Chapter IV: CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.――Federalists and anti-Federalists―― (9)

Civil freedom, as we have seen, dawned first in the great commercial cities of Italy, whence it spread to Germany, Flanders, and Britain. This important change in society may be traced to the institution of free communities of traders, or guilds of merchants; and such confederacies were a necessary consequence of the usurpation and tyranny of the nobles and feudal possessors of the soil. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the usurpations of the nobility became intolerable; they had reduced the great body of the people to a state of actual servitude. Nor was such oppression the portion of those alone who dwelt in the country, and were employed in cultivating the estates of their masters. Cities and villages found it necessary to hold of some great lord, on whom they might depend for protection, and became no less subject to his arbitrary jurisdiction. The inhabitants were deprived of those rights which, in social life, are deemed most natural and inalienable. They could not dispose of the effects which their own industry had acquired, either by a later will, or by any deed executed during their lives. Neither could they marry, nor carry on lawsuits, without the consent of their lord. But as soon as the cities of Italy began to turn their attention towards commerce, and to conceive some idea of the advantages which they might derive from it, they became impatient to shake off the yoke of their insolent lords, and to establish among themselves such a free and equal government as would render property and industry secure. The Italian cities were the first to emancipate themselves, and their example was followed in other great seats of population, the king of the country in general countenancing the establishment of free communities, in order to gain support against the encroachments of the overgrown power of the barons. The first community of this description formed in Scotland is understood to have been that of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which received its charter from William the Lion. Towns, upon acquiring the right of community, became so many little republics, governed by known and equal laws. The inhabitants being trained to arms, and being surrounded by walls, they soon began to hold the neighboring barons in contempt, and to withstand aggressions on their property and privileges. Another great good, of fully more importance, was produced. These free communities were speedily admitted, by their representatives, into the great council of the nation, whether distinguished by the name of a Parliament, a Diet, the Cortes, or the States-General. This is justly esteemed the greatest event in the history of mankind in modern times. Representatives from the English boroughs were first admitted into the great national council by the barons who took up arms against Henry III in the year 1265; being summoned to add to the greater popularity of their party, and to strengthen the barrier against the encroachments of regal power. Readers may draw their own conclusions from an event which ultimately had the effect of revolutionising the framework of society, and of rearing that great body of the people commonly styled ‘the middle class.’

The enfranchising of burghal communities led to the manumission of slaves. Hitherto the tillers of the ground, all the inferior classes of the country, were the bondsmen of the barons. The monarchs of France, in order to reduce the power of the nobles, set the example, by ordering (1315-1318) all serfs to be set at liberty on just and reasonable conditions. The edicts were carried into immediate execution within the royal domain. The example of their sovereigns, together with the expectation of considerable sums which they might raise by this expedient, led many of the nobles to set their dependents at liberty; and servitude was thus gradually abolished in almost every province of the kingdom. This beneficial practice similarly spread over the rest of Europe; and in England, as the spirit of liberty gained ground, the very name and idea of personal servitude, without any formal interposition of the legislature to prohibit it, was totally banished.

While society was assuming the semblance of the form it now bears, the progress of improvement was accelerated by various collateral circumstances, the first of which worth noticing was:

_The Revival of Letters._ The first restorers of learning in Europe were the Arabians, who, in the course of their Asiatic conquests, became acquainted with some of the ancient Greek authors, discovered their merits, and had them translated into Arabic, esteeming those principally which treated of mathematics, physics, and metaphysics. They disseminated their knowledge in the course of their conquests, and founded schools and colleges in all the countries which they subdued. The western kingdoms of Europe became first acquainted with the learning of the ancients through the medium of those Arabian translations. Charlemagne caused them to be retranslated into Latin; and, after the example of the caliphs, founded universities at Bonona, Pavia, Osnaburg, and Paris. Similar efforts were made in England by Alfred; and to him we owe the establishment, or at least the elevation, of the university of Oxford. The first efforts, however, at literary improvement were marred by the subtleties of scholastic divinity. Perhaps the greatest and wisest literary character of the middle ages was an English friar, named Roger Bacon. This extraordinary individual was not only learned, but, what was more uncommon in those times, he was scientific. Hallam asserts that he was acquainted with the nature of gunpowder, though he deemed it prudent to conceal his knowledge. He saw the insufficiency of school philosophy, and was the first to insist on experiment and the observation of nature as the fittest instruments by which to acquire knowledge. He reformed the calendar, and made discoveries in astronomy, optics, chemistry, medicine, and mechanics.

It is to Italy, however, that we owe the first and greatest exertions in the revival of letters. The spirit of liberty which had arisen among its republics was favorable to the cultivation of literature and accordingly we find that not only did they produce many individuals who were most active and successful in bringing to light the relics of classical lore, but that there also arose among them men possessed of the highest order of original genius. Florence produced Dante so early as 1265. Dante was associated with the magistracy of his native city in his earlier years; but having given dissatisfaction in that capacity, he was banished, and in his exile produced his great poem entitled the ‘Divine Comedy.’ It is a representation of the three supposed kingdoms of futurity――Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise――divided into one hundred cantos, and containing about 14,000 lines. The poem has been much praised. Petrarch, born in the year 1304, was likewise a Florentine by birth. The misfortunes of his father had impoverished the family, and Petrarch was too proud to take the usual method of retrieving his affairs. His genius, however, earned for him the friendship of many Italian princes, and even of more popes than one, although he had exerted his talents to expose the vices of their courts. Petrarch’s personal character seems to have exhibited some unamiable traits; but he has sung of love, friendship, glory, patriotism, and religion, in language of such sweetness and power as to have made him the admiration of every succeeding age. Boccaccio, like the two great poets named, was a Florentine. He was born in 1313, and his name has descended to posterity less associated with his poetry than the light, elegant, and easy prose of his novels.

_The discovery of Justinian’s Laws_, as detailed in the Pandects, was another event which powerfully tended to modify the barbarism that prevailed during the middle ages in Europe.

_The invention of the Mariner’s Compass_ must be reckoned of still greater importance, and yet it is absolutely unknown to whom we owe it. That honor has been often bestowed on Gioia, a citizen of Amalphi, who lived about the commencement of the fourteenth century. But the polarity of the magnet at least was known to the Saracens two hundred years before that time; though even after the time of Gioia, it was long before the magnet was made use of as a guide in navigation. ‘It is a singular circumstance,’ says Mr. Hallam, ‘and only to be explained by the obstinacy with which men are apt to reject improvement, that the magnetic needle was not generally adopted in navigation till very long after the discovery of its properties, and even after their peculiar importance had been perceived. The writers of the thirteenth century, who mentioned the polarity of the needle, mention also its use in navigation; yet Campany has found no distinct proof of its employment till 1403, and does not believe that it was frequently on board Mediterranean ships at the latter part of the preceding age.’ The Genoese, however, are known in the fourteenth century to have come out of that inland sea, and steered for Flanders and England. But by far the greatest sailors of the age were the Spaniards and Portuguese. This latter nation had little or no existence during the greater part of the middle ages, but in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, they were able to expel the Moors from a great part of their country; and in the beginning of the fifteenth, John, surnamed the Bastard, who was then their king, was the first European prince who exhibited a respectable navy. It was in 1486 that this adventurous people first doubled the Cape of Good Hope.

_The discovery of America_ (1493) may be mentioned supplementarily to the invention of the mariner’s compass, as an event which, without it, could never have taken place. The immortal honor of that discovery rests with Christopher Columbus, a sailor of Genoa. After unsuccessful applications at almost every court in Europe, and braving obloquy and contempt, Columbus at last obtained a miserable force from Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain; and with no landmark but the heavens, nor any guide but his compass, he launched boldly into the sea, and at last conducted Europeans to the great western hemisphere.

In the course of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries, various discoveries in the arts were made, which powerfully tended to the advancement of society; among these the more important were the invention of gunpowder and firearms, clocks and watches, paper-making and printing. This last, the greatest of all, prepared the way for the Reformation in religion, in the sixteenth century, by which religious was added to civil freedom, and a great spur given to individual activity.

HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

CONQUEST BY THE ROMANS.

Previously to the year 55 before Christ, the British Islands, in common with the whole of northern and western Europe, were occupied by barbarous tribes, who bore nearly the same relation to the civilized nations of Greece and Italy, which the North American Indians of the present day bear to the inhabitants of Great Britain and the United States. The Romans, who for ages had been extending their power over their rude neighbors, had concluded the conquest of Gaul, now called France, when, in the year just mentioned, their celebrated commander, Julius Cæsar, learning from the merchants of that country that there was another fertile land on the opposite side of the narrow sea now termed the British Channel, resolved to proceed thither, and subject it also to the Roman arms. Disembarking at the place since called Deal, he soon overawed the savage natives, though they were naturally warlike, and averse to a foreign yoke. He did not, however, gain a firm footing in Britain till the succeeding year, when he employed no fewer than 800 vessels to convey his troops from Gaul. Except along the coasts, where some tillage prevailed, the British tribes lived exactly as the Indians now do, upon animals caught in hunting, and fruits which grew spontaneously. They stained and tattooed their bodies, and had no religion but a bloody idolatry called Druidism. The people of Ireland were in much the same condition.

Little was done on this occasion to establish the Roman power in Britain; but about a century afterwards――namely, in the year of Christ 43, when the emperor Claudius was reigning at Rome――another large army invaded the island, and reduced a considerable part of it. A British prince called Caradoc, or Caractacus, who had made a noble defense against their arms, was finally taken and sent prisoner to Rome, where he was regarded with the same wonder as we should bestow upon a North American chief who had greatly obstructed the progress of settlements in this quarter of the world. In the year 61, an officer named Suetonius did much to reduce the Britons, by destroying the numerous Druidical temples in the Isle of Anglesea; religion having in this case, as in many others since, been a great support to the patriotic cause. He soon after overthrew the celebrated British princess Boadicéa, who had raised an almost general insurrection against the Roman power.

In the year 79, Agricola, a still greater general, extended the influence of Rome to the Firths of Forth and Clyde, which he formed into a frontier, by connecting them with a chain of forts. It was his policy, after he had subdued part of the country, to render it permanently attached to Rome, by introducing the pleasures and luxuries of the Capital. He was the first to sail round the island. In the year 84, having gone beyond the Forth, he was opposed by a great concourse of the rude inhabitants of the north, under a chief name Galgacus, whom he completely overthrew at _Mons Grampius_, or the Grampian Mountain; a spot about which there are many disputes, but which was probably at Ardoch in Perthshire, where there are still magnificent remains of a Roman camp. Tacitus, a writer related to Agricola, gives a very impressive account of this great conflict, and exhibits the bravery of the native forces as very remarkable; but the correctness of his details cannot be much relied on.

It appears that Agricola, while on the western coast of Scotland, was desirous of making the conquest of Ireland, which he thought would be useful, both as a medium of communication with Spain, and as a position whence he could overawe Britain. He formed an acquaintance with an Irish chief, who, having been driven from his country by civil commotions, was ready to join in invading it. By him Agricola was informed that the island might be conquered by one legion and a few auxiliaries. The inhabitants, according to Tacitus, bore a close resemblance to the Britons.

It is generally allowed that the Romans experienced an unusual degree of difficulty in subduing the Britons; and it is certain that they were baffled in all their attempts upon the northern part of Scotland, which was then called Caledonia. The utmost they could do with the inhabitants of that country, was to build walls across the island to keep them by themselves. The first wall was built in the year 121, by the Emperor Hadrian, between Newcastle and the Solway Firth. The second was built by the Emperor Antoninus, about the year 140, as a connection of the line of forts which Agricola had formed between the Firths of Forth and Clyde. This boundary was not long kept, for in 210 we find the Emperor Severus fortifying the rampart between the Tyne and Solway. Roman armies, however, probably under the command of Lollius Urbicus, had penetrated far beyond the more northerly wall, although, unfortunately, no accounts of their reception are preserved. From comparing Roman remains lately discovered with ancient geographies, it is held as established that the Romans reached the north-east end of Loch Ness, near the modern town of Inverness. The number of roads and camps which they made, and the regularity with which the country was divided into stations, prove their desire to preserve these conquests. When the conquest was thus so far completed, the country was governed in the usual manner of a Roman province; and towns began to rise in the course of time――being generally those whose names are found to end in _chester_, a termination derived from _castra_, the Latin word for camp. The Christian religion was also introduced, and Roman literature made some progress in the country.

CONQUEST BY THE SAXONS.

At length a time came when the Romans could no longer defend their own native country against the nations in the north of Europe. The soldiers were then withdrawn from Britain (about the year 440), and the people left to govern themselves. The Caledonians, who did not like to be so much straitened in the north, took advantage of the unprotected state of the Britons to pour in upon them from the other side of the wall, and despoil them of their lives and goods. The British had no resource but to call in another set of protectors, the Saxons, a warlike people who lived in the north of Germany, and the Jutes and Angles, who inhabited Denmark. The remedy was found hardly any better than the disease. Having once acquired a footing in the island, these hardy strangers proceeded to make it a subject of conquest, as the Romans had done before, with this material difference, that they drove the British to the western parts of the island, particularly into Wales, and settled, with new hordes of their countrymen, over the better part of the land. So completely was the population changed, that, excepting in the names of some of the hills and rivers, the British language was extinguished, and even the name of the country itself was changed, from what it originally was to Angle-land or England, a term taken from the Angles. The conquest required about two hundred and fifty years to be effected, and, like that of the Romans, it extended no farther north than the Firths of Forth and Clyde. Before the Britons were finally cooped up in Wales, many battles were fought; but few of these are accurately recorded. The most distinguished of the British generals were the Princes Vortimer and Aurelius Ambrosius. It is probably on the achievements of the latter that the well-known fables of King Arthur and his knights are founded.

England, exclusive of the western regions, was now divided into seven kingdoms, called Kent, Northumberland, East Anglia, Mercia, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex, each of which was governed by a race descended from the leader who had first subdued it; and the whole have since been called by historians the _Saxon Heptarchy_, the latter word being composed of two Greek words, signifying _seven kingdoms_. To the north of the Forth dwelt a nation called the Picts, who also had a king, and were in all probability the people with whom Agricola had fought under the name of Caledonians. In the Western Highlands there was another nation, known by the name of the Scots, or Dalriads, who had gradually migrated thither from Ireland, between the middle of the third century and the year 503, when they established, under a chief named Fergus, a monarchy destined in time to absorb all the rest. About the year 700 there were no fewer than fifteen kings, or chiefs, within the island, while Ireland was nearly in the same situation. In Britain, at the same time, five languages were in use, the Latin, Saxon, Welsh, the Pictish, and the Irish. The general power of the country has been found to increase as these nations and principalities were gradually amassed together.

Although three of the Saxon kingdoms, Wessex, Mercia, and Northumberland, became predominant, the Heptarchy prevailed from about the year 585 to 800, when Egbert, king of Wessex, acquired a paramount influence over all the other states, though their kings still continued to reign. Alfred, so celebrated for his virtues, was the grandson of Egbert, and began to reign in the year 871. At this time the Danes, who are now a quiet, inoffensive people, were a nation of pirates, and at the same time heathens. They used to come in large fleets, and commit dreadful ravages on the shores of Britain. For some time they completely overturned the sovereignty of Alfred, and compelled him to live in obscurity in the centre of a marsh. But he at length fell upon them when they thought themselves in no danger, and regained the greater part of his kingdom. Alfred spent the rest of his life in literary study, of which he was very fond, and in forming laws and regulations for the good of his people. He was perhaps the most able, most virtuous, and most popular prince that ever reigned in Britain; and all this is the more surprising, when we find that his predecessors and successors, for many ages, were extremely cruel and ignorant. He died in the year 901, in the fifty-third year of his age.

CONQUEST BY THE NORMANS.

The Saxon line of princes continued to rule, with the exception of three Danish reigns, till the year 1066, when the crown was in the possession of a usurper named Harold. The country was then invaded by William, Duke of Normandy, a man of illegitimate birth, attended by a large and powerful army. Harold opposed him at Hastings (October 14), and after a well-contested battle, his army was defeated, and himself slain. William then caused himself to be crowned king at Westminster; and in the course of a few years he succeeded, by means of his warlike Norman followers, in completely subduing the Saxons. His chiefs were settled upon the lands of those who opposed him, and became the ancestors of most of the present noble families of England.

Previously to this period, the Church of Rome, which was the only surviving part of the power of that empire, had established its supremacy over England. The land was also subjected to what is called the feudal system (see HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES), by which all proprietors of land were supposed to hold it from the king for military service, while the tenants were understood to owe them military service in turn for their use of the land. All orders of men were thus kept in a chain of servile obedience, while some of the lower orders were actually slaves to their superiors.

In the year 853, Kenneth, king of the Scots, had added the Pictish kingdom to his own, and his descendant Malcolm II, in 1020, extended his dominions over not only the south of Scotland, but a part of the north of England. Thus, putting aside Wales, which continued to be an independent country, under its own princes, the island was divided, at the time of the Norman Conquest, into two considerable kingdoms, England and Scotland, as they were for some centuries afterwards. Ireland, which had also been invaded by hordes from the north of Europe, was divided into a number of small kingdoms, like England under the Saxon Heptarchy.

EARLY NORMAN KINGS.

William, surnamed _The Conqueror_, reigned from 1066 to 1087, being chiefly engaged all that time in completing the subjugation of the Saxons. He is allowed to have been a man of much sagacity, and a firm ruler; but his temper was violent, and his disposition brutal. At the time of his death, which took place in Normandy, his eldest son Robert happening to be at a greater distance from London than William, who was the second son, the latter individual seized upon the crown, of which he could not afterwards be dispossessed, till he was shot accidentally by an arrow in the New Forest, in the year 1100. Towards the close of this king’s reign, the whole of Christian Europe was agitated by the first Crusade――an expedition for the recovery of the Holy Land from the Saracens. Robert of Normandy had a high command in this enterprise, and gained much fame as a warrior; but while he was in Italy, on his return, his youngest brother Henry usurped the throne left vacant by William, so that he was again disappointed of his birthright. HENRY I――surnamed _Beauclerc_, from his being a fine scholar――was a prince of some ability; but he disgraced himself by putting out the eyes of his eldest brother, and keeping him nearly thirty years in confinement. Such barbarous conduct shows that in this age might was the only right, and that men hesitated at no actions which might promise to advance their own interests.

Cotemporary with William the Conqueror in England, was MALCOLM III in Scotland, surnamed _Canmore_, from his having a large head. This prince, after overthrowing the celebrated usurper Macbeth, married Margaret, a fugitive Saxon princess, through whom his posterity became the heirs of that race of English sovereigns. He was a good prince, and by settling Saxon refugees upon his lowland territory, did much to improve the character of the Scottish nation, who are described as having been before this time a nation in which there was no admixture of civilization. At Malcolm’s death, in 1093, the crown was contested for a while by a usurper called Donald Bane, and the elder sons of the late monarch, but finally fell to the peaceable possession of his youngest son DAVID I, who was a prince of much superior character, apparently, to the Norman sovereigns who lived in the same age. The church of Rome having now gained an ascendancy in Scotland, David founded a considerable number of monasteries and churches for the reception of the ministers of that religion. All the most celebrated abbacies in Scotland took their rise in his time.

Henry Beauclerc of England, in order to strengthen his claim by a Saxon alliance, married Maud, the daughter of Malcolm Canmore and of Princess Margaret. By her he had an only daughter of the same name, whom he married first to the Emperor of Germany, and then to Geoffrey Plantagenet, eldest son of the Earl of Anjou, in France. This lady and her children by Plantagenet were properly the heirs of the English crown; but on the death of Henry, in 1135, it was seized by a usurper named STEPHEN, a distant member of the Conqueror’s family, who reigned for nineteen years, during which the country was rendered almost desolate by civil contests, in which David of Scotland occasionally joined.

On the death of Stephen, in 1154, the crown fell peacefully to HENRY II, who was the eldest son of Maud, and the first of the Plantagenet race of sovereigns. Henry was an acute and politic prince, though not in any respect more amiable than his predecessors. His reign was principally marked by a series of measures for reducing the power of the Romish clergy, in the course of which some of his courtiers, in 1171 thought they could not do him a better service than to murder Thomas-à-Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been the chief obstacle to his views, and was one of the ablest and most ambitious men ever produced in England. For his concern in this foul transaction, Henry had to perform a humiliating penance, receiving eighty lashes on his bare back from the monks of Canterbury. We are the less inclined to wonder at this circumstance, when we consider that about this time the Pope had power to cause two kings to perform the menial service of leading his horse.

Henry was the most powerful king that had yet reigned in Britain. Besides the great hereditary domains which he possessed in France, and for which he did homage to the king of that country, he exacted a temporary homage from William of Scotland, the grand-son of David, a monarch of great valor, who took the surname of the _Lion_, and who reigned from 1166 to 1214. Henry also added Ireland to his domininions. This island had previously been divided into five kingdoms――Munster, Leinster, Meath, Ulster, and Connaught. The people, being quite uncivilized, were perpetually quarreling among themselves; and this, with their heathen religion, furnished a flimsy pretext for invading them from England. Dermot Macmorrough, king of Leinster, having been dethroned by his subjects, introduced an English warrior, Richard, Earl of Strigul, generally called _Strongbow_, for the purpose of regaining his possessions. A body composed of 50 knights, 90 esquires, and 460 archers, in all 600 men, was enabled by its superior discipline to overthrow the whole warlike force that could be brought against them; and the conquest was easily completed by Henry in person, who went thither in 1172. The military leaders were left to rule over the country; but they managed their trust so ill, that the Irish never became peaceable and improving subjects of the Norman king, as the English had gradually done.

RICHARD CŒUR DE LION――JOHN――MAGNA CHARTA.

Henry II was much troubled in his latter years by the disobedience of his children. At his death, in 1189, he was succeeded by his son RICHARD, styled _Cœur de Lion_, or the _Lion-hearted_, from his head strong courage, and who was much liked by his subjects on that account, though it does not appear that he possessed any other good qualities. At the coronation of Richard, the people were permitted to massacre many thousands of unoffending Jews throughout the kingdom. Almost immediately after his accession, he joined the king of France in a second Crusade; landed in Palestine (1191) and fought with prodigious valor, but with no good result. On one occasion, being offended at a breach of truce by his opponent Saladin, he beheaded 5000 prisoners; whose deaths were immediately revenged by a similar massacre of Christian prisoners. In 1192, he returned with a small remnant of his gallant army, and being shipwrecked at Aquileia, wandered in disguise into the dominions of his mortal enemy the Duke of Austria, who, with the Emperor of Germany, detained him till he was redeemed by a ransom, which impoverished nearly the whole of his subjects. This prince spent the rest of his life in unavailing wars with Philip of France, and was killed at the seige of a castle in Limousin, in 1199, after a reign of ten years, of which he had spent only about three months in England.

JOHN, the younger brother of Richard, succeeded, although Arthur, Duke of Bretagne, the son of an intermediate brother, was the proper heir. John, who was at once vain, cruel, and weak, alienated the affections of his subjects almost at the very first by the assassination of his nephew, which he is said to have performed with his own hands. The weakness of kings is often the means of giving increased liberties and privileges to the people. The paltry tyranny and wickedness of John caused his barons to rise against him, and the result was that, on the 19th June, 1215, he was compelled by them to sign what is called the _Magna Charta_, or great Charter, granting them many privileges and exemptions, and generally securing the personal liberty of his subjects. The principal point concerning the nation at large was, that no tax or supply should be levied from them without their own consent in a great Council――the first idea of a Parliament. Some excellent provisions were also made regarding courts of law and justice, so as to secure all but the guilty.

The Pope, it appears, regarded the Magna Charta as a shameful violation of the royal prerogative, and excommunicated its authors, as being worse, in his estimation, than infidels. The opinion of a leading modern historian is very different. He says, ‘To have produced the Great Charter, to have preserved it, to have matured it, constitute the immortal claim of England on the esteem of mankind.’

HENRY III――ORIGIN OF PARLIAMENT.

John, at his death in 1216, was succeeded by his son, HENRY III, a weak and worthless prince, who ascended the throne in his boyhood, and reigned fifty six years, without having performed one worthy act of sufficient consequence to be detailed. In his reign was held the first assemblage approaching to the character of a Parliament. It was first called in 1225, in order to give supplies for carrying on a war against France. The money was only granted on condition that the Great Charter should be confirmed; and thus the example was set at the very first, for rendering supplies a check upon the prerogative of the king, and gradually reducing that power to its present comparatively moderate level. Under the earlier Norman kings, and even, it is believed, under the Saxons, an assembly called the Great Council had shared with the sovereign the power of framing laws; but it was only now that the body had any power to balance that of the sovereign, and it was not till 1265 that representatives from the inhabitants of towns were introduced.

EDWARD I AND II――ATTEMPTED CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND.

Henry III, at his death in 1272, was succeeded by his son EDWARD I, a prince as warlike and sagacious as his father was the reverse. He distinguished himself by his attempts to add Wales to his kingdom, an object which he accomplished in 1282, by the overthrow and murder of Llewellen, the last prince of that country. In the meantime, from the death of William the Lion in 1214, Scotland had been ruled by two princes, ALEXANDER II, and III, under whom it advanced considerably in wealth, civilization, and comfort. On the death of Alexandria III, in 1285, the crown fell to his granddaughter MARGARET, a young girl, whose father was Eric, king of Norway. Edward formed a treaty with the Estates of Scotland for a marriage between this princess and his son, whom he styled Prince of Wales. Unfortunately, the young lady died on her voyage to Scotland; and the crown was left to be disputed by a multitude of distant relations, of whom JOHN BALIOL and ROBERT BRUCE seem to have the best right. Edward, being resolved to make Scotland his own at all hazards, interfered in this dispute, and being appointed arbitrator among the competitors, persuaded them to own in the first place an ill-defined claim put forward by himself of the right of paramountcy or superior sovereignty over Scotland. When this was done, he appointed Baliol to be his vassal king, an honor which the unfortunate man was not long permitted to enjoy. Having driven Baliol to resistance, he invaded the country, overthrew his army, and stripping him of his sovereignty, assumed to himself the dominion of Scotland, as a right forfeited to him by the rebellion of his vassal. After he had retired, a brave Scottish gentleman, named William Wallace, raised an insurrection against his officers, and defeating his army at Stirling in 1298, cleared the whole country of its southern invaders. But in the succeeding year, this noble patriot was defeated by Edward in person at Falkirk, and the English yoke was again imposed. It may be remarked, that this could have hardly taken place if the common people, who rose with Wallace, and who were wholly of Celtic and Saxon origin, had been led and encouraged by the nobility. The grandees of Scotland, and even the competitors for the crown, being recent Norman settlers, were disposed to render obedience to the English sovereign.

Some time after the death of Wallace, while Edward was engrossed with the French wars, Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, grand son of him who had competed with Baliol, conceived the idea of putting himself at the head of the Scots, and endeavoring by their means at once to gain the crown, and to recover the independence of the kingdom. After a series of adventures, among which was the unpremeditated murder of a rival named Comyn, Bruce caused himself, in 1306, to be crowned at Scone. For some time after he had to skulk as a fugitive, being unable to maintain his ground against the English officers; but at length he became so formidable, that Edward found it necessary (1307) to lead a large army against him. The English monarch, worn out with fatigue and age, died on the coast of the Solway Firth, when just within sight of Scotland, leaving his sceptre to his son Edward II. That weak and foolish prince immediately returned to London, leaving Bruce to contest with his inferior officers.

After several years of constant skirmishing, during which the Scottish king was able to maintain his ground, Edward resolved to make one decisive effort to reduce Scotland to subjection. In the summer of 1314, he invaded it with an army of 100,000 men. Bruce drew up his troops, which were only 30,000 in number, at Bannockburn, near Stirling. Partly by steady valor, and partly by the use of stratagems, the Scots were victorious, and Edward fled ignominiously from the field. The Scottish king gained an immense booty, besides securing his crown and the independence of his country. He soon after sent his brother Edward, with a body of troops, to Ireland, to assist the native chiefs in resisting the English. This bold young knight was crowned King of Ireland, and for some time held his ground against the English forces, but was at length defeated and slain.

The weakness of Edward II was chiefly shown in a fondness for favorites, into whose hands he committed the whole interests of his people. The first was a low Frenchman, named Piers Gaveston, who soon fell a victim to the indignation of the barons. The second, Hugh Spencer, misgoverned the country for several years, till at length the Queen and prince of Wales raised an insurrection against the king, and caused him to be deposed, as quite unfit to reign. The Prince was then crowned as EDWARD III (1327), being as yet only about fourteen years of age; and in the course of a few months the degraded sovereign was cruelly put to death in Berkeley Castle.

During the minority of the young king, the reins of government were held by his mother and the Earl of March. Under their administration, a peace was concluded with King Robert of Scotland, of which one of the conditions was a full acknowledgement of the independence of the Scottish monarchy, which had been a matter of dispute for some ages.

EDWARD III――RICHARD II.

Edward III, who soon after assumed full power, was destined to make good the remark prevalent at this time, that the kings of England were alternately able and imbecile. He was a warlike and sagacious monarch, and inspired by all his grandfather’s desire of conquest. In 1329, Robert Bruce died, and was succeeded by his infant son DAVID II, to whom a young sister of the English king was married, in terms of the late treaty. Notwithstanding this connection, Edward aided a son of John Baliol in an attempt to gain the Scottish crown. Edward Baliol overthrew the Regent of Scotland at Duplin, September 1332, and for two months reigned as King of Scots, while David and his wife took refuge in France. Though now expelled, Baliol afterwards returned to renew his claims, and for many years the country was harassed by unceasing wars, in which the English took a leading part.

But for his attention being diverted to France, Edward III would have made a more formidable effort to subdue Scotland, and might have succeeded. He was led into a long course of warfare with France, in consequence of an absurd pretension which he had made to its crown. In the victories which he had gained at Cressy (August 26, 1346) and Poitiers (September 17, 1356), the national valor, his own, and that of his celebrated son, the Black Prince, were shown conspicuously; but this lavish expenditure of the resources of his kingdom, in which he was supported by his parliament, was of no permanent benefit, even to himself, for whom alone it was made. In those days, almost all men fought well, but very few had the art to improve their victories. John, king of France, who had been made captive at Poitiers, and David, king of Scotland, who had been taken in 1346, while conducting an invasion of England, were at one time prisoners in England; but no permanent advantage was ever gained over either of the states thus deprived of their sovereigns. In 1361, after about twenty years of active fighting, the English king left France with little more territory than he had previously enjoyed. Edward had invaded Scotland with a powerful army in 1356, but without making any impression. The Scots, under David’s nephew, Robert Stuart, effectually protected themselves, not only from his arms, but from a proposal which David himself basely undertook to make, that Lionel, the third son of the English king, should be acknowledged as his successor. Edward died in 1377, a year after the decease of his son the Black Prince; and notwithstanding all their brilliant exploits, the English territories in France were less than at the beginning of the reign.

England was at this time affected more than at any other by the fashions of chivalry. This was a military enthusiasm, which for some centuries pervaded all Christian Europe. It prompted, as one of its first principles, a heedless bravery in encountering all kinds of danger. Its votaries were expected to be particularly bold in behalf of the fair sex, insomuch that a young knight would sometimes challenge to mortal combat any one who denied his mistress to be the loveliest in the world. Tournaments were held, at which knights clad in complete armor would ride against each other at full speed with leveled lances, merely to try which had the greatest strength and skill; and many were killed on these occasions. It was a system full of extravagance, and tending to bloodshed; but nevertheless it maintained a certain courtesy towards females, and a romantic principle of honor, which we may be glad to admire, considering how rude was almost every other feature of the age.

Edward III was succeeded by his grandson, RICHARD II, then a boy of eleven years of age, and who proved to be a person of weak and profligate character. The Commons took advantage of the irregularity of his government to strengthen their privileges, which they had with difficulty sustained during the more powerful rule of his predecessor. Early in this reign they assumed the right, not only of taxing the country, but of seeing how the money was spent. Indignant at the severity of a tax imposed upon all grown-up persons, the peasantry of the eastern parts of England rose, in 1381, under a person of their own order, named Wat Tyler, and advanced, to the number of 60,000, to London, where they put to death the chancellor and primate, as evil counselors of their sovereign. They demanded the abolition of bondage, the liberty of buying and selling in fairs and markets, a general pardon, and the reduction of the rent of land to an equal rate. The king came to confer with them at Smithfield, where, on some slight pretense, Walworth, mayor of London, stabbed Wat Tyler with a dagger――a weapon which has since figured in the armorial bearings of the metropolis. The peasants were dismayed, and submitted, and no fewer than fifteen hundred of them were hanged. Wat Tyler’s insurrection certainly proceeded upon a glimmering sense of those equal rights of mankind which have since been generally acknowledged; and it is remarkable, that at the same time the doctrines of the reformer Wickliffe were first heard of. This learned ecclesiastic wrote against the power of the Pope, and some of the most important points of the Romish faith, and also executed a translation of the Bible into English. His writings are acknowledged to have been of material, though not immediate effect, in bringing about the reformation of religion.

The country was misgoverned by Richard II till 1399, when he was deposed by his subjects under the leading of his cousin, Henry, Duke of Lancaster. This person, though some nearer the throne were alive, was crowned as HENRY IV, and his predecessor, Richard, was soon after murdered. In the meantime, David of Scotland died in 1371, and was succeeded by ROBERT STUART, who was the first monarch of that family. ROBERT I, dying in 1389, was succeeded by his son ROBERT II, who was a good and gentle prince. He had two sons, David and James; the former was starved to death by his uncle, the Duke of Albany; and the latter, when on his way to France for his education, was seized by Henry IV of England, and kept captive in that country for eighteen years. Robert II then died of a broken heart (1406), and the kingdom fell into the hands of the Duke of Albany, at whose death, in 1419, it was governed by his son Duke Murdoch, a very imbecile personage.

HOUSE OF LANCASTER.

Henry IV proved a prudent prince, and comparatively a good ruler. The settlement of the crown upon him by parliament was a good precedent, though perhaps only dictated under the influence of his successful arms. He was much troubled by insurrections, particularly a formidable one by Percy, Earl of Northumberland――and one still more difficult to put down in Wales, where Owen Glendower, a descendant of the British princes, kept his ground for several years.

On the death of Henry IV in 1413, he was succeeded by his son, who was proclaimed under the title of HENRY V. The young king attained high popularity, on account of his impartial administration of justice, and his zeal to protect the poor from the oppressions of their superiors. His reign is less agreeably marked by the persecutions of the Lollards, a body of religious reformers, many of whom were condemned to the flames. Being determined to use every endeavor to gain the crown of France, which he considered his by right of birth, he landed in Normandy with 30,000 men (August 1415), and gave battle to a much superior force of the French at Agincourt. He gained a complete victory, which was sullied by his afterwards ordering a massacre of his prisoners, under the apprehension that an attempt was to be made to rescue them. The war was carried on for some years longer, and Henry would have probably succeeded in making good his claim to the French crown, if he had not died prematurely of a dysentery (August 31, 1422), in the thirty-fourth year of his age, leaving the throne to an infant nine months old, who was proclaimed as HENRY VI, King of France and England.

Under Henry VI, whose power was for some time in the hands of his uncle the Duke of Bedford, the English maintained their footing in France for several years, and at the battle of Verneuil, in 1424, rivaled the glory of Cressy and Poitiers. At that conflict, a body of Scotch, 7000 strong, who had proved of material service to the French, were nearly cut off. In 1428, when France seemed completely sunk beneath the English rule, the interests of the native prince were suddenly revived by a simple maiden, named Joan of Arc, who pretended to have been commissioned by Heaven to save her country; and entering into the French army, was the cause of several signal reverses to the English. By her enthusiastic exertions, and the trust everywhere reposed in her supernatural character, Charles VII was crowned at Rheims in 1430. Being soon after taken prisoner, the heroic maiden was, by the English, condemned for witchcraft, and burnt. Nevertheless, about the year 1453, the French monarch had retrieved the whole of his dominions from the English, with the exception of Calais.

Henry VI was remarkable for the extreme weakness of his character. His cousin, Richard, Duke of York, descended from an elder son of Edward III, and therefore possessed of a superior title to the throne, conceived that Henry’s imbecility afforded a good opportunity for asserting what he thought his birthright. Thus commenced the famous _Wars of the Roses_, as they were called, from the badges of the families of York and Lancaster――the former of which was a white, while the latter was a red rose. In 1454, the duke gained a decisive victory over the forces of Henry, which were led by his spirited consort, Margaret of Anjou. In some succeeding engagements the friends of Henry were victorious; and at length, in the battle of Wakefield (December 24, 1460), the forces of the Duke of York were signally defeated, and himself, with one of his sons, taken and put to death. His pretensions were then taken up by his eldest son Edward, who, with the assistance of the Earl of Warwick, gained such advantages next year, that he assumed the crown. Before this was accomplished, many thousands had fallen on both sides. Henry, who cared little for the pomp of sovereignty, was confined in the Tower.

Scotland, in the meantime (1424), had redeemed her king from his captivity in England; and that prince, styled JAMES I, had proved a great legislator and reformer, not to speak of his personal accomplishments in music and literature, which surpassed those of every cotemporary monarch. James did much to reduce the Highlands to an obedience under the Scottish government, and also to break up the enormous power of the nobles. By these proceedings, however, he excited a deep hatred in the bosoms of some of his subjects; and in 1437 he fell a victim to assassination at Perth. He was succeeded by his infant son, JAMES II, the greater part of whose reign was spent in a harassing contention with the powerful house of Douglas, and who was finally killed, in the flower of his age, by the bursting of a cannon before Roxburgh Castle. His successor, JAMES III, was also a minor, and, on reaching man’s estate, proved to be a weak, though not ill-meaning prince. He fell a victim, in 1488, to a conspiracy formed by his subjects, and which was led by his eldest son. The morality of princes in this age seems to have been much upon a par with that ascribed to the Turkish sovereigns of a later period. They never scrupled to destroy life, either within the circle of their own family, or out of it, when it suited their interests or their ambition to do so.

HOUSE OF YORK.

Edward, of the House of York, styled EDWARD IV, who commenced his reign in the nineteenth year of his age, reigned ten years, perpetually disturbed by renewed attempts of the Lancastrian party, of which he mercilessly sacrificed many thousands who fell into his hands. At length, having offended the Earl of Warwick, who had been chiefly instrumental in placing him upon the throne, that powerful nobleman raised an insurrection against him, and in eleven days was master of the kingdom, while Edward had to take refuge on the continent. Henry VI was then restored, and Warwick acquired the title of King-maker. Nine months after (1471), Edward landed with a small body of followers, and having called his partisans arround him, overthrew and killed Warwick at St. Alban’s. Margaret of Anjou, who had fought battles for her husband in almost every province of England, gathered a new army, and opposed Edward at Tewkesbury Park, where she was completely defeated. Her son and husband being taken, were murdered in cold blood, and she herself spent the remainder of her singular life in France. Edward reigned, a profligate and a tyrant, till 1483, when he died in the forty-second year of his age. He had previously caused his brother, the equally profligate Duke of Clarence, to be drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine.

During the reign of Edward IV, the plague frequently broke out in England, and carried off immense numbers of the people. It was particularly fatal in London, and in all other places where many houses were huddled closely together, with imperfect means of cleaning and ventilation. It was calculated that the disease, on one occasion in this reign, destroyed as many lives as the fifteen years’ war. The plague did not cease to occur in England, as well as in other European countries, until considerable improvements had taken place in the habits of the people, especially in point of cleanliness.

EDWARD V, the eldest son of Edward IV, was a boy of eleven years when he succeeded to the crown. His uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, a wicked and deformed wretch, soon after contrived to obtain the chief power, and also to cause the murder of the young king and his still younger brother in the Tower. He then mounted the throne under the title of RICHARD III. For two years, this disgrace to humanity continued to reign, though universally abhorred by his people. At length, in 1485, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, a connexion rather than a descendant of the Lancaster family, resolved to make an attempt upon the English crown. Having landed with about 2000 followers at Milford Haven, he advanced into the country, and speedily gained such accession of force as enabled him to meet and overthrow Richard at Bosworth Field, where the tyrant was slain, and the victorious Richmond was immediately proclaimed king, under the title of HENRY VII. The new monarch soon after sought to strengthen his title by marrying Elizabeth, the daughter and heir of Edward IV, by which it was said the families of York and Lancaster were united.

HOUSE OF TUDOR――HENRY VII.