground The twentieth part that thou hast conquered. Dolphin, thy hand; to Worster we will march. Lords all lay hands to bear your sovereign With obsequies of honor to his grave. If England’s peers and people join in one, Nor Pope, nor France, nor Spain can do them wrong. ”