A history of England principally in the seventeenth century, Volume 1 (of 6)
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Title: A history of England principally in the seventeenth century, Volume 1 (of 6)
Author: Leopold von Ranke
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF ENGLAND PRINCIPALLY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, VOLUME 1 (OF 6) ***
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Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
A HISTORY OF ENGLAND PRINCIPALLY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
by
LEOPOLD VON RANKE
VOLUME I
PREFACE.
Once more I come before the public with a work on the history of a
nation which is not mine by birth.
It is the ambition of all nations which enjoy a literary culture to
possess a harmonious and vivid narrative of their own past history. And
it is of inestimable value to any people to obtain such a narrative,
which shall comprehend all epochs, be true to fact and, while resting on
thorough research, yet be attractive to the reader; for only by this aid
can the nation attain to a perfect self-consciousness, and feeling the
pulsation of its life throughout the story, become fully acquainted with
its own origin and growth and character. But we may doubt whether up to
this time works of such an import and compass have ever been produced,
and even whether they can be produced. For who could apply critical
research, such as the progress of study now renders necessary, to the
mass of materials already collected, without being lost in its immensity?
Who again could possess the vivid susceptibility requisite for doing
justice to the several epochs, for appreciating the actions, the modes of
thought, and the moral standard of each of them, and for understanding
their relations to universal history? We must be content in this
department, as well as in others, if we can but approximate to the ideal
we set up. The best-written histories will be accounted the best.
When then an author undertakes to make the past life of a foreign
nation the object of a comprehensive literary work, he will not think
of writing its history as a nation in detail: for a foreigner this
would be impossible: but, in accordance with the point of view he
would naturally take, he will direct his eyes to those epochs which
have had the most effectual influence on the development of mankind:
only so far as is necessary for the comprehension of these, will he
introduce anything that precedes or comes after them.
There is an especial charm in following, century after century, the
history of the English nation, in considering the antagonism of the
elements out of which it is composed, and its share in the fortunes
and enterprises of that great community of western nations to which it
belongs; but it will be readily granted that no other period can be
compared in general importance with the epoch of those religious and
political wars which fill the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In the sixteenth century the part which England took in the work of
emancipating the world from the rule of the western hierarchy
decisively influenced not only its own constitution, but also the
success of the religious revolution throughout Europe. In England the
monarchy perfectly understood its position in relation to this great
change; while favouring the movement in its own interest, it
nevertheless contrived to maintain the old historical state of things
to a great extent; nowhere have more of the institutions of the Middle
Ages been retained than in England; nowhere did the spiritual power
link itself more closely with the temporal. Here less depends on the
conflict of doctrines, for which Germany is the classic ground: the
main interest lies in the political transformation, accomplished
amidst manifold variations of opinions, tendencies, and events, and
attended at last by a war for the very existence of the nation. For it
was against England that the sacerdotal reaction directed its main
attack. To withstand it, the country was forced to ally itself with
the kindred elements on the Continent: the successful resistance of
England was in turn of the greatest service to them. The maintenance
of Protestantism in Western Europe, on the Continent as well as in
Britain, was effected by the united powers of both. To bring out
clearly this alternate action, it would not be advisable to lay weight
on every temporary foreign relation, on every step of the home
administration, and to search out men's personal motives in them; a
shorter sketch may be best suited to show the chief characters, as
well as the main purport of the events in their full light.
But then, through the connexion of England with Scotland, and the
accession of a new dynasty, a state of things ensued under which the
continued maintenance of the position taken up in home and foreign
politics was rendered doubtful. The question arose whether the policy
of England would not differ from that of Great Britain and be
compelled to give way to it. The attempt to decide this question, and
the reciprocal influence of the newly allied countries, brought on
conflicts at home which, though they in the main arose out of foreign
relations, yet for a long while threw those relations into the
background.
If we were required to express in the most general terms the
distinction between English and French policy in the last two
centuries, we might say that it consisted in this, that the glory of
their arms abroad lay nearest to the heart of the French nation, and
the legal settlement of their home affairs to that of the English. How
often have the French, in appearance at least, allowed themselves to
be consoled for the defects of the home administration by a great
victory or an advantageous peace! And the English, from regard to
constitutional questions of apparently inferior importance, have not
seldom turned their eyes away from grievous perils which hung over
Europe.
The two great constitutional powers in England, the Crown and the
Parliament, dating back as they did to early times, had often
previously contended with each other, but had harmoniously combined in
the religious struggle, and had both gained strength thereby; but
towards the middle of the seventeenth century we see them first come
into collision over ecclesiastical regulations, and then engage in a
war for life and death respecting the constitution of the realm.
Elements originally separate unite in attacking the monarchy;
meanwhile the old system breaks up, and energetic efforts are made to
found a new one on its ruins. But none of them succeed; the
deeply-felt need of a life regulated by law and able to trust its own
future is not satisfied; after long storms men seek safety in a return
to the old and approved historic forms so characteristic of the
German, and especially of the English, race. But in this there is
clearly no solution of the original controversies, no reconciliation
of the conflicting elements: within narrower limits new discords break
out, which once more threaten a complete overthrow: until, thanks to
the indifference shown by England to continental events, the most
formidable dangers arise to threaten the equilibrium of Europe, and
even menace England itself. These European emergencies coinciding with
the troubles at home bring about a new change of the old forms in the
Revolution of 1688, the main result of which is, that the centre of
gravity of public authority in England shifts decisively to the
parliamentary side. It was during this same time that France had won
military and political superiority over all its neighbours on the
mainland, and in connexion with it had concentrated an almost absolute
power at home in the hands of the monarchy. England thus reorganised
now set itself to contest the political superiority of France in a
long and bloody war, which consequently became a struggle between two
rival forms of polity; and while the first of these bore sway over the
rest of Europe, the other attained to complete realisation in its
island-home, and called forth at a later time manifold imitations on
the Continent also, when the Continent was torn by civil strife.
Between these differing tendencies, these opposite poles, the life of
Europe has ever since vibrated from side to side.
When we contemplate the framework of the earth, those heights which
testify to the inherent energy of the original and active elements
attract our special notice; we admire the massive mountains which
overhang and dominate the lowlands covered with the settlements of
man. So also in the domain of history we are attracted by epochs at
which the elemental forces, whose joint action or tempered antagonism
has produced states and kingdoms, rise in sudden war against each
other, and amidst the surging sea of troubles upheave into the light
new formations, which give to subsequent ages their special character.
Such a historic region, dominating the world, is formed by that epoch
of English history, to which the studies have been devoted, whose
results I venture to publish in the present work: its importance is as
great where it directly touches on the universal interests of
humanity, as where, on its own special ground, it develops itself
apart in obedience to its inner impulses. To comprehend this period we
must approach it as closely as possible: it is everywhere instinct
with collective as well as individual life. We discern how great
antagonistic principles sprang almost unavoidably out of earlier
times, how they came into conflict, wherein the strength of each side
lay, what caused the alternations of success, and how the final
decisions were brought about: but at the same time we perceive how
much, for themselves, for the great interests they represented, and
for the enemies they subdued, depended on the character, the energy,
the conduct of individuals. Were the men equal to the emergency, or
were not circumstances stronger than they? From the conflict of the
universal with the special it is that the great catastrophes of
history arise, yet it sometimes happens that the efforts which seem to
perish with their authors exercise a more lasting influence on the
progress of events than does the power of the conqueror. In the
agonising struggles of men's minds appear ideas and designs which pass
beyond what is feasible in that land and at that time, perhaps even
beyond what is desirable: these find a place and a future in the
colonies, the settlement of which is closely connected with the
struggle at home. We are far from intending to involve ourselves in
juridical and constitutional controversies, or from regulating the
distribution of praise and blame by the opinions which have gained the
day at a later time, or prevail at the moment; still less shall we be
guided by our own sympathies: our only concern is to become acquainted
with the great motive powers and their results. And yet how can we
help recognising manifold coincidences with that conflict of opinions
and tendencies in which we are involved at the present day? But it is
no part of our plan to follow these out. Momentary resemblances often
mislead the politician who seeks a sure foothold in the past, as well
as the historian who seeks it in the present. The Muse of history has
the widest intellectual horizon and the full courage of her
convictions; but in forming them she is thoroughly conscientious, and
we might say jealously bent on her duty. To introduce the interests of
the present time into the work of the historian usually ends in
restricting its free accomplishment.
This epoch has been already often treated of, if not as a whole, yet
in detached parts, and that by the best English historical writers. A
native author has this great advantage over foreigners, that he thinks
in the language in which the persons of the drama spoke, and lets them
be seen through no strange medium, but simply in their natural form.
But when, too, this language is employed in rare perfection, as in a
work of our own time,--I refer not merely to rounded periods and
euphony of cadence, but to the spirit of the narrative so much in
harmony with our present culture, and the tone of our minds, and to
the style which by every happy word excites our vivid sympathy;--when
we have before us a description of the events in the native language
with all its attractive traits and broad colouring, a description too
based on an old familiar acquaintance with the country and its
condition: it would be folly to pretend to rival such a work in its
own peculiar sphere. But the results of original study may lead us to
form a different conception of the events. And it is surely good that,
in epochs of such great importance for the history of all nations, we
should possess foreign and independent representations to compare with
those of home growth; in the latter are expressed sympathies and
antipathies as inherited by tradition and affected by the antagonism
of literary differences of opinion. Moreover there will be a
difference between these foreign representations. Frenchmen, as in one
famous instance, will hold more to the constitutional point of view,
and look for instruction or example in political science. The German
will labour (after investigation into original documents) to
comprehend each event as a political and religious whole, and at the
same time to view it in its universal historical relations.
I can in this case, as in others, add something new to what is already
known, and this to a larger extent as the work goes on.[1]
In no nation has so much documentary matter been collected for its
later history as in England. The leading families which have taken
part in public business, and the different parties which wish to
assert their views in the historical representation of the past as
well as in the affairs of the present, have done much for this object;
latterly the government also has set its hand to the work. Yet the
existing publications are far from sufficient. How incredibly
deficient our knowledge still is of even the most important
parliamentary transactions! In the rich collections of the Record
Office and of the British Museum I have sought and found much that was
unknown, and which I needed for obtaining an insight into events. The
labour spent on it is richly compensated by the gain such labour
brings; over the originals so injured, and so hard to decipher, linger
the spirits of that long-past age. Especial attention is due to the
almost complete series of pamphlets of the time, which the Museum
possesses. As we read them, there are years in which we are present,
as it were, at the public discussion that went on, at least in the
capital, from month to month, from week to week, on the weightiest
questions of government and public life.
If any one has ever attempted to reconstruct for himself a portion of
the past from materials of this kind,--from original documents, and
party writings which, prompted by hate or personal friendship, are
intended for defence or attack, and yet are withal exceedingly
incomplete,--he will have felt the need of other contemporary notices,
going into detail but free from such party views. A rich harvest of
such independent reports has been supplied to me for this, as well as
for my other works, by the archives of the ancient Republic of Venice.
The 'Relations,' which the ambassadors of that Republic were wont to
draw up on their return home, invaluable though they are in reference
to persons and the state of affairs in general, are not, however,
sufficient to supply a detailed and consecutive account of events. But
the Venetian archives possess also a long series of continuous
Reports, which place us, as it were, in the very midst of the courts,
the capitals, and the daily course of public business. For the
sixteenth century they are only preserved in a very fragmentary state
as regards England; for the seventeenth they lie before us, with gaps
no doubt here and there, yet in much greater completeness. Even in the
first volume they have been useful to me for Mary Tudor's reign and
the end of Elizabeth's; in the later ones, not only for James I's
times, but also far more for Charles I's government and his quarrel
with the Parliament. Owing to the geographical distance of Venice from
England, and her neutral position in the world, her ambassadors were
able to devote an attention to English affairs which is free from all
interested motives, and sometimes to observe their general course in
close communication with the leading men. We could not compose a
history from the reports they give, but combined with the documentary
matter these reports form a very welcome supplement to our knowledge.
Ambassadors who have to manage matters of all kinds, great and small,
at the courts to which they are accredited, fill their letters with
accounts of affairs which often contain little instruction for
posterity, and they judge of a man according to the support which he
gives to their interests. This is the case with the French as well as
with other ambassadors in England. Nevertheless their correspondence
becomes gradually of the greatest value for my work. Their importance
grows with the importance of affairs. The two courts entered into the
most intimate relations: French politicians ceaselessly endeavoured to
gain influence over England, and sometimes with success. The
ambassadors' letters at such times refer to the weightiest matters of
state, and become invaluable; they rise to the rank of the most
important and instructive historical monuments. They have been
hitherto, in great part, unused.
In the Roman and Spanish reports also I found much which deserves to
be made known to the readers of history. The papers of Holland and the
Netherlands prove still more productive, as I show in detail at the
end of the narrative.
A historical work may aim either at putting forward a new view of what
is already known, or at communicating additional information as to the
facts. I have endeavoured to combine both these aims.
NOTES:
[1] _Note to the third edition._--In the course of my researches for
this work the representation of the seventeenth century has occupied a
larger space than I at first thought I should have been able to give
it; it forms the chief portion of the book in its present form. I have
therefore allowed myself the unwonted liberty of altering the title so
as to make this clear. Still the representation of the sixteenth
century, which is not now mentioned in the title, has not been
abridged on this account. The history of the Stuart dynasty and of
William III make up the central part of the edifice; what is given to
the earlier, as well as the later times may, if I may be allowed the
comparison, correspond to its two wings.
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE.
'The History of England, principally during the Seventeenth Century,'
which is here laid before the reader in an English form, is one of the
most important portions of that cycle of works on which Leopold von
Ranke has long been engaged. His History of the Popes, his History of
the Reformation in Germany, his French History, his work on the
Ottomans and the Spanish Monarchy, his Life of Wallenstein, his volume
on the Origin of the Thirty Years' War, and other smaller treatises,
all aim at delineating the international relations of the states of
Europe. His History of England may well be regarded as the concluding
portion of this series; for the relations of England, first with
France, and then with Holland, eventually determined the course of
European politics.
The book however is more than a history of this period, for Professor
Ranke, according to his custom, has prefixed to it a luminous and
interesting sketch of the earlier part of our history, presented, as
all summaries ought to be, in the form of studies of the most
important epochs. And at the end of the work are Appendices, which
supply not only happy examples of historical criticism in the
discussions on the chief contemporary writers of the period, but also
a mass of original documents, most of which have never before been
published. Above all, the critiques on Clarendon and Burnet, and the
correspondence of William III with Heinsius, will well repay careful
study; and the Appendices throw light on some of the more important
details connected with the history of the time, besides shewing the
student how a great master has found and used his materials.
The present translation was undertaken with the author's sanction, and
was intended in the first instance for the use of students in Oxford.
Its publication has been facilitated by a division of labour, the
eight volumes of the original having been entrusted each to a separate
hand. The translators are Messrs. C. W. Boase, Exeter College; W. W.
Jackson, Exeter College; H. B. George, New College; H. F. Pelham,
Exeter College; M. Creighton, Merton College; A. Watson, Brasenose
College; G. W. Kitchin, Christchurch; A. Plummer, Trinity College. The
task of oversight, of reducing inequalities of style, and of
supervising the Appendices and Index, has been performed by the
editors, C. W. Boase and G. W. Kitchin. Notwithstanding the
disadvantages incident to a translation, it is hoped that the work in
its present shape will be welcomed by a large number of English
readers, and will help to increase the deserved renown of the author
in the country to the history of which he has devoted such profound
and fruitful study.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
THE CHIEF CRISES IN THE EARLIER HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 3
CHAP. I. The Britons, Romans, and Anglo-Saxons 5
The Anglo-Saxons and Christianity 10
II. Transfer of the Anglo-Saxon crown to the Normans
and Plantagenets 22
The Conquest 28
III. The crown in conflict with Church and Nobles 39
Henry II and Becket 41
John Lackland and Magna Charta 47
IV. Foundation of the Parliamentary Constitution 58
V. Deposition of Richard II. The House of Lancaster 74
BOOK II.
ATTEMPTS TO CONSOLIDATE THE KINGDOM INDEPENDENTLY IN ITS TEMPORAL
AND SPIRITUAL RELATIONS.
INTRODUCTION 91
CHAP. I. Re-establishment of the supreme power 93
II. Changes in the condition of Europe 104
Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey in their earlier
years 109
III. Origin of the Divorce Question 120
IV. The Separation of the English Church 134
V. The opposing tendencies within the Schismatic State 151
VI. Religious Reform in the English Church 171
VII. Transfer of the Government to a Catholic Queen 186
VIII. The Catholic-Spanish Government 199
BOOK III.
QUEEN ELIZABETH. CLOSE CONNEXION OF ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH AFFAIRS.
INTRODUCTION 221
CHAP. I. Elizabeth's accession. Triumph of the
Reformation 222
II. Outlines of the Reformation in Scotland 238
III. Mary Stuart in Scotland. Relation of the two Queens
to each other 254
IV. Interdependence of the European dissensions in
Politics and Religion 280
V. The fate of Mary Stuart 300
VI. The Invincible Armada 316
VII. The later years of Queen Elizabeth 330
BOOK IV.
FOUNDATION OF THE KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN. FIRST DISTURBANCES
UNDER THE STUARTS.
INTRODUCTION 359
CHAP. I. James VI of Scotland: his accession to the
throne of England 361
Origin of fresh dissensions in the Church 361
Alliance with England 364
Renewal of the Episcopal Constitution in Scotland 368
Preparations for the Succession to the English
Throne 375
Accession to the Throne 381
II. First measures of the new reign 386
III. The Gunpowder Plot and its consequences 403
IV. Foreign policy of the next ten years 418
V. Parliaments of 1610 and 1614 436
VI. Survey of the literature of the epoch 450
BOOK V.
DISPUTES WITH PARLIAMENT DURING THE LATER YEARS OF THE REIGN OF
JAMES I AND THE EARLIER YEARS OF THE REIGN OF CHARLES I.
INTRODUCTION 467
CHAP. I. James I and his administration of domestic
government 469
II. Complications arising out of the affairs of the
Palatinate 484
III. Parliament of the year 1621 497
IV. Negotiations for the marriage of the Prince of
Wales with a Spanish Infanta 509
V. The Parliament of 1624. Alliance with France 522
VI. Beginning of the reign of Charles I, and his First
and Second Parliament 537
VII. The course of foreign policy from 1625 to 1627 554
VIII. Parliament of 1628. Petition of Right 566
IX. Assassination of Buckingham. Session of 1629 580
FIRST BOOK.
THE CHIEF CRISES IN THE EARLIER HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
As we turn over the pages of universal history, and follow the
shifting course of events, we perceive almost at the first glance one
comprehensive process of change going on, which, more than any other,
governs the external fortunes of the world. Through long periods of
time the historic life of the human race was active in Western Asia
and in the lands bordering on the Mediterranean which look towards the
East: there it laid the foundations of its higher culture. We may
rightly regard as the greatest event that meets us in the whole course
of authentic history, the fact that the seats of the predominant power
and culture have been transplanted to the Western lands and the shores
of the Atlantic Ocean. Not merely the abodes of the ancient civilised
nations, but even the capitals which were the medium of communication
between East and West, have fallen into barbarism; even the great
metropolis, from which first political, and then spiritual, dominion
extended itself in both directions over widespread territories, has
not maintained its rank. It was due to this tendency of things,
combined with a certain geographical cause, that neither could the
medieval Empire attain its full development, nor the Papacy continue
to subsist with unimpaired authority. From age to age the political
and intellectual life of the world transferred itself ever more and
more to the nations dwelling further West, especially since a new
hemisphere was opened up to their impulses of activity and extension.
So it was that the chief interests of the Pyrenean peninsula drew
towards its ocean coasts; that there grew up on either side of the
Channel which separates the Continent from Britain, the two great
capitals in which modern activity is chiefly concentrated; that
Northern Germany, together with the races which touch on the North Sea
and the Baltic, developed a life and a system of their own; it is in
these regions latterly that the universal spirit of the human race
chiefly works out its task, and displays its activity in moulding
states, creating ideas, and subjugating nature.
Yet this transmission, this transplanting, is not the work of a blind
destiny. While civilisation in the East succumbed and died out before
the advance of races incapable of culture, it was welcomed in the West
by races possessing the requisite capacity, which by their inborn
force gave it new forms and indestructible bases for its outward
existence. Nor have the nations and kingdoms arisen each from its
mother earth, as it were in obedience to some inward impulse of
inevitable necessity, but amid constant assimilation and rejection,
ever repeated wars to secure their future, and a ceaseless struggle
with opposing elements that threatened their ruin.
The object of universal history is to place before our eyes the
leading changes, and the conflicts of nations, together with their
causes and results. Our purpose is to depict the history of one of the
chief of the Western nations, the English, and that too in an age
which decisively modified both its inner constitution and its outward
position in the world, but it cannot be understood unless we first
pourtray, with a few quick touches, the historical events under the
influence of which it became civilised and great.
CHAPTER I.
THE BRITONS, ROMANS, AND ANGLO-SAXONS.
The history of Western Europe in general opens with the struggle
between Kelts, Romans, and Germans, which determined out of what
elements modern nations should be formed.
Just as it is supposed that Albion in early times was connected with
the Continent, and only separated from it by the raging sea-flood
which buried the intermediate lands in the abyss, so in ethnographic
relations it would seem as if the aboriginal Keltic tribes of the
island had been only separated by some accident from those which
occupied Gaul and the Netherlands. The Channel is no national
boundary. We find Belgians in Britain, Britons in Eastern Gaul, and
very many names of peoples common to both coasts; there were tribes
which, though separated by the sea, yet acknowledged the same prince.
Without being able to prove how far natives of the island took part in
the expeditions of conquest, which pouring forth from Gaul inundated
the countries on the Danube and Italy, Greece and Western Asia, we yet
can trace the affinity of names and tribes as far as these expeditions
extend. This island was the home of the religion that gave a certain
unity to the populations, which, though closely akin, nevertheless
contended with each other in ceaseless discord. It was that Druidic
discipline which combined a priestly constitution with civil
privileges, and with a very peculiar doctrine of a political and even
moral purport. We might be tempted to suppose that the atrocity of
human sacrifice was first introduced among them by the Punic race. For
they were from primeval times connected with the Carthaginians and
Phoenicians, who were the first to traverse the outer sea, and sought
in the island a metal which was very valuable for the wants of the
ancient world. Distant clans might retain in the mountains their
original wildness, but the southern coasts ranked in the earliest
times as rich and civilised. They stood within the circle of the
relations that had been created by the expeditions of the Keltic
tribes, by the mixture of peoples thence arising, by the war and
commerce of the earliest age.
In the great war between Rome and Carthage, which decided the destiny
of the ancient world, the Keltic tribes took part as allies of the
Punic race. If Carthage had conquered, they would have maintained in
most, if not all, the lands they had occupied, and especially in their
own homes, their old manners and customs, and their religion in its
existing form. It was not merely the supremacy of the one city or the
other, but the future of Western Europe that was at stake when
Hannibal attacked the Romans in Italy. Rome, which had already grown
strong in warring against the Gauls, won the victory over the
Carthaginians. Thenceforth one after another of the Keltic nations
succumbed to the superiority of the Roman arms, which at last invaded
Transalpine Gaul, and struck its military power to the ground.
From this point the reaction against the Keltic enterprises
necessarily extended itself also to Britain.
The great general who conquered Gaul did not feel sure of being able
to accomplish his task unless he also obtained influence over the
British tribes, from which those of the Continent constantly received
help and encouragement, unless he established among them the authority
of the Roman name.
It was an important moment in the world's history, well worthy of
remembrance, when Caesar first trod the soil of Albion. Already
repulsed from the steep chalk cliffs of the island, he found the flat
shore on which he hoped to disembark occupied by the enemy, some in
their war-chariots, others on horseback and on foot; his ships could
not reach the shore; the soldiers hesitated, encumbered with their
armour as they were, to throw themselves into a sea with which they
were not familiar, in presence of an enemy acquainted with the
ground, active, brave, and superior in numbers; the general's order
had no effect on them; when however an eagle-bearer, calling on the
gods of Rome, threw himself into the flood, the men would have thought
themselves traitors had they allowed the war-standard, to which an
almost divine worship was paid, to fall into the hands of the enemy;
fired by the danger that threatened their honour, and by the religion
of arms, from one ship after another they followed him to the fight;
in the hand-to-hand combat in the water which ensued they gained the
superiority, supported most skilfully by their general wherever it was
necessary; the moment they reached the land, the victory was won.[2]
We cannot reckon it a slight matter, that Caesar, though not at the
first, yet at the second and better prepared expedition, succeeded in
carrying away with him hostages from the chief tribes. For this very
form was the one customary in that century and among those tribes, by
which he bound them and their princes to himself.
It was the first step towards the Roman supremacy. But Gaul and West
Germany had first to be subdued, and the Empire securely concentrated
in one hand, before--a century later--the conquest of the island could
be really attempted.
Even then the Britons still fought without helmet or shield, as did
the Gauls of old before Rome. In Britain, just as on the Lombard
plains, the war-chariot was their best arm; their defective mode of
defence necessarily yielded to the organised tactics of the legion.
How easily did the Romans, pushing forward under cover of their
mantelets, clear away the rude entrenchments by which the Britons used
formerly to secure themselves against attack. The Druids on Mona
trusted in their gods, whose will they thought to ascertain from the
quivering fibres of human sacrifices; and for a moment the sight of
the crowd of fanatics collected around them checked the attack, but
only for a moment: as soon as they came to blows they were instantly
scattered, and their holy places perished with them. For this is the
greatest result of the Roman wars, that they destroyed the rites which
contradicted the idea of Humanity. Yet once more an injured
princess--Boadicea--united all the sympathies which the old
constitution and religion could awaken. Dio has depicted her,
doubtless according to the reports which reached Rome. A tall form,
with the national decoration of the golden necklace and the chequered
mantle, over which her rich yellow hair flowed down below her waist.
She called on her peoples to defend themselves at any risk, since what
could befall those to whom each root gave nourishment, each tree
supplied shelter: and on her gods, not to let the land pass into the
possession of that insatiable, unjust foe of foreign race. So truly
does she represent the innate characteristics of the British race,
when oppressed and engaged in a desperate defence. She is earnest,
rugged, and terrible; the men who gathered round her were reckoned by
hundreds of thousands. But the Britons had not yet learnt the art of
war. A single onslaught of the Romans sufficed to scatter their
disorderly masses with a fearful butchery. It was the last day of the
old British independence. Boadicea would not, any more than Cleopatra,
adorn a Roman triumph; she fell by her own hand.
Within a few dozen years the Roman eagles were masters of Britain as
far as the Highlands: the Keltic clan-life and the religion of the
Druids withdrew into the Caledonian mountains, and the large islands
off that coast; in the conquered territory the religion of the arms
that had won the victory, and the might of the Great Empire, were
supreme. The work which was begun by superiority in war was completed
by pre-eminence in civilisation. It seemed an advantage and an
improvement to the sons of the British princes, to adopt the Roman
language, and knowledge, and mode of life; they delighted in the
luxury of colonnades, baths, feasts, and city life. Men like Agricola
used these modes of Romanising Britain by preference. Just as the
Britons exchanged their rude shipbuilding and their leathern sails for
the discoveries of a more advanced art of navigation, so they learnt
to carry on their agriculture in Roman fashion; in later times
Britain was considered as the granary of the legions in Germany. Most
of the cities in the land betray by their very names their Roman
origin; London, though it existed earlier, owes its importance to this
connexion. It was the emporium destined as it were by nature for the
peaceful commerce that now arose between the Western provinces of the
Empire. Once in the third century an attempt was made to make the
island independent, but it failed the moment the marts on the opposite
coast fell into the hands of the Emperor who was universally
recognised. Britain seemed an integral part of the Roman Empire. It
was from York that Constantine marched forth to unite its Eastern and
Western halves once more under one government.
But soon after him an epoch began in which the third great
nationality, at first thought to be part of the Keltic race, then
driven back or taken into service by the Romans, but always
maintaining its peculiar original independence--the German, rose to
supremacy in the West. In the fifth century it had become everywhere
master in the militarily-organised Roman frontier districts:
encouraged by the embarrassments of the authorities it advanced into
the peaceful provinces.
It is of importance to remark what the fate of Britain was in these
struggles.
From the Romanised territory an Augustus, called Constantine, set up
by the revolted legions, invaded Gaul, not merely to check the inroads
of the barbarians, but at the same time to possess himself of the
Empire. He at one time held a great position, when the legions of Gaul
and Aquitaine also took his side, and Spain saluted him Emperor. But
the authority of Honorius the generally recognised Emperor could not
be so easily set aside: discontented followers of the new Augustus
again went over to the old one: before them and the barbarians
combined Constantine fell, and soon after paid for his attempt with
his life.
The result, then, was that Honorius restored his authority to a
certain extent everywhere on the Continent, but not in Britain. To the
towns which had taken up arms while Constantine was there he gave the
right of self-defence--he could do nothing for them. The Roman Empire
was not exactly overthrown in Britain--it ceased to be.[3]
At this time, when the connexion between Rome and Roman Britain was
broken off, the Germans possessed themselves of the latter country.
_The Anglo-Saxons and Christianity._
Germans had been long ago settled in this as in so many other
provinces of the Western and Eastern Empires. Antoninus had brought
over German tribes from the Danube, Probus others from the Rhineland.
In the legions we find German cohorts, and very many others joined
them as free allies. In the civil wars between the Emperors we hear of
one side relying on the Franks, the other on the Alemanni in their
service; Constantine the Great is called to be Caesar by help of the
chiefs of the Alemanni. But besides this, German seafarers, who
appeared under the name of Saxons, after they had learnt shipbuilding
and navigation from the Romans, settled on the opposite coasts of
Britain and Gaul, and gave their name to both. Not then for the first
time, nor at the invitation of the Britons, as the Saga declares,[4]
did the descendants of Wodan make their first trial of the sea in
light vessels. Alternating between piracy and alliance--now with a
usurper and now with the lawful Emperor, between independence and
subjection, German seafarers had long ago filled all seas and coasts
with the terror of their name. In the North too they are mentioned
together with Scots and Attacotti. When now the Roman rule over the
island and the surrounding seas came to an end, to whom could it pass?
To the peaceful Provincials, if they could indeed gird on the sword,
or to the old companions in arms of the Romans? There is no doubt
that the same general impulse which urged on the German peoples, in
the great revolution of affairs, into the Roman provinces, led the
enterprising inhabitants of the German and Northern coasts, Frisians,
Angles, and Jutes, as well as Saxons, into Britain. A fearful war
broke out, in which it may be true to say the ruined towns became the
sepulchres of their inhabitants, but no man found the quiet time
necessary for depicting its details. After it had filled a century and
a half with its horrors, and men again lifted up their eyes, they
found the island divided between two great nationalities, which had
separated themselves as opposing forces. The natives had as good as
abandoned the civilisation they had learnt from Rome, and leant on
their kinsfolk in North Gaul, and the Scots in Ireland and the
Highlands; they occupied the west of the island. The Germans were
settled in the east, in the greatest part of the south, and in the
north, in most of the old Roman settlements,--but they were far from
forming a united body. Not seven or eight merely, but a large number
of little tribal kingdoms, occupied or fought for the ground.
If we wish to point out in general the distinction between the
Anglo-Saxon and other German settlements, it lies in this, that they
rested neither on the Emperor's authorisation whether direct or
indirect, nor on any agreement with the natives of the land. In Gaul
Chlodwig assumed and carried on the authority of the Roman Empire;--in
Britain it went wholly to the ground. Hence it was that here the
German ideas could develop in their full purity, more so than in
Germany itself, over which the Frankish monarchy, which had also
adopted Roman tendencies, had gained influence.
Just as the natives who would not submit were driven out of the German
settlements, so within their boundaries the germs of Christianity,
which had already spread in the island, were as good as annihilated.
Among the victorious Germans the Northern heathenism existed in full
strength. In many names of places, at the water-springs, the
watersheds, in the designations of the days of the week, the names of
the gods of Germany and the North appear; the kings trace their
descent directly from them as their immediate ancestors; the Sagas and
poems about them symbolise those battles with the elements, the
storm, the sea, and the powers of nature, which are peculiarly
characteristic of the Northern mythology. With this, however, arose
the question, so important for the history of the world, whether the
great territory already won for the ideas of the universal culture and
religion of mankind should be again lost.
Towards the end of the 6th century the epoch began in which, as the
German invaders of Gaul had already done, so now those of Spain and
Italy, whether Arians or heathens, came over to the Catholic faith of
the Provincials. This took place under the mediation of the chief
Pontiff, who had raised the city, from which the Empire took its name,
to be the metropolis of the Faith. Lombards and Visigoths became as
good Catholics as the Franks already were. The relationship of the
royal families, which held all Germans in close connexion, and the
zeal of Rome, which could not possibly suffer the loss of a province
that it had once possessed, now combined to call forth a similar
movement among the Anglo-Saxons, yet one which worked itself out in a
very different way. Since among the natives a peculiar form of
church-life, not unconnected with the Druidic discipline, had arisen,
with which Rome would hold no communion, and which rejected all
demands of submission, the spiritual enmity of the missionary was
united to the national enmity of the conqueror. When a king still
heathen, while attacking the Britons, directed his weapons against the
monks of Bangor, who (collected on a height) were offering up prayers
against him, and massacred them to the number of twelve hundred, the
followers of the Roman Mission saw in this a punishment decreed by God
for apostasy, and the fulfilment of the prophecies of their
apostle.[5] On the other hand British Christian kings also made common
cause with the heathen Angles, and wasted with fire and sword the
provinces that had been converted by Rome. Had not in the vicissitudes
of internal war the native church organisation of the North won
influence over the Anglo-Saxons, heathenism would never have been
conquered; it would have always found support among the Britons.
When this however had once taken place, the whole Anglo-Saxon name
attached itself to the Roman ritual. Among the motives for this change
those which corresponded to the naive materialistic superstition of
the time may have been the most influential, yet there were other
motives also which touched the very essence of the matter. Men wished
to belong to the great Church Communion which then in still unbroken
freedom comprehended the most distant nations.[6] They preferred the
bishops whom the kings appointed (with the authorisation of the Roman
See), to those over whom the abbot of the great monastery on the
island of Iona exercised a kind of supremacy. Here there was no
question of any agreement between the German king and the bishops of
the land, as under the Merovingians in Gaul; they even avoided
restoring the bishops' sees which had flourished in the old Roman
times in Britain. The primitive and independent element manifests
itself in the decision of the princes and their great men. In
Northumberland, Christianity was introduced by a formal resolution of
the King and his Witan: a heathen high priest girt himself with the
sword, and even with his own hand threw down his idols. The
Anglo-Saxon tribes in fact passed over from the popular religion and
mythology of the North and of Germany, which would have kept them in
barbarism, to the communion of the universal religion, to which
belonged the civilisation of the world. Never did a race show itself
more susceptible of such an influence: it presents the most remarkable
example of how the old German ideas, which had now taken living root
in this soil, and the Roman ecclesiastical culture, which was
vigorously embraced, met and became intertwined. The first German who
made the universal learning, derived from antiquity, his own, was an
Anglo-Saxon, the Venerable Beda; the first German dialect in which men
wrote history and drew up laws, was likewise the Anglo-Saxon. Despite
all their reverence for the threshold of the Apostles they admitted
foreign priests no longer than was indispensable for the foundation of
the new church: in the gradual progress of the conversion they were no
longer needed, we soon find Anglo-Saxon names everywhere in the
church: the archbishops and leading bishops are as closely related to
the royal families, as the heathen high priests had been before.
It was exactly through the co-operation of both principles, originally
so foreign to one another, that the Anglo-Saxon nature took firm and
lasting form.
The Kelts had formerly lived under a clan system which, extending over
vast districts, yet displayed in each spot characteristic weaknesses
which the hostility of every neighbour rendered fatal. Then the Romans
had introduced a military administrative constitution, which displaced
this tribal system, while it also subjected Britain to the universal
Empire, of which it formed only an unimportant province. A
characteristic form of life was first built up in Britain by the
Anglo-Saxons on the ruins of the Roman rule. The union into which they
entered with the civilised world was the freely chosen one of the
religion of the human race; they had no other connexion to control
them. Their whole energies being concentrated on the island, they gave
it for the first time, though continually at war with each other, an
independent position.
Their constitution combines the ideas of the army and the tribe: it is
the constitution of armies of colonists bringing with them domestic
institutions which had been theirs from time immemorial. A society of
freemen of the same stock, who divided the soil among themselves in
such a manner that the number of the hides corresponded to that of the
families (for among no people was there a stronger conception of
separate ownership), they composed the armed array of the country, and
by their union maintained that peace at home which again secured each
man's life and property. At their head stands a royal family, of the
highest nobility, which traces its origin to the gods, and has by far
the largest possessions; from it, by birth and by election combined,
proceeds the King; who then, sceptre in hand, presides in the court
of justice, and in the field has the banner carried before him; he is
the Lord, to whom men owe fidelity; the Guardian, to whom the public
roads and navigable rivers belong, who disposes of the undivided land.
Yet he does not stand originally so high above other men that his
murder cannot be expiated by a wergeld, of which one share falls to
his family--not a larger one than for any other of its members,--and
the other to the collective community, since the prince belongs to the
former by birth, to the latter by his office. Between the simple
freeman and the prince appear the eorls, ealdormen, and thanes, in
some instances raised above the mass by noble birth or by larger
possessions, natural chiefs of districts and hundreds, in others
promoted by service in the King's court and in the field, sometimes
specially bound to him by personal allegiance: they are the Witan who
have elected him out of his family (in a few instances they depose
him); they concur in giving laws, they take part in making peace. Now
the bishops take place by their side. They appear with the ealdormen
in the judicial meetings of the counties: if the Gerefa neglects his
duty, it is for them to step in; yet they have also their own
spiritual jurisdiction. It is a spiritual and temporal organisation of
small extent, yet of a certain self-sufficing completeness. Many of
the present shires correspond to the old kingdoms, and bear their
names to this day. The bishops' sees often coincide with the seats of
royalty; for the kings wished each to have a bishop to himself in his
little territory, since they had to endow the bishopric. How many
regulations still in force date from these times!
The Anglo-Saxons always had an immediate and near relation to the
kingdom of the Franks.
It was with the daughter of a Frankish prince that the first impulse
towards conversion came into a Saxon royal house. By the Anglo-Saxons
again the conversion of inner Germany was carried out, in opposition
to the same Scoto-Irish element which they withstood in Britain. Carl
the Great thought it expedient to inform the Mercian King Offa of the
progress of Christianity among the Saxons in Germany: he looked on him
as his natural ally. Both kingdoms had moreover a common interest as
against the free British populations on their western marches, who
were allied with each other across the sea: decisive campaigns of Carl
the Great and King Egbert of Wessex coincide in point of time, and may
have supported each other.
Similarly, we may suppose that Egbert, who lived a number of years as
an exile at Carl's court, and could not have remained uninfluenced by
his mode of government and improved military tactics, was then also
incited and enabled, after his return, to subdue the little kingdoms
and unite them with Wessex: by the side of the 'Francia' of the
continent he created in the island a united 'Anglia.' But still there
subsisted a yet greater difference. Sprung from the stock of Cerdic,
Egbert belonged to the popular royalty which we find throughout at the
head of the invading Germans; he is, so far, more like the
Merovingians whom Carl's predecessors overthrew, than like Carl
himself; and he was almost entirely destitute of that strong
groundwork of military institutions on which the Carolingians
supported themselves. His rise depended much more on the fact that the
old families in Mercia, Northumbria, and Kent had disappeared, and the
succession in general had become doubtful; after Egbert had conquered
the claimants to the throne in a great and bloody battle, he was
recognised by the Witans of the several kingdoms as their common
prince, and his family as that which in fact it now was,--the leading
one of all. After the example of Pipin's family, whose alliance with
the Papacy was the most important historical event of the epoch and
founded Western Christendom, the descendants of Cerdic also got
themselves anointed by the popes--for the religious movement still had
the predominance over every other. The amalgamation of the tribes and
kingdoms found its expression in the Church, through the prestige and
rank of the Archbishop of Canterbury, almost earlier than it did in
the State; the unity of the Church broke down the antipathies of the
tribes, and prepared the way for that of the kingdoms. In the midst of
this work of construction, so incomplete as yet, but so full of hope,
of these birthpangs of a new life, the very existence of the country
was threatened by the rise of a new Great Power. For so may we well
designate the influence which the Scandinavian North exercised by land
over Eastern Europe, and at the same time over all the Western coasts
by sea.
Only a part of the German peoples had been influenced by the idea of
the Empire or the Church; the inborn heathenism of the rest, irritated
by the losses it had sustained and the dangers that continually
threatened it, roused itself for the most formidable onslaught that
the civilised world has ever had to withstand from the heroic and
barbarous children of Nature.
The mischief they wrought in Britain, from the middle of the ninth
century onwards, is indescribable.
The Scoto-Irish schools, then in their most flourishing state (they
trained John Scotus Erigena, of all the scholars of that time the man
who had the widest intellectual range), fell before the Danish, not
the Anglo-Saxon assaults; an element of intellectual activity which
might have been of the greatest importance was thus lost to the
Western world. But the Northmen persecuted the Romano-English forms as
bitterly as they did the Irish. In the places where those Anglo-Saxon
scholars had been trained, who then enlightened the West, the Northmen
planted the banner which announced utter destruction; with twofold
rapacity they threw themselves on the more remote abbeys which seemed
to derive protection from their inaccessibility, and to guarantee it
by their dignity; in searching for the treasures which they believed
had been placed in them for security, they destroyed the monuments and
means of instruction which were really there; in Medeshamstede, where
there was a rich library, the flames raged for fourteen days. The
half-formed union of the various districts into one kingdom seems to
have crippled rather than strengthened the power of local resistance:
the Danes became masters of Kent and of East-Anglia, of
Northumberland, and even of Mercia; at last Wessex too, after already
suffering many losses, was invaded; from both sides at the same
moment, from the inland and from the coast, the deluge of
robber-hordes poured over its whole extent.
Things had come to such a point that the Anglo-Saxon community seemed
inevitably devoted to the same ruin which had overtaken first the
Britons and then the Romans, they seemed doomed to make way for
another reconstruction. Britain would have become an outpost of the
restored heathenism, which could then have been with difficulty
repulsed from the Eastern and Western Frankish empires, afflicted as
they were by similar attacks, and governed by the discordant and weak
princes who then ruled them. At this moment of peril King Alfred
appeared. It was not merely for his own interests, nor merely for
those of England, but for those of the world, that he fought. He is
rightly called 'the Great;' a title fairly due only to those who have
maintained great universal interests, and not merely those of their
own country.
The distress of the moment, and the deliverance from it, have been
kept in imperishable remembrance by popular sagas and church legends.
It is well worth the trouble to trace out in the authenticated
traditions, brief as they are, the causes that decided the event. We
may state them as follows:--Since the attacks of the Vikings were
especially ruinous, from their occupation of the strong places whence
they could command and plunder the open country, one step in the work
of liberation was taken when Alfred, for the first time, wrested from
them a stronghold which they had seized, deep in the west. Then he,
too, occupied strong positions, and knew how to defend them. With the
bravest and most devoted of his nobles, and of the population that had
not yet submitted, he established a hill-fortress on a height rising
like an island out of the standing waters and marshlands in the still
only slightly cultivated land of Somersetshire; this not only served
him as an asylum, but also as a central point from which he too ranged
through the land far and wide, like the enemy, except that his object
was to guard it, and make it ring once more with the already forgotten
name of the King. Around his banners gathered, with reviving courage,
the population of the neighbouring districts also: the Saxons could
again appear in the open field; from their advancing shield-wall the
disorderly onsets of the Vikings recoiled, the victory was theirs.
Hereupon, moreover, as if the decision between the two religions
depended on the result of the war, the leader of the heathens came
over to Christianity, and took an Anglo-Saxon name. The Danes attached
themselves to the principles and the powers which they had come forth
to destroy.
King Alfred is a marvellous phenomenon: suffering from a disease which
sometimes broke out with violence, and which he never ceased to feel
for a single day of his life, he not merely withstood the extreme of
peril at that moment so big with ruin, but also founded a system of
resistance throughout the kingdom, in which his arms so worked
together by sea and land that each new band of Vikings betook
themselves again to their ships, and those that had already penetrated
into the country, gave way step by step. We remark with interest how,
under Alfred and his children, his son who succeeded him, and his
manlike daughter, the protecting fortresses advance from place to
place, and provide free space for the Anglo-Saxon community. The
culture already existing, the whole future of which had been saved by
Alfred, attained in him its fullest development. How many years had
passed since the hour when an illuminated initial letter gave him his
first taste for a book, before he could master even the elementary
branches of knowledge! then he devoted his whole efforts to instil new
life into the studies that had almost perished, and to give them a
national character. He not merely translated a number of the later
authors of antiquity, whose works had contributed most to the
transmission of scientific culture; in the episodes which he
interweaves in them he shows a desire for knowledge that reaches far
beyond them; but especially we find in them a reflective and
thoughtful mind, solid sense at peace with itself, a fresh way of
viewing the world, a lively power of observation. This King introduced
the German mind with its learning and reflection into the literature
of the world; he stands at the head of the prose-writers and
historians in a German tongue--the people's King of the most primeval
kind, who is also the teacher of his people. We know his laws, in
which extracts from the books of Moses are combined with restored
legal usages of German origin; in him the traditions of antiquity are
interpenetrated by the original tendencies of the German mind. We
completely weaken the impression made on us by this great figure, so
important in his first limited and arduous efforts, by comparing him
with the brilliant names of antiquity. Each man is what he is in his
own place.
Though the Anglo-Saxon monarchy wanted that element of authority which
the kings of other German tribes drew from the Roman government by
transmission or succession, yet it had strengthened itself, like the
others, by union with the Church. Alfred, too, was at Rome in his
boyhood: it stood him in good stead that he had been anointed, and, as
men said, adopted by a Roman pope. In the reconquest of the land,
Church ideas had played an important part. It was impossible to drive
out the invading foes, they could only be held in check; never would
they have submitted to the Anglo-Saxon commonwealth had they not at
the same time been converted to Christianity. Nothing, moreover,
contributed more to this than the effort, which was then the order of
the day in the Christian world, to base the organisation of the Church
on monasticism: from Italy this tendency spread to Germany, from South
France to North, from thence to England, where it produced its
greatest effect. Now the power of conversion is inherent only in
sharply-defined doctrines; and it was precisely this tendency that
penetrated the Northern natures: the sons of the Vikings became the
champions of monachism; to the fury with which the fathers had
destroyed the monasteries succeeded in the sons a zeal to restore
them. And in what good stead this stood the Anglo-Saxon kings! The
kingly power obtained, through the splendour which the union with
religion bestowed on its victorious arms, a reverential recognition by
the old native population as well as by the invaders.
Alfred's grandson had regained Northumbria by a somewhat doubtful
title, and had then maintained his right in a great battle, renowned
in song; his great-grandson, Edgar, in one of his charters thanks the
grace of God which had permitted him to extend his rule further than
his predecessors, over the islands and seas as far as Norway, and over
a great part of Ireland. We are not to look on it as a mere piece of
vanity, when he seeks after new titles for his power, when he calls
himself Basileus and Imperator; the former is the title of the
Eastern, the latter of the Western emperors; he will not yield the
precedence to either the one or the other, though the latter are so
closely related to him by blood. We cannot express the feeling of a
supreme power, independent of men, derived from the grace of God, the
King of kings, more strongly than it was expressed by Edgar under
Dunstan's influence; the ruling motives of life in Church and State
make it conceivable that a monkish hierarch, such as Dunstan, shared,
as it were, the King's power, and shaped the course of the authority
of the state.
It was still the ancestral Anglo-Saxon crown which glittered on
Edgar's head, but, if we may so say, its splendour had at the same
time received a monkish and hierarchic colouring.
NOTES:
[2] The words of some MSS. in Caesar's Commentaries, iv. 25,
'deserite, milites, si vultis, aquilam, atque hostibus prodite,' might
well be taken for the genuine words, originally noted down in his
Ephemerides (journal).
[3] Brettanian mentoi hoi Rômaioi anasôsasthai ouketi eschon, all'
ousa hupo tyrannois ap' autou emene. Procop. de bello Vand. I. No. 2.
p. 318 ed. Bonn. Compare Zosimus, vi. 4. on, we may assume, the better
authority of Olympiodorus.
[4] The simplest form of the Saga occurs in Gildas, with very few
historical ingredients. Nennius enlarges it with Anglo-Saxon
traditions. Beda has combined both with some notices from the real
history. Since the departure of the Romans was rightly fixed about
409, and Gildas said the Britons had rest for forty years, Beda
settled that the Saxons arrived in 449.
[5] Beda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 2. Some have wished to consider the remark,
that Augustine had been then long dead, as a later interpretation, 'ad
tollendam labem caedis Bangorensis;' this, however, is against the
spirit of that age.
[6] 'Omnem orbem, quocunque ecclesia Christi diffusa est per diversas
nationes et linguas uno temporis ordine.' Beda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 14.
CHAPTER II.
TRANSFER OF THE ANGLO-SAXON CROWN TO THE NORMANS AND PLANTAGENETS.
In the families of German national kings we not unfrequently find
among the women a hideous mixture of ambition, revenge, and
bloodthirstiness, which brings kings and kingdoms to ruin. In England
it appears, despite of Christianity and monastic discipline, in its
most atrocious form after the death of Edgar. His eldest son, for some
years his successor, was treacherously murdered by his stepmother (who
wished to advance her own son to the throne), at a visit which he paid
her as he returned from hunting. It was that Edward whose innocence
and leaning towards the Church have gained him the name of Martyr. The
son of the murderess did ascend the throne, but the guilt of blood
seemed to cleave to the crown; he met with the obedience of his
father's times no more. The Anglo-Saxon magnates seized the occasion
which this crime, or the subsequent vacillation of the government
between violence and weakness, offered them, to aim at an independent
position, and to indulge in a personal policy, each man for himself.
At this very moment the Danes renewed their invasions.
Little did Edgar and those around him understand their position, when
they attributed the peace they enjoyed to their own military power, in
the splendid and extensive display of which they took delight. In
reality it was the state of the world at large that brought this peace
about. First of all, it was due to the settlement of the Normans in
North Gaul, under the condition that they should be of one religion
and one realm, and should fulfil the natural duty of keeping off
fresh incursions: the current of Northern invasion thus lost its aim
and direction. But it was of still more decisive effect at the first
that the energetic family which arose in North Germany, and even
assumed the imperial authority, not content with warding off the
Danes, sought them out in their own country instead, and carried the
war against heathenism into the North. The Saxons beyond the sea were
indebted for the peace which they enjoyed chiefly to the great and
splendid deeds of arms of their kindred on the mainland. How much all
depended on this became very clear when Otto II, in the full glow of
great enterprises, met with an unlooked for and early death. Within
the empire two able women and their advisers succeeded in maintaining
peace; but in Denmark, as in other neighbouring countries, the hostile
elements got the upper hand. The Danish king's son, Sven Otto,
abandoned the religion which he regarded as a yoke laid on him by the
German conquerors; he could not destroy the order of things
established in Denmark, but he revived the old sea-king's life, and
threw himself with the old superiority of the Viking arms on the
English coasts.
Ethelred on this attack fell into the greatest distress, mainly
because he was not sure of his great nobles. How often did the
commanders of the fleet desert it at the moment of action, and the
leaders of the inland levies go over to the enemy! Ethelred sought for
safety by an alliance with the Duchy of Normandy, then daily rising to
greater power. Thus supported, he proceeded to unjustifiable outrages
against his domestic as well as his foreign foes. The great nobles
whom he suspected were mercilessly killed or exiled, and their
children blinded. The Danes who remained in the land he caused to be
murdered all on one day.
The consequences of this deed necessarily recoiled upon himself. When
Sven some years after again landed with redoubled enmity, which was to
a certain extent justified, he experienced no effectual resistance
whatever; Ethelred had to fly before him and quit the island. But now
that Sven too, who had been already saluted by many as King, died in
the first enjoyment of his victory, a question arose which extended
far beyond the personal relations and embarrassments of the moment.
The influence always exercised by the Witans of the Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms in determining the succession to the throne remained much the
same when they were all fused into a single kingdom; even among the
descendants of Alfred, the great men designated the sovereign. In the
disturbed state of things in which they now found themselves, the
lawful King having fled, and the other, who had put himself into
actual possession of the supreme authority, being dead, they framed
the largest conception of their right. They formally made conditions
with Ethelred for his return, and he consented to their demands
through his son.[7] Since he, however, did not fulfil his promise--for
how could he have altered his nature?--they held themselves released
from their engagement to maintain this family on the throne. Sven's
son, Canute, had taken his father's place among the Danes; he had been
long ago baptised, he was of a character which commanded confidence,
and possessed at the time overwhelming power. After Ethelred's death
the lay and spiritual chiefs of England decided to abandon the house
of Cerdic for ever, and to recognise Canute as their King. How many
jarls and thanes of Danish origin do we find around the kings under
all the last governments. Edgar was especially blamed for the very
reason that he took them under his protection. But they had been
subjected only by war; no hereditary sentiment of natural loyalty
attached them to the West Saxon royal house. The ecclesiastical
aristocracy was besides determined by religious considerations; to
them these disasters and crimes seemed sufficient proof of the truth
of those prophecies of coming woe which Dunstan was believed to have
uttered. They repaired to Canute at Southampton, and concluded a peace
with him, the conditions of which were that they would abandon the
descendants of Ethelred for ever, and recognise Canute as their King;
he, on the other hand, promised to fulfil the duties of a King truly,
in both spiritual and temporal relations.[8] Yet once more, Ethelred's
eldest son, Edmund Ironsides, who was himself half a Dane by birth,
roused himself to a vigorous resistance: London and a part of the
nobility took his side; he gained through force of arms a settlement
by which, though indeed he lost the best part of the land and the
capital itself, he maintained the crown; he died however, soon after,
and then the whole country recognised Canute as King. The last scion
of the royal house in the land was banished, and all the claims of the
family to the crown again declared void. The Anglo-Saxon magnates
undertook to make a money payment to the Danish host; in return they
received the pledge from the King's hand, and the oath by his soul
taken by his chiefs.[9] It was a treaty between the Anglo-Saxon and
the Danish chiefs, by which the former received the King of the latter
as also their own.
This extremely important event links the centuries together, and
determines the future fortunes of England. The kingly house, whose
right and pre-eminence was connected with the earliest settlements,
which had completed the union of the realm and delivered it from the
worst distress, was at a moment of moral deterioration and disaster
excluded by the spiritual and temporal chiefs, of Anglo-Saxon and
Danish origin. They had first tried to limit it, to bind it by its own
promise; when this led to nothing, they annihilated its right by a
formal resolution of the realm, and procured peace by raising to the
throne another sovereign who had no right by birth. Canute did not owe
the crown to conquest, though his greater power contributed to the
result, but to election, which now appeared as the superior right:
hitherto the Witan had always exercised it within the limits of the
royal family; this time they disregarded that family altogether.
Canute decreed or allowed some bloody acts of violence, in order to
strengthen the power that had fallen to his lot; but afterwards he
administered it with a noble spirit answering to his position. He
became the leading sovereign of the North: men reckoned five or six
kingdoms as subject to him. England was the chief of them all, even
for him; it was in possession of the culture and religion which he
wished should prevail in the rest: the missionaries of the North went
forth from Canterbury. England itself, however, gained a higher
position in the world by its union with a power which ruled as far as
Norway and North America, and carried on commerce with the East by the
Baltic. In Gothland the great emporium of the West, Arabic as well as
Anglo-Danish coins are found; the former were carried from the North
as far as England. Canute favoured the Anglo-Saxon mode of life; he
liked to be designated the 'successor of Edgar;' he confirmed his
legislation; and it was his intention, at least, to rule according to
the laws: as he even submitted himself to the military regulations of
the Huskarls, so he commanded right and law to be administered in
civil matters without respect to his own person.
But a union of such different kingdoms could only be a transitory
phenomenon. Canute himself thought of leaving England again
independent under one of his sons.
With this object he had married Ethelred's widow Emma. For, according
to Anglo-Saxon ideas, the Queen was not merely the King's wife, but
also sovereign of the land, in her own right. It was settled that the
children of this marriage should succeed him in England. Probably
Canute did not wish the inheritance of the crown in his house to
depend merely on the goodwill of the Witan.
After Canute's death we can observe a wavering between the principles
of election and birthright. The magnates again elected, but limited
their choice to the King's house. After the extinction of the
Danish-Norman family, they came back to the English-Norman one; they
called the son of Ethelred and Emma, Edward the Confessor, to the
throne of his fathers, though, it is true, without leaving him much
power. This lay rather in the hands of the Earls Godwin of Kent and
Leofric of Mercia; especially in the former, whose wife was related
to Canute, did the Anglo-Saxon spirit of independence energetically
manifest itself. He was once banished, but returned and recovered all
his offices. When however, Edward too died without issue, the dynastic
question once more came before the English magnates. It might have
seemed most consistent to recall the Aetheling Edgar a member of the
house of Cerdic from exile, and to carry on the previous form of
government under his name. But the thoughts of the English chiefs no
longer turned in that direction. Not very long before a king from the
ranks of the native nobility had ascended the throne of the
Carolingians in the West Frank empire; in the East Frank, or German
empire, men had seen first the mightiest duke, then one of the most
distinguished counts, attain the imperial dignity. Why should it not
be possible for something similar to happen in England also? The very
day on which Edward the Confessor died, Godwin's son, Harold, was
elected by the magnates of the kingdom, and crowned without delay[10]
(Jan. 5, 1066). The event now happened which was only implied in what
occurred at Canute's accession: the house of Cerdic was abandoned, and
the further step taken of raising another native family to its throne.
It was not this time a pressing necessity that brought it about; but
we cannot deny that, if carried through, it opened out an immeasurable
prospect.
For such would have been the case, if the attempt to found a Germanic
Anglo-Saxon kingdom under Harold, and maintain it free from any
preponderating foreign influence had been successful. By recalling
Edgar the influence of Normandy, against which the antipathies of the
nation had been awakened under the last government, would have been
renewed. But just as little were those claims to be recognised which
the Northern kings put forward for the re-establishment of their
supremacy. Even as regards the Papacy, the government began to adopt
an independent line of conduct.
The question now was, whether the Anglo-Saxon nation would be
unanimous and strong enough to maintain such a haughty position on all
sides.
The first attack came from the North; it was all the more dangerous,
from the fact that an ambitious brother of the new King supported it:
only by an extreme effort were these enemies repelled. But, at the
same moment, an attack was threatened from another enemy of infinitely
greater importance--Duke William of Normandy. It was not only this
sovereign, and his land, but a new phase of development in the history
of the world, with which England now entered into conflict.
_The Conquest._
Out of the antagonism of nationalities, of the Empire and the Church,
of the overlord and the great chiefs, in the midst of invasions of
foreign peoples and armies, the local resistance to them and their
occupations of territory, a new world had, as it were, been forming
itself in Southern Europe, and especially in Gaul. Still more
decidedly than in England had the invading Vikings in France attached
themselves to the national element, even in the second generation they
had given up their language; they discovered at the same time a form
which reconciled the membership in the kingdom, and the recognition of
the common faith, with provincial freedom. In France no native power
successfully opposed and checked the advancing Normans, such as that
which the Danes had encountered in England. On the contrary they
exercised the greatest influence over the foundation of a new dynasty.
A system developed itself over the whole realm, in which, both in the
provincial authorities and in the lower degrees of rank, the
possession of land and share in public office, feudalism and freedom,
interpenetrated each other, and made a common-weal which yet
harmonised with all the inclinations that lend charm and colouring to
individual life. The old migratory impulse and spirit of warlike
enterprise set before itself religious aims also, which lent it a
higher sanction; war for the Church, and conquest (which meant for
each man a personal occupation of land) were combined in one. Starting
from Normandy, where great warlike families were formed that found no
occupation at home (for these young populations are wont to multiply
quickest), North French love of war and habits of war transplanted
themselves to Spain and to Italy. How must it have elevated their
spirit of enterprise when in the latter country the Papacy, which had
just thrown off the supremacy of the emperor, and entered on a new
stage in the development of its power, made common cause with their
arms, and a practised Norman warrior, Robert Guiscard, appeared as
Duke of Apulia and Calabria 'by grace of God and of S. Peter and,
under his protection, of Sicily also in time to come'![11] The Pope
gave him lands in fief, which had hitherto belonged to the Greek
Empire, and which the Germans had been unable to conquer; he promised,
in return, to defend the prerogatives of S. Peter. Between the
hierarchy which was striving to perfect its supremacy, and the warlike
chivalry of the 11th century, an alliance was formed like that once
concluded with the leaders of the Frankish host. The ideas were
already stirring from which proceeded the Crusades, the foundation of
the Spanish kingdoms, and the creation of the Latin Empire at
Constantinople. In the princely fiefs of the French Crown, and above
all in Normandy, they seized on men's minds. Chivalrous life and
hierarchic institutions, dialectic and poetry, continual war at home
and ceaseless aspirations abroad, were here fused into a living whole.
In the Germanic countries also this close alliance of hierarchy and
chivalry now sought to win influence, but here it met with a strenuous
resistance. In England, Edward the Confessor had tried to prepare the
way for it: Godwin and his house opposed it. And when the former named
the Norman Robert Archbishop of Canterbury, and the latter drove him
out, the English quarrels became connected with those of Rome;
Stigand, the archbishop put in by Godwin, received his pallium from
Pope Benedict X, who had been elected in the old tumultuous manner
once more by the neighbouring Roman barons, but had to succumb to
Hildebrand's zeal for a regular election by the cardinals, on which
the emancipation of the Papacy depended. It seemed, then, intolerable
at Rome that there should be a primate of the English Church,
connected by his Church position with a phase of the supreme
priesthood now condemned and abolished: it is very intelligible that
this priesthood in its present form took up a hostile position towards
the England of that time. In this, moreover, it found an ally ready to
act in Duke William of Normandy, who wished to be regarded as the born
champion of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty, and as the natural successor to
its rights. Once already his father had collected a fleet to restore
the exiled Aethelings, and was only kept back from an invasion by
unfavourable weather. There had often since been rumours, that Edward
had destined Duke William to be his successor; men asserted that
Harold had previously recognised this right, and that in return
William's daughter, and a part of the land as an independent
possession, had been promised him.[12] In his own position William had
cleared the ground for himself with a strong hand. He had beaten his
feudal lord in the open field, and thus not only recovered a frontier
fortress lost during his minority, but also strengthened the
independence of the duchy. At the same time William had vanquished his
rebellious vassals in arms, banished them, deprived them of their
possessions, and got rid, with the Pope's consent, of an archbishop
who was allied with them. Death freed him from another mighty
opponent, the Duke of Brittany, who threatened him with a great
maritime expedition. It throws a certain light on his policy, to see
how he made himself master of the county of Maine in 1062. On the
ground that Count Heribert, whom he had supported in his quarrel with
Anjou, had become his vassal and made him his heir,[13] he overran
Maine, and put his adherents in possession of the fortresses which
commanded the land. However we may decide as to the details told us
about his relations to Edward and Harold, it seems undeniable that
William had received provisional promises from both--for Harold loved
to side with Edward. He was not the man to put up with their being
broken. The system, however, which through Harold's accession gained
the upper hand in England, was in itself hostile to the Norman one:
and that a king of England like the present might some day become
dangerous to the duke, amidst all the other hostilities which
threatened him, is clear. To these motives was now added the
approbation of the Roman See. The Pope's chief Council deliberated on
the enterprise, above all did the archdeacon of the Church,
Hildebrand, declare himself in its favour. He was reproached--then or
at a later time--with being the author of bloodshed; he declared that
his conscience acquitted him, since he knew well, that the higher
William mounted, the more useful he would be to the Church.[14]
Alexander II now sent the duke the banner of the Church. As a few
years before Robert Guiscard had become duke, so now a Norman duke was
to become king, in the service of the Church. The Normans were still
divided in their views as to the enterprise, but when this news
arrived, all opposition ceased, for in the service of S. Peter and the
Church men believed themselves secure of success; then lay and
spiritual vassals emulously armed ships and men; in the harbour of S.
Valery, which belonged to one of those who had been last gained over,
the Count of Ponthieu, the fleet and the troops gathered together.[15]
The Count of Flanders, the duke's father-in-law, secretly favoured the
enterprise; another of his nearest relations, Count Odo of Champagne,
brought up his troops in person; Count Eustace of Boulogne armed, to
avenge on Godwin's house an affront he had once suffered at Dover; a
number of leading Breton counts and lords attached themselves to
William in opposition to their duke, who cherished wholly different
projects. To the lords and knights of North France were joined many of
lower rank, whose names show that they came from Gascony, Burgundy,
the duchy of France, or the neighbouring districts belonging to the
German Empire. Of their own free will they ranged themselves round
William, to vindicate the right which he claimed to the English crown,
but each man naturally entertained brilliant hopes also for himself.
William is depicted as a man of vast bodily strength, which none could
surpass or weary out, with a strong hardy frame, a cool head, an
expression in his features which exactly intimated the violence with
which he followed up his enemies, destroyed their states, and burnt
their houses. Yet all was not passionate desire in him. He honoured
his mother, he was true to his wife. Never did he undertake a quarrel
without giving fair notice, and certainly never without having well
prepared for it beforehand. He knew how to keep up a warlike spirit in
his vassals: there were seen with him only splendid men and able
leaders; he kept strict discipline. So also he had seized the moment
for his enterprise, at which the political relations of Europe were
favourable to him. The two great realms, which might otherwise have
well interposed, the East Frank (or the Roman-German) as well as the
West Frank, were under kings not yet of age: the guardianship of the
latter lay with the Count of Flanders, who thought he did enough in
not standing openly by his son-in-law, of the former with great
bishops devoted heart and soul to the hierarchic system.[16] Harold,
on the other hand, had no friend or ally, in North or East, in South
or in West. To encounter the combined efforts of a great European
coalition he had only himself and his Anglo-Saxons to rely on. Harold
is depicted as coming forth perfect from the hands of nature, without
blemish from head to foot, personally brave before the enemy, gentle
among his own people, and endowed with natural eloquence. His enemy's
passion for, and knowledge of, war were not in him; the taste of the
Anglo-Saxons was directed more to peaceful enjoyments than to
ceaseless wars. At this moment too they were weakened by great losses
in the last bloody war; many of the most trustworthy and bravest had
fallen, others wavered in their fidelity; Harold had not been able to
put even the coasts in a state of defence; William landed without
resistance, to demand his crown from him. When reminded of his promise
Harold was believed to have answered in the very spirit of Anglo-Saxon
independence, that he had no right to make any such promise without
the consent of the Anglo-Saxon chiefs and people. And not to meet the
invading foe instantly at the sword's point would have seemed to him
disgraceful cowardice. And so William and Harold, the North French
knights and the national war-array of the Anglo-Saxons, encountered at
Hastings. Harold fell at the very beginning of the fight. The Normans,
according to their wont, knew how to separate their enemies by a
pretended flight, and then by a sudden return to surround and destroy
them in isolated bodies. It was the iron-clad, yet rapidly moving
cavalry, which decided the battle.[17]
William expected, now that his rival had fallen, to be recognised by
the Anglo-Saxons as their King. Instead of this the chiefs and the
capital raised Edgar the Aetheling, grandson of Edmund Ironsides, to
the throne: as though William would retire before a scion of the old
West-Saxon house, of which he professed to be the champion. He held
firmly to the transfer made to him by the last king without regard to
any third person, ratified as it was by the Roman See, and marched on
the capital.
Edgar was a boy, and the magnates were at variance as to who should
have the authority to exercise guardianship over him. When William
appeared before the city, and threatened the walls with his
siege-machines, it too lost courage. The embassy which it sent him was
amazed at the grandeur and splendour of his appearance, was convinced
as to the right which King Edward had transferred to him,[18] and
penetrated by the danger which a resistance, in itself hopeless, would
bring on the city. Aldermen and people abandoned Edgar, and recognised
William as King. There is an old story, that the county of Kent, on
capitulating, made good conditions for itself. To the nobles also, who
submitted by degrees, similar terms may have been accorded, but their
position was almost entirely altered. We need notice only this one
point. Their chief right, which they exercised to a perhaps
unauthorised extent, was that of electing the King; they had now
elected twice, but the first election was annulled by defeat in the
open field, the second by increasing superiority in arms; they had to
recognise the Conqueror, who claimed by inheritance, as their King,
whether they would or no. There is something almost symbolic of the
resulting state of things in the story of William's coronation, which
was now celebrated by the tomb of Edward the Confessor at Westminster.
For the first time the voices of the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans were
united to greet him as King, but the discordant outcry of the two
languages seemed a sign of conflict to the troops gathered outside,
and made the warlike fury, so hardly kept under control, boil up again
in them; they set the houses of London on fire. Whilst all hurried
from the church, the ceremony it is said was completed by shuddering
priests in the light of the flames: the new King himself, who at other
times did not know what fear was, trembled.[19]
By this coronation-acclaim, two constituent elements of the world,
which had been fundamentally at conflict with each other, became
indissolubly united.
That against which the Anglo-Saxons had set themselves to guard with
all their strength during the last period, the inroad of the
Norman-French element into their Church and their State, was now
accomplished in fullest measure. William's maxim was, that all who had
taken arms against him and his right had forfeited their property;
those who escaped, and the heirs of those who had fallen, were
deprived alike. In a short time we find William's leading comrades in
the war, as earls of Hereford, Buckingham, Shrewsbury, Cornwall; his
valiant brothers were endowed with hundreds of fiefs; and when the
insurrection which quickly broke out led to new outlawries and new
confiscations, all the counties were filled with French knights. From
Caen came over the blocks of freestone to build castles and towers, by
which they hoped to bridle the towns and the country. It is an
exaggeration to assume a complete transfer of property from the one
people to the other; among the tenants in chief about half the names
are still Anglo-Saxon. At first, those who from any even accidental
cause had not actually met William in arms were left in possession of
their lands, though without hereditary right: later, after they had
conducted themselves quietly for some time, this too was given back to
them. In the next century it excited surprise that so many great
properties should have remained in the hands of the Anglo-Saxons.[20]
It would have been altogether against William's plan, to treat the
Anglo-Saxons as having no rights. He wished to appear as the rightful
successor of the Anglo-Saxon kings: by their laws he would abide, only
adding the legal usages of the Normans to those of the Danes,
Mercians, and West Saxons; and it was not merely through his will, but
also by its higher form, and connexion with the ideas of the century,
that the Norman law gained the upper hand. But however much we may
deduct from the usual exaggerations, this fact remains, that the
change of ownership which took place, like the change in the
constitution and the general state of things, was of enormous extent:
the military and judicial power passed entirely into the hands of the
victors in the war. And in the Church alterations no less
thoroughgoing ensued. Under the authority of Papal legates, the great
office-holders of the English Church, who had been opposed to the
newly arisen hierarchic system, were mercilessly deprived of their
places. The King was afterwards personally on tolerably good terms
with Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, but was not inclined on
his account to oppose the Church. The archbishopric, and with it the
primacy of England, passed to the man in whom the union of the Church
authority and orthodoxy of that which we may call the especially
hierarchic century was most vividly represented, the man who had been
the chief agent in establishing the dogma of Transubstantiation, the
great teacher of Bec, Lanfranc. In most of the bishoprics and abbeys
we find Normans of kindred tendency. It was precisely in the
enterprise against England that the hierarchy concluded its compact
with the hereditary feudal state, which was all the more lasting in
that they were both still in process of formation.
In this way was England attached by the strongest ties to the
Continent, and to the new system of life and ecclesiastico-political
constitution which had then gained the upper hand in Latin Europe.
Under the next three successors of the Conqueror, none of whom enjoyed
a completely legal recognition, it sometimes appeared as though
England would again tear herself away from Normandy: such variances
were not without influence on home affairs: in the general relations
of the country they wrought no change at all. On the contrary, these
were developed on a still larger scale, owing to the complicated
family connexions which so peculiarly characterise that epoch. From
the county of Anjou which, like the dominion of the Capets, had been
formed in the struggle against the invasion of the Normans, a
sovereign arose who had the right to rule the Norman conquests, the
son of the Conqueror's granddaughter, Henry Plantagenet. He had
become, though not without appeal to the sword, which his father
wielded powerfully on his behalf, master of Normandy, and had then
married Eleanor of Poitou, who brought him a great part of South
France: he then succeeded more by fair means than by force in
establishing his right to the throne of England. Henry was the first
to establish in France the power of the great vassals, by which the
crown was long in danger of being overthrown. The Kings of Castille
and Navarre submitted to his arbitration. And under a sovereign whose
grandfather had been King of Jerusalem, and one of the mightiest
rulers of that Western kingdom established in the East, the
tendencies, which had led so far, could not fail to extend themselves
to the utmost in all their spheres of action? The hierarchic and
chivalrous spirit of Continental Europe, which under the Normans had
seized on England, was much strengthened by the accession of the
Plantagenets. It thus came to pass that after the disastrous loss of
Jerusalem, the knights of Anjou and of Guienne, from Brittany (for
Henry had added this province also to his family possessions) and from
Normandy, gathered together in London, and took the Cross in company
with the English. England formed a part of the Plantagenet Empire--if
we may apply this word to so anomalous a state--and contributed to its
extension, even though no interest of its own was involved. But
towards such a result the relations which this alliance established
between England and Southern Europe had long tended. Not seldom was
the military power of the provinces over the sea employed for
enterprises that aimed at the direct advantage of England itself.
Whether and when the German element without this influence would have
become master of the British group of islands none could say. The
English dominion over Ireland in particular is derived from Henry II,
and his alliance at that time with the Papacy; he crossed thither
under the Pope's authorisation: at the Pope's word the native kings
did homage to him as their lord.[21] And the foreign-born Plantagenets
struck living root in England itself. As Henry II's mother was the
daughter of a princess descended from the West-Saxon house, he was
hailed by the natives as their lawfully-descended King; in accordance
with Edward the Confessor's prophecy, that from the severed bough
should spring up a new tree: they traced his descent without scruple
back to Wodan. This King, moreover, has impressed his mark deeply on
English life; to this day justice is administered in England under
forms established by him.
The will of destiny cannot be gainsaid. Just as Germany without its
connexion with Italy, so England without its connexion with France,
would never have been what it is. More than all, the great
commonwealth of the western nations, whose life pervades and
determines the history of each separate state, would never have come
into existence. But on this ground first, amidst continual warfare,
was gradually accomplished the formation of the nationalities.
NOTES:
[7] Se in omnibus eorum voluntati consensurum, consiliis acquieturum.
[8] Florentius Wigorniensis: 'Post cujus (Aethelredi) mortem episcopi
abbates duces et quique nobiliores Angliae, in unum congregati pari
consensu in dominum et regem Canutum sibi elegere--ille juravit, quod
et secundum deum et secundum seculum fidelis eis esse vellet dominus.'
The oath which Ethelred had taken was, however, only 'secundum deum.'
[9] Florentius, 593: 'Accepto pignore de manu sua nuda cum juramentis
a principibus Danorum, fratres et filios Eadmundi omnino despexerunt
eosque esse reges negaverunt.'
[10] In Ingulphus (Savile Script. 511) it is said expressly: per
Archiepiscopum Eboracae, Aedredum (Aldredum). But it is surprising
that the Bayeux Tapestry expressly names Stigand (Lancelot:
Description de Tapisserie de Bayeux, in Thierry, I). Yet Harold could
not possibly have meant, by passing over the Archbishop of Canterbury,
to declare him to be incompetent, since he had been appointed by his
party.
[11] Juramentum fidelitatis Roberti Guiscardi: 1059 in Baronius,
Annales Eccles. ix. 350.
[12] The simplest statement occurs in the Carmen de bello Hastingensi,
p. 352, according to which Edward promised the succession, and sent
ring and sword to the duke by Harold; but as early as in William of
Jumièges we have the tale of Harold's captivity in Ponthieu, and the
promise made him, and the chief outlines of what in Guilielmus
Pictaviensis, and Ordericus Vitalis, lies before us with further
embellishments, and to which the Bayeux Tapestry (itself, too, a kind
of historical memorial of the time) adds some further traits.
[13] Guilielmus Pictaviensis, Gesta Wilhelmi ducis, in Duchesne 189,
already relates this in reference to the English affair.
[14] Gregorii Registrum, vii. 23; Mansi, xx. 306.
[15] William of Jumièges, Hist. vii. 34. 'Ingentem exercitum ex
Normannis et Flandrensibus ac Francis ac Britonibus aggregavit.'
[16] Guilielmus Pictaviensis 197 assures us that help was promised
from Germany in the name of Henry IV.
[17] William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, III. § 245. 'Magis temeritate
et furore praecipitati quam scientia militari Wilhelmo congressi.'
[18] 'Contulit Eguardus quod rex donum sibi regni Monstrat et adfirmat
vosque probasse refert.' So Guido (Carmen de bello Hastingensi, 737)
makes Ansgard on his return speak to the citizens.
[19] Ordericus Vitalis 503. In Guido the ceremony is described with
the greatest calmness, as though it passed undisturbed; but the
conclusion of his work seems wanting.
[20] Dialogus de Scaccario, i. 10. 'Miror singularis excellentiae
principem, in subactam et sibi suspectam Anglorum gentem hac usum
misericordia, ut non solum colonos indempnes servaret, verum ipsis
regni majoribus feudos suos et amplas possessiones relinqueret.' In
Madox, History of the Exchequer, ii. 391. In Domesday Book the memory
of Edward the Confessor is always treated with the greatest respect.
Ellis, Introduction to Domesday Book, i. 303.
[21] 'Ut illius terrae populus te sicut dominum veneretur.' Breve of
Hadrian IV.
CHAPTER III.
THE CROWN IN CONFLICT WITH CHURCH AND NOBLES.
Highly as we may estimate the due appreciation and expression of those
objective ideas, which are bound up with the culture of the human
race, still the spiritual life of man is built up not so much on a
devout and docile receptivity of these ideas as on their free and
subjective recognition, which modifies while it accepts, and
necessarily passes through a phase of conflict and opposition.
In England the authority both of Church and State now came forward
with far more strength than before. The royal power was a continuation
of the sovereignty inherited from Anglo-Saxon times, but, leaning on
its continental resources, and supported by those who had taken part
in the Conquest, it developed itself much more durably. The clergy of
the land were far more closely and systematically bound to the Papacy;
thus it had become more learned and more active. The one sword helped
the other; just at this very time, the King and the Archbishop of
Canterbury were depicted as the two strong steers that drew the plough
of England.
But yet, below all this there existed a powerful element of
opposition. After the new order of things had existed more than eighty
years, among a portion of the Anglo-Saxon population the design was
started of putting a violent end to it, of destroying at one blow all
those foreigners who seemed its representatives, just as the Danes had
all been murdered on one day.
It was an evil thought, and all the more atrocious because manifold
ties had been already gradually formed between the two populations.
How could they ever become fused into one nation if the one was always
plotting the destruction of the other?
It was not merely by alliances of blood and family, but even still
more by great common political and ecclesiastical interests that the
English nationality, which contains both elements, was founded. And,
in truth, the leading impulse towards it was that the conquerors, no
less than the conquered, felt themselves oppressed by the yoke which
the two supreme authorities laid on them, and hence both combined to
oppose them. But centuries elapsed before this could be effected. The
first occasion for it was given when the two authorities quarrelled
with each other, and alternately called on the population to give its
voluntary aid.
For, as the authorities which represent the objective ideas are of
different origin, they have never in our Western Europe remained more
than a short time in complete harmony with each other. Each retains
its natural claim to be supreme, and not to endure the supremacy of
the other. The one has always more before its eyes the unity of the
whole, the other the needs and rights of the several kingdoms and
states. Amidst their antagonism European life has moulded itself and
made progress.
Close as their union was at the time of the Conquest of England, yet
even then their quarrel broke out. Though the Conqueror pledged
himself again to pay a tribute which the Anglo-Saxon kings had
formerly charged themselves with, and which had been long unpaid, yet
this was not sufficient for the Roman See: Gregory VII demanded to be
recognised as feudal lord of England. But this was not what William
understood, when he had allowed the papal banner to wave over the
fleet that brought him to England. It was not from the Pope's
authorisation that he derived his claim to the English crown, as if
this had been merely transferred to him by the Papal See, but from the
Anglo-Saxon kings, as whose heir and legal successor he wished to be
regarded. He answered the Pope that he could enter into no other
relation to him than that in which his predecessors in England had
stood to previous popes.
For the first time the popes had to give up altogether the attempt to
make kings their feudal dependents; they attempted, however, an
almost deeper encroachment into the very heart of the royal power,
when they then formed the plan of severing the spiritual body
corporate, which already possessed the most extensive temporal
privileges, from their feudal obligation to the sovereigns. The
English kings opposed them in this also with resolution and success.
Under the influence of the father of scholasticism, Anselm of
Canterbury, Primate of England, a satisfactory agreement was arranged
long before the Concordat was obtained in Germany. In general there
was little to fear, as long as the Archbishop of Canterbury had a good
understanding with the Crown; and this was the case in the first half
of the 12th century, if not on all points, yet, at least on all
leading questions. Far-reaching differences did not appear until the
higher ecclesiastics embraced the party of the Papacy, which happened
in England through Thomas Becket.
_Henry II and Becket._
It was precisely from him that this would have been least expected. He
had been the King's Chancellor, or if we may avail ourselves of a
somewhat remote equivalent expression, his most trusted cabinet
minister, and had as such, in both home and foreign affairs, rendered
the most valuable services. The introduction of scutage is attributed
to him, and he certainly had a large share in the acquisition of
Brittany. It was through the direct influence of the King that he was
elected archbishop.[22] But from that hour he seemed to have become
another man. As he had hitherto rivalled the courtiers in splendour,
pleasure, and pomp, so would he now by strictness of life equal the
sanctity of the saints; as hitherto to the King, so did he now attach
himself to the interests of the Church. It might, so we may suppose,
be some satisfaction to his self-esteem, that he could now confront
his stern and mighty sovereign as Archbishop 'also by the grace of
God,' for so he designates himself in his letter to the King; or he
might feel himself bound to recover the possessions of his Church,
which had been wrested from it by the Crown or the high nobility. But,
as spiritually-minded men are moved more by universal ideas than by
special interests, so for Becket the determining impulse without doubt
lay above all in the sympathy which he devoted to the hierarchic
movement in general.
Those were the times in which the attempt of the Emperor Frederic I to
call a council, and in it to decide on a contested papal election, had
created general excitement among the peoples and churches of Southern
Europe, which would only consent to be led by a pope independent of
the empire. Driven from Italy, Alexander III, the Pope rejected by the
Emperor, found a cordial reception in France; and here he now
collected on his side a papal council in opposition to the imperial
one, in which the cardinals, whose election the Emperor was trying to
annul, and the bishops of Spain and South Italy, and those of the
collective Gaulish dioceses (more than a hundred in number), and the
English bishops also, gathered around him, and laid the Pope elected
by the Emperor under the anathema. It was inevitable that the idea of
the Church, as independent of the temporal power, should here find its
strongest expression. Some canons were passed which prohibited the
usurpation of ecclesiastical property by the laity, and made it a
crime in the bishops to allow it.[23]
Thomas Becket was welcomed in this council with a seductive kindness;
but besides this, what is harder than to set oneself against the
common feeling of one's own order, when moderation already appears to
be apostasy? He returned to England filled with the ideas of
hierarchic independence; in preparing to carry it through, he
necessarily brought on the conflict which had hitherto been avoided.
The Plantagenet King, whose whole heart was in the work of securing
the obedience of the manifold provinces that had fallen to his lot;
who hastened ceaselessly from one to the other (when people thought
him far away in South France, he had already recrossed the sea to
England), ever occupied in extending his inherited power by
institutions of a legal and administrative nature, was not inclined to
give way to the Church in this attempt. He would neither make the
election of the higher clergy free, nor allow their excommunication to
be valid without State control; he not only maintained the right of
the lay courts to try ecclesiastics for heinous offences, which else
often remained unpunished; but, even in the sphere of spiritual
jurisdiction, he claimed to hear appeals in the last instance without
regard to the Pope. In all this the lay and spiritual nobility agreed
with him; in a Council at Clarendon they framed 'constitutions,' in
which they declared these rules to be the law of the realm, as it had
always been observed, and ought to be observed henceforth.[24]
Becket did not possess the inflexible obstinacy which distinguishes
most of the champions of the hierarchy. As the accordant voice of
Europe moved him to take up the hierarchic principles, so now the
accordant voice of his country's rulers made an impression on him: he
listened to the ecclesiastics who entreated him not to draw the King's
displeasure on them, and to the laymen, who prayed him not to bring on
them the necessity of executing it on the ecclesiastics: he virtually
accepted the Constitutions of Clarendon. But then again he could not
prevail on himself to observe them. Only when his vacillation
endangered him personally, so that he could expect nothing else to
follow but a condemnation by a new assembly of the royal court, did he
come to a decision. Then he took the hierarchic side resolutely; in
contradiction to the Constitutions, he appealed to the Pope. It is a
remarkable day in English history, that 14th October 1164, on which
Thomas Becket, after reading mass, appeared before the court without
his archiepiscopal dress, but cross in hand. He forbade the earl, who
wished to announce the judgment to him, to speak, since no layman had
power to sit in judgment on his spiritual father;[25] he again put
himself under the protection of God and the Roman Church, and then
passed from the court, no man venturing to lay hands on him, still
armed with his cross, to a church close by, from whence he escaped to
the Continent. By this he brought into England the war of the two
powers, which had already burst into flame in Italy and Germany. The
archbishop and primate rejected the supreme judicial authority of the
Curia Regis; only in the chief pontiff at Rome did he recognise his
rightful judge: by undertaking to bring into full view the complete
independence of the spiritual principle on this ground also, he broke
down that unity of authority, which had, been hitherto maintained in
the English realm, and entered into open war with his King.
Henry II was, like most of the sovereigns of that age, above all
things a warrior; you could see by his stride that he spent his days
on horseback; and he was an indefatigable hunter. But yet he found
time besides for study; he took pleasure in solving, in the company of
scholars, the difficulties of the theologico-philosophical problems
which then largely occupied men's minds; there is no doubt that he
also fully understood these politico-ecclesiastical questions. He was
by no means a good husband, rather the contrary, but, in other things,
he could control himself; he was moderate in eating and drinking.
Success did not make him overweening, but all the more prudent:[26]
ill-success found him resolute; yet it was remarked that he was more
severe in success, milder in adversity. If contradicted, he showed all
the excitability of the Southern French nature; he passed from
promises to threats, from flatteries to outbursts of wrath, until he
met with compliance. His administration at home witnesses to a noble
conception of his mission and to a practical understanding; from his
lion-like visage shone forth a pair of quiet eyes, but how suddenly
did they flame up with wild fire, if the passion was roused that
slumbered in the depths of his soul! It was the passion of unlimited
power; an ambition for which, as he once said, the world appeared to
be too small. He never forgave an opponent; he never reconciled
himself with an enemy or took him again into favour.
He would of himself have been much inclined to abandon Alexander III,
and attach himself to the Pope set up by the Emperor: his ambassadors
took part in a German diet at which the most extreme steps were
approved of. But Henry was not sufficiently master of his clergy nor,
above all, of his people for this; the solemn curse of Thomas Becket
wrought on men from far away. Was there really any foundation for what
men then said, that the King thought it better that his foe should be
in the country rather than out of it? An apparent reconciliation was
brought about, which, however, left the main questions undecided, each
side only consenting generally to a peace with the other. Becket did
not allow himself to be hindered by it, on his return to England, from
excommunicating leading ecclesiastics who had supported the King's
party. But at this Henry's deep-seated wrath awoke. Beset by the
exiles with cries for protection, he let the complaint escape him in
the presence of his knights, that among so many to whom he had shown
favour there was not one who had courage enough to avenge the insults
offered to him.[27] As opposed to the Church sympathies which through
the clergy wrought on all people, the temporal state was mainly kept
together by the reciprocal relations of the feudal lord and sovereign
to his vassals and knights, and of them to him: to spiritual reverence
was opposed personal devotion. But these feelings, too, as they have
their justification, so they have their moral limitations; they are as
capable of exaggeration and excess as all others. Enflamed by the
King's words which seemed to touch the honour of knighthood, four of
his knights hastened to Canterbury, and sought out the man, who dared
to bid the King defiance in his own kingdom; as Becket refused to
recall the excommunication, they murdered him horribly in the
cathedral. When required to obey the King, Becket was wont to reserve
the rights of the Church and the priesthood; for this reservation he
died.
Henry II by calling forth, intentionally or not, this brutal act of
violence in the ecclesiastical strife, drew on himself the catastrophe
of his life.
By Becket's murder the ideas of Church independence gained what was
yet wanting to them, a martyr: his death was more advantageous to them
than his life could ever have been. The belief that the victim wrought
miracles, which were ascribed to him in increasing measure, at first
slight, then more and more surprising ones, viz. cures of incurable
diseases,--who does not know the resistless nature of this illusion,
bound up as it is with the nearest needs of man in every form?--made
him the idol of England. Henry II had to live to see the man who had
refused him the old accustomed obedience, reverenced among his people
with almost divine honours as one of the greatest saints that had ever
lived. The great Hohenstaufen in the unsuccessful struggle with the
Papacy was at last brought to declare that all he had hitherto done
rested on an error; and in like manner, but one far more humiliating
and painful, Henry II had to do penance, and receive the discipline of
the scourge, at the tomb of the man who had been murdered by his loyal
subjects. On a hasty glance it seems as though his Constitutions were
established, but a more accurate inquiry shows that the articles which
displeased the Pope were left out. The hierarchic ideas gained the day
in England also.
It was precisely the Church quarrel that fed the discords which broke
out in the King's own house. His eldest son found a pretence for his
revolt, and essentially promoted it, by alleging that the murderers of
the glorious martyr were unpunished; he on his side promised the
clergy to make good all existing injuries, since what belonged to the
Church should not serve man's ostentation. The example of the elder
wrought on the younger sons too, who, to withstand their father,
recognised the supremacy of the King of France. Henry's last years
were filled with depression, and even with despair; when dying he was
believed to have bequeathed his curse to his children. In the
cloisters his death was ascribed to the intercession and merits of S.
Thomas.
For with the acceptance of the hierarchic ideas the prestige of their
martyr grew day by day. In the crusade of 1189 men saw him appear in
dreams, and declare that he was appointed to protect the fleet, to
calm the storms.
It was under these auspices that the chivalry of the Plantagenet realm
took part in the Third Crusade: King Richard (in whom the ideas of
Church and Chivalry attained their highest splendour) at their head
gave back to the already lost kingdom of Jerusalem, in despite of a
very powerful foe, a certain amount of stability: as he served the
hierarchic views with all his power, there was no question under him
as to any dispute between Church and State. But this power itself
could not be increased owing to his absence. Whilst he fought for the
Church far away, elements of resistance were stirring in his realm
which had been there long ago, and soon after his death came to the
most violent outbreak.
_John Lackland and Magna Charta._
Despite all the community of interests between the sovereigns of the
Conquest and their vassals, grounds of hostility between them had
never been altogether wanting. The Conqueror's sons had to make
concessions to the great lords, because their succession was not
secure; they needed a voluntary recognition, the price of which
consisted in a relaxation of the harsh laws with which the monarchy
had at first fettered every department of life. But when the great
nobles had managed, or decided, contests for the throne, Were they
likely to feel bound unconditionally to obey the man whom they had
raised? Besides Henry II in his ecclesiastical quarrel needed the
consent of his vassals; his court-Assemblies were no longer confined
to proclamations of ordinances from the one side only; consultations
were held, leading to decisions that concerned them all.
But what is now surprising is the fact, that even the associates in
the Conquest, and much more their descendants, claimed the rights
which the Anglo-Saxon magnates had once possessed. They, too, appealed
incessantly to the _Laga_, the laws of Edward the Confessor, by which
was meant the collection of old legal customs, the observation of
which had been promised from the first. Following the precedent of
their kings, the families that had risen through the Conquest regarded
themselves as the heirs of the fallen Anglo-Saxon chiefs, into whose
place they had stepped. The rights of the old Witan and of the vassals
of the new feudal state became fused together.
We must now lay greater weight than is commonly done on the incidents
that occurred during King Richard's absence. He had entrusted the
administration of the realm to a man of low origin, William, bishop of
Ely, who carried it on with great energy, and not without the pomp and
splendour, which grace authority, but arouse jealousy. Hence lay and
spiritual chiefs combined against him: with Earl John, the brother of
the absent King, at their head, they banished the hated bishop by the
strong hand, and of their own authority set another in his place. The
city of London, which had been already allowed the election of its own
magistrates by Henry II, had then formed a so-called _Communia_ after
the pattern of the Flemish and North French towns; bishops, earls, and
barons, swore to support the city in it.[28]
These first attempts at an opposition by the estates obtained fresh
weight when on Richard's death a contest again arose about the
succession. Earl John claimed it for himself, but Arthur, an elder
brother's son, seemed to have a better right, and had been moreover
recognised at once in the South French provinces. The English nobles
fortified their castles, and for some time assumed an almost
threatening position; they only acknowledged John on the assurance
that each and all should have their rights.[29] John's possession of
the crown was therefore derived not merely from right of inheritance,
but also from their election.
A strong territorial confederacy had thus gradually grown up,
confronting the royal power with a claim to independent rights; events
now happened that roused it into full life.
King John incurred the suspicion of having murdered Arthur, who had
fallen into his hands, to rid himself of his claims; he was accused of
it by the peers of France, and pronounced guilty; on which the
Plantagenet provinces which were fiefs of the French crown went over
to the King of France at the first attack. The English nobility would
at least not fight for a sovereign on whom such a heinous suspicion
lay: on another pretence it abandoned him.
But then broke out a new quarrel with the Church. The most powerful
pontiff that ever sat in the Roman See, Innocent III, thought good to
decide a disputed election at Canterbury by passing over both
candidates, including the King's, and caused the election of, or
rather himself named, one of his friends from the great school at
Paris, Stephen Langton. As King John did not acknowledge him, Innocent
laid England under an Interdict.
Alike careless and cruel, naturally hasty and untrustworthy, of
doubtful birthright, and now rejected by the Church, John must have
rather expected resistance than support from the great men of the
realm. He tried to assure himself of those he suspected by taking
hostages from their families; he confiscated the property of the
ecclesiastics who complied with the Pope's orders, and took it under
his own management; he employed every means which the still unlimited
extent of the supreme authority allowed, to obtain money and men;
powerfully and successfully he used the sword. But in the long run he
could not maintain himself by these means. When a revolt broke out in
Wales at the open instigation of the Pope, and the King's vassals were
summoned to put it down, even among them a general discontent was
perceptible; John had reason to dread that if he came near the enemy
with such an army he might be delivered into their hands or killed: he
did not venture to carry out the campaign. And meanwhile he saw
himself threatened from abroad also. King Philip Augustus of France
armed, to attack his old opponent at home (whom he had already driven
from in those provinces over which he himself was feudal sovereign),
and to carry out the Pope's excommunication against him. He boasted,
probably with good grounds, of having the English barons' letters and
seals, promising that they would join him. He would have restored all
the fugitives and exiles; the Church element would have raised itself
all the more strongly, in proportion to its previous depression; a
general revolt would have accompanied his attack, the English
government according to all appearance would have been lost.
King John knew this well: to avoid immediate ruin he seized on a means
of escape which was completely unexpected, but quite decisive--he gave
over his kingdom in vassalage to the Pope.
What William I had so expressly rejected was now accepted in a moment
of extreme pressure, from which such a step was the only means of
escape. The moment the Pope was recognised as feudal lord of England,
not only must his hostility cease, but he would be bound to take the
realm under his protection. He now forbade the King of France, whom he
had before urged on to its conquest, to carry out the invasion, which
was already prepared.
It appears as if the barons had originally agreed with the King's
proceeding, although they did not entirely approve its form. They
maintained that they had risen up for the Church's rights,[30] and saw
in the Pope a natural ally. They thought to gain their own purpose all
the more surely now that Stephen Langton received the see of
Canterbury, a man who, while he represented the Papal authority, at the
same time zealously made their interests his own. At the very moment
when the archbishop absolved the King from the excommunication, he made
him swear that he would restore the good laws, especially those of King
Edward, and would do all according to the legal decisions of his
courts. It may be regarded as the first time that a Norman-Plantagenet
king's administration was acted on by an obligatory engagement, when
King John, on the point of taking the field against some barons whom he
regarded as rebels, was hindered by the archbishop who reminded him
that he would thus be breaking his last oath, which bound him to take
judicial proceedings. The tradition that a forgotten charter of Henry I
was produced by the archbishop (who was certainly, as his writings
show, a scholar of research), and recognised as a legal document which
gave them a firm footing, may admit of some doubt; there is no doubt
that it was Stephen Langton who gathered around him the great nobles
and bound them by a mutual engagement, to defend, even at the risk of
life, the old liberties and rights which they derived from Anglo-Saxon
times.
It was, in fact, of considerable importance that the primate, on whose
co-operation with the King the Norman state originally rested, united
himself in this matter as closely as possible with the nobles; among
all alike, without regard to their origin, whether from France or from
England, had arisen the wish to limit the crown, as it had been
limited in the Anglo-Saxon period.
Here, however, they had to discover that the Pope was minded to
protect the King, his vassal, not only against attacks from abroad,
but also against movements at home. The engagements which the barons
had formed, when he released them from their oath of fidelity to the
King, he now declared to be invalid and void. The legate in England
reported unfavourably on their proceedings, and it was seen that he
was intimately allied with the King. The war was still raging on the
continent, and the King had been again defeated, at Bouvines, July 27,
1214; he had returned disheartened, but not without bodies of
mercenaries, both horse and foot, which excited anxiety in the allied
nobles. This feeling was strengthened by the fact that, after the
death of a chancellor connected with them by family, and on good terms
with them, he raised a foreigner, Peter des Roches, to that dignity,
and it was believed that this foreigner would lend a hand to any
attempt at restoring the previous state of things. Acts of violence of
the old sort, and the King's lusts, which brought dishonour into their
families, added to their indignation. In short, the barons, far from
breaking up their alliance, confirmed it with new oaths. While they
pressed the King to accept the demands which they laid before him,
they sent one of the chief of their number, Eustace de Vescy, to Rome,
to win the Pope to their cause, by reminding him of the gratitude due
to them for their services in the cause of the Church. As lord of
England, for they did not hesitate to designate him as such, he might
admonish King John, and, if necessary, force him to restore unimpaired
the old rights guaranteed them by the charters of earlier Kings.[31]
But not so did Innocent understand his right of supreme lordship in
England; he did not side with those who had helped to win the victory
for him over the King, but with the King himself, to whose sudden
decision he owed its fruits--the acknowledgment of his feudal
superiority. He blamed the archbishop for concealing the movements of
the barons from him, and for having, perhaps, even encouraged them,
though knowing their pernicious nature: with what view was he stirring
questions of which no mention had been made either under the King's
father or brother? He censured the barons for refusing the scutage,
which had been paid from old times, and for their threat of proceeding
sword in hand. He repeated his command to them to break up their
confederacy, under threat of excommunication.
As one step lower the primate and nobles, so in the highest sphere
Innocent and John were in alliance. The Papacy, then in possession of
supremacy over the world, made common cause with royalty. Would not
the nobles, some from reverence for the supreme Pontiff's authority,
others from a sense of religious obligation, yield to this alliance?
Such was not their intention.[32]
The King proffered the barons an arbitration, the umpire to be the
Pope, or else an absolute reference of the whole matter to him, who
then by his apostolic power could settle what was right and lawful.
They could not possibly accept either the one or the other, after the
known declarations of the Pope. As they persevered in their hostile
attitude, the King called on the archbishop to carry out the
instructions of a Papal brief, and pronounce the barons
excommunicated. Stephen Langton answered that he knew better what was
the true intention of the holy father. The Pope's name this time
remained quite powerless. Rather it was preached in London that the
highest spiritual power should not encroach on temporal affairs;
Peter, in the significant phrase of the time, could not be Constantine
as well.[33] Only among the lower citizens was there a party
favourable to the King, but they were put down at a blow by the great
barons and the rich citizens. The capital threw its whole weight on
the side of the barons. They rose in arms and formally renounced their
allegiance to the King; they proclaimed war against him under the name
of 'the army of God.' Thus confronted by the whole kingdom, in which
there appeared to be only one opinion, the King had no means of
resistance remaining, no choice left.
He came down--15th June, 1215--from Windsor to the meadow at
Runnymede, where the barons lay encamped, and signed the articles laid
before him, happy enough in getting some of them softened. The Great
Charter came into being, truly the 'Magna Charta,' which throws not
merely all earlier, but also the later charters into the shade.
It is a document which, more than any other, links together the
different epochs of English history. With a renewal of the earliest
maxims of German personal freedom it combines a settlement of the
rights of the feudal Estates: on this twofold basis has the proud
edifice of the English constitution been erected. Before all things
the lay nobles sought to secure themselves against the misuse of the
King's authority in his feudal capacity, and as bound up with the
supreme jurisdiction; but the rights of the Church and of the towns
were also guaranteed. It was especially by forced collections of
extraordinary aids that King John had harassed his Estates: since they
could no longer put up with this, and yet the crown could not dispense
with extraordinary resources, a solution was found by requiring that
such aids should not be levied except with the consent of the Great
Council, which consisted of the lords spiritual and temporal. They
tried to set limits to the arbitrary imprisonments that had been
hitherto the order of the day, by definite reference to the law of the
land and the verdict of sworn men. But these are just the weightiest
points on which personal freedom and security of property rest; and
how to combine them with a strong government forms the leading problem
for all national constitutions.
Two other points in this document deserve notice. In other countries
also at this epoch emperors and kings made very comprehensive
concessions to the several Estates: the distinctive point in the case
of England is, that they were not made to each Estate separately, but
to all at the same time. While elsewhere each Estate was caring for
itself, here a common interest of all grew up, which bound them
together for ever. Further, the Charter was introduced in conscious
opposition to the supreme spiritual power also; the principles which
lay at the very root of popular freedom breathed an anti-Romish
spirit.
Yet it was far from possible to regard them as being fully
established. There were also conditions contained in the Charter, by
which the legal and indispensable powers of the King's government were
impaired: the barons even formed a controlling power as against the
King. It could not be expected that King John, or any of his
successors, would let this pass quietly. And besides, was not the Pope
able to do away with the obligation of which he disapproved? We still
possess the first draft of the Charter, which presents considerable
variations from the document in its final form, among others the
following. According to the draft the King was to give an assurance
that he would never obtain from the Pope a revocation of the
arrangements agreed on; the archbishop, the bishops, and the Papal
plenipotentiary, Master Pandulph, were to guarantee this assurance. We
see to what quarter the anxieties of the nobles pointed, how they
wished above all to obtain security against the influences of the
Papal See. Yet this they were not able to obtain. There was no mention
in the document either of the bishops or of Master Pandulph; the King
promised in general, not to obtain such a revocation from any one;
they avoided naming the Pope.[34]
In reality it made no difference, whatever might be promised or done
in this respect. Innocent III was not the man to accept quietly what
had taken place against his declared will, or to yield to accomplished
facts. On the authority of the words 'I have set thee over the nations
and over the kingdoms,' which seemed to him a sufficient basis for his
Paramount Right, he gave sentence rejecting the whole contents of the
Charter; he suspended Stephen Langton, excommunicated the barons and
the citizens of London, as the true authors of this perverse act, and
forbade the King under pain of excommunication to observe the Charter
which he had put forth.
And even without this King John had already armed, to annul by force
of arms all that he had promised. A war broke out which took a turn
especially dangerous to the kingdom, because the barons called the
heir of France to the English throne and did him homage. So little
were the feelings of nationality yet developed, that the barons fought
out the war against their King, supported by the presence and military
Power of a foreign prince. For the interests of the English crown it
was perhaps an advantage that King John died in the midst of the
troubles, and his rights passed to his son Henry, a child to whom his
father's iniquity could not be imputed.[35] In his name a royalist
party was formed by the joint action of Pembroke, the Marshal of the
kingdom and the Papal Legate, which at last won such advantages in the
field, that the French prince was induced to surrender his claim,
which he himself hardly held to be a good one--the English were
designated as traitors by his retinue,--and give back to the barons
the homage they had pledged him. But he did so only on the condition
that not merely their possessions, but also the lawful customs and
liberties of the realm should be secured to them.[36] At a meeting
between Henry III and the French prince at Merton in Surrey, it was
agreed to give Magna Charta a form, in which it was deemed compatible
with the monarchy. In this shape the article on personal freedom
occurs; on the other hand everything is left out that could imply a
power of control to be exercised against the King; the need of a grant
before levying scutage is also no longer mentioned. The barons
abandoned for the time their chief claims.
It is, properly speaking, this charter which was renewed in the ninth
year of Henry III as Magna Charta, and was afterwards repeatedly
confirmed. As we see, it did not include the right of approving taxes
by a vote.
Whether men's union in a State in general depends on an original
contract, is a question for political theorists, and to them we leave
its solution. On the other hand, however, it might well be maintained
that the English constitution, as it gradually shaped itself, assumed
the character of a contract. So much is already involved in the first
promises which William the Conqueror made at his entry into London and
in his agreement with the partisans of Harold. The same is true of the
assurances given by his sons, especially the second one: they were the
price of a very definite equivalent. More than any that had gone
before however does Magna Charta bear this character. The barons put
forward their demands: King John negociates about them, and at last
sees himself forced to accept them. It is true that he soon takes
arms to free himself from the obligation he has undertaken. It comes
to a struggle, in which, however, neither side decidedly gains the
upper hand, and they agree to a compromise. It is true the barons did
not expressly stipulate for the new charter when they submitted to
John's son (for with John himself they could certainly have never been
reconciled), but yet it is undeniable that without it their submission
would never have taken place, nor would peace have been concluded.
As, however, is generally the case, the agreement had in it the germs
of a further quarrel. The one side did not forget what it had lost,
the other what it had aimed at and failed to attain. Magna Charta does
not contain a final settlement, by which the sovereign's claims to
obedience were reconciled with the security of the vassals; it is less
a contract that has attained to full validity, than the outline of a
contract, to fill up which would yet require the struggles of
centuries.
NOTES:
[22] He says himself later, 'terror publicae potestatis me intrusit,'
in Gervasius, 497.
[23] Canones Concilii Turonensis, Article III, 'ut laici ecclesiastica
non usurpent;' and Article I of those previously omitted in Mansi,
XXI. 1178 seq.
[24] Concilium Clarendoniae, 8 Cal. Febr. MCLXIV, Article VIII, de
appellationibus. 'Si archiepiscopus defuerit in justitia exhibenda, ad
dominum regem perveniendum est postremo; ita quod non debeat ultra
procedi absque assensu domini regis.' Wilkins, i. 435.
[25] Rogeri de Hoveden Annales ed. Savile, 283. 6. 'Prohibeo vobis ex
parte omnipotentis dei et sub anathemate, ne faciatis hodie de me
judicium, quia appellavi ad praesentiam domini papae.' None, however,
of the accounts we have can be looked on as quite accurate.
[26] 'Ambigua fata formidans.' Knyghton de eventibus Angliae, 2391.
[27] Gervasius 1414 'se ignobiles et ignavos homines nutrivisse,
quorum nec unus tot sibi illatas injurias voluerit vindicare.'
[28] 'Episcopi comites et barones regni--juraverunt quod ipsi eam
communiam et dignitatem civitatis Londinensis custodirent.'
[29] Hoveden, p. 450, 'quod redderet unicuique illorum ius suum, si
ipsi illi fidem servaverint et pacem.'
[30] 'Quod ipsi audacter pro libertate ecclesiae ad mandatum suum se
opposuerint,--honores quos ei (Papae) et romanae ecclesiae
exhibuistis, id per eos coactus fecistis.'--Mauclerc, literae ad
legem, in Rymer, Foedera, i.
[31] Mauclerc, literae de negotio Baronum, in Rymer, Foedera, i. 185:
'Magnates Angliae--instanter domino Papae supplicant, quod cum ipse
sit dominus Angliae vos--compellat, antiquas libertates suas--eis
illaesas conservare.'
[32] Literae Johannis regis, quibus quae sit baronum contumacia
narrat. Apud Odiham, 29 die Maii.
[33] In Matthew Paris: 'Quod non pertinet ad papam ordinatio rerum
laicarum.'
[34] Articuli magnae cartae libertatum, § 49. Magna carta regis
Johannis. In Blackstone, the Great Charter, 9, 23.
[35] Matthew Paris. 'Nobiles universi et castellani ei multo facilius
adhaeserunt, quia propria patris iniquitas filio non debuit imputari.'
[36] Forma pacis inter Henricum et Ludovicum, in Rymer, i. 221.
'Coadiutores sui habeant terras suas--et rectas consuetudines et
libertates regni Angliae.'
CHAPTER IV.
FOUNDATION OF THE PARLIAMENTARY CONSTITUTION.
There is a very accurate correspondence in this epoch also between the
general history of the Western world and events in England: these last
form but a part of the great victory of the hierarchy and its advance
in power, which marks the first half of the 13th century. By combining
with the vassals the Popes had overcome the monarchy, and had then in
turn overcome the vassals by combining with the monarchy and its
endangered rights. It must not be regarded as a mere title, an empty
word, if the Pope was acknowledged to be feudal Lord of England: his
legates, Gualo, Pandulph, Otho, and with them some native prelates,
devoted to him (above all that Peter des Roches, who, by his conduct
when Bishop of Winchester, through the mistrust awakened, incurred
almost the chief responsibility of the earlier troubles), spoke the
decisive word in the affairs of the kingdom and crushed their
opponents. It was reported that Innocent IV was heard to say, 'Is not
the King of England my vassal, my servant? At my nod he will imprison
and punish.'[37] Under this influence the best benefices in the
kingdom were given away without regard to the freedom of election or
the rights of patrons, and in fact mostly to foreigners. The Pope's
exchequer drew its richest revenues from England; there was no end to
the exactions of its subordinate agents, Master Martin, Master Marin,
Peter Rubeo, and all the rest of them. Even the King surrounded
himself with foreigners. To his own relations and to the relations of
his Provençal wife fell the most profitable places, and the advantages
arising from his paramount feudal rights; they too exercised much
influence on public affairs, and that in the interests of the Papal
power, with which they were allied. Riotous movements occasionally
took place against this system, but they were suppressed: men suffered
in silence as long as it was only the exercise of rights once
acknowledged. But now it happened that the Popes in their war with the
last of the Hohenstaufen, whom they had resolved to destroy, proposed
to employ the resources of England and in a very different manner than
before. They awoke Henry III's dynastic ambition by promoting the
elevation of his brother to be King of the Romans, and destining his
younger son Edmund for the crown of Naples and Sicily. King Henry
pledged himself in return to the heaviest money-payments. It began to
appear as if England were no longer a free kingdom, using its
resources for its own objects: the land and all its riches was at the
service of the Pope at Rome; the King was little more than a tool of
the hierarchy.
It was at this crisis that the Parliaments of England, if they did not
actually begin, yet first attained to a definite form and efficiency.
The opposition of the country to the ecclesiastico-temporal government
became most conspicuous in the year 1257, when Henry, happy beyond
measure in his son's being raised to royal rank by the Apostolic See,
presented his son to the Great Council of the nation, already wearing
the national costume of Naples, and named the sum, to the payment of
which he had pledged himself in return. The Estates at once refused
their consent to his accepting the crown, which they considered could
not be maintained owing to the untrustworthiness of the Italians, and
of the Romish See itself, and the distance of the country; the
money-pledge excited loud displeasure. Since they were required to
redeem it, they reasonably enough gave it to be understood that they
ought to have been consulted first. It was precisely the alliance of
the Pope and the King that they had long felt most bitterly; they said
truly, England would by such a joint action be as it were ground to
dust between two millstones. As, however, despite all remonstrances,
the demands were persevered with,--for the King had taken on himself
the debts incurred by Pope Alexander IV in the Neapolitan war, and the
Pope had already referred to England the bankers entrusted with the
payments,--a storm of opposition broke out, which led to what was
equivalent to an overthrow of the government. The King had to consent
to the appointment of a committee for reforming the realm, to be named
in equal proportions by himself and by the barons; from this, however,
was selected a council of fifteen members, in which the King's
opponents had a decisive majority. They put forth Statutes, at Oxford,
which virtually stripped the King of his power; he had to swear to
them with a lighted taper in his hand. The Pope without hesitation at
once condemned these ordinances; King Louis IX of France also, who was
called in as arbiter, decided against them: and some moderate men drew
back from them: but among the rest the zeal with which they held to
them was thus only inflamed to greater violence. They had the King in
their power, and felt themselves strong enough to impose their will on
him as law.
Without doubt they had the opinion of the country on their side. For
the first time since the Conquest the insular spirit of England, which
was now shared even by the conquerors themselves, manifested itself in
a natural opposition to all foreign influence. The King's
half-brothers with their numerous dependents were driven out without
mercy, their castles occupied, their places given to the foremost
Englishmen. The Papal legate Guido, one of the most distinguished
members of the Curia, who himself became Pope at a later time, was
forbidden to enter England. Most foreigners, it mattered not of what
station or nationality, were forced to quit the realm: it went hard
with those who could not speak English. The leader of the barons,
Simon de Montfort, was solemnly declared Protector of the kingdom and
people; he had in particular the lower clergy, the natural leaders of
the masses, on his side. When he was put under the ban of the Church
his followers retorted by assuming the badge of the cross, since his
cause appeared to them just and holy.[38]
At this very juncture it was that the attempt was made to form a
Parliamentary Assembly corresponding to the meaning of that word.
The Statutes or Provisions of Oxford contain the first attempt to
effect this, by enacting that thrice every year the newly formed royal
Council should meet together with twelve men elected by the Commonalty
of England, and consult on the affairs of the kingdom.[39] There is no
doubt that these twelve belonged to the nobles and were to represent
them: the decisive point lies in the fact that it was not a number of
nobles summoned by the King, but a committee of the Estates chosen by
themselves that was placed by the side of the Council. The Council and
the twelve persons elected formed for some years an association that
united the executive and legislative powers.
But this continued only as long as the King acquiesced in it. When he
had the courage to resist, it is true that in the first encounter
which ensued, he was himself taken prisoner: but his partisans were
not crushed by this; and soon after his wife, who had collected about
her a considerable body of mercenaries, in concert with the Pope and
the King of France, thought herself strong enough to invade England.
Simon felt that he needed a greater, in other words, a broader, basis
of support. And the design he then conceived has secured him an
imperishable memory. He summoned first of all representatives of the
knights of the shires, and directly afterwards representatives of the
towns and the Cinque Ports, to form a Parliament in conjunction with
the nobles of the realm. This was not an altogether new thing in the
European world; we know that in the Cortes of Aragon, as early as the
12th century, by the side of the high nobility and the ecclesiastics
there appeared also the Hidalgos and the deputies of the Commons; and
Simon de Montfort might well be aware of this, since his father had
been in so many ways connected with Aragon. In England itself under
King John men had come very near it without however carrying it
through: not till afterwards did the innovation appear a real
necessity. In opposition to the one-sided power exercised by the
foreigners, nothing was so much insisted on in daily talk and in the
popular ballads as the propriety of calling the natives of the land to
counsel, since to them its laws were best known. This justifiable wish
met with adequate satisfaction now that the Commons were summoned; the
public feeling against the foreigners, on which Simon de Montfort
necessarily relied, thus found expression. The assembly which he
called together doubtless sympathised with his party views. As he
invited only those nobles to it who remained true to him (they were
not more than twenty-three in number), so he appears to have summoned
those only of the towns which adhered to him unconditionally. But the
arrangement involved more than was contemplated from his point of
view.
Amid the storms he had called forth Simon de Montfort perished: the
King was freed, the royal authority re-established. A new Papal legate
entered London in the full splendour of his office, Cardinal Ottoboni;
Guido having meanwhile himself obtained the tiara, and using every
means to subdue the unbending spirits, from which danger even to the
Church was dreaded.[40] Yet the old state of things was not restored:
neither the rule of foreigners, nor the absolute dependence on the
Papal policy. The later government of Henry III has a different
character from the earlier: the legate himself confirmed Magna Charta
in the shape finally accepted. It is not merely at the great national
festivals that we find representatives of the towns present, whom the
King has summoned; it is beyond a doubt that one of the most important
statutes of the time was passed with their consent.[41] Yet
regulations for the summons of representatives from the towns were as
little fixed by law as those for voting the taxes. It would by no
means harmonise with the constitution of Romano-German states, that
organic institutions should come into full force in mere antagonism to
the highest authority. They must coincide with the interests of that
authority, as was the case in England under Henry's warlike son Edward
I.
Without doubt Edward, who once more revived in the East the reputation
of the Plantagenet Kings for personal valour, would have preferred to
fight there for the interests of Christendom, he even speaks of it in
his will; or else he would have wished to recover from the French
crown the lands which his father had inherited, and which had passed
into French possession; but neither the one nor the other was
possible; another object was assigned to his energy and his ambition,
one more befitting an English king: he undertook to unite the whole
island under his sceptre.
In Wales, the conquest of which had been so often attempted and so
often failed, there lived at this time Prince Llewellyn, whose
personal beauty, cunning, and high spirit fitted him to be a brilliant
representative of the old British nationality. The bards, reviving the
old prophecies, promised him the ancient crown of Brutus; but when he
ventured out of the mountains, he was overpowered and fell in a
hand-to-hand conflict. The English crown was not to fall to his lot,
but Edward transferred the title of Prince of Wales to his own son.
The great cross of the Welsh, the crown of Arthur, fell into his
hands: he no longer tolerated the bards: their age passed away with
the Crusades.
From Wales Edward turned his arms against Scotland. There Columban had
in former days anointed as king a Scottish prince, who was also of
Keltic descent; how the German element nevertheless got the upper hand
not merely in the greatest part of the country, but also in the ruling
family, is the great problem of early Scottish history: a thoroughly
Germanic monarchy had arisen, but one which after it had once given a
home to the Anglo-Saxons who fled before the Normans, thought its
honour concerned in repelling all English influences. A disputed
succession gave Edward I an opportunity of reviving the claims of his
predecessors to the overlordship of Scotland: he gave the Scotch a
king, whom the Scotch rejected simply because he was the English
King's nominee. The war, which sometimes seemed ended--there were
times at which Edward could regard himself as the Lord of all
Albion,--ever blazed out again; above all, the support the Scotch
received from the King of France brought about complications which
filled all Western Europe with trouble and war; but it was in the home
politics of England that their effect was destined to be greatest.
Compelled to make incessant efforts, which exhausted the resources of
the crown, Edward appealed to the voluntary assistance of his
subjects. He laid down to them the principle, that their common perils
should be met with their united strength, that what concerns all must
also be borne by all. In the war against Wales he had gathered
together the representatives of the counties and the towns, to hear
his demands and to act accordingly; chiefly to vote him subsidies.
After the victory he had called an assembly of nobles, knights, and
towns, to take counsel with them about the treatment of the captives
and the country. Similarly he drew together the representatives of the
towns in order to decide the affairs of Scotland. With especial
emphasis did he call for their united help against Philip the Fair of
France, who thought to destroy the English tongue from off the earth:
knights and towns were pledged to help in carrying out the resolutions
thus adopted by common consent.
In spite of all this appealing to free participation in public
matters, Edward I did not refrain from the arbitrary imposition of
taxes, and those the most oppressive: the eighth, even the fifth part
of men's income. For the campaign in Flanders he summoned the
under-tenants as well as the tenants in chief. We find instances of
arbitrary seizure of whatever was necessary for the war.
King Edward excused this by his maxim that the interests of the land
must be defended with the resources of the land,[42] but we can
conceive how, on the boundary line between two different systems,
acts of violence, which combined the arbitrariness of the one with the
principles of the other, caused a general agitation. In the year 1297
the spiritual lords under their archbishop, as well as the temporal
ones (who denied the obligation to serve beyond the sea) under the
Constable and Marshal, set themselves energetically to oppose the
King. The people, which had the most to suffer from the arbitrary
exactions, took their side with cordial approval. They set forth all
the grievances of the country, and insisted on their immediate and
final redress.
To avoid the pressure, the King had already quitted England, to carry
on his campaign in Flanders: the demand was laid before the
Councillors whom he had left behind as assessors to his son, who was
named Regent. They however were in great perplexity, partly from the
trouble of this agitation itself, but mainly from the revolt in
Scotland which had broken out in a formidable manner. William Walays,
like one of those Heyduck chiefs who rise in Turkey against the
established order of things, the right of which they do not recognise,
had come down from the hill country, at the head of the fugitives and
exiles, a robber-patriot, of gigantic bodily strength and innate
talent for war. His successes soon increased his band to the size of
an army; he beat the English in a pitched battle, and then swept over
the borders into the English territory. If the royal commissioners
would oppose a strong resistance to this inroad, they must needs
ratify a provisional concession of the demands brought forward. The
King, who had meanwhile reached Flanders, which the French had entered
from two sides, could not possibly yield to the Scottish
movement--whether he wished to carry on the war or make a truce:
nothing therefore remained to him but to confirm the concessions made
by his councillors.
It is not absolutely certain how far these had gone; one word of
discussion may be allowed on the matter.
The historians of the time have maintained that the right of voting
the taxes was granted to the Estates, and in fact conjointly to the
nobles whether spiritual or temporal, and the representatives of the
counties and towns: the copy of a statute is extant, in which this is
very expressly stated.[43] But since the statute does not exist in an
authentic shape, and is not to be found in the Rolls of the Realm, we
cannot safely base any conclusion on it. As to the date too at which
it may have been passed, our statements waver between the
twenty-eighth and the thirty-fourth year of Edward. On the other hand
we find in the collection of charters an undoubted charter of
confirmation given at Ghent and dated 5 November 1297, in which not
merely are the Great Charter of Henry III and the Forest Charter
confirmed, but also some new arrangements of much importance
guaranteed, and confirmed by ecclesiastico-judicial regulations.[44]
According to it the grants of taxes and contributions which had been
hitherto made to the King for his wars were not to be regarded as
binding for the future. He reserves only the old customary taxes: to
the higher clergy, the nobility, and the commons of the land the
assurance is given, that under no circumstances, however pressing,
should any tax or contribution or requisition--not even the export
duty on wool--be levied except by their common consent and for the
interests of all.[45] In the Latin text all sounds more open and less
reserved: but even the words of the authentic document include a very
essential limitation of the prerogative of the crown, which hitherto
had alone exercised the right of estimating what the state needed and
of fixing the payments by this standard. The King was averse at heart
to the limitation even in this form. When he came back from Flanders
after concluding a truce with France, and army and people were met
together at York, to carry out a great campaign against Scotland, he
was pressed to confirm on English soil the concessions which he had
granted on foreign ground.[46] He held it advisable that the campaign
should be first carried through; four of his confidential friends
swore in his stead (since an oath in person was thought unbecoming to
the King), that, the campaign ended, the confirmation should not be
wanting. The enterprise was most successful, it led to a great victory
over the Scots, and it was the leaders of the English aristocracy who
did the best service there; nevertheless, when they met together next
Lent (1299) in London, the King strove to avoid an absolute promise:
he wished to expressly reserve the undefined 'rights of the crown.'
But this delay aroused a general storm: and as he was quite convinced
that he could not, under this condition, reckon on further support in
the war which still continued, he at last submitted to what was
unavoidable, and allowed his clause to drop.[47]
I do not know whether I am mistaken in ascribing to these concessions
a different character from that of the earlier ones. It was not a
sovereign defeated and reduced to the deepest humiliation who made
them, nor did the barons obtain articles which aimed at securing their
own direct supremacy: the concessions were the result of the war,
which could not be carried on with the existing means. When Edward I
laid stress on the necessity of greater common efforts, the
counter-demand which was made on him, and to which he yielded, merely
implied that a common resolution should be previously come to. His
concessions included a return for service already done, and a
condition for future service. It did not abase the royal authority; it
brought into clear view the unity of interests between the crown and
the nation.
Another great crisis united them for the second time. As Edward led
the forces of England year by year across the Tweed, to compel the
Scots to acknowledge his overlordship by the edge of the sword, the
Pope who assumed himself to be the Suzerain of the kingdoms of the
world, Boniface VIII, met him with the assertion that Scotland
belonged to the Church of Rome, the King therefore was violating the
rights of that Church by his invasions. To confront the Pope, King
Edward thought it best, as did Philip the Fair of France about the
same time, to call in his Estates to his aid, since without them no
answer to the claim was possible. The Estates then in a long letter
not merely maintain the right of the English crown, but also reject
the Pope's claim to decide respecting it as arbiter, as incompatible
with the royal dignity: even if the King wished it, yet they would
never lend a hand to anything so unseemly and so unheard of.[48] The
King, without regard to the Pope, continued his campaigns against
Scotland with unabated energy.
It marks the character of Edward I that he nevertheless did not break
with the Papacy on this account; so too he still raised taxes that had
not been voted, and held Parliaments in the old form: when
representatives of the counties and towns were summoned it is not
always clear whether they were elected or named.[49] Edward I could
not free himself from the habits of arbitrary rule and the old ideas
connected with them. But with all this it is still undeniable that
under him the monarchy took a far more national position than before;
it no longer stood in a hostile attitude as against the community of
the land, but belonged to it.
And his successors soon saw themselves forced to complete still
further the foundations of a new state of things, which had been thus
laid.
Under Edward II the old ambition of the barons to take a preponderant
part in the government reappeared once more with the greatest
violence. The occasion was afforded by the weakness of this sovereign,
who allowed his favourite, the Gascon Gaveston, a disastrous influence
on affairs. Discontented with this, the King's nearest cousin, Thomas
of Lancaster, placed himself at the head of the great nobles, as
indeed he was believed to have sworn to his father in law (whose rich
possessions passed to him, and who feared a return of the foreign
influences), that he would adhere to the interest of the barons, which
was also that of the country. In the fourth year of his government
Edward was obliged to accept all the regulations made by a Committee
of the Nobles called the 'Ordainers.'
Without advice of the nobles he was forbidden either to begin a war,
or to fill up high offices of State, or even to leave the country: the
officers of the crown were to be responsible to them. Gaveston had to
pay for his short possession of influence by death without mercy.
It was long before the King found men who had the courage to defend
the lawful authority of the crown. At last the two Hugh Despencers
undertook it: under their leadership the barons were defeated, and
Thomas of Lancaster in his turn paid for his enterprises with his
life. For in England, if anywhere, the assumption of power led
inevitably to the scaffold.
It is hardly needful to say that the regulations of the Ordainers were
now revoked. But must not some means be also thought of, to prevent
similar acts of violence for the future? It was deemed necessary to
declare even the form, under cover of which they had been ratified,
invalid for all time. And so an enactment was now made, in which the
first definite idea of the Parliamentary Monarchy becomes visible. It
was declared that never for the future should any ordinance affecting
the King's power and proceeding from his subjects be valid, but only
that should be law which was discussed, agreed on, and enacted in
Parliament by the King with the consent of the prelates, the earls and
barons, and the commonalty of the realm.[50] For it was above all
things necessary to withdraw the legislative authority for ever from
the turbulent grandees. The monarchy opposed to them its alliance with
the commonalty of the realm, as it was expressed by the
representatives of the knights and the commons. Among the founders of
the English constitution these Hugh Despencers, through whom the
legislative power was first transferred to the united body of King
Lords and Commons, take a very important position.
This thought was however rather one left for the future to carry out,
than one which swayed or contented the English world at the time.
Edward II fell before a new attack of the revolted barons, with whom
even his wife was allied: he had to think it a piece of good fortune
that, on the ground of his own abdication, his son was acknowledged as
his successor. The latter however could only obtain real possession of
the royal power by overthrowing the faction to which his father had
succumbed. While he restored the memory of the two Despencers, who had
been condemned and executed by the barons, he also decided to carry on
a Parliamentary government; it is the first that existed in England.
For the general course of the development it is significant that the
rights of Parliament in relation to the voting of taxes, and now also
to legislation as a whole, were acknowledged before an appropriate
form was found for its consultations. In the first years of Edward III
its four constituent parts, prelates, barons, knights, and town
deputies, held their debates in four different assemblies; but
gradually the two first were fused into an Upper, the two last into a
Second House, without any definite law being laid down to that effect:
the nature of things led to the custom, the custom in course of time
became law.
That which had been already preparing under the first Edward came
under the third for the first time into complete operation, viz. the
participation of the Estates in the management of foreign affairs and
of war.
In the year 1333 the Parliament advised the King to break the peace
with Scotland, which the barons had concluded of their own authority
according to their own views, not to put up with any more outrages,
and not merely to take back the lost border-fortress of Berwick, but
to force the Scots to acknowledge the supremacy of England.
In the year 1337 and afterwards the Parliament more than once approved
the King's plan of asserting the claim he had through his mother on
the French throne by force of arms and through alliances with foreign
princes,[51] and promised to support him in it with their lives and
properties; it was all the more ready for this, as France had been
repeatedly threatening England with a new Conquest. In the year 1344
the Peers, each in his own name, called on the King to cross the sea
and not let himself be hindered by any one, not even by the Pope, from
appealing to the judgment of God by battle. The clergy imposed on
themselves a three-years' tenth, the counties a fifteenth, the towns
two tenths; the great nobles followed him in person with their squires
and horsemen, without even alluding to their old remonstrances. So
that splendid army made its appearance in France, in which the weapons
of the yeomen vied with those of the knights, and which, thanks
chiefly to the former, won the victory of Cressy. Whilst the King made
conquests over the French, his heroic Queen repelled the Scotch. In
these wars the now united nation, which put forth all its strength,
came for the first time to the feeling of its power, to a position of
its own in the world and to the consciousness of it. The King of
Scotland at that time, and the King of France some years later, became
prisoners in England.
A period followed in which England seemed to have obtained the
supremacy in Western Europe. The Scots purchased their King's freedom
by a truce which bound them to long and heavy payments, for which
hostages were given as a security. A peace was made with the French by
which Guienne, Gascony, Poitou, and such important towns as Rochelle
and Calais were surrendered to the English. The Prince of Wales, who
took up his residence at Bordeaux, mixed in the Spanish quarrels with
the view of uniting Biscay to his territories in South France. As the
result of these circumstances and of the well-calculated encouragement
of Edward III, we find that English commerce prospered immensely and,
in emulous alliance with that of Flanders, began to form another great
centre for the general commerce of the world. It was still chiefly in
the hands of foreigners, but the English made great profits by it.
Their riches gained them almost as much prestige in the world as their
bravery.[52] The more money-resources the towns possessed, and the
more they could and did support the King, the greater became their
influence on the affairs of the realm. No language could be more
humble than that of these 'poor and simple Commons,' when they address
themselves to 'their glorious and thrice gracious King and lord.'[53]
But for all that their representations are exceedingly comprehensive
and pressing; their grants are not to take effect, unless their
grievances are redressed; they never leave out of sight the interests
of their staple; they assail the exactions of the officials or the
clergy with great zeal. The regard paid to them gives the whole
government a popular character.
On an attempt of the King to exercise the legislative power in his
great council, they remonstrated; they had no objection to the
ordinances themselves, but insisted that valid statutes could only
proceed from the lawfully assembled Parliament.
Now too the relations to the Papal See came again into consideration.
Seated at Avignon under the influence of the French crown, the Popes
were natural opponents of Edward III's claims and enterprises; they
sometimes thought of directing the censures of the Church against him.
On the other hand, the complaints in England against the encroachments
and pecuniary demands of the Curia were louder than ever, without
however coming to a rupture on these points. But at last Urban V
renewed the old claim to the vassalage of England; he demanded the
feudal tribute first paid by King John, and threatened King and
kingdom, in case they were not willing to pay it, with judicial
proceedings.[54] We know the earlier kings had seen in the connexion
with Rome a last resource against the demands of the Estates: on the
King's side it required some resolution to renounce it. But the very
nature of the Parliamentary government, as Edward III had settled it,
involved a disregard of these considerations for the future. It was
before the Parliament itself that he laid the Papal demands for their
consent and counsel. The Estates consulted separately: first the
spiritual and lay lords framed their resolution, then the town
deputies assented to it. The answer they gave the Pope was that King
John's submission was destitute of all validity, since it was against
his coronation-oath, and was made without the consent of the Estates;
should the Pope try to enforce satisfaction of his demand by legal
process or in any other manner, they would all--dukes earls barons and
commons--oppose him with their united force.[55] The clergy only
assented to the declaration of invalidity; to threaten the holy father
with their resistance, they considered unbecoming. But the declaration
of the lay Estates was in itself sufficient for the purpose: the claim
was never afterwards raised again.
The Estates had often been obliged to contend against the King and the
Roman See at the same time; now the King was allied with them against
the Papacy. Now that the Parliamentary constitution was established in
its first stage, it is clear how much the union of the Crown and the
Estates in opposition to external influence had contributed to it. It
was destined however shortly to undergo yet other tests.
NOTES:
[37] Matthew Paris, Historia Major ann. 1253, p. 750.
[38] In Henr. Knyghton, 2445. According to Matthew Paris they swore,
not to let themselves be held back by anything--'quin regnum, in quo
sunt nati homines geniales et eorum progenitores, ab ingenerosis et
alienigenis emundarent.'
[39] 'Les XXIV ont ordene, ke treis parlemens seient par an,--a ces
treis parlemens vendrunt les cunseillers le rei eslus,--ke le commun
eslise 12 prodes hommes ke vendrunt as parlemens--pur treter de
besoigne le rei et del reaume.' On the explanation of this passage,
the 'Report on the dignity of a peer' 102 contains matter wellweighed
on all sides.
[40] Letter of Clement IV to Louis IX, in Rainaldus, 1265, p. 167.
'Quid putas--per talia machinamenta quaeri? Nisi ut de regno illo
regium nomen aboleatur omnino: nisi ut Christianus populus a devotione
matris ecclesiae et observantia fidei orthodoxae avertatur.'
[41] 'Convocatis discretioribus regni tam ex majoribus quam
minoribus.' Statute of Marleberge, 1267.
[42] 'Nostrae voluntatis fuit ut de bonis terrae ipsa terra
conservaretur.' In Knyghton, ii, 2501.
[43] Statutum de tallagio non concedendo, or Nova additio cartarum; in
Hemingburgh, articuli inserti in magna charta.
[44] 'Carta confirmationis regis Edwardi I,' in the collection of
charters prefixed to the collection of the Statutes in the 'Statutes
of the Realm,' p. 37.
[45] 'Avuns graunte--as Arceevesques etc. e as Countes--e a toute la
communauté de la terre que mes pur nule busoigne tieu manere des aydes
mises ne prises de nre Roiaume ne prendrums fors ke par commun assent
de tout le Roiaume e a commun profist de meismes le Roiaume, sauve les
auncienes aydes e prises due e acoustumees.' The Articulus insertus in
Magna Charta, according to the other statements, runs, 'nullum
Tallagium vel auxilium imponatur seu levetur sine voluntate atque
assensu communi Archiepiscoporum Episcoporum et aliorum liberorum
hominum in regno nostro.'
[46] Hemingburgh: eo quod confirmaverat eas in terra aliena.
[47] Matthew of Westminster, 433. 'Procrastinatis quampluribus diebus
demum videns rex quod non desisterent ab inceptis nec adquiescerent
sibi in necessitatibus suis, respondit se esse paratum concedere et
ratificare petita.'
[48] At Lincoln, 21 Feb. 1301. In Rymer, Rainaldus, Spondanus.
[49] Report 183; Hallam, Additional Notes 332.
[50] Revocatio novarum ordinationum, 1323, 29 May, Statutes of the
Realm I. 189, 'les choses, qui serount à establir--soient tretées
accordees et establies en parlaments par notre Sr. le Roi et par
lassent des Prelats Countes et Barouns et la communalté du roialme.'
[51] Speech of W. Shareshall 1351, Parliamentary History (1762) i.
295.
[52] We know the letter of the Duke of Guelders, in which he praised
equally 'lanae commoda,--divitias in comparatione ad alios reges
centuplas,' and the 'probitas militaris, arcuum asperitas,' in Twysden
ii. 2739.
[53] Report 324.
[54] 'Est en volunté de faire procès devers le roy et son roialme pur
le dit service et cens recoverir.'
[55] 'Qu'ils resisteront et contre esteront ove toute leur puissance.'
Edw Coke first published the document, Institutes iv. 13. In Urban V's
letter to Edward in Rainaldus 1365, 13, the demand is not so clearly
expressed, but mention is made in it of the Nuncio's overtures; it is
to these that the resolution of the Parliament referred.
CHAPTER V.
DEPOSITION OF RICHARD II. THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER.
England did not long maintain herself in the dominant position she then
occupied; the plan of extending her rule into Spain proved ruinous to
the Prince of Wales. Not merely was his protégé overpowered by the
French 'Free Companies,' which had gathered round his opponent: a
Castilian war-fleet succeeded in destroying the English one in sight of
the harbour of Rochelle. On this, their natural inclination towards the
King of France awoke in the nobles and towns of South France; without
great battles, merely by the revolt of vassals tired of his rule,
Edward III again lost all the territories conquered with such great
glory, except a few coast towns. Then a gloom settled down around the
aged conqueror. He saw his eldest son, who, though obliged to quit
France, in England enjoyed the fullest confidence and had every
prospect of a great future, sicken away and die. And he too
experienced, what befalls so many others, that misfortune abroad raised
him up opponents at home. In the increasing weakness of old age, which
gave rise to many well-grounded grievances, he could not maintain the
independence of the royal power, with the re-establishment of which he
had begun his reign. He was forced to receive into his Council men whom
he did not like. He was still able to effect thus much, that the
succession to the kingdom came to the son of the Prince of Wales,
Richard II. But would he, a boy of eleven, be able to take the helm of
the proud ship? Men saw factions arise that grouped themselves round
the King's uncles, who were not fully disposed to defend his authority.
The great question for English history now was, whether the
Parliamentary constitution, whilst it limited the King's prerogative,
would also give him security. For the Commons had been at last
admitted into the King's Council chiefly in order that they might
withstand the violence of the factions. The situation however was not
without its complications, for with the political movement one of yet
wider aim was connected.
When the kingdom was at the very height of its power there arose in a
college at Oxford the man who began that contest against the Papal
supremacy which has never since ceased. John Wiclif attached himself
first of all to the political movements of his time. One of his
earliest writings was directed against the feudal supremacy of the
Popes over England. He supported the Parliament's complaints of Romish
Provisions and exactions of money, with great learning and at great
length. Had his activity confined itself to these subjects, he would
be hardly more remembered than perhaps Marsilius of Padua. What gave
him quite a special significance was the fact that he brought into
clear view the contradiction between the ruling form of the Church and
the original documents of the Faith. From the claim of the Popes to be
Christ's representatives, he drew the conclusion that they ought also
to observe the Gospel which comes from the God-Man, follow His
example, and give up their worldly power.[56] The leading Church
dogma, that most closely connected with the hierarchic system, the
dogma of Transubstantiation, he attacked as being one which equally
contradicted Scripture and Reason. He urges his proofs with the
acuteness of a skilful Schoolman, but throughout he shows a deep inner
religious feeling. We may distinguish in him two separate tendencies.
His appeal to Scripture, his attempt to make it accessible to the
people, his treatment of dogmatic and religious questions which he
will allow to be decided only by Revelation,--all this makes him an
evangelic man, one of the chief forerunners of the German Reformation.
But, as he himself felt, his strength lay rather in destruction than
in construction. In asserting the doctrine that the title to office
depends for its validity on personal worth, that even the rule of
temporal lords rests on the favour in which they stand with God, and
in raising subjects to be the judges over their oppressive masters, he
entered on a path like that which the Taborites and the leaders of the
peasants in Germany afterwards took.[57]
And these were precisely the doctrines for which his scholars, who
traversed the land to make them known, found a well prepared soil in
the people of England. How could the rise of popular elements fail to
call forth a kindred effort also among the lower classes? The belief
arose that Nature intended all men to be equal. The country people
spoke of their primitive rights, traces of which were found in the
memorials of the Conqueror's times, and which had then been taken from
them. When now, instead of seeing these respected, they were subjected
to new impositions, and this with harshness and insolence, they rose
in open revolt. So overpowering was the attack which they directed
against the capital and the King's palace, that Richard II found
himself forced to grant them a charter which secured them personal
freedom. Had they contented themselves with this, they might have done
best for themselves and perhaps for the crown, but when they demanded
yet further and more extreme concessions, they roused against
themselves the whole power of the organised State, for which they were
as yet no match. The Mayor of London himself struck down with his
dagger the leader of the bands, Wat Tyler, because he seemed to
threaten the King; the Bishop of Norwich was not hindered by his
spiritual character from levelling his lance against the
insurgents;[58] after which he accompanied the leaders, who were taken
and condemned to death, to the scaffold, with words of comfort; in
other places the lay nobles did their best. When therefore in the next
Parliament the King brought forward the proposal to declare the serfs
free by a united resolution,--for the previous charter that had been
wrung from him was considered invalid,--both Lords and Commons
rejected it, as tending to disinherit them and prove pernicious to the
kingdom.
It is not to be supposed that a movement like this, which the lower
class of citizens in the towns had joined, just as in the German
peasant war, and which was mainly directed against the landed gentry,
could be stifled by one defeat: it continued to ferment
uninterruptedly in men's hearts.
Still less did the condemnation passed by Convocation on the
deviations from the teaching of the Church effect their suppression.
On the basis of Wiclif's doctrines grew up the sect of the Lollards,
which condemned the worship of images, pilgrimages, and other external
church ceremonies, designated the union of judicial authority with
spiritual office as unnatural--'hermaphroditism'--rejected
excommunication with abhorrence, and made secret and systematic war
against the whole Church establishment.
But further besides these feuds there was one within the State system
itself which now became most conspicuous.
In the midst of the general ferment how necessary had a strong and
resolute hand become! But Richard's government had shown itself
somewhat weak; by many it was suspected of having meant to turn the
disturbances to its own advantage. The commons, who mainly represented
the lower gentry and the upper citizens, abandoned him, and attached
themselves to the nobles, just as these revived their old jealousy
against the crown. For the almost inevitable result of success in
suppressing a popular agitation is to heighten the self-confidence of
an aristocracy. Impatient at being excluded from all share in the
government, and strengthened in his ambition by the military disasters
of the last years, the youngest of Richard's uncles, Thomas of
Gloucester, put himself at the head of the grandees, whose plans the
commons, instead of opposing, now on the contrary adopted as their
own. The great questions arose, which have so often since then
convulsed the European world, as to the relation of a Parliamentary
assembly to the Monarchy, and their respective rights.
The first demand of the English Parliament was that the ministers of
State should be named by it, or at least should be responsible to it.
Much as this demand itself implies, yet even more extensive views were
behind. The Peers told the King plainly that if he would not rule
according to the common law and with their advice, it was competent
for them to depose him, with consent of the people, and to raise
another of the royal house to the throne;[59] they threatened him
openly with the fate of Edward II.
Richard could do nothing but submit. Eleven lords were appointed to
restore order in the country; Richard had to swear to carry out all
they should ordain (November 1386). There remained but one way by
which to oppose this open violence: the King collected the chief
judges at Nottingham, and laid the question before them, whether the
Commission now forced upon him did not contravene the royal power and
his prerogative. The judges were far from so interpreting the
Constitution of England as to allow that the King is unconditionally
bound by the commands of Parliament. They affirmed under their hand
and seal that the appointment of that Commission against the King's
will contravened his legal prerogative; those by whom he had been
forced to accept it, and who had revived the recollection of the
statute against Edward II, they declared to be guilty of high treason.
But Parliament itself saw in this sentence not a judgment but an
intolerable outrage. At its next sitting it summoned the judges before
its tribunal, and in its turn declared them to be themselves guilty of
high treason. Chief Justice Tresilian died a shameful death at Tyburn.
The King lived to find yet harsher laws laid upon him: his uncle
Gloucester was more powerful than he was himself.
He was not however disposed to bear this yoke for ever. He first freed
himself from the war with France, which tied his hands; by his
marriage with Charles VI's young daughter he sought to win that king
over as an ally on his own side; at home too he gained himself
friends; when all was prepared, he struck a sudden blow (July 1397),
which no one would have expected from him. He removed his leading
opponents (above all his uncle Gloucester, and Arundel Archbishop of
Canterbury), banished them or threw them into prison: then he
succeeded in getting together a Parliament in which his partisans had
the upper hand. It moreover completely adopted the ideas of the judges
as to the Constitution; it revoked the statutes which had been forced
on the King,[60] and gave effect to the sentence of Nottingham. By
making the King a very considerable grant for his lifetime, it freed
him from the necessity of summoning it anew; he rose at once to a high
pitch of self-confidence: he was believed to have said that the laws
of England consisted in his word of mouth.
In England, just as in France at the same epoch, political opinions
and parties ebbed and flowed in ceaseless antagonism. Richard's
success was only momentary. He too, like so many of his ancestors, had
incurred a grievous suspicion; the crime laid to his charge was that
his uncle, who died in prison, had been murdered there by his command.
Besides his absolute rule was not free from arbitrary acts of many
kinds; among the great nobles each trembled for his own safety; the
clergy, never on good terms with Richard, were impatient at being
deprived of their Primate, who was to them 'the tower in the
protecting bulwark of the Church.' In the capital too men were against
a rule which seemed to put an end to popular influence; it needed only
the return of an exile, the young Henry of Lancaster (whom the King
would not allow to take possession of his inheritance by deputy, and
who in conformity with the feeling of the time broke his ban to do
himself right); all men then deserted the King; the nobles could now
think of carrying out the threat which they had once hurled against
him.
Richard was compelled to call a Parliament, and at the moment it met
to pronounce his own abdication. The Parliament was not contented with
accepting this; it wished to put an end to all doubt for the future,
and to establish its own right for ever.
A long list of articles was drawn up, from which it was concluded that
the King had broken his coronation oath and forfeited his crown; the
assembled Estates, when severally and conjointly consulted, held them
sufficient to justify them in proceeding to the King's deposition.
They named Proctors, two for the clergy, two for the high
nobility--one for the earls and dukes, the other for the barons and
bannerets, two for the knights and commons--one for the Northern, the
other for the Southern counties. They sat as a court of justice before
the vacant throne, with the Chief Justice in their midst: then the
first spiritual commissioner, the Bishop of S. Asaph, rose, and in the
place and name and under the authority of the Estates of the realm
announced the sentence of deposition against the late King, and
forbade all men to receive any further commands from him. Some
opposition was raised; it is said that the Bishop of Carlisle very
expressly denied the right of subjects to sit in judgment on their
hereditary sovereign;[61] but how could this have had any effect
against the Parliament's claim which had been formulated so long?
As the crown was now regarded as vacant, Henry of Lancaster arose,--in
the name of God, as he said, whilst he made the sign of the cross on
his forehead and breast,--to claim it for himself, in virtue of his
birth and the right which accrued to him through God and the help of
his friends. It was not properly speaking an election that now took
place: the spiritual and lay lords, as well as the other members of
the Parliament, were asked what their opinion of his claim was: the
answer of all was that the Duke should be their King. When, conducted
by the two archbishops, he ascended the vacant throne, he was greeted
with the joyous acclaim of those assembled. The Archbishop of
Canterbury made a speech full of unction, the drift of which was, that
henceforth it would not be a child, such as the late sovereign had
been, self-willed and void of understanding, but a Man that would rule
over them, in the full maturity of his understanding, and resolved to
do not so much his own will as the will of God.[62]
Thus did the spiritual and lay nobility, in and with the Parliament,
make good their claim to dispose of the crown. They went to work
against Richard II with less reserve than against Edward II. In the
latter case the Queen had taken part in the movement; they had set the
son in his father's stead. But this time they did not wait for the
actual consummation of the King's marriage; they raised a prince to
the throne who had openly opposed him in the field, and was not even
the next in succession. For there were still the descendants of an
elder brother left, who according to English usage had a prior right.
The Parliament held itself competent to settle on its own authority
even the succession to the crown. It enacted that it should belong to
the King's eldest son, and after him to his male issue, and on their
failure to his brothers and their issue. The proposal formally to
exclude succession in the female line did not pass; but for a long
while to come the actual practice had that effect.
Besides the motives involved in the extension of the Power of the
Estates in and for itself there was yet another reason for such a
proceeding. And this arose out of the growth, and increasing urgency,
of the religious divisions. The Lollards preached, and taught in
schools, according to their views: in the year 1396 in a petition to
Parliament they traced all the moral evils and defects of the world to
the fact that the clergy were endowed with worldly goods, and showed
the advantage which would arise from the application of these to the
service of the state and the prosecution of war.[63] They seem to have
flattered themselves that by this they would win over the lay lords,
but they were completely mistaken. For these remarked on the contrary
that their own property had no better legal foundation than that of
the clergy,[64] and only attached themselves to the rights of the
Church all the more zealously.
That which would have been impossible under Richard II's vacillating
government, the first Lancaster now undertook: in full agreement with
the Estates he a few days after his accession announced to Convocation
that he purposed to destroy heretics and heresies to the best of his
power.[65] In the next Parliament a statute was drawn up in which
relapsed heretics were condemned to the flames. And still more
remarkable than this mode of punishment, which was that of the
Church-law, is the regulation of the procedure in this statute. In
former times the sentence had been pronounced by the archbishop and
the collective clergy of the province, and the King's consent had to
be asked before it was executed. The decision was now committed to the
bishop and his commissary, and the sheriff was instructed to inflict
the punishment without further appeal, and to commit the guilty to the
fire on the high grounds in the country, that terror might strike all
the bystanders. It is clear how much the power of the bishops was thus
extended. Soon after, on the proposal of the lay lords, at whose head
the Prince of Wales is named, a further statute passed, in which to
spread the rumour that King Richard was yet alive, and to teach that
the prelates ought to be deprived of their worldly goods, are treated
as offences of equal magnitude and threatened with a similar
punishment; the object being alike in both,--to raise a tumult. And in
fact, when Henry V himself had ascended the throne, an outbreak did
occur, in which these causes co-operated. The Lollards were
strengthened in their resistance to the government of the house of
Lancaster by the rumour that their rightful King was yet alive. Henry
V was obliged to crush them in open battle, and then force them to
remain quiet by a new statute, which enacted the confiscation of their
goods as well.[66] His alliance and friendship with the Emperor
Sigismund was based on the fact, that he regarded the Hussites as only
the successors of the Lollards.
This orthodox tendency was now moreover combined with a strict
Parliamentary government. Under the Lancasters there is no complaint
as to illegal taxes; they allowed the moneys voted by the Parliament
to be paid over to treasurers named by itself and accountable to it;
that which earlier Kings had always rejected as an affront, the claim
of Parliament to exercise a sort of supervision over the King's
household, the Lancasters admitted; the royal officers were bound by
oath to observe the statutes and the common law; the prerogative,
hitherto exercised by the Kings, of softening the severity of the
statutes by proclamations contravening their purpose was expressly
abolished.
The Lancasters owed their rise to their alliance with the clergy and
the Parliament: a fact which determined the character and manner of
their government. The most manifold results might be expected, even
beyond the borders of England, from their having by this very alliance
won for themselves a great European position.
Nowhere was greater interest taken in Richard's fate than at the
French court. Louis Duke of Orleans, whose voice was generally
decisive there, once challenged the first Lancaster to a duel, and
when he refused it pressed him hard with war. That Owen Glendower
could once more maintain himself as Prince in Wales was entirely due
to his French auxiliaries. That we find Henry IV more secure of his
throne in his later years than in his earlier is a phenomenon the
explanation of which we seek in vain in English affairs alone: it
results from the fact that his powerful foe, Louis of Orleans, was
murdered in the year 1407 at the instigation of John Duke of Burgundy,
and that then the quarrel of the two parties, which divided France,
burst out with increased violence, and remained long undecided. From
the French there was no longer anything to fear: they emulously sought
the alliance of the highest power in England; there even arose
circumstances under which the Lancasters could think of renewing the
claims of Edward III, from whom they too were descended.
At the time that Henry V ascended the English throne, the Orleanists
had again gained the preponderance in France: they unfurled the
Oriflamme against the Duke of Burgundy, who was now in fact hard
pressed. Henry negociated with them both. But while the Orleanists
made difficulties about granting him the independent possession of the
old English provinces, Burgundy declared himself ready to acknowledge
him as King.[67] The common interests moreover of home politics allied
him with this house.
Henry could reckon on the sympathies of a part of the population of
France, when he led the power of England across the sea. A successful
battle in which he destroyed the flower of the French nobility gave
him an undoubted superiority. The vengeance which the Orleanists
wreaked even under these circumstances on the Duke of Burgundy, who
was now murdered in his turn, brought the Burgundian party over
completely to his side, together with the greater part of the nation.
Things went so far that Charles VI of France decided to marry his
daughter to the victorious Lancaster and to acknowledge him, as his
heir after his death, as his representative during his life.
It was a very extraordinary position which Henry V now occupied. The
two great kingdoms, each of which by itself has earlier or later
claimed to sway the world, were (without being fused into one) to
remain united for ever under him and his successors. Philip the Good
of Burgundy was bound to him by ties of blood and by hostility to a
common foe: as heir of France Henry sat in the Parliament by which
the murderers of the last duke, who were also the chief opponents of
the new state of things, were prosecuted. Another promising connexion
was opened to him by
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