A history of England

In the dim dawn of history our island was a land of wood and marsh, broken here and there by patches of open ground, and pierced by occasional track-ways, which threaded the for...

In the early half of the fifth century it seemed likely that Britain would become the prey of its old enemies the Picts and Scots, rather than of the more distant Saxons. But th...

After the battles of Deorham and Chester had broken the strength of the Britons, and all central Britain had fallen into English hands, the victorious invaders did not persevere...

The English chronicles have accurately fixed for us the date of the first raid of the Northmen. In 787, three strange ships were seen off the Dorsetshire coast. From them landed...

For a full century (871-975) England had been under the rule of a series of kings of marked ability. Only the short reign of the unfortunate Eadwig interrupts the succession of...

William pitched his tents among the dead and dying where the English standards had stood. Next day he could judge of the greatness of his success, and see that the English army...

The eighty years which followed the death of William the Conqueror were spent in the solution of the problem which he had left behind him. William had brought over to England tw...

When Henry of Anjou, now a young man of twenty-one years, succeeded to Stephen's crown, he found the country in a most deplorable condition. The regular administration of justic...

When Henry of Anjou died broken-hearted at Chinon, his eldest surviving son Richard succeeded him in all his vast dominions, save in the duchy of Brittany, which fell to the chi...

The moment that John was dead, the insurgent barons began to be conscious of the huge mistake that they had made in calling over Lewis of France to their aid. John's successor w...

The confidence and admiration which the English nation felt for Prince Edward were well shown by the fact that he was proclaimed king on the day of his father's death without an...

Seldom did a son contrast so strangely with his father as did Edward of Carnarvon with Edward the Hammer of the Scots. The mighty warrior and statesman begot a shiftless, thrift...

Shameful as the state of the realm had been under the rule of Edward of Carnarvon and his favourites, a yet more disgraceful depth was reached in the years of minority of his so...

The little King Richard II. was a boy ten years old, born in the year when his father went on his ill-fated expedition to Spain to help Don Pedro. Richard's mother was Joan, Cou...

Henry of Bolingbroke had small comfort all his days on the throne which he had usurped. He was only the king of a faction, the nominee of the party which had once supported the...

Henry of Monmouth had a far easier task before him, when he ascended the throne, than his father had been forced to take in hand. He had the enormous advantage of succeeding to...

England had never yet had a sovereign of such tender age as the infant king who succeeded to the heritage of Henry V. It was under the rule of a child of less than twelve months...

In mediaeval England there was but one way of getting rid of political grievances which the king refused to redress--the old method of armed force, the means which we have seen...

All the males of the house of Lancaster had now fallen by the sword or the dagger, not only the last representatives of the elder and legitimate branch which had occupied the th...

Henry Tudor had the good fortune to appear upon the scene as the avenger of all wrongs, those of the injured heirs of York no less than those of the long-exiled partisans of Lan...

The young king who succeeded to the cautious and politic Henry VII. was perhaps the most remarkable man who ever sat upon the English throne. He guided England through the epoch...

The breach between England and Rome had become irreparable when Henry executed More and Fisher, and when Pope Paul had declared the king deposed. The Church of England had now s...

The death of Edward VI. gave the signal for the outbreak of trouble all over England. The nation had acquiesced in the selfish and unscrupulous government of Northumberland sole...

When Mary Tudor had passed away unwept and unregretted, all England heaved a sigh of relief, and turned to do homage to her sister Elizabeth. The daughter of Anne Boleyn was now...

With the death of Elizabeth the greatness of England departed. From 1603 to 1688 she counted for little in the Councils of Europe, save indeed during the ten years of Cromwell's...

The accession of Charles I. made a profound change in the destinies of England, for though the new king had the same policy and the same notions of government in Church and Stat...

Nine years of almost continuous war, broken by only one short interval in 1647-48, followed the raising of the royal standard at Nottingham, on the 22nd of August, 1642. The fir...

After the "crowning mercy" of Worcester fight, the rule of England lay nominally in the hands of its mutilated and discredited House of Commons, the representative of a mere fra...

He left England great and prosperous, but discontented and unhappy. An autocrat, however well meaning, is never pardoned if he fails to understand and obey the feeling of the na...

Charles Stuart, who now returned to fill the English throne, was a young man of thirty. He had spent the last fourteen years of his life in exile, the penniless guest of many un...

No greater testimony to the caution and cleverness of Charles II. can be given than the fact that, after a reign of twenty-five stormy years, he died in possession of a very con...

James II. had believed that by absconding to France he would plunge England into anarchy, and leave no constituted power behind him. With a childish worship of forms, he flung t...

According to the provisions of the "Act of Settlement," the English crown passed, on the death of William III., to his sister-in-law, the Princess Anne, the second daughter of J...

George Lewis, Elector of Hanover, who in virtue of the Act of Settlement now mounted the English throne, was a selfish, hard-hearted, unamiable, and uninteresting man of fifty-f...

When the unwilling Walpole was driven into war with Spain in 1739 by the clamours of the nation, he believed that he was about to become responsible for a very dangerous struggl...

In the last two centuries of English history the accession of a new king has not often caused a complete revolution in politics. The change of sovereigns often gives us an unfor...

When England bowed before the force of circumstances, and concluded peace with America, France, Spain, and Holland in 1783, she had touched the lowest point of weakness which ha...

In the year 1789, when Pitt was in the zenith of his power, strong in the confidence of the nation and the king, signs of trouble began to appear across the British Channel, whi...

When the treaty of Amiens had been signed, the English people firmly believed that the great war was ended, that the period of stress and anxiety, of heavy taxation and huge arm...

The great struggle was now over, and a new period had commenced, in which European wars were to be as rare as they had of late been common, for between 1815 and 1848 there was n...

The struggle over the Reform Bill had been so fierce, and the change in the House of Commons caused by it had been so sweeping, that it was generally supposed at the time that t...

The time which followed the quieting down of England and Europe after the turbulent years 1848 and 1849, was perhaps the most peaceful which the century had known. The English p...

The death of Lord Palmerston forms a convenient point at which to draw the line between the earlier and the later history of the two great English political parties. Down to 186...

In August, 1886, Lord Salisbury took office, with the most powerful majority at his back that any minister had enjoyed since the days of Lord Grey and the Reform Bill. He was su...

Down to the end of the great struggle with Revolutionary and Imperial France, the history of the rise and development of the British empire beyond seas is intimately connected w...

=LE FRANCAIS CHEZ LUI.= A French Reader on Reform Lines, with Exercises on Grammar for Middle and Junior Forms. By W. H. HODGES, M.A., Modern Language Master at Merchant Taylors...

=SIMPLE FRENCH STORIES.= An entirely new series of easy texts, with Notes, Vocabulary, and Table of Irregular Verbs, prepared under the General Editorship of Mr. L. VON GLEHN, A...

=England in the Nineteenth Century.= By C. W. OMAN, M.A., Author of "A History of England," etc. With Maps and Appendices. Revised and Enlarged Edition. One vol., crown 8vo., 3s...