History of England

Preface

A BOOK that traverses so vast a field as the whole of English history in the course of seven hundred pages is apt to be either a text-book or an essay. It can in no case be a full narrative of events. This work is an essay in so far as it attempts to analyze the social development of the nation in relation to economic conditions, political institutions, and overseas activities. It is a text-book in so far as it preserves the narrative form in brief, deals in dates, and gives prominence to leading events and persons.

Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and overseas Imperial history are treated, I trust not in all cases from too English a point of view. But what unity the book has, especially in its earlier parts, is necessarily derived from England as the centre. Not to arouse expectations which I may not fulfil, I have called the book merely a History of England.

The original nucleus out of which the work has grown was the Lowell Lectures which I had the honour of delivering in Boston, Mass., in the spring of 1924. I therefore dedicate the book in its present form to President Lowell of Harvard and my other kind hosts on that occasion.

I am greatly indebted to two friends at the older Cambridge, Dr. Clapham of King’s, and Mr. Claude Elliott of Jesus: to the former for allowing me to see the early part of his Economic History of Modern Britain before it went to press, a privilege of which I have made extensive use; and to Mr. Elliott for reading the earlier half of my work and giving me valuable advice on numerous points.

G. M. TREVELYAN

BERKHAMSTED, April 1926,

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Book I

THE MINGLING OF THE RACES. FROM THE EARLIEST

TIMES TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST INTRODUCTION Stee . .

The island and its early invaders. Geography governs history. Iberian civilization. Tracks and trade routes. Downland and fenland centres. The Celtic conquest and civilization : : :

Julius Cesar. Celtic and Roman London. The Claudian Conquest. The North-west frontier and the Roman Wall. Limits of Latinization in Roman Britain. Villas and cities. Religion : A : 4

Beginning of the Nordic invasions. . Anglo-Saxons and Jutes. Character and methods of the invaders. Weakness of late Roman Britain. Chaos and reconstruction. Slower conquest of the West. Questions of Celtic survival. Roman roads. Welsh Christianity . 5 .

Mediterranean influence again. Return of Christianity. Nordic paganism. St. Patrick and St. Columba. Augustine and Theodore of Tarsus. Northumbria and Mercia. Church and State. Mediterranean and Nordic ideals : - J ; ; H

The Second Nordic invasion. Weakness of Saxon England. The Vikings at home and overseas. Alfred and Guthrum. The Danelaw and its conquest by Wessex. Anglo-Danish law, town life and civilization

Life in later Saxon England. Pioneers in the forest. Thegn and serf. The Earldoms. Fedal justice encroaching. Second coming of the Vikings. The Danegeld. Canute’s maritime Empire . ‘ :

ix

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I x CONTENTS CHAPTER VII

The Norman Conquest up to Hastings, 1042-1066. Normandy and Norman institutions. Edward the Confessor and Godwin. William and Harold. Tactics at Hastings . ‘ é c - : .

The Norman Kings. Submission and rebellions of the English. The harrying of the North. The new feudalism and the new monarchy. The King’s Curia. Domesday. Forest law. Anglo-Norman Church and State. The English language ° . . . . °

Book II The Making Of The Nation

FROM THE CONQUEST TO THE REFORMATION

INPRODUCTION: os - A

The Anarchy under Stephen and the Restoration of Royal Power. Henry of Anjou. Knights and villeins at the Manor. The Manor Court and the methods of open-field agriculture : fs : : 5

Henry [I continued. The Cistercians and sheep-farming. Becket. Benefit of clergy. The King’s Courts. Common Law. The Jury . :

The Crusades. Richard I. Hubert Walter and the Middle Classes. Coroners and Mayors. Constitutionalism grows out of feudalism. John and Magna Carta. Henry III and Simon de Montfort . :

The corporate sense of the Middle Ages. The Universities. The Friars. The Jews. Edward I, the Common Law and Lawyers. Parliament under the Edwards. The House of Commons. Reign of Edward II. Justices of the Peace . ; é . . . : :

Celt and Saxon. Attempts to complete the island Empire. Causes of failure in the Middle Ages. Ireland. Wales. Scotland. Different character of the three stories. The Llewelyns, Wallace and Bruce

The Hundred Years’ War. Its causes and effects. The birth of nationalism. Archery and Yeomanry. French and English tactics and their social origins. English language and patriotic feeling a

PAGE

IOI

CONTENTS

The Black Death. The emancipation of the Villeins and the fluidity of labour. The rising of 1381 and after. The Church and the Attys Nation, Pope and King. Wycliffe and Lollardry

Parliamentary development from Edward III to Henry VI. Formal importance and real weakness of the Commons House. Aristocratic Anarchy. Some aspects of English Life in the later Middle Ages. Wars of the Roses. The Yorkist Kings . s . . .

Book III The Tudors

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION AND SEA-POWER

INTRODUCTION. : é 3

Character of Henry VII. The machinery of Tudor government. Powers of the Council and decline of the aristocracy. Economic and social change. Cloth Trade, Poor Law and Agriculture . é : .

The revival of Lollardry. The Renaissance Scholars. Colet and the young Henry VIII. Wolsey and the Balance of Power. The era of discovery. The Cabots. Henry VIII founds the Royal Navy .

The Royal and Parliamentary Reformation under Henry VIII. London and the Reformation. Lutheranism. The Divorce. The Breach with Rome. The dissolution of the Monasteries. The Six Articles

Interludes, Protestant and Catholic. Edward VI. Latimer and Cranmer. Somerset and Dudley. Agrarian and religious strife. Mary. Submission to Spain and Rome. The Protestant Martyrs. & 3

The policy and character of Elizabeth. The Elizabethan Church Settlement. Spain and France. The Scottish Reformation and the future Great Britain. Ceciland Knox. The Rising of the Earls and the end of English feudalism . ° ° 5 : . : . é

The Origin of English Sea-Power. France, England, and Spain in the new age. Drake and the new naval tactics. Cecil and Walsingham. Philip and Elizabeth. Drake’s wowene: The Armada. The Regular War . é 5 . : 5 . ° :

xi

PAGE xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII PAGR

The great Elizabethan era: Wales. Ireland. Religion. The boundaries of Elizabethan freedom. The Bible, poetry and music. Apprenticeship and some conditions of industry. The gentry and Parliament . 357

Book IV The Stuart Era

PARLIAMENTARY LIBERTY AND OVERSEAS EXPANSION

INTRODUCTION. . . » 375

James I. Parliaments, Puritans and Recusants. Decline of English sea-power. The Spanish match. Buckingham and the Thirty Years’ War. Charles I. The King, Parliament and the Common Law. Coke and Eliot. Laud and Strafford . ‘ c é * 390

England and Scotland. The Scottish Revolt. The Long Parliament. First Session : fall of the Prerogative system and execution of Strafford. Second Session : the Church Question and the division of parties + 3096

The Great Civil War, 1642-1646. Resources of the two sides. Arms and tactics. Course of the War. Politics, religion and military reorganization. The Scottish Alliance. Cromwell and the New Model. Causes of the victory of Parliament ; c 5 - . - 406

The Failure to reach a Settlement. Regicide. The Revolutionary Governments. Ireland and Scotland. Blake and the Revival of the Navy. Domestic, Ecclesiastical and Foreign Policy of the Protectorate. The Death of Oliver and the Restoration . . . ° . + 416

English village and town life and its expansion overseas. Character of colonization and Colonial policy in the Seventeenth Century. New England, Virginia, and the absorption of the Dutch middle Colonies. England, France, and Holland : : . + 433

The Restoration in State and in Church. Clarendon and the Cabal. The ‘just balance of the constitution.’ The Dutch wars. Danby’s policy. The formation of the Whig and Tory Parties. Faction and fury. The Court left supreme . : : . : : - 446

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER VII PAGE

James II. Monmouth’s Rising. Ilegal proceedings of James. The Tories and the Church alienated. Union of parties against the Court. The Revolution. The Revolution Settlement . - c ° - 466

Scotland and Ireland from the Restoration to Queen Anne. The character of the Two Settlements . A 5 é ° . e 476

CHAPTER IX

The Wars of William and Marlborough. The downfall of Louis XIV and the Rise of Great Britain to Maritime and Commercial Supremacy. Whig and Tory interaction. The Death of Anne and the Dynastic Crisis . . - 5 5 . A ° = . 5 - 486

Book V

FROM UTRECHT TO WATERLOO. SEA-POWER AND ARISTOCRACY. FIRST STAGE OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

INTRODUCTION. . . » 505

Early Hanoverian England. Character of the Aristocratic Government. Prime Minister, Cabinet and Parliament. The Spirit of the Eighteenth Century. John Bull and French Influences. The Church and the Wesleyan Movement. Scotland. Universities and Schools. Village Life. Decay of the Yeomen begins. The Underworld. Humanitarianism. The Eve of the Industrial Revolution . ‘ - 508

George I and II. The Whig Oligarchy. The 1715 and the 1745: Social Consequences in Scotland. Walpole and the Elder Pitt. Great Britain in Peace and War. Annexation of Canada and Foundation of the Indian Empire . : : . . : . 5 + 529

Personal Government of George III. The American Question. The Disruption of the First British Empire. Restoration of Government by Party and Cabinet. The New ae and New ai Parties. Burke, Fox and the Younger Pitt . 546

The Tory Oligarchy and the Beginnings of the Democratic Movement. Tom Paine and the anti-Jacobin Reaction. Burke, Fox and the Whig Schism 6 F , 5 5 : ; 559 xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER V

Tne Character of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Period of Pitt and Nelson, 1793-1805. Period of Wellington and Castlereagh, 1808-1815. The Naval, Commercial and Military Struggle. The Final Settlement . ° . C ° > °

The Empire in the latter years of George III. The outward expansion of the island life. England, Scotland and Ireland. Canada and Australia. India. The Anti-slavery Movement. Wilberforce and the Evangelicals . ° 5 fe . A a - ° °

The reign of George III in its economic aspect. The early stages of the Industrial Revolution. Population. Canals. Machinery. Coal. The movement of industry from the village to the town. Enclosure. Housing. Administrative defects. Laissez-faire . . ; °

Book VI

THE LATER HANOVERIANS. SEA-POWER IN THE AGE OF MACHINERY. THE TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY

INTRODUCTION. . ° .

Chapter I

Repression and Reform, 1815-1835. Corn Law and Income Tax. Cobbett, Peterloo and the Six Acts. Tory Reform. Castlereagh and Canning. Huskisson and Peel. Wellington’s Ministry. Grey’s Ministry. The Whigs and the Reform Bill. The Municipal Corporations Act and Slavery Abolition. Belgium . : a . A

CHAPTER II Whig financial failure. Peel and the new Conservative Party. The New Poor Law. Chartism. The Repeal of the Corn Laws, 1846. Disraeli and Peel. The Whig-Palmerston regime. The Civil Service. Queen Victoria. The Crimea and Italy. Prosperity and Social Assuagement, The franchise agitation and the Second Reform Bill, 1867 :

CHAPTER III External Development in the Latest Era. Character of the Second British

Empire. Growth of Canada. Relations with the United States.

Australasia. South Africa. India 5 : 5 :

The new Reform Era. Gladstone’s First Ministry, 1868-74. Disraeli and Modern Conservatism. Gladstone, Egypt, Home Rule. Lord Salisbury’s Ministries. The era of the Jubilees. Democracy, Social Reform and Imperialism. Death of Queen Victoria. : .

PAGS

57°

677 693 704 795

MAP

MAPS xV

PAGE Celtic and Roman Britain (coloured) , ‘ Frontispiece . Iberian Britain . . . ° : . C 8 . The Roman Empire . 3 4 é i 6 22 . Medizval Christendom 3 2 5 23 . The Destruction of Roman Britain eototredlc facing p. 30 . England of the Heptarchy : : 41 . Scotland and Northumbria in the Dark er 3 56 . Viking routes 76 . England, Scotland and iieland: ee of the Viking invasions : 3 : - facing p. 77 . England in Earldoms : ante of the Norman Conquest IIo . The Angevin Empire c . . : 142 . Cowstead: an imaginary eee atte under Gs Manorial system = : 151 . Ireland towards the close of this Middle ‘Rees A ZO5 . Medieval Wales . : ' b - 209 . Medieval Scotland and North ea 214 . France: First part of the Hundred Years’ War. Height of Edward III’s power 225 . France: Second part of the Maina Youn’ War. Height of Henry VI’s power . : ° . 231 . England in the Fifteenth Century . . 258 . England and Wales in Counties, Tudor period (Inset, Tudor London) ; 281 . Europe in the time of Henry VII. Rise a5 ae at Continental Monarchies 294 . The World in the Elizabethan era atoweay ‘ facing b. 338 . Europe in the time of Elizabeth . ° : . + 342 . Spanish and Dutch Netherlands : : 350 . An Army in Battle Array: Great Civil War . + 409 . England and Walesin the winter of 1643-1644 . facing p. 411 . Ireland in the Seventeenth Century : A 22 . English American settlements, latter part of a hotoaent Century . : . : . facing p. 437 . Europe after the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713 4 ° » 403 xvi MAPS MAP PAGE XXVIII. Scotland and North England in the time of the Jacobites. 530 XXIX. French and English Colonies, 1755 (Inset, Quebec, 1759). 541 XXX. Europe in 1810 (at the height of Napoleon’s power) 7573 From Trevelyan’s ‘ British History in the Nineteenth Century.’

XXXI. The two Canadas and the Maritime Provinces, 1791. 592 From Trevelyan’s ‘ British History in the Nineteenth Century.’

XXXII. India early in the Nineteenth Century . 596 From Trevelyan’s ‘ British History in the Nineteenth _ Century.’

XXXIII. India in 1906, illustrating the growth of British territory and supremacy. - 597 From Tout’s * Advanced H istory of Great Britain.’ XXXIV. Crimea. The N eighbourhood of Sebastopol . - 652 From Tout’s ‘ Advanced History of Great Britain,’ XXXV. Development of the West Canadian Border with U.S.A. in Nineteenth Century . 663 From Trevelyan’s ‘ British History in the Nineteenth Century.’

XXXVI. South Africa, 1899 ‘: - 669 From Tout’s Advanced History of Great Britain,’ GENEALOGICAL TREES 1. Claimants for the throne, 1066 . . : . . + X23 2. William the Conqueror’s descendants: the Angevin claim . se iste) 3. Henry VII’s descendants: the Stuart claim . : : sed: 4. James I’s descendants: the Hanoverian claim . ; : - 388 5. Charles I’s descendants: Orange and Jacobite claims ° >» 458

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE.

The frontispiece map of Celtic and Roman Britain is based upon the Ordnance Survey Map, with the sanction of the Controller of His Majesty’s Stationery Office.

THE history of civilized man in our country is very old ; it begins long before the reign of Alfred. But the history of Britain as a leader in the world’s affairs is of much shorter date; it begins with the reign of Elizabeth. The reason can be read upon the map. Map-makers, whether in ancient Alexandria or in medizeval monasteries, placed our island on the north-west edge of all things. But, after the discovery of America and the ocean routes to Africa and the East, Britain lay in the centre of the new maritime movement. This change in her geographic outlook was employed to good purpose by her inhabitants, who in the era of the Stuarts made her the chief seat of the new transoceanic commerce and of the finance and industry that sustained it. Next, with the aid of modern science, the land of Newton applied machinery to manufacture and began the world-wide Industrial Revolution. Meanwhile, Britain was peopling and giving lawsto North America; and after she had lost the Thirteen ‘Colonies, she built up a second Empire, more widely scattered and more vast.

These latter centuries of material growth and leadership correspond with the period of greatest intellectual achievement. In spite of Bede, Roger Bacon, Chaucer and Wycliffe, Britain’s contribution to medieval science and literature is slight when compared to the world of her intellectual creation from the time of Shakespeare onward. The era when London awoke to find herself the maritime centre of the suddenly expanded globe, was also the era of the Renaissance and the Reformation—movements of intellectual growth and individual self-assertion which proved more congenial to the British than to many other races, and seemed to emancipate the island genius.

In the sphere of pure politics Britain is famous as the mother of Parliaments. In answer to the instincts and temperament of her people, she evolved in the course of centuries a system which reconciled three things that other nations have often found incompatible—executive efficiency, popular control, and personal freedom.

It is indeed in the Middle Ages that we must seek the origin xvii

XViii INTRODUCTION of Parliament, and of the English Common Law which the ultimate victory of Parliament over the Royal power has made supreme in all English-speaking lands. The political merit of the Medieval period lay in its dislike of absolutism in the Temporal sphere, its elaborate distribution of power, its sense of corporate life, and its consultation of the various corporate interests through their representatives. But, although Parliament was a characteristic product of the Middle Ages, the development of its powers in Tudor, Stuart and Hanoverian days, its resistance to the political theories of the Roman law recelved in contemporary Europe, and its transplantation to America and the Antipodes, are the great events which raised the political history of Britain into a sphere apart from the political life of the Continent. For, although France and Spain had a number of medieval Estates and Parliaments, they failed to adapt them to modern conditions. On the passing of feudalism, the Latin peoples read despotic monarchy as the political message of the new era. Against Machiavelli’s princely interpretation of the new nationalism, Britain alone of the great national States successfully held out, turned back the tide of despotism, and elaborated a system by which a debating club of elected persons could successfully govern an Empire in peace andin war. During the commercial and military struggles with foreign rivals which followed between 1689 and 1815, our goods, our ships, and our armies proved that Parliamentary freedom might be more efficient than despotism as a means of giving force to the national will. Nor, in the new era of man’s life introduced by the Industrial Revolution, has this verdict yet been reversed.

In the Nineteenth Century the same Parliamentary institutions, while undergoing democratic transformation, were put to the severer test of coping with the new and bewildering conditions of social life created by the Industrial Revolution. At the same time the vast and ever-increasing Empire, of white, brown, and black communities, presented diverse and complicated problems, each one recurring in new guise every few years under the stimulus that modern economic conditions give to social and political change. Parliamentary government for the white races, and the desire to govern justly societies not yet prepared for self-government, have so far preserved this astonishing association of peoples.

Whatever, then, be our chief interest in the past—whether material progress and racial expansion, the growth of political and social institutions, or pure intellect and letters—it is the last four hundred years in British History which stand out. Yet I have not hesitated to devote a third of this work to a

INTRODUCTION xix survey of the pre-Tudor epochs. The mingling of the armed races poured into Britain from the earliest times until 1066, and the national temper and customs which they developed in the shelter of the island guarded by the Norman and Plantagenet Kings, alone rendered it possible for five millions of people, ruled by Elizabeth, to lay hold on the splendid future offered to themselves and their descendants by the maritime discoveries and intellectual movements of that age. If the hour then came, the men, too, were ready.

Britain has always owed her fortunes to the sea, and to the havens and rivers that from the earliest times opened her inland regions to what the sea might bring. Long before she aspired to rule the waves she was herself their subject, for her destiny was continually being decided by the boat-crews which: they floated to her shore. From Iberian and Celtic to Saxon and Danish settlers, from pre-historic and Phcenician traders to Roman and Norman overlords, successive tides of warlike colonists, the - most energetic seamen, farmers and merchants of Europe came by the wave-path to inhabit her, or to instil their knowledge and spirit into the older inhabitants. Her east coast lay obvious and open to Teuton and Scandinavian immigrants; her south coast to cultural influences from the Mediterranean by way of France. From Teuton and Scandinavian she acquired the more important part of her population and character and the root of her language ; from the South she received the rest of her language, the chief forms of her culture, and much of her organizing power.

The Norman Conquest severed her ties with Scandinavia, which Canute had drawn very close. For several hundred years the Nordic islanders were governed by a French-speaking aristocracy and a Latin-speaking clergy. By a significant paradox it was under this foreign leadership that the English began to develop their intense national feeling and their peculiar institutions, so different in spirit from those of Italy and France. Already among the fellow-countrymen of Chaucer and Wycliffe, even when engaged in the disastrous adventure of the Hundred Years’ War, we see the beginnings of a distinct English nationality, far richer than the old Saxon, composed of many different elements of race, character and culture which the tides of ages had brought to our coasts and the island climate had tempered and mellowed into harmony. At the Reformation the English, grown to manhood, dismissed their Latin tutors, without reacting into close contact with the Scandinavian and Teuton world. Britain had become a world by itself.

XX INTRODUCTION

It was at this crisis in England’s cultural and political growth, when she was weakening her ties with Europe, that the union with Scotland came about, and at the same time the ocean offered the islanders a pathway to every corner of the newly discovered globe. The universality of the Englishman’s experience and outlook—quite as marked a characteristic as his insularity—is due to his command of the ocean which has for more than three centuries past carried him as explorer, trader, and colonist to every shore in the two hemispheres.

Thus, in early times, the relation of Britain to the sea was passive and receptive ; in modern times, active and acquisitive. In both it is the key to her story.

» HISTORY OF ENGLAND

BOOKS!

| THE MINGLING OF THE RACES. FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST

IT is a commonplace to say that the British are a people of mixed blood. I hope, in this First Book, to indicate a little how, when and why this mingling of races occurred.

It may be as well to say, at the outset, that the entrance into our island of the races who people it to-day was completed in main outline at the time of the Norman Conquest. With that event, which itself made less racial than social and cultural change, we come to an end of migratory invasions and of forced entry behind the point of the sword. Since Hastings there has been nothing more catastrophic than a slow, peaceful infiltration of alien craftsmen and labourers,—Flemings, Huguenots, Irish and others,—with the acquiescence of the existing inhabitants of the island.

To invade Britain was singularly easy before the Norman Conquest, singularly difficult afterwards. The reason is clear. A well-organized State, with a united people on land and a naval force at sea, could make itself safe behind the Channel even against such military odds as Philip of Spain, Louis XIV. or Napoleon could assemble on the oppositeshore. Inrecent centuries these conditions have been fulfilled, and although an invading force has sometimes been welcomed, as when Henry Tudor or William of Orange came over, no invasion hostile to the community as a whole has met with even partial success owing to the barrier of the sea. But, before the Norman Conquest, there had been long ages when neither the island State nor the island navy was formidable ; even in the days of Alfred and Harold they were inadequate to their task, and in earlier times they did not exist. Except when protected by the Roman galleys and legions, ancient Britain was peculiarly liable to invasion for geographic and other reasons.

B

2 PRE-INSULAR BRITAIN

The story of the Mingling of the Races in Britain, ending with the advent of the Normans, covers a thousand years of history very dimly descried, succeeding to many thousand more of archeological twilight. The era of Celt, Saxon and Dane is like Macbeth’s battle on the blasted heath. Prophecy hovers around. Horns are heard blowing in the mist, and a confused uproar of savage tumult and outrage. We catch glimpses of giant figures—mostly warriors at strife. But there are ploughmen, too, it seems, breaking the primeval clod, and we hear the sound of forests crashing to the axe. Around all is the lap of waves and the cry of seamen beaching their ships.