Part 115

KINGS COLLEGE (1441), founded by Henry VI., is the finest building in the University. The chapel is the finest specimen of perpendicular Gothic existing. The roof, unsupported by pillars, contains twelve divisions of exquisite lace-work tracery in stone. The twenty-four stained-glass windows, each fifty feet high, are beautiful.

The _Fitzwilliam Museum_, and some of the churches, especially the round chapel of _St. Sepulchre_, are of considerable interest. _All Saints_ contains a monument, by Chantrey, to Henry Kirke White. _Girton College_, for women, founded in 1869, is about two miles northwest of the town. The walk along the Cam behind the colleges, with the view of the “Backs” and bridges, is the pride of Cambridge.

ENGLISH HISTORY

The island of Great Britain in the remotest times bore the name of _Albion_. From a very early period it was visited by Phœnicians, Carthaginians, and Greeks, for the purpose of obtaining tin.

=Roman Period.=--Cæsar’s two expeditions, 55 and 54 B. C., made it known to the Romans, by whom it was generally called _Britannia_; but it was not till the time of Claudius, nearly a hundred years after, that the Romans made a serious attempt to convert Britain into a Roman province. Some forty years later, under Agricola, the ablest of the Roman generals in Britain, they had extended the limits of the Provincia Romana as far as the line of the Forth and the Clyde.

Here the Roman armies came into contact with the Caledonians of the interior, described by Tacitus as large-limbed, red-haired men. After defeating the Caledonians, Agricola marched victoriously northward as far as the Moray Firth, establishing stations and camps, remains of which are still to be seen. But the Romans were unable to retain their conquests in the northern part of the island, and were finally forced to abandon their northern wall and forts between the Clyde and the Forth and retire behind their second wall, built in 120 A. D. by Hadrian, between the Solway and the Tyne. Thus the southern part of the island alone remained Roman, and became specially known as Britannia, while the northern portion was distinctly called Caledonia.

The capital of Roman Britain was York (Eboracum). Under the rule of the Romans many flourishing towns arose. Great roads were made, traversing the whole country and helping very much to develop its industries. Christianity was also introduced, and took the place of the Druidism of the native British. Under the tuition of the Romans the useful arts and even many of the refinements of life found their way into the southern part of the island.

=Creation of England and Scotland.=--From the time of the Roman conquest, and still more decidedly after the Saxon invasions in the fifth century, the history of Britain branches off into a history of the southern part of the island, afterwards known as England, and a history of the northern part of the island, afterwards named Scotland. It was not till the union of the crowns in 1603 that the destinies of England and Scotland began again to unite; and it was not till the final union of the parliaments in 1707 that the histories of the two countries may be said to merge into one.

=The Anglo-Saxon Period.=--In 411 Honorius abandoned Britain, whose inhabitants, finding it impossible to defend themselves against the Picts, called to their aid the Saxons, who, in 449, assisted them so effectually that they took possession of the country and founded the four kingdoms of Essex, Wessex, Sussex, and Kent. The Angles, who followed them, established three other kingdoms, _viz._, East Anglia, Deira, and Mercia, 540-584. All these kingdoms ended by being reduced to one, under Egbert, the Saxon king of Wessex, in 827.

After 835 the Danes ravaged England from time to time, but in 871 Alfred the Great forced them to desist, and from thence till near the end of his reign in 900, the Danes left the island in peace. Returning in 981, the Danes succeeded, in 1013, in putting their king, Sweyn, on the throne, which was not recovered by the Saxon dynasty till 1041.

=Norman Conquest.=--When William of Normandy landed in England to claim the crown which Edward the Confessor had bequeathed to him, he found that the people had raised to the throne Harold, the son of a popular nobleman. The resources of the Saxons, however, had been wasted in domestic conflicts before the attack of William; and the battle of Hastings, in 1066 A. D., gave England with comparative ease to the Normans. The next twenty years saw the conquest completed, and nearly all the large landed estates of the Saxons pass, on every pretext except the true one, into the hands of the Normans. In the course of time the Normans were absorbed among the Saxons, their very language disappearing, though leaving many traces. From this union arose the English people and the English language as they now exist. The union of the Normans with the Saxons was not fully effected so long as the Normans retained their foreign possessions. In King John’s reign the whole of these were lost excepting Guienne and Poitou.

In the reign of Stephen occurred the civil war between the Empress Maud, daughter of Henry I., and Stephen; she finally retired to France, and concluded a peace with her adversary. The great struggles of the successors of William were with the ecclesiastics and with the barons. Sometimes in these the popular sympathies were with, and sometimes against, the crown. The Conqueror himself and his immediate successors had no difficulty in maintaining the superiority of the courts of justice over the ecclesiastics; but even a sovereign so bold and skillful as Henry II. was forced, after the outcry occasioned by the murder of Thomas à Becket (1170 A. D.) to yield the point. The right to nominate the higher ecclesiastics was also secured by the popes.

=The Plantagenets.=--Under the Plantagenets an era of progress, generally, opened for England. The reign of Henry II. gave to the country the constitution of Clarendon; Ireland was conquered, 1172; England was divided into six circuits for the better administration of justice, and a digest of the laws was made by Glanville about 1181. Richard I. did little for the internal good of the land, his chief exploits occurring on the field of battle in foreign lands.

=Magna Charta.=--Under John two important events occurred: Magna Charta was obtained, and the French possessions were nearly all lost--both unmitigated blessings; but otherwise John’s influence was cast against progress and reform. The degradation of the English monarchy was at its lowest when he consented (1213 A. D.) to hold the crown as a gift from Rome. From Henry II. something similar to the Great Charter had already been gained; but it was the Magna Charta of John which firmly established two great English principles--that no man should suffer arbitrary imprisonment, and that no tax should be imposed without the consent of the council of the nation.

During the reign of Henry III., England obtained her first regular parliament, and gold money was first coined in 1257. Edward I. was crowned 1272, and almost the first event of his reign was the conquest of Wales; Scotland also was subdued, but revolted again in 1297.

The reign of Edward II. was disastrous to himself and to England. The barons rose against his favorites, and Edward was murdered by the connivance of his wife. A new and vigorous era began with the reign of Edward III. The Scots were defeated at Halidon Hill; important victories were gained in France; the Order of the Garter was instituted, and, most important of all, law pleadings were ordered to be in English, instead of in the Norman-French tongue which had hitherto prevailed. Richard II. was crowned in 1377, and with his death in 1385, ended the line of the Plantagenets.

=House of Lancaster.=--Henry IV. was the first sovereign under this ill-fated house. His reign was disturbed by an insurrection of the Welsh under the Percies, but was otherwise peaceful. Henry V. invaded France and won the famous battle of Agincourt, and gained the French crown, 1420; but during the reign of his successor, Henry VI., all the French possessions were lost save Calais. He was deposed by Warwick the kingmaker, and the first representative of the House of York, Edward IV., was placed on the throne. The Wars of the Roses ensued, which continued through the two succeeding reigns of Edward V. and Richard III, ending with the death of Richard on Bosworth field, the coronation of Henry VII., 1485, and his marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV.

=The Tudors.=--The union of the houses of York and Lancaster under Henry VII. begins a new period in English history. Under him England entered on her career of maritime discovery. He died, 1599, and was succeeded by his second son, Henry VIII. Henry VIII. succeeded under the most favorable auspices. He found the alliance of his now important country courted by both of his contemporaries, Francis I., of France, and Charles V., of Germany. But the interest of the foreign complications of the reign merges in the courts of England and of Rome. Henry was frequently engaged in hostilities with foreign countries, and the great victory of Flodden was won by one of his generals over James IV. of Scotland, husband of his sister Margaret. He threw off his allegiance to the pope, and became head of the church in England. He was six times married, and two of his wives were beheaded and two were repudiated. In his reign the scaffold was occupied by victims from every class of society. He died January 28, 1547, and was succeeded by his only son, Edward VI., whose mother was Jane Seymour, Henry’s third wife.

Edward was in his tenth year, and the government was vested in a regency. In this reign the church of England was established, and the nation placed on the Protestant side in the struggle then going on in Europe. When Edward VI. died, July 6, 1553, Lady Jane Grey, to whom Edward had bequeathed the crown, was queen for ten days, when her party was dispersed, and Mary, eldest daughter of Henry VIII., ascended the throne.

The marriage of Mary with Philip II. of Spain led to war between England and France, and an English army joined the Spanish force that invaded France. Mary was a devout Catholic, and caused Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, and about three hundred other Protestants to be burned. Her death, November 17, 1558, left the throne to Elizabeth, who sided with the Protestants.

=Elizabethan Period.=--The reign of Elizabeth, which lasted nearly forty-five years, is one of the most brilliant in English history. She triumphed over her enemies, and raised her kingdom to the first place in Europe. She ruled over Scotland in fact, and put the queen of that country, the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, to death, after having held her in captivity nearly nineteen years. The Huguenots of France and Henry IV. received aid from her, and but for the assistance which she gave the Dutch they would have sunk under the power of Spain. She invited the Turks to join her in attacking the pope and Phillip II.; and over both those potentates she achieved a great triumph in 1588, when the Spanish armada was destroyed. The enterprise of Englishmen led them to circumnavigate the globe, to attempt colonization, to extend commerce, and to inaugurate trade relations with India. Elizabeth died March 24, 1603, and with her terminated the Tudor dynasty, after an existence of nearly one hundred and eighteen years.

=House of Stuart.=--Elizabeth was succeeded by James VI. of Scotland, the son of her victim, Mary Stuart, and first king of England of the Stuart line, who inherited the English crown in virtue of his descent from Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VII., who had married his great-grandfather, James IV. The new king, under the title James I., was hailed with much satisfaction by the English; but he was a pedant and a tyrant, and soon lost his popularity. His first parliament, 1604, in reply to his assertion that all their privileges were derived from him, asserted all those principles for which the English constitutionalists contended as facts not to be questioned.

Then began that civil contest which lasted down to 1689 in full force, and which was not utterly at an end till 1746. The foreign policy of James was as vicious as his home policy, and England sank in the estimation of Europe. He died in 1625, and was succeeded by his son Charles I.

For eleven years (1629-1640) this ruler called no parliament, and England was ruled as despotically as France. His chief instruments were Wentworth, afterward earl of Strafford, and Laud, archbishop of Canterbury. Laud sought to fasten the English church policy on Scotland. War between the Scotch people and the English government followed, and Charles was compelled to call a parliament April, 1640, which was dissolved in a few days, and became known as the “short parliament.” Six months later assembled the famous “long parliament,” which proceeded to divest the king of much of his power.

=Period of the Commonwealth.=--The contest between the king and parliament under the lead of Vane, Cromwell and others, led to the great English Civil war, which began in the latter part of 1642. Cromwell was everywhere victorious in the field. The army became the source of all power. The king was tried, condemned and executed. Ireland was conquered by Cromwell, who was almost equally successful in Scotland. The battle of Worcester, September 3, 1651, crushed the royalists for nearly nine years. In 1653 Cromwell dissolved the parliament by force, and was master of England for five years, as Lord Protector. After his death, in 1658, the military and civil republicans quarreled.

=Restoration of the House of Stuart.=--Richard, the son and successor of the great Protector, resigned, and the restoration of the Stuarts was effected in the person of Charles II., 1660, whose reign in law dates from the time of his father’s execution, January 30, 1649. The king’s popularity soon declined, mainly on account of his foreign policy. An unnecessary war with the Dutch produced much disgrace. The triple alliance with Sweden and Holland for a brief interval stayed the course of Louis XIV., but the king’s forces assisted in the war on Holland made by Louis, and afterward assistance was sent to the Dutch.

The peace of 1678 was followed by the excitement caused by the alleged popish plot. Parliament after parliament was elected, met, set itself in decided opposition to the government, and was dissolved. The leading object of the opposition was the exclusion of the duke of York, Charles’ brother, from the line of succession. Charles II. died in February, 1685, and his brother James II., an avowed Roman Catholic, came to the throne.

James II. was bent on the establishment of a despotism, by the destruction of the constitution in church and state. He punished Monmouth’s rebellion with excessive vindictiveness. The king prorogued parliament in November, 1685, and that body never met again. For three years he governed despotically, and a perpetual contest was waged between him and his people.

In June, 1688, it was announced that the king’s second wife had given birth to a prince, who was afterwards known as the pretender. It was generally believed that a supposititious child had been placed in the position of heir apparent.

In November, William, prince of Orange, who was the king’s nephew and had married his eldest daughter Mary, heir apparent to the British crown, landed in England at the head of an army. James fled, and William and Mary were proclaimed sovereigns.

War was declared against France in 1689, and was ended in 1697. Ireland was subdued. Mary died in 1694, and left William III. sole monarch till his death in March, 1702, when the succession passed to Anne, second daughter of James II.

In May war was declared against France, and after splendid victories achieved by Marlborough, it was ended by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713. The union of England and Scotland was effected in 1707. Anne died August 1, 1714, and the crown passed to the house of Hanover in the person of George I.

=House of Hanover under the Four Georges.=--The rebellion of 1715 in behalf of the Stuarts proved a failure. The bursting of the “South sea bubble” in 1720 placed Robert Walpole in control of the government, which he retained under George II. (who ascended the throne in 1727) till 1742. His fall was occasioned by a war with Spain, to which one with France was soon added, growing out of the question of the Austrian succession. In 1746 the contest between the reigning dynasty and the remains of the Stuart party was brought to an end at Culloden where the duke of Cumberland defeated Charles Edward. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 restored peace to Europe for a few years.

The Whigs continued to rule, headed by Henry Pelham, and after his death in 1754 by his brother, the duke of Newcastle. The renewal of the war with France in 1755 was followed by the formation in 1757 of the celebrated Pitt-Newcastle ministry, which carried on the contest with great vigor; so that when George II. died, October 25, 1760, his fleets and armies were everywhere triumphant. The foundation of the East Indian empire of England was laid at Plassey June 23, 1757. French America was conquered at Quebec, September 13, 1759.

The new king, George III. (the first English-born king of his house), grandson of George II., was by nature and education as despotic as the worst of the Stuarts. The attempt to tax the American colonies led to the American revolution. The English in the last years of the war had to fight the Americans, the French, the Spaniards, and the Dutch. The peace of 1783 left England in a low condition.

When France became convulsed by the revolution, England engaged in the war against her that soon followed, which lasted, with two brief intervals, till 1815, ending in the complete triumph of England and her allies. The legislative union between Ireland and Great Britain went into effect January 1, 1801. The exertions made by England, beginning with the administration of Pitt, were vast. Her fleets, chiefly under Nelson, achieved splendid victories over the French and Spaniards, and in the last years of the war her armies were greatly distinguished under the lead of Wellington, who, at Waterloo, inflicted the final defeat on Napoleon in 1815.

In 1810 George III. lost his reason finally, and his eldest son was prince regent till 1820 when he became king as George IV.

In 1812 England became involved in a war with the United States, growing out of the impressment and right of search questions. The contest was virtually terminated by the treaty of Ghent, December 24, 1814. In 1829 the Catholic emancipation act was passed, under a ministry headed by Wellington and Peel. George IV. died in 1830, and was succeeded by his brother, the duke of Clarence, as William IV.

In March, 1831, a bill for parliamentary reform was introduced into the house of commons by Lord John Russell, and after long debates in parliament and intense excitement in the country, caused by the opposition of the house of lords, a bill making extensive changes in the constitution of the house of commons finally passed in June, 1832, under the ministry of Earl Grey.

The first reformed parliament, which met January 29, 1833, contained an overwhelming majority of reformers. Lord Grey retired from office in 1834, and was succeeded by Lord Melbourne. Toward the close of the same year the government was committed to Sir Robert Peel, who formed a conservative ministry. Peel continued in office until April 8, 1835, when he retired, having been repeatedly beaten on Irish church questions. Lord Melbourne returned to office, with many of his old colleagues. The king died on June 20, 1837, and was succeeded by his niece Victoria, the only child of Edward, duke of Kent, fourth son of George III.

=The Victorian Period.=--The accession of Victoria led to the separation of the crowns of England and Hanover, which had been worn by the same persons since 1714. In 1841 Melbourne resigned, and the conservatives under Peel came into power. In 1846 the Peel ministry brought forward an act to protect life in Ireland, but it was defeated in the commons on the same day that the Corn Laws were repealed, and the ministry came to an end, being succeeded by one at the head of which was Lord John Russell. The Russell ministry went out of office in 1852, and for several months the tories, led by Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, were at the head of affairs. This ministry was followed by one composed of the coalesced Whigs and Peelites, headed by Lord Aberdeen.

=Crimean War.=--In 1853 the troubles on the Turkish question began, and war was declared against Russia by France and England in March, 1854. Large fleets and armies were sent to the East, and fleets to the Baltic. The Crimea was invaded, the victory of the Alma won by the allies, and Sebastopol partially invested. On September 8 Sebastopol was reduced, the French storming the Malakhoff, and peace was restored by a congress of the powers at Paris in March, 1856.

=Indian Mutiny and Final Absorption of the Indian Empire.=--Early in 1857 a formidable revolt broke out in England’s great Bengal army of sepoys. Delhi fell into the hands of the rebels, and the nominal Mogul emperor found himself once more a sovereign in reality. The mutiny spread rapidly, and in a short time the whole Bengal army had become hostile to the English. The military reputation of England was greatly raised by the successes of her armies in India, achieved under the lead of Sir Henry Havelock, Sir Colin Campbell, and others. In eight months after the breaking out of the mutiny there were nearly seventy thousand effective English troops there, and new native corps had replaced the sepoys. By the end of 1858 the revolt was totally suppressed. The rebellion resulted in the transfer of the immediate government of India from the East India company to the crown, the old directory sitting for the last time September 1, 1858.

In February, 1858, the Palmerston ministry was driven from office, and a new conservative ministry was formed, with the earl of Derby as premier, and Mr. Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer. This ministry soon resigned and Lord Palmerston resumed office in June, 1859. On May 13, 1861, Great Britain recognized the belligerency of the Confederacy during the American Civil war and the blockade of their ports, and proclaimed neutrality.

In 1868 Disraeli became Prime Minister in succession to Lord Derby, but was defeated in the general election of that year and resigned before the end of the year.

Disraeli was succeeded by Gladstone, who, during the five years of his ministry passed more measures than almost any previous one. Education became compulsory. Trade unions were legalized, the Ballot Act was passed. The Irish Church Act and a Land Act for Ireland were passed, and the state of Ireland at the time also necessitated Coercion Acts.

In 1874 Gladstone resigned, and the Conservatives were returned to power, having for the first time since 1841 a real majority in the House of Commons. The ministry formed by Disraeli was a brilliant one, and the Opposition was for a time weakened by the withdrawal into private life of Gladstone. The great question of Home Rule was gradually forcing itself to the front, and the Irish tactics in the House became obstructive. It was at this time that Disraeli put forward his imperial policy, and the ministry is chiefly noticeable for its attitude on foreign and imperial affairs.