Part 21

+--------------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+ | | A | B | C | +--------------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+ | ENGLAND. | | | | | Bedfordshire | 302,942 | 194,588 | 206,478 | | Berkshire | 463,830 | 280,794 | 294,807 | | Buckinghamshire | 479,360 | 219,551 | 236,209 | | Cambridgeshire | 315,168 | 128,322 | 129,594 | | Isle of Ely | 238,073 | 69,752 | 73,778 | | Cheshire | 657,950 | 954,779 | 1,025,423 | | Cornwall | 868,167 | 328,098 | 320,559 | | Cumberland | 973,086 | 265,746 | 273,037 | | Derbyshire | 650,369 | 683,423 | 714,539 | | Devonshire | 1,671,364 | 699,703 | 709,488 | | Dorsetshire | 625,612 | 223,266 | 228,258 | | Durham | 649,244 | 1,369,860 | 1,478,506 | | Essex | 979,532 | 1,350,881 | 1,468,341 | | Gloucestershire | 805,842 | 736,097 | 757,668 | | Herefordshire | 538,924 | 114,269 | 113,118 | | Hertfordshire | 404,523 | 311,284 | 333,236 | | Huntingdonshire | 233,985 | 55,577 | 54,748 | | Kent | 975,965 | 1,045,591 | 1,141,867 | | Lancashire | 1,194,555 | 4,767,832 | 4,928,359 | | Leicestershire | 532,779 | 476,553 | 494,522 | | Lincolnshire | | | | | The parts of Holland | 263,355 | 82,849 | 85,225 | | The parts of Kesteven | 469,142 | 111,324 | 108,237 | | The parts of Lindsey | 972,796 | 369,787 | 408,643 | | London | 74,850 | 4,521,685 | 4,483,249 | | Middlesex | 148,692 | 1,126,465 | 1,253,164 | | Monmouthshire | 349,552 | 395,719 | 450,700 | | Norfolk | 1,315,064 | 499,116 | 504,277 | | Northamptonshire | 585,148 | 303,797 | 302,430 | | Soke of Peterborough | 53,464 | 44,718 | 46,954 | | Northumberland | 1,291,515 | 696,893 | 746,138 | | Nottinghamshire | 540,123 | 604,098 | 641,134 | | Oxfordshire | 479,220 | 189,484 | 189,558 | | Rutlandshire | 97,273 | 20,346 | 18,368 | | Shropshire | 861,800 | 246,307 | 242,959 | | Somersetshire | 1,037,594 | 458,025 | 465,682 | | Southampton | 958,896 | 862,393 | 910,333 | | Isle of Wight | 94,146 | 88,186 | 94,697 | | Staffordshire | 741,318 | 1,279,649 | 1,349,225 | | Suffolk, East | 557,353 | 277,155 | 291,006 | | Suffolk, West | 390,916 | 116,905 | 108,982 | | Surrey | 461,833 | 845,578 | 930,377 | | Sussex, East | 530,555 | 487,070 | 532,206 | | Sussex, West | 401,916 | 176,308 | 195,795 | | Warwickshire | 605,275 | 1,247,418 | 1,390,092 | | Westmoreland | 504,917 | 63,575 | 65,740 | | Wiltshire | 864,101 | 286,822 | 292,213 | | Worcestershire | 458,352 | 387,688 | 405,876 | | Yorkshire, East Riding | 750,115 | 432,759 | 460,717 | | " North Riding | 1,362,058 | 419,546 | 456,312 | | " West Riding | 1,773,529 | 3,045,377 | 3,181,654 | | +-------------+-------------+-------------+ | Totals | 32,559,868 | 34,045,290 | 35,678,530 | | | | | | | WALES. | | | | | Anglesey | 176,630 | 50,928 | 51,695 | | Brecknockshire | 469,281 | 59,287 | 61,257 | | Cardiganshire | 443,189 | 59,879 | 61,292 | | Carmarthenshire | 588,472 | 160,406 | 175,069 | | Carnarvonshire | 366,005 | 125,043 | 131,034 | | Denbighshire | 426,080 | 144,783 | 154,847 | | Flintshire | 163,707 | 92,705 | 106,466 | | Glamorganshire | 520,456 | 1,120,910 | 1,252,701 | | Merionethshire | 422,372 | 45,565 | 45,450 | | Montgomeryshire | 510,110 | 53,146 | 51,317 | | Pembrokeshire | 393,003 | 89,960 | 92,056 | | Radnorshire | 301,165 | 22,590 | 23,528 | | +-------------+-------------+-------------+ | Totals, Wales | | | | | (12 counties) | 4,780,470 | 2,025,202 | 2,206,712 | | | | | | | Totals, England | | | | | and Wales | 37,340,338 | 36,070,492 | 37,885,242 | +--------------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+

A large part of the surface of England consists of wide valleys and plains. Beginning in the north, the first valleys on the east side are those of the Coquet, Tyne, and Tees; on the west the beautiful valley of the Eden, which, at first hemmed in between the Cumbrian range and Pennine chain, gradually widens out into a plain of about 470 sq. miles, with the town of Carlisle in its centre. The most important of the northern plains is the Vale of York, which has an area of nearly 1000 sq. miles. Properly speaking it is still the same plain which stretches, with scarcely a single interruption, across the counties of Lincoln, Suffolk, and Essex, to the mouth of the Thames, and to a considerable distance inland, comprising the Central Plain and the region of the Fens. On the west side of the island, in South Lancashire and Cheshire, is the fertile Cheshire Plain. In Wales there are no extensive plains, the valleys generally having a narrow rugged form favourable to romantic beauty, but not compatible with great fertility. Wales, however, by giving rise to the Severn, can justly claim part in the vale, or series of almost unrivalled vales, along which it pursues its romantic course through the counties of Montgomery, Salop, Worcester, and Gloucester. South-east of the Cotswold Hills is Salisbury Plain, but it is only in name that it can be classed with the other plains and level lands of England, being a large elevated plateau, of an oval shape, with a thin chalky soil only suitable for pasture. In the south-west the only vales deserving of notice are those of Taunton in Somerset and Exeter in Devon. A large portion of the south-east may be regarded as a continuous plain, consisting of what are called the Wealds of Sussex, Surrey, and Kent, between the North and South Downs, and containing an area of about 1000 sq. miles. The south-east angle of this district is occupied by the Romney Marsh, an extensive level tract composed for the most part of a rich marine deposit. Extensive tracts of a similar nature are situated on the east coast, in Yorkshire and Lincoln, where they are washed by the Humber; and in the counties which either border the Wash, or, like Northampton, Bedford, Huntingdon, and Cambridge, send their drainage into it by the Nene and the Ouse. Many of these lands are naturally the richest in the kingdom, but have been utilized only by means of drainage.

England is well supplied with rivers, many of them of great importance to industry and commerce. Most of them carry their waters to the North Sea. If we consider the drainage as a whole, four principal river basins may be distinguished, those of the Thames, Wash, and Humber belonging to the North Sea; and the Severn belonging to the Atlantic. The basin of the Thames has its greatest length from east to west, 130 miles, and its average breadth about 50 miles, area 6160 sq. miles. The river itself, which is the chief of English rivers, has a length of 215 miles. The basin of the Wash consists of the subordinate basins of the Great Ouse, Nene, Welland, and Witham, which all empty themselves into that estuary, and has an area computed at 5850 sq. miles. The basin of the Severn consists of two distinct portions, that on the right bank, of an irregularly oval shape, and having for its principal tributaries the Teme and the Wye; and that on the left, of which the Upper Avon is the principal tributary stream. The area of the whole basin is 8580 sq. miles. The next basin, that of the Humber, the largest of all, consists of the three basins of the Humber proper, the Ouse, and the Trent, and its area is 9550 sq. miles, being about one-sixth of the whole area of England and Wales. Other rivers unconnected with these systems are the Tyne, Wear, and Tees in the north-east; the Eden, Ribble, Mersey, and Dee in the north-west. The south-coast streams are very unimportant except for their estuaries.

For the minerals, climate, agriculture, manufactures, &c., of England, see the article _Britain_.

_Civil History._--The history of England proper begins when it ceased to be a Roman possession. (See _Britain_.) On the withdrawal of the Roman forces, about the beginning of the fifth century A.D., the South Britons, or inhabitants of what is now called England, were no longer able to withstand the attacks of their ferocious northern neighbours, the Scots and Picts. They applied for assistance to Aetius, but the Roman general was too much occupied in the struggle with Attila to attend to their petition. In their distress they appear to have sought the aid of the Saxons; and according to the Anglo-Saxon narratives three ships, containing 1600 men, were dispatched to their help under the command of the brothers Hengist and Horsa. Vortigern, a duke or prince of the Britons, assigned them the Isle of Thanet for habitation, and, marching against the northern foe, they obtained a complete victory. The date assigned to these events by the later Anglo-Saxon chronicles is A.D. 449, the narratives asserting further that the Saxons, finding the land desirable, turned their arms against the Britons, and, reinforced by new bands, conquered first Kent and ultimately the larger part of the island. Whatever the credibility of the story of Vortigern, it is certain that in the middle of the fifth century the occasional Teutonic incursions gave place to persistent invasion with a view to settlement. These Teutonic invaders were Low German tribes from the country about the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, the three most prominent being the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. Of these the Jutes were the first to form a settlement, taking possession of part of Kent and the Isle of Wight; but the larger conquests of the Saxons in the south and the Angles in the north gave to these tribes the leading place in the kingdom. The struggle continued 150 years, and at the end of that period the whole southern part of Britain, with the exception of Strathclyde, Wales, and West Wales (Cornwall), was in the hands of the Teutonic tribes. This conquered territory was divided among a number of small states or petty chieftaincies, seven of the most conspicuous of which are often spoken of as the _Heptarchy_. These were: 1. The kingdom of Kent; founded by Hengist in 455; ended in 823. 2. Kingdom of South Saxons, containing Sussex and Surrey; founded by Ella in 477; ended in 689. 3. Kingdom of East Angles, containing Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Ely (Isle of); founded by Uffa in 571 or 575; ended in 792. 4. Kingdom of West Saxons, containing Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wilts, Hants, Berks, and part of Cornwall; founded by Cerdic 519; swallowed up the rest in 827. 5. Kingdom of Northumbria, containing York, Durham, Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland, and the east coast of Scotland to the Firth of Forth; founded by Ida 547; absorbed by Wessex in 827. 6. Kingdom of East Saxons, containing Essex, Middlesex, Hertford (part); founded by Erchew in 527: ended in 823. 7. Kingdom of Mercia, containing Gloucester, Hereford, Worcester, Warwick, Leicester, Rutland, Northampton, Lincoln, Huntingdon, Bedford, Buckingham, Oxford, Stafford, Derby, Salop, Nottingham, Chester, Hertford (part); founded by Cridda about 584; absorbed by Wessex in 827. Each state was, in its turn, annexed to more powerful neighbours; and at length, in 827, Egbert, by his valour and superior capacity, united in his own person the sovereignty of what had formerly been seven kingdoms, and the whole came to be called England, that is Angle-land.

While this work of conquest and of intertribal strife had been in progress towards the establishment of a united kingdom, certain important changes had occurred. The conquest had been the slow expulsion of a Christian race by a purely heathen race, and the country had returned to something of its old isolation with regard to the rest of Europe. But before the close of the sixth century Christianity had secured a footing in the south-east of the island. Ethelberht, King of Kent and suzerain over the kingdoms south of the Humber, married a Christian wife, Bertha, daughter of Charibert of Soissons, and this event indirectly led to the coming of St. Augustine. The conversion of Kent, Essex, and East Anglia was followed by that of Northumberland and then by that of Mercia, of Wessex, of Sussex, and lastly of Wight, the contest between the two religions being at its height in the seventh century. The legal and political changes immediately consequent upon the adoption of Christianity were not great, but there resulted a more intimate relation with Europe and the older civilizations, the introduction of new learning and culture, the formation of a written literature, and the fusion of the tribes and petty kingdoms into a closer and more lasting unity than that which could have been otherwise secured.

The kingdom, however, was still kept in a state of disturbance by the attacks of the Danes, who had made repeated incursions during the whole of the Saxon period, and about half a century after the unification of the kingdom became for the moment masters of nearly the whole of England. But the genius of Alfred the Great, who had ascended the throne in 871, speedily reversed matters by the defeat of the Danes at Ethandune (878). Guthrum, their king, embraced Christianity, became the vassal of the Saxon king, and retired to a strip of land on the east coast including Northumbria and called the Danelagh. The two immediate successors of Alfred, Edward (901-925) and Athelstan (925-940), the son and the grandson of Alfred, both vigorous and able rulers, had each in turn to direct his arms against these settlers of the Danelagh. The reigns of the next five kings, Edmund, Edred, Edwy, Edgar, and Edward the Martyr, are chiefly remarkable on account of the conspicuous place occupied in them by Dunstan, who was counsellor to Edmund, minister of Edred, treasurer under Edwy, and supreme during the reigns of Edgar and his successor. It was possibly due to his policy that from the time of Athelstan till after the death of Edward the Martyr (978 or 979) the country had comparative rest from the Danes. During the tenth century many changes had taken place in the Teutonic constitution. Feudalism was already taking root; the king's authority had increased; the folkland was being taken over as the king's personal property; the nobles by birth, or ealdormen, were becoming of less importance in administration than the nobility of thegns, the officers of the king's court. Ethelred (978-1016), who succeeded Edward, was a minor, the government was feebly conducted, and no united action being taken against the Danes, their incursions became more frequent and destructive. Animosities between the English and the Danes who had settled among them became daily more violent, and a general massacre of the latter took place in 1002. The following year Sweyn invaded the kingdom with a powerful army and assumed the crown of England. Ethelred was compelled to take refuge in Normandy; and though he afterwards returned, he found in Canute an adversary no less formidable than Sweyn. Ethelred left his kingdom in 1016 to his son Edmund, who displayed great valour, but was compelled to divide his kingdom with Canute; and when he was assassinated in 1017 the Danes succeeded the sovereignty of the whole.

Canute (Knut), who espoused the widow of Ethelred, that he might reconcile his new subjects, obtained the name of Great, not only on account of his personal qualities, but from the extent of his dominions, being master of Denmark and Norway as well as England. In 1035 he died, and was followed in England by two other Danish kings, Harold and Hardicanute, whose joint reigns lasted till 1042, after which the English line was again restored in the person of Edward the Confessor. Edward was a weak prince, and in the latter years of his reign had far less real power than his brother-in-law Harold, son of the great Earl Godwin. On Edward's death in 1066 Harold accordingly obtained the crown. He found, however, a formidable opponent in the second-cousin of Edward, William of Normandy, who instigated the Danes to invade the northern counties, while he, with 60,000 men, landed in the south. Harold vanquished the Danes, and hastening southwards met the Normans near Hastings, at Senlac, afterwards called Battle. Harold and his two brothers fell (14th Oct., 1066), and William (1066-87) immediately claimed the government as lawful King of England, being subsequently known as William I, the Conqueror. For some time he conducted the government with great moderation; but being obliged to reward those who had assisted him, he bestowed the chief offices of government upon Normans, and divided among them a great part of the country. The revolts of the native English which followed were quickly crushed, Continental feudalism in a modified form was established, and the English Church reorganized under Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canterbury.

At his death, in 1087, William II, commonly known by the name of Rufus, the Conqueror's second son, obtained the crown, Robert, the eldest son, receiving the duchy of Normandy. In 1100, when William II was accidentally killed in the New Forest, Robert was again cheated of his throne by his younger brother Henry (Henry I), who in 1106 even wrested from him the duchy of Normandy. Henry's power being secured, he entered into a dispute with Anselm the Primate, and with the Pope, concerning the right of granting investure to the clergy. He supported his quarrel with firmness, and brought it to a not unfavourable issue. His reign was also marked by the suppression of the greater Norman nobles in England, whose power (like that of many Continental feudatories) threatened to overshadow that of the king, and by the substitution of a class of lesser nobles. In 1135 he died in Normandy, leaving behind him only a daughter, Matilda.

By the will of Henry I his daughter Maud or Matilda, wife of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, and frequently styled the Empress Matilda, because she had first been married to Henry V, Emperor of Germany, was declared his successor. But Stephen, son of the Count of Blois, and of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, raised an army in Normandy, landed in England, and declared himself king. After years of civil war and bloodshed an amicable arrangement was brought about, by which it was agreed that Stephen should continue to reign during the remainder of his life, but that he should be succeeded by Henry, son of Matilda and the Count of Anjou. Stephen died in 1154, and Henry Plantagenet ascended the throne with the title of Henry II, being the first of the Plantagenet or Angevin kings. A larger dominion was united under his sway than had been held by any previous sovereign of England, for at the time when he became King of England he was already in the possession of Anjou, Normandy, and Aquitaine.

Henry II found far less difficulty in restraining the licence of his barons than in abridging the exorbitant privileges of the clergy, who claimed exemption not only from the taxes of the State, but also from its penal enactments, and who were supported in their demands by the Primate Becket. The king's wishes were formulated in the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), which were at first accepted and then repudiated by the Primate. The assassination of Becket, however, placed the king at a disadvantage in the struggle, and after his conquest of Ireland (1171) he submitted to the Church, and did penance at Becket's tomb. Henry was the first who placed the common people of England in a situation which led to their having a share in the Government. The system of frank-pledge was revived, trial by jury was instituted by the Assize of Clarendon, and the Eyre courts were made permanent by the Assize of Nottingham. To curb the power of the nobles he granted charters to towns, freeing them from all subjection to any but himself, thus laying the foundation of a new order in society.

Richard I, called Coeur de Lion, who in 1189 succeeded to his father, Henry II, spent most of his reign away from England. Having gone to Palestine to join in the third crusade, he proved himself an intrepid soldier. Returning homewards in disguise through Germany, he was made prisoner by Leopold, Duke of Austria, but was ransomed by his subjects. In the meantime John, his brother, had aspired to the crown, and hoped, by the assistance of the French, to exclude Richard from his right. Richard's presence for a time restored matters to some appearance of order; but having undertaken an expedition against France, he received a mortal wound at the siege of Ch[^a]lons, in 1199.

John was at once recognized as King of England, and secured possession of Normandy; but Anjou, Maine, and Touraine acknowledged the claim of Arthur, son of Geoffrey, second son of Henry II. On the death of Arthur, while in John's power, these four French provinces were at once lost to England. John's opposition to the Pope in electing a successor to the see of Canterbury in 1205 led to the kingdom being placed under an _Interdict_; and, the nation being in a disturbed condition, he was at last compelled to receive Stephen Langton as archbishop, and to accept his kingdom as a fief of the papacy (1213). His exactions and misgovernment had equally embroiled him with the nobles. In 1213 they refused to follow him to France, and, on his return defeated, they at once took measures to secure their own privileges and abridge the perogatives of the Crown. King and barons met at Runnymede, and on 15th June, 1215, the Great Charter (Magna Charta) was signed. It was speedily declared null and void by the Pope and war broke out between John and the barons, who were aided by the French king. In 1216, however, John died, and his turbulent reign was succeeded by the almost equally turbulent reign of his son Henry III.