Part 22

During the first years of the reign of Henry III the abilities of the Earl of Pembroke, who was regent until 1219, retained the kingdom in tranquillity; but when, in 1227, Henry assumed the reins of government he showed himself incapable of managing them. The Charter was three times reissued in a modified form, and new privileges were added to it, but the king took no pains to observe its provisions. The struggle, long maintained in the Great Council (henceforward called Parliament) over money grants and other grievances, reached an acute stage in 1263, when civil war broke out. Simon de Montfort, who had laid the foundations of the House of Commons by summoning representatives of the shire communities to the Mad Parliament of 1258, had by this time engrossed the sole power. He defeated the king and his son Edward at Lewes in 1264, and in his famous Parliament of 1265 still further widened the privileges of the people by summoning to it burgesses as well as knights of the shire. The escape of Prince Edward, however, was followed by the battle of Evesham (1265), at which Earl Simon was defeated and slain, and the rest of the reign was undisturbed.

On the death of Henry III, in 1272, Edward I succeeded without opposition. From 1276 to 1284 he was largely occupied in the conquest and annexation of Wales, which had become practically independent during the barons' wars. In 1292 Baliol, whom Edward had decided to be rightful heir to the Scottish throne, did homage for the fief to the English king; but when, in 1294, war broke out with France, Scotland also declared war. The Scots were defeated at Dunbar (1296), and the country placed under an English regent; but the revolt under Wallace (1297) was followed by that of Bruce (1306), and the Scots remained unsubdued. The reign of Edward was distinguished by many legal and legislative reforms, such as the separation of the old king's court into the Court of Exchequer, Court of King's Bench, and Court of Common Pleas, and the passage of the Statute of Mortmain. In 1295 the first perfect Parliament was summoned, the clergy and barons by special writ, the commons by writ to the sheriffs directing the election of two knights from each shire, two citizens from each city, two burghers from each borough. Two years later the imposition of taxation without consent of Parliament was forbidden by a special Act (De Tallagio non Concedendo). The great aim of Edward, however, to include England, Scotland, and Wales in one kingdom proved a failure, and he died in 1307 marching against Robert Bruce.

The reign of his son Edward II was unfortunate to himself and to his kingdom. He made a feeble attempt to carry out his father's last and earnest request to prosecute the war with Scotland, but the English were almost constantly unfortunate; and at length, at Bannockburn (1314), they were defeated by Robert Bruce, which ensured the independence of Scotland. The king soon proved incapable of regulating the lawless conduct of his barons; and his wife, a woman of a bold, intriguing disposition, joined in the confederacy against him, which resulted in his imprisonment and death in 1327.

The reign of Edward III was as brilliant as that of his father had been the reverse. The main projects of the third Edward were directed against France, the crown of which he claimed in 1328 in virtue of his mother, the daughter of King Philip. The victory won by the Black Prince at Cr['e]cy (1346), the capture of Calais (1347), and the victory of Poitiers (1356), ultimately led to the Peace of Br['e]tigny in 1360, by which Edward III received all the west of France on condition of renouncing his claim to the French throne. (See _Br['e]tigny_.) Before the close of his reign, however, these advantages were all lost again, save a few principal towns on the coast.

Edward III was succeeded in 1377 by his grandson Richard II, son of Edward the Black Prince. The people of England now began to show, though in a turbulent manner, that they had acquired just notions of government. In 1380 an unjust and oppressive poll-tax brought their grievances to a head, and 100,000 men, under Wat Tyler, marched towards London (1381). Wat Tyler was killed while conferring with the king, and the prudence and courage of Richard appeased the insurgents. Despite his conduct on this occasion, Richard was deficient in the vigour necessary to curb the lawlessness of the nobles. In 1398 he banished his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke; and on the death of the latter's father, the Duke of Lancaster, unjustly appropriated his cousin's patrimony. To avenge the injustice Bolingbroke landed in England during the king's absence in Ireland, and at the head of 60,000 malcontents compelled Richard to surrender. He was confined in the Tower, and despite the superior claims of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, Henry was appointed king (1399), the first of the House of Lancaster. Richard was, in all probability, murdered early in 1400.

The manner in which the Duke of Lancaster, now Henry IV, acquired the crown rendered his reign extremely turbulent, but the vigour of his administration quelled every insurrection. The most important--that of the Percies of Northumberland, Owen Glendower, and Douglas of Scotland--was crushed by the battle of Shrewsbury (1403). During the reign of Henry IV the clergy of England first began the practice of burning heretics under the Act _de haeretico comburendo_, passed in the second year of his reign. The Act was chiefly directed against the Lollards, as the followers of Wycliffe now came to be called. Henry died in 1413, leaving his crown to his son, Henry V, who revived the claim of Edward III to the throne of France in 1415, and invaded that country at the head of 30,000 men. The disjointed councils of the French rendered their country an easy prey; the victory of Agincourt was gained in 1415; and after a second campaign a peace was concluded at Troyes in 1420, by which Henry received the hand of Katherine, daughter of Charles VI, was appointed regent of France during the reign of his father-in-law, and declared heir to the throne on his death. The two kings, however, died within a few weeks of each other in 1422, and the infant son of Henry thus became King of England (as Henry VI) and France at the age of nine months.

England, during the reign of Henry VI, was subjected, in the first place, to all the confusion incident to a long minority, and afterwards to all the misery of a civil war. Henry allowed himself to be managed by anyone who had the courage to assume the conduct of his affairs, and the influence of his wife, Margaret of Anjou, a woman of uncommon capacity, was of no advantage either to himself or the realm. In France (1422-53) the English forces lost ground, and were finally expelled by the celebrated Joan of Arc, Calais alone being retained. The rebellion of Jack Cade in 1450 was suppressed, only to be succeeded by more serious trouble. In that year Richard, Duke of York, the father of Edward, afterwards Edward IV, began to advance his pretensions to the throne, which had been so long usurped by the House of Lancaster. His claim was founded on his descent from the third son of Edward III, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, who was his great-great-grandfather on the mother's side, while Henry was the great-grandson on the father's side of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the fourth son of Edward III. Richard of York was also grandson on the father's side of Edmund, fifth son of Edward III. The wars which resulted, called the Wars of the Roses, from the fact that a red rose was the badge of the House of Lancaster and a white one that of the House of York, lasted for thirty years, from the first battle of St. Albans, 22nd May, 1455, to the battle of Bosworth, 22nd Aug., 1485. Henry VI was twice driven from the throne (in 1461 and 1471) by Edward of York, whose father had previously been killed in battle in 1460. Edward of York reigned as Edward IV from 1461 till his death in 1483, with a brief interval in 1471; and was succeeded by two other sovereigns of the House of York, first his son Edward V, who reigned for eleven weeks in 1483; and then by his brother Richard III, who reigned from 1483 till 1485, when he was defeated and slain on Bosworth field by Henry Tudor, of the House of Lancaster, who then became Henry VII.

Henry VII was at this time the representative of the House of Lancaster, and in order at once to strengthen his own title, and to put an end to the rivalry between the Houses of York and Lancaster, he married, in 1486, Elizabeth, the sister of Edward V and heiress of the House of York. His reign was disturbed by insurrections attending the impostures of Lambert Simnel (1487), who pretended to be a son of the Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV, and of Perkin Warbeck (1488), who affirmed that he was the Duke of York, younger brother of Edward V; but neither of these attained any magnitude. The king's worst fault was the avarice which led him to employ in schemes of extortion such instruments as Empson and Dudley. His administration throughout did much to increase the royal power and to establish order and prosperity. He died in 1509.

The authority of the English Crown, which had been so much extended by Henry VII, was by his son Henry VIII exerted in a tyrannical and capricious manner. The most important event of the reign was undoubtedly the Reformation; though it had its origin rather in Henry's caprice and in the casual situation of his private affairs than in his conviction of the necessity of a reformation in religion, or in the solidity of reasoning employed by the reformers. Henry had been espoused to Catherine of Spain, who was first married to his elder brother Arthur, a prince who died young. Henry became disgusted with his queen, and enamoured of one of her maids of honour, Anne Boleyn. He had recourse, therefore, to the Pope to dissolve a marriage which had at first been rendered legal only by a dispensation from the Pontiff; but, failing in his desires, he broke away entirely from the Holy See, and in 1534 got himself recognized by Act of Parliament as the head of the English Church. He died in 1547. He was married six times, and left three children, each of whom reigned in turn. These were: Mary, by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon; Elizabeth, by his second wife, Anne Boleyn; and Edward, by his third wife, Jane Seymour.

Edward, who reigned first, with the title of Edward VI, was nine years of age at the time of his succession, and died in 1553, when he was only sixteen. His short reign, or rather the reign of the Earl of Hertford, afterwards Duke of Somerset, who was appointed regent, was distinguished chiefly by the success which attended the measures of the reformers, who acquired great part of the power formerly engrossed by the Catholics. The intrigues of Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, during the reign of Edward, caused Lady Jane Grey to be declared his successor; but her reign, if it could be called such, lasted only a few days. Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, was placed upon the throne, and Lady Jane Grey and her husband were both executed. Mary, a bigoted Catholic, seems to have wished for the crown only for the purpose of re-establishing the Roman Catholic faith. Political motives had induced Philip of Spain to accept of her as a spouse; but she could never prevail on her subjects to allow him any share of power. She died in 1558.

Elizabeth, who succeeded her sister Mary, was attached to the Protestant faith, and found little difficulty in establishing it in England. Having concluded peace with France (1559), Elizabeth set herself to promote the confusion which prevailed in Scotland, to which her cousin Mary had returned from France as queen in 1561. In this she was so far successful that Mary placed herself in her power (1568), and after many years imprisonment was sent to the scaffold (1587). As the most powerful Protestant nation, and as a rival to Spain in the New World, it was natural that England should become involved in difficulties with that country. The dispersion of the Armada by the English fleet under Howard, Drake, and Hawkins was the most brilliant event of a struggle which abounded in minor feats of valour. In Elizabeth's reign London became the centre of the world's trade, the extension of British commercial enterprise being coincident with the ruin of Antwerp in 1585. The Parliament was increased by the creation of sixty-two new boroughs, and its members were exempted from arrest. In literature not less than in politics and in commerce the same full life displayed itself, and England began definitely to assume the characteristics which distinguish her from the other European nations of to-day.

To Elizabeth succeeded (in 1603) James VI of Scotland and I of England, son of Mary Queen of Scots and Darnley. His accession to the crown of England in addition to that of Scotland did much to unite the two nations, though a certain smouldering animosity still lingered. His dissimulation, however, ended in his satisfying neither of the contending ecclesiastical parties--the Puritans or the Catholics; and his absurd insistence on his divine right made his reign a continuous struggle between the prerogative of the Crown and the freedom of the people. His extravagance kept him in constant disputes with the Parliament, who would not grant him the sums he demanded, and compelled him to resort to monopolies, loans, benevolences, and other illegal methods. The nation at large, however, continued to prosper through the whole of his reign. His son Charles I, who succeeded him in 1625, inherited the same exalted ideas of royal prerogative, and his marriage with a Catholic, his arbitrary rule, and illegal methods of raising money provoked bitter hostility. Under the guidance of Laud and Strafford things went from bad to worse. Civil war broke out in 1642 between the king's party and that of the Parliament, and the latter proving victorious, in 1649 the king was beheaded.

A Commonwealth or republican government was now established, in which the most prominent figure was Oliver Cromwell. Mutinies in the army among Fifth-monarchists and Levellers were subdued by Cromwell and Fairfax, and Cromwell, in a series of masterly movements, subjugated Ireland and gained the important victories of Dunbar and Worcester. At sea Blake had destroyed the Royalist fleet under Rupert, and was engaged in an honourable struggle with the Dutch under van Tromp. But within the governing body matters had come to a deadlock. A dissolution was necessary, yet Parliament shrank from dissolving itself, and in the meantime the reform of the law, a settlement with regard to the Church, and other important matters remained untouched. In April, 1653, Cromwell cut the knot by forcibly ejecting the members and putting the keys of the House in his pocket. From this time he was practically head of the Government, which was vested in a council of thirteen. A Parliament--the Little or Barebones Parliament--was summoned, and in the December of the same year Cromwell was installed Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. With more than the power of a king, he succeeded in dominating the confusion at home, and made the country feared throughout the whole of Europe. Cromwell died in 1658, and the brief and feeble protectorate of his son Richard followed.

There was now a widespread feeling that the country would be better under the old form of government, and Charles II, son of Charles I, was called to the throne by the Restoration of 1660. He took complete advantage of the popular reaction from the narrowness and intolerance of Puritanism, and even endeavoured to carry it to the extreme of establishing the Catholic religion. The promises of religious freedom made by him before the Restoration in the Declaration Breda were broken by the Test and Corporation Acts, and by the Act of Uniformity, which drove two thousand clergymen from the Church and created the great dissenting movement of modern times. The Conventicle and Five-mile Acts followed, and the 'Drunken Parliament' restored Episcopacy in Scotland. At one time even civil war seemed again imminent. The abolition of the censorship of the press (1679) and the reaffirmation of the Habeas Corpus principle are the most praiseworthy incidents of the reign.

As Charles II left no legitimate issue, his brother the Duke of York succeeded him as James II (1685-8). An invasion by an illegitimate son of Charles, the Duke of Monmouth who claimed the throne, was suppressed, and the king's arbitrary rule was supported by the wholesale butcheries of such instruments as Kirke and Jeffreys. The king's zealous countenance of Roman Catholicism and his attempts to force the Church and the universities to submission provoked a storm of opposition. Seven prelates were brought to trial for seditious libel, but were acquitted amidst general rejoicings. The whole nation was prepared to welcome any deliverance, and in 1688 William of Orange, husband of James's daughter Mary, landed in Torbay. James fled to France, and a convention summoned by William settled the crown upon him, he thus becoming William III. Annexed to this settlement was a Declaration of Rights circumscribing the royal prerogative by depriving him of the right to exercise dispensing power, or to exact money, or maintain an army without the assent of Parliament. This placed henceforward the right of the British sovereign to the throne upon a purely statutory basis. The Toleration Act, passed in 1689, released dissent from many penalties. An armed opposition to William lasted for a short time in Scotland, but ceased with the fall of Viscount Dundee, the leader of James's adherents; and though the struggle was prolonged in Ireland, it was brought to a close before the end of 1691. The following year saw the origination of the national debt, the exchequer having been drained by the heavy military expenditure. A Bill for triennial Parliaments was passed in 1694, the year in which Queen Mary died. For a moment after her death William's popularity was in danger, but his successes at Namur and elsewhere, and the obvious exhaustion of France, once more confirmed his power. The Treaty of Ryswick followed in 1697, and the death of James II in exile in 1701 removed a not unimportant source of danger. Early in the following year William also died, and by the Act of Settlement Anne succeeded him.

The closing act of William's reign had been the formation of the grand alliance between England, Holland, and the German Empire, and the new queen's rule opened with the brilliant successes of Marlborough at Blenheim (1704) and Ramilies (1706). Throughout the earlier part of her reign the Marlboroughs practically ruled the kingdom, the duke's wife, Sarah Jennings, being the queen's most intimate friend and adviser. In 1707 the history of England becomes the history of Britain, the Act of Union passed in that year binding the Parliaments and Realms of England and Scotland into a single and more powerful whole. See _Britain_.

_Ecclesiastical History._--The first religion of the Celts of England was Druidism. It has been conjectured that Christianity may have reached Britain by way of France (Gaul) before the conclusion of the first, or not long after the commencement of the second century, but the period and manner of its introduction are uncertain. It had, however, made considerable progress in the island previous to the time of Constantine the Great (306-337). Several bishops from Britain sat in the Councils of Nice (325), Sardica (347), and Ariminum, in Italy (359); and in 519 an ecclesiastical synod of all the British clergy was held by St. David, Archbishop of Caerleon, for extirpating the remains of the Pelagian heresy.

A period of almost total eclipse followed the inroad of the pagan Saxons, and it was not till A.D. 570 that signs of change showed themselves in the new nationality. On the coming of Austin, or St. Augustine, sent over in 596 by Gregory the Great, a residence at Canterbury was assigned to him, and Ethelberht, King of Kent, and most of his subjects, adopted Christianity. Other missionaries followed; East Saxons were soon after converted by Mellitus; and a bishop's see was established at London, their capital, early in the seventh century. The Northumbrians were next converted, an event accelerated by the marriage of their king, Edwin, with a daughter of Ethelberht, and by the labours of the missionary Paulinus. The influence of Edwin and Paulinus also secured the conversion of Carpwald, King of the East Angles; and, as a reward to Paulinus, Edwin erected a see at York, and obtained an archbishop's pall for him from Pope Honorius I, who sent one at the same time to Canterbury. The conversion of the other kingdoms followed in the course of the seventh century.

As Kent and Wessex received Christianity from Roman and Frankish missionaries, and Mercia and Northumberland through the Scottish St. Aidan (for Northumbria had apostatized after the death of its first Christian king, and received Christianity anew from a Scottish source), there were certain differences between the Churches, especially concerning the time of keeping Easter. To promote the union of the Churches thus founded in England with the Church of Rome, a grand council was summoned by Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Hertford, A.D. 673, when uniformity was secured among all the English Churches, and the see of Canterbury made supreme.

The clergy in course of time attained, particularly after the Norman Conquest, to such a height of domination as to form an _imperium in imperio_. Under Anselm (1093-1109) the Church was practically emancipated from the control of the State, and the power of the Pope became supreme. The result was a considerable increase of monasticism in England, and the prevalence of the greatest abuses under the cloak of Church privilege. Several monarchs showed themselves restive under the Papal control, but without shaking off the yoke; and though Henry II succeeded in abating some evils, yet the severity of the penance exacted from him for the murder of Becket is a striking proof of the power that the Church then had in punishing offences committed against itself. The reaction set in during the reign of Henry III, when the vigorous independence of Robert Grosseteste did much to stimulate the individual life of the English Church. With the reign of Edward I the new system of Parliaments came as an effective rival of the Church Synods, and various Acts restrained the power of the clergy. In the fourteenth century the teaching of Wycliffe promised to produce a thorough revolt from Rome; but the difficulties of the House of Lancaster--which drove its members to propitiate the Church--and the Wars of the Roses, prevented matters coming to a head.