Part 9

Unless I greatly deceive myself, the general effect of this chequered narrative, faithfully recording disasters mingled with triumphs, 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 period concerned is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement.

Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated the greatness she was destined to attain. Of the western provinces which obeyed the Caesars, she was the last conquered, and the first flung away. Though she had been subjugated by the Roman arms, she received only a faint tincture of Roman arts and letters. No magnificent remains of Roman porches and aqueducts are to be found in Britain, and the scanty and superficial civilisation which the islanders acquired from their southern masters was effaced by the calamities of the 5th century.

From the darkness that followed the ruin of the Western Empire Britain emerges as England. The conversion of the Saxon colonists to Christianity was the first of a long series of salutary revolutions. The Church has many times been compared 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 rode alone, 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 of 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. Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted. Learning followed in the train of Christianity. The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was assiduously studied in the 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 9th century, began the last great migration of the northern barbarians.

Large colonies of Danish adventurers established themselves in our island, and for many years the struggle continued between the two fierce Teutonic breeds, each being alternately paramount. At length the North ceased to send forth fresh streams of piratical emigrants, and from that time the mutual aversion of Danes and Saxons began to subside. Intermarriage became frequent. The Danes learned the religion of the Saxons, and the two dialects of one widespread language were blended. But the distinction between the two nations was by no means effaced, when an event took place which prostrated both at the feet of a third people.

The Normans were then the foremost race of Christendom. Originally rovers from Scandinavia, conspicuous for their valour and ferocity, they had, after long being the terror of the Channel, founded a mighty state which gradually extended its influence from its own Norman territory over the neighbouring districts of Brittany and Maine. They embraced Christianity and adopted the French tongue. They renounced the brutal intemperance of northern races and became refined, polite and chivalrous, their nobles being distinguished by their graceful bearing and insinuating address.

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 has seldom, even in Asia, been more complete. During the century and a half which followed the Conquest, there is, to speak strictly, no English history. 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. England owes her escape from dependence on French thought and customs to separation from Normandy, an event which her historians have generally represented as disastrous. The talents and even the virtues of her first six French kings were a curse to her. The follies and vices of the seventh, King John, were her salvation. He was driven from Normandy, and in England the two races were drawn together, both being alike aggrieved by the tyranny of a bad king. From that moment the prospects brightened, and here commences the history of the English nation.

In no country has the enmity of race been carried further than in England. In no country has that enmity been more completely effaced. Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of the races was all but complete: and it was soon made manifest that a people inferior to none existing in the world has been formed by the mixture of three branches of the great Teutonic family with each other, and with the aboriginal Britons. A period of more than a hundred years followed, during which the chief object of the English was, by force of arms, to establish a great empire on the Continent. The effect of the successes of Edward III. and Henry V. was to make France for a time a province of England. A French king was brought prisoner to London; an English king was crowned at Paris.

The arts of peace were not neglected by our fathers during that period. English thinkers aspired to know, or dared to doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and to believe. The same age which produced the Black Prince and Derby, Chandos and Hawkwood, produced also Geoffrey Chaucer and John Wycliffe. In so splendid and imperial a manner did the English people, properly so called, first take place among the nations of the world. But the spirit of the French people was at last aroused, and after many desperate struggles and with many bitter regrets, our ancestors gave up the contest.

The First Civil War

Cooped up once more within the limits of the island, the warlike people employed in civil strife those arms which had been the terror of Europe. Two aristocratic factions, headed by two branches of the royal family, engaged in the long and fierce struggle known as the Wars of the White and Red Roses. It was at length universally acknowledged that the claims of all the contending Plantagenets were united in the House of Tudor.

It is now very long since the English people have by force subverted a government. During the 160 years which preceded the union of the Roses, nine kings reigned in England. Six of those kings were deposed. Five lost their lives as well as their crowns. Yet it is certain that all through that period the English people were far better governed than were the Belgians under Philip the Good, or the French under that Louis who was styled the Father of his people. The people, skilled in the use of arms, had in reserve that check of physical force which brought the proudest king to reason.

One wise policy was during the Middle Ages pursued by England alone. Though to the monarch belonged the power of the sword, the nation retained the power of the purse. The Continental nations ought to have acted likewise; as they failed to conserve this safeguard of representation with taxation, the consequence was that everywhere excepting in England parliamentary institutions ceased to exist. England owed this singular felicity to her insular situation.

The great events of the reigns of the Tudors and the Stuarts were followed by a crisis when the crown passed from Charles II. to his brother, James II. The new king commenced his administration with a large measure of public good will. He was a prince who had been driven into exile by a faction which had tried to rob him of his birthright, on the ground that he was a deadly enemy to the religion and laws of England. He had triumphed, he was on the throne, and his first act was to declare that he would defend the Church and respect the rights of the people.

But James had not been many hours king when violent disputes arose. The first was between the two heads of the law, concerning customs and the levying of taxes. Moreover, the time drew near for summoning Parliament, and the king's mind was haunted by an apprehension, not to be mentioned, even at this distance of time, without shame and indignation. He was afraid that by summoning his Parliament he might incur the displeasure of the King of France. Rochester, Godolphin, and Sunderland, who formed the interior Cabinet, were perfectly aware that their late master, Charles II., had been in the habit of receiving money from the court of Versailles. They understood the expediency of keeping Louis in good humour, but knew that the summoning of the legislature was not a matter of choice.

As soon as the French king heard of the death of Charles and of the accession of James, he hastened to send to the latter a munificent donation of £35,000. James was not ashamed to shed tears of delight and gratitude. Young Lord Churchill was sent as extraordinary ambassador to Versailles to assure Louis of the gratitude and affection of the King of England. This brilliant young soldier had in his 23rd year distinguished himself amongst thousands of brave men by his serene intrepidity when engaged with his regiment in operations, together with French forces against Holland. Unhappily, the splendid qualities of John Churchill were mingled with alloy of the most sordid kind.

Subservience to France

The accession of James in 1685 had excited hopes and fears in every Continental court. One government alone, that of Spain, wished that the trouble that had distracted England for three generations, might be eternal. All other governments, whether republican or monarchical, Protestant or Romanist, wished to see those troubles happily terminated. Under the kings of the House of Stuart, she had been a blank in the map of Europe. That species of force which, in the 14th century, had enabled her to humble France and Spain, had ceased to exist. The Government was no longer a limited monarchy after the fashion of the Middle Ages; it had not yet become one after the modern fashion. The chief business of the sovereign was to infringe the privileges of the legislature; that of the legislature was to encroach on the prerogatives of the sovereign.

The king readily received foreign aid, which relieved him from the misery of being dependent on a mutinous Parliament. The Parliament refused to the king the means of supporting the national honour abroad, from an apprehension, too well founded, that those means might be employed in order to establish despotism at home. The effect of these jealousies was that our country, with all her vast resources, was of as little weight in Christendom as the duchy of Savoy or the duchy of Lorraine, and certainly of far less weight than the small province of Holland. France was deeply interested in prolonging this state of things. All other powers were deeply interested in bringing it to a close. The general wish of Europe was that James should govern in conformity with law and with public opinion. From the Escurial itself came letters expressing an earnest hope that the new King of England would be on good terms with his Parliament and his people. From the Vatican itself came cautions against immoderate zeal for the Catholic faith.

The king early put the loyalty of his Protestant friends to the proof. While he was a subject he had been in the habit of hearing mass with closed doors in a small oratory which had been fitted up for his wife. He now ordered the doors to be thrown open, in order that all who came to pay him their duty might see the ceremony. Soon a new pulpit was erected in the palace, and during Lent sermons were preached there by Popish divines, to the great displeasure of zealous churchmen.

A more serious innovation followed. Passion week came, and the king determined to hear mass with the same pomp with which his predecessors had been surrounded. The rites of the Church of Rome were once more, after an interval of 127 years, performed at Westminster on Easter Sunday with regal splendour.

Monmouth and his Fate

The English exiles in Holland induced the Duke of Monmouth, a natural son of Charles II., to attempt an invasion of England, and on June 11, 1685, he landed with about 80 men at Lyme, where he knelt on the shore, thanked God for having preserved the friends of liberty and pure religion from the perils of the sea, and implored the divine blessing on what was yet to be done by land. The little town was soon in an uproar with men running to and fro, and shouting "A Monmouth! a Monmouth! the Protestant religion!" An insurrection was inaugurated and recruits came in rapidly. But Parliament was loyal, and the Commons ordered a bill of attainder against Monmouth for high treason. The rebel army was defeated in a fight at Sedgmore, and Monmouth in his misery complained bitterly of the evil counsellors who had induced him to quit his happy retreat in Brabant. Fleeing from the field of battle the unfortunate duke was found hidden in a ditch, was taken to London, lodged in the Tower, and beheaded, with the declaration on his lips, "I die a Protestant of the Church of England."

After the execution of Monmouth the counties that had risen against the Government endured all the cruelties that a ferocious soldiery let loose on them could inflict. The number of victims butchered cannot now be ascertained, the vengeance being left to the dissolute Colonel Percy Kirke. But, a still more cruel massacre was schemed. Early in September Judge Jeffreys set out on that circuit of which the memory will last as long as our race or language. Opening his commission at Winchester, he ordered Alice Lisle to be burnt alive simply because she had given a meal and a hiding place to wretched fugitives entreating her protection. The clergy of Winchester remonstrated with the brutal judge, but the utmost that could be obtained was that the sentence should be commuted from burning to beheading.

The Brutal Judge

Then began the judicial massacre known as the Bloody Assizes. Within a few weeks Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest. Nearly a thousand prisoners were also transported into slavery in the West Indian islands. No English sovereign has ever given stronger proofs of a cruel nature than James II. At his court Jeffreys, when he had done his work, leaving carnage, mourning, and terror behind him, was cordially welcomed, for he was a judge after his master's own heart. James had watched the circuit with interest and delight. At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with horror of the Bloody Assizes, the wicked judge and the wicked king attempted to vindicate themselves by throwing the blame on each other.

The king soon went further. He made no secret of his intention to exert vigorously and systematically for the destruction of the Established Church all the powers he possessed as her head. He plainly declared that by a wise dispensation of Providence, the Act of Supremacy would be the means of healing the fatal breach which it had caused. Henry and Elizabeth had usurped a dominion which rightfully belonged to the Holy See. That dominion had, in the course of succession, descended to an orthodox prince, and would by him be held in trust for the Holy See. He was authorised by law to suppress spiritual abuses; and the first spiritual abuse which he would suppress would be the liberty which the Anglican clergy assumed of defending their own religion, and of attacking the doctrines of Rome.

No course was too bold for James. To confer a high office in the Established Church on an avowed enemy of that Church was indeed a bold violation of the laws and of the royal word. The Deanery of Christchurch became vacant. It was the head of a Cathedral. John Massey, notoriously a member of the Church of Rome, and destitute of any other recommendation, was appointed. Soon an altar was decked at which mass was daily celebrated. To the Pope's Nuncio the king said that what had thus been done at Oxford should very soon be done at Cambridge.