The Growth of British Policy ... Second edition

Front matter

THE GROWTH or BEITISH POLICY. 3LortDon : C. J. CLAY and SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. ©tasjoto: 203, ARGYLE STREET. ILtipjig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. lUfcj gork: THE MAC11ILLAN CO. Bombas: GEORGE BELL AND SONS. THE GROWTH OF BEITISH POLICY AN HISTORICAL ESSAY BY y.O O* Sir J. R. SEELEY, Lttt. D^.C.M.G. FORMERLY KEGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE FELLOW OF GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE AND HONORARY FELLOW OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE. VOLUME I. SECOND EDITION. CAMBRIDGE : AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1897 [All Rights reserved.] First Editio>i 1895. Second Edition DEDICATED BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN MEMOIR. John Robert Seeley was born in London on Sep tember 10, 1834. He was the third son of Mr Robert Seeley, the publisher, a man of great mental and bodily energy, and of no mean Hterary skill.

Mr Seeley was a contributor to Fraser's Magazine and a leader-writer for the Times. A strong churchman, and an evangelical, he published a volume of essays, which passed rapidly through several editions, in defence of the Establishment, and he was one of the founders of the Church Pastoral Aid Society. Late in life he wrote a work on Edward the First, entitled " The greatest of the Plantagenets," which has the merit of being among the first books to do adequate justice to that king. He was fond of good novels, and made his boys acquainted with Scott, Dickens and Thackeray at an early age. From his father Seeley imbibed a love of books, a bias towards history, and a habit of thinking about religion. He learnt unusually young to read, and he read eagerly and widely. As a child he went to school under the Rev. MEMOIR.

J. A. Barron, at Stanmore. No prizes were given at this school, but there was a master who infected his pupils with a taste for English poetry. Here Seeley acquired his first love for Milton and Pope. After a while he was sent to the City of London School, then under Dr Mortimer. The school was already making a name for winning scholarships at the Universities. Seeley, being a precocious boy, was pushed on so fast that he entered the sixth form when little over thirteen. His two elder brothers were in the sixth at the same time, the eldest — afterwards a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge — being captain of the school. To keep up with the work of the form involved a great effort in so young a boy. The lessons had to be prepared at home. No attention was paid to games, and the only exercise which Seeley got, as a rule, was the daily walk between Bloomsbury and Cheapside.

Part I. Elizabeth

CHAP. I. The growth of the House of Habsburg ... 9 II. The first phase of policy 31 III. The Counter-Reformation 63 IV. The British question 92 V. The middle period of Elizabeth . . . .112 VI. The Spanish Monarchy 139 VII. From peace to war 172 VIII. The war of Elizabeth 212 IX. Close of the Elizabethan age 237

Part II. Reaction

I. Outlines 251 II. Epochs in the reign of James I 263 III. James I and the Thirty Years' War ... 298 IV. The policy of Charles I 330 V. The transformation of France .... 357 VI. The transformation of England .... 389 CHAP. CONTENTS. XXIV VOLUME II.

PART IIL CROMWELL AND THE MILITARY STATE.

CHAP. PAOB I. The first Dutch war ...... 1 II. The peace of Cromwell 43 III. The war of Cromwell ...... 59

Part IV. The Second Reaction

I. The Restoration and Charles II ... . 101 II. The French ascendency 135 III. Revival of the dynastic system .... 171 IV. The rise of a new opposition .... 199 V. The last phase of the Counter- Reformation . . 221 VI. The Stuart dynasty and the nation . . . 250

Part V. William III And The Commercial State

I. The Revolution 274 II. The work of William III 309 III. The commercial state 349 Index

Introduction

. PT^HE subject of this book is a particular aspect of our -*- state, namely, that which it wears towards foreign states, during a certain period. We have already ecclesiastical histories, parliamentary histories, economic histories. More especially we have constitutional histories. Correlative to the Constitutional History is the International History or History of Policy. Among the many aspects in which a state may be regarded these two are the most obviously distinguishable. A state may be contemplated in itself; its structure and develope ment may be studied. This is Constitutional History. On the other hand a state may be considered in its relation to foreign states. This is International History or the History of Policy. In general histories we may observe that one of these aspects is commonly sacrificed to the other.

In other countries the temptation has been to sacrifice the internal aspect. In France, where for a long time constitutional developement, if it existed, escaped notice, still more in Germany, where it was petty and uninteresting, history leaned towards foreign affairs. But in England, the home of constitutionalism, history leaned just as decidedly in the opposite direction. English eyes are always bent upon Parliament, English history always tends to shrink intos. mere parliamentary history, and, as Parliament itself never shines less than in the discussion of foreign affairs, so there is scarcely a great English historian who does not sink somewhat below himself in the treatment of English foreign relations. It was only natural therefore that, while we have entered early into the conception of constitutional history, and have seen in this department first a Hallam and then a Stubbs, we have scarcely yet perceived that Con stitutional History requires the History of Policy as its correlative.

Some writers indeed we have had whose natural tendencies have been in this direction, notably William Coxe. But I know no English history of Diplo macy such as that of Flassan, no book on English policy such as that of Droysen on Prussian policy. At the best we have lives of Marlborough or Wellington, Chatham, Canning or Palmerston, in which foreign affairs have a certain necessary prominence, though even here they are usually subordinated either to military or else to parlia mentary affairs. Nevertheless there has been of late years improvement in this respect. Since Ranke tried in his English History to supply those links between English and continental affairs which English historians had not troubled them selves to give, we have seen Mr S. R. Gardiner treating foreign relations with no less conscientious thoroughness than home affairs even in that seventeenth century in which Parliament has an exceptional right to be prominent.

And Mr Kinglake has assuredly no trace of the national weakness of insularity. In his book England appears always as a Power. He sees her always in the company of other great states, walking by the side of France or Austria, supporting Turkey, withstanding

INTRODUCTION.

. 3 Russia. Her Parliament is in the background ; in the front of the stage he puts the Ministers who act in the name, or the generals who wield the force, of England, the Great Power. So much of the History of Policy in general. But this book deals with a special period, roughly the period between the accession of Elizabeth and the reign of William III. It will be asked why, since my object is to consider English history from a special point of view, I select this particular period. For it is somewhat distant if I wish to treat British Policy practically, and not distant enough if I wish to treat it completely. My answer is that I regard British Policy, that is, the policy of the modern Great Power, as beginning about the close of the seventeenth century, but that I see beyond that com mencement a period of growth, during which British Policy may be said to have been in the making.

This is a period during which the Three Kingdoms were drawing together and acquiring stable mutual relations, while the complex whole was taking up a secure position with respect to the Continental Powers. The history of the Great Power cannot be understood until the process of its growth has been studied. This book then offers, in the form of an historical essay, such an outline or general view as may be a necessary introduction to the history of British Policy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its subject is the growth of British Policy. By calling it not a history but an essay, I mean first that it deals not in narrative but in discussion, secondly that it does not aim at com pleteness. It is of the nature of an outline, undertaking to show the position our state occupied among other states, the changes which this position underwent, and 1—2 the causes both within our own state and in the relations of the Continental Great Powers by which these changes were produced.

We have immediately behind us three-quarters of a century more peaceful on the whole than any period of equal length in the history of England, a period in which England has had but one short war with a Great Power. Beyond this we see a long period which is not less strikingly warlike. It is marked by the perpetual recurrence of wars with France. The dividing line is at 1815. Beyond that year the National Debt is seen continually growing ; on this side of it the Debt either stands still or diminishes. But when did the period of war, the period which ended in 1815, begin? The first great war of England and France, that can be held to belong to this series, is that which followed the Revolution of 1688. It was followed at the opening of the eighteenth century by a second and still greater war.

There was then a pause of about thirty years ; but from 1744 to 1815 war between England and France is almost chronic. It is natural then on the whole to consider the ''period of war as beginning, along with our army and our debt, at the Revolution. Thus the long period of peace and the still longer period of war cover together the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries. If now we look over these into the seventeenth, we see quite a different spectacle. There is as yet no "/'chronic rivalry with France, Charles II and Cromwell are generally in alliance with France ; Charles I marries a French princess. But also we see everything as yet im mature and unshaped; England and Scotland are but loosely united. The King at times has an understanding with France against his own Parliament. Revolution

INTRODUCTION.

. 5 takes place more than once. Out of this confusion there emerges soon after 1688 the solid and stable Great Britain. But in what way, by what process of growth ? In the comparative confusion of the seventeenth century lies evidently the genesis of the Britannic Great Power. I attempt here to describe this genesis or growth. Three great persons raised England to the great position she held among the nations when the eighteenth century opened. William III finished this work, and indeed established not only the greatness of England but also the international system of Europe for the greater part of the eighteenth century. Oliver Cromwell first indicated, by prematurely and temporarily realising, the great position which was definitely achieved for England by William. Elizabeth broke up the older medieval! system, paved the way for the union with Scotland, and* launched us on the career of colonisation and oceanic trade. j> My essay will examine the work of Elizabeth with the reaction that followed, then that of Oliver, finally that of William.

For if we see at the beginning of the eighteenth century a great epoch dividing two ages, still more clearly marked is the great epoch of the sixteenth century, which may be said to divide in international policy modern from medieval England. I have found the accession of Queen Elizabeth to be the most convenient starting-point. So far the periods I have distinguished have been purely English. But international history demands that attention be given not to one state only, but to all the states whose mutual relations are in question. Along with the Policy of England this book will exhibit that of France, the Spanish Monarchy, Austria and the United Provinces. By the side of Elizabeth, Oliver and William it will delineate Philip II, Henry IV, Richelieu, Mazarin and Louis XIV. Now the period between the accession of Elizabeth and the reign of William III, which we find so sharply characterised in English history, stands out with equal distinctness in Continental history.

It is the period in which the Spanish Monarchy under the House of Habsburg took distinct shape, flourished and fell. It is also the period of the Counter-reformation, which begins with the Ccarncil_of_Tr_ent and may be said to reach its limit with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. It also includes the complete developement of Bourbon France from its rise in the Religious Wars to its European ascendency. This period, while it transformed England in her foreign relations, also gave a new form to most of the Continental states. The student of the eighteenth century requires an explanation of these states. 'What is the House of Habsburg ? How comes it to be divided into two branches, one of which governs a strange congeries of Slavonic and Teutonic territories which we call roughly Austria, the other a still stranger congeries of Spaniards, Flemings, Italians, and Americans ?

How comes the House of Bourbon, though Catholic, to be commonly in alliance with Protestant states?' These questions, and a hundred others, need to be answered, and for the answer a student must turn to the records of the sixteenth century. But he will seldom need to look further back than the reign of Elizabeth. Near the end of that reign the House of Bourbon was established, and just before the beginning of it the double House of Habsburg. At the beginning of that reign the disturbance in Germany produced by the Reformation subsided for a time, while

INTRODUCTION.

. 7 the Counter-reformation acquired a commanding power through the termination of the Council of Trent. The ecclesiastical settlement of Europe, which was to last in the main till the French Revolution, was arrived at in this period. In short, we take our departure from a cluster of decisive events, which gave to international history the direction it has since taken. These events are partly British, partly continental. They are as follows : Between 1558 and 1561 : Death of Queen Mary without children. Accession of Queen Elizabeth, in which is involved the victory of the Reformation in England. Death of King Francis II of France without children by Mary Stuart. Commencement of the Scottish Reformation, and intervention of England in Scottish affairs against France. Abroad, between 1555 and 1567: Religious peace of Augsburg, or settlement of the religious question for Germany.

Abdication of Charles V and establishment of the double House of Habsburg. Commencement of the Religious Wars of France and of the last generation of the Line of Valois. Treaty of Cateau Cambresis, involving the establishment of Spain as the paramount Power in Italy. Termination of the Council of Trent, or Regeneration of Catholicism. Commencement of the Rebellion in the Low Countries. Much will be said in the sequel about the significance of these events. But, considered most superficially, they will appear, when taken together, to have made Europe what it has been since. Here is the commencement of modern England, isolated with respect to the Continent but tending to union with Scotland, and, along with Scotland, devoted to the cause of the Reformation. Here begins modern Germany, the country of Parity, where the two confessions are inextricably mixed together.

Here begins that double House of Habsburg, against which the Coalitions of Europe were to be directed in the seventeenth century and the disappearance of which was to convulse Europe in the eighteenth. Here is the germ of Bourbon France. Here begins the servitude of Italy. Here begins that modern, or Jesuitic Catholicism, against which in the eighteenth century Europe under the leadership of France was to rebel. Here is the germ of the Dutch Republic. Our plan requires us to treat England as one state among many, and to give it only a certain precedence. It will therefore require us occasionally to turn our attention altogether away from England, while we follow some important Continental developement, destined after a time to react upon England. One of these occasions occurs at the opening of our narrative.

We find it impossible to form a conception of the international position of England at the accession of Elizabeth, until we have noted the condition of Europe at the time when the aggregate of principalities which had been brought together under Charles V had lately given place to two Monarchies under his son and his brother.

Chapter I. The Growth Of The House Of Habsburg

Elizabeth succeeded to the throne on the morrow of the abdication of Charles V. She found a world in which a new arrangement of power had been recently established. The Habsburg Ascendency had just entered on its second period. The ascendency of one man was at an end, but his power had not been dissolved, only divided between two of his relatives. The larger half of it had passed to his son Philip, the smaller to his brother Ferdinand, who however added to this moiety two kingdoms of his own, those of Hungary and Bohemia. Such great aggregations of power were in the main a new feature in Europe, though something similar had been witnessed in the great times of the medieval empire, especially when Frederick II was at the same time emperor and king of Naples and Sicily. In the middle of the fifteenth century such aggregations were scarcely to be seen.

At that time the Emperor was a needy and powerless prince, almost a stranger to Germany, and the Iberian peninsula was divided among several independent sovereignties. Nor was Italy at that time subject either to a Spanish King or, more than nominally, to an Emperor. Burgundy had but recently been united to the Low Countries, and it had as yet no sort of connexion with Spain or with Austria. But now with great rapidity a vast aggregation sprang into existence, similar to the great empires which have so often been founded by conquest. Yet no conquest took place, nor was the aggregation devised by any statesman. It was the result of natural circumstances which, at the outset at least, were certainly X^, accidental. It was the result of a series of marriages. Henceforward this aggregation is the principal feature of the European system.

First a single aggregate, the dominion of Charles V, then two aggregates, one bearing the name of Spain, the other that of Austria. Of these the former, the complex Spanish Monarchy, is in the times of Elizabeth and James I the greatest Power in the world. This Habsburg Power therefore will accompany us to the end of our review, and we cannot too soon form a clear conception of it. Bella gerant alii, tu,felix Austria, nube! This verse, so invariably quoted when the Habsburg Ascendency is in question, may deceive us if we gather from it either that the method of aggrandisement was peculiar to the House of Austria or that it was employed by this House rather through luck and occasionally than systematically and for a long time. Accident did indeed reveal, in the case of Charles V, what immeasurable results might proceed from a method so simple, but when the discovery had been made a system was speedily founded upon it, which was adopted by other royal Houses, and in some cases with scarcely less success.

Since the system culminated early in Charles V, we may be led to fancy that it fell into disuse soon after. Now we cannot too early recognise that during the whole period we are to review this system of royal marriage reigns in international politics, that it con tinued to be employed by the House of Habsburg, so that a new Charles V might at any time have appeared in Europe, and we cannot too early remark that, as we begin with it, we shall have to end with it. The aggregate which had been brought together by Habsburg marriages in the sixteenth century was dissolved at the end of the sj seventeenth by the effect of a Bourbon marriage. We shall have occasion over and over again to mark the vast consequences which flowed in many states, and often were intended to flow, from royal marriages, so that we shall cease to think of the system as Austrian, and shall regard it as almost the established system of foreign politics in the greater part of Europe.

We shall accord ingly recognise that England before and through Elizabeth's reign had to guard not merely against the armies and navies of foreign Powers, but against new marriages, by which either the Habsburg might be still further aggrandised or the Valois might emulate the Habsburg. Such marriages might swallow up England or Scotland or both, as the Low Countries had already been swallowed up, and as Portugal was absorbed a little later, in the Habsburg Empire or in a Valois Empire. Hence we shall see it as a natural consequence of the success of the Habsburg system that in England too in that age the great questions of foreign politics are marriage questions, the -*•**■ marriage of Mary Tudor, of Mary Stuart, the proposals of marriage for Elizabeth and of remarriage for Mary Stuart. So much of the Habsburg system in general.

But the Habsburg Power itself must now be considered, and particularly in its bearing upon the interests of England. In 1588, we know, the Spanish Habsburg undertook an invasion of England, and Philip II at that time was an enemy to us more formidable than Louis XIV afterwards and not less formidable than Napoleon. This crisis however came on rather slowly, if we consider that the Habsburg Power was by that time some seventy years old ; the later ascendencies have certainly been much more intense and also more short-lived. Charles V. himself played his part of universal monarch to the end without once coming into hostile collision with England, and even Philip had reigned more than thirty years before he equipped the Armada against us. Let us J*ecall very summarily the principal epochs of Habsburg history before 1558.

It need not detain us for a moment to relate how in the thirteenth century Count Kudolph, possessor of the castle Habsburg, the ruins of which stand in the Swiss Canton of Aargau, became Roman Emperor, and as Emperor endowed his family with the Duchy of Austria, which had been held before by the house of Bamberg, a line much celebrated by the Minnesanger, and mentioned in English history for the detention of Richard Cœur de Lion. Since 1282 the two names Habsburg and Austria have been inseparably associated. But their first connexion with the Empire was short. Two Habsburg Emperors Rudolph and Albert (the uom senza fede of Dante) reigned in close succession, and then the Luxemburg dynasty supplanted that of Habsburg. For more than a century there was no third Habsburg Emperor, but in 1438 a Duke of Austria was once more chosen by the Electors, and from that date till 1740, when male heirs failed in the family, through all revolutions and transformations of Germany and Europe it remained a fixed rule that the German King and Roman Emperor should be a Habsburg or Austrian prince.

From 1438 I to 1740 the three names Habsburg, Austria, and Roman/ Emperor, were inseparably associated. From 1745 till the Empire was wound up in 1806 the House of Lorraine takes the place of the House of Habsburg. But the Habsburg line of Emperors had for a long time little distinction. It did not outshine the House of Luxemburg, much less emulate the Hohenstauffen. It marks in fact in the fifteenth century the lowest decline of the Holy Roman Empire. In more modern times, for instance in the eighteenth century, it was usual to speak of the Empire as a nullity, but the Emperors of the eighteenth century were in their own way, though not as Emperors, sovereigns of great power. Charles VI, Joseph II, Leopold II, were incomparably more important personages than the Habsburg of the fifteenth century, for example Frederick III.

Even in the time of the last Luxemburg it had become usual to speak of Germany as actually governed by the Electors, and a historian writes, 'In the same year the Prince Electors with a great army made war upon the Bohemians1'. Nor was the weakness of the Emperor in the fifteenth century compensated, as it was in the eighteenth, by a great hereditary Power (Hausmacht) possessed by him in other capacities. Frede rick III and Maximilian I were not kings of Hungary and Bohemia as the later Habsburgs were. Their Hausmacht 1 Matthias Doring ap. Mencken (Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte, Vol. i, p. 34). was more purely German, but much less imposing : it was confined to the duchy of Austria and a few lordships in Switzerland and in Alsace. This is the first phase we need recall of the Habsburg Power. Many small states have swelled into mighty dominions by some warlike energy in the people, or some genius in a ruler.

The Habsburg Power also was to grow till it overshadowed Europe, but not through any similar cause. The first Habsburg prince who foresaw and desired this result was assuredly not one of the commanding figures of history; Maximilian I was no Philip of Macedon, no Pepin, no Sultan Othman or Orchan. But he married Mary of Burgundy, heiress of Charles the Bold, and had sj by her a son, Philip the Handsome. By this marriage the hereditary dominion of the Habsburg was vastly increased and in such a way as to illustrate in a startling manner the potency of that simple political engine, royal marriage. Charles the Bold himself had been a great European prince, and how? Because by an earlier marriage his Duchy and County of Burgundy had been united with the Netherlands. Maximilian then could not but perceive the law of aggregation that was at work.

Burgundy had been added to the Netherlands on the one side ; on the other Austria had already been added in a similar manner to Tirol. And now these two considerable aggregates were by the same simple process blended into one. If Philip himself should make no similar marriage he could not fail by mere inheritance to be the greatest potentate in Europe, and as he would probably acquire the imperial Crown, it was already evident that a vast change impended over Europe. The nullity of the Empire, already of long standing, would now, it was likely, disappear l, Maximilian himself from his helpless impecuniosity was an object of contempt among crowned heads; as a sovereign out at elbows he is a character for a farce. But he could already see himself as an ancestor of mighty kings, for his son Philip, even before his marriage, was evidently destined to regenerate the Empire and to be such a Caesar as had scarcely been seen since the fall of the Hohenstauffen.

So far however what might be foreseen was much less great, and also much less strange and questionable, than what in the end took place. For the territory which Philip would inherit, Austria, Burgundy, the Netherlands, was in the main Germanic or at least continuous with Germany, territory in the main which had once formed part of the Holy Roman Empire. But now Philip himself married. It is to be remarked that this marriage, the greatest of the whole long series, was not contracted with any view to the prodigious effects which flowed from it. It cannot be said that the heir of Austria and Burgundy married the heiress of Castille and Aragon, for Juana, when she married Philip, was not yet, and had little prospect of becoming, heiress of the crowns of Ferdinand and Isabella. They had a son and they had also a daughter older than Juana.

But these disappeared, and a boundless prospect now opened. Aggregation was already far advanced in Southern Europe. The united 1 As early as 1473 it was predicted by Charles the Bold in negociating with Frederick III the marriage of Maximilian and Mary that through this alliance the Emperor would come to be more feared than any Emperor for three hundred years. It was also the best way to help Christianity and drive out the Turk. See M. I. Schmidt, Geschichte der Deutschen vi. 319. Crowns of Castille and Aragon had not merely, as it were, created Spain by the conquest of the Moors, they had also obtained possession of Naples and Sicily. But in the persons of Philip and Juana Central and Southern Europe J would now be aggregated together with Spain and Italy. Austria, Burgundy, and the Low Countries would be united.

The same Power to which Columbus had so lately given a world beyond the Ocean would now rule the Mediterranean on the one side and the North Sea on the other. Barcelona and Antwerp would own the same allegiance. It is strange indeed, it must be mortifying to those who would think nobly of human history, to see an almost universal dominion created neither by a reasonable view of the public good, nor even by an exertion of force which if irrational might be grand, and might involve displays of heroic valour, but by the mere operation of a legal usage originally intended to produce no such effect. Because a young man marries a young woman, and custom chooses to regard their regal office as heritable property, therefore * Spain and Germany are to be united for all time! We shall see that this particular union was found after one reign too unnatural to be maintained, but the union of Spain and the Low Countries, not less irrational, lasted scarcely less than two centuries, and caused half the disputes and half the wars that will be considered in this book.