A history of England from the earliest times to the death of Queen Victoria

Front matter

.o

OF THE

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

PART I— TEUTONIC ENGLAND The Era of National, Foundation From Earliest Times to 1042

CHAPTEB

I. Introduction — Britain before the coming of the Teutons 1

II. The Teutonic Settlement of Britain 18

III. The Rival Confederacies of Teutonic Britain, and the Found-

ing of the National Church 33

IV. The Danish Wars^ Alfred the Great and the Founding of the

English Kingdom 57

V. The Reconquest of the Danelagh and the Expansion of the English Kingdom under the Great Kings of the House of

Alfred 78

VI. The Days of Dunstan; the Early English Kingdom passes

Meridian ,... 93

VII. The Decline of the Early English Kingdom; the Era of

Danish Kings 106

PART II— FEUDAL ENGLAND The Era of National Organization

I. The Shadow of the Norman 125

II. The Conquest of England 145

III. The Norman Reorganization of the Kingdom and the Introduction of Feudalism 167

vii

Vlll CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

IV. The Organization of the Kingdom Continued — The English

Conquest of Normandy , 184

V. Feudal Reaction and the Reconstitution of the Kingdom 203

VI. The Growth of Popular Rights and the Loss of the Continental

Possessions of the Angevins , 230

VII. The Great Charter 249

VIII. The Struggle for the Charter.. 266

IX. The Chartered Confirmed 294

PART III— NATIONAL ENGLAND The Era of National Awakening

book i — social awakening

I. The New Era; Edward I. and the Beginning of the Wars of Foreign Conquest — The Struggle of the Scots for

Independence.. 317

II. The Barons and the Royal Favorites — The Independence of

Scotland Established 334

III. Edward III. and the Opening of the Hundred Years' War 350

IV. The Decline of Edward III. — Second Stage of Hundred Years'

War 381

V. The Peasant Revolt — The Attack of the King upon the

Constitution 403

VI. The Constitutional Kings of the House of Lancaster* — The

Third Stage of the Hundred Years' War 427

VII. The Last Stage of the Hundred Years' War— The Rivalry of

Lancaster and York 450

VIII. The Fall of York and the Close of the Dynastic Struggle 474

BOOK II — RELIGIOUS REFORMATION From 1485 to 1603

I. The Restoration of the Monarchy 494

II. The Monarchy Supreme — The Administration of Wolsey 512

III. The Ecclesiastical Revolt of England 528

IV. The Progress of the Reform 548

V. The Catholic Reaction 571

VL Elizabeth; the Reform Established....... 587

VII. Elizabeth; The Duel with Spain 606

CONTENTS IX

BOOK III — POLITICAL REVOLUTION From 1603 to 1689 CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Breach Between King and Commons........................ 618

II. The Era of Arbitrary Government ..,.,,... 647

III. The Long Parliament and the Civil War 669

IV. The Parliament and the Army , ........ 697

V. Cromwell and the Protectorate ,,....... 722

VI. The Stuart Restoration ........ 742

VII. The Birth of the Whig Party ..,.,..........,.>,.. 760

VIII. The Whig Revolution 782

PART IV— IMPERIAL ENGLAND The Era of National Expansion From 16S9 to the Close of the 19th Century

I. The Beginning of Party Rule in England and the Founding of

British Foreign Policy 805

IL The Completion of the Work of the Revolution • 836

in. Walpole and the First Era of Whig Rule 861

IV. The Pelhams and Pitt — The Ocean Empire Secured 885

V. George III. — The First Period of Tory Rule and the Loss of

the American Colonies 911

VI. The Second Period of Tory Rule and the French Revolution... 941

VII. The Eastern Question and the First Era of Reform 976

VIII. Peel and the Dissolution of the Old Parties — The Crimean

War — Palmerston and British Foreign Policy 1009

IX. The Rise of the New Democracy — Gladstone and the Second

Era of Reform 1037

Index 1070

LIST OF MAPS

PAGE

Teutonic Britain about 600 36

Britain about 792 52

Partition of England by Treaty of Wedmore 67

England: Later Expansion of Wessex 80

The Great Earldoms 118

England and Scotland: 1066-1328...,. 184

The Angevin Dominions...... 208

Battle of Bannockburn 338

Campaigns OF Hundred Years' War 350

Battle of Crecy 365

Battle op Poitiers 377

Parts of France held by England after Treaty of Troyes 380

France by Treaty of Bretigny 380

General Map of Hundred Years' War 444

Field of Agincourt 446

The Wars of the Roses , 467

England during Tudor Period 528

Battle of Edgehill 684

England during Civil Wars and Later Stuart Period 686

Battle OF Marston Moor ........ 689

Battle of Naseby ^ 694

Ireland during Civil Wars and Later Stuart Period 710

Scotland during Civil Wars and Later Stuart Period 712

Battle op Dunbar 714

Battle of Blenheim or Hochstadt 840

Battle OF Ramillies 844

Spanish Netherlands....... 850

Peninsular Campaigns of Wellesley 969

Battle of Waterloo 973

India 1028

South Africa „... 1055

xi

LIST OF TABLES

PAGE

The Family of Alfred ....,„ , 57

Rival English and Danish Royal Families 106

The Dukes of Normandy. Early Connection with the English Line 125

Contemporaries of Edward the Confessor and William 1 166

The Family op the Conqueror 167

Families of Blois and Boulogne .,„.., 202

Contemporaries of later Norman and Early Angevin Kings.. 229

Family of Henry II 230

Family of John Lackland 266

Prominent Contemporaries of the Era of the Charter 293

The English Constitution from the 11th to the 14th Century 316

The Disputed Succession to the Scottish Throne 317

Contemporaries of Edward I , 338

The House of Lancaster 334

The Valois Succession 350

The Uncles of Edward III 351

The Breton Succession 361

Family of Edward III 381

Contemporaries op Edward III 403

The House of Lancaster o^.„. 427

The Descent of the Rival House of York 450

The Beauforts 474

The Woodvilles 478

The Younger Branch of the Nevilles— The De la Poles 494

Prominent Characters of the Fifteenth Cent-jry 511

Royal Descent of the Stafpords 512

The Howards 548

The Stuart Succession 587

Prominent Contemporaries of the Later T dors 605

Contemporaries of the Early Stuarts 696

The Rival Lines of Stuart 805

Contemporaries of the Later Stuarts 835

Claimants to the Spanish Succession.. 836

Descent op the House of Hanover 861

Prominent British Statesmen of Modern Times Who Have

Entered the Peerage...... 1069

xii

THE

HISTORY OF ENGLAND

PAET I— TEUTONIC ENGLAND THE ERA OF NATIONAL FOUNDATION

INTRODUCTION BEITAIN" BEPOEE THE COMING OF THE TEUTONS

The entire area of the British Islands, roughly estimated, is about one hundred and twenty thousand square miles. Of this,

England occupies less than one-half, about fifty-eight basifof' thousand square miles; not a very large country as "reotness modern states go. And yet, what has been lacking in

size, has been more than made up by physical conditions, the most favorable to vigorous and prosperous national life. An insular position, midway in the north temperate zone, provides a climate tempered, yet invigorated by ocean breezes, and supplying that most urgent of agricultural needs, an abundant and regular rainfall. The soil is diversified with mountain, river, and lowland; and under intelligent tillage, is generally capable of great fertility. To resources of soil and favorable climatic conditions, is also to be added a vast wealth in minerals, by no means the least considerable of the national assets. Above all, and of the greatest political importance, the continuous

2 EAELY BRITAIN"

boundary of ocean and channel, by protecting the people from foreign interference, has afforded opportunity for the development of unique political and social institutions, the normal unfolding of a healthy national life. The long seaboard, moreover, set with numerous and commodious harbors, has naturally suggested commerce and naval enterprise; offered a ready outlet for a population straitened by inflexible natural boundaries, but peculiarly energetic and adventure loving; and inspired those vast schemes of colonization, which have resulted in the founding of a Greater Britain beyond the seas.

The population of the British Islands represents in about equal

proportions the two great branches of the Aryan race, who have

taken possession of central and western Europe, — the

Thepopuia- Celts and the Teutons. To the first belong the Scots, tion of the ° '

British the Welsh, the Irish, and the Manx; to the second the

Islands. ' ' '

English. The Celts, who were the first to come, found another race in occupation before them; these they did not exterminate, but absorbed. The Teutons in turn overwhelmed the Celts, and while they probably expelled them entirely from the eastern parts of the island, in the west and the north, Celt and Teuton rapidly blended, until to-day they so shade into each other that it is difficult to tell where Celtic Britain begins, or Teutonic Britain leaves ofl:. Other infusions of foreign blood from Denmark and Normandy, from Holland and France, liave since been received and lost in the larger population. Hence the population of the British Islands to-day is the result, partly, of a layer of population upon population, of race upon race; and partly of the fitting of population to population, like the pieces of a mosaic, yet so skillfully set, that the seams of division are lost, and colors the most violent in contrast shade into each other imperceptibly.

The history of the people of the British Islands, therefore, begins far back beyond the Teutonic migration, when the first of

these populations appeared. Then a huge peninsula ISi!!"^^ "'^ occupied the place of the present islands, and stretched History. 2LW&.J from the continent, far into the northern ocean. Its vast areas of woodland and marsh, broken here and there by open country, afforded a home for the bison and the mammoth,

EAELIEST INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN" 3

the reindeer and the wolf, and many other creatures, fierce and

strange, which have long since disappeared. A people who are

represented to-day by the Esquimaux, fished along the

Paleolithic sedgy rivers, or tracked the wild beasts to their lairs

Men.

among the uplands. They are known to scientists as PaleolWiic or Old Stone men. Of these, two races have been distinguished. The oldest or first comers are called the River Drift men; the second comers, the Cave men. They represent the rudest form of human life. They made tools of flint which the River Drift men used without handles. They also protected their bodies from the extremes of the weather, much more violent then than now, with garments made of skins, rudely stitched together with the tendons of wild beasts. Though barbarians of the lowest type, they had some artistic sense, and attempted to ornament their weapons with rude imitations of the creatures which they were accustomed to slay in the chase. Yet they had no domestic animals ; knew nothing of spinning, or weaving ; and took no care of their dead. Existence must have been hard and precarious at best, affording little to develop the nobler instincts of human nature.

Then untold centuries passed away; the great peninsula was severed from the mainland, and cut up into the group of islands

which we know to-day; a climate better suited to

The

Neolithic primitive life also succeeded. The earlier races of men, the Old Stone men, or Paleolithic men, disappeared; and a new race, the Neolithic.^ or Neio Stone men, succeeded them. These people came from the southeast, and must have known something of sea craft. They brought with them over the narrow seas the domestic animals now so familiar, — the dog and the sheep, the ox, the goat, and the hog. They knew something about spinning and weaving; and reverently laid away their dead in long chambers, built of flat stones, over which they heaped pear-shaped mounds of earth. These mounds are still to be seen in parts of the British Islands, and are known as long harrows. From remains found in these barrows, we learn something of the appearance of the New Stone men; they were somewhat shorter than modern Europeans, with swarthy complexions, black curly hair, and, probably, dark eyes. The skulls, seen from

4 EAELY BRITAIN"

above, were oval; the faces, also oval; chins small, foreheads low, and cheek bones not prominent. Kindred peoples, commonly distinguished from later Neolithic men as Iberians or Ivernians, extended over all western and southern Europe. They dwelt among the Swiss lakes, the Lake Dtvellers; they were found upon the plains of Italy and in the mountains of ancient Etruria. Within historic times they appear in the Iberians of Spain and the modern Basques of the Pyrenees. Their blood is represented to-day, probably, in most of the populations of western Europe.

How long these men of the long barrow and the oval skull, the first Neolithic men, remained in undisputed possession of their

island home is not known. But sometime, perhaps The Celts.

twenty centuries before the beginning of the Christian era, another people, also in the Neolithic stage, entered Europe, and slowly drifting westward, everywhere displaced the Iberians, breaking up their settlements, and either exterminating the inhabitants or absorbing them. These people were the Celts, the first great historic people of western Europe. They represented a new race — the Aryan, now for the first time seen upon European soil. In marked contrast with the Iberians, the newcomers were tall and muscular, with fair skin, yellow hair, and fierce blue eyes. Their skulls were round, foreheads high and broad, and cheek bones prominent. They treated their dead with reverent care; but covered the grave with a round or bell-shaped barrow. Later, when bronze had begun to take the place of stone, they burned their dead.

About the seventh or eighth century before the Christian

era, these people had completed the conquest of Gaul, and were

beginning to press into Britain. They did not come

The Celtic o o j. j

migration to all at once, but in successive waves of population, each

B'K'ifjCl'lTh

people pushing their predecessors on before them, to be crowded forward in turn by others who came after. In Caesar's day the last of these migrations had been completed; but so recently, that the last comers still kept up a close connection with their kindred of northern Gaul. During this long period the Celts also were passing through a very important transition, The

THE CELTS O

first to come had used stone weapons, similar to those of the Iberians; but the later comers had learned the secret of hardening copper with tin. They knew how to make huge bronze swords, and to protect their bodies with bronze armor and bronze shields. They had also learned to use the chariot in war, somewhat after the manner of the Greek nations of the Mediterranean. They must have been very formidable opponents, even to those of their own people who were already in Britain, and who now saw themselves despoiled of their choicest fields and finest hunting grounds.

While many such waves of Celtic population broke upon the British Islands during this period, they represented only two

divisions of the race, the Goidels or Gaels, and the Brimis"'^^ ^'>^^tons. The Gaels are represented to-day by the

people of Ireland and the Scotch Highlands ; the Britons, by the Welsh. It is thought, too, that strains of the old Iberian blood may be detected in the short stature, black hair, and dark eyes which prevail in certain parts of Ireland and Scot- ■ land. A map of the British Islands at the close of the Celtic migration would show in the hands of the Britons, middle and southern Britain from the Firth of Forth to the Channel and about one-half of Wales ; in the hands of the Goidels the modern Cornwall, southern Wales, with Anglesey and the adjoining peninsula, the Scotch Highlands, Man, and Ireland.

The Celts were an exceedingly interesting people, and the ardent researches of antiquarians have restored many of their

customs. They understood agriculture, but their chief Customs wealth consisted in cattle. They soon discovered the

mineral resources of their new home, for which, especially the tin, they found a ready market among the peoples of the Mediterranean. Along the channels of this ancient commerce,

the gold and silver coins of the Greek cities of the

Coinage.

south found their way into Britain, and the British Celts soon began to imitate them on their own account. Many of these imitations have been found, struck long before the era of Eoman occupation, and bear no slight testimony to the wealth and intelligence of the people who used them, the more remarkable when we

6 EARLY BRITAIN

remember that "Saxon England practically never had a gold cornage, and that even Norman England never saw a gold coin struck nntil the year 1257."'

The Celts had kings or tribal chieftains; but they seem to have been nnable to attain any permanent political union. Like Gaul in the time of Caesar, or Ireland in the time of the Plantagenets, Britain was cut up into scores of petty tribal families, each family held together by a theoretical kinship to a tribal chief. There were laws and interpreters of laws ; but beyond the tribal family there was no Judicial machinery by which intertribal quarrels might be adjusted, or offenses might be punished. Hence the tribal chieftains were ever quarreling among themselves, and never able to secure a lasting peace.

Another institution peculiar to the Celts was the order of

Dmids, a body of men of learning, -who were held in great honor,

and were exempt from military service and taxation.

T7i6 Dvuids

They were the repositories of the learning of the age, which they received as oral traditions in a long and arduous tutelage. Like most primitive peoples, the Celts offered human sacrifices to their gods, and the Druids officiated in these grim rites. The famous Stonehenge, the remains of which are still to be seen in the great Salisbury plain, is generally thought to be a monument of such ancient British worship. Beside their sacerdotal functions, the Druids were also professional jurists; "they could give legal advice, enunciate the law, act as arbiters, but could not enforce a decree." They existed both in Gaul and Britain, and, if the later Irish hrelions or judges may be regarded as representatives of an ancient order, probably in Ireland as well. The authentic record of Celtic Britain begins with the permanent Eoman occupation, about the middle of the first century of the Christian era. Some three centuries earlier, however, of^Pvth.ms' Pytheas, a savant of the Greek city of Marseilles, was sent a^out325 Q^^f; ]3y w^Q merchants of. his city to open up new trade relations with the people of the north coast of Europe. The expedition was successful, and much useful information was no doubt brought back to the Mediterranean cities ; but unfor-

* Ramsay, Foundations of England, I, p. 33.

A. D. 43] CAESAR llf BRITAIN ' 7

innately the original record left by the explorer has been lost, and all that remain are a few stray references or allusions on the pages

of his critics. When Caesar was in Gaul, he also made Britain, B.C. two expeditions to the island; but apparently he had no

serious thought of conquest at the time, and proposed little more than a reconnoissance in force. His first expedition was unmistakably a failure. On his second expedition he remained two months, advancing beyond the Thames, and breaking up a confederacy of tribes which the chieftain Cassivellaunus had brought together to resist him. He also exacted a promise of tribute; but there is no evidence that a tribute was ever collected or that any effort was made by the Romans at this time to secure a permanent footing on the island. They were soon too busy with their own domestic affairs to give the distant Britons further attention, and left them to sink again into the oblivion which for so many centuries had hidden their island from the eyes of civilized Europe; nor v/as it until the reign of Claudius, ninety-seven years later, that the Eomans seriously undertook to reduce the Britons, or to establish their power beyond the Channel. Here the recorded history of Britain begins.

A great king, Cunobelinus, the "Cymbeline" of Shakespeare, had closed a long and prosperous reign in eastern Britain. His

capital was at Camulodunum, among the Trinobantes, ofiZ^"^^ the site of the modern Colchester. Both north and ^Chmdius"'^ south, the neighboring tribes had yielded to his sway.

Upon his death, however, his kingdom broke up; the tribes were embroiled in a bloody civil war, and soon exiled chieftains began to appear at the court of Claudius, only too ready to sign away questionable claims to paper thrones, in order to secure the aid of the emperor in avenging their wrongs. Claudius determined to interfere upon pretext of the 'alliance and friendship' of Eome with these dispossessed chieftains. He was, moreover, sadly in need of a military reputation, while the chronic disorder of the island promised an easy conquest — much easier than the conquest of the incorrigible Germans, upon whom Augustus had spent the whole strength of the empire to little purpose.

Accordingly, in the summer of the year 43 A. D., Claudius sent

8 EAELT BKITAIN

forward an able general, Anliis Plautius, with an armament, numbering, both legionaries and auxiliaries, about forty thousand men. The

Britons were able to make no effective resistance to this of^Auh^^^* force, and in a few weeks the lands of the Cantii, the piauttm, region of the later Kent and Sussex, were overrun.

So glowing were the accounts returned of the achievements of Eoman prowess, that Claudius ventured to expose his sacred person by appearing among the legionaries, and was present when the army crossed the Thames and took possession of Camulodunum. After sixteen days he returned to Eome to enjoy his much-needed triumph, and to add a "Britannicus" to the calendar of Eoman national heroes, Aulus Plautius remained behind to complete the work of conquest, and within four years the most of Eoman Britain was secured. Colonists also flocked into the island, and in a short time the Eomanizing of the new provinces was seriously under way.

Other governors followed Aulus Plautius. There was much hard fighting on the borders ; but for eighteen years the Eoman advance

failed to pass the Severn, or the Humber. Within these Romanizing lines, however, there were many important changes. begun— Londinium, the modern London, was rising rapidly to

be the "commercial center of the island." From the southern ports the inevitable Eoman roads converged upon her gates. A great road led away to Glevum (Gloucester) , the Eoman outpost on the Severn. The famous Watling Street stretched away to Uriconium (Wroxeter), and Deva (Chester), the outpost of Eome in the northwest. Other highways, the Icknield Street, the Ermine Street, and the Fosse-way, then, or soon after, were laid down to connect the remote corners of the province with the interior and with each other. These roads were designed primarily for military purposes ; but commerce was quick to take advantage of the easy and safe communication offered by solid roadbeds and continuous lines of depots and Avatch-stations ; and very soon, over the Eoman road, as along the line of the modern railroad, the subtle influences of civilization began to pass outward in ever-increasing volume, from the older cities of the coast into the western and northern wilderness.

61] BOADICEA 9

But how fared it with the conquered people during these eighteen years? The Celtic nature is not averse to civilization ; but it was the peculiar misfortune of the British Celts, as with of the their kinsmen of Ireland, to come first in contact with

civilization on its most unlovely side. Under such emperors as Claudius and Nero, Eoman public service was at its worst. Officials were shamelessly corrupt, and did not hesitate to use their public authority to extort money from the defenseless provincials for their own uses. Troops of private speculators, brokers and money-lenders, had also followed the army, and "offered fatal facilities to needy chiefs," Conscriptions, taxation, and requisitions of all sorts, enforced by punishments which the Britons thought fit only for slaves, were the order of the day.

Such blind and stupid oppression of a brave people, who, though conquered, still retained in their hands unlimited power for mischief, could have but one result. In the year 61, the BoadiJea,6i. Iceni, a vassal tribe who dwelt in the region of the present Norfolk, rose under the leadership of their widowed queen, the famous Boadicea, and, joined by the Trinobantes and other neighbors to the south, made a desperate effort to destroy the foreigners and break the Eoman yoke. In the first tide of revolutionary ardor the insurrection bore all before it. The recently established colony at Camulodunum was overwhelmed. Yerulamium, the modern St. Albans, and London were stormed and sacked. Frightful massacres attended these successes; seventy thousand persons, it was said, perished. The nearest legion, the Ninth, hastened to the scene of the revolt, but only to be swept away in the flood. Help, hov/ever, was not far off. Suetonius Paullinus, the governor, was already returning from the distant Mona, the later Anglesey, wliere he had been engaged in an attempt upon the warlike Ordovices. He hastened his march in the hope of saving London; but when he found that he was too late, he fell back to a strong position somewhere on the line of the Thames, and there awaited the advance of the enemy. Boadicea led the charge in her war chariot ; her people supported her with great spirit, but their valor was no match for the dogged endurance of the

10 EAELY BRITAIN

Eomans. After the first wild and furious onslaught, their energies were soon spent, and they were easily swept away before a well timed counter charge of the legionaries. Boadicea ended her life with poison. Southern Britain was not only conquered, but crushed ; and never again disputed the Eoman supremacy. Yet the rising was not without its lesson to the Eomans; and when the overthrow of the last of the Claudian Caesars and the subsequent establishment of the Flavians, afforded an opportunity for a change in the policy of the provincial administration, the Britons were among the first to share the benefit of the new order. The ' governors who now came out to the province were good men, who sought to reconcile the people to the Eoman rule by removing the causes of irritation.

Among the new governors was the famous Agricola, immortalized by the pen of his son-in-law, the historian Tacitus. He came to Britain in the year 78, and at once under- Britaiih^^^ took the reduction of the wild tribes of the island, who ''*"*^" had not yet recognized the Eoman rule. In three years,

he had overrun the western highlands, the later Wales; then, turning north, he crossed the Humber and advanced to the line of the Clyde and the Forth. It took two years more to clear the lowlands, and in the summer of 84 he entered the mountain fastnesses of the Caledonians, as the Picts were then called, the only people who still defied the authority of Eome in Britain. The difficulties which confronted the Eomans in the unaccustomed mountain warfare were serious, but the Caledonians greatly simplified the task by massing their forces at a place known as Mons Graupius,^ where Agricola defeated them in a single pitched battle. If we may believe his biographer, Agricola left ten thousand of their warriors dead upon the field. It was one of the

First most brilliant victories which Eoman arms had won

circumnavigation of the since the day of the great Caesar. Yet it was impossible

to hold or fortify the Highlands, or secure the fruits of

victory by permanent possession, and Agricola was forced to

return to the province. The fleet, however, he sent forward to

1 It is now generally agreed that Mons Graupius is not to be identified with the Grampian Hills.

84] EOMAE^ CIVILIZATION" 11

explore the northern coast. They turned the cape, and discovering the Orkneys, returned by way of the Irish Sea and the Channel to their winter station. They were the first representatives of civilization to circumnavigate the island.

Agricola, in the meantime, was meditating great things for his next campaign. He proposed, in short, the complete reduction, not ^ ,, only of the people of the Highlands, but of the Irish

Recall of ^ i n ^ n

Agricola, Gaels as well. But the suspicious Domitian was already jealous of the growing fame of his brilliant lieutenant, and determined to recall him, leaving three legions in the island, sufficient for a guard, but not sufficient to tempt another lieutenant to a career of conquest.

The Koman advance in Britain now ceased for a season. The government, in accordance with a policy, deliberately adopted, sought henceforth not to make new conquests, but to medefensive. ^ecure the most practicable military frontier. The northern Gaels kept up their old active hostility, and again and again swept into the Lowlands; the Brigantes, who dwelt south of the Tyne, also gave the unfortunate Mnth Legion which was stationed at York, much hard work; yet Rome persisted in her defensive policy. Hadrian, who was a thrifty, business-like emperor, decided that the conquests of Agricola north of the Tyne were not worth the trouble which it cost to hold them, and abandoning all this region, withdrew south of the Tyne and the Sol way;

_ ,, marking the new frontier by a permanent fortification.

Wall of 1 • n 1 • •' i- '

A7itonimis, the remains of which are still to be seen.^ Antoninus

138,

Pius, who succeeded Hadrian in 138, however, advanced again to the old frontier, connected the Clyde and the Forth with a second line of fortifications, and made the intervening country once more Eoman territory. This practically ended the Roman advance.

One hundred and twenty-four years after the battle of ^mrm^i ^^o^s Graupius, Septimius Severus once more took up m-2ii!'' *^® aggressive policy of Agricola, and made a last

attempt to complete the conquest of the island. But

1 For description of the famous walls of Hadrian and his successors, see Mommsen, Tlie Provinces of the Roman Empire I, pp. 200-205; and Ramsay, Foundations of England I, pp. 75-79.

12 EARLY 'BRITAIN

he died before lie had hardly begun his work. .His successors were too deeply occupied at home with military mutinies and barbaric inroads, to burden themselves with the old quarrel with the Highland Gaels.