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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Thomas Babington Macaulay's "The History of England" spans five volumes, presenting a comprehensive narrative that captures the complexities of English history from the Roman invasion to the Glorious Revolution. Macaulay's masterful prose blends scholarly rigor with a vivid storytelling style, utilizing rich descriptions and keen observations to engage readers while offering critical commentary on political, social, and cultural evolution. His work is notable not only for its narrative depth but also for its incisive reflections on the Whig interpretation of history, emphasizing progress and the gradual advancement of liberty and democracy. Macaulay, a prominent historian, poet, and politician of the 19th century, was influenced by Enlightenment ideals and his own Whig beliefs, leading him to write this ambitious history. His experiences in British politics and his dedication to public service informed his perspectives, as he aimed to not only document the past but also shape public understanding of national identity and governance. His literary career intertwines with his historical endeavors, marking him as a pivotal figure in Victorian literature and historiography. This monumental work is essential reading for anyone interested in the intricate tapestry of English history and its lasting impact on contemporary society. With its blend of scholarly insight and engaging narrative, Macaulay's "The History of England" remains an indispensable resource for historians, students, and anyone seeking to explore the foundations of modern Britain. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The History of England (Vol. 1-5)
Table of Contents
Introduction
A nation discovers its modern conscience in the pitched struggle where monarch, Parliament, and faith contend for the terms of liberty.
Thomas Babington Macaulay’s The History of England (Vol. 1–5), composed in the mid-nineteenth century, is both a sweeping narrative and a considered argument about how a constitutional society is forged. Written at a time when British liberalism was crystallizing its ideals, the work traces the story from the accession of James II onward, setting political drama within the textures of everyday life. Macaulay aims to make public events intelligible by showing their human stakes, rendering statesmen, dissenters, soldiers, and citizens as actors in a shared national story with consequences that still reverberate.
Its classic status rests first on a feat of style. Macaulay’s lucid, rhythmic prose makes vast complexity comprehensible without flattening it, and his orchestration of narrative momentum with moral reflection gives the history a literary presence rare in the genre. The work helped broaden the audience for historical writing, proving that scholarship and readability could coexist at scale. It has sustained its reputation because it offers more than facts: it supplies a framework for thinking about continuity and change, and it does so with a sense of drama that has influenced generations of writers and readers.
As a landmark of Victorian historiography, the book shaped expectations for narrative history, encouraging subsequent authors to combine archival rigor with storytelling verve. Its portraits of political culture, its pacing, and its confident judgments set a benchmark to emulate or resist. Even those who challenge its assumptions engage with its cadence and clarity, testifying to its durable imprint on literary history. The History of England also demonstrated that national history could hold a central place in public discourse, nourishing later works that sought to interpret the past for a broad, civically minded readership.
Key facts underscore its ambition. The first installment appeared in 1848, and additional volumes followed over the next decade, with the fifth issued posthumously; the project remained unfinished at Macaulay’s death in 1859. The full title announces his point of departure: the accession of James II, a hinge between dynastic authority and emergent constitutional norms. Macaulay intended to carry the narrative well into later reigns, but the scale of his undertaking limited completion. Nonetheless, the five volumes stand as a coherent arc, presenting a closely knit chronicle of political conflict, institutional settlement, and social transformation.
The content blends high politics with the common life, portraying debates in council chambers alongside developments in commerce, religion, and culture. Macaulay tracks how institutions evolve under pressure, how ideas migrate from pamphlets to policy, and how public opinion, technology, and finance reshape the landscape of power. By anchoring legislative change in lived experience, he shows how law, custom, and sentiment interact. Without anticipating outcomes, he frames the central stakes: the terms of authority, the scope of tolerance, the accountability of rulers, and the rights of subjects in an increasingly complex and interconnected realm.
Macaulay’s method pairs wide reading in primary sources with a novelist’s eye for scene and character. He mines parliamentary records, private correspondence, diaries, pamphlets, and diplomatic dispatches to reconstruct motives and consequences. He then arranges this evidence into episodes that carry readers through argument as story. The approach allowed him to educate without pedantry, to persuade without obscurity. His apparatus never overwhelms the narrative but underwrites it, inviting trust while prompting scrutiny. This balance between documentation and design helped establish an ideal—still debated—of the historian as both interpreter and craftsman of the public memory.
The work is often identified with a Whig interpretation of history, emphasizing the gradual, contingent advance of civil liberty and constitutional balance. Macaulay’s pages insist that progress is neither automatic nor bloodless; it is negotiated, defended, and sometimes nearly undone. He writes with moral conviction about power and responsibility, yet he also revels in the multiplicity of causes that push events forward. Vivid characterization, strategic pacing, and thematic recurrence give the volumes the coherence of a grand narrative while preserving the messiness of politics, making the book compelling both as literature and as a meditation on governance.
Critics have rightly noted limitations: the vantage point of a nineteenth-century liberal statesman can yield partial views, confident verdicts, and emphases that later scholarship revises. Yet these very qualities make the book invaluable as a historical artifact about historiography. It discloses the ideals and anxieties of its era, offering a window into how Victorians understood the relationship between liberty and order. Read alongside more recent studies, Macaulay’s history becomes a conversation partner rather than an oracle, sharpening judgments and broadening perspectives by making readers conscious of both the power and the partiality of grand narratives.
In literary history, the volumes occupy a distinctive position between epic and archive. They adapt techniques familiar from oratory and the essay—periodic cadence, set-piece description, moral summation—to the demands of long-form history. This fusion helped normalize the idea that the past could be narrated with the grip of a novel without sacrificing seriousness. The result is a work that has taught writers how to sustain scale without monotony and taught readers how to delight in evidence. Its continued presence in curricula and libraries speaks to its dual life as a stylistic exemplar and an interpretive landmark.
Approached today, The History of England rewards several modes of reading: as an engrossing chronicle of crises and settlements; as a reflective treatise on institutions; and as a case study in how historians frame causes and consequences. Its accessibility makes it hospitable to newcomers, while its density of reference supports repeated engagement. Macaulay’s voice—confident yet attentive to complexity—invites agreement and argument in equal measure. The work’s architecture is generous: it anticipates questions, provides context, and situates personalities within systems, ensuring that the reader can trace how ideas and interests converge to shape public life.
The enduring appeal lies in themes that remain vital: the negotiation of authority, the safeguards of law, the place of conscience in politics, and the social energies that alter constitutions from within. Macaulay evokes the drama of collective choice and the responsibilities that accompany power, reminding readers that liberty is a practice as much as a principle. For contemporary audiences, the book offers both intellectual exhilaration and civic instruction, clarifying how institutions weather strain and how public narratives take hold. It persists as a classic because it marries breadth, clarity, and purpose to a story still unfolding.
Synopsis (Selection)
Macaulay opens with a broad survey of England in 1685, at the accession of James II. He describes institutions—Crown, Parliament, courts—and contrasts parties, customs, and economy. He situates England in European system dominated by Louis XIV, the Dutch Republic, Spain, the Empire. He recounts the Restoration settlement, religious divisions between Anglicans, Dissenters, and Catholics, and memories of civil war. He presents the social order, municipal corporations, and the press. This introductory panorama establishes the condition of the nation, the functioning of law and revenue, and the temper of political factions that would shape the events of the subsequent crisis and constitutional transformation.
The narrative moves to James II’s character and early measures. He maintains a standing army, asserts the dispensing power, and prosecutes political opponents. The Monmouth Rebellion is raised and suppressed at Sedgemoor, followed by the Bloody Assizes under Jeffreys. James strengthens ties with France, creates the Ecclesiastical Commission, and challenges Anglican control of education, notably at Magdalen College. Municipal charters are revised to secure compliant officials. His promotion of Catholics and reliance on prerogative alienate former supporters. Macaulay records legislative sessions, judicial proceedings, and administrative changes that deepen tensions between Crown and Parliament, clarifying how policy choices accelerate the breakdown of consensus.
James turns to religious liberty as state policy through the Declaration of Indulgence, first issued in 1687 and reissued in 1688, suspending penal laws and tests by prerogative. He orders the Indulgence read in churches, prompting the petition of seven bishops. Their arrest and trial become a national test of authority, concluding in their acquittal. The birth of a Prince of Wales alters the succession, intensifying fears of a Catholic dynasty. English leaders communicate with William of Orange, and the Dutch prepare an expedition framed in defense of laws and religion. Diplomatic correspondences and military preparations signal the approaching confrontation.
William lands at Torbay in November 1688. Desertions from James’s army and council, disturbances in London, and confusion at court lead to the King’s flight and brief capture before his escape. A Convention assembles, debates whether the throne is vacant, and settles the crown on William and Mary. The Declaration of Right enumerates abuses and affirms limits on prerogative, later embodied in the Bill of Rights. These measures regulate standing armies, taxation, and the dispensing power, and confirm parliamentary procedures. The new government secures the capital and provinces, fills offices, and begins the transition from personal monarchy to a constrained constitutional settlement.
The conflict continues in the kingdoms. In Ireland, James convenes a parliament at Dublin; the siege of Londonderry and operations across Ulster precede William’s arrival. The Boyne decides the main contest, followed by actions at Aughrim, the sieges of Limerick, and the capitulation that ends organized resistance. Land, religion, and governance are rearranged. In Scotland, a Convention recognizes William, abolishes episcopacy, and restores Presbyterian polity. Viscount Dundee’s rising culminates at Killiecrankie; pacification follows, later marred by the Glencoe episode. Macaulay recounts these campaigns alongside administrative reorganization and settlement, showing how the Revolution is secured beyond England.
With war against France underway, the administration and Parliament develop new fiscal and institutional tools. Excise and customs are systematized; long-term public credit emerges through funded debt. The Bank of England is established, alongside lotteries and tontines, to support military expenditure. The great recoinage addresses a degraded currency, with the Mint, under new management, implementing reforms. Civil liberties and procedure are adjusted: the Triennial Act mandates regular elections, press licensing lapses, and treason trials are reformed. Party organization sharpens, and the Whig Junto rises to prominence. Macaulay traces how finance, law, and party competition sustain the war and reshape governance.
Naval and continental operations frame domestic events. The fleets struggle at Beachy Head and prevail at La Hogue; on land, William commands in Flanders against Louis XIV’s marshals. Conspiracies and Jacobite activity persist, notably the 1696 assassination plot, followed by prosecutions and the attainder of Sir John Fenwick. Commercial questions lead to rivalry and reorganization of the East India Company. North of the border, the Darien venture fails, deepening Scottish distress and straining relations with England. Macaulay integrates military, diplomatic, and economic developments to explain the pressures on the monarchy and Parliament during the long war.
The Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 ends the Nine Years’ War and opens a contentious peace. Parliament contests the size of a standing army and reduces forces. Queen Mary dies in 1694, altering the court and administration. Questions of future succession follow the death of the Duke of Gloucester, leading to the Act of Settlement in 1701: succession is fixed on the Electress Sophia and her heirs, judges hold office during good behavior, and limitations address foreign influence. Internationally, Partition Treaties seek to prevent a European crisis. The Kentish Petition and impeachments of ministers reveal shifting party ascendancy.
The narrative closes with the Spanish succession unsettled, Tory strength resurgent, and William reconstructing a ministry around Godolphin and Marlborough. Diplomatic failures and European developments point to renewed conflict. William dies in 1702, and Anne succeeds under the framework established since 1688. Macaulay concludes by assessing the Revolution settlement’s durability, the establishment of parliamentary supremacy, and the administrative and fiscal capacities that elevate England’s position in Europe. The volumes present a connected account of events from James II’s accession to William III’s death, emphasizing constitutional change, religious policy, finance, and war as the organizing themes of England’s transformation.
Historical Context
Thomas Babington Macaulay’s narrative is set chiefly in late seventeenth-century England, with constant excursions into Scotland, Ireland, and continental Europe. The period is the later Stuart era, when the constitutional, religious, and fiscal bases of the British state were remade. London, already the largest city in Western Europe, frames much of the action, but provincial towns, counties, and garrisoned ports are integral. Confessional divisions among Anglicans, Dissenters, and Roman Catholics structure politics and daily life. England and Wales likely held around five million people; Scotland and Ireland, smaller but strategically vital, formed part of a composite monarchy whose internal strains and European wars against Louis XIV define the book’s setting.
The time span emphasized runs from the accession of James II in 1685 to the opening years of the eighteenth century under William III, with background reaching to the Restoration. The landscape comprises a centralized monarchy constrained by common law, ancient charters, and increasingly assertive parliaments. Roads and posts were improving; coffeehouses multiplied; the print trade accelerated; and a commercial economy began to eclipse older feudal remnants. Standing armies and professional navies posed novel constitutional questions. The setting is thus one of transition: from personal monarchy and confessional coercion toward parliamentary sovereignty, legal toleration for Protestant dissent, and the fiscal-military state that would dominate eighteenth-century Britain.
The Restoration of 1660 returned Charles II to the throne after civil war and interregnum. The settlement re-established the Church of England and imposed the Clarendon Code (1661–1665) on Nonconformists. Later, the Test Act of 1673 barred Catholics and many Dissenters from office. Foreign policy oscillated, including the secret Treaty of Dover with France (1670) and wars with the Dutch. The Popish Plot scare of 1678 fueled anti-Catholicism. Macaulay treats the Restoration as prelude: the legal, ecclesiastical, and party configurations of Charles II’s reign supply the institutional pressures and public anxieties that his History argues culminated in the constitutional realignments of 1688–1689.
The Exclusion Crisis (1679–1681) sought to bar the Catholic Duke of York, later James II, from the succession. The Habeas Corpus Act (1679) strengthened protections against arbitrary imprisonment. Parliamentary polarization crystallized the Whig and Tory designations. Charles II dissolved the Oxford Parliament in 1681 and ruled without Parliament, tightening control over municipal charters and purging opponents. The failed Rye House Plot (1683) discredited radical Whigs. Macaulay ties this crisis to the emergence of durable party identities and to constitutional arguments about hereditary right versus the safety of Protestantism, themes he traces through debates, impeachments, and electoral management in the decades that follow.
James II acceded in 1685, bringing a clear Catholic agenda and a preference for standing military force. He expanded a peacetime army to roughly 30,000 men and used an Ecclesiastical Commission to overawe the Church. The Magdalen College, Oxford, affair (1687) symbolized religious coercion, and the case of Godden v. Hales (1686) upheld his dispensing power over the Test Acts. He promoted Catholics to command and office, alienating Tories as well as Whigs. Macaulay presents James’s combination of religious policy, military build-up, and legal manipulation as the catalyst that made a revolutionary redefinition of sovereignty both possible and, to many contemporaries, necessary.
The Monmouth Rebellion erupted in June 1685, when James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, landed at Lyme Regis and proclaimed himself king. Poorly armed west-country supporters fought royal forces at Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685 and were decisively defeated. Monmouth was captured and executed on Tower Hill. Judge George Jeffreys then conducted the Bloody Assizes across Somerset, Dorset, and adjacent counties, condemning about 320 to death and transporting hundreds to the Indies. Macaulay’s narrative uses the rebellion and reprisals to illustrate the coercive machinery of the late Stuart state and the public revulsion that made James’s later authoritarian steps politically fatal.
James II’s Declarations of Indulgence (1687 and reissued 1688) suspended penal laws against Catholics and Protestant Dissenters by prerogative. When seven bishops petitioned against the order to read the Declaration in parish churches, they were arrested and tried for seditious libel. On 29 June 1688 a jury acquitted the bishops, and church bells rang across London. The trial dramatized opposition across traditional Tory and Anglican constituencies. Macaulay relates the bishops’ acquittal to the collapse of James’s moral authority, positioning the episode as a hinge: legality and conscience combined to justify resistance and to frame the Revolution as a defense of law rather than a mere palace coup.
In June 1688, seven leading figures invited William of Orange to intervene: Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby, Lumley, Compton, Russell, and Sidney. William landed at Torbay on 5 November 1688 with Dutch and allied troops. Desertions by John Churchill and others crippled James II, who fled London and finally into exile in France in December. A Convention Parliament met in January 1689 to settle the throne, offering it jointly to William III and Mary II. Macaulay links the invitation and William’s disciplined campaign to international Protestant solidarity and to a principled, broadly supported transfer of sovereignty that preserved order while repudiating arbitrary power.
The constitutional settlement of 1689–1694 redefined English governance. The Convention framed the Declaration of Rights, enacted as the Bill of Rights (December 1689), condemning suspending and dispensing powers without Parliament, prohibiting standing armies without parliamentary consent, and guaranteeing regular parliaments, free elections, and freedom of speech in Parliament. The Toleration Act (May 1689) granted limited freedom of worship to Trinitarian Protestant Dissenters. The Mutiny Act (1689) placed the army under annual parliamentary control, and the Triennial Act (1694) required regular elections. The Coronation Oath Act (1689) bound monarchs to uphold law and the Church. Macaulay treats these statutes as the Revolution’s core achievement: a legal, not merely dynastic, reordering that secured property, conscience, and parliamentary supremacy, while leaving room for vigorous party conflict and ministerial responsibility to develop within the new framework.
The Williamite War in Ireland (1689–1691) followed James II’s arrival in Ireland with French support. The siege of Derry held from April to July 1689. Marshal Schomberg landed in Ulster in 1689, and William III personally commanded at the Boyne on 1 July 1690, forcing James’s flight. The decisive battle of Aughrim on 12 July 1691 shattered Jacobite resistance. Limerick capitulated in October 1691 under a treaty promising civil terms later eroded by penal legislation. Many Irish soldiers departed as the Wild Geese to French service. Macaulay uses the Irish campaign to demonstrate William’s military legitimacy and to explain the confessional and legal settlements that shaped Anglo-Irish relations.
In Scotland, a Convention of Estates in 1689 declared James II to have forfeited the throne and offered sovereignty to William and Mary under the Claim of Right. Viscount Dundee’s Jacobite rising won at Killiecrankie (27 July 1689) but soon faltered. The 1692 Massacre of Glencoe, arising from a bungled oath of allegiance deadline, stained the new regime. The Presbyterian Church was re-established. Later, the Darien scheme (1698–1700), a failed Scottish colonial project on the Isthmus of Panama, deepened economic crisis and political grievance. Macaulay reads Scottish developments as paralleling England’s revolution while foreshadowing union questions and sustained Jacobite resistance.
A financial revolution underwrote the new state. Parliament authorized long-term funded debt and novel instruments: the Million Lottery (1694), the Bank of England’s foundation via the Tonnage Act (1694) with a £1.2 million subscription, and excise-based revenue streams. The Great Recoinage (1696) stabilized the currency; Isaac Newton became Warden of the Mint in 1696. Joint-stock companies flourished; the East India Company’s charters and controversies (1693 investigations, 1698 creation of a rival new company) showcased Parliament’s growing oversight of commerce. The Licensing Act lapsed in 1695, expanding the press. Macaulay links these innovations to the Revolution’s constitutional discipline, arguing that credit, law, and parliamentary control together forged a durable fiscal-military power.
The Nine Years’ War (1688–1697), or War of the League of Augsburg, embedded England within a Grand Alliance against Louis XIV. At sea, Admiral Russell’s victory at La Hogue (May 1692) crippled French invasion hopes. On land, William III suffered costly checks at Steenkirk (1692) and Landen (1693) but recaptured Namur in 1695 after a celebrated siege. Privateering, convoy systems, and colonial skirmishes extended the conflict’s reach. The Treaty of Ryswick (1697) recognized William III and restored some conquests. Macaulay emphasizes the war as the crucible of the new state: parliamentary supply, naval professionalism, and allied strategy fused, proving that constitutional monarchy could wage great-power war without lapsing into despotism.
Party organization matured in the 1690s. The Whig Junto—Somers, Montagu, Russell, Wharton, and allies—advanced credit finance and prosecution of the war; Tory leaders pressed for peace and Anglican solidarity. Ministerial experiments under William III moved toward coherence: Treasury and Admiralty management, parliamentary managers, and committees shaped policy. The Partition Treaties of 1698 and 1700, intended to avert a European crisis over the Spanish succession, failed when Charles II of Spain died in 1700 naming Philip of Anjou heir. The Commons clashed with ministers in 1701, as seen in the Kentish Petition affair and impeachments. The Act of Settlement (1701) secured the Hanoverian succession and judicial independence. Macaulay presents these struggles as the apprenticeship of cabinet government.
Social and cultural change formed the backdrop. London’s population approached 600,000; provincial towns like Bristol, Norwich, and Newcastle grew. Turnpikes and stagecoaches shortened journeys; the Post Office integrated markets. Coffeehouses proliferated as hubs of gossip, trade, and political news. After 1695, newspapers such as the Flying Post and the Post Boy expanded public debate. Huguenot refugees after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) brought skills in textiles and finance. The Royal Society flourished; Newton’s Principia appeared in 1687; Locke’s political writings circulated from 1689. Macaulay’s panoramic chapters on manners, roads, crime, and print culture demonstrate how social infrastructure enabled constitutional politics to take root and public opinion to matter.
The book serves as a political critique by contrasting arbitrary prerogative with accountable government. Through detailed portraits of James II, Jeffreys, and compliant judges, it exposes the dangers of military coercion, manipulation of juries, and dispensing with laws. By highlighting statutes like the Bill of Rights and Mutiny Act, it argues for the moral necessity of parliamentary consent, annual control of the army, and financial scrutiny. It criticizes confessional persecution while endorsing limited toleration as a pragmatic settlement. The narrative’s evaluation of ministers, party tactics, and contested elections admonishes corruption and patronage, insisting that public virtue requires transparent institutions and frequent, meaningful parliaments.
Social critique appears in its attention to regional poverty, sectarian penalties, and the burdens of war taxation. Macaulay dwells on the consequences of the Bloody Assizes, the erosion of the Treaty of Limerick’s terms, and the exclusion of Catholics from political life to reveal structural injustices. He shows how credit and commerce empowered a middling public while warning against speculative abuses and monopoly. His treatment of Scotland’s Darien debacle and Irish dispossession underlines uneven development within the composite monarchy. The book thus frames the Revolution as a reform of power for the common safety, yet measures the period by how far it fell short of equal civil rights and impartial law.
Author Biography
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) was a British historian, essayist, poet, and Whig politician whose prose helped shape Victorian understandings of the nation’s past. Best known for The History of England from the Accession of James II, his Lays of Ancient Rome, and a long series of critical essays, he wrote with confidence in constitutional progress and individual liberty. His lucid, rhythmic style and command of anecdote made complex politics accessible to a broad readership. At the same time, his work embodied a distinctly 19th‑century liberal outlook, celebrating parliamentary government, commerce, and religious toleration as engines of national improvement.
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the late 1810s and early 1820s, where he excelled in classics and oratory and absorbed the moral and stylistic models of 18th‑century English prose. Cambridge debating societies and prize compositions honed the striking rhetorical cadences that later made his essays and speeches notable. In the mid‑1820s he began contributing to the Edinburgh Review, the leading Whig periodical, with essays on Milton and other figures that blended literary judgment with political argument. The Review’s argumentative culture, together with classical historiography and Enlightenment narratives of improvement, formed durable influences on his development as a writer.
Macaulay entered Parliament in the early 1830s as a supporter of reform, aligning with Whig efforts to broaden representation and modernize institutions. His speeches on the Reform Bill were widely remarked for their clarity and historical sweep, and he soon became a recognized orator. Alongside legislative work, he deepened his public profile through essays on literature, political thought, and imperial governance, using history to argue for civil and religious liberty. Government service followed, including responsibilities connected with the War Office, which gave him administrative experience while he continued to publish influential criticism.
In the mid‑1830s he accepted a seat on the governing council in British India created by the Charter Act, where he worked on legal codification and education policy. His Minute on Education advocated English as the medium of higher instruction, a stance that influenced colonial policy and remains debated for its dismissive treatment of indigenous learning. He also led the drafting of what became the Indian Penal Code, a systematic criminal code later enacted after his return. These efforts reflected his belief in rational legislation and accessible knowledge, while revealing tensions between liberal universalism and the hierarchies of empire.
Back in Britain by the late 1830s, Macaulay resumed parliamentary service and held cabinet‑level responsibility as Secretary at War, even as his literary reputation grew. The Lays of Ancient Rome, narrative poems on republican virtue and civic courage, achieved wide popularity in the early 1840s. Collections of his Critical and Historical Essays consolidated his status as a leading man of letters. By the mid‑1840s he turned sustained attention to a national narrative, preparing the research and prose that would become his multi‑volume History. His dual career—statesman and stylist—lent the work authority and a distinctive vantage on the interplay of politics and society.
The History of England from the Accession of James II appeared in installments from the late 1840s into the mid‑1850s, covering the revolution of 1688 and the subsequent settlement through the turn of the 18th century. It combined archival reading with vivid portraits and set‑piece scenes, seeking to explain institutional change through the lives of ordinary people as well as elites. The books were bestsellers, translated widely, and praised for narrative power. Critics, then and later, faulted their partisanship and teleological confidence in “progress,” and the approach later became a touchstone in debates over so‑called Whig history.
In his later years Macaulay withdrew intermittently from active politics due to health, devoted himself to writing, and was elevated to the peerage in the mid‑1850s as Baron Macaulay. He died in the late 1850s and was buried in Westminster Abbey, a sign of his contemporary renown. His Indian legal work long remained foundational across South Asia, while his prose style—epigrammatic, rhythmic, and argumentative—continued to be admired and contested. Today his History and essays are read both as masterly Victorian narrative and as documents of their moment, influential in shaping liberal historiography and instructive for the biases they reveal.
The History of England (Vol. 1-5)
VOLUME 1
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
I purpose to write the history of England from the accession of King James the Second down to a time which is within the memory of men still living. I shall recount the errors which, in a few months, alienated a loyal gentry and priesthood from the House of Stuart. I shall trace the course of that revolution which terminated the long struggle between our sovereigns and their parliaments, and bound up together the rights of the people and the title of the reigning dynasty. I shall relate how the new settlement was, during many troubled years, successfully defended against foreign and domestic enemies; how, under that settlement, the authority of law and the security of property were found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and of individual action never before known; how, from the auspicious union of order and freedom, sprang a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnished no example[1q]; how our country, from a state of ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to the place of umpire among European powers; how her opulence and her martial glory grew together; how, by wise and resolute good faith, was gradually established a public credit fruitful of marvels which to the statesmen of any former age would have seemed incredible; how a gigantic commerce gave birth to a maritime power, compared with which every other maritime power, ancient or modern, sinks into insignificance; how Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at length united to England, not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties of interest and affection; how, in America, the British colonies rapidly became far mightier and wealthier than the realms which Cortes and Pizarro had added to the dominions of Charles the Fifth; how in Asia, British adventurers founded an empire not less splendid and more durable than that of Alexander.
Nor will it be less my duty faithfully to record disasters mingled with triumphs, and great national crimes and follies far more humiliating than any disaster. It will be seen that even what we justly account our chief blessings were not without alloy. It will be seen that the system which effectually secured our liberties against the encroachments of kingly power gave birth to a new class of abuses from which absolute monarchies are exempt. It will be seen that, in consequence partly of unwise interference, and partly of unwise neglect, the increase of wealth and the extension of trade produced, together with immense good, some evils from which poor and rude societies are free. It will be seen how, in two important dependencies of the crown, wrong was followed by just retribution; how imprudence and obstinacy broke the ties which bound the North American colonies to the parent state; how Ireland, cursed by the domination of race over race, and of religion over religion, remained indeed a member of the empire, but a withered and distorted member, adding no strength to the body politic, and reproachfully pointed at by all who feared or envied the greatness of England.
Yet, unless I greatly deceive myself, the general effect of this chequered narrative will be to excite thankfulness in all religious minds, and hope in the breasts of all patriots. For the history of our country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement. Those who compare the age on which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in their imagination may talk of degeneracy and decay: but no man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.
I should very imperfectly execute the task which I have undertaken if I were merely to treat of battles and sieges, of the rise and fall of administrations, of intrigues in the palace, and of debates in the parliament. It will be my endeavour to relate the history of the people as well as the history of the government, to trace the progress of useful and ornamental arts, to describe the rise of religious sects and the changes of literary taste, to portray the manners of successive generations and not to pass by with neglect even the revolutions which have taken place in dress, furniture, repasts, and public amusements. I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history, if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.
The events which I propose to relate form only a single act of a great and eventful drama extending through ages, and must be very imperfectly understood unless the plot of the preceding acts be well known. I shall therefore introduce my narrative by a slight sketch of the history of our country from the earliest times. I shall pass very rapidly over many centuries: but I shall dwell at some length on the vicissitudes of that contest which the administration of King James the Second brought to a decisive crisis. 1
Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated the greatness which she was destined to attain. Her inhabitants when first they became known to the Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the natives of the Sandwich Islands. She was subjugated by the Roman arms; but she received only a faint tincture of Roman arts and letters. Of the western provinces which obeyed the Caesars, she was the last that was conquered, and the first that was flung away. No magnificent remains of Latin porches and aqueducts are to be found in Britain. No writer of British birth is reckoned among the masters of Latin poetry and eloquence. It is not probable that the islanders were at any time generally familiar with the tongue of their Italian rulers. From the Atlantic to the vicinity of the Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries, been predominant. It drove out the Celtic; it was not driven out by the Teutonic; and it is at this day the basis of the French, Spanish and Portuguese languages. In our island the Latin appears never to have superseded the old Gaelic speech, and could not stand its ground against the German.
The scanty and superficial civilisation which the Britons had derived from their southern masters was effaced by the calamities of the fifth century. In the continental kingdoms into which the Roman empire was then dissolved, the conquerors learned much from the conquered race. In Britain the conquered race became as barbarous as the conquerors.
All the chiefs who founded Teutonic dynasties in the continental provinces of the Roman empire, Alaric, Theodoric, Clovis, Alboin, were zealous Christians. The followers of Ida and Cerdic, on the other hand, brought to their settlements in Britain all the superstitions of the Elbe. While the German princes who reigned at Paris, Toledo, Arles, and Ravenna listened with reverence to the instructions of bishops, adored the relics of martyrs, and took part eagerly in disputes touching the Nicene theology, the rulers of Wessex and Mercia were still performing savage rites in the temples of Thor and Woden.
The continental kingdoms which had risen on the ruins of the Western Empire kept up some intercourse with those eastern provinces where the ancient civilisation, though slowly fading away under the influence of misgovernment, might still astonish and instruct barbarians, where the court still exhibited the splendour of Diocletian and Constantine, where the public buildings were still adorned with the sculptures of Polycletus and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious pedants, themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, could still read and interpret the masterpieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes, and of Plato. From this communion Britain was cut off. Her shores were, to the polished race which dwelt by the Bosphorus, objects of a mysterious horror, such as that with which the Ionians of the age of Homer had regarded the Straits of Scylla and the city of the Laestrygonian cannibals. There was one province of our island in which, as Procopius had been told, the ground was covered with serpents, and the air was such that no man could inhale it and live. To this desolate region the spirits of the departed were ferried over from the land of the Franks at midnight. A strange race of fishermen performed the ghastly office. The speech of the dead was distinctly heard by the boatmen, their weight made the keel sink deep in the water; but their forms were invisible to mortal eye. Such were the marvels which an able historian, the contemporary of Belisarius, of Simplicius, and of Tribonian, gravely related in the rich and polite Constantinople, touching the country in which the founder of Constantinople had assumed the imperial purple. Concerning all the other provinces of the Western Empire we have continuous information. It is only in Britain that an age of fable completely separates two ages of truth. Odoacer and Totila, Euric and Thrasimund, Clovis, Fredegunda, and Brunechild, are historical men and women. But Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Mordred are mythical persons, whose very existence may be questioned, and whose adventures must be classed with those of Hercules and Romulus.
At length the darkness begins to break; and the country which had been lost to view as Britain reappears as England. The conversion of the Saxon colonists to Christianity was the first of a long series of salutary revolutions. It is true that the Church had been deeply corrupted both by that superstition and by that philosophy against which she had long contended, and over which she had at last triumphed. She had given a too easy admission to doctrines borrowed from the ancient schools, and to rites borrowed from the ancient temples. Roman policy and Gothic ignorance, Grecian ingenuity and Syrian asceticism, had contributed to deprave her. Yet she retained enough of the sublime theology and benevolent morality of her earlier days to elevate many intellects, and to purify many hearts. Some things also which at a later period were justly regarded as among her chief blemishes were, in the seventh century, and long afterwards, among her chief merits. That the sacerdotal order should encroach on the functions of the civil magistrate would, in our time, be a great evil. But that which in an age of good government is an evil may, in an ago of grossly bad government, be a blessing. It is better that mankind should be governed by wise laws well administered, and by an enlightened public opinion, than by priestcraft: but it is better that men should be governed by priestcraft than by brute violence, by such a prelate as Dunstan than by such a warrior as Penda. A society sunk in ignorance, and ruled by mere physical force, has great reason to rejoice when a class, of which the influence is intellectual and moral, rises to ascendancy. Such a class will doubtless abuse its power: but mental power, even when abused, is still a nobler and better power than that which consists merely in corporeal strength. We read in our Saxon chronicles of tyrants, who, when at the height of greatness, were smitten with remorse, who abhorred the pleasures and dignities which they had purchased by guilt, who abdicated their crowns, and who sought to atone for their offences by cruel penances and incessant prayers. These stories have drawn forth bitter expressions of contempt from some writers who, while they boasted of liberality, were in truth as narrow-minded as any monk of the dark ages, and whose habit was to apply to all events in the history of the world the standard received in the Parisian society of the eighteenth century. Yet surely a system which, however deformed by superstition, introduced strong moral restraints into communities previously governed only by vigour of muscle and by audacity of spirit, a system which taught the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was, like his meanest bondman, a responsible being, might have seemed to deserve a more respectful mention from philosophers and philanthropists.
The same observations will apply to the contempt with which, in the last century, it was fashionable to speak of the pilgrimages, the sanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic institutions of the middle ages. In times when men were scarcely ever induced to travel by liberal curiosity, or by the pursuit of gain, it was better that the rude inhabitant of the North should visit Italy and the East as a pilgrim, than that he should never see anything but those squalid cabins and uncleared woods amidst which he was born. In times when life and when female honour were exposed to daily risk from tyrants and marauders, it was better that the precinct of a shrine should be regarded with an irrational awe, than that there should be no refuge inaccessible to cruelty and licentiousness. In times when statesmen were incapable of forming extensive political combinations, it was better that the Christian nations should be roused and united for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, than that they should, one by one, be overwhelmed by the Mahometan power. Whatever reproach may, at a later period, have been justly thrown on the indolence and luxury of religious orders, it was surely good that, in an age of ignorance and violence, there should be quiet cloisters and gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safely cultivated, in which gentle and contemplative natures could find an asylum, in which one brother could employ himself in transcribing the Æneid of Virgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of Aristotle, in which he who had a genius for art might illuminate a martyrology or carve a crucifix, and in which he who had a turn for natural philosophy might make experiments on the properties of plants and minerals. Had not such retreats been scattered here and there, among the huts of a miserable peasantry, and the castles of a ferocious aristocracy, European society would have consisted merely of beasts of burden and beasts of prey. The Church has many times been compared by divines to the ark of which we read in the Book of Genesis: but never was the resemblance more perfect than during that evil time when she alone rode, amidst darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all the great works of ancient power and wisdom lay entombed, bearing within her that feeble germ from which a Second and more glorious civilisation was to spring.
Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was, in the dark ages, productive of far more good than evil. Its effect was to unite the nations of Western Europe in one great commonwealth. What the Olympian chariot course and the Pythian oracle were to all the Greek cities, from Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her Bishop were to all Christians of the Latin communion, from Calabria to the Hebrides. Thus grew up sentiments of enlarged benevolence. Races separated from each other by seas and mountains acknowledged a fraternal tie and a common code of public law. Even in war, the cruelty of the conqueror was not seldom mitigated by the recollection that he and his vanquished enemies were all members of one great federation.
Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted. A regular communication was opened between our shores and that part of Europe in which the traces of ancient power and policy were yet discernible. Many noble monuments which have since been destroyed or defaced still retained their pristine magnificence; and travellers, to whom Livy and Sallust were unintelligible, might gain from the Roman aqueducts and temples some faint notion of Roman history. The dome of Agrippa, still glittering with bronze, the mausoleum of Adrian, not yet deprived of its columns and statues, the Flavian amphitheatre, not yet degraded into a quarry, told to the rude English pilgrims some part of the story of that great civilised world which had passed away. The islanders returned, with awe deeply impressed on their half opened minds, and told the wondering inhabitants of the hovels of London and York that, near the grave of Saint Peter, a mighty race, now extinct, had piled up buildings which would never be dissolved till the judgment day. Learning followed in the train of Christianity. The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was assiduously studied in Mercian and Northumbrian monasteries. The names of Bede and Alcuin were justly celebrated throughout Europe. Such was the state of our country when, in the ninth century, began the last great migration of the northern barbarians.
During many years Denmark and Scandinavia continued to pour forth innumerable pirates, distinguished by strength, by valour, by merciless ferocity, and by hatred of the Christian name. No country suffered so much from these invaders as England. Her coast lay near to the ports whence they sailed; nor was any shire so far distant from the sea as to be secure from attack. The same atrocities which had attended the victory of the Saxon over the Celt were now, after the lapse of ages, suffered by the Saxon at the hand of the Dane. Civilization,—just as it began to rise, was met by this blow, and sank down once more. Large colonies of adventurers from the Baltic established themselves on the eastern shores of our island, spread gradually westward, and, supported by constant reinforcements from beyond the sea, aspired to the dominion of the whole realm. The struggle between the two fierce Teutonic breeds lasted through six generations. Each was alternately paramount. Cruel massacres followed by cruel retribution, provinces wasted, convents plundered, and cities rased to the ground, make up the greater part of the history of those evil days. At length the North ceased to send forth a constant stream of fresh depredators; and from that time the mutual aversion of the races began to subside. Intermarriage became frequent. The Danes learned the religion of the Saxons; and thus one cause of deadly animosity was removed. The Danish and Saxon tongues, both dialects of one widespread language, were blended together. But the distinction between the two nations was by no means effaced, when an event took place which prostrated both, in common slavery and degradation, at the feet of a third people.
The Normans were then the foremost race of Christendom. Their valour and ferocity had made them conspicuous among the rovers whom Scandinavia had sent forth to ravage Western Europe. Their sails were long the terror of both coasts of the Channel. Their arms were repeatedly carried far into the heart of: the Carlovingian empire, and were victorious under the walls of Maestricht and Paris. At length one of the feeble heirs of Charlemagne ceded to the strangers a fertile province, watered by a noble river, and contiguous to the sea which was their favourite element. In that province they founded a mighty state, which gradually extended its influence over the neighbouring principalities of Britanny and Maine. Without laying aside that dauntless valour which had been the terror of every land from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, the Normans rapidly acquired all, and more than all, the knowledge and refinement which they found in the country where they settled. Their courage secured their territory against foreign invasion. They established internal order, such as had long been unknown in the Frank empire. They embraced Christianity; and with Christianity they learned a great part of what the clergy had to teach. They abandoned their native speech, and adopted the French tongue, in which the Latin was the predominant element. They speedily raised their new language to a dignity and importance which it had never before possessed. They found it a barbarous jargon; they fixed it in writing; and they employed it in legislation, in poetry, and in romance. They renounced that brutal intemperance to which all the other branches of the great German family were too much inclined. The polite luxury of the Norman presented a striking contrast to the coarse voracity and drunkenness of his Saxon and Danish neighbours. He loved to display his magnificence, not in huge piles of food and hogsheads of strong drink, but in large and stately edifices, rich armour, gallant horses, choice falcons, well ordered tournaments, banquets delicate rather than abundant, and wines remarkable rather for their exquisite flavour than for their intoxicating power. That chivalrous spirit, which has exercised so powerful an influence on the politics, morals, and manners of all the European nations, was found in the highest exaltation among the Norman nobles. Those nobles were distinguished by their graceful bearing and insinuating address. They were distinguished also by their skill in negotiation, and by a natural eloquence which they assiduously cultivated. It was the boast of one of their historians that the Norman gentlemen were orators from the cradle. But their chief fame was derived from their military exploits. Every country, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Dead Sea, witnessed the prodigies of their discipline and valour. One Norman knight, at the head of a handful of warriors, scattered the Celts of Connaught. Another founded the monarchy of the Two Sicilies, and saw the emperors both of the East and of the West fly before his arms. A third, the Ulysses of the first crusade, was invested by his fellow soldiers with the sovereignty of Antioch; and a fourth, the Tancred whose name lives in the great poem of Tasso, was celebrated through Christendom as the bravest and most generous of the deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre.
The vicinity of so remarkable a people early began to produce an effect on the public mind of England. Before the Conquest, English princes received their education in Normandy. English sees and English estates were bestowed on Normans. The French of Normandy was familiarly spoken in the palace of Westminster. The court of Rouen seems to have been to the court of Edward the Confessor what the court of Versailles long afterwards was to the court of Charles the Second.
The battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it, not only placed a Duke of Normandy on the English throne, but gave up the whole population of England to the tyranny of the Norman race. The subjugation of a nation by a nation has seldom, even in Asia, been more complete. The country was portioned out among the captains of the invaders. Strong military institutions, closely connected with the institution of property, enabled the foreign conquerors to oppress the children of the soil. A cruel penal code, cruelly enforced, guarded the privileges, and even the sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, though beaten down and trodden underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some bold men, the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook themselves to the woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws and forest laws, waged a predatory war against their oppressors. Assassination was an event of daily occurrence. Many Normans suddenly disappeared leaving no trace. The corpses of many were found bearing the marks of violence. Death by torture was denounced against the murderers, and strict search was made for them, but generally in vain; for the whole nation was in a conspiracy to screen them. It was at length thought necessary to lay a heavy fine on every Hundred in which a person of French extraction should be found slain; and this regulation was followed up by another regulation, providing that every person who was found slain should be supposed to be a Frenchman, unless he was proved to be a Saxon.
During the century and a half which followed the Conquest, there is, to speak strictly, no English history. The French Kings of England rose, indeed, to an eminence which was the wonder and dread of all neighbouring nations. They conquered Ireland. They received the homage of Scotland. By their valour, by their policy, by their fortunate matrimonial alliances, they became far more popular on the Continent than their liege lords the Kings of France. Asia, as well as Europe, was dazzled by the power and glory of our tyrants. Arabian chroniclers recorded with unwilling admiration the fall of Acre, the defence of Joppa, and the victorious march to Ascalon; and Arabian mothers long awed their infants to silence with the name of the lionhearted Plantagenet. At one time it seemed that the line of Hugh Capet was about to end as the Merovingian and Carlovingian lines had ended, and that a single great monarchy would spread from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees. So strong an association is established in most minds between the greatness of a sovereign and the greatness of the nation which he rules, that almost every historian of England has expatiated with a sentiment of exultation on the power and splendour of her foreign masters, and has lamented the decay of that power and splendour as a calamity to our country. This is, in truth, as absurd as it would be in a Haytian negro of our time to dwell with national pride on the greatness of Lewis the Fourteenth, and to speak of Blenheim and Ramilies with patriotic regret and shame. The Conqueror and his descendants to the fourth generation were not Englishmen: most of them were born in France: they spent the greater part of their lives in France: their ordinary speech was French: almost every high office in their gift was filled by a Frenchman: every acquisition which they made on the Continent estranged them more and more from the population of our island. One of the ablest among them indeed attempted to win the hearts of his English subjects by espousing an English princess. But, by many of his barons, this marriage was regarded as a marriage between a white planter and a quadroon girl would now be regarded in Virginia. In history he is known by the honourable surname of Beauclerc; but, in his own time, his own countrymen called him by a Saxon nickname, in contemptuous allusion to his Saxon connection.
Had the Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely, succeeded in uniting all France under their government, it is probable that England would never have had an independent existence. Her princes, her lords, her prelates, would have been men differing in race and language from the artisans and the tillers of the earth. The revenues of her great proprietors would have been spent in festivities and diversions on the banks of the Seine. The noble language of Milton and Burke would have remained a rustic dialect, without a literature, a fixed grammar, or a fixed orthography, and would have been contemptuously abandoned to the use of boors. No man of English extraction would have risen to eminence, except by becoming in speech and habits a Frenchman.
England owes her escape from such calamities to an event which her historians have generally represented as disastrous. Her interest was so directly opposed to the interests of her rulers that she had no hope but in their errors and misfortunes. The talents and even the virtues of her first six French Kings were a curse to her. The follies and vices of the seventh were her salvation. Had John inherited the great qualities of his father, of Henry Beauclerc, or of the Conqueror, nay, had he even possessed the martial courage of Stephen or of Richard, and had the King of France at the same time been as incapable as all the other successors of Hugh Capet had been, the House of Plantagenet must have risen to unrivalled ascendancy in Europe. But, just at this conjuncture, France, for the first time since the death of Charlemagne, was governed by a prince of great firmness and ability. On the other hand England, which, since the battle of Hastings, had been ruled generally by wise statesmen, always by brave soldiers, fell under the dominion of a trifler and a coward. From that moment her prospects brightened. John was driven from Normandy. The Norman nobles were compelled to make their election between the island and the continent. Shut up by the sea with the people whom they had hitherto oppressed and despised, they gradually came to regard England as their country, and the English as their countrymen. The two races, so long hostile, soon found that they had common interests and common enemies. Both were alike aggrieved by the tyranny of a bad king. Both were alike indignant at the favour shown by the court to the natives of Poitou and Aquitaine. The great grandsons of those who had fought under William and the great grandsons of those who had fought under Harold began to draw near to each other in friendship; and the first pledge of their reconciliation was the Great Charter, won by their united exertions, and framed for their common benefit.
Here commences the history of the English nation. The history of the preceding events is the history of wrongs inflicted and sustained by various tribes, which indeed all dwelt on English ground, but which regarded each other with aversion such as has scarcely ever existed between communities separated by physical barriers. For even the mutual animosity of countries at war with each other is languid when compared with the animosity of nations which, morally separated, are yet locally intermingled. In no country has the enmity of race been carried farther than in England. In no country has that enmity been more completely effaced. The stages of the process by which the hostile elements were melted down into one homogeneous mass are not accurately known to us. But it is certain that, when John became King, the distinction between Saxons and Normans was strongly marked, and that before the end of the reign of his grandson it had almost disappeared. In the time of Richard the First, the ordinary imprecation of a Norman gentleman was "May I become an Englishman!" His ordinary form of indignant denial was "Do you take me for an Englishman?" The descendant of such a gentleman a hundred years later was proud of the English name.
The sources of the noblest rivers which spread fertility over continents, and bear richly laden fleets to the sea, are to be sought in wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in maps, and rarely explored by travellers. To such a tract the history of our country during the thirteenth century may not unaptly be compared. Sterile and obscure as is that portion of our annals, it is there that we must seek for the origin of our freedom, our prosperity, and our glory. Then it was that the great English people was formed, that the national character began to exhibit those peculiarities which it has ever since retained, and that our fathers became emphatically islanders, islanders not merely in geographical position, but in their politics, their feelings, and their manners. Then first appeared with distinctness that constitution which has ever since, through all changes, preserved its identity; that constitution of which all the other free constitutions in the world are copies, and which, in spite of some defects, deserves to be regarded as the best under which any great society has ever yet existed during many ages. Then it was that the House of Commons, the archetype of all the representative assemblies which now meet, either in the old or in the new world, held its first sittings. Then it was that the common law rose to the dignity of a science, and rapidly became a not unworthy rival of the imperial jurisprudence. Then it was that the courage of those sailors who manned the rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of England terrible on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient colleges which still exist at both the great national seats of learning were founded. Then was formed that language, less musical indeed than the languages of the south, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to the tongue of Greece alone. Then too appeared the first faint dawn of that noble literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the many glories of England.
Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of the races was all but complete; and it was soon made manifest, by signs not to be mistaken, that a people inferior to none existing in the world had been formed by the mixture of three branches of the great Teutonic family with each other, and with the aboriginal Britons. There was, indeed, scarcely anything in common between the England to which John had been chased by Philip Augustus, and the England from which the armies of Edward the Third went forth to conquer France.
