A 450883
DUPL

HOLLYA
-71.
기
​MMMMMMTEN
DOMEIMIVITI
Mittu
ARTES
LIBRARY
1837
ST
VERITAS
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
LUZEU
SCIENTIA
OF THE
QUAERIS PENINSULAM AMOENAME
CIRCUMSPICE
HARAPANANNYASI SI ALANTS
UNIVARERS
WHITI
MORGAN DAMEN BRANDEURUUMIDESTA CLUSTERING
HIR

...
J N
177
• $39
1872


..
+
1.12.
!



for
Ta
CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS.
39238
LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
BY MONTAGU BURROWS, M.A.,
=
CHICHELE PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY.
CONT
CONTENTS:
THE CHIEF ARCHITECT OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION.
ANCIENT AND MODERN POLITICS.
RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE.
THE IMPERIAL AND NATIONAL PRINCIPLES.
NATIONAL CHARACTER OF THE OLD ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES.
THE RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
SECOND EDITION.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1872.
1
The right of Translation is reserved.
·
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET
AND CHARING CROSS.
0280198.5
Belass. 3-31-31 IWN,
•
PREFACE.
THE following Lectures were prepared, in successive
years, chiefly for Students in the Honours School of
Law and Modern History. Most of them are attempts
to give a compendious view of large subjects, which
could not be treated as a whole in a Course of
Terminal Lectures extending over only short historical
periods. The popular form in which they were there-
fore necessarily cast has suggested to some who heard
them that they might be found acceptable beyond the
University.
If the Lectures are thought to touch too closely, or,
at any rate, more than is usual from a Professorial
Chair, on matters of present interest, it must be remem-
bered that the nature of the subjects, living subjects
as they are and pressing on the attention of every
one, made it quite impossible to avoid all reference
to modern events. It is hoped that such matters may
not be found to have been treated in any unfair or con-
troversial spirit. The Constitution of this Country is
simply spoken of as it is, not as it might or ought to
be. To regard with respect the system under which
our Nation has become great and happy will not, it
a 2
•
·
·
€
iv
PREFACE.
is hoped, be considered a mark of Party. The Text-
books of the Oxford School take at least as much
as this for granted, and a Professor can scarcely betray
his trust if he adopts their spirit, even though he may
sometimes venture to criticize their defects.
The title of the book has been given, it will be seen,
rather as expressing the idea which runs more or less
through each Lecture than as describing any connec-
tion between them.
To the two distinguished historians who have done
the writer the great kindness of examining these
Lectures and advising as to their publication, and
whose names he would gladly mention in this place if
it were fair to make them in any degree responsible
for the work, the most hearty thanks of one of their
greatest admirers are justly due and willingly ren-
dered.
OXFORD, April, 1869.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
THE CHIEF ARCHITECT OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION.
The Qualities which make a Great King-The reasons why Edward I.
has lost his proper title-Modern attempts to restore the true view
of his reign-Edward's early life and conduct in the Civil War-
Simon de Montfort-Edward and the Crusades-Edward's return,
and the work he had to do-The theory of Annexation-The
case of Wales-The "murder of the Bards" a libel-Edward as an
Arbitrator-The Good Queen Eleanor-English view of the Scotch
War-The Scotch view of the war-Edward's rights in Scotland-
The question of homage-Pure legal view of the subject-Edward's
heroic personal conduct-Wallace must be counted a hero-Edward's
theory as to Scotland neither generous nor expedient- Edward's re-
markable clemency-Edward and Robert Bruce-The French War
-Results on the Constitution-Conduct of barons and clergy-
Edward and the Papacy-Settlement of Church and State-The
true position of the Crown-Sketch of previous Constitutional pro-
gress-Edward cements the fabric-His special work has remained
-His composite character greatly due to foreign connections—
Edward the medium between England and the Continent-
General summary of Edward's claims to greatness-Edward the
Good ..
Page 1
..
..
··
•
LECTURE II.
ANCIENT AND MODERN POLITICS.
Distaste for lessons of ancient history a mark of shallowness—Ancient
Greece and Modern Europe; differences less than supposed—
General Parallelism of the two sets of States-Early history and
gradual development-Their great wars-The view of Thucydides
-Athens and France-The ancient and modern "Allies "-Results
of each democracy-Similarity of Party-Government in Athens and
Great Britain-Parallelism of the careers of Pericles and William
Pitt-Personal Resemblances-Pitt's conception of his work-
Pericles' conception of his work-Their conduct as to their respec-
tive wars-Their similar fate-Defence of Pitt-The two States-
men contrasted-Teaching of Athenian history on the subject of
1
vi
CONTENTS
Democracy Ancient and modern Democracy American Demo-
cracy Changes in the British Constitution Neccssity of popular
Education Formation of public opinion Athenian Party-Govern-
ment Mistakes of the party of resistance Position of men of no
party Clubs, ancient and modern Colonies, ancient and modern
Democracy in relation to war Picture of a perfect State True
progress only obtained by acting on true principles..
Page 47
LECTURE IIT
THE RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED.
PART I
Mr. Gladstone and Lord Macaulay Conditions of the inquiry The
Early Church-The Emperors and the Church Orthodoxy of the
Eastern Empire Eastern Nationality saved by the Church
Church and State in Russia Church and Slate in Western
Europe Connection with Rome Formation of National Churches
Roman Catholic Church and State Swedish Church and State
Early-English Church and State Independence of the Saxon
Church Causes and results of Independence Saxon spirit finally
victorious 'The new phase of Church and State Changes at the
Norman Conquest Mcanings of the word "Church " The Ecclc-
siastical body assumes a wholly different position Inherent weak-
ness of this position The Conqueror's compact Church Freedom
regulated Church Freedom explained Essential parts of Church
Freedom Church Freedom attacked by Popes Effects of Papal
tyranny The Edwardian Convocation The Nation checked a
premature Reformation The Church was still free when the
Reformation came
88
··
•
•
··
LECTURE IV.
THE RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED.
PART II.
The Church after the Reformation is the same Church as beforo New
position of the Church Henry the Eighth Elizabethan settlement
of the Supremacy- Church Freedom was retained Ecclcsiastical
Courts Modern Court of Final Appcal Convocation remained the
same, but Constitutionally reformed The Church reformed her own
Servicos Flection of Bishops unchanged History of this question
Bishops in the Eastern Church Bishops in the Western Church
Bishops in the Saxon Church Election of Popcs War of Investi-
tures Compromise in favour of Popcs The Church as free as before
on the four cardinal points Dangers of the new position Tessons
taught by the "Grcat Rebellion" The Church at the Restora
CONTENTS.
tion-Practical Suspension of Convocation-Church cramped by
protection-Compact renewed at the Revolution -Convocation again
suspended-Convocation restored-Wake and Atterbury-"Letter to
a Convocation Man"-Convocation again suppressed through its in-
ternal struggles-Effects of stifling the Church's voice palpable in
the Eighteenth century-England nearly revolutionized-New sense
of the word "Church"-Reign of William the Fourth-The Con-
stitution is changed-Demand for re-adjustment of the relations of
Church and State-Increased Freedom of the State must bring
increased Freedom of the Church
Page 122
..
..
··
•
··
LECTURE V.
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE IMPERIAL AND NATIONAL PRINCIPLES,
OB, THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE PAPACY.
vii
The Progress of Civilized Man due to the conflict between two prin-
ciples-Negative proof from Africa-Unity and Individualism—
Pre-Roman and Roman Imperialism-Abiding power of Imperial
ideas-Periods of later Imperialism-Feudalism and Nationality—
Effects of Justinian's policy-Principle of Unity in the Church-
Change coming over the Papacy-Nationalities formed-The Frank
phase of Imperialism-Compact between Charles and the Popes-
Civilization rallies round the representatives of Unity-Results of
Charles' work, especially in Italy-Was Charles more French or
German?-Each his heir in its turn-History of the Papacy shame-
ful, yet overruled for good-Dawn of Italian Nationality-Germano-
Italian Imperialism-Neither principle lost-Saxon, Franconian,
and Suabian Emperors-France practically supersedes the Holy
Roman Empire-The Emperors become merely German, the Popes
mere Italian Princes-Growth of German and Italian States-Popes
again ruin Italy-Shocking state of the Papacy-Slavery of Italy-
The two Napoleons and the Papacy-Fall of the Papacy, rise of
Italy-Augury of some great change-Why the schism was, perhaps,
permitted-Intercommunion of National Churches was to supersede
Papal supremacy
166
..
LECTURE VI.
THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF THE OLD ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES.
German Universities contrasted with English-Antiquity and Nation-
ality of Oxford and Cambridge-They form an integral part of
English history-National by Royal Patronage-Struggles with
citizens-Defence by means of Secessions-Principle of a Common
Life-Constant battles, producing National results of importance—
Effect of battles on Universities-Steps towards a reform-Ed-
ward III. prevents Secessions-"The Great Conflict" works a cure—
Foundation of Colleges-Causes of decrease in numbers-Fame
→ ·
viii
CONTENTS.
of Colleges: Wicliff: Anti-French fccling: Insularity: National
changes: risc of London Patronage of Lancastrian House Growth
of Collegiate system National in opposition to the Papacy First
to receive the "New Learning" Wolscy The Professoriate The
Reformation Queen Elizabeth Divinity: Taw: Medicino Laud
The Stuarts Parliaments Boyle Newton, Bentley, Locko Share
in National decay and risc National, but not dependent Constant
proofs of their independence being recognized by the Nation Pro-
perty privato No "Paternal" rule Close relation to the Church
Colleges founded for Parochial Clergy as opposed to Monastic
Merton, Oriel, Queen's, New, Lincoln, All Souls, Magdalen, Brasc
nose, &c. Objects attested by Chaucer and proved by the result of
the Reformation Subsequent Church connection Four cardinal
characteristics Modern marks of antiquity Defence of English
system Prcscnt Church character Reciprocal influence of Nation
and Universitics Opinion of Americans..
Page 206
··
··
··
..
LECTURE VII
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE RELIGIOUS AND THE POLITICAL
HISTORY OF ENGLAND,
English politics have always turned on religious questions Throc
Periods; the First. The Second commences with Wicliff The two
species of reformers The Third commences with Laud "The Great
Rebellion" Party names given on a religious issuc Mistakes made
at the Restoration Reign of Charles II, Struggle on the Exclusion
Bill The Fathers of Party-government Causes of Errors of Church
party Its principles tested The Nation al one with the Church
Junction of both political partics Religious aspect of the Revoln-
tion Hallam unfair on this question Decay and renovation of
religion Church corporate action revives Importance of Quocn
Anne's reign Her alleged "bigolry and "fccbleness
An❝entirely
English "Queen "The Church in danger" Rationale of the strug-
gle The Queen understands the cry Rcal causes of the Peace of
Utrecht It was a dccp National movement Effect on Partics, and
on the Hanoverian Succession Religion and Politics for a time
dissevered The Hanoverian policy Influence of Bolingbroke on
Gcorge III The Nation returns to its old track Struggle on the
Test Acts No Popery Riots: French Revolution Difficulties of
the Whigs Renewal Life of the Church has brought rencwcd
Life to the Stato Warnings of History Tmportance of the sub-
ject
1
255
;
CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS.
LECTURE L
THE CHIEF ARCHITECT OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION.
OCTOBER 22, 1863.
M. DE MONTALEMBERT (in his Political Future of
England') has lately said, that there are only six English
sovereigns whose memory lives in the public mind of
their people, and that these are-Alfred the Great,
Edward the Confessor, Richard I., Edward III., Henry V.,
and Elizabeth. A foreigner's estimate is sometimes pre-
ferable to that of a native; but, if he is right, there
must be a great fault in the way English history is
taught. The weakest, the least English kings find
themselves here along with two of the mightiest, and
the mere fame of the warrior usurps the place due to
the goodness and greatness of the statesman.
There are not many monarchs in European history
who have been honoured with the appellation of "Great."
Five only have been at all widely known by that title,-
the Emperors Charles and Otho I., Alfred of England,
Peter of Russia, and Frederick of Prussia.
6
Into the reasons why these alone have, and others
have not, acquired the august title it is not the object
B
2
THE QUALITIES WHICH
of this Lecture to enter. It will be found a very com-
plicated inquiry. The title is always given by the
generation which has witnessed the deeds of the sove
reign It is never successfully fastened on the memory
of a man by a posterity which has learnt to discover the
merits hidden from contemporarics. It is sometimes, so
to speak, accidentally given, bestowed by a people daz-
zled with military glory, and very reluctantly admitted
by those whose judgment is worth having. Yet in each of
the cases above mentioned there is the common mark of
a carccr coincident with the opening glorics of a people or
nation, Charlemagne with Western Europe as a whole,
Otho with Germany, Alfred with England, Peter with
modern Russia, and Frederick with modern Prussia.
They found, they initiate, they raisc an obscure power
into one which holds a leading place among nations
Succccding monarchs cannot claim this position, for it
is already occupied. The memory of a St. Louis must
be perpetuated by a title of a different kind The grcat
qualitics of the Suabian Fredericks fail to win the
suffrages of Europe A Henri Quatre has scarcely won
it. A Louis Quatorze rather calls himself "the Great"
than is hailed as such by the world The title of a
Napoleon is challenged from every quarter
Of our English sovereigns since the Conquest one
only has carried down to our day a reputation which
amounts to greatness, though even she, our Qucen
Elizabeth, has missed the title, and modern exposure
of her feminine weaknesses and unfeminine acts has
rather weakened than strengthened her claim Many
strong-handed, able men present themselves along the
glorious line; but the viccs of some, the unpopularity
of others, the mere warrior-character of not a few, the
LECT, I.
LECT. I.
MAKE A GREAT KING.
3
troubles consequent upon disputed titles, or the weak-
nesses of a virtuous private character, have reduced the
claimants to the title of "Great," as we of this age
should view it, to a very small number. For we have
learnt to understand by the attributes of a really great
sovereign a union of great natural qualities with great
skill in using them-a skill acquired by a steady
discipline of the character. We require a power of
discerning the true interests of his country, the devotion
of a whole life to its service, a largeness and breadth of
view, a noble object in his acts and an attainment of
beneficial results, a sacrifice of luxurious ease, selfish
indulgence, immediate advantages, popular applause.
We look for private as well as public virtues, a religious
character, a higher motive than mere duty to subjects.
If, however, the most gifted and best-meaning prince is
generally unsuccessful, if he fails to leave his mark
behind him, if subsequent ages fail to set right what the
prejudices of his own times may have obscured, he will
scarcely make good his title to be called "the Great."
One such there is, unmentioned in the list we have
just read, and, for the last century, little recognised by
Englishmen, who towers, as we believe, not only above
the Plantagenets, but above the whole series who have
inherited the task of governing the mixed population
which the Norman Conqueror formed. In him we shall
observe all the marks of true greatness, and, if we re-
quire the seal of his contemporaries to the claim, we have
only to consult them, and we find they freely gave it.
His very faults are virtues in excess. He is not god-
like, but he is certainly heroic, kingly, majestic. His
work remains. From him English Nationality, English
law, politics, and social life, took a fresh start. He is
B 2
..
4
THE REASONS WHY EDWARD I.
LECT. I.
the great architect of the English Constitution,* the first
English king, Ile is the last in whom the various
claims to true greatness indisputably mcct.
To what causcs must we attribute this modern diffi-
culty of rising to the idea of the true greatness of
Edward I? Perhaps the plan of our modern historics
has something to do with it. They hurry on, not for
want of materials, too fast through mediaval times.
They labour to be concisc; they become obscure Events
are scparated from their context; military events, as in
this reign notably, from civil; ecclesiastical from both
We fail to touch and handle the organised whole. For
every reign, like a drama, has its unity; and the true
way of preserving it is to follow the simpler plan of
reciting the facts in their order. To save such a process
from the dry unprofitableness of mere annals is the
business of an historian.
But Edward I suffers from this treatment little more
than other mediaval sovereigns Ilis memory has its
own peculiar wrongs Ilis varied carcer, various as
his age, has led him directly across the path of several
classes of writers. Each takes his revenge His victory
over Montfort and the Barons was a victory over the
enthusiastic admirers of that faction With them may
be classed many writers on the English Constitution,
such as Ilallam, who fasten with tenacity on his acts of
resistance to the popular demands of his time. Ilis
conquest of Wales and Scotland has been more than
avenged by the success of Welsh and Scotch writers in
blackening his memory. Ilume led the way, and has
been praised by Hallam for "exposing the true chá
* Henry II was its founder; if we may use such an expression
as to what was founded many ages before.
LECT. I.
HAS LOST HIS PROPER TITLE.
5
racter of the reign." It is strange that so penetrating
an eye should not have perceived that Hume was misled
by Scotch prejudice, and that, in attacking so extra-
vagantly the too favourable views of earlier writers, he
had erred equally on the opposite side. Can we avoid
the conclusion that some political bias has intervened?
Those again who, like Lingard, are led away by an
overpowering ecclesiastical bias, complain bitterly of the
rough hand put forth by Edward on the Rome-governed
clergy of his day. Each of these classes of writers has
unhesitatingly absolved Edward on some point in which
he is condemned by the others. When, therefore, they
agree in condemning him for the possession of a par-
ticular sort of character and principles, we might, per-
haps, be tempted, on a superficial view, to rely on that
agreement. But we should be wrong. This special
bias manifestly leads each class of writers to make out
his own case; each has his idiosyncracy, and he wishes
to justify it. It is convenient to accuse the obnoxious
monarch of violence, unscrupulousness, and cruelty.
The variations in the estimate of Edward can only be
paralleled by those which have attended the memory of
Becket. Each was admired-Becket extravagantly-
for some ages after his own times. The Reformation
with one, the invasion of Scotch historians with the other,
set the tide running in the opposite direction. In the
last century and beginning of this, a microscopic eye
would be required to find a good word given to Becket;
while Hume, Henry, Dalrymple (Lord Hailes),
Mackintosh, Scott, and Tytler (each of whom has been
accepted as the historian of his day), between them mur-
dered the fame of Edward. The third phase arrived
with the second quarter of the present century, when a
6
MODERN ATTEMPTS TO RESTORE
J
LECT. I.
general sifting of history became prevalent, and one after
another, the judgments of the last age began to be at-
tacked The grcat Church movement of our own day scnt
forth the late Mr. Froude, Dr Gilcs, and others, as the
champions of Becket, writers who, while they exposed
the errors of the post-Reformation cstimate, threw at the
same time a halo of such absurdly ideal perfection
around their idol, as showed that opinion was far
enough from having settled down to its final level
Perhaps an indication of the advent of a fourth phasc,
an approach to the final level, may be found in the late
works of Deans Milman and Hook, and of Canon Robert-
son It can scarcely be held that the memory of
Edward I is as near the point of being justly appreci-
ated. The views maintained upon his character are still
too discordant. Little has been done as yet towards a
due distribution of praisc and blame Lingard, Sharon
Turner, and Palgrave, have indeed done much to
clear his character on the Scotch and some other ques
tions; their independent and truly English spirit has
protected them from a slavish adherence to the Scotch
view; and quite lately the memory of the great king
has found a most vehement defender in the anonymous
author of The Greatest of all the Plantagenets' But
though many fallacics are excellently exposed by this
last-named author, the praise of Edward is far too reck-
less and indiscriminate, and has probably seriously inter-
fered with a general reception of his views. * We shall
6
* An abstract of this Lecture, in the form of a criticism of the
above book, was delivered by the Lecturer before the Oxford Archi-
tectural and Historical Society, and is printed in their Transactions
for Trinity Term, 1864 Dean Hook, in his third volume of the
"Archbishops of Canterbury,' published in 1865, speaks of "The
LECT. I.
THE TRUE VIEW OF HIS REIGN.
7
avail ourselves of his help, where we can, with gra-
titude; but it is impossible to avoid the conviction
that a complete life of Edward I. is still a desideratum.
A few of the salient points of that life will be sketched in
this Lecture, in order to justify the foregoing remarks.
Let us take the three great military periods of
Edward's career,-the Civil, the Welsh, and the Scotch
wars, and let us watch the equally furious literary
battles waged in each case for and against his fame.
The Constitutional questions of his reign arise out of the
military events of it. And, first, let us regard him as he
enters public life.
All accounts agree in presenting us with a very inte-
resting picture of the youth of this Prince. From his
mother, one of the four famous daughters of the Count
of Provence who all became queens, seem to have come
his more brilliant qualities. But his father, though a
man of great weakness of character, transmitted to him
the inestimable inheritance of sincere religious habits
and domestic purity. The Prince came out of a virtuous
home, and he repaid the debt. Many little incidents
preserved by the chroniclers prove the deep affection
which existed between him and his parents. There
must have been something real at bottom to stand the
Greatest of all the Plantagenets' with respect, though he complains
that it is the work of a lawyer who has taken a brief for a client; and
it has evidently influenced the only history of Edward I.'s reign
which has appeared since its publication (in the second volume of
Mr. Pearson's' History of the Early and Middle Ages of England,’
1867). That history is indeed on the whole so fair, and will probably
do so much towards restoring the proper position of the reign, that
the usefulness of publishing this Lecture may be questioned. Never-
theless, it contains an independent view, being delivered so long
previously, and far from an identical one; and it claims to be the
first attempt to utilize the efforts of the above-mentioned author.
(
J
•
8
EDWARD'S EARLY LIFE AND
LECT. I.
test of witnessing a conduct so destructive of respect as
that of Henry III Yet almost from the first, and still
more and more as he plays a more leading part, we find
him applying himself to the task of supplying his father's
deficiencies, conccaling his faults, labouring in his
cause, and bearing him, like another Anchiscs, out of
the conflagration There is no more beautiful picture
in English history. The short exceptional period when
he sided with the barons may well be justified
While he was taking up the duty thus lying in his
path, he was gaining the most thorough education prince
ever had. Not only did he escape the usual fate of
princes, the smooth and easy life, the training of luxury
and flattery, the absence of that efficient restraint and
discipline which alone can temper vigorous naturcs into
true metal, but he had the thorough training of positive
adversity. He could hardly have remembered the time
when his father's home had not been a scene of distress
Bickering and strife were familiar at Court. The ascen-
dancy which the grcat qualitics of Montfort obtained
over his imagination must have been accompanied with
a sense of bitter shame at the degradation of his own flesh
and blood. There are many indications of the impression
made upon his generous young mind by the treatment
his parents had to undergo. Had it not been for his
carly and most happy marriage, it is hardly conceivable
that he could have been saved from a hardening and
souring of his temper for life. Probably, indeed, to this
time may be traced some share in the formation of that
scverity of character which, with every deduction for the
bias of historians, we cannot but obscrve showing itself
as he drew towards the end of his carccr and difficultica
thickened round him
LECT. I.
CONDUCT IN THE CIVIL WAR.
9
In judging of Edward's conduct in the Civil war,
much will depend on the view we take of his great
opponent. The memory of Montfort is, like that of
Edward, a battle-ground. The ardent admirers of
"Simon the Righteous," an increasing body, can find no
fault in their idol, and of course, therefore, can find
little room for the praises of Edward. But even though
we should hold Edward to have been right in the main
throughout this struggle, we need not, like Carte and the
anonymous author above named, indiscriminately con-
demn Montfort. * Edward's conduct appears to have
been very much like that of Hyde and Falkland under
similar circumstances. Each engaged for a time, from
a sense of duty, in the anti-royal cause. The Crown had
put itself in the wrong, and must be resisted at whatever
cost. Soon its opponents are in the wrong, and the
Crown is in imminent danger. Those who do not mean
that the monarchy shall be destroyed must rally round
it. This is surely the true heroic course. There would
have been more ground for the extravagant admiration
of late bestowed on Montfort's memory had he stopped
in his career when to stop would perhaps have been to
sacrifice himself. He chose what was more natural, to
go forward in his course, to make himself king in all but
the name, to trample the royal princes in the dust, and
with them one after another of those who had helped
him in his ascent to power. His fame must follow his
Not the praises of the satirical song-writers of
the day-mostly, by-the-bye, ecclesiastics of those new
Orders which he had patronized -not his pseudo-
error.
* This headlong assault upon the memory of any person who
opposed Edward throughout the whole course of his reign is the most
faulty characteristic of "The Greatest of all the Plantagenets.”
10
SIMON DE MONTFORT,
LECT, I.
canonization by the people, not even his merit in sum-
moning the Assembly of 1265, can avail to save his
memory from reproach Some portion of the modern
eulogy is fairly deserved, but only as far as relates to the
time when he was the fearless leader of a rightful re
sistance, when he was the friend of Grosseteste (who, it
should be remembered, died long before the armed
struggle), and before he had allowed himself to be carried
away by the force of circumstances, and, we can hardly
doubt, the hopes of a crown.
During this conflict Edward had become more than a
consummate knight (Froissart calls him and Bruce the
first knights in Europe of their times); he had learned
from Montfort the highest generalship a feudal age
admitted Ile had also taken his part for life against
the dictation of the English aristocracy. Yet he had at
the same time learnt what were the wants, the motives,
and the power of that aristocracy, and had studied the
true relations of the different classes of Englishmen to
one another. Ile had learnt, in short, at the age when
alone such lessons can be learnt, the secrets of practical
politics It was a long and rigorous apprenticeship; but
it was thus he gained that rare knowledge of which his
conduct in after years often showed he had the posscs
sion, how to resist as long as there was any hope of
success, for fcar that concessions, once wrested, might be
turned into fatal precedents; how to concede so as to
losc as little ground as possible, and prcscrve for his
successors the prerogative without which monarchy in
that age could not exist. It was the same in his civil
and military policy. It became his special characteristic
to prove his power first, to show his clemency after-
wards After this civil war, terrible and prolonged as
LECT. I.
EDWARD AND THE CRUSADES.
11
the convulsion had been, even Hume is obliged to admit
that "no blood was shed on the scaffold; no attainders,
except of the Montfort family, were carried into execu-
tion; the highest sum levied on the most obnoxious
offenders exceeded not five years' rent of their estate."
Well may it be asked-When was ever civil war so
wisely, so mercifully concluded? No wonder he felt he
could leave the country on the Seventh Crusade. No
wonder, during the five years of his absence, all things
remained as he had left them.
And this is the best answer to those who blame the
Prince for deserting his father in his old age and
leaving England so soon after the war. The result
justified his sagacity. If, indeed, it was a fault to join
in the war, it was most pardonable. We must judge
the age rather than the Prince. If we are unable to
disprove the folly, the superstition and the vice so
loudly charged against these expeditions in modern
times, if we have not learnt to balance such charges
by considering the great political, and to some
extent even the religious purpose they answered, and
the effects which ensued on their cessation, we may
at least remember that they stood in the place of
modern wars and modern emigration "as issues for
discharging the sores of the body politic." Edward
carried off with him many of those who had learnt to
be bad subjects at home, just as, by the Fifth Crusade,
the country was eased of a strain it could ill bear during
the minority of his father. He was also, it must be
remembered, subject to strong pressure on the part of
St. Louis, the greatest personage of the times, his own
relative, and one whom we have reason to think he
considered his model. The hero was now grown feeble,
12
EDWARD'S RETURN AND
LECT. I.
and desirous of the support of his vigorous nephew.
The position of England, though it had become more
insular during the last two reigns, still subjected her
princes to the responsibilitics of European confede
rations If ever a time was to be found for her
future king to take his measure of Continental affairs,
it was while his father and uncle (Richard) were yet
alive. It was too much to expect such a man, on
hcaring of the death of his relatives, to return without
striking a blow.
Ile returns, covered with glory, returns at last.
Never did any sovereign mount a throne to which the
right had been more royally earned by the head, the
hand, and the heart. Like Justinian, to whom the old
law-writers of his time loved to compare him, he comes.
to his work at a mature age. He has long been the
virtual king. Unlike Justinian, he had learned to
connect practice with theory. Like Alfred after the
Danish struggle, like St. Louis after his first Crusade,
he could form plans for the organization of his country,
and he could carry them out himself, as well as choosc
the right men to assist him He was not to relinquish
the foreign possessions he had inherited; they were a
sacred trust; but his business was at home Next to
the great work of consolidating the laws, the govern-
ment, and the police of his country, and of readjusting
the connection between the still heaving elements of
English society was to come the cstablishment on a
proper footing of England's feudal relations with the
peoples inhabiting the north and west of the island,
relations which had grown up loosely, irregularly, and
dangerously during the course of agcs
This brings us then to another of the vexed questions
LECT. I.
THE WORK HE HAD TO DO.
13
66
of the reign, to what has been even lately called the
iniquitous enterprise against Wales.” * Wales and
Scotland, though so generally mixed up together in treat-
ing of Edward's reign, really stood on a very different
footing towards England. We shall not find Edward's
conduct equally free from blame in both instances.
The question involved was very much the same at
bottom as that we know in this day by the name of
Annexation. The admiration we entertain for a spirit
of sturdy independence and ardent patriotism, the value
of the inheritance of national deeds, the benefits pro-
duced by the rivalry of nations in arts and arms, the
sympathy we feel for an ancient people and line of
princes (where such is the case), above all, our love of
justice, force us to scrutinize closely all pleas for annexa-
tion put forth by the stronger people. Add to this that
our modern ideas are coloured by the European struggles
which have gathered round small independent Conti-
nental states as they played, each in turn, their not
unimportant part in the "balance of power." Those
who observe that the course of events, in all parts of
the world, is constantly bringing the subject before
them are almost forced to look for some general
principles which they may apply to cases as they
emerge. It would, of course, be presumptuous to
suppose that any cut-and-dried rules could be complete
* Annals of England,' vol. i., p. 337. This book has attained a
just reputation. It is the more to be regretted that the compiler
should be so singularly retrograde on these Welsh and Scotch wars.
Carte in the last century, Lingard and Sharon Turner in this, had
abundantly shown the true nature of the Welsh conquest, yet not
only are no new facts alleged in this work, but the true character of
some that are well known is suppressed; e.g., that David treache-
rously surprised Hawarden Castle in the midst of a profound peace.
14
THE THEORY OF ANNEXATION.
LECT I.
enough for general acceptance, but some such consider-
ations as the following will afford a broad outline.
If a bordering nation is not large enough to be rcally
independent; if from its situation, or the nature of its
population, or both combined, it is a constant source of
weakness to the larger country and, conscquently, of
strength to that country's enemics, always taking ad-
vantage of favourable opportunitics to avenge ancient
wrongs, and neccssitating the employment of a constant
and burdensome force along its borders; still more, if it
cannot govern its own subjects, who are always giving
just cause of offence, it may be held that under these
circumstances it is the duty of the larger to absorb, if it
can, the smaller country. The absence of any of these
conditions establishes a weak point in the casc of the
conqueror Whether under this formula the Conti-
nental powers, the United States of America, and we
ourselves in India, have been justified in our several
annexations it is not our place here to discuss; but it
may certainly be said that it would apply in the casc
before us Situated close to the very vitals of the
kingdom, its gallant people animated by an inextin-
guishable, ancestral hatred of the Saxon and Norman
raccs, torn to pieces by intestine factions, allied on
every possible occasion with the elements of disorder
in England, already reduced by the policy of Edward's
predecessors to the limits of a large English county,
even a St. Louis could hardly have failed to annex
Wales Ile would certainly have advised Edward's
first steps
Unlike the homage of Scotland, there was no dispute
about the homage due from Walcs. The obligation had
bccn acknowledged and obscrved. Llewellyn, Prince
LECT. I.
THE CASE OF WALES.
15
of Wales, had been the most active ally of Montfort
and his party. He now refused homage. But there
was no precipitate resort to force. The daughter of
the Prince's old ally, Edward's deadly enemy, is indeed
stopped on her way to marry her lover, and, as some
writers forget to tell us, honourably entertained as the
king's cousin. But she represented a party not yet by
any means extinct. Ought this to be considered, as the
author above quoted remarks, "unworthy of the great
prince that Edward is usually represented?" Would
it not rather have been the greatest imprudence to
suffer the marriage of Eleanor de Montfort with one
whose hostility was declared, or at least implied, in the
most formal manner?
- The necessary steps are taken. Wales is conquered,
and the Prince condemned to a large fine, but only to
be pardoned. He is to lose a part of his territory as a
guarantee for peace, but much of it is returned. To this
same Eleanor, Edward, at his own expense, marries him.
Prince David is rewarded in the most lavish manner
for his assistance, and Edward now naturally believes
the Welsh difficulty at an end. It is obvious that he
could have annexed the country at once, but he pre-
ferred to leave it under its native princes, shorn of
power to do him further harm, and, as he hoped, con-
ciliated.
It is, of course, easy to assert that the king now pur-
posely made the new state of things unbearable. There
seems to be no proof of the assertion. Some causes of
complaint against the English would of course, and
soon did, arise; but long before any remedy could be
applied, a sudden and furious revolt is organized. Prince
David,—he who, being an English subject, is the most
16
THE MURDER OF THE BARDS A LIBEL
LECT. I.
bound to Edward of the two princes, scizes the king's
castle in the dead of night, and massacres many of
the unsuspecting English borderers Wales is once
more in a flame; it resumes its chronic condition
Everything had been tried; absolute conqucst alone
remained Llewellyn falls in a chance encounter David,
by the award of an English parliament, suffers the pun-
ishment of a traitor No one can dispute the justice of
the sentence. As for its barbarity, it is scarcely just to
find fault with the system pursued six centuries ago,
when it has only lately dropped out of our own practice
It would no doubt have been better if it had been com-
muted to beheading
*
Here, however, justice stopped, and the work of con-
ciliation began The story of the murder of the bards
riscs to our minds It ought to be no longer neccssary
to say that it is now admitted to be a pure fiction
Yet even Dean Milman (Latin Christianity,' vol v. p.
33, sccond edition), to whom history owcs so much, has
repeated the groundless slander without remark The
fact is, that the Welsh bards disappeared very gradually
under the English rule, and from various causes This
way of accounting for the fact is amongst the ingenious
devices of a later age.
The result of this conquest fully justified Edward's
policy. The Statute of Wales is a model for similar
cascs Just as much of the old customs was retained
* See Lingard, Sharon Turner, even the Annals of England'
The prevalence of this error in the present day is really due to Gray's
immortal poem, Plato excluded the poets from his Republic. How
much more should they be excluded from the domain of history!
On the other hand, for the usefulness of Shakspeare, as an historical
commentary, scc Professor Rccd's Lectures on English History.'
"
LECT. I.
EDWARD AS AN ARBITRATOR.
as was not injurious; just as much of English law im-
posed as was necessary. A marked improvement takes
place. It was not at once and for ever that Wales
ceased to afford a training-ground for our princes in
the art of war; but, as every one knows, the Princi-
pality has supplied for many centuries the most faithful
subjects of the Crown. It is a case of annexation to
which the descendants on either side may look back
without shame.
17
On the period between the Welsh and Scotch expe-
ditions it will be unnecessary to remark in this place
except to point out how strong a proof of Edward's
greatness being recognized abroad is afforded by his
being chosen arbiter between the conflicting nations of
Southern Europe.* This was almost a new thing.
Scarcely, as yet, had even popes thus dealt with nations.
Our Henry II. had indeed set a sort of precedent, but
St. Louis had merely arbitrated between warring factions
within a State.
We have now to deal with the still more vexed
question of the Scotch wars. By the time the King
commences this struggle he has arrived at his culmi-
nating point. More than half his reign has passed away.
Successful in all his undertakings, his fame at its height
at home and abroad, not yet forced into collision with his
* Edward did not go abroad merely on the business of this arbitra-
tion. His presence was required in Gascony, with which he had a
peculiar personal connection and which had long been in a state of
disorder. In that most interesting metrical French chronicle of
Langtoft (an English contemporary), done into English verse, and
so changed from a "Romance" into a "Geste," by Robert Brunne,
the precursor of Gower and Chaucer, the state of Gascony is pithily
put:-
"Thither behoved him nede to set that lond in pes,
For foles have no drede that long are justiceles."
C
!
18
THE GOOD QUEEN ELEANOR.
Læer I.
people, his domestic happiness, since his acccasion, in the
main unclouded, he had perhaps Icarnt to presume too
much on his power and prosperity. At the very moment
when he is called on to deal with the most scrious ques
tion of his eventful life, his great affliction overtakes
him The wife of his carly youth, the inscparable com-
panion of all his wanderings, the mother of his fourteen
children, dics. Few of our quccns have left a more
pleasing memory behind them than Eleanor of Castile
It has been suggested that we may trace from the
period of her death the commencement of a decadence
in Edward's moral standard, a growing scverity, and a
less scrupulous reluctance to scize political advantages.
It may be so This second portion of the reign offers
more difficultics than the first. Let us deal with them
as best we may.
*
In the first place we have to recover the true history
of these events from two entirely different sources,
neither of which can in the nature of things be satis
factory. The English alone had at that period any
* By Sharon Turner. Walsingham says of her that she was
"Mulier pia, modesla, misericors Anglicorum, amatrix omnium et
velut columna regni totius." The public-spirited conduct of the
Charing Cross Hotel Company in erecting their beautiful restoration
of the Eleanor Cross has done something to revive a memory which
should never be suffered to die.
The fine old story of her sucking the poison from her husband's
wound has been looked for in vain in any writer earlier than a
Spanish chronicler of nearly two centuries after the date of Eleanor.
It can scarcely be supposed that such an anecdote would have
escaped contemporary writers if it had been true, and it is now
universally repudiated. It is scarcely possible that a private tra
dition should have lingered on in the Castilian home of the Queen
without being known in England; yet it is just possible, and in
itself the thing was probable enough
LECT. I.
ENGLISH VIEW OF THE SCOTCH WAR.
19
""
chroniclers. Several of these are allowed to be trust-
worthy and well informed. But then they cannot avoid
regarding Edward's transactions from an English point
of view. Edward is the "rex bonus," " magnificus rex,
"le bon roi Edouard." Wallace, or "Waleys," is
nothing but "latro publicus" and "proditor." His
resistance to Edward is "audacia presumptibilis."
Bruce's murder of Comyn is simply an act of foul
treachery and horrid sacrilege; he is called the
"pseudo-rex et pestifer coronatus." Edward is in the
right through each act of the drama. How could it be
otherwise? The English have never been wanting in
national prejudice. It is not easy to find an account of
the great war of the French Revolution which does
justice to our enemies.
On the other hand, the Scotch, not being civilized
enough at that time to have any chroniclers at all, and
unwilling to accept the version of their enemies, have
been obliged to trust entirely to tradition.† Everybody
knows what stories of national exploits become in a bar-
barous age under the process of oral transmission. In
the course of five or six generations Wallace, in the
minstrelsy of Blind Harry, is a fabulous demigod. Even
in the soberer pages of Fordun, the earliest Scotch
chronicler, writing nearly a century after the death of
* Froissart uses this term to distinguish Edward I., as if it was his
usual designation; while he calls his own patron, the great living
hero of his imagination, only "le gentil et le preux roi." Elsewhere
he speaks of Edward I. as "Moult preux, vaillant, sage, preud-
homme, hardi, très entreprenant, et bien fortuné," &c. This testi-
mony is even more valuable than if he had been strictly contempo-
rary or English-born.
†The exposure of the difference of credit due to these sources is
the chief merit of the 'Greatest of all the Plantagenets,' but the
deductions are far too sweeping.
C 2
20
THE SCOTCH VIEW OF THE WAR.
.
LECT, I.
Edward, a connected account of the Scotch heroic age
had grown up wholly at variance in important particu-
lars with the contemporary English history. Bruce's
memory is somewhat better cared for by Archdeacon
Barbour, but his account is a poem (of considerable
merit), not a history, a professcd eulogium for which he
is pensioned, and written seventy years after the death
of Edward. In these writers, and in Wyntoun, the
English monarch is of course "tyrannus,” “the tyrand;
his iniquitics and crueltics disturb the whole globe; his
conquest of Scotland is a scrics of frauds; he is "a do
stroyer of churches, an imprisoner of prelates, and the
perpetrator of infinite ills." Wallace is a pure martyr,*
"the lele man," Bruce the most faultless of all herocs,
ancient or modern
"Rycht suth it is a martyr was Wallace,
As Osan old, Edmund, Edward, and Thomas.”
در
The Scotch were still further unfortunate (if truth is
desirable) in their historians at the revival of literature
The accounts of their heroic age, thus transmitted, were
not only accepted, but improved upon They were an
Iliad, read, with less claim than Ilomer's, as literal
history; and they have in this form, owing to the
ability of the modern Scotch historians of both countrics,
as has been said, driven the English view of the reign
out of the field. Still, imperfect, untrustworthy, pre
judiced as the Scotch accounts of thesc events may be,
* The selection of distinguished martyrs with whom Wallace is
associated by Blind Harry has some interest.
These are three early English kings, along with the great martyr
of all, Thomas-à-Beckot. Amongst the French the examples of
the brutality of the English were Anselm, 'Thomas, and Edmund,
the thrcc archbishops who found refuge in France (v. Matthew
Paris).
LECT. I.
EDWARD'S RIGHTS IN SCOTLAND.
21
we cannot throw them aside. Tradition, though not
history, has its value. There is always something at
bottom even of its extravagances. Candour will at any
rate admit that the same transactions may look wholly
different from opposite points of view. Rapin,-who,
though a Frenchman, set the example early in the last
century of an improved style of English history,-hit the
mark when he said of his own day, that "the English
still consider Edward a great prince, who employed his
arms only in maintaining the justice of his cause; the
Scotch consider him a tyrant." The last portion of this
judgment will probably never be reversed; it will be all
that any one can expect if modern efforts succeed in re-
establishing the former part.
The two questions of right and expediency must be
kept distinct. The question of right depends on the
vexed question of Scottish homage, one of the most
complicated in history. Was the king of England law-
ful suzerain over Scotland, or was he not? Positive
statements on this point must be received with as much
caution in the present day as ever. So much has to be
gathered by inference, so many important records are
still wanting, so many interpolations have been made
in ancient MSS., so undefined (often purposely) are, in
many cases, the terms of homage, so unhistorical was
the age in which the great controversy was brought to
an issue, so mixed were the most rational claims with
irrational, that it would be a very harsh judgment which
would condemn either party for believing itself to be in
the right, and load either side with opprobrious names for
the part it took. The broad outline of the difficulty is
visible enough to us now, but it was far from being easy
for that age to trace even as much as that. It had
--
༡༡
THE QUESTION OF HOMAGE.
arisen out of the fact that the Scotch Lowlands had
originally been an outlying part of England, and yel
had now been for centurics the central governing part of
Scotland A dependence, readily enough acknowledged
in Saxon times, grew to practical independence in Nor-
man and Plantagenet reigns Ilad it not been that the
centre of gravity, so to speak, of the English dominions
had been shifted Southwards by the Continental posses
sions of our kings, Scotland would probably have
retained its original position; but, as it was, it was con-
venient to leave it alone, interference only taking place
on occasion, and as quickly coming to an end In a
general way the suzerainty of England was admitted;
but was it for lands held by kings of Scotland in
England, or was it the old claim of the larger country
for Scotch dominions of which it had made the grants
or received the lordship in early times? The Scotch
kings, in the century preceding these transactions, either
rendered an indefinite homage, or assumed the former
view of its meaning; the English insisted that it always
meant the latter kind of homage When Richard T
sold for money, to equip his crusading force, the abso
lute homage his father had acquired by the capture of
William the Lion, the charter expressly reserved what-
ever homage had bccn performed previously to that
capture Thus, Edward and his barons, in their letter
to the Pope, omit to mention the relations of William
the Lion to the English crown Things had resumed
their old position, and that position was, as they held,
indisputably in favour of the English.
Tt sccms then there was enough right on the English
side to justify an English king in believing that, when-
ever the time should come for the question to be put
LECT I.
LECT. I.
PURE LEGAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT.
23
beyond a doubt, it was his business to settle it. On the
other hand, the Scotch might fairly claim to be con-
sidered patriots for not permitting themselves to be
deprived of one particle of the rights they had learnt to
believe they had inherited.*
But admitting that Edward did not exceed what he
might fairly consider his right in asserting his suzerainty,
a wonderful concurrence of favourable events having
opened his way, we shall still have to decide whether
his subsequent steps were equally right, then whether
they were generous, and finally whether he was justified
on the lowest grounds of political wisdom or expediency.
It is not always expedient to assert even undoubted
rights.
Now each of the steps taken by Edward after he had
accepted the feudal suzerainty into the admission of
which the disputed succession to the Scottish throne had
forced all parties, will be found to partake of the same
character. There is not one of them which may not be
defended by the strict reasoning which commended itself
to his legal, feudal mind. His motto was-Serva pactum.
He would keep his part of the engagement; let every-
one else keep his, or take the consequences. If the rival
claimants found it their interest to swear fealty to him
he was to be a real suzerain. It was no longer a doubt-
ful and nominal acknowledgment. It was to be
modelled afresh on the same footing as that on which
he himself held Gascony of the King of France.
* The facts about the original connection between England and
Scotland have been lately very concisely put by Mr. Freeman in
vol. i. of his 'History of the Norman Conquest.' All that bears
upon the English view of the homage-question since the Conquest
will be found in Lingard. The Scotch view has been lately forcibly
put by E. W. Robertson in his 'Scotland under her Early Kings.'
24
:
EDWARD'S HEROIC PERSONAL CONDUCT.
* Trivet.
LECT I.
Appeals were to be received from subjects If the king
resisted, he must be coerced. If he defied his lord, his
kingdom must be scized If, when conquered, the con-
quered barons broke the oath of fealty they had taken,
they were to be treated according to their descrts. All
remission of their punishment was so much mercy and
grace on the king's part.
All this followed with the regularity of a prc arrange
ment. Scotland trod in the steps of Walcs, though with
a different final result. The appcals from the vassal-
king take place. The complaints of vexatious inter-
ference are made. The vassal revolts. His kingdom is
scized. (It should be remembered for what it is worth in
Edward's favour that Balliol, when he finally renounced
his crown, denied the truth of all the statements he had
formerly made as to the grounds of his revolt.)* Rc
bellion after rebellion is crushed lle would not sit still
and have it done by deputy. Never did general less
spare himself. His own personal acts of daring followed
thick upon one another. From first to last his personal
heroism is the astonishment of the world There was
no faltering as to right when the step was once taken,
France might interposc at the critical moment; he would
withdraw for a space till the obstacle was removed, and
return to his work with redoubled energy. Ilis barons
and clergy might refuse him supplics, his people murmur
at the taxes; he would crush one, conciliate another,
throw himself on the generosity of a third; the work
must be done. The Papacy with a last dying effort
might check him in mid carcer; it was but for a moment
There is no more remarkable instance in the world's
/
LECT. I.
WALLACE MUST BE COUNTED A HERO.
25
history of perseverance under accumulated difficulties,
-except indeed, the resistance of Scotland itself.
Rightly Scotland glories in the deeds of her heroes.
Rightly she erects a monument to Wallace on the scene
of his exploits. Rightly she treasures up the traditions
which haunt each spot he made famous. For, strip off,
if we will, all the romance with which a fond nation has
clothed his name; reduce his effective work to the
modest limit of two years' service; allow all that can be
said on the barbarities he practised; admit even that
Edward was justified in dooming him to the traitor's
death (which is to stretch feudal legality to the furthest
limit), and the fact remains. He alone, a simple gen-
tleman, never despaired of his country. To the events
of his single life, and still more of his death, may be
traced the independence of Scotland. The private life
of a soldier and outlaw must not be criticised too
closely, except to refute extravagant eulogium. The bar-
barous cruelty of his raids may fairly be put down to
the habits of the people, rather than to himself. Hem-
ingford designates him as latro publicus, yet describes
his efforts to protect the monks of Hexham and to
punish his followers for sacrilege. The complaints of
Scotch border barbarism are precisely the same when
the troops are led by Malcolm Canmore, Saint David,
and John Balliol. Wallace's merits are his own.*
In Edward's conduct towards Wallace may be ob-
served exactly the same straining of legal principle as
in the larger question. The sentence may be defended
on the ground that all sub-vassals were bound by the
* See 'Henry of Huntingdon,' Book viii., for the barbarities of
David's troops, and the letter of Edward and his Barons to the Pope
(in Hemingford) for the account of the behaviour of those of Balliol.
26
EDWARD'S THEORY AS TO SCOTLAND
LECT, I.
oath of feally taken by their lords. Yet there was some
thing in his own proud plea that he had never himself
acknowledged the English king. He had preferred out-
lawry. Scottish armics had acknowledged him as chief.
Ile had commanded in a pitched battle against the
mighty king himself. If his life were forfeit it should
have been his life only. The hideous accessories of
treason might have been spared. The best excusc for
Edward's severity is that the punishment was really
inflicted by the whole English nation, so exasperated
had the people become with Wallace's mode of warfare
and with the taxation he had brought upon the land.
And so with all It would have been nobler to have
abstained from pushing right to the furthest through-
out. It was not generous to scize the opportunity of
Scotland's weakness and to usc for his own purposes,
however much he may have believed those purposcs to
be right and expedient for both countrics, the trust
reposed in him His clear perception of the benefits to
be derived from union caused him to hurry on too fast.
lle was before his age. His success in Walcs led him
to apply his principles too rigorously; for the casco
were not the same, and the same arguments did not
apply. A peaceful solution of rival intercsts had been
progressing through a whole century; the royal familics
were becoming so interwoven with one another that the
union which was effected four centurics later sccmed
about to take place; the border districts had been,
indccd, not unfrequently disturbed, but less and less
often; no gradual encroachments by previous monarchs
had paved the way for a final absorption, as in Walcs;
the distance of Scotland made its feudal relations of less
practical importance; it was extensive enough for a
LECT. I.
NEITHER GENEROUS NOR EXPEDIENT.
27
strong kingdom; its subjects were fairly under the re-
straint of their own government; the king had mistaken
its real strength, which ought not to have been measured
by its population, or the numbers it could bring into
the field, for the nature of the country and the habits
of its people doubled or trebled for military purposes,
like the walls of a fortress, its actual numbers. From
the time of the Romans to that of Cromwell, Scotland
could always tire out her ponderous neighbour by adopt-
ing the tactics which Bruce shaped into a formula for
his successors. And as to the possibility of retaining
such a conquest, Edward's powerful mind told him truly
that he was himself perfectly able to hold as well as
conquer; but like some other not dissimilar monarchs,
like Charlemagne in his imperial schemes, like William
the Conqueror in establishing the new relations of
Church and State, his foresight stopped short with the
span of his own life. Not one of these three sagacious
men appeared to foresee that the fabric he had raised
could never be sustained, except by an arm equally
strong with his own. Finally, it was too great a task
for the decline of life. The result might have been
different had the opportunity offered itself at an earlier
period.
With the still further question whether, if Edward
had ultimately succeeded, it would have been better or
worse for Scotland, we have, strictly speaking, nothing
to do. Such speculations are really out of place in his-
tory. We cannot view events from a sufficient height.
We may be quite sure that everything has been for the
best; and we may at least see that some good has
resulted from this conspicuous failure. A nation con-
quered as Edward for a time conquered Scotland, would
28
EDWARD'S REMARKABLE CLEMENCY.
LECT, I.
never have ceased to cherish a sense of degradation and
disgrace a bad inheritance for any people. It was
different with Wales If anarchy and tyranny alter-
nately affected Scotland, if her nobles grievously op-
pressed the classes below them, if her social and political
development was more tardy than our own, she has
cscaped some of the civil convulsions and foreign wars
of her neighbour If four centurics of more or less
hostility with England ensued upon her emancipation
from Edward's yoke, some obvious compensations will
suggest themselves. Looking to the advantage of both
countrics, we have not perhaps had too great a price to
pay for the incstimable boon of a union based upon
a footing of equality. What would we not all give that
such a consummation had been possible in Treland!
The Scotchman, like the Castilian peasant, has the step
and eye of a man who has inherited sclf-respect.
In our final estimate of Edward's Scotch policy, we
may then perhaps obscrve that we do not so much learn
the one great lesson of history, that what is not strictly
right can never be expedient, as that even strict rights
followed out to the very letter of the law are not in the
long run consistent with expediency. But against the
somewhat scvere and unamiable aspect which the con-
queror's character assumes in his general management
of thesc affairs, we must in justice sct the extraordinary
clemency he showed in his particular acts As in the
sculement of England and Wales, so also in Scotland,
the instances are innumerable It is a "system of con-
ciliation;" courage and clemency walk hand in hand.
As a lecture cannot deal with details, it may be suffi-
cient to state this in Dr. Lingard's words, "The world
has seen many conquerors," says he, spcaking of this
4
LECT. I.
&
EDWARD AND ROBERT BRUCE.
29
Scotch struggle, "but it will be difficult to find one who,
with such provocation, has displayed an equal degree of
lenity." The extreme severity with which, in his final
campaign, he treated Bruce's family and followers may be.
objected as an exception to this praise by those who are
willing to admit it up to that point. But Bruce's position
is very different from that of Wallace. Edward was deal-
ing with one whose earlier acts will not bear inspection,
and were condemned by the public opinion of his age.
After Edward's death he displayed noble patriotism, pru-
dence, and heroism. An indulgent critic may suffer this
to atone for the selfishness, murder in cold blood, sacri-
lege, perjury, and treachery, which Edward punished,
and felt he had a right to punish. From his point of
view Bruce's followers could not but be regarded as
traitors. The story of the cage in which he confined the
Countess of Buchan loses its point as explained from
the original document by Lord Hailes. Edward has
also been much blamed for the massacre at the storming
of Berwick, but there was the greatest provocation. The
greatest of English generals could not, in our own times,
prevent the atrocities of St. Sebastian. We must not
demand that Edward should be too, much in advance of
a cruel age; we must measure all such acts by the
position in which he had placed himself, and our judg
ment must take its hue from our opinion of that posi-
tion. If a country is to be conquered,-and we have
conceded that he had grounds for his policy, there is
but one rule, parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.
Dante,* an impartial judge, distributes blame pretty
evenly between the English and Scotch.
'Paradiso,' canto xix.
30
THE FRENCH WAR.
6
Edward's French war deserves a passing notice for
three reasons. 1 The alliance formed for the first time
between the Scotch and French on this occasion, and
destined to last so long, has had its effect on the French
cstimate of Edward, and thus adds to our difficulties in
forming a judgment. 2 The financial struggles of this
reign, so intimately connected with our Constitutional
progress, grew far more out of that than out of the
Scotch war 3. Even to the present day, writers (as the
compiler of the Annals of England'*) are found who af-
fect to consider the scizure of Gascony, by the villainous
Philip the Fair, an excellent parallel to Edward's own
conduct in Scotland and Wales. This is a pure blunder
Rapin, once for all, exposcd the accounts of his own
countrymen, which represented Philip's proceedings in
this light. Since the publication of the original docu-
ments, it has been impossible to deny that Philip acted
in this casc even more iniquitously than in the other
transactions of his reign.† No one doubts that he had
a perfect right to call Edward to account. The charge
against him is that he broke his solemn promisc to re
store the castles, the key of Gascony, which he had
begged might be delivered up to him as a mere formality.
Edward never disputed Philip's superiority over Gas
cony. Ile appcared by his deputy, and the citation was
withdrawn Yet, suddenly, by a trick of the grossest
kind, forfeiture is declared Of a war to recover his
ancient rights, thus stolen as a man might steal a pursc,
Vol. i. pp. 337, 353
† Langtoft's version of the affair is thoroughly English:
LECT. I.
"What did King Philip when all this was eut?
To Paris gan he skip and held his parlement;
And Charles his brother with him com he thither,
The Earl of Artous the t'other, thrcc fals men togidere."
[
LECT. I.
RESULTS ON THE CONSTITUTION.
31
Edward is surely innocent, for his reign would have
been eternally disgraced had he tamely submitted. And
whatever we may think of his too easy confidence (or
rather that of his brother) in Philip's honour, it is not
the slightest of all the proofs we possess of his extra-
ordinary political talents that, betrayed by his foreign
allies, thwarted by his subjects, and with revolted Scot-
land as well as Wales on his hands, he was able to
transmit his Continental inheritance to his successors
unimpaired. Thus, as we are now to speak of the
financial struggles of the reign, we must bear in mind
that the king was not to blame for requiring such great
supplies for the French war. The money must be
obtained. He was responsible to Europe for his
conduct.
The fact is, that England was now called upon to take
a great part in Continental affairs for the first time since
the new forces of the State had been called into active
existence. The respective liabilities of the different
orders of society for the public service had never yet
been adjusted. The revenues of the Crown had never,
since the commencement of the century, been placed on
a proper footing.* England was undergoing a transition
from the scarce-controlled Norman monarchy to the
mixed form of government. It had to suffer many con-
vulsive throes before it could finally settle down. But
it does not seem at all necessary, in order to put
Edward's position in a true light, that we should blacken
the character of those who opposed his measures. Pro-
bably no one acted in the best possible way. It is easy
for us to sit in judgment. But Bigod, Bohun and their
* See Carte on Henry III. for the low condition into which the
revenues of the Crown had fallen.
32
CONDUCT OF BARONS AND CLERGY.
LECT. I.
party, acted substantially well. If Edward may be most
fairly defended for preserving the rights of the Crown,
which had been trampled in the dust during the mise-
rable reign of his father, and supporting the honour of
the realm so cruelly threatened, his subjects may as
fairly be defended for maintaining the principle of self-
taxation, so newly won, so manifestly destined to be the
main lever of our national liberties. Where would this
country have been had they not asserted this principle?
So deep-seated must be the gratitude of every.English-
man for the stand 'thus made at the most critical period
of our Constitutional history, that we can scarcely avoid
a lenient judgment, even though these men are justly
chargeable with want of patriotism for their dogged
obstruction of wars which lay at their door as much as
at the King's. Winchilsey's conduct is far less defen-
sible than that of the barons, yet even he deserves the
gratitude of Englishmen.
And so with regard to the clergy as a body. The pro-
perty of the Church was, it is admitted on all hands, at
this time enormous. It contributed in nothing like a
fair proportion toward the expenses of the State. The
clergy were supporting out of their funds two masters,
and of these the Pope got more than the king. The
thirteenth century had witnessed the establishment of
Papal spoliation to an extent which had been previously
unheard of. The question had thus come to a point at
which solution was absolutely necessary. Should the
Pope be permitted to dictate in civil matters, or should
he not? Were the clergy to be masters or subjects of
the king? Was the spiritual power, in short, or the
temporal power, to have the upper hand in the general
policy of the realm? Nice, and yet most momentous
LECT. I.
EDWARD AND THE PAPACY.
33
questions for a people to be called upon to settle; ques-
tions ever recurring, not yet laid asleep! Who can
venture to pronounce a hasty condemnation of the
leaders in such a struggle? Rather we may rejoice
that men were willing to venture something in that day
in defence of what they believed, and that, by the very
force of the resistance of the opposite elements, a place
for both has been preserved. For it was no truism then,
as it seems to us now (though even Dean Milman, in
his account of these transactions, curiously enough calls
it a "bold yet tenable" principle), that those who would
not contribute a fair share to the maintenance of the
temporal power ought not to enjoy its protection. The
clergy believed they were only asserting their ancient
rights and their necessary independence when they said
that they and the Pope were the judges of this "fair
share." Edward, his barons, and, it may be said, the
nation at large, thought differently.* His penetration
convinced the King that the interference of the Papacy
had become an anachronism. During times when
scarcely any other check on royalty existed, it had, as
the protector of religion, done its work. Its opposition
to a William Rufus, a Henry I., a Henry II., had been
beneficial. It had, even later, performed good political
service to England. But its moral influence was gone.
Its policy towards Frederick II. and our own Henry III.,
its growing secularity, the establishment of the Inqui-
"We
* How entirely the barons of England shared the views of their
king is shown by their celebrated letter to the Pope in 1301.
came to this unanimous resolution, which, by God's assistance, we
intend never to depart from: that our Sovereign Lord the King is
by no means obliged to own the jurisdiction of your court, or submit
to your Holiness's sentence with respect to his sovereignty over the
kingdom of Scotland, or, indeed, in any other temporal matter."
D
31
SETTLEMENT OF CHURCH AND STATE
LECT. I.
sition, the Albigensian Crusade, the loss of Palestine,
the assertion of (what was in later times called) the
Gallican libertics, had assured so keen an obscrver as
Edward that its anomalous and temporary position
towards nations ought to come to an end. Kings,
scarcely able to struggle against the developing powers
within their own States, could no longer put up with a
divided allegiance. The influences of the Common Law
and the lawyers, the reviving Saxon spirit of independ-
ence, had prepared the nation And thus, in true
accordance with the wants of the age, was laid down for
ever a principle which had been lost sight of since the
humiliation of King John, and which was to lead ulti-
mately to the Reformation. The Act of Præmunire, on
which that great change was based, was merely a more
definite legislation founded upon Edward's precedent
The force, then, neccssary to establish that the clergy
were the King's subjects, not the Pope's, may appear, in
its immediate exercisc, scvere and arbitrary; and it is
casy to paint a disagrccable picture of it: but of all
Edward's titles to admiration perhaps none in reality
ranks higher. And let it be remembered that this was
no godless Rufus or profligate John, no irreligious or
indifferent king, with whom the clergy were struggling,
but one who exhibited a noble example (not, indccd,
without the imperfections of mortality) of moral excel-
lencc admirable, all but faultless in his domestic rela
tions through life proverbially faithful to his word,
deeply imbued with the religion in which he had been
educated Nor was this a prince whosc wish was to
make the clergy one whit less politically important than
they had ever been. It is well known that it was not his
fault that the clergy did not form an integral portion
•
LECT. I.
THE TRUE POSITION OF THE CROWN.
35
of the new Parliament which took shape in his reign.
The devolution of their function as an Estate of the
Realm on their separate House of Convocation, when
they might and ought to have taken their place in the
Parliament itself, was entirely, by the confession of all,
their own shortsighted policy. Instead of a National
Synod for spiritual, and a Representation in Parliament
for political purposes, they chose a Convocation which
was defective under both aspects, though far better than
nothing. Perhaps, however, even this remark borders
upon useless speculation; for, after all, how can we tell,
six hundred years after the event, what would have
been really best or worst? Edward's memory at least
is clear in the matter.
We must assuredly weigh these considerations before
we allow ourselves to be carried away by the full tide
of depreciation which meets us in modern authors when
they speak of Edward's seizure of money, evasions of
the Charters, oppression of the Church, and violence
towards his subjects generally. No doubt something of
all this sticks. We have no faultless prince before us.
A love of power was scarcely separable from so vigorous
a character, trained in such a school of restless action;
but we must remember, also, that kings swore at their
Coronation to maintain the rights of the Crown, as well
as that the obligation of an oath extorted by force has
always been deemed questionable, independently of the
notion, peculiar to a corrupted form of Christianity, that
the Pope had the power of dispensation. Magna Charta
was always regarded by the early Plantagenets as a
violent invasion of their rightful prerogative. Hence
its numerous Confirmations. Each of these was a fresh
display of force on the part of the subject. Each
D 2
36
SKETCH OF PREVIOUS
LECT I.
made it more difficult for a king to recur to the previous
slate of things. In the course of four or five generations
the prerogative of the subject (if we may use the term)
was as well established as that of the Crown The
power of the purse had given to subjects what the power
of the sword had given the Norman kings and their
successors
We are not then too exclusively to regard the long
conflict as that of an injured people perseveringly
extorting their rights from faithless and slippery princes
Some, at least, of those princes believed they were
acting conscientiously. Rather, it was a long course of
adjustment of the relations of the different classes of
society to the sovereign and to one another, running
parallel with that which was taking place on the Con-
tinent. Ever since the loss of Normandy (in 1201) the
power of the Crown had been undergoing so rapid a
decline that, by the middle of the century, government
of any kind had become scarcely possible. The country
was in much the same condition, constitutionally, as in
the seventeenth century: old methods of government
were passing away, and the new had not been developed
The Edwardian settlement holds a similar place with
that of the Revolution, though the changes of the latter
period were of far less importance. John and Henry III,
happily for England, had ruined the old Norman posi-
tion of English kings. The vast alienation of Crown
lands which had been necessary to save the very exist
ence of royalty in Henry III's minority, had made a
There was
gap which something else must fill up.
imminent danger during this century of a Constitution
being formed of a very diſſerent nature from that under
which we have attained our present position, one, as
LECT. I.
CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS.
37
men may think, better or worse, but certainly not the
same. What would have been the issue of a struggle
between a powerful nobility and a powerful clergy, with
the Crown unable to hold the balance? What the con-
dition of a Third Estate prematurely called into pro-
minence as the ally of one or the other? Territorial
redivisions of our scarcely yet consolidated England
would probably have taken place; or, at best, some family
raised to the throne less noble, less fitted for its post.
than the Plantagenet. Exactly such a chief as Edward
seems at any rate to have been required for the times,-
one who could command respect from the rude and
turbulent for the now contemptible name of king, who
could win the suffrages of the learned and politic by his
sagacity and self-restraint, who could awe foreign
sovereigns by his fame, and reign in the hearts of the
virtuous and industrious by his care for their welfare,
his domestic purity and his religious character. Hallam
has remarked that public liberty might have been
crushed in its infancy had an Edward succeeded John;
but we find him nowhere admitting that, without an
Edward, the due power of the Crown, quite as necessary
for the nation as public liberty in that age, would pro-
bably have dropped altogether out of the Constitution.
Panegyrics on our form of government lose much of
their force when the successful efforts of those to whom
one part of it is due are alone applauded.
How remarkably have each of the three kings whose
reigns span that wonderful century fitted into the place
required for our Constitutional progress! Without a
John we might have failed to consecrate in our national
infancy the right of resistance to tyranny. Without a
Henry III. we might have failed to learn the art of
38
EDWARD CEMENTS THE FABRIC.
LECT. I.
combination against the rule of foreigners, Papal inter-
ference, and ecclesiastical immunities. But without an
Edward we could hardly have leaped, as it were, during
the space of one generation, out of a chaos of conflict
into the settled government, the united society, the
nation powerful for peace and war which we were at his
death. Had he not checked the too vigorous growth of
clergy and barons, and fostered the growth of the middle
classes, they could hardly have fallen into the places
they have since held. It required a strong hand, a wise
head. The barons were all but petty sovereigns when he
came to the throne; the clergy had not yet learnt they
were subjects; the Pope still claimed coequal govern-
ment in the realm; the people had scarcely yet ap-
peared, much less interfered, as a power. Before he dies,
all are working harmoniously together.
But if these arguments fail to place Edward's conduct
in any better light, if we still feel ourselves forced to
regard him as a mere obstruction to the rising tide of
liberty, let us at least remember to give him the credit,
of which we have already said that he cannot be robbed,
of knowing when to give way. It is here we perceive the
likeness between him and Queen Elizabeth, the unlike-
ness between him and so many of our other princes. As
soon as he perceives that the government can be carried
on by the joint action of those who have united to oppose
him, he frankly accepts and organizes the new state of
things. He is reluctant to accept the Charter before
means had been found for regular taxation; but he bends
himself to the problem, and his work has remained,
with no very great alterations, down to our own day.
We have occupied nearly all our time with the defen-
sive portion of the question of Edward's greatness: we
LECT. I.
HIS SPECIAL WORK HAS REMAINED.
39
said at the commencement why such a course was neces-
sary. To develop the positive side of the subject would
require another lecture. But it is in reality unnecessary,
for the best histories are clear enough on this point, and
a few very simple references are sufficient. It is only
needful to remove the ignoble varnish of later ages, and
the true lineaments of the original come forth of them-
selves. Let those who wish to be reminded of what he
and his great lawyers did for English law observe in
Blackstone, not only how every portion of Real Property
law was affected by his reign, but see, in the concluding
chapter of that great work, the testimony of the
greatest lawyers to the value and importance of his legal
settlements; or let them run their eye down the Statutes
of his reign, and they will find them dealing with such a
great variety of subjects as to show plainly how gigantic
was the task which he accomplished. Let them turn to
Prynne's Records, and they will be astonished at the
magnitude of the body of precedents laid down in this
reign for the adjustment of the relations between Church
and State. Still more might his eulogist say of his
settlement of our Representative system, as was said of
Wren in St. Paul's, Si monumentum requiris circumspice.
That the English Justinian had his Tribonian in the
great Bishop Burnell, that the successful general was
served by such an able soldier-prelate as Anthony Beck,
that the opposition to his arbitrary finance forced the
king into a Constitutional position, these things detract
no whit from his glory. It is the man who can make,
discover, and use instruments who deserves fame; the
man who can organize for the future what was at the
moment unmanageable.
Nor, again, will it really detract from Edward's
40
HIS COMPOSITE CHARACTER GREATLY
LECT. I.
greatness if we connect his policy with that of his con-
temporaries. We shall never comprehend his life and
conduct as a whole until we have grasped the condition
of Christendom and of the human mind at this period.
For this king is, if ever a king of England was, a mem-
ber of the great European royal family, and brings with
him a wider experience of European affairs than even
the first Norman and first Plantagenet to whom England
owed so much. His early residence in Gascony and his
Castilian marriage, his five years' wanderings before his
coronation, his three years subsequently spent abroad,
and his expedition against France, fall naturally into
the career of the nephew by marriage both of Frederick
II.,-who, whatever else we may think of him, was
certainly the most brilliant emperor of the German
series, and of the greatest king of the Capetian
dynasty, Louis IX. His early youth must have been
familiar with the story of the chequered career of the
first; his early manhood was influenced by personal
intercourse with the second.* Much, no doubt, of that
remarkable union of the soldier, the statesman, and the
devout Christian, which is to be found so rarely in his-
tory, though less rarely in that age than any other, was
learnt by Edward from him of whom it has been said-
"Where shall the Holy Cross find rest?
On a crown'd monarch's mailed breast.
Like some bright angel o'er the darkling scene
Through court and camp he holds his heavenward course serene."
From these men he was learning his political lesson, and
what a lesson it was! The world has never seen the
* Matthew Paris has more than one letter from Frederick II. to
Henry III. The relations with St. Louis were intimate.
LECT. I.
DUE TO FOREIGN CONNECTIONS.
41
like.* How could he but have been influenced by it?
From them he was learning to fill the place they vacated
on the European stage, and to become like them, for all
posterity, the most famous monarch of his nation. It is
remarkable that one century should have witnessed the
highest flight of royalty in the three greatest monarchies
of the modern world.
It has now become a trite historical statement that
the twelfth century was that in which the human mind
exhibited the greatest activity, and made the most
wonderful advances. The effect of this march of intel-
lect upon politics was scarcely felt before the thirteenth
century; and England, though far before the rest of her
neighbours on some points, especially in the foundation
laid for a Constitution, was somewhat behind in the in-
tellectual race. She had yet to learn much from the
Continent, and Edward I. was the great medium of
transmission. In every department of government and
of society he seems to have felt the European influences
of that stirring age. His plans for the consolidation of
the British Isles were identical with those with which he
was familiar abroad. He was but adopting the policy
which had for some time been partially pursued in
France with the most marked success. The North
French provinces-which, in his father's time, had
scarcely been more French than Scotland English-
were already so satisfied with their incorporation into the
French monarchy, that they refused the well-intentioned
proposals of St. Louis to restore them to their old
masters. The process was going on in many other
See Sismondi's estimate of St. Louis and the work of the last
sixteen years of his reign ('Hist. des Français): and Milman for
Fred. II.
42
EDWARD THE MEDIUM BETWEEN
LECT. I.
directions. As England was losing her position on the
Continent, it seemed only the more necessary she should
integrate her own island populations. The resemblance
to St. Louis may further be remarked in the practical
instinct which taught him to use the feudal system as
he found it, for the purpose of carrying his schemes
into execution..
Next, it was an age of lawyers and legislation. Fre-
derick had been the great legislator of Italy, Louis of
France. The “Establishments" of St. Louis was the great
work of the age. Feudalism had now imbibed the full
influences of Roman law, and required remodelling for
the growing middle class. England was ripe for her
Establishments also, and Edward with his lawyers gave
them. In Edward's proceedings with the ecclesiastics
we may plainly trace the hand of the lawyers, but St.
Louis and Blanche had been as remarkable as Edward
for the combination of devoted piety with a stern re-
solution to check ecclesiastical abuses.
It was the age of Representative governments. Castile
and Aragon, countries with which Edward was well
acquainted, had preceded England by a century and a
half. Frederick II., a generation before Montfort
sought that method of protecting himself against the
Crown, had summoned representatives in Italy.* Louis
had commenced the practice of summoning burghers in
France. It was Edward's glory to lay the foundations
of parliamentary government deeper and firmer than
any. English Parliaments up to Edward's time had
* Yet Sir James Mackintosh believed that "Montfort was the
instrument of disclosing to the world that great institution of repre-
sentation which was to introduce into popular governments a regu-
larity and order," &c.-' History of England,' vol. i. p. 238.
LECT. I.
ENGLAND AND THE CONTINENT.
43
been like the rudimentary fossils, precursory to existing
species, which we find in the earlier geological strata.
From his reign we trace without a break what we still
possess.
.
It was an age of Universities. Frederick in Italy,
Blanche and Louis in France, had protected and deve-
loped them. Edward's reign is full of evidence that he
considered this work to have a special claim upon him.
The age had taken up the correction of debased
coinage. Like St. Louis, Edward drove the foreign
coin out of his kingdom, and cried down the base cro-
cards and pollards of his day. In his careful develop-
ment of commerce he had been preceded by Frederick
and Louis. His treatment of the Jews has been
harshly judged, but it was the will of the nation, and ran
parallel with the Continental movement. The policy
had a deeper seat in the commercial instincts of the day
than is sometimes supposed. Europe had outgrown the
need of so exclusive and offensive a body of capitalists,
and Christians were now ready to take their place. Many
other traces of sympathetic action between England
and the Continent might be noted. Edward in every
case improved on his model. England had the best of
what the age produced. How much the social and
political advance of the Continent would have affected
England in the thirteenth century had it not been for
him, no one can say; but through him mainly it came.
* On this point Brunne's Langtoft quaintly says:—
"Edward did smyte rounde peny, halfpeny, ferthyng,
The croice passed the bounde of alle thorghout the ryng;
The Kynge's side selle be the hede and his name written,
The croice side what cite it was in coined and smytten.
The powere man ne the preste the peny praises nothing,
Men gyf God the lest, the feffe him with a ferthyng."
44
GENERAL SUMMARY OF EDWARD'S
Surely, then, this is not a king whose memory Eng-
lishmen can allow to fade. Let us sum up his claims to
our admiration. Of great natural gifts, accompanied
by the most splendid skill in using them, we find
abundance. We have the beauty of person, the phy-
sical force*, the splendid knighthood, the unconquered
generalship of a hero, the foresight, patience, pru-
dence, and mental activity of a great man, to a degree
and in a combination very seldom found in any indivi-
dual. Of the effect on his age enough has been said.
No one questions his zeal for what he believed to be the
welfare of his country, nor the largeness of the views he
entertained of promoting her greatness and security.
On no part of our social, military, ecclesiastical, and
،،
A
LECT. I.
* He was
""
“ab humeris et supra" above the common height,
aspectu pulcher, magnæ staturæ et elegantis formæ (Heming-
ford). Again Trivet tells us, he was "elegantis formæ, staturæ pro-
ceræ qua ab humero et supra communi populo præeminebat... frons
lata, ceteraque facies pariliter disposita, eo excepto quod sinistri
oculi palpebra demissior paterni aspectus similitudinem exprimebat;
lingua blæsa, cui tamen efficax facundia." He also speaks of the
nervous vivacity" of his arms, the prominence of his chest, and the
length of his legs, so that his seat on horseback was exceedingly
firm. Hence his name Longshanks. Hume adds the epithet
"smallness" to the length of his legs. I have not been able to
find the authority for it. It is apparently a Scotch embellishment.
"Of the taking of Berwick Brunne's Langtoft speaks thus :-
"What did then Sir Edward? pere he had none like
Upon his steed bayard first he wan the dyke."
Might not Gibbon have added Edward to his very select list of
heroes (only four in all history) who combined in a great degree the
personal prowess of the soldier with the qualities of high generalship?
Edward might at least rank with Pyrrhus and Henri Quatre, if he
could not be placed with Alexander the Great and Belisarius. There
are numerous records of his chivalrous feats of daring. Mr. Pearson
calls him "brave almost to insanity."
LECT. I.
CLAIMS TO GREATNESS.
45
political condition, has he failed to leave his impression.
He is fortis, et in seipso totus, teres atque rotundus. Of
him more than any other of our monarchs it may be
said that all previous English history converges to
his reign, and all that is subsequent diverges from it.
Even those who find most fault with him sum up his
character in words which express as much or more ad-
miration than they bestow on any other of our monarchs.
If they cannot agree upon a candidate for the first place,
they seem to fix on him for the second, and this once in
ancient story settled a question of pre-eminence. Of
his private life we have also spoken. Where shall we
find his equal in respect of domestic virtues? As to his
motives, as far as man can judge, the chroniclers leave
no doubt of his reaching the full standard, the high tone
which we find now and then in the elevated personages
of that age, of his being filled with the very essence of
that lofty chivalry which was new-born from the crusa-
ding and religious element of late introduced into feu-
dalism. If, as we have seen, there are stages of his
career which betoken severity of character and a too
great strictness in pursuing what he believed to be right,
even though mixed up with innumerable acts of mercy
and forgiveness, we may observe the same characteristic
in each one of those whom mankind most fully agrees
to honour-in a Charlemagne, an Alfred, and a St.
Louis. It is the condition of establishing order in a
rude age. What is wanted before all things is a "good
peace.
We are little able to imagine in these days of
law and police what a mediæval society really was.
""
We compare him with those who, since Charlemagne
and Alfred, have received or claimed the title of "great."
How small do they appear! With our own Alfred alone
L
46
EDWARD THE GOOD.
LECT. I.
18
we shall find it safe to place him Like him he was
more a rcstorer and an adapter than an originator; like
him he was trained in adversity and nursed in war
life, like his, was one long devotion to the scrvice of his
country. Like him he was not ashamed to make reli-
gion, publicly and privately (though not in the same
degrcc), the companion of his daily life; like him he
was the first and ablest in doing that which he sct his
subjects to do. Ile has not the literary claim to our
admiration possessed by Alfred; but, like him, he has
left his mark on the country indelibly. He has not,
like him, bccn saluted with the title of "the Great;"
but he was called by the writers of the next generation
"Edward the Good" It has been to our shame as a
nation that we have been so careless of a Royal reputa
tion, and that so little effort has been made to restore
him his rights. Perhaps the time is at hand when
a more enlightened public opinion will repair the
omission
LECT. II.
ANCIENT AND MODERN POLITICS.
LECTURE II.
ANCIENT AND MODERN POLITICS.
47
NOVEMBER 12, 1864.
THE text of one of De Tocqueville's greatest works is
this: "A new science of politics is indispensable for a
new world;" and the fulfilment of many of his predictions
as to the course of events in the United States has gone
far to strengthen the sense which has been generally
entertained of his political sagacity. But such a sen-
tence jars strangely on the ears of men who have been
accustomed to deal with politics as a science of which
they learn the rudiments in Plato and Aristotle, Thu-
cydides and Tacitus, and who are accustomed to such
interpreters as Thirlwall and Grote, Arnold and Cole-
ridge, Niebuhr and Sir George Cornewall Lewis. There
is, no doubt, a sense in which De Tocqueville's words
are true, as we shall see further on; but, broadly
stated, they are scarcely true. Indeed the converse is
more correct. It may be asked whether there is any-
thing in the science of politics which is really new. It
may be said that the progress of society may require
fresh rules and develop new phenomena, but that these
phenomena have at least a remarkable resemblance to
others which history has handed down to us, and these
rules are little more than adaptations of the principles
familiar to the earlier writers on politics.
We must not stop to inquire into the causes of the
3.
48
.
DISTASTE FOR LESSONS OF ANCIENT
LECT. II.
modern distaste for the lessons of ancient history which
has succeeded to what was once so fashionable. Per-
haps it is not only that the vast accumulations of
modern experience, and the necessity for generalizing
results, have so completely occupied men's minds; but,
possibly, they still remember with disgust the carica-
ture of antiquity which marked the French Revolution,
the bombastic harangues, the pedantic imitations, and
the absurd nomenclature of that day* perhaps they
have not been led to look with favour on such trains of
thought even by the visions of a Democratic Paradise
which have been of late unfolded in Mr. Grote's Grecian
history, though a candid judgment must admit that
his brilliant pages, however one-sided, are a noble
""
* Coleridge has shown how useful a candid study of ancient
history might have been to the men of that day. "If there be any
antidote for modern restless craving for wonders and appetite for
publicity, if any means for deriving resignation from general
discontent, and building up a sted fast frame of hope. that
antidote must be sought for in the collation of the present with
the past, in the habit of thoughtfully assimilating the events of our
own age to those of the time before us.
"I well remember
that when the examples of former Jacobins, Julius Cæsar, Cromwell,
&c., were adduced in France and England at the commencement of
the French Consulate, it was rejected as pedantry and pedant's
ignorance to fear a repetition of usurpation and military despotism at
the close of the enlightened eighteenth century.” "Even in
the very dawn of the late tempestuous day, when the revolutions
of Corcyra, the proscriptions of the reformers, Marius, Cæsar, &c.,
and the direful effects of the levelling tenets in the Peasants' War
in Germany, were urged on the Convention and its vindicators, the
Magi of the day, the true citizens of the world . . . . gave us set
proofs that similar results were impossible, and that it was an
insult to so philosophic an age, so enlightened a nation, to direct the
public eye towards them as to lights of warning. Alas! like lights
in the stern of a vessel, they illumined the path only that had been
passed over.”—Lay Sermons.
•
r
LECT. II.
HISTORY A MARK OF SHALLOWNESS.
49
illustration of the principles which should guide the
reading of all history, viz., that human nature is always
identical, and that no lesson of the past is to be thrown
away by those who are called upon to deal with the
present. Surely no advance of modern science has
affected, or can affect, these principles.* But it is
one thing to write history in the spirit of a partisan;
it is another to take the history of the past as we find
it, stripped of all disguises, and to enquire where the
principles of ancient politics have any affinities with our
own. It would be a curious specimen of reaction if, in
an age of educated thought, men were deliberately and
persistently to insist on depriving themselves of what
most truly constitutes education.†
Let us proceed then to limit our ground to the re-
quirements of a lecture. Leaving the consideration
of other phases of antiquity, let us turn our eyes to
Greece. There are, obviously, peculiar reasons why we
cannot neglect the lessons drawn from Grecian history.
Nothing in the whole history of the world has in any
degree answered to the condition of modern Europe
like the confederation of Grecian States. Ancient
Roman history may help us to trace by its light the
rise of a particular modern nation; we may trace many
resemblances between particular States in mediaval
Italy and the larger ones of modern Europe; or we
may, on the other hand, fairly call mediæval Venice the
* Thucydides, at any rate, assigns the probability of a recurrence
of events as the reason for writing his history ;-τῶν μελλόντων ποτὲ
ἆυθις κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπειον τοιουτῶν και παραπλησίων ἔσεσθαι.
Thuc. I. 22.
6
+ For many valuable remarks on the use to which ancient ex-
amples may be put by moderns, see Methods of Observation and
Reasoning in Politics' by Sir G. C. Lewis.
E
:
50
ANCIENT GREECE AND MODERN EUROPE.
LECT. II.
*
Sparta, and Florence the Athens of Italy; for it is
true that the Italian States in their prime were the
nearest reproduction of ancient Grecce the world. had
then sccn; but, taken as a whole, they were far too
numerous, and in too fluctuating a condition, to admit
of their being themselves considered in their turn as the
prototypes of the state of things within our own obscrva-
tion, Medieval Italy has been indeed the school from
which modern Europe has received her teaching. The
science of diplomacy, the rudiments of International
Law, the refinements of politics, the common improve
ments of domestic life, the Fine Arts, and the forms of
modern literature, have been in a great measure, as
we all know, her gift; she has been to Europe what
Grecce was to Rome; through her hands has bccn.
passed on the torch which she received from the East.
But, after all, the fact remains. The product of this
Italian influence on the rest of Europe, as exhibited in
our times, is but the reproduction of the type with which
we are familiar in a much more ancient community;
the features of long-buried political ancestors have most
For
surely reappeared in their remote descendants
a confederacy of entirely independent states, such as
now exists in Europe, looser indeed than that of Grecce,
but united by numerous common tics, and assisting one
another's progress by their intercourse and rivalry, we
must ascend to another Europe, a Europe in miniature,
but compensating for want of space by the intensity of
its political life. For the model of a sclf-governed
* Mr. Freeman has drawn out an interesting parallel of this sort
in the Oxford and Cambridge Essays.
"The cities of ancient Grecce were cast in the happy mixture
of union and independence which is repeated on a larger scale, but
LECT. II.
DIFFERENCES LESS THAN SUPPOSED.
51
people, with all the machinery such government re-
quires, with all the brilliant consequences of rapid
political development, with all the disasters which are
sure to dog the steps of a too rapid development, for
all the lessons, therefore, which are likely to be most
useful for modern society, we must turn to the glowing
pages of the great Greek authors.
Do men say that the lapse of so many ages creates
insuperable difficulties with regard to such lessons?
Perhaps they are smaller than is supposed. Christi-
anity has leavened our institutions and softened our
manners; but the acts of nations towards one another
are really very much the same in principle as in the
fifth century B.C. Politicians are guided by very much
the same motives; the forces which bind society to-
gether are all but identical. Railways and steamers
have not changed much, perhaps, besides the surface of
things. New worlds have taken their place in East
and West along with the old, but only to prove the
unity of the human race. Men communicate their
ideas by the newspaper and the cheap press, but it may
be questioned if the number of those who have an in-
telligent notion of politics is larger in proportion to the
mass than in some of the old Grecian States. It is
probable that in every Christian country, in spite of an
occasional retrogression, a real progress is going on,
and it is certain that each development of civilization
in a looser form, by the nations of modern Europe: the union of
language, religion, and manners, which renders them the spectators
and judges of each other's merit: the independence of government
and interest which asserts their separate freedom, and excites them
to strive for pre-eminence in the career of glory."-Gibbon's 'Decline
and Fall,' c. 53.
E 2
52
GENERAL PARALLELISM OF THE
LECT. II.
commences from a higher level than its predecessor;
but it is also possible to adopt a method of speaking
about modern progress which is not very far removed
from cant. The course of events is only too constantly
and relentlessly exposing those glorifications of modern
civilization with which we are so familiar. In short,
while it would be vain to bring forward the examples
of antiquity, if it were not possible to promote progress
by so doing, it would be useless unless the elementary
conditions of the society in which we live were sub-
stantially the same.*
But it is not only the general resemblance of the
relative position of the two sets of States to one another
that has attracted the attention of so many writers.
It is that both ancient Greece and modern Europe.
seem to have arrived at much the same stage of political
life when an event happened of equally overpowering
importance in each case. Of course much depends on
taking an accurate estimate of such political position,
and it must be admitted that to suppose every State
must necessarily go through a similar process of rise,
*On this whole subject of using the experience of past history,
see 'An Inaugural Lecture' by the late lamented Dr. Shirley,
Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford. It
is full of warnings against a slavish use of parallels and the mistake
of forgetting that the progress of mankind is rather that of the
growth of organic life than a recurrence of cycles of similar events.
At first sight some of the points so well drawn out in his Lecture
(which preceded the one here given by a few days) might be supposed
to lead to a different conclusion from that adopted in the text; but the
Lecturer has the satisfaction of recollecting how positively Dr. Shirley
disclaimed that notion, and professed his agreement with the qualified
and guarded use of ancient political lessons which it has here been
attempted to set forth. His remarks were meant indeed to apply to
some of the very errors which are exposed in this place.
240
LECT. II.
TWO SETS OF STATES.
53
culmination and decay, is a somewhat arbitrary assump-
tion. All that can be said is that something of the
sort is discernible in the history of every State with
which we are acquainted, and that it is natural to
expect the future to be very like the past. The period
of the Peloponnesian War and that of the French Revo-
lution have been, then, regarded as those of a very
similar political and intellectual development, and to
have been followed by a somewhat similar change both
in Greece and Europe; while the war in each case
affected the whole series of States, overtaking each of
them in different stages of political existence, but
shaping the subsequent course of all, breaking up the
fountains of society, opening up new modes of thought,
leaving marks upon the language, affording magnificent
examples of military and naval glory.
The previous career of both sets of States has had so
much in common, that men might be pardoned if they
worked out various points of parallelism only too far.
In their very infancy, their formation, we have the
same phenomenon,-that mixture of races which is
the parent of all vigorous nationality, the conquest of
a weaker and more civilized by a ruder and stronger
people. The Achæan and Dorian conquests of the Pelas-
gians represented very faithfully that marriage of the
masculine with the feminine elements of society which
was witnessed, so many centuries later, when the bar-
barians formed the modern States of Europe by their
conquest of the Roman provinces. The immediate
product of that mixture of peoples was remarkably
similar, for it was the very form which mediæval
Europe presented, a Feudal System,* rudely but securely
* See Mr. Gladstone's 'Homer,' passim.
54
EARLY HISTORY AND GRADUAL
'LECT. II.
binding together the scattered fragments of society.
Then in each case, when that feudal system has done
its work, we have a common enterprise of all the
States, a Siege of Troy, a Crusading Exodus, using up
and getting rid of the superabundant product of the
military system, bringing those separate polities into a
sort of confederation, and enlarging and enriching the
common stock of ideas and institutions. Then, a
common enemy, the Persian of old, the Turk of the
Middle Ages, ever forcing by necessity a certain har-
mony on selfish and discordant members of the con-
federation;-common losses, common victories, each
doing its appointed work in solidifying the whole ;-
a common book of reference, historical, moral, religious,
political, for Homer was the Bible of the Greeks;*
a struggle for pre-eminence among the States in colo-
nization and commerce, the formation in each case of
somewhat different types of political government in
different States, but with a general resemblance to one
another which wholly distinguishes them from other
communities. In the course of time, as the States in
each case develop their individuality and act with a
more organized State force, while at the same time the
common enemy ceases to be formidable, frequent wars
take place with one another. Then, when the excite-
ment of these national contests had somewhat begun
to subside, and they had done their work in forming an
International Law, when the most vigorous national
life was showing itself within the bosom of each State,
we have the emergence of one member of the confedera-
tion into such a position of pre-eminence, with a de-
velopment of such a boundless ambition, and a form of
* See Mr. Gladstone's 'Homer,' passim.
LECT. II.
DEVELOPMENT-THEIR GREAT WARS.
55
political government within that State which so affected
the peace of its neighbours, offending each in the place
where it was most susceptible of affront and alive to
danger, that a general league was found necessary in
order to reduce the offender to its ancient position.
This war is in each case a war of opinion as much as
a war of self-preservation, and lasting for more than
twenty years, though at the beginning expected to be
but a short war,* broken indeed by a hollow and delu-
sive peace which was scarcely distinguishable from war.
In each case the offender develops a desperate energy
which no one could have the least foreseen, and which
makes it a match for all its foes combined. In each
case alike the quarrel becomes internecine, develops
new types of commanders, and demands unheard-of
sacrifices. There is nothing which is not drawn within
its vortex; and it is only concluded by the complete
overthrow of the State which had been the original
cause of the war.
Such has been the parallelism, though never perhaps
fully drawn out, which has coloured consciously or un-
consciously the writings of so many authors. Historians
of Greece professedly direct their remarks to the modern
history while they are recounting the ancient. Mr.
Mitford set the example on a great scale. His history-
which, with many obvious faults, was a great advance
for its day-showed a very decided Tory hue in every
line. Bishop Thirlwall was far from copying Mr.
Mitford. His calm and philosophical pages may be
said to represent the Whig view of the period; while
* Burke stood almost alone in his prediction that the war which
he had so great a share in exciting his countrymen to undertake
would be a long war.
56
THE VIEW OF THUCYDIDES.
LECT. II.
Mr. Grote has lately recast the whole subject on a still
grander scale, and on the principles of the most “ad-
vanced" political school. It is because this last remark-
able work has for the moment so nearly superseded
all others that it is well to remind ourselves that he
has not superseded the contemporary historians them-
selves, and that if we want to make full use of the
lessons of those times, we shall do well to take what
such a writer as Thucydides tells us without following
too closely any party interpreters.
The very sketch given above, concise to the utmost
degree as it is, involves an appeal from Mr. Grote
to Thucydides himself. Dazzled by the blaze of glow-
ing eulogy which the modern writer has heaped upon
the Constitution and early successes of Athens, we
might be in danger of forgetting the deliberate judg-
ment of one who knew them well, and whose opinions
cannot be put aside. All that we can attempt here
is to recall the facts of that deliberate judgment, pro-
testing against the attempt to overthrow it. From
him it is that we learn what was the true cause of this
typical Peloponnesian war, viz., the just and natural
dread entertained of the power which Athens had long
been so busily engaged in acquiring. He points signi-
ficantly to the iniquitous seizure of the treasure which
had been confided to her as the trustee for the rest of
Greece. He gives a faithful picture of the arrogance
with which she treated both her allies and her enemies.
From him we discover the ubiquitous presence of that
proselytising spirit which made all non-democratic go-
vernments insecure. From him we learn the true cha-
racter of the demagogues whom, after the death of
Pericles, the Athenian Constitution carried to the head
LECT. II.
ATHENS AND FRANCE.
57
of affairs. From him we learn to perceive, and by him
are distinctly taught, the impossibility of good order
at home or success abroad in the long run where a
State is governed by an unchecked Democracy. What
avails the most elaborate attempt to shake our faith
in these facts, and rob us of the lessons they convey?
The more we study the other contemporary authors,
the more we shall learn to trust this great writer; the
more we perceive the touches of magnanimity and
candour he incidentally displays, the less willing shall
we be to entertain the suggestions of moderns as to
the motives which might have swayed him in pro-
nouncing his opinions.
We may defend the parallel which we have sketched
still further. It might be objected that if the unjust
and arbitrary assumption of power by Athens, under
the pressure of a democratical government, and the
drawing upon her in consequence of the whole force of
the neighbouring States, is taken as a foreshadowing
of the French Revolutionary War in its motives, its
circumstances and its results, we find ourselves com-
paring an essentially naval with an essentially military
power, a Constitution which had gradually worked
itself out into a Democracy with one that started full-
grown, a State of extremely small dimensions, which
had appropriated to itself what was then a wide Empire,
with one whose natural greatness was in itself consider-
able. But these are surely not vital points of differ-
ence. France had, besides the temporary similarity
above noticed, many inherent elements which served to
identify her with Athens. She had long given the tone
to European fashion. Her language was as much the
polite language of other nations as the Attic amongst
58
THE ANCIENT AND MODERN ALLIES.
LECT. II.
Hellenes. Her leading place in European politics, the
ability of her writers, the cleverness, restlessness, love
of glory, and vivacity of her people, the elegance of
her capital, and the extent to which at least the ex-
ternal polish of civilization had penetrated her society
-all this and much more might be brought forward
on the other side.
So with the enemies of France. While she is taken
to represent the Ionic type, to which her large share
of the old Roman and Celtic elements corresponds,*
the Teutonic and Sclavonic nations are taken to repre-
sent the Dorian. The monarchical and aristocratic
governments of these nations, the fear, horror, and
indignation with which, penetrated by the influence
of traditions of innate superiority, they beheld the
triumphant outburst of Republican fervour, the slow-
ness of their movements, their adherence to routine,
the haughty awkwardness of their early attempts
at coercion, not unmixed with reprehensible motives
and selfish acts, the tenacity with which they pursued
their object in spite of the most galling defeats and
the extraordinary difficulties of keeping the confedera-
tion together, the constant employment, till taught by
disaster, of incompetent officers,-all this marks off a
resemblance to the history of the Peloponnesian war
which will be most clearly appreciated by those who
are most familiar with both periods of history. The
parallel might even be carried into the prominent
persons and minuter circumstances of the two wars
with almost as marked a resemblance, but it will be
* This Celto-Roman basis of French nationality presents more
than an analogy to Attic Pelasgianism. It might be called an
ethnological affinity.
LECT, II.
more in place to refer to the spirit in which each con-
test was carried on.
RESULTS OF EACH DEMOCRACY.
59
Of course no one who defended this parallel would
expect any one to agree with him if he suggested that
all the good was to be found on one side, all the bad
on the other. The courage which rose superior to
defeat was to be found on both sides in both periods.
They were wars of giants. But where do we see the
true fruits of Athenian democracy? Is it in Pericles,
Nicias, or Socrates, who may be said to have been its
victims; or in Cleon, Alcibiades, the Thirty Tyrants,
and the Sophists? Has Mr. Grote really reversed the
judgment which we form of the demagogues and cor-
rupt teachers of the period from the philosophers,
historians, and poets of their own time? We may be
pardoned for doubting it. Or where shall we look for
the characteristic fruits of the French democracy?
In the virtues of the Girondistes and valour of the
Vendéans, or in the "liberty and equality" of a
Robespierre and the sanguinary dictatorship of a
Napoleon? Englishmen have not yet forgotten what
was burnt into the national mind of the last genera-
tion. There is certainly something to be said in
favour of the view which traces a similarity between
the fruits of Democracy in the two periods, and
observes in the conduct of the confederacies against
Athens and France a high-minded protest similarly
made against the infringements of moral and religious
sanctions.
Thus much by way of attempt to weaken the im-
pression too generally entertained that we are so far
removed from ancient times that any arguments de-
duced from their politics must be of little value. We
60
SIMILARITY OF PARTY-GOVERNMENT
LECT. II.
may differ as to the precise analogies of different his-
tories, and no one would dream of pressing them too
far;-analogies, like metaphors, will never run upon
four legs; but some sort of repetition of events arising
out of similar combinations at the two periods will at
least be admitted to have taken place.
Let us consider the Grecian history of this period
under another aspect. Let us inquire whether the
internal development of Athenian politics does not
offer some sort of parallelism to our own. Great Britain
was in the aristocratic stage of her Constitution when
she led the alliance against France: while that country
had suddenly leaped to the highest pitch of Athenian
development. Since that time our own country has
passed through many changes, some marked and rapid,
some slow and, during their operation, scarcely per-
ceptible. Our population at the end of the last century
was only half what it is now. King, Lords and Com-
mons, represented but a curiously checked and tempered
aristocracy. But now, though we retain the old forms,
the democratic element has assumed a wholly different
position, and the Athens of Thucydides may be fertile
in examples which may be full of instruction to the
England of to-day. How like a page of English
political life is the history of Athenian party warfare!
How little have we to change beyond the names and
the language!
Nor is it wonderful that it should be so. All really
self-governed States must exhibit the common feature of
Party-government. The process by which such go-
vernment is formed must be the same in all. When
the tyrannies and oligarchies and aristocracies under
which society has gained its consistency have made way
LECT. II.
IN ATHENS AND GREAT BRITAIN.
61
for popular government, parties fall into their places.
The old depositaries of power do not give way without
a struggle. Family influence, education, and wealth,
have a great tendency to hold their own.
But a vav-
τικὸς ὄχλος, or a manufacturing and mechanic popu-
lation, increases and multiplies. It finds leaders. It
insists (very naturally) on being represented. The new
interests press on; the old resist. Parties fall as natu-
rally into a Conservative and an Innovating party in
the fifth century B.C. as in the nineteenth century A.D.
They exhibit the same types, the same shades of differ-
ence, adopt the same rules. It requires but a moderate
knowledge of the subject to enable us to detect at
Athens the presence, for example, of the older states-
man never ceasing to regret every change, however
slight, in the Constitution or foreign policy of the State,
for ever wishing to bring back even the abuses of
ancient times, and attributing every disaster to some pre-
vious concession,-the political retrogressionist, in short.
We find it easy to point out his direct opponent, the
man who thinks everything indefensible in exact pro-
portion to its antiquity, and every one equally fit to
govern, be his stake in the country or his mental culti-
vation what it may,—the man of abstract right, the man
of the present. We can discern the men who rejoiced
in the removal of patent abuses, who made the best of
such changes as had been inevitable, but resolved to
make a stand upon what they thought the essential safe-
guards of their polity, and to preserve its balance by
adjustments suited to their times. We can point to the
politicians who habitually allowed their perception of
the benefits to be derived from change (often very closely
connected with benefits to themselves), to overpower
1
:
62
PARALLELISM OF THE CAREERS
LECT. II.
the sense they still entertained of the value of their
institutions; and who are in effect found on the same
side as the mere demagogue. We distinguish the high-
minded politician and the selfish, corrupt trader in
politics. We see parties sometimes divided on foreign
politics alone, sometimes on domestic politics, some-
times on both. And while we find much which illus-
trates the usefulness of party government, we cannot
but observe of course the grossest cases of abuse. What,
in fact, we call "human nature" betrays itself at every
turn, and enables us to read the history of our own
party struggles in those of Athens. Scarcely a character
presents itself before us without reminding us of some
one who occupies or has occupied the very same place
amongst ourselves.
It is obvious that this is not the place from which
particular similarities should be verified by illustrations
drawn from the leaders of our own day. Yet there is one
which is irresistible, and of which the subject is just re-
moved to a sufficient distance in the past to justify us
in making the reference,-the parallel afforded by the
careers of Pericles and William Pitt. It is true that in
this case the exact coincidence of the political stages to
which the States they respectively administered had at-
tained is wanting. The Athens of Pericles is far ahead
in the democratic race of the England of Pitt. But it
may serve our present purpose to show how the accidents,
so to speak, of party governments may throw up from
time to time men of essentially the same type.* This is
again scarcely a new parallelism; but the misrepre-
* "Practical examples are real models." Sir G. C. Lewis, in
'Methods of Observation' &c., vol. ii. p. 220.
LECT. II.
OF PERICLES AND WILLIAM PITT.
63
sentations which have gradually gathered round both
these statesmen, the false colouring which has been
put upon their simplest acts by the industrious efforts
of modern partisans, and the clearer light which is
once more breaking upon the periods in which they
lived, may excuse, perhaps, our dwelling on it for a
few moments.
These great men have filled a much larger space
than any others in the political history of their re-
spective countries; the glory which they each acquired
has inseparably connected itself with that of their own
people; the periods which they illuminated (though,
as we have seen, not corresponding to one another in
Constitutional history), have been by common consent
emphatically the golden age of each State. Their
names have, therefore, notoriously become the battle-
ground of party, the watchwords of opinion. Perhaps
each year makes it more easy to place them in their
true position.
Such points as the following will at least be admitted
by all: their appearance at a time when their States
were in a condition to be virtually governed by the
sagacity and eloquence of a single person, with no
further right to govern them than that acquired by
his own personal ascendancy; the fact that their re-
spective States had been prepared by the predecessors
of these men for a high standard, and had not yet been
debased by the political deterioration of a succeeding
age; and, in connection with this fact, the matchless
superiority of the political education each had received,
the one under Themistocles and Aristides, the other
under Lord Chatham, Burke, and the galaxy of great
men who flourished in the first period of George III.'s
64
PERSONAL RESEMBLANCES.
LECT. II.
reign; the extraordinary character of their eloquence,
rivalled occasionally by their contemporaries, but out-
living and eventually dwarfing them all; the position
attained in each case quite as much by the incorruptible
probity and unquestionable public spirit of the men as
by their success in debate; the simplicity of life of
each, standing out exceptionally in an age fast becoming
luxurious and artificial; the wisdom each sought and
found outside the sphere in which his public life was
cast, the one from Anaxagoras and the philosophers of
the day, the other from the great works of antiquity,
but still more perhaps from intercourse with such men
as Wilberforce; the unusual amount of foresight and
sagacity each naturally possessed, and which each
strengthened by a long career of public activity; the
imperturbable calmness with which they met the surging
sea of opposition which from time to time seemed about
to overwhelm them; the very appearance and manner of
the men, their haughty, defiant mien, their reserve and
dignity; the fulness and completeness of the grasp with
which they seized the subject in hand; the unwearied
patience with which they devoted themselves to busi-
ness; their very death in harness, devoting their latest
energies to the service of their country. It is not too
much to say that future historians will probably describe
the government of Great Britain during Pitt's ministry
by the very words, mutatis mutandis, in which Thucy-
dides described the government of Greece in the time
of Pericles" It was called a Democracy, but it was in
reality the rule of the first man."*
*
ἐγίγνετο τε λόγῳ μὲν δημοκρατία, ἔργω δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ πρώτου
ἀνδρὸς ἀρχή.--Thuc. ii. 65.
LECT. II.
PITT'S CONCEPTION OF HIS WORK.
65
It may be objected that one was the means of popu-
larising his State, while the other ruled as the head of
the party which resisted popular dictation; in other
words, that one would in modern language be classed
with Whigs, the other with Tories. Granted; but we
shall see they had much more in common than is
sometimes supposed. The way in which each used his
marvellous ascendancy was remarkably similar, and cer-
tainly each worked on a similarly grand conception
of the mission of his State.
Coming into power as Pitt did, when the struggle
with our American colonies had just been brought to an
end, and when the mistakes of his predecessors had
dimmed the glory acquired in his father's time, it
was his noble conception to make use of the opportu-
nity in order to consolidate, to reform, to build up on a
secure foundation the Constitution and the foreign rela-
tions of his country. How well he succeeded during
that magnificent decade of his administration which has
never been surpassed in our history is familiar to all;
how he settled our Indian government, brought order
into our finance, established commercial relations with
France, supported the movement for abolishing the
slave-trade, settled the great Constitutional question of
the Regency, obtained, without prejudice to his own
independence, the entire confidence of the last king
who exercised the power of former dynasties, laid the
foundations of that Union with Ireland which he lived
to complete with his own hand, laid the equally secure
foundations of a Reform of Parliament, and by the
vigour of his diplomacy as well as his domestic govern-
ment caused his country to be respected abroad to an
extent which had never been experienced in modern
F
66
PERICLES' CONCEPTION OF HIS WORK.
LECT. II.
times, except under the influence of Cromwell and
Marlborough,—all this is now beyond dispute.*
No less grand, though destined to be less advan-
tageous to his State, was the conception of Pericles.
Whether he perceived from the first that his country-
men had gone too far in their perilous policy at home
and abroad to be turned out of their path, and so threw
himself into the stream, resolved to lead them for their
good and to gain such power as might enable him to
restrain them in their furious career, or whether his
position was only the result of circumstances, gradually
influencing him as his political life proceeded, cannot
now be ascertained. Perhaps in no other case has such
an attempt so nearly succeeded: and yet it was all too
late. While he lived, the monster he had fostered,
or been obliged to foster, could, though with infinite
difficulty, be guided; when he died, it could but
rush to destruction. To raise his own State to supre-
macy, to render her safe from attack, to beautify her
so that all might learn to look up to her with pride,
to sow her institutions broadcast all around, to make
her the eye, the model, the school of Greece, the soul
of the universe, the awful personification of reason.
and strength, attracting all by love and wisdom and
majesty, the natural barrier against Persian barbaric
force, as well as against the vulgar arrogance of unen-
* The remarkable work of Von Sybel on the French Revolution
has appeared in the English translation since this Lecture was
delivered. In vol. ii. p. 252, there occurs much such an estimate of
Pitt's conception as in the text:-"All these plans, the completion
of which was to bring the epoch of 1688 to a close and open a new
era for England, . . . were nipped in the bud by the approach of the
revolution." He has some good remarks on the extreme reluctance
of Pitt to enter into the war.
67
lightened Sparta-this, however little based on a true
view of human affairs, and however it might involve
very questionable means, was a noble conception; and
before the gloomy shadows of the war, and the plague,
and the ingratitude of his countrymen, closed around
him, he could with perfect truth claim that it had been
very largely realized.
LECT. II. THEIR CONDUCT AS TO THEIR RESPECTIVE WARS.
But the points of comparison culminate in the re-
lation these greatest of all party chiefs held to the
greatest of the wars of their respective countries. Each
was at the head of affairs, apparently almost supreme,
when the time came that he must make the momentous
election. Each has received his most abundant share
of praise or blame for the election he made. It is
remarkable that in each case the verdict of history,
after the violent oscillations of years, seems to be iden-
tical. It is now understood that both the wars were
inevitable, wholly beyond the power of either minister
to prevent. True;-Pericles persuaded the Athenians
to resist the demands of Sparta; but that is not the
point. The steady tendency of the whole previous half-
century had been towards war. It may be just to blame
the minister for continuing and extending the policy
which so unerringly led to this result; but it is unde-
niable that he did all in his power to preserve peace as
long as it was compatible with the independence,—nay,
the very existence of his State.
Nor was the French war less forced upon Pitt. It
was the almost united act of the whole British com-
munity. This has been proved by Mr. Massey* and
Lord Stanhope.† It is easy for us, speculating in our
closets, to prove that it ought not to have been so. It
* 'Life of George III.,' c. 32, 33.
† 'Life of Pitt.'
F 2
68
THEIR SIMILAR FATE.
LECT. II.
is indeed well we should treasure up our national ex-
perience; well that we should learn that it is not the
place of this country to interfere in the internal affairs
of our neighbours. Yet, though French Revolutions
are no longer new to us, it is probable that if any such
convulsion were to occur again, any such general rising
of Europe in alarm at the aggressive policy of a Conti-
nental state, we should, with all our superior enlighten-
ment, "drift” into precisely such a war as we waged
with the French. But, in fact, it was not England that
went to war with France, but France with England.
Pitt resisted it to the utmost.*
The fate of these great men was similar. The war
destroyed them both. Both received hard measure
from their contemporaries, and Pitt has scarcely yet
had justice done him. That he was not the great war-
minister his father was, is certain. He was emphati-
cally the minister of peace and progress. But his father
was not tried as he was. We are apt to forget how
perfectly new a thing in the European world was that
extraordinary burst of Republican vigour. No one
could have foreseen it, no one at first have successfully
contended with it. The smallness of our army, and its
* The latest authority on this point may be given here from Von
Sybel, who quotes the opinion of the man most capable of all to
form one, Maret, the French (virtual) Foreign Minister:-" France
might have preserved peace with England without any sacrifice if
the French Government had not once for all desired war."-vol. ii.
p. 312.
Again: "The French felt so strong an impulse within themselves
to revolutionize the other nations of Europe, that they could not
but presuppose an equally active hostility towards themselves on
the part of the European governments." "The simple statement of
the facts of German history in 1790 is sufficient to show the impos-
sibility of such a league."-vol. i. pp. 223, 224.
LECT. II.
DEFENCE OF PITT.
69
rare employment on any large scale, has always sub-
jected us to disaster at the beginning of a war. We
require a long war to make efficient officers, and they
were not ready to Pitt's hands. Nor is it fair to load
him with the discredit of employing the royal princes
in high commands. This also was the fashion of the
day. Still less ought all credit to be refused to Pitt for
the brilliant career of the navy during his administra-
tion. Lord Stanhope has well met the remarks of
Macaulay on this head. No doubt much was due to
the ability of our Admiralty; no doubt very much more
was due to the preceding generation of British seamen
who trained the men about to become so famous in our
annals; but an enlightened candour will attribute the
kindling of that chivalrous devotion to Pitt's own patri-
otic spirit, which found a speedier answer on the sea
than on the shore. It was not till some time after
Pitt's death, when the British navy had no longer an
enemy, and the whole energies of the nation were
directed towards the land service, that the old régime
was swept away, and the one man who could match
Napoleon forced to the head of the army. Till the
Great Duke came upon the scene military matters had
not emerged out of a chronic state of blunder, and per-
haps could not have been brought into a satisfactory
condition by any minister.
The charge most sustained against Pitt is his coercive
system of domestic administration during the first years
of the war. Yet, though these measures were so un-
popular at the time, so open to ridicule, and in some
cases proved to be unnecessarily severe, it is not easy
to say that the volcanic elements of society would not
have burst forth with fatal violence, had they not been
70
DEFENCE OF PITT.
LECT. II.
66
""*
kept in check by the certainty that no half measures
would be employed. It is certain that Wilberforce,
who so often asserted his independence during this trying
time, and whose amiable nature revolted at the least
severity, vehemently supported Pitt on most of these
occasions, and has left it as his deliberate opinion that we
made "a temporary sacrifice by which the blessings of
liberty might be transmitted to our children unim-
paired," and that we were only throwing up new
bastions to defend the bulwarks of British liberty."
The difficulties into which Pitt was plunged by the war,
the bitter cup he had to drink in foregoing his most che-
rished schemes, the contest with the very classes whom
he was attempting gradually to raise to power, remind us
by no feeble analogy of the enormous sacrifices of personal
comfort which Pericles called upon his countrymen to
make, of the misery they for a time involved, of the
fierceness with which, in their agony of disappointment,
the Athenians turned upon their great chief, and the
humiliation which even his genius could not avert. The
foresight with which Pericles obliged his countrymen to
set aside a reserve fund for the future cannot fail to
recall the famous measure of Mr. Pitt, which was
analogous to it. That particular measure we are not
indeed obliged to approve because we admire the sound
principle which dictated it. On the reproductive power
of his “sinking fund" he erred with nearly the whole .
of his countrymen; but if the principle of reducing the
National Debt had taken the same place in the counsels
of subsequent statesmen which it took with Pitt, it
would have been well for Great Britain now.
* Life of Wilberforce,' by his Sons. In the new Edition, by the
Bishop of Oxford, these passages will be found at pp. 140, 141.
LECT. II.
THE TWO STATESMEN CONTRASTED.
71
On two points our great Minister was inferior to him
whom we have ventured to call his prototype,-on one by
the nature of the case, on the other by a defect of his
own nature. The Athenian Constitution almost abso-
lutely required capability of guiding an army as well.
as an assembly, and Pericles added to his other great
qualities that of being a considerable general. Here
Pitt cannot compete with him; but a careful study of
his life offers many a proof that he would have eminently
shone in that capacity, if circumstances had favoured
him. Again, we have no trace in Mr. Pitt of that
splendid patronage of the arts which distinguished
Pericles above all the worthies of Greece. The cold,
self-contained disposition, which would in any age or
State have prevented him from becoming a demagogue,
refused to allow the expansion of his faculties in one of
the noblest fields within the reach of man.
But it may
be observed that this disposition had also something to
do with one of his greatest virtues. It probably assisted
largely in saving him from one form of immorality preva-
lent enough in his day ;* and Pericles was certainly not
above his own age, if he was not below it, in that respect!
As for the charge against Pitt for the excesses of the table,
it is now well understood to be far less heinous than it
* The share which Bishop Tomline had in the formation of Pitt's
character has perhaps been too much overlooked. That he was nar-
row, self-interested, rather below than above the age in his worldly
notions on Church matters, that he perhaps prevented Pitt from
accepting a higher religious standard than he did, and that he made
out of the best possible materials a very poor biography, may be
admitted; but Pitt owed his tutor and friend much from his boy-
hood down to the day of his death. His moral purity and noble
elevation of character were indeed his own glory, but they were also
very much the result of Tomline's training.
•
72
TEACHING OF ATHENIAN HISTORY
LECT. II.
was once the fashion with his detractors to assert. His
medical advisers had trained him in the habit of drinking
port wine in large quantities, and his naturally feeble
constitution seemed to require it, though of course this
is by no means a sufficient justification for even occasional
excess. That he broke up at forty-six is less marvellous
than that he lasted so long. Nothing but the most
indomitable spirit, fortified by a conviction of the good-
ness of his cause, could have borne him up under such a
load as periraps Lever fell to the lot of an English
Minister before or since, added to the pressure of a phy-
sical weakness hard enough to bear without that load.
We have thus drawn out two, at least defensible,
parallelisms. Enough has been said to show that they
do not lose their value, because Athens does duty for
France in one and the Athenian Minister for the English
Minister in the other. They will be considered more
or less useful by different persons in giving life and
reality to times fertile in political examples. But the
successive changes in the Athenian Constitution, the
character of its developed Democracy, the broad outlines
of its Party-government, and some other features, give
its history a value for us of the present day which must
be patent to all. We may perhaps modestly attempt
to make a few deductions from it.
First:-We have in this history, as in a most perfect
mirror, an exhibition of a Constitution in which num-
bers alone formed the basis of government. There were
many Democracies in Greece, but here we have the
typical instance, described to us with all the splendour
of diction, the fidelity of observation, the details of
growth, culmination, and decay. What impression does
the study of it leave on the mind? That there is
LECT. II
ON THE SUBJECT OF DEMOCRACY.
73
something fascinating in this notion of absolute political
equality, this direct share in the government possessed
by every citizen, all rcaders of Mr Grote's history, to
say nothing of any other work, will perhaps admit.
What we have ventured to call a more sober and philo-
sophical view, supported by those authors from whom
there is in reality no appeal,* will bid us strip off the
mask And when we have laid bare its true features
we find that this ancient Democracy, fair sccming as
it was, was only another name for Tyranny. We do
not find ourselves able to admit that its success while a
Pericles is at its head is any argument in its favour;
for not only is the State policy which even its best man
finds himself obliged to pursue a policy marked with
spccdy ruin, but we find that this Constitution cannot
stand under the conditions of average humanity; that it
requires and supposcs perfection, is based on theory, and
fails in practice We find that the State falls, not by
accident, but necessarily, under such demagogucs as
Cleon, Hyperbolus and Alcibiadcs, or is obliged to fall
back on such incompetent Icaders as Nicias; that its
caprices are so violent that it cannot make full usc
of even such weapons as these, paralysing them with ſoar,
or checking them in full carcer; that it is attended with
incorrigible corruption; that it breaks out into paroxysms
of fearful cruelty, succccded indeed sometimes, but
generally too late, by repentance; that it is hateful to its
weaker allics, and universally voted dangerous by its
independent neighbours. This is surely a sufficient
*e.g. Plato, Thucydides, and Aristophancs. Plato's magnificent
description of Demos, the typical monster, and the way in which it
was fed and petted by its keepers, forms one of the most brilliant
pages of the Republic'
74
ANCIENT AND MODERN DEMOCRACY.
LECT. II.
condemnation. If a Tyranny or an Oligarchy is detest-
able, it is scarcely questionable that a pure Democracy,
as understood in ancient times, is worse than either; at
least, this was the opinion of the best writers of those
times, and of most moderns till quite our own day.
C
But the question for us is-How far must this ex-
perience of ancient be taken to guide us in an estimate
of modern Democracy? If we apply it without making
allowance for the great distinction between the two,
we shall be led into mistakes. Two chief differences
confront us. On the one hand, a thoroughly organized
representative system must, no doubt, largely modify
the Democracy of the ancients. The numbers actually
meeting to consult are now smaller. On the other hand,
that very large proportion of the working class of ancient
States which consisted of slaves was in those days excluded
from the most democratic of ancient polities. What
we should call the upper and middle classes alone took
part in the government. How far does one difference
counteract the other? Does the result, after the two are
balanced one against the other, leave us nearly where
the ancients were, with only such distinctions as modern
habits of thought, Christianity, the qualities of race, and
the traditions of the past, have created?-a problem
which in this place we can only state. At any rate, the
conditions of the two systems are not the same. Yet it
would be a most narrow view which would on that
account reject the warnings of antiquity. On the
contrary, it would be more true to assert that the spirit
of a Constitution in which the force of mere numbers
is supreme must be taken as a fixed quantity. We
have seen what it is. Those who find a similar Con-
stitution established, or progressing towards establish-
LECT. II.
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.
75
ment, have need for the most anxious watchfulness;
for they may be sure that precisely as it approximates
to the ancient direct and supreme voice of mere num-
bers in practical government, it will faithfully reproduce
the phenomena of the older experiment. Modern
examples are as yet few. Indeed we have, with the
exception of the short-lived madness of France, so soon
quenched in seas of blood, no instance of a pure Demo-
cracy in action in any large State until the establishment
of the independence of the United States of America;
nor, it may be said, even there, under conditions free from
the traditions of European politics, till quite of late
years. They afford the great standing lesson of modern
times, to be spelt out in telegrams and newspapers to-
day, and by-and-by to take its place amongst the stock
examples of politics.* It is ours to read it in no carping
spirit of contemptuous superiority. Those who are now
working out their most difficult problem are not respon-
sible for what they have inherited. It is for them to make
the best of their political condition, and to apply, as far
as may be, the political mind of their English ancestors
to repair the evils they have suffered from a premature
separation for which both countries are equally respon-
sible. It is the absolute novelty of Democracy on such
a scale which led M. de Tocqueville to make the remark
already quoted; and yet perhaps our kinsmen have still
something to learn from antiquity.
But for Englishmen, who have not yet parted with
that splendid inheritance they have received, there
is of course special significance in the teaching of the
Greek authors. Those whose Constitution is the slow
* The Civil War in America was raging in its utmost fury when
this Lecture was delivered.
76
CHANGES IN THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION. LECT. II.
growth of many centuries, and the model on which
modern Constitutions are formed, will at least learn
caution from antiquity; for they will perceive the irre-
vocability of popular changes, the impossibility of reco-
vering any institution which has once been thrown
aside, the consequences of admitting dangerous prin-
ciples into political science, and how easy it is to lose
sight of the rights of one class in legislating for the
relief of another. In short, they will learn to think for
themselves, to shake themselves clear of the common-
places which have a tendency to fill a political atmo-
sphere, and to recur continually to such questions as-
Will such and such changes in the Constitution throw
the power of government into hands which are fit to
use it?
Will the new interests swamp and overpower
the old? Ought they to do so? Will not something
known to be good be sacrificed for a doubtful advantage?
Is the community ripe for such and such a change? Or
will a violent shock be produced which will shake the
whole fabric of society? They will not, however, as we
shall see presently, blindly set themselves against all
change; for that would be the surest way to destroy
what they wish to conserve. Again, the more faithfully
they imbibe the teaching of antiquity, the more plainly
will they learn to distinguish between that equality
before the law which we have long possessed, the ancient
ioovoμía, and that equality of right to govern which is
often so ignorantly confused with it, and which is con-
demned by all theory and practice. They will see the
need of accurately studying their own mixed government,
and observing carefully its origin, its history, and its
modern development. They will gain that habit of
mind which will teach them to touch the defects of their
LECT: II.
NECESSITY OF POPULAR EDUCATION.
77
*
Constitution tenderly, to choose the fitting time for
reform, and to place themselves in the attitude of resist-
ance when reforms are unwisely pressed. The great
books read in our School of Law and Modern History,
Blackstone, Hallam, Hume, Lingard, and the rest, can
scarcely fail to teach us these lessons. Let us not submit
to be robbed of the teaching of Thucydides.
And next, observing how surely in the career of a
self-governed people, ancient or modern, step after step
does necessarily bring one class after another into pos-
session of political power, we learn to look about for
the best means of averting a great danger; and we see
that, if we are to rally each of these classes in succession
round the Constitution, we must educate them before-
hand. This is indeed a trite observation; but it is not
so generally perceived that this education must be
moral and religious as well as intellectual. The classes
which ruined Athens were intellectual enough. Even
in heathen times the signal for political debasement was
given by the overthrow of religion. A little reflection
on these examples will show that this education must
not be mere mechanical instruction, not mere power of
reading a newspaper, but an education which includes
history, an education which teaches men to reason, to
weigh evidence, to control impulse, to choose the solid
in preference to the showy, to distinguish between the
specious people-flatterer and the capable statesman.
How many of the very books from which these classes
are taught require to be rewritten! Perhaps we are
only as yet at the very threshold of the work which lies
before us.
* See some excellent remarks on this subject in Sir G. C. Lewis's
'Best Form of Government.' (Parker, Son, and Bourn.)
・
·
78
FORMATION OF PUBLIC OPINION.
LECT. II.
And, then, being summoned to witness such a deteri-
oration of national virtue as took place at Athens, we
are led to ask whether, in a state of society to which
our own is beginning to offer some points of resem-
blance, it is possible to detect any particular agency
which bears the same features in both cases. If in that
Athenian society, for instance, we observe a systematic
moral corruption in vigorous and deadly action, if we
find ourselves listening to demagogues flattering the
people in every foible, and sophists poisoning the moral
springs of youth, appealing in turn to every wrong prin-
ciple,—such as the absolute rights of the stronger, expe-
diency in avowed preference to justice, the sweetness of
revenge, the negation of a fixed standard of right and
wrong, we shall be more likely to discover the false
basis on which our own national and social acts are tou
often defended both in newspapers and books. And if
the mischief done by a debased press can only be met
by means of the press itself, those who have learnt to
read antiquity to any purpose and to recognise the
duties superadded by Christianity, will be the foremost
in this noblest of tasks.
We have spoken of the analogies afforded by Athe-
nian Party-government to our own, and of the one pre-
vious instance it affords of a civilized people living under
a regular government of this sort for any length of
time, or at any rate the sole instance of which we have
any sufficient account. As might be expected in a Con-
stitution based on so simple a democratical system, the
leaders of the party of Innovation have the best of it
almost throughout. The Conservative leaders, as we
should call them, have an uphill game. They are
always on the losing side, until for a short time national
LECT. II.
ATHENIAN PARTY-GOVERNMENT.
79
disaster sobers the multitude, or a successful conspi-
racy enables the more violent of their body to seize the
government by force. Such periods are exceptional. The
popular party generally secures the ablest men-Themis-
tocles, Pericles, Ephialtes, Demosthenes, who represent
the more respectable heads of the party; Cleon,
Alcibiades, and others, who represent the less. The
Institution of Ostracism had no doubt something to
do with this result, for it was the natural weapon of
the popular party. The Conservatives fought with a
rope round their necks. It required an almost super-
human strength of mind to support them in coming
forward. They who did so must have had to make
great sacrifices. The party was represented by men
who had to trust to their wealth or reputation as ge-
nerals. They were slower and far less efficient as orators
than their opponents. They were often scarcely felt as
a drag on the popular movement. In short, the leaders
of the party of resistance, who saw only too plainly
whither the vessel of the State was drifting, were
mainly gallant men who excite our admiration for
the spirit with which they clung to what they thought
right, in spite of unpopularity; but it is evident that
the phenomenon of modern times was present then
also,—the apathy and selfishness of the rich and educated,
the want of a public, self-sacrificing spirit amongst the
mass of those on whom the defence of institutions fell.
It was no light thing to face an Athenian mob. It was
much the easiest and safest thing to join the pack and
hunt down the "aristocrats." Popular admiration was
very cheaply gained, and a very agreeable thing to
possess. It paid well.
But perhaps the "Conservative" party at Athens did,
80
MISTAKES OF THE PARTY OF RESISTANCE.
LECT. II
in reality, misapprehend the nature of the Constitution
in which they found themselves. They appear to have
rested on methods of policy which were obsolete. It
may have been their own fault that they did not put at
the head of affairs men who could match the dema-
gogues at their own weapons. They may have been too
easily satisfied with the dull, respectable, wealthy men
who presented themselves. A self-governing country
cannot afford this waste of opportunity. The studious
cultivation of the qualities necessary to command the
ear of the public, the highest possible education, the
most generous self-devotion, the most faithful, liberal,
and energetic support of men so trained, when they can
be obtained, this,-for the party which has to support
established institutions in a free State, seems to be a
necessity.
Nor is the example of Athenian history favourable to
a notion which has in some few instances been sup-
ported in modern times by considerable men, viz., that
Party can be dispensed with in a self-governed State.
No doubt it is a clumsy expedient, a poor substitute for
a perfectly just and equable rule,—very liable to abuse,
easily degenerating into faction, very imperious, and
very much tending to cramp the greatness of individual
conceptions. But the question remains, whether any
thing else is, in a free State, possible. When people
virtually govern themselves, it must be admitted that
no principles of government can prevail except through
the means of combination. Individuals are lost when
isolated. The country loses the benefit of their agency
unless they give up something. Small knots, again, of
independent politicians exhibit, as a rule, the defects
without the advantages of a party. At any rate, when
LECT. II.
POSITION OF MEN OF NO PARTY.
81
one party combines, those who disagree with them can-
not afford to remain uncombined.* The organization
Some words for which the Lecturer is responsible, in a late
review of the new 'Life of Wilberforce,' may perhaps, without im-
pertinence, be appended by way of illustration :-
"The political question forced on the reader over and over again,
as he reads this fascinating book, is that of a politician's duty as to
'party.' Wilberforce made a conscience of never joining either
side. Though member for undivided Yorkshire, and one of the very
best speakers in the House, he yet held independence to be his duty.
Ought good men to imitate him? We believe not. His real ground
for adopting this line was his conviction, that the abolition of the
slave trade could only be promoted by his neutrality. Once adopted,
other considerations strengthened his resolution. Yet it may even
be a question whether he would not have succeeded sooner had he
joined a party. Most of his disappointments arose from his not
being necessary to a Minister, and he could have been so had he
taken the usual course. But, granting that he was right on this
point, wise men will remember that such a cause as the Abolition
only presents itself on rare occasions in a nation's history, and that
what might be right in a Wilberforce may not be right in ordinary
men. In a free country party-government is a necessity. With all
its evils it is as necessary to the social and political, as the food we
eat to the natural body. Some, within these parties, will act on
lower motives than others, but it is as possible for party men to act
on the highest as it is to the most independent politicians outside a
party. It may become necessary to reconstitute parties from time
to time; they may have outlived their objects and watchwords; but,
after all, this is seldom the case to any great extent, for behind the
immediate anachronism lies generally the fundamental principle of
difference; yet whether this is the case or not, the separation of
individuals from the great bulk of their fellow politicians is more
generally a sign of pride, vanity, and obstinacy, than of honesty,
wisdom, and a commendable independence. That we do not for a
moment attribute these faults to the great man whose life we are
noticing is apparent from the tenour of all we have said; but the
caution is necessary in times when squeamishness is too often taken
for independence, and when men who pretend to hover between two
parties too often end by throwing their weight into that which leads
them and their country down the easy but fatal hill of revolution.
G
82
LECT. II.
CLUBS, ANCIENT AND MODERN.
of the Conservative party at Athens appears to have
been thoroughly defective. We find a want of reliance
upon the power of their own principles, a shrinking
from the trouble of trying to influence and convince
their opponents, and a too ready resort to the easy sub-
stitute of exclusive societies. We hear of the formation
of certain most narrow and exclusive oligarchical clubs,
and very little else of a higher character. In themselves
these ovvwμoola rather afford a warning than an
example.
No doubt such associations have their use.
What we
call Clubs are part of the necessary life of a free
country; but their natural tendency seems to be towards
narrowness, prejudice, and violence. It may be hoped
that the Jacobins and Cordeliers were the last modern
reproduction of that type of Athenian association which
Thucydides has immortalized; but in all political clubs
the spirit which sent forth the aristocratic assassins of
the short-lived Athenian oligarchic revolution, and the
cruel democrats of Paris, is, we may be sure, that
which in times of excitement is always to be feared and
guarded against.
How far the Athenian system of Colonies and depen-
dent States is capable of affording instruction to modern
times, though closely connected with the development of
political parties,―inasmuch as colonies give, along with
domestic grievances and foreign wars, the great oppor-
tunity for party combinations,-is too wide a subject for
this lecture. The existence of a multitude of such de-
pendencies attached to such a State as Athens must
Their shoulders applied unpretendingly but vigorously to the wheel
in good time, might have saved their country from a terrible ca-
tastrophe."
LECT. II.
COLONIES, ANCIENT AND MODERN.
suggest many analogies to Englishmen. If the lesson
had been wisely studied, it might have prevented our
quarrel with our American colonies. Those States might
have retained their connection till they were ripe for
separation; the seeds of long future hostility would not
have been sown; and the two countries, when the
hour of separation came, might have proved that mutual
support to one another which we may perhaps yet hope
some day to witness. Without asserting that it rules
one of the greatest questions of our times, it is at least
noticeable that the position of Athens collapsed into
almost insignificance when her dependencies dropped
off. As nations progress in their onward career, it may
be prudent that they should from time to time review
their position as to their colonies, and that not only with
regard to themselves, but relatively to each other and
the neighbouring States of each. A connection desir-
able at one time may not be so at another; but the
mere material argument of pecuniary loss and gain,
based on the condition of affairs at a particular moment,
is far from sufficient to settle the question.
83
The moral weight and consideration given by Colonies
to a nation, the support she may gain from them at a
critical period, the use others may make of what she
discards, the sacred obligations implied in forming a
colony, the force of the link which binds the past with
the present-these and many other such points, varying
in different cases, will always be taken into account
by sound statesmen; for they are by no means senti-
mental or transcendental arguments, as some would
have us believe, but, on the contrary, lie at the root of
the whole matter.
Lastly, the contemplation of this period of Athenian
•
3
G 2
│
84
DEMOCRACY IN RELATION TO WAR.
LECT. II.
history supplies some strong arguments for a policy of
peace, or at any rate against all but the most neces-
sary wars. M. de Tocqueville has pronounced that the
tendency of a Democracy is naturally towards peace.
Events have not as yet proved the truth of his remark.
He also says, that war is the grand evil to be feared by a
democratic State, for when war is once begun, the army
of a Democracy will always desire to continue the state
of war; and consequently the alternative of ruin by
internal divisions or subjugation by a domestic despot is
always imminent. This dictum agrees well with the
history we have been considering. It found an illustra-
tion in France. America fills us with anxiety.* It is
a warning for ourselves. According to this view, the
more the democratic element preponderates, the more
dangerous will war be to domestic unity and strength,
and the less able should we be in consequence of
any war which might arise, to take the place befitting
a member of the European Confederation; the more
probably should we be exposed to disgrace when
obliged to act. But precedents, whatever M. de
Tocqueville may say, are, as we have already asserted,
not in favour of the immunity of a democratic State
from war. The inference is, that checks on democracy
should not be discarded. Cosmopolitanism is very well
in its proper place; but patriotism, like charity, begins
at home. At any rate, when a nation under the process.
of democratic development is goaded into war by a
popular sentiment, it is right to remember that the
These remarks were made, it will be remembered, during the
great American war. Its conclusion is too recent and its conse-
quences too indefinite, as yet, to add any complete illustration in
favour of, or against, the prophecy of the philosopher.
85
danger to its internal and external condition will be
greatly increased if the war should cause a severe strain
on the resources of the State. The patriot will cherish
whatever enables his country to emerge from any war
into which she may be driven with least injury. Wars,
in short, are certain to take place, however much peace
may be coveted; and the consequences are scarcely less
certain. Wise men will connect the two facts.
LECT. II.
PICTURE OF A PERFECT STATE.
Bishop Butler, in a well-known passage, has drawn a
fine picture of the influence which a perfect State would
exert in the world. "In such a State," says he, "there
would be no such thing as faction; but men of the
greatest capacity would, of course, all along have the
chief direction of affairs willingly yielded to them, and
they would share it among themselves without envy.
Each of these would have the part assigned him to
which his genius was peculiarly adapted; and others
who had not any distinguished genius would be safe,
and think themselves very happy, by being under the
protection and guidance of those who had. Public de-
terminations would really be the result of the united
wisdom of the community, and they would be faithfully
executed by the united strength of it. Some would in
a higher way contribute, but all would in some way
contribute to the public prosperity; and in it each
would enjoy the fruits of his own virtue. And as
injustice, whether by fraud or force, would be unknown
among themselves, so they would be sufficiently secured
from it in their neighbours. For cunning, false self-
interest, and confederacies in injustice, (which are) ever
slight, and accompanied with faction and intestine
treachery-these, on the one hand, would be found
mere childish folly and weakness when set in opposition
86
TRUE PROGRESS ONLY OBTAINED
LECT. II.
against wisdom, public spirit, union inviolable, and
fidelity on the other; allowing both a sufficient length
of years to try their force. Add the general influence
which such a kingdom would have over the face of the
earth, by way of example particularly, and the reverence
which would be paid it. It would plainly be superior
to all others, and the world must come gradually under
its empire, not by means of lawless violence, but partly
by what must be allowed to be just conquest, and
partly by other kingdoms submitting themselves vo-
luntarily to it, through a course of ages, and claiming
its protection, one after another, in successive exi-
gencies."*
In its perfection such a picture is Utopian. Butler
only uses it as an ideal illustration. Universal empire
will never again be realised until some great change
comes over mankind. But the steady effort to realise
the idea and satisfy the conditions proposed is not
Utopian. All experience tells us that precisely as a
State approximates towards these conditions, the effects
here depicted do most surely follow. Patience, modera-
tion, justice, fair dealing, consistency, self-sacrifice,-the
virtues of individuals, are also virtues which may be
and sometimes are exhibited in greater or less degree
by States. Modern States have even advanced so far as
to profess and parade such principles; their contempo-
raries are pretty well aware how much or how little
claim they really have to be credited with them. It is
the business of every citizen to weigh well what sort of
government, human nature being what it is, what sort
of institutions, what sort of political and social influences,
are best calculated to make such professions real; re-
* Analogy,' chap. iii.
LECT. II.
BY ACTING ON TRUE PRINCIPLES.
87
membering that what is not abstractedly the best is
generally best when it is once established, when it has
slowly grown up along with the life of a nation, and
when it has gathered round it those principles of re-
spect and loyalty which can never be hastily planted,
or, if they are, will be sure to wither speedily and hope-
lessly decay.
Thus the consideration of Athenian history, as we find
it in ancient authors, may not be without its use in
clearing our ideas on the points which press for settle-
ment in modern times.
יי
}
88
RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE.
LECTURE III.*
LECT. III.
THE RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE HISTORICALLY
CONSIDERED.-PART I.
NOVEMBER 16, 1865.
THE time has perhaps passed when theories of the
relations of Church and State could command attention.
Warburton, Paley, Coleridge, Arnold, Mr. Gladstone,
and Lord Macaulay, have had their day, each in his
turn. None of their contributions have been without
value; but their way of dealing with the subject was,
it may be thought, rather suited to a past than to the
present generation. Rightly or wrongly, we are learning
to look more to facts than to theories, and to inquire into
the history of what we see around us rather than to
rest satisfied with philosophical discussions. We are
learning to recognize that a thing which we have in-
herited from a remote period stands on a footing which
does not admit of our considering it sufficiently treated
when merely dealt with as an open question, or put
before us as a matter of choice whether we shall accept
it or not. If we find our inheritance impaired, it is to
history as well as to reason and policy that we must
look for light upon the repairs which that inheritance
may from time to time demand.
* This and the next Lecture have been published separately, and
have passed through a First Edition.
fr
LECT. III. MR. GLADSTONE AND LORD MACAULAY.
89
The two last-named writers have given us, each from
his own point of view, the highest results of the con-
troversy in its abstract form. It might not be useless
to attempt an impartial statement of what was left at
the end of that controversy; but it will be sufficient for
our purpose to say that, while the most determined
adherents of Church principles will scarcely support,
any more than Mr. Gladstone himself is supposed to
support, every statement or every deduction in the
able work of that writer's younger days, there are in
all probability very few Churchmen of any kind in the
present day who would accept the fundamental prin-
ciples on which the most brilliant of essayists has built
his structure.† Few would now be willing to forget
the lessons of all history, and exclude the establish-
ment of religion from the prime functions of govern-
ment. Few take so false a view of morality, the only
basis and bond of government, as to suppose that it
can exist without a Faith; few believe that such a Faith
can lay a firm and permanent hold on the various ele-
ments, rich and poor, of a widely scattered society
without the assistance of the State. Few would now
consider it a sufficient argument to point out that a
Railway Company, a Club, or a Joint Stock Bank, per-
form their functions without any agreement on religious
matters; or that because it may happen that two por-
tions of an army can combat in unison, although of
different Creeds, that therefore a Nation as a whole
must be considered free from all responsibility for the
Faith of those who compose it. We may indeed have
* This would of course be stated much more strongly if written
now, after Mr. Gladstone's open repudiation of his book.
† Macaulay's Essay on Gladstone's 'Church and State.'
90
CONDITIONS OF THE INQUIRY.
LECT. III.
been slow in learning lessons of toleration, but the most
tolerant do not find themselves obliged to give up
the position that the public recognition and support
of the Christian religion, as taught by the Church,
is the best possible condition for a nation; and that
all which falls short of it is a deterioration, a condition
to be deplored, a condition to be delayed as long as
possible, if it is still possible to save the principle upon
which alone a Church Establishment can be properly
retained. When we hear such a deformed and really
unnatural position as that of an organized State with-
out an Established Religion, not excused on the ground
of untoward circumstances, but held up to admiration
as theoretically superior to all others, we are irresistibly
reminded of a certain ancient fable about a fox that
had lost its tail.*
What, then, are the facts as to the relations of
Church and State in this country? What is the his-
tory of those relations? What have we inherited?
What do we now possess of our inheritance? What
have we in common with other branches of the Church?
What do those other branches possess? We cannot in
two short lectures do much more than indicate the
lines of inquiry, but that may be better than nothing.
We must start with an axiom. The Church is One,
Catholic, and Apostolic. She may be separated into
* To this brief summary of arguments for a State Establishment
of the Church should be added the security thus given (unless revo-
lutionary principles prevail) for private endowments, and the sub-
stantial independence of the transitory whims of their flocks thus
secured for the clergy, as well as the guarantee for sound teaching
given to the laity, if the proper conditions of the connection are
preserved. Permanence, universality, union, and independence, with
all their corollaries, can only be secured by an Establishment.
LECT. III.
THE EARLY CHURCH.
91
parts, but her parts are in essence entirely homogeneous.
Each branch possesses exactly the same sacred deposit
which was entrusted to the Church at the beginning in
order to be handed on to the end of time: and if any
branch loses this deposit, it ceases ipso facto to belong
to the one Whole. Each branch owns the same Divine
Head, refers back to the same original Constitution,
rejects all notion of any subsequent origin. The bishops
and clergy of each branch of the Church are the
appointed guardians of the one deposit. That view of
the Church of England which would degrade her, nay,
transform her whole existence, by asserting her to be
the mere creature of the State, an invention of the
Tudor princes, has been too often refuted to require
notice here; it is contrary to the best-known facts.
She has the same lineaments as her sister Churches of
the East and West; her connection with the State may
be of a different kind, but it leaves her equally pos-
sessed with them of all that constitutes a true branch
of the Church. Let us glance for a moment at the
general condition of State-connection in those other
branches, and in order to do so let us mark the prin-
ciples upon which the connection was first formed in
the undivided Church.
Under the heathen Emperors, surrounded by ene-
mies, and afflicted, yet strengthened, by persecution,
the Church, like Israel in Egypt, silently grew and
multiplied. Her internal organization, derived from
the Apostles, had so much in common with the local
institutions under which the Græcized populations of
the East flourished, that, by the time the civilized
world had grown ripe for the establishment of Chris-
tianity, the ecclesiastical framework of society had be-
鳌
​92
THE EMPERORS AND THE CHURCH.
LECT. III.
come the most vigorous and permanent force to be
found on the face of the earth. It would be more
correct to say that the Church of the fourth century
forced the State into combination with her, than to speak
of the Emperors as patrons of the Church. No other
policy than an acknowledgment of Christianity as the
State religion could have made government possible.
The mass of the people of the East, the source from
which the army was so largely drawn, had seriously
and intelligently embraced Christianity. It was not so
in the West, but the political power of Paganism was
gone. From the East the State-Christianity, retarded
by the different nature of Western society and institu-
tions, gradually, in spite of all obstacles, made its way.
The powers of the whole Roman world became the
powers of Christ.
And now, through the divisions amongst Christians,
began the struggles between Church and State, the
struggles between those of the people who most re-
garded political government, supported by the still-
existing influences of Paganism, and those of them
who most regarded ecclesiastical interests. The strug-
gle is gathered up into the persons of those who re-
present either class. At first the Emperor is the
"nursing father" of the Church, whose supremacy
over all its external and civil affairs is gratefully ac-
knowledged, and whose presidency at General Councils
is gracefully conceded; the clergy are the free subjects,
not the tools, of the civil power. But the independence
of the ecclesiastical organization begins to excite the
Emperor's jealousy. He begins to dread, and not with-
out some reason, an imperium in imperio. The heresies
with which the Church was never to cease from con-
LECT. III. ORTHODOXY OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE.
93
tending afforded a party within its own bosom for plots
and alliances. To divide and conquer became the
policy of the civil government. Yet, as we all know,
after the bitter conflict of the fourth century, the victory
was given to the "faith once delivered;" and so com-
pletely was the principle established throughout the
Roman world of a strict adherence to that Faith as
guarded (not altered) by General Councils, that the
adhesion of the Emperors to Orthodoxy became a
political canon, never afterwards to be overthrown.*
It became an unalterable law of the Empire. The
ecclesiastical machinery of their subjects might still
be used by the Eastern emperors for civil purposes, but
the doctrinal independence of the Church was hence-
forth secure. It was based on the people. The know-
ledge of, and interest in, the faith were not confined
to an upper or middle class; they were the inheritance
of all. As the Eastern Empire creeps on into the
Byzantine, we may find Emperors deposing Patriarchs,
or even temporarily interfering against the faith, but
that faith had taken too firm a hold to be overthrown.
At the worst of times some Emperor was raised up who
made it his pride to secure the privileges of the Church.
Philosophers may sneer at the insignificance of the
point on which the multitude may in times of danger
have made a stand; but the extreme obstinacy with
which the outworks were defended had no slight effect
on the final defence of the citadel. The sacred deposit
was more and more defiled with superstition, more and
more degraded by the servility of its guardians, more
and more weakened by puerilities; but the long and
* See Finlay's 'History of Greece under Foreign Dominion,' passim.
94 EASTERN NATIONALITY SAVED BY THE CHURCH. LECT. IN.
interesting, though melancholy records of Byzantine
history still, to the last, show a real and effective inde-
pendence of State dictation on all matters concerning
the faith.*
And we know how the constancy of the Oriental
Church, thus marvellously maintained through so many
ages, was rewarded. We know how when the clouds
gathered round her, when the last attenuated thread
of Christian government at Constantinople was rudely
snapped, the Church had done her work; how, in spite
of corruptions, she had handed down her sacred deposit
through the long ages of Saracen and Turkish oppres-
sion; and how, when that oppression had wholly de-
stroyed Christian independence, when the faults of
Church and State had worked out their punishment,
the Church was still to be seen preserved as by a
miracle amidst the wreck.
And we know, not only how it has been itself pre-
served, but what has been the consequence. The
tenacity with which the Faith has been retained by
the Greek and Slavonic races has in its turn kept their
Nationality alive during a prolonged slavery; and these
long-suffering people appear once more to be about to
enter- some indeed have already entered,-upon a
happier period. It is the second time in these classic
regions that civilization has been saved by the Church;
for without the National vitality afforded by the Church
of the fifth and sixth centuries, the barbarian invasions
which proved fatal to the West would most surely have
been equally fatal to the East. What was witnessed
then we are witnessing in a different form now.
* The sketch_given in Gibbon is of itself sufficient to prove this
statement.
LECT. III.
•
CHURCH AND STATE IN RUSSIA.
•
95
And in the history of Russia we may read in some-
what different characters the same story. There,
through the traditions derived from Constantinople,
have reappeared many of the phases of Byzantine
history. There also we read the history of a domi-
neering civil power, a too servile Church; but there
also we find the one indispensable claim to orthodoxy,
the unaltered, undiluted Faith, the same to-day as it
has ever been.* And it has survived (humanly speak-
ing) for the same reason as the mother Church; it has
fastened on the hearts of the people; it is mixed up
most intimately with their whole social and domestic
life; it is anchored so firmly that no profane or un-
scrupulous Czar, no turbulent faction of nobles, has
been permanently successful in any attempt to shake
it. The connection of Church and State is stamped
with the peculiar marks of Russian nationality, in many
respects so Oriental, so unlike our own; but the only
true terms of that connection are in the main under-
stood. The Church applies her utmost influence in the
service of the State; the State supports and protects
the Church. The State keeps a certain check-on the
whole perhaps a salutary check-upon the action of
the Church in its temporal relations, but well knows
within what bounds it is safe to interfere. Anything
* One of the most easily accessible proofs of the primitive purity
of the doctrines of the Oriental Church may be found in the tract
written by His Eminence Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, when
he was Professor of Divinity at Petersburgh in 1815, and lately
republished with his sanction by the Russo-Greek Committee of the
American Church. Copies can be obtained through the Eastern
Church Association, 22, Boltons, London, S. W. Of course this
reference to the purity of the doctrine must not be taken as a
defence of all the ritual and practice of the Oriental Church.
་
96 CHURCH AND STATE IN WESTERN EUROPE.
LECT. III.
approaching to State interference with doctrine is, it
is needless to say, never dreamt of. The Church is
governed by Churchmen, and the voice of the Em-
peror is heard through them. The memory of patri-
archs like Philip and Nikon is not extinct. If the
office of Patriarch has been extinguished by a Peter,
the Holy Governing Synod is at least no bad repre-
sentative of ruling power in the Church.*
The scene changes when we turn to look at the
relations of Church and State in Western Europe, but
we find the same landmarks. The Teutonic settlers
in the Empire erect Nationalities of a type very dif-
ferent from that of Constantinople. The religion of the
Church is the religion of the conquered; the Church
does not all at once come into connection with the
State; it takes time to establish relations between
both parties; and, when they are formed, it is be-
tween the conquerors and the clergy of the conquered
people, scarcely at all between the conquerors and the
people themselves. Thus the idea of an alliance ger-
minates, and soon colours more or less the whole his-
tory of modern Europe. The Church comes on the
stage of the barbaric nations from a point external to
themselves, either from the midst of conquered natives
owning a sort of allegiance to the Roman Patriarch, or
direct from Rome itself, a spiritual centre, which claims
a right of interference, and which receives the deference
due from a daughter to a mother Church.
*"From the above account it may appear how utterly false is
the modern notion, so industriously circulated by Roman Catholics,
that in Russia the Church is the mere creature of the State; whereas
probably, at the present moment, it enjoys more freedom in that
empire than anywhere else in the world."-(Neale's 'History of the
Holy Eastern Church,' vol. i. p. 58.)
LECT. III.
CONNECTION WITH ROME.
. 97
And now, as the incoherent barbaric kingdoms decay,
and scatter, and again reform, with every variety of
shape, almost like the fantastic combinations of the
kaleidoscope, the Church, with the ecclesiastical order
very highly developed, and with her all-embracing bond
of unity in the highest contrast with the shifting chaos
of political anarchy around, gains rapidly and steadily
in relative strength. As conquered Greece took cap-
tive her captors, so the conquered Romans vanquish
the Teutonic conquerors. At each change of dynasty
it becomes more and more worth the while of the new
princes to court the Ecclesiastical Order. Church and
State become interwoven with one another; the National
Assemblies are more or less Church Councils, the Church
Councils more or less National Assemblies. At length
we have in the West, not uninfluenced by the example
of the Byzantine Empire, so august even in its deca-
dence, and to these barbarians so mysterious and un-
approachable, a system of connection between Church
and State almost as intimate as that of the East. It is
equally based on the condition of orthodoxy on both
sides, equally arises out of political necessity, is equally
subject to danger at the hands of particular princes,
above all it equally provides for the substantial inde-
pendence and freedom of the Church in matters of
doctrine and discipline. Here, however, is the dis-
tinctive difference. While in the East the strong hold
of orthodox belief on the middle and lower classes of
society formed a barrier within the State against which
all permanent oppression was shattered, in the West
the external authority of Rome supplied a considerable
part of the support.
And truly this authority was much needed; for the
H
+
98.
FORMATION OF NATIONAL CHURCHES.
LECT. III.
aristocratic character of Roman society in the Western
Empire had lost nothing of its prevalence by the settle-
ment of the Teutonic tribes. It only took a new form.
The Feudalism of the Middle Ages excluded the masses
from any real share in government, nor were they
assembled in any centre of power from which their
weight could tell as it told at Constantinople. Had
not Rome been appointed as the mistress of the nations,
as the make-weight in the balance of forces, as the
standard to which all national Churches could turn,
laying from generation to generation its firm grasp on
the brute hand of power, it is not easy to see what in
those rude times could have saved the Church from
utter degradation. Had Rome but given to the nations
the Liturgy in the vernacular, an advantage from which
the Oriental Church had derived all along so much.
strength, how different might have been the history of
Christendom! But how different also her part in that
history! As it was, the good she was provided on pur-
pose to do lasted on till the nations were sufficiently
trained to act without her. The critical time was
bridged over. The Church's spiritual independence of
the State was secured as a condition of her connection
with it.
And now, as the Papal corruptions and impostures
increased, as the pretensions of Rome became more
hollow, and her influence began to be undermined by
her own self, the National Churches on their part began
to base themselves more securely on the people. The
rise to power of the Third Estate synchronized with the
decadence of Rome. Church and State had to fight
out the battle in each Nationality with varying results.
The power of the Papacy is almost destroyed by its
LECT. III.
ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH AND STATE.
99
French Captivity, its fatal Schism. The Councils of
the West are summoned to answer that appeal which
Rome can no longer be trusted to hear; and they pre-
pare the way for the great religious change which was
soon to follow. Then comes the time when the rela-
tions of Church and State are to be watched under new
conditions in those countries where the yoke of Rome
was thrown off. Those countries inherited all the ma-
chinery, all the guarantees of spiritual independence
-National Councils, Appeals to a common standard,
Freedom of action and self-government within certain
bounds. How did they fare? how in their changed form
did they retain their inheritance?
Our present purpose does not require us to trace in
detail, though a very valuable study in itself, the rela-
tions of Church and State in those countries of the
West where the Reformation did not shape all such
relations afresh. Directly or indirectly no doubt the
Reformation has affected those countries also. New
Concordats have been framed, or old ones modified.
But in all alike the very terms of their connection with
Rome, and through her with Roman Christendom, have
supplied some sort of guarantee over and above that
existing in the nation itself for the preservation of
doctrine and discipline. Whatever else those countries
have lost by their failure to throw off the Roman cor-
ruptions, they have at least kept this. If in them, as
with ourselves, the State has often used the Church
improperly for its own ends, has appointed Bishops for
mere political purposes, has checked the proper freedom
of Church action, and, even where conscientiously at-
tempting to keep within its prescribed duty of prevent-
ing action prejudicial to the State, has often overstepped
H:2
100
鷺
​SWEDISH CHURCH AND STATE.
LECT. III.
those bounds, yet the basis of faith, however overlaid
with the grossest errors, and, in the main, discipline,
have been secure. The Church is ruled through Church-
men; the public opinion of the Church cannot be over-
borne. The old struggle, so familiar to ourselves before
the Reformation, between the National and Roman in-
terests, may be constantly going on, but the substantial
independence of the Church on matters vital to her
existence is an axiom beyond all dispute.
Nor shall we at present venture on that wide review
of Church-and-State relations in the Reformed Com-
munions of Europe which would supply us with end-
less examples of variety in this matter; some, as in
Prussia, exhibiting something very like a pure Eras-
tianism; some, as in Sweden, a Church-independence,
especially in the appointment of Bishops, (though ex-
isting along with a Royal Supremacy,) which is in
many respects a complete model.*
*"In the Church law of 1686 it is said that the oversight, care,
and protection of the Church and Commonalty are intrusted by God
to the King. It is not understood in Sweden that by these expres-
sions the King has authority over faith, or worship, or matters purely
spiritual, but only over such things as concern the Church in her
outward relations, and in reference to her union with the State."
"His right to appoint the Archbishop and Bishops, as also the
pastors of the so-called royal benefices, he exercises under many
limitations. It is ruled by law, and the King always chooses one of
the three persons presented to him as elected by the majority of
voices among the clergy, a choice to which he is also limited in the
case of the pastors of congregations, except in the royal benefices."
—(‘History of the Reformation in Sweden,' by L. A. Anjou, Coun-
cillor to the King of Sweden. Translated by Dr. Mason. New
York, 1859. Appendix, pp. 660, 661.)
The true succession of the Swedish Episcopate is also defended
with much force in this book by Professor Knos, of the University
of Upsala.—(Appendix, p. 634.)
Mou
LECT. III.
EARLY-ENGLISH CHURCH AND STATE.
101
We shall for the remainder of these lectures confine
ourselves to our own country, and in order to under-
stand our modern condition must take a rapid survey
of the early history of English Church-and-State. It
may not be unprofitable to count over our treasures.
It is no insular self-complacency which prompts us to
see that we conserve our inheritance. The very state-
ment of our privileges carries with it a lofty style of
superiority which no other nation in the world can
boast. For have we not here in combination what all
others possess only in some mutilated form? Have we
not monarchy and self-government, order and liberty,
stability and progress, in the State, intimately bound
up, by a law and a custom as old as the State itself,
with a Church, as pure as the Primitive Church, and
not wanting, as tested by her Orders and her formula-
ries, in any of the formal characteristics which the defini-
tion of a true Church requires? If we understand clearly
how such a Constitution has come down to us, we shall
the better understand how in the midst of political
changes its substantial features may be retained.
It is scarcely necessary to say that we should not be
in our present position if the foundation of this most
remarkable of all Church-and-State connections had
not been solidly laid during the four centuries which
preceded the Norman Conquest.* It is not a thing of
yesterday. More than a thousand years have passed
since the relations of Church and State were so inti-
mately blended in this country with the very roots of
* For the purpose of these two Lectures the usual division of
English history has been followed, viz., the division into three
parts; the Saxon or Early-English; from the Conquest to the Re-
formation; and from the Reformation to our own time.
102
INDEPENDENCE OF THE SAXON CHURCH. LECT. III.
*
the Constitution, so taught to interpenetrate one an-
other in all functions of government, that, to use an
old simile of which we have been lately very forcibly
reminded, they may well be compared to the mys
terious and inseparable connection between the soul and
the body of the individual man. But it should be ob-
served that even then, so wisely did the far-reaching
mind of our Teutonic ancestors look before and behind
its immediate sphere of operation, so wonderfully were
all the so-called accidents of the times guided for the
best, that this government was never, on the one hand,
a government by priests,-never, on the other hand,
a slavery on the part of the Church. Owing a debt
to Papal Rome scarcely less than any other of the
barbaric kingdoms founded on the ruins of the Empire,
yet the independence of the National Church was never
compromised. With Bishops powerful in the Witena-
gemote, and seated side by side with the Earl in the
Courts, the spectacle of a State governed by eccle-
siastical Councils was never, even under a Dunstan,
witnessed in England, as in Gothic Spain. The Councils
of the Church were free and frequent, yet, as they
depended not on the authority of the Pope, so neither
did the King usurp any further power in them than
that his consent should be held necessary in important
matters. Converted by monks, and receiving from
monastic institutions, as yet but little debased, all the
benefits they were then able to afford; governed by
kings and nobles who have supplied, perhaps, in propor-
tion to their number a larger contribution to the rolls
of canonization than any other aristocracy, no portion of
* Hook's 'Archbishops of Canterbury,' vol. iii. p. 7.
LECT. III. CAUSES AND RESULTS OF INDEPENDENCE.
103
the Western Church so jealously guarded the marriage
of their clergy, none more strenuously supported their
Parish Priests against the ever-strengthening array of
the Regular Ecclesiastics.
Where shall we look for the causes of this marvellous
moderation of spirit, exceptional as it is, though not by
any means unalloyed by a rude and phlegmatic tem-
perament? Was it in any degree the consequence
of our insular position? Was it part of that Chris-
tian inheritance derived from Celtic missionaries which
affected the infancy of the Saxon State, not so per-
ceptibly as the Roman form, but far more powerfully
than is generally supposed? Was it due to the over-
whelming preponderance of the Teutonic blood, so dif-
ferent from that mixture of races which obtained in other
provinces of the Empire? All this, no doubt; but still
more perhaps, the wisdom taught by suffering. Not
in vain had the Danish invasions for a time submerged
both Church and State in seas of blood. The premature
civilization of a people too early taught to exchange
the sword for the gown and the ploughshare, was thus
checked: the inherent weakness of a too rapid political
education was thus detected and strengthened. Toge-
ther Church and State had suffered, together they rose;
rose with a firmer and a wiser attachment to one
another. If both were yet once more to fall into a con-
dition too unhealthy for permanence, if the complement
to the great qualities of the race was yet to be found in
a kindred stock, trained under more intellectual and
more chivalrous influences, if years of bitter suffering
were yet to refine the political and ecclesiastical institu-
tions of England, they were now too entirely one to be
again separated. They were together strong enough to
104
SAXON SPIRIT FINALLY VICTORIOUS.
LECT. III.
assert in the course of ages the mastery over all the
power of their conquerors.
Observe how the Saxon principles were for ever, so
to speak, "cropping up" in after history. It is no mere
fancy. We are accustomed to trace this Saxon in-
fluence on our laws; it is no less evident in the rela-
tions of Church and State. On Saxon precedents the
very Conqueror (using them, no doubt, for his own
objects) grounds his resistance to the Papacy, when, in
the flush of his victorious career, Hildebrand demanded
that submission from the Crown which this country had
never yet yielded to Rome. It was the Saxon freedom
of the Church which, as each Norman monarch ascended
a throne, not his by natural right, he was obliged to give
a charter to protect. It was on Saxon principles, in the
main, that Henry II. and his great legal advisers
sought to establish the relations of Church and State
against what was, no doubt, the conscientious resistance
of Becket. It was the Saxon spirit which supported
and avenged the champion of the Church when the
proceedings of the King turned the unbending priest,
who was at least half a knight, into a martyr. It was
the Saxon spirit which stood behind the barons at
Runnymede, which expelled the French locusts in the
time of John's feeble son, and which, under the auspices
of Edward I., the first monarch who thoroughly repre-
sented it, once more consolidated a true and equitable
relation between the Crown and the Altar. From the
time of the great Edward to that of Henry VIII. it was
the Saxon spirit which was surely and progressively
modifying our feudal institutions, delivering the Church
and State from one after another of the Roman innova-
tions, and ensuring that when the great change camę, it
LECT. III. THE NEW PHASE OF CHURCH AND STATE.
·
With the Norman Conqueror came a new phase of
Church and State. Dr. Hook has once more supplied
us with an apt illustration: "The union thenceforth
may be compared to the union between man and
wife in one household. Although the general interest
was one and the same, there was room for misunder-
standings, disputes, and even for divorce. The almost
immediate effect was a struggle for the mastery between
two powers, the civil and ecclesiastical. If they were
no longer one in action, who was to have the domi-
nion?"† The metaphor might be much further ex-
tended; for it is the same in other words which is im-
plied in that " Original Compact" of old writers, the
field of many a contention in Constitutional battles.
What the supposed Original Compact was, which no one
C
105
should prove, not as in some other countries, a revolu-
tion, but a true Reformation; not indeed an unmixed
blessing, but a change which left Church and State
substantially what they were before, and capable of
passing on to future generations all that was of essential
value in either. That Saxon polity shewed such won-
derful vitality because it was of the only sterling sort.
It was a free and independent Branch of the Church in
close relation with a Constitutional Government. And
it may be worth remarking that the Faith of that
Church was in all the most important points identical
with that represented by our own modern English
Prayer-book.*
* Lathbury on Convocation,' p. 47 (second edition); Soames,
History of the Anglo-Saxon Church,' passim. Lingard, in his
History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church,' has weakened
the force of some of Soames's arguments, but he cannot be said to
have disproved the statement in the text.
،
†' Archbishops of Canterbury,' vol. iii. p. 7.
·
106
CHANGES AT THE NORMAN CONQUEST. LECT. III.
ever saw, but which is none the less surely implied in
the relation of Sovereign to subject, that and no less,
as Bishop Warburton has remarked,* was present in the
new Alliance of Church and State. A free and volun-
tary choice on both sides once made and unalterable,
a sacred tie, a mutual benefit, a respect for the rights and
privileges of each, a forbearance with the shortcomings
of either, a studious care to avoid irritating disputes,
the notion of protector and protected, of functions se-
parate yet accordant, of a graceful deference due to the
weaker party so long as it keeps its own place, supreme
only in its own department- all this was implied in the
alliance, and took a concrete form whenever the govern-
ment of both parties fell into good hands. That during
the disputes which so often occurred, the inevitable
consequence of human imperfection, these abstract no-
tions are often scarcely traceable, is no argument against
their existence and constant presence. We note the
storms because by their fury they force themselves on
our attention; we take the calm weather as a matter
of course, and make no note of it.
The confusion which is for ever besetting this sub-
ject now demands our notice. In England before the
Conquest, as in the early Roman Empire, it is easy to
conceive the same members of the State in their double
capacity. In their civil capacity they are the State;
in their ecclesiastical, the Church. The king and his
nobles, the bishops and the clergy, are the representa-
tives of the same people on either aspect of their posi-
tion. But now the Conqueror has dissolved that pecu-
liar tie, and has introduced the Continental, the Roman,
system. The Clergy and the Laity are separated in
* Alliance,' B. ii. c. 3.
LECT. III.
MEANINGS OF THE WORD "CHURCH.”
107
the Courts of Law. The Bishop no longer sits with
the Earl; the clergy are tried in the Bishop's Court for
criminal as well as civil offences. Separate interests,
separate customs, separate bodies of law, take the place
of the old united system. We find two rival wills, two
separate persona. The Canon Law, formed in the next
century, gives shape and permanence to the Ecclesias-
tical Courts; the Common Law grows with its mar-
vellous growth, entwined with the affections of the
people, or at least of the upper classes, in the secular
Courts. That rivalry between the clergy and the
lawyers, which is said to have left its marks on society
even to the present day, and which has found its con-
stant expression in the struggles between the Courts of
Chancery and Common Law, as well as in so many
of the political conflicts of our history, was then com-
menced. Henceforth we find it scarcely possible to
think of Church and State except as represented by
the civil government on the one hand, by the clergy on
the other. We lose sight of the Laity in general as
a part of the Church; and yet we know they are there
all the while. We know that the "Church" is just as
much the People of England regarded in their spiritual
capacity, and ministered to by properly constituted
spiritual persons, as in Saxon times. This is the source
of many of the errors made in discussion.
Men are
talking of two different things under the name of
"Church."
We may convince ourselves of the difficulty of clear-
ing our minds on the subject by observing how well-
informed people even yet, after attention has been
drawn to the error for so many years, persist in
speaking of such and such a person's "going into the
܆܃
108
THE ECCLESIASTICAL BODY ASSUMES
LECT. III.
Church," when they mean to say that he is going to
take Holy Orders. This error, which has so worked
itself into our very language, has perhaps been one
cause of the dangers to which the Church has been
exposed. It is one of those legacies of mediavalism
of which we did not get clear at the Reformation ;
it is the ground of that cold carelessness, or at best
lukewarmness of support, which leaves the battle of the
Church to be fought by those who without the Laity at
their backs are powerless in the conflict with evil.
It is more correct then to say that the struggle be-
tween the State and the Clergy as an Order commenced
with the Conqueror. The weight in the balance lost
by the Clergy in consequence of the change in their
position was partly compensated by the far closer ex-
ternal connection with Rome, partly by the far more
systematized alliances now made at home with .which-
ever section of the body politic might best serve their
turn at different times. The Conqueror, for instance,
having, with the aid of Lanfranc, placed Norman eccle-
siastics in all important posts as a means of securing
his Conquest, the close connection between the Crown
and the clergy is the first phase of the alliance. Not
Charlemagne when he planted the clergy as a garrison
in the midst of ferocious half-subdued borderers, not a
Byzantine Emperor when his well-drilled Bishops were
his most efficient State-officers, more sagaciously used
the Ecclesiastical Order for the discipline of his subjects
than William the Conqueror. Nor was ever prince
better served. The cathedrals and the parish churches
of the present day bear witness to the zeal and ability
of the Norman ecclesiastics; the great place secured
for their Order in the new organization of the realm,
LECT. III.
A WHOLLY DIFFERENT POSITION.
109
the wrecks only of which are now visible, was their
reward.
It can scarcely be doubted that when the traces of
conquest had been somewhat obliterated by time, what-
ever may be set on the other side of the account, a
change for the better had come over the clergy of this
island. They became more learned, more active, more
accomplished, not less devoted. And there can be no
doubt that their relative strength as a body had made
an immense stride. What Guizot has remarked with
regard to the clergy of the Empire, when the bar-
barians settled in its provinces, was here experienced
in a still more marked manner, though on so much
smaller a scale. With every class of society, with
every one of the forces of the State, the Anglo-Norman
clergy soon began to blend their interests. At first
their fortunes depend on that of the Crown. With
keen sagacity they support those members of their
great patron's family who were most likely to secure
that "good peace," and devote that attention to the
land of their adoption which they saw, far more clearly
than others, to be necessary for the healing of its
wounds. With vast possessions, and with a feudal state
like that of the greatest barons, with seats in the Great
Council of the Realm, exceeding in number those of
the laity, the hierarchy move about among the fierce
Norman aristocracy their equals and not seldom their
superiors. And each year they take up more and more
of the down-trodden people into their ranks, swelled
in number as those ranks were in that age to an extent
we can scarcely measure now; till at the end of less
than a century the Ecclesiastical Order, with its arms
extending in every direction, its head in the Great
N
110
INHERENT WEAKNESS OF THIS POSITION.
LECT. III.
Council and the King's Court, its foot in every parish
of the realm, is the arbiter and guide of the whole
nation. And, as if this were not enough, the support
of Rome, needful at times to curb the lawless will of
a Rufus or a Beauclerc, to check the policy, good in
the main, of an imperious Henry Plantagenet, to restore
the trembling balance of regal power when the over-
whelming forces of the barons, with French help, had
well nigh extinguished it, to protect in fact and foster
the liberties of the country, as it most surely did at
times, in the infancy of the Constitution,-this support
of Rome was also at the disposal of the clergy.
No wonder then that with all these advantages, to
which may be added, what was closely connected with
them all, the superior education and mental develop-
ment which they undoubtedly possessed over all around
them, and with all the claims to popular gratitude
which they might most justly plead, as aiding to deliver
the Saxons from their degradation, and, afterwards, the
Villein-class from a wretched slavery (claims allowed
by so unexceptionable a witness as Lord Macaulay),*—
no wonder the ecclesiastical order came to be looked
upon as the representative of religion, as the corre-
lative of the State, as the body with or against which
alliances were to be made, as, in short, the Church.
But through this Roman connection, corrupt as the
Papacy was daily becoming, and claiming, as it did
every day more arrogantly, an unlimited obedience
which it appeared to have less and less title to claim,
it was inevitable that this "Church" should also be
regarded more and more as something foreign, as well
* History of England,' vol. i., Introduction.
THE CONQUEROR'S COMPACT.
as external, to the State; and that, in consequence,
as soon as the Constitution had grown into sufficient
strength, she should be subjected to a series of or-
ganized attacks which exceedingly reduced and under-
mined her power. As Rome was at first her strength,
so it soon became her weakness. The staff became
rotten, and it broke.
LECT. III.
111
Each of the next four centuries witnesses a further
step in the gradual diminution of ecclesiastical power.
The most exact form of the so-called Original Com-
pact to which we can refer for the terms of the new
alliance is that with which the Conqueror set out.
his part, the part of the State, as we have seen, the
Church was placed in the independent position she held
in the Continental States. That position carried with
it the Church's own Synods, the Church's own Courts,
a voice, or at least attention to her wishes, in election
of Bishops. But it was worthy of that great man and
of his great Archbishop that the one should impose,
and the other admit, limitations to the power of the
clergy, which after-experience showed to be absolutely
necessary for the safe existence of a National Church.
There was to be no divided allegiance to the Patriarch
of the West, no Pope and anti-Pope for Englishmen ;
Church and State must be in accord on this point.
There was to be no imperium in imperio; no decrees
of Ecclesiastical Synods were to become the law of the
land without the king's license. There was to be no
weakening of the king's authority by the excommu-
nication of his great lords till the nature of the offence
had been certified to himself. Many of the struggles
of the next two centuries arise out of the attempts of
the ecclesiastics, often for long periods together suc-
•
་
112
CHURCH FREEDOM REGULATED.
LECT. III.
cessful, to evade these laws: and though for the time
their efforts may in some cases be justified,* yet it was
well for all parties alike that these landmarks did on
the whole remain fixed. But, on the other hand, other
struggles arose from the proved insufficiency of these
restrictions. It was very well for a powerful mon-
arch like the Conqueror to establish an ecclesiastical
independence of municipal law while he was at hand
with the sagacious Lanfranc to keep order; but the
lapse of a century fully proved the necessity of a further
limitation. The evils of the system had by that time
come to a head. The Becket struggle was its direct
consequence. That struggle ended, and happily ended,
in placing the clergy in their proper position on the
vital point of criminal trials. It was the first great
step towards making them real subjects of the realm;
while at the same time our monarchs learnt a lesson
as to the inherent power of the Church (in its larger
sense), when stirred to its foundations, a lesson which
was never afterwards forgotten. Another century was
to pass before the relations of the State with the clergy
could be placed on a durable footing, before the clergy
could be truly considered subjects, owning an undivided
temporal allegiance to their anointed Sovereign.
But in the mean time Magna Charta, in no slight
degree through the efforts of the clergy, had become
the law of the land for all time: and in that great
instrument their claims and privileges were duly regis-
tered. Not then for the first time did the famous words,
ECCLESIA LIBERA SIT, head a royal charter. They had
formed a necessary part of charters already granted.
* See the Essays on Anselm in the Rev. R. W. Church's 'Essays
and Reviews.'
LECT. III.
CHURCH FREEDOM EXPLAINED.
113
They represented the sacred inheritance of earlier
times. "It would have been," says Lingard, "more
satisfactory if these liberties had been enumerated and
described;" but we may be sure Stephen Langton
knew his business well: he was the last man to make
a mistake in this matter. It might not in the future
secure a greater liberty for the Church, if her liberties
were too definitely laid down according to the idea at
that time entertained of them. It was thought better
to leave the old expression, full of significance as it was,
for the interpretation of those who were responsible for
interpreting it rightly. The words echo down the ages,
the law of the land now as it was then.
CHURCH BE FREE." It is for each age to see that it
keeps the law under which the connection of Church
and State is alone tenable.
"LET THE
►
But it is not true to say that there was no explana-
tion put forth of this freedom. The Charters both of
John and subsequent princes interpret it in some de-
gree; and the practice of the times proves the rest. It
meant FREEDOM IN THE ELECTION OF BISHOPS. "Know
ye that we, by the grace of God, &c. . . . by the advice
of our honoured Fathers and by the advice of other
lieges, have in the first place granted to God and con-
firmed by this our present Charter for us and for our
heirs for ever that the Church of England shall be free,
and shall enjoy its rights and franchises entirely and
fully; and that election shall be free." And at sub-
sequent confirmations of the Charter these expressions
were either repeated or more fully explained. In
9 Henry IV. we find, "Elections of all archbishoprics,
bishoprics, and other dignitaries elective whatsoever
shall be rendered henceforth free, without any manner
;
•
I
114
ESSENTIAL PARTS OF CHURCH FREEDOM. LECT. III.
of disturbance by the Apostolic See or by command-
ment of our Sovereign Lord the King; provided always
that our said lord the King shall have as freely his
liberty and prerogative as any of his noble progenitors
have had before his time." And this prerogative had
been explained by 25 Edward III., which asserted that
"the elections were first granted by the King's pro-
genitors upon a certain form and condition, as to demand
license of the King to choose, and then after the election
to have his royal assent, and not in any other manner.
And the irrevocability of this species of freedom is
declared in 2 Henry VI., where it is said that "Holy
Church and all the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, &c.,
having liberties and franchises, shall have and enjoy all
their liberties and franchises well used and not repealed,
nor by the Common Law repealable."
The further notice of this vexed question of Election
of Bishops it will be more convenient to reserve for the
next Lecture. What else did the Freedom of the Church
mean? It meant also FREEDOM TO HOLD COUNCILS OR
SYNODS, subject to the restriction upon the making of
canons imposed by the Conqueror. It meant also FREE-
DOM IN THE ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS from secular in-
terference, which was indeed specified in Magna Charta.
And lastly it meant, what came home more practically
than anything else, freedom from arbitrary taxation, the
right of the clergy to meet and tax themselves. These
are the main elements in that Freedom of the Church,
or, strictly speaking, of the Ecclesiastical Order for the
benefit of the rest, which, as far as they were assaulted,
it took care to see ratified and secured at every crisis of
politics. The numerous other customs and privileges
included under the broad ægis of Church freedom need
not be mentioned here.
99
LECT. III. CHURCH FREEDOM ATTACKED BY POPES.
115
The first three of these conditions of Freedom, exer-
cised within proper limits, and guarded from all inter-
ference with civil liberty, are essential to the healthy
existence of the Church. They are essential in all
times and under all circumstances. They are essential
in order to the proper exercise of ecclesiastical func-
tions. They are essential to the faithful transmission
of the sacred deposit. An Established Church may drag
on a feeble existence without them, but at imminent
risk, and under grievous depression. The last of the
conditions is accidental. Yet it was the fortune of the
Church of England (wisely ordered no doubt by One
who can see the end) that in all alike, essential and
accidental, she was hampered not only by the natural
causes of difference which must always arise between
Church and State, but by the action of that Roman
power with which since the Conquest she had been so
closely allied.
It was not only that unscrupulous princes were
tempted to keep open Episcopal Sees in order to seize
their revenues, or to force into them slaves and tools
of their own, but they too often had a colourable pre-
text for such tyranny in the equally tyrannical exercise
of their vast power by the Popes. How often was it
a mere race of fraud and wickedness, the ancient rights
of the Church and the Metropolitan having been over-
borne, which should carry off the spoils, the King or the
Pope! How plausible must any stretch of royal power
have appeared when an iniquitous system of "pro-
viding" for bishoprics and livings before they fell vacant
was skilfully managed by a foreign and anti-English
power, using the most subtle of all agents in this country
for its own purpose! It was not only that the temporal
¿
I 2
116
EFFECTS OF PAPAL TYRANNY.
LECT. III.
power was always naturally and properly jealous of any
synodical action which might interfere with the laws of
the land or the freedom of the subject, but the Popes
had gradually seized the power of English Councils into
their own hands. After the Papal Legate, long success-
fully resisted, had at last (in 1125) succeeded in usurp-
ing the well-ascertained and most ancient office of the
Metropolitan, it was seldom that the precedent was dis-
regarded. The repeated acts of the Legislature which
at last checked, though till the Reformation they never
wholly stopped, the practice, while they did a real ser-
vice to the country, yet at the same time fostered a
spirit which tended to the subversion of all Church
discipline and all Church freedom. It was not only
that the inherent impatience and dislike of statesmen
to ecclesiastical freedom were excited by the spectacle
of litigation in Ecclesiastical Courts, but their indigna-
tion was perpetually aroused by those constant appeals
to the venal Courts of Rome which, in spite of the Con-
stitutions of Clarendon, continued to be made up to the
very time of the Reformation. It was not only that the
liberty of ecclesiastical self-taxation had to struggle
against the rapacity of monarchs or the exigencies of
the times, but the example of tampering with it was set
by the Papal Court. What more just than to argue—
if you can spare money for those who are directly or
indirectly assisting the national enemies, you can spare
it for the national chest; if you cannot secure yourselves
from the grasping avarice which many of you vehe-
mently disapprove, you must be protected by the
emptiness of your barns; you must first render unto
Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's; national wealth
must be taxed for national purposes?
LECT. III.
THE EDWARDIAN CONVOCATION.
117
We might well wish that all invasions of ecclesi-
astical liberties had been equally just, or rather that
all matters of dispute between Church and State had
admitted of an equally righteous method of adjustment.
The act of Edward I. and his wise counsellors, by which
the clergy were placed, as regards taxation, on the same
footing with all other subjects of the realm, was harsh
in its immediate operation, but its substantial wisdom
and justice can scarcely be doubted. It was a legitimate
termination of a state of things which had grown up out
of the usage of times when it was of less consequence;
but the Constitution was now taking shape, and the
national necessities could no longer be met by the old
methods: this ancient privilege was no longer tenable.
From the Convocations which soon grew out of that
settlement, summoned regularly, along with the new-
born Representative Parliaments, for the purpose of
regular instead of the old irregular self-taxation, dates
the commencement of that especial form of ecclesiastical
self-government which we trace down to the present
day—that thread, often so slender, yet never broken, by
which one at least of the essential liberties of the Church
has been conveyed to our own times.*
*
* It may be observed here that what is called "Convocation" is
held by some great authorities to be in reality a twofold assembly.
That of the Southern Province is a Provincial Synod—an institution
as old as the Church itself-summoned by the Archbishop (and thus
always first meeting at St. Paul's for Divine Service and certain
formal acts), as well as a representative Assembly of the Estate of
the Clergy, meeting, according to the Edwardian settlement, along
with the other Estates of the Realm, for business at Westminster.
Some have advocated the separation of these two characters as an
escape from the difficulties attending undue State interference, the
reform of clerical representation, and the co-operation of bonâ fide lay
:
118
THE NATION CHECKED
LECT. III.
For the next two centuries the Church is more or
less in a state of transition. Her representatives and
guardians, tenaciously clinging to Rome, become more
and more out of harmony with those forces of govern-
ment which are gradually gaining power. The
Statutes of Richard the Second's reign evidenced the
triumph of those forces; the seizure of the Alien Priories
gave an ominous presage of future attacks. But her
vast wealth, her firm hold on the Constitution, the affec-
tion of a large proportion of the lower class (less influ-
enced by the heaving motions of the pre-Reformation
than the middle), the support, at first perhaps from
interest, and then from conscience, of the House of
Lancaster, the leading position of a Chichele or a
Beaufort in the State, the constant wars which dis-
tracted men's minds as well as brought political power
to the Church, and above all the good solid English
sense which told the nation that a Reformation, how-
ever much required, was not to be entrusted to the
hands of the Lollards, kept the stately edifice erect. To
the last she showed a bold front to her enemies, played
them off upon one another, took advantage of their
mistakes, and attempted, though with feeble hands, her
own reformation. Kings, nobles, the upper classes,
threw in their lot with her.
And in truth the dreaded opinions of the reforming
party were not unjustly charged with the odious features
of revolution, with the fanaticism of desperate men, the
heresy of untaught men, leaving the ancient landmarks,
Churchmen. No opinion on this point is offered here. Time and
circumstances will show. The same twofold character attaches of
course to the Convocation of the Northern Province. (Vide Wake's
State of the Church,' &c., p. 27.) This view is, however, disputed.
LECT. III.
A PREMATURE REFORMATION.
119.
and groping their way by the light of an uninformed
private judgment. Any rottenness of the old house
seemed better than a deluge which would sweep all
away. The wisest men trembled at that which, fixing
itself in our national mind at the Lollard period, has
run on without a break from those days to the present
in the body politic. The same fierce spirit of resistance
to all authority which distinguished John Ball from
John Wiclif, and the later Lollards from the first Poor
Priests, is that of which the fanatics of the seventeenth
century were only one out of perpetual developments.
It was necessary that a century and a half should elapse
before the sterling element in the reforming party could
recover itself from these degrading associations, and from
a mere destructive, become a constructive, agency.
Then, at last, having infused its spirit into Bohemia and
Germany, and receiving thence in return, at the critical
moment, the impulse itself required-chastened by
persecution, and penetrated by all the electric influences
of that stormy age, it was in a state to afford a handle
for the grasp of one who seemed, with all his detestable
vices, to be yet raised up for the special purpose of
effecting the mighty change.
Never did the glory of the unreformed Church blaze
higher than just before it set at the fall of Wolsey.
The long delay had been of infinite service, for she was
thus enabled to pass on her inheritance. Through the
prolonged conflict with the pre-Reformation the rela-
tions of Church and State had suffered no material
change. If anything, the expiring energies of the
Plantagenets had drawn the bonds closer together;
and the silent changes in the State which the first
half-century of the Tudors had produced, had rather
•
f
120
THE CHURCH WAS STILL FREE
LECT. III.
given notes of warning than effected any severance.
To the last the Church used her ancient privilege of
holding Synods, and those Synods, though too late to
stave off the Reformation, were growing more national
and less enslaved to Rome. In matters of doctrine
Parliament, though becoming so powerful, left the
Church to herself. To the last the power of correcting
ecclesiastical offences, however it was exercised with
a shameful cruelty (and for this it is not the eccle-
siastics alone who are to blame), was rigorously con-
served by the Church. To the last, in spite of the
temptations which Popes and clergy had themselves
offered to the Crown, elections to bishoprics were free
in theory, and, to some extent, though indirectly, in
practice. Above all, if the deposit of the faith had
received many Roman corruptions, it had, at least for-
mally, lost nothing while in the hands of its medieval
guardians. The rust of ages had but to be rubbed off.
Where anything of the status which a proper ecclesi-
astical constitution requires had been lost, it had been
very much from the Church not keeping to her own
functions. The guardians of the Church had too often
encroached on the governors of the State; there had
been too great a confusion between the things of Cæsar
and the things of God; and there was an almost inex-
tricable entanglement in the errors and politics of Rome.
The Church was to undergo the severest trial, the most
fearful purgation, to which any Church could be exposed.
In the next Lecture we shall have to note this process,
and observe the final escape of the Church from the
Roman connection; we shall have to examine the
question whether this casket of spiritual independence,
the necessary framework for the conservation of the
LECT. III.
WHEN THE REFORMATION CAME.
121
deposited jewel, was preserved in the new relations of
Church and State introduced by the Tudors of the
Reformation; or, to put it in another way, we shall
have to confront the assertions of those who have
allowed the boisterous tide of State Supremacy to
conceal from their sight that feebler current of Church
Freedom which it will be ours to trace. We shall have
to watch this current, now eddying out into the broad
stream, now compressed into narrow channels, often
the deeper for their narrowness, yet never lost. We
shall have to measure its breadth as it approaches our
own times; and thus, gathering into one focus the
light thrown on the relations of Church and State by
all the centuries, may learn some lessons useful for
ourselves as units in the great mass of British citi-
zens, not brought into this marvellous inheritance for
nothing, but with a duty to do which at least in-
volves our making ourselves acquainted with the facts
concerning it.
--
#
122
THE CHURCH AFTER THE REFORMATION LECT. IV.
LECTURE IV.
THE RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE HISTORICALLY
CONSIDERED-PART II.
NOVEMBER 17, 1865.
WE are now to consider the relations of Church and
State during the third period of English history, from
the Reformation to the present time. We shall find
these relations affected by all that had taken place pre-
viously, changed in character, yet substantially the
same. If they are still to be regarded rather in the
light of an alliance than of an incorporation,-if we have
the same Church, with the identical Bishops, priests,
and deacons for its ministers as before the Act of
Submission, the same Convocation, the same Ecclesias-
tical Courts, the same congé d'élire, no more a mockery
than before and no less, the same dioceses, the same
cathedrals, the same parish churches, frequented for the
most part by the same worshippers, the same Doctrine,
as far as each was primitive, the same Liturgical offices,
only purified, the same Constitutional tie between the
guardians of the Church and the governors of the
State, we have at the same time, now at last, the com-
plete triumph of the old Saxon independence of Rome,
brought about mainly by that middle class which inhe-
rited with their blood the principles of their remote
forefathers; we see the corruptions of the Faith shaken
off which those forefathers (at least in their earlier his-
•
LECT. IV.
IS THE SAME CHURCH AS BEFORE.
123
tory) never knew; we find a return to that greater sim-
plicity of an earlier stage, carried, perhaps, in some
instances to excess, but in that tendency to excess only
sharing the fate of good things in all great changes; and,
lastly, we have at length an end to that excessive influ-
ence in the government of the State possessed since the
Conquest by great ecclesiastical officers, which was a
wholly different thing from the joint action of ecclesi-
astics in State affairs known to the Saxon Constitution.
*
Great was the gain of the Reformation: yet no one
ought, no one does, in the present day, speak of it as
a pure gain. It is unhistorical, it is untrue, and there-
fore it is worse than useless, to conceal its drawbacks.
It was no slight injury, however little it was the fault
of the English Church, to be cut off from communion
with so much of Christendom; it was no slight loss to the
cause of religion that so vast an amount of monastic pro-
perty should be divided between the King and his hungry
courtiers, instead of being distributed for the benefit of
the people through the clergy and the schools; it was
no slight evil that the clergy should lose so much ground
in social rank, should be recruited from a lower class of
people, and, losing the ubiquitous influence which (with
manifold inconveniences and gross abuses) the monastic
system gave, should have had so little means afforded
them for making up the deficiency. It was no slight
evil that the great National separation from Rome was
only too sure to involve sectarian schism, and that the
proportions of the Church should shrink from the posses-
sion of the whole, however uneasy a possession, to that
only of a part, though by far the greatest part. It was
* See Coleridge on 'Church and State' for the Teutonic idea of a
fund set apart for a "Clerisy."
;
124
NEW POSITION OF THE CHURCH.
LECT. IV.
no slight change in her political status, however neces-
sary, that her Prelates should become, by the abstraction
of the Abbots, a minority in the House of Lords, and
that, by the iniquitous distribution of her property, a
body of hereditary opponents to the recovery of her just
rights should be raised up for her perpetual enfeeble-
ment. Above all, it was no trifling price to pay for
deliverance from a foreign usurpation that the Crown
should gain a power over ecclesiastical affairs which
' nothing but necessity, if even that, could justify.
If the illustration used in the last Lecture may be
reproduced, if State and Church are still man and wife,
the same husband and the same wife, we must hence-
forth regard them as we should a married couple, long
used to a certain well-recognized position both as to one
another and their neighbours, now no longer tenable,
since they have been obliged to migrate to some ruder
land where the state and dignity of the wife are lost,
where she has to make herself useful as a drudge, and
where she loses no little of her own self-respect, though
still doing that service for her imperious lord which
alone keeps his household together; till at last, startled
at symptoms of a growing tendency to neglect, face to
face with the possibility of being turned out of doors,
and wearied with making useless remonstrances, she
once more stands upon her inherent, indisputable
claims, counts up her losses, and deliberately pronounces
that the union can only continue on the footing of a
return to at least the spirit of the "Original Com-
pact."*
* It is hoped that these expressions will not be taken to encourage
a mischievous way of talking about the separation of Church and
State, which has become too common of late years. These Lectures
LECT. IV.
HENRY THE EIGHTH.
125
How much light has of late been thrown on the his-
tory of Henry VIII.! And yet, though we can better fill
up the picture, how exactly does he remain where he
was! It was no chance medley, the meeting of the
work and the instrument, of the man who was capable
of shaping anew the relations of Church and State, and
the Reformation to be effected. Inheriting the great
position made for him by his father, combined with the
advantage of not having been the heir-apparent, with
every personal advantage of mind and body, taught the
science of government by the ablest ecclesiastic England
had seen since the days of Becket, backed by the middle
and a great part of the lower classes of English society,
governing a nobility thinned by the Wars of the Roses
as well as cowed by the first Tudor's vigorous reign, and
a hierarchy trembling at the storm now rising on all
sides, seated on a throne which, through the struggle of
the two Princes who were so nearly balanced, for a time
arbitrated in Europe,-how exactly was such a Prince
calculated to change the Constitution of a State! How
could such a Prince fail to be tempted to play the
tyrant!
As a tyrant there is no doubt he acted, and, if the
Church felt his hand, so also did the State. His
temporary stretch of the Regale was certainly no more
unconstitutional than his obliging his subjects to allow
his Proclamations the force of Laws. But surely of all
his public acts there was none which will less bear
inspection than that which has given its shape and
form to the relations of Church and State from that
are based on an ample recognition of the extreme importance of the
connection of Church and State, and, by a reference to history, they
attempt to point out the true method of retaining that connection.
墨
​126
ELIZABETHAN SETTLEMENT
LEGT. IV.
day to the present. That the king who had himself
sanctioned and forwarded the holding of a Synod by
Wolsey as Papal Legate, should turn round, and having
caught the whole clergy in his trap, should use the law
of the land against them, urging the penalties of a Præ-
munire till he had reduced them to make the Submission
he himself dictated, is one of the most tyrannical deeds
on record.* But we are not concerned here to award
praise or blame to particular monarchs; we are only
to trace the consequences of their acts. Yet let us
not forget what we noticed in the previous Lecture.
If we cannot excuse the King, we must remember it
was the Popes who had first set him the example of
trampling on the rights of the National Church.
The Act of Submission freed the Church from Rome.
In that Act everything required for the purpose was
bound up. But it did something more. It tied the
Church to the Crown in a manner which if it had not
been subsequently explained, and practices founded on
it modified, would have gone far to ruin her position
as a true Church. It is, however, quite unworthy
of fair-minded men to judge the Reformed Church of
England by all the violent proceedings of Henry.
As steps to an end let them be marked. There are,
indeed, some of them which it would be well if we
remembered better. But the true aspect of the new
relations of the Crown to the Church must be looked for
in the settlement made by Queen Elizabeth, after the
violent fluctuations of the first turbulent years of the
* Hallam admits that "6 Henry's prosecution of the Church on
this occasion was extremely harsh and unfair."—" Constitutional
History of England,' chap. ii.
LECT. IV.
127
Reformation had subsided. By the Articles of her
reign alone are Churchmen bound as to the Royal Su-
premacy; and the explanation of the prerogative con-
tained there need bring no blush to their cheeks. This
explicit renunciation of all offensive interpretations of
the Oath of Supremacy left the position of the Church
open indeed to assault, but it was not at all objec-
tionable if taken in the sense intended. If the strange-
ness of the new position scarcely suffered her at first
to move freely, the essential forms of freedom were at
least retained; and thus an opening was left for ex-
pansion when the proper time should arrive.
OF THE SUPREMACY.
And, in fact, the evils of her fettered condition were
not materially felt so long as the crown was on the
head of princes who knew their duty, and felt their
responsibility. Mary's melancholy reign may be put
aside as exceptional; but it has been often remarked
that the Tudor sovereigns and the early Stuarts had
at least this merit, that they would allow no one to
touch the Church but themselves. With the Church
they stood or fell. Their Coronation by the Archbishop
was to them profoundly significant. And, if it is not
easy to understand how Magna Charta, with all its
stately guarantees of Church freedom, could be recon-
ciled with all the acts of the Tudor Supremacy, the
plea of necessity carried them over all: a tyrant's plea,
to be sure; but the nation preferred its own to foreign
tyrants. It is the only and the true ground of defence
for all parties concerned in the new settlement of the
Church. We may not condone individual acts of ra-
pacity or violence, we must condemn the wholesale
robberies, the judicial murders, the bitter persecutions,
of that terrible period; but we may surely perceive
128
CHURCH FREEDOM WAS RETAINED.
LECT. IV.
that nothing short of a series of able and strong-
willed sovereigns, taking the interests of the Church
into their own hands, could, humanly speaking, have
carried her through the perils of the times. They
alone saved this country from religious wars like those
of France, from a return to Popery on the one hand,
from & Genevan settlement on the other. Not that
these sovereigns must be thought of as acting single-
handed: beyond doubt they had the better sense of
clergy and people with them; but they had the will
and the power necessary to give the victory to that
better sense, to the opinions of that moderate party,
which but for them, in the mad conflict of opinion,
must assuredly have gone to the wall. English Church-
men may very easily lose sight of the dangers from
which they have been preserved in a too narrow criti-
cism of the acts of their preservers. There is an old
proverb against speaking ill of the bridge which has
carried one over.
We have said that the essential characteristics of
the Church's freedom were preserved in the transi-
tion. Let us examine this a little further.
1. There was no pretence of taking the judgment
of ecclesiastical matters away from the clergy, or of
preventing the Church from declaring when necessary
what that truth was which she was founded in order
to hand down. "If the cause be spiritual, secular
Courts do not meddle with it;" "We may refuse to
answer before any civil judge in a matter which is not
civil." So writes Hooker,* the recognized exponent
of Tudor Church and State. There was no thought of
stretching the Supremacy beyond this. The Crown
* Hooker, viii, 8, 9.
LECT. IV.
ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS.
129
was to see justice done by ecclesiastics in the Eccle-
siastical Courts. The Crown in the last resort was to
hear appeals from the Archbishop's Court, those ap-
peals which, though temporarily stopped by the Con-
stitutions of Clarendon, used, up to this time, to go
to Rome; and it heard them through Delegates chosen
by the Lord Chancellor.* Now, as the appeal could
no longer go to Rome, it must vest somewhere; and
so long as the Delegates were faithfully selected, with
a view to mere cases of ordinary discipline, a good deal
might be said for this COURT OF APPEAL.† It was
probably only intended as a temporary arrangement,
and was no doubt liable to abuse, yet for a long period
it was not abused. But the great point is that it went
side by side with the active existence of Convocation,
regularly sitting, and acknowledged as the proper
Court for questions of doctrine. From that august
tribunal there was no appeal; for to it lay the Appeal
in causes where the King was himself concerned,‡ and
in its hands on more than one occasion we all know
that even the imperious Henry found it convenient
to lodge his cause.
As far then as the Ecclesiastical Courts went, we are
not in the least obliged to admit that the Royal Supre-
macy, as established by the Tudors, interfered with the
freedom of the Church. The Crown decided no eccle-
siastical questions itself, but only through its proper
Constitutional agents. The language put into the
* 25 Hen. VIII,
† See Sir Robert Phillimore's paper read at the Norwich Church
Congress,
‡ 24 Hen. VIII, See Joyce's 'Civil Power in its Relations to the
Church,' chap. iii.
K
130
MODERN COURT OF FINAL APPEAL.
LECT. IV.
mouth of the Sovereign, in the Preface to the Articles,
shews a clear appreciation of the Church's rights, or, as
expressed at the last revision, "a princely care that the
Churchmen may do the work which is proper unto
them." The deterioration of the Court of Delegates
commenced, however, early, and progressed rapidly;
though it was reserved for our own times to combine
in one almost every possible objection which can lie
against such a Court.* It will be seen at once that
*"In the year 1833 it was enacted that all causes coming to the
King in Council should be tried by a Committee, to be composed of
at least four out of a number of persons of whom all must be lay-
men; a very small proportion only could be civilians; none of the
rest, except the Lord Chancellor, need, be members of the Church of
England. Nay, the Court might actually be composed in any given
case of persons holding their offices during the pleasure of the Crown,
that is to say, of the minister of the day." "It is vain to lay stress
upon the unmeaning arrangement for the presence of Bishops at the
hearing of such a case (the trial of doctrine) which has been unduly
embellished with the name of assessorship. For, first, they are few
in number; secondly, so many other qualities are of necessity to be
regarded in the choice of Archbishops, and likewise in filling the See
of London, that the three persons who are officially Privy Councillors
can very rarely be the best theologians on the Episcopal Bench;
thirdly, their presence is not required by law; fourthly, they are
no assessors at all, having no defined function, and need not, when
present, be consulted at all, or may be consulted on the small points
and not on the large ones; fifthly, the whole system of such con-
sultation is secret and irregular, and in the highest degree irre-
sponsible, and no blessing can be expected to flow from it. Here
then we have arrived at a plain and gross violation of the principle
recited in the preamble of the 24th Henry VIII., that the spirituality,
according to the constitution of the realm of England, administered
the law spiritual, as the temporalty administered the law temporal ;
the principle declared by Lord Coke, that the king administers his
ecclesiastical laws by his ecclesiastical judges, a principle of universal
application, but of the most especial and vital application, it need
hardly be observed, in the trial of doctrine. And thus I arrive at
'
LECT. IV.
CONVOCATION REMAINED THE SAME,
131
nothing said here applies to that temporary abuse of
the Supremacy, the High Commission Court, which,
neither in its constitution nor its proceedings, we are
in any way concerned to defend.
2. We come next to CONVOCATION. This vital portion
of the framework of Church freedom was, as a matter
of course, retained at the Reformation. There was no
attempt to deprive the clergy of their stated meetings;
their sessions are an unbroken series; there is no such
gap as some suppose between the sessions previous to
the Reformation and subsequent to it. It was the same
essential part of the Constitution as before; self-taxation
by the clergy was as much the necessary order of
things; every ancient usage and formality was kept up
as tenaciously as ever. The Act of Submission did not
affect its character, though it left the door open to abuses.
The Archbishop still summoned and prorogued it. The
arrangements concerning it were but a return, in most.
respects, to those of the Conqueror. It was only the
Conqueror's law for which kings had so long been con-
1
the answer to my second question proposed at the outset, namely
this, that the present composition of the appellate tribunal, with
regard to causes of doctrine, is unreasonable, unconstitutional, and
contrary to the spirit of the Reformation Statutes." "Lord Brougham
has declared from his own recollection that cases of heresy were not
taken into view at all on the passing of the Act of 1833.”—Mr. Glad-
stone, ‘On the Royal Supremacy,' pp. 78, 79, 80. Published in 1850 ;
reprinted, by his permission, in 1865 (Parkers). See also Fuller, 'On
the Court of Final Appeal' (Parkers).
Thus the present Court of Final Appeal is not only open to the
objections so unanswerably urged by the Church, but it is actually
the result of a mistake, an accident, an oversight! (Surely a hun-
dredth part of the attention given to Cattle Plague or Railway Bills,
might turn this Court into something which would be satisfactory
to the nation at large as well as the Church.)
K 2
132
BUT CONSTITUTIONALLY REFORMED.
LECT. IV.
tending against Popes which prevented the passing of
Canons into the law of the land without Royal permis-
sion. That Convocation should only meet when sum-
moned by the King was not only in the spirit of the
Constitution, but it was, like all the other defences of
the Royal Supremacy, a necessary bulwark for the time
against Rome. In this particular, Convocation was only
in the same condition as Parliament, to which it almost
exactly corresponded. The post-Reformation Convoca-
tion was in fact the recognized ecclesiastical Parliament.
"It was the supreme Court for the trial of doctrine: it
might correct or depose offenders; might examine and
censure heretical works; might, after having obtained
the royal license, make and publish Canons; might,
with the consent of Parliament, alter the Liturgy; and
in short transact all business of an ecclesiastical cha-
racter. * In this Convocation there was always one
guarantee of independence, the negative on the pro-
ceedings of the Upper House possessed by the Lower.
This might lead, and has led, to complications; but
it is easy to see how the overweening influence of the
Crown, or of mere political Bishops, might in this
way be checked.†
">
The inherent independence of the Church on this
side was then sufficiently preserved in form by the
Tudor princes. The danger of the new Royal Supre-
macy began to show itself when unconstitutionally
worked: when the Crown was advised to omit the
* Lathbury, ‘On Convocation,' chap. v.
†The Act of Submission applied to the Assembly technically
known as Convocation; it has been questioned whether it affected
the Archbishop's independent power of summoning his Provincial
Synod or Council.
鹭
​•
LECT. IV. THE CHURCH REFORMED HER OWN SERVICES. 133
summons of the Ecclesiastical Parliament, or, if sum-
moned, to prevent the passing of Canons which did not
conflict with the laws and customs of the realm, and
which were demanded by the united voice of the Church.
3. It flows from the last heading, but must be men-
tioned as a separate mark of the independence of the
Reformed Church, and the more because so many
mistakes are made on the subject, that she had FREE
LIBERTY TO REFORM HER OWN LITURGY, AND TO DE-
CLARE IN HER OWN FORM THE ARTICLES OF THE FAITH.
After the first wild convulsions of Henry's will had
spent themselves, Cranmer, Ridley, and their coadju-
tors, had the work entrusted to their hands. The
reign of Edward VI., short and troubled as it was,
was yet long enough to give us the inestimable pri-
vilege of our Book of Common Prayer, sanctioned by
Church and State. The proceedings at the opening
of Elizabeth's reign were the almost unanimous return
of the nation to that of which it had been illegally
deprived by Mary. No alterations have since been
made in the Prayer Book of any material consequence,
and where slight changes have been introduced, Convo-
cation has first passed them, then Parliament.* The
Articles, though our princes were seriously and most
intelligently interested in their formation, or re-enact-
ment, were none the less the free work of the clergy.
The King and the laity in Parliament only ratified and
sanctioned the Articles; they did not meddle with them.
Thus the Church was permitted to settle all her formu-
laries, establish all her reforms of ritual, and make all
necessary concessions to Nonconformists, during the
* See Wheatly, 'On the Book of Common Prayer.' Appendix to
the Introductory Discourse.
134
ELECTION OF BISHOPS UNCHANGED.
LECT. IV.
time when she was in the fittest state to do the work,
before she was raised too high by the policy which
Laud represented, or depressed too low by that of
which Walpole may be taken as the exponent. Thus
she retained the full amount of primitive truth without
sacrificing her inheritance of Apostolical order.
4. The ELECTION OF BISHOPS, if not free in practice,
was as free as in Roman times, and at least retained
the form of freedom. If the Bishops of the Reformed
Church are accused of servility, the old observation
should be remembered that a Bonner took out the same
Commission from Henry VIII. as a Cranmer from Ed-
ward VI. The ancient form, known as the congé d'élire,
of which the Church was for a short time deprived,
was soon restored and still exists. "The congé d'élire,"
says an old writer, "is still kept up in England, though
to no other purpose than to show the ancient right of
the Church to elect her own Bishops, and may one day
prove a handle to recover it." As however there is no
doubt that the congé d'élire has been a contradiction in
terms for many an age, this may be the place for the
briefest inquiry how far this practical denial of the in-
herent right of the Church, secured by Magna Charta,
and acknowledged in form, is a bar to the claim of
independence.
So brief an inquiry must proceed on the assertion,
which students of history will acknowledge requires
no proof, that this claim of the State to appoint or
nominate, or at least sanction or confirm the appoint-
ment of, Bishops, has been made in all ages, in all
branches of the Church, and within all countries. It
is not in the least peculiar to England. The popular
Election and the Confirmation by the Metropolitan with
HISTORY OF THIS QUESTION.
""
which the Church started in her career began prac-
tically to fall, but only occasionally, into the hands of
the Emperor soon after State-connection commenced.
The Emperor, as representing the people, was often
applied to by the Church in great cities in order to
escape from the turbulence of popular elections in
troubled times. "Before the fall of the Empire," says
Guizot, "the Bishops were elected by the clergy and
the people. The Emperor only interfered in rare cases,
in the election for the most considerable towns.' But
in the exercise of this occasional and exceptional †
function there was a very decided understanding be-
tween both parties. As was remarked in the former
Lecture, the adhesion of the Emperor to Orthodoxy was
(after the fourth century) a law. Church and State
were in harmony. Each performed its own function—
often jarring no doubt in the best of times, but with
substantial justice on both sides: the State protecting
the Synods, and lending its support to the laws of the
Church, the Church supporting the Government in all
lawful matters, and lending its all-powerful aid in every
relation of social life to the cause of order and obedience.
LECT. IV.
135
As time went on, and in the Eastern Roman Empire
primitive purity decayed, the Emperors interfered on
this point more constantly. The position gradually
* 'Hist. de la Civilisation en France.' 12me Leçon.
† That the Emperors acted in this matter only occasionally and
exceptionally is not a mere matter of antiquarian interest for English
Churchmen: for in the explanation of the Royal Supremacy given
in the Second Canon, the authority of "Christian Emperors of the
primitive Church" in ecclesiastical causes is expressly referred to as
the model on which our Sovereigns' Supremacy was framed, and of
course it must have an equal weight in regard of this particular part
of the Regale.
+
136
BISHOPS IN THE EASTERN CHURCH.
LECT. IV.
taken up by the Emperors was that they had the right
of sanctioning or confirming those who were nominated
by the clergy of the see, and already confirmed by the
Metropolitan-a right which secured them a veto on all
appointments. But the notion of absolute power in
the matter was not present. We shall not be misre-
presenting the convictions of the age when we say that
the inherent rights of the Church, the sacred tie, the
spiritual relation, between a Bishop and his flock, were
too well understood to admit of such an idea. The
whole respect of a people for their pastor, at least all
that was worth having, was too clearly seen to hang
upon a well-recognized distinction between the civil and
the ecclesiastical power. The true interests of the State
would have been not only weakened, but the advantage
derived from the Church-far greater than the Church
ever derived from the State-would have been entirely
lost if the people once began to believe that religion
was a mere State-craft, their Bishops mere State-
officers. They could no longer have respected such a
religion, and the whole foundations of society would
have been loosened. And in fact as this principle of
true respect for the Church declined, as the Emperors
pushed their power over it further and further, that
loosening of the foundations of society became more
apparent. The later ages of Byzantine history will
scarcely be quoted except for warning. In its pro-
longed decrepitude this particular abuse obtained almost
the dignity of a law, for every symptom of independent
political life had disappeared; the carcase of the State
alone was left, and "the eagles were gathered together.'
Little was left the Church but her Faith.*
* See above, p. 93.
""
LECT. IV.
BISHOPS IN THE WESTERN CHURCH.
137
In the early days of the barbaric kingdoms of West-
ern Europe, as soon as they were once fairly converted,
and while Christian teaching was yet fresh, the ortho-
doxy of the Church was in little danger; but in the
matter of elections the anarchy of the times soon affected
the relations of Church and State. M. Guizot has thus
summed up the facts of the case during the first period
of these kingdoms:-" The Churches were wealthy;
the barbaric kings made them a means of recompensing
their servants and enriching themselves. In nume-
rous instances they directly nominate the Bishops. The
Church protests; she claims the election; she does
not always succeed therein; many Bishops are retained
in the Sees where they have been placed by the kings
alone. Still the fact is not changed into a matter of
right, and continues to pass for an abuse. The kings
themselves admit this on many occasions. The Church
by degrees regains the election; but she also gives way
in her turn. She grants that after the election the
confirmation by the king is necessary. The Bishop
who formerly took possession of his See from the time
that he was consecrated by the Archbishop, now ascends
not his throne until he has obtained the sanction of
royalty. Such is not only the fact, but the religious
and civil law.” *
Charlemagne, who left his mark on most things, gave
fixity to this system, at least in theory. In him was
gathered up all the past; in him met all Teutonic, all
Roman elements, hitherto so inharmoniously mingled;
and from him, stamped with his mark, they descended
'La Civilisation en France.' 12me Leçon.
† Capitulary of the year 803. Quoted by Neander in ‘Church
History,' Stebbing's translation, vol. v. p. 122.
138
BISHOPS IN THE SAXON CHURCH.
LECT IV.
into the constitution of the modern kingdoms formed
out of his Empire. The trust reposed by their subjects
in the monarchs of these kingdoms, and exercised by
those monarchs in that branch of the Regale which
gave them the right of Confirmation of Bishops, was
fully acknowledged by themselves to be a trust. The
Clergy as guardians of the Church kept their full share
of influence through the Nomination. The direct voice
of the Laity was the element which had disappeared
during the transition from ancient to modern times;
but it would be wrong to make light of the indirect
influence they exerted, an influence perhaps more really
effective in the long run because less dependent on
varying times and circumstances; and this influence
was no doubt exceedingly powerful while the Church,
however corrupt and internally divided, was as yet un-
broken by schisms. England itself received no small
amount of political legacy both as to Church and State
from Charlemagne. But the peculiar relations of Saxon
Church and State were more favourable to some sort
of independence on the point of episcopal elections
than they were abroad.* If the Witan did not always
appoint for we know the King often appointed—it
did so frequently; and the Bishops in the Witan seem
to have managed ecclesiastical affairs pretty much as
they wished.t
* Neander as above.
† It is scarcely necessary to quote the numerous authors of late
years whose researches into Anglo-Saxon history have thrown light
upon these points. The substantial agreement of two competent
writers, opposed to one another in principles, will be sufficient to
establish it. Soames (in his 'History of the Anglo-Saxon Church,'
p. 149) says: "In that see (Canterbury) without even the form of a
reference to Rome, was vested a control over episcopal vacancies.
LECT. IV.
ELECTION OF POPES.
139
The confusion which succeeded upon the failure of
Charlemagne's wonderful attempt to organize a world
gave free scope to those struggles upon Episcopal ap-
pointments which perpetually afflicted the disorganized
States which had composed his Empire. The grand
appointment of all, the Papacy, afforded the central
and typical instance of the general struggle. When
the Emperor was powerful enough to exercise a real in-
fluence in the appointment of a Pope, the appointments
were respectable; when too feeble to affect the elec-
tion, that election fell under the control of corrupt local
influences, and appointments became unspeakably bad.
Qn the death of their prelate the principal inhabitants of a diocese,
both clerical and lay, elected a successor. This individual was pre-
sented to his Metropolitan, and on consecration he was required to
swear canonical obedience to no other."
And Lingard, in his 'History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon
Church,' p. 91, says: "By Theodore the discipline of the Saxon
Church was reduced to a more perfect form. Under him and his
immediate successors the appointment of Bishops was generally
made in the National Synods, in which the Primate presided, and at
which the deputies of the vacant Church attended to give their
consent." (This "attendance of deputies" seems, however, to lack
evidence.) Lingard then shows how corrupt practices began to
creep in on the part of Kings, Bishops, and clergy generally; and
says that "in historical records of the ninth and tenth centuries the
appointment is sometimes described as made by the unfettered choice
of the clergy and people; sometimes as proceeding solely from the
absolute will of the sovereign." "The probability is that both were
conjoined; that the recommendation of the prince operated as a
command; while the choice of the clergy was a mere form prelimi-
nary to the confirmation and consecration of the prelate elect.
Thus it was certainly under our native kings, the descendants of
Egbert, who, however, appear to have disposed of the most im-
portant sees in National Councils with the consent of the Bishops
and Earldormen; but under Canute and his successors the will of
the King was notified in a more imperious manner."
140
WAR OF INVESTITURES.
LECT. IV.
The degradation of the Papacy in Carlovingian times
belongs to a page which Christendom may wish blotted
from its annals. When order revived in the persons of
the German Emperors, order revived also at Rome, but
soon took a form, as regards the Papal appointment,
unknown to earlier periods. A direct Nomination by
the Emperor, and that a Nomination exercised in favour
of his own countrymen, became the rule. The same
principle was more and more openly extended to other
ecclesiastical appointments. So violent a bending of
the old rule of compromise in one direction could
not fail to bring on a corresponding violence from
the opposite side; and the War of Investitures was the
result. The secular and non-secular principles in the
relations of Church and State were now for the first
time brought into serious conflict on a great scale.
Heroic men on either side fought out a battle which
deluged Europe with blood for half a century. Each
party had much to allege on its own behalf, but, till
each was exhausted, neither could see its way back to
the compromise from which both had departed, and
to which at length both returned. The feudal cere-
monial of the times, and the developed state of the
Papacy, did indeed dictate the peculiar terms of the
new agreement, but the substance was the same as that
which had existed in the Roman and the Franco-Roman
Empire. The Pope was to invest with the ring and
staff (in the case of an Archbishop with the crozier);
the Emperor was to receive homage for the tempo-
ralities. From that day to this there has always been
exactly the same need of just such a compromise.
Putting the Metropolitan, or the Bishops of the pro-
vince, or the Diocesan Synod of Clergy and Laity, or
LECT. IV.
COMPROMISE IN FAVOUR OF POPES.
141
the independent Church in some form or other, for the
Pope, the Election should come through that channel;
the revenues, the State position, from the Crown.
Translated into modern language, if the State chooses
the Bishop, it should be a choice amongst those pre-
sented for choice by the Church.
To the compromise effected in the twelfth century
must be traced what we now see around us. Rome
became the standing example of the clergy-elected
Bishop; and the Popes, freed from the direct, though
not from the indirect, influence of secular princes,
became competitors with those princes for a share in
the election of every Bishop in every Western State.
This, though indeed the letter of the compact, seriously
interfered in practice with the working of the principle
of the compromise. As the battle had been fought
under the leadership of the Popes, so the result was
found to be in their favour, not in that of the National
Churches which had supported them. Like the dwarf
in the alliance with the giant, the national forces gained
much honour, but little solid result. The principle of
ecclesiastical independence in regard of elections was
indeed preserved, but it was represented by a foreign
Bishop; and thus its force, from the growing estrange-
ment between Rome and the nations, was seriously
impaired. Still, even in spite of so great a disadvan-
tage, the ecclesiastical power, both in this country and
on the Continent, was sufficiently strong to protest
against, and, on the whole, offer a certain dogged re-
sistance to, the arbitrary will of kings: the confirma-
tion or sanction of the appointment of Bishops was all
that was technically granted them. In numerous cases
the Church struggled against improper appointments,
142
THE CHURCH AS FREE AS BEFORE
LECT. IV.
and at least kept the notion of her veto alive. She
was in fact backed up by the public opinion of the
State at large, and in many instances found pious kings
or powerful ecclesiastical statesmen to take her part.
It is here indeed that we are to look for an answer
to the question we have proposed. If from a variety
of causes, growing not only out of the ever-present facts
of human nature, but out of mistakes on all sides in the
past, the rights of the Church in the election of her
chief Pastors have been overborne,-has the "unwritten
law" of the Church, has the public opinion of the
Church laity, been strong enough to compel the respect
of the governing power? Has she practically retained
a veto of which she may appear to have been deprived?
Have her indirect influences really prevailed on the
whole? If we apply this test to the system of Episco-
pal appointments under the Tudor princes, it may be
said that the Church was practically free even here at
the most critical period of her history, and in the most
delicate of all relations to the State. The Regale was in
the nature of things somewhat more tightly pressed
than before, but as a compensation the necessity under
which the Tudor and early Stuart princes lay to pre-
serve the discipline of that Church in which they had
embarked their fortunes, obliged them to choose on the
whole the men of whom the Church approved. This
moral guarantee, which left so much to the capricious
will of monarchs, was indeed a bad exchange for the
ancient usage; but it was not new at the Reformation,
and at least the form of freedom was retained—an ines-
timable thing to save in any State, because the form
can always be clothed with life; but most of all in our
own, where precedents are never too antiquated, the
LECT. IV.
ON THE FOUR CARDINAL POINTS.
143
hopes of reform never so favourable as when that re-
form can be based on laws still existing, though not
carried into act. Two of our post-Reformation sove-
reigns have attempted of their own accord to rectify
the almost universal abuse of the Royal power in ap-
pointing Bishops. "King James I. used this method
in Scotland, that when any Bishop died, the Archbishop
convened his fellow Bishops, and they gave in to the
King the names of three persons whom they judged
most fit, out of whom the King chose one into the
vacant See."* And King William III., "soon after
the loss of his Queen, was induced to appoint a Com-
mission, consisting of the six most distinguished Prelates
on the Bench, who were to recommend fit persons to
supply all vacant Bishoprics, Deaneries, and other pre-
ferments, as well as Headships and Professorships of
the two Universities in the Royal patronage.” †
We may then say that on all the four cardinal points
which must be taken as guarantees and bulwarks of
the independence of the Church, viz., ECCLESIASTICAL
COURTS, SYNODS, REGULATION OF DOCTRINAL AND
LITURGICAL FORMS, and THE ELECTION OF BISHOPS, the
Reformed Church started on her course substantially
free, or at least as much so as she was in Roman times.
Her relations with the State were only changed in form,
and that form was in the main a recurrence to an earlier
state of things. The change in short was made on Con-
stitutional principles, though some of the temporary
acts by which it was effected were arbitrary enough.
The precautions taken at the Reformation were in in-
* Leslie's 'Case of the Regale,' Works, folio, p. 677.
† Monk's 'Life of Bentley,' p. 108, 1st edit.
144
DANGERS OF THE NEW POSITION.
LECT. IV.
tention, however they might be afterwards twisted,
rather anti-Papal than pro-Regal.*
We have spoken of the danger to which the Church
was exposed by the Act of Submission, and by the con-
sequent stricter connection with the Crown, and there-
fore exposure to the caprice of particular monarchs.
It was not only this. Relations which were tolerable
under certain conditions might become intolerable when
the conditions were altered. For good or for evil the
Church was for the future far more concerned in the
vicissitudes of the Sovereign than before; and as that
Sovereign's place altered with the course of time, so
the relations of the Church with the altered State
would require an alteration which she might or might
not be strong enough at the moment to gain. And we
must further add that her own external power to com-
mand attention was enormously diminished. However
overgrown, or rather irregularly developed, that power
had, previously to the Reformation, been, the Church
has never since that time been able to expand herself
in full proportion to the wants of the people.
Between the Reformation and the Restoration there
was no definite change in the relations of the two
powers to one another. The Church had indeed to
undergo the extremes of elevation and depression
within that period. Raised out of her proper posi-
tion by the mistaken policy of the two elder Stuarts,
* "To sum up the whole, then, I contend that the Crown did
not (at the Reformation) claim by Statute either to be of right or to
become by convention the source of that kind of action which was
committed by the Saviour to the Apostolic Church, whether for the
enactment of laws or for the administration of its discipline."-
Gladstone, 'On the Supremacy,' p. 21, as cited above.
LECT. IV. LESSONS TAUGHT BY THE GREAT REBELLION. 145
and exiled for a time with their successor, when re-
stored with the Sovereign she came back to a country
which had passed through an immense change. But
until that time, though for a while dormant, her rela-
tions with the State remained as they were fixed by
the Tudor compact. The Sovereigns of this period were,
with scarce an exception, the nurses and friends of the
Church. They only erred, the later of them, in attempt-
ing to govern the State by her agency. The weakness
of the hold which the first James and Charles felt they
possessed on the Government led them to lean on that
which has always failed when used improperly. The
nation, freed from the strong arm of the Tudors,`and
gathering each year fresh political strength against the
Crown, could no longer put up with Tudor government
from Stuart hands. Those who could not understand
the signs of the times had to succumb to the shock.
The Church, the Sovereign, and in the end the whole
nation, had each its lesson to learn. The Church had
to learn, that if, before the Reformation, the govern-
ment of a people by ecclesiastics was almost intolerable,
it was quite so afterwards; and that she might well be
satisfied if she could but secure fair play along with the
legitimate means for her proper development. The
Sovereign had to learn the limits of his prerogative,
and that he could no longer rely on one branch of the
Constitution at the expense of the rest. The people
had to learn that whatever they might have had to
suffer at the hands of ecclesiastics, it was as nothing
compared to what they had to endure from the Church's
enemies; and that for the future they must watch
Church, King, Lords and Commons, alike; the only
safety for all being that each should keep its due
L
}
146
THE CHURCH AT THE RESTORATION.
LECT. IV.
place. Coke had already laid down the law, and with
something of a prophetic spirit, in these words :-" And
certain it is that this kingdom hath been best governed
and peace and quiet preserved when both parties, that is,
the justices of the temporal courts and the ecclesiastical
judges, have kept themselves within their proper juris-
diction, without encroaching or usurping one upon an-
other; and when such encroachment or usurpation
have been made, they have been the seeds of great
trouble and inconvenience." *
At the Restoration, Church and State seemed to start
afresh, with the old Constitution more firmly founded
on the goodwill of the people than ever. But few knew
at that time how great a change had taken place during
the last twenty years, or could guess how short was to
be the duration of the happy prospect with which they
set out. It would have been impossible, even under
a better king than Charles, to return in all points to
the ancient condition of England. The old feudal land-
marks were of necessity swept away at once, and the
state of things under which we are now living took
their place. Silently and unobserved, one important
outwork of the Church vanished into the past. Tax-
ation was to undergo an entire change, a process of
centralization; the clergy were to relinquish their most,
ancient privilege of taxing themselves. They had
scarcely any choice in the matter; they made no re-
monstrance; they seem not to have foreseen the natural
consequence, but that consequence was most momentous.
Convocation lost its chief guarantee for a place in the
Constitution. There was no longer now the same cogent
reason for summoning it as before; and the kings who
* Fourth Institute, c. 74.
LECT. IV. PRACTICAL SUSPENSION OF CONVOCATION.
would have summoned it for Church purposes had
passed away.
With a profligate monarch, whose heart, so far as he
had one, was at Rome, and "who so plainly showed
that he considered religion a farce that he could not
properly be called a hypocrite," a Court as bad, of
course, as its king, a people relapsing by force of reac-
tion into licentiousness, the Church, after the banish-
ment of Clarendon, went through a period of trial
only less afflicting than when she suffered with her
murdered sovereign. But she had learnt her lesson;
and if she often lost the support of those to whom her
defence was entrusted, she gained that affection amongst
the people which she has, as far as she has reached them,
retained ever since. Her inner life also was illustrated
by great Divines: the best type of laymen arose within
her pale. Izaac Walton, and Browne, and Boyle, and
Evelyn, and Nelson, were but specimens of a class of men
which adversity had bred. Thus before the suspension of
her self-government had time to develop its injurious
effects, her rights and interests had been safely lodged
with the town and country parishes, the halls and cottages
of the entire realm. Her rights were indeed recorded in
plain language, for, in the first money-bill by which the
clergy were taxed along with the laity, a clause was in-
serted to the effect that "nothing herein contained shall
be drawn into example to the prejudice of the ancient
rights belonging to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and
clergy of this realm." But the rights, however protected
in words, were not used in fact. Grievances were now
unredressed because the sense of justice was no longer
quickened by the want of money. Some slight compen-
sation had, it is true, been gained by the vote for Mem
147
·
- we need is a
L 2
148
CHURCH CRAMPED BY PROTECTION.
LECT. IV.
bers of Parliament now first placed in the power of the
clergy; but the voice of the Church, which, by the Con-
stitution, should be constantly heard, was silent; her
influence, which, by the nature of the case, ought to be
publicly exerted for the good of all, was paralyzed. The
rulers of the land cared little enough for the State, but
for the Church still less;* and her relations to the State,
thus mutilated by the unconstitutional suspension of her
Synods, were not readjusted. Can it be said that they
have been properly readjusted since those days?
The Restoration period brought into prominence the
new difficulties with which, though without any diminu-
tion of the old, the relations of Church and State had
henceforward to contend. Nonconformity-to use the
most comprehensive word—never, after its defeat at the
Restoration, really recovered itself; but it was still a
political power. The Church, in an evil day, lent her-
self to Parliament for the purpose of keeping in sub-
jection what Parliament, speaking the voice of the great
mass of Englishmen, felt to be the common enemy.
Something may be said for the Test Act; its policy
must not be judged from the nineteenth-century point
of view; men were blinded with fear lest the perils of
the past should recur: if the Establishment were to pre-
vail, perhaps it could only at that time be secured at that
price; † but there can be no doubt that the future
position of the Church was grievously weakened by
the close alliance she was thus forced to make with a
Government about to become year by year less friendly
to her real interests. With Romanism in high places
* Charles II. has, however, at least the merit of making good
ecclesiastical appointments.
+ See Bishop Warburton's defence of the Test Act.
LECT. IV. COMPACT RENEWED AT THE REVOLUTION.
149
and ever imminent on one side, with Dissent, on the
other, strong enough to be used as a political tool by
the hand of power, with a Latitudinarian school spring-
ing up within herself, her danger was great; yet,
through her firm hold on the mass of the people, she
was enabled, surely we may say by God's Providence,
to hand down at least the traditions of her rights, along
with her unchanged faith, through the darkness of the
next century. Sometimes, indeed, she was even able to
claim the exercise of those rights.
The hold she had on the people taught the world a
lesson in the reign of James II. From the Church
came the political salvation of the country. The Uni-
versities, and, notably, Oxford, gave the first impulse to
the national resistance. The trial of the Seven Bishops
was the rallying cry of a realm. Its significance could
not be ignored. Statesmen might feel little gratitude
for the services thus rendered by the Church, but they
learnt her power. They shaped their course accordingly.
It became their policy to sap her influence, to play off
parties within herself against one another, to withhold
her rights and privileges as far as they dared, to teach
her to forget her independence.
As the Church bore her full share in the Revolution
of 1688, the Compact between Church and State was
now more solemnly ratified than before. The Corona-
tion Oath was fixed as it now stands,—a solemn record
of the monarch's obligation to the Church, and the
Church's Parliament was duly summoned to consider
the ecclesiastical state of the realm. Thus, after a long
interval, we find Convocation again exercising its proper
functions on the important question to which the King
was pledged, the Comprehension of Dissenters. We are
not about to discuss that question; but it falls into our
150
CONVOCATION AGAIN SUSPENDED.
LECT. IV.
plan to observe that the Session of Convocation made it
at once apparent that the Revolution had not diminished
the difficulties of the Church. It had in fact added
another of no small magnitude. The secession of the
Non-jurors not only carried off from the Church some of
the ablest and most devoted men, the very men most
wanted at this critical juncture, but also bequeathed a
political taint to what they left behind. If the new King
were to continue on the throne, he had (at first at any
rate) but little choice in the matter of Convocation. The
political condition of England was too critical; it would
not, as a matter of fact, bear the strain of an opposition
to Government within that body. Thus the continuance
of the practice of the preceding Kings—those Kings
who so ill performed their duty either to Church or
State-was only too fairly excused. It was ten years
before Convocation sat again.
And so for the second time the proper independence
of the Church suffered from political causes external to
herself. We have seen that the usurpations of the Papacy
had forced her into a questionable position with regard
to the Crown, and, though her rights had never been
repudiated, that the freedom of their exercise had in
the course of time been impaired. The affection of
a large portion of her members to the exiled family
was now to offer a similar impediment. But the purely
accidental character of both grounds of restriction is of
itself the best possible proof of the essentially just
character of her claims. It is obvious that when the
political accidents had passed away, when the repression
of Constitutional rights which temporary necessity had
brought about could no longer be said to be required,
then the normal state of things returned. To continue
impositions, which a just dread of Rome at one time,
LECT. IV.
CONVOCATION RESTORED.
151
and a justifiable dread of Jacobitism at another, had pro-
duced, up to periods when Roman and Jacobite political
power had ceased to exist, was more than injustice; it
was tyranny. It was a policy as short-sighted as tyran-
nical; for the Church's deprivation of her rights could
not but re-act upon the State: and it did re-act. Yet
it has been reserved for our own times to perceive and
to attempt to redress the wrong.
But before we speak of the Georgian era, we must
notice how, in the circumstances of that agitated period
which preceded the final suppression of Convocation,
out of evil came forth good.
The Jacobite leaven working among Churchmen no
doubt added to the activity of those who, towards the
close of William's reign, effected the temporary revival
of Convocation, but it did not create the spirit which
gave them the victory. There was a vehement feeling
of indignation throughout the country at the suspension
of the Church's Synods in that reign, and the controversy
it evoked has produced monuments of learning on the
question from which all subsequent times have drawn.
It will be enough in this Lecture to mention the three
works to which every one who wishes to understand the
controversy must refer.
The celebrated Letter to a Convocation Man'
aroused the whole nation. It was probably written by
Sir Bartholomew Shower, and is short, pithy, vigorous,
and eloquent.* The next was the far more elaborate
work of one whose busy presence we find from first to
last during the movement.
* Mr. Lathbury quotes the 'Atterbury Correspondence' in favour
of Dr. Binkes, but his references fail to bear out his view. He is no
doubt right in repudiating Atterbury's authorship of the paper.
(Lathbury on 'Convocation,' p. 344.)
152
WAKE AND ATTERBURY.
LECT. IV.
Atterbury's 'Rights, Powers, and Privileges of an
English Convocation,' followed up the first blow. So
ably, so vehemently did he follow it up, that it was once
said that though truth might be with Wake (his great
antagonist), the appearance of it was with Atterbury.*
These two works produced the revival of Convocation.
The third work to which reference has been made is
Wake's 'State of the Church and Clergy of England."
It is not the first of that great author's treatises on the
subject, but it is his greatest and most matured produc-
tion, exhausting every notice of English Synods from
the earliest times to his own. He and Atterbury were
no unworthy combatants. But it should be observed
that they do not differ so much as is sometimes sup-
posed. The controversy is often spoken of as one of
principle. It was only a difference of detail. Wake
contended for a greater power in the Crown as to
summoning Convocation than Atterbury admitted, and
for a greater power of action in the Upper House, but
his general conclusions on the claims of the Church are
as decided as his opponent's, and his distress at the
suppression of Convocation no less pronounced. These
are his words, the words of the champion of the Regale,
the favourite of the Court, the future Archbishop:
"Should we be ever so unhappy under a Christian
magistrate as to be denied all liberty of these assem-
blies, though the governors and fathers of the Church
should with all their care and interest endeavour to
obtain it—should he so abuse his prerogative as to turn
it not only to the detriment but to the ruin of all true
religion and morality among us-in such case of extre-
mity I have before said, and still adhere to it, that the
* Quoted by Lathbury, 'History of Convocation,' p. 393.
LECT. IV.
LETTER TO A CONVOCATION MAN.
153
bishops and pastors of the Church must resolve to
hazard all in the discharge of their duty."
An extract or two from the famous 'Letter to a
Convocation Man' above mentioned, may not at this
point of our survey be unacceptable. "In plain Eng-
lish," says the author, writing in 1697, "I think if
ever there was need of a Convocation since Christianity
was established in this kingdom, there is need of one
now; when such an open looseness in men's principles
and practices, and such a settled contempt of religion
and the priesthood, have prevailed everywhere, when
heresies of all kinds, when scepticism, deism, and
atheism itself, overrun us like a deluge, when the
Mosaic history has, by men of your own order, been
cunningly undermined and exposed under pretence of
explaining it. . . . when all mysteries in religion have
been decried as impositions on men's understandings,
and nothing is admitted as an article of faith but what
we can fully and perfectly comprehend. . . . . There
is need of it to give a check to the further proceeding
of these loose and pernicious opinions, or if that cannot
be done, yet at least to remove the scandal which their
growth and impunity have brought upon this Church
and Nation. A Convocation seems necessary not only
for the sake of the faith and doctrine of our English
Church, but even to preserve the faith of any Revela-
tion.' "If after all it should be pretended that the
proper way of redressing these mischiefs and grievances
is by Parliament . . . to this it may be replied.
that such a method is in the nature of the thing
improper. "Tis a little too much to suppose country
gentlemen, merchants, or lawyers, to be most skilled in
""
* 'State of the Church,' &c., p. 86. See the whole page.
= 0
154
CONVOCATION AGAIN SUPPRESSED
LECT. IV.
the languages of the Bible, masters of all the learn-
ing of the Fathers, or of the history of the Primitive
Church, which they must be in some measure who sit
judges of religious doctrines and opinions. . . . . Besides,
the ascribing such a power to either of the two Houses
or to both of 'em together, is to confirm the ground of
the Papist's cavil at our Reformation, when they say
that our religion is merely Parliamentary, and change-
able at the will of the Prince and of the majority of the
Peers and Commons, an assertion which I believe there
is no worthy member of either House but would reject
with disdain. . They were wise enough to know
that the preserving the Constitution is the best way
to preserve their true and real interests, and that the
Constitution can no otherwise be upheld than by the
several parts of it being preserved in their just rights
and powers, allowed to act in their proper spheres, and
circumscribed within 'em. .. Convocation is an
ecclesiastical Court or Assembly essential to our Consti-
tution and established by the law of it, by the same
law as the gentleman receives his rent, or the member
enjoys his privilege. The same arguments used
for stated and regular Parliaments exactly apply to
Convocation. The king has no right to withhold his
summons."
Of Atterbury's style the following extract may serve
as a specimen. It occurs both in the Preface to the
work before named and in the famous pamphlet called
"The Mitre and the Crown," "Those Divines who read
lessons to princes how to strain their ecclesiastical power
to the utmost without exceeding it, and how to oppress
their clergy legally, are surely not the best men of their
order. They are Church Empsons and Dudleys, and
LECT. IV.
THROUGH ITS INTERNAL STRUGGLES.
155
usually find the fate of such wretched instruments, to
be detested by the one side and at last abandoned by
the other."
What was the effect of this controversy? How has
it left the rights of the Church on this point? Here
is a summary by the best modern authority, the late
Mr. Lathbury: "The licence to make canons ought,
according to the opinion of all the men on both sides
who took part in the controversy in the time of Wil-
liam III., Anne, and George I., to be granted whenever
the Bishops and Clergy assembled in Convocation may
represent to the Crown that it is required by the circum-
stances of the Church." How, then, could these admitted
rights be overborne in practice? By a subterfuge.
Convocation was summoned with every Parliament, and,
after 1717, as regularly, immediately prorogued. But
how could the nation, which had insisted on the revival,
allow the disuse, of Convocation? No doubt the dis-
putes which raged within that body were the principal
cause. But it is equally certain that these disputes
were more or less connected with the Jacobite struggles
of the day. The Crown-appointed Whig Bishops were,
to use the phrase then first adopted, Low Churchmen,
and against them the Lower House, consisting chiefly
of Tories and High Churchmen,* were perpetually at
war, not always by any means upon frivolous grounds.
The nation grew weary of these bickerings, the best
excuse for which is to be found in the times themselves;
and the statesmen dreaded them. Yet it must be main-
tained that never could a body of Churchmen point to
their acts with more pride than Convocation to those
which were the immediate cause of their suppression.
On the difference between the past and present meanings of
"High" and "Low" Church, see Lect. vii. p. 271.
156 EFFECTS OF STIFLING THE CHURCH'S VOICE LECT. IV.
99
It would indeed have been unworthy of the name of a
Synod if it could have passed over attacks on funda-
mental principles so subversive of all ecclesiastical dis-
cipline as those of Hoadley. And count up the faults
as we may of the "angry insects over whom the
"State was about to scatter a little dust," to use Mr.
Hallam's elegant and courteous metaphor,* it has been
remarked by a late and very moderate writer that their
"censures of books, with the exception of Burnet's
'Exposition,' were always just." Nor should we in
common fairness forget that the obscurity which hung
about the respective rights of the two Houses of Con-
vocation was in great measure due to the long sus-
pension of their exercise, and that the relative position
of the two lay Houses of Parliament has itself been a
matter for fierce contention throughout Parliamentary
history. The active exercise of functions produces
precedents, and precedents produce law. It is as un-
reasonable and ungenerous to make the struggles of
this period an argument against the Church's privilege,
as to sneer at the want of weight in the unreformed
Convocation existing at this moment, and yet to resist
all attempts to reform it.
That short period of seventeen years to which we
have referred was the last opportunity the Church has
had to place herself in her just and Constitutional
position towards the Government, towards the members
of her own body, and towards Dissenters. For a time
the favour of Queen Anne and the affection of the
people had made the Church a great political power.
But the times were too disturbed; parties ran too
* Hallam's 'Constitutional History,' chap. xvi.
† Perry's History of the Church of England;' see also Joyce's
England's Sacred Synods.'
LECT. IV. PALPABLE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
157
high; too many of the Bishops of the previous reign
had for a political reason been carefully selected for
their opposition to a Church revival; and it was not
surprising that the opposition to them on the part of
more independent men should be both obstinate and acri-
monious. It was impossible that any permanent settle-
ment could be made, and the golden opportunity was lost.
It was no doubt wisely ordered that the period
should have witnessed as much substantial recognition
of the Church's independence as it did, and that such
recognition should for a long time subsequently be
denied. But if we are to account for the shocking
decay of religion, the foul corruption of morals, the
depravation of taste, the fatal ecclesiastical blunders,
yes, and many of the grossest political mistakes of the
succeeding century, we shall find it difficult to do so.
with candour unless we observe how the Georgian era
produced a total suspension of the Church Parliament,
a wholesale and deliberate abuse of the Regale in ap-
pointing Bishops, and a gradual deterioration of the
Church's Courts. Yet, in regard of all these points, it
must be noticed that the thread of continuity was never
broken; and in consequence of the strength that still
lay dormant in these unused rights, the orthodoxy of
the Church, however decayed in individuals of the body,
remained intact in the body itself. Her Formularies,
in spite of numerous efforts, now taking the shape of
attempts at a fatal amount of Comprehension, now
of attempts to relax the terms of Subscription, have,
as we know, remained unchanged.
It might be well worth while to inquire how much of
the “darkness which might be felt" in the eighteenth
century was due to re-action from the brilliant political
struggles of the Revolution, and the bitter ecclesiastical
158
•
ENGLAND NEARLY REVOLUTIONIZED.
LECT. IV.
contests of Queen Anne's reign, as those were them-
selves re-actions from the treacherous State-craft and
the glittering licentiousness of the preceding period;
for there is no one portion of history which does not
grow out of all the past: but the coincidence of the
moral disgraces of the eighteenth century with the sup-
pression of the Church's rights has struck all impartial
observers, and cannot but have weight in such in-
quiries as the present. That century raises a warning
voice. It proclaims that to keep an institution like
the Church safely bottled up, as it were
a sort of
possession to be placed on a shelf, protected from en-
croachment by State edicts, yet on condition of its sub-
mitting to be deprived of all that could exercise its life,
or expand its energies,—is a suicidal policy, only worthy
of Oriental decrepitude.* For the time must come when
such a timid guardianship must cease perforce. Pro-
tection could not long avail. It did not long. avail.
No provision was made for the change that was sure
to come. And when the seething tide of intellectual
revolution set in, when men read, and questioned, and
scoffed, and combined, when every barrier which the
wisdom of ages had raised for the protection of religion
and society seemed about to be swept away, it was no
wonder that all but the most courageous despaired.
We need not describe how the country was saved, under
Providence, by the meritorious efforts of a truly good
and sensible, if not clever monarch,† by the abilities and
* The Church of the last century is perhaps as much to blame as the
State for the surrender of liberties which she might have claimed
and even exercised.
† The fame of few monarchs has been more perseveringly “written
down" than that of George III. The present generation is once
more beginning to recover what was well enough known to the last
but one.
LECT. IV. NEW SENSE OF THE WORD CHURCH.
159
magnanimity of certain great Statesmen, by the grand
intellect of a few literary men, by the preaching of
some ardent clergymen, by the agency of great religious
Societies, through the fiery furnace of war, and the still
more fiery conflict of opinion; till, at length, what may
almost be called a new England once more emerged
out of the ashes of the old, and a population nearly
doubled in amount stood confronted with new pro-
blems of social life, new political combinations, new
forms of Dissent, and the same ancient, venerable
Church.
C
It is enough to point out how the years 1828, 1829,
and 1832, which witnessed the Repeal of the Test and
Corporation Acts, Roman Catholic Emancipation, and
the Reform Bill, all made necessary by the changes
which the country had passed through, were the
boundary between the times when the old relations
of Church and State, however defective, were defen-
sible, and the times when they became only tolerable
under vigorous protest, and on condition of every
member of the Church devoting himself to obtain
their re-adjustment.
Henceforward we have a new political sense of the
word "Church" taken in its connection with the State.
We have seen it under an Incorporate Union, when the
Church may almost be said to have meant the State
regarded in its ecclesiastical aspect; and we have seen
the sense of the word narrowed to mean the great
Ecclesiastical Body, grouped round the working clergy.
From the Reformation to the reign of William IV.,
we are conscious of a constant confusion between the
two senses of the word, intensified by the growing dis-
crepancy between the theory of the Church as co-ex-
•
160
REIGN OF WILLIAM THE FOURTH.
7
LECT. IV.
tensive with the State, and the fact. But since that
date this generation has been in contact with a dif-
ferent sense again. Church and State being no longer
in theory co-extensive, the Church now only means
that part of the people which remains within the old
spiritual corporation, and with which the State, the
whole body of Churchmen and non-Churchmen, in
their political aspect, is in alliance.
The measures of the years above-mentioned did in
reality completely upset the balance which had hitherto
been preserved: and the perception of this fact is the
best justification for the dogged obstinacy with which
some of them were resisted. The question was not
only, How is the Government to be carried on ?-but,-
How are Church and State to be kept together? Men
might be excused for not perceiving the answer. With
a Parliament no longer consisting of the Church's
friends, and that Parliament coming more and more
into the place of the Crown, how different, not only in
the degree of interference implied, but in kind, was
the old Regale under the new régime! How much
weakened was the protection of the Sovereign's Coro-
nation Oath, when the power of the Prime Minister
was so largely increased, and when the House of Com-
mons, which virtually created him, was so differently
composed! The State had begun to relapse into the
condition of heathen Empires; Church and State were
no longer under any theory one.
It was well that the discovery of these startling re-
sults was not made too early or too suddenly. It
might have produced a hasty disruption instead of a
wise amendment. No after repentance could have
availed against a false step once taken. But when,
LECT. IV.
THE CONSTITUTION IS CHANGED.
161
in the opinion of many, the time seemed to have come
for a fresh spoliation on the model of Henry VIII.,
then for the third time since the Revolution * arose the
cry of the "Church in danger," the old cry, scoffed
at by those who know and dread its power, but never,
it may perhaps be said, raised without cause. As the
voice of the people pronounced itself more and more
clearly, as the clergy and increasing bodies of the laity
sprang to their posts, as, in the minds of the better-
educated, faith revived, as the intellect of the age
began to bend itself to the problem now put before it,
as the last hope that the congé d'élire was anything but
a mockery collapsed at a touch, as the final deprava-
tion of the Court of Appeal became more apparent,
so,-gradually, at first with faintness, then with ever-
increasing sharpness, the outlines of the great Church
Liberties which we have traced through so many ages,
began to loom through the mist. Men began to see
that while on the one hand the people were deter-
mined to keep their ancient Church, endeared to them
by its old ties, and, now, by its new life, on the other
hand that Church must be restored to a condition
which the spirit of the Original Compact, almost de-
stroyed, might once more penetrate.
This is the meaning of the demand which has been
made in our own times for the REVIVAL OF CONVOCA-
TION (of late happily effected †),—for a proper COURT
In the reigns of Anne, George III. and William IV. (the last
extending into the present reign).
† The demand for the Reform of Convocation rests on different
grounds. If rights have been so long suppressed that when restored
they require an adjustment which must have taken place had not
their exercise been suspended, the strongest possible moral claim to
M
F
162
DEMAND FOR READJUSTMENT
LECT. IV.
OF FINAL APPEAL,-for some voice in, or at least a veto
on, the ELECTION OF BISHOPS, as well as for an increase
of their number,-and for IMMUNITY FROM ALL HAND-
LING OF THE CHURCH'S DOCTRINE OR DISCIPLINE, EX-
CEPT WITH THE CONSENT OF HER OWN ASSEMBLIES.
It was one thing, said the modern reformers, to bear
a suspension of rights from the Government of a State
nominally one with, and theoretically friendly to, the
Church, as, for instance, even in pre-Reformation times,
the Church had to bear it during the reign of William
Rufus; it was another to be placed for the most part in
the condition of the sects, and not to be allowed the
privileges those sects enjoyed; privileges secured by
charter, and only suspended by political accidents long
since vanished; privileges no longer in the remotest
degree dangerous to the State; privileges not only vital
for the Church, but for the sects themselves; privileges
absolutely required for the practical development of the
Church amidst the millions whom she has not reached
at home and abroad. Without entering on political
discussions it is scarcely too much to say, that the men
who have used such language have spoken the language
of history as well as common sense.
For have we not seen how these privileges are in-
herent rights, how they have been so in all ages and in
all branches of the Church, and how, where most over-
laid abroad, a substitute is practically found in other
ways? With us it has been shewn there are no other
ways. On the one hand, there are great masses of the
population which the Church has not reached; on the
other, she cannot, till Rome throws off her corruptions,
adjustment must be admitted, but this is not absolutely the same
thing as a direct and legal claim.
LECT. IV. OF THE RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE. 163
derive support from Western Christendom. This age,
more than any other, has been thrown back on its own
English resources. Present responsibilities can only
be read in the history of the past, and we have asked
the past. The jewel of Primitive Doctrine along with
a True Priesthood is yet preserved in the Church of
England, or it would cease to be a true Church. What
reason have Englishmen, grounded either on history
or analogy, for believing that the jewel can be retained
unless the decayed and tottering sides of the casket
are kept in repair?
Happily, in a self-governed country like England,
with institutions evolved out of the struggles of many
ages, and yet never broken by revolutions, there is always
a self-adjusting process going on, which in the course
of time reconciles the most jarring claims. Reason and
Time in such a nation have a tendency to form, however
slowly, a correct public opinion. Let the most powerful
classes of the land, those middle classes amongst which
the Church has in this generation taken so much deeper
root than in the last, once clearly perceive the nature
of the inheritance into which they have come, let them
once entertain the notion that spiritual independence
on the part of the Church (an independence which does
not exclude-far from it, which demands the constant
and vigorous action of the Church Laity in her affairs)
is an absolute necessity, if it is to be a Church at all ;*
let them once understand the difference between the
influence of State-government on such a body when that
Government is wielded by a Rex pius, a Constantine, a
"The Church herself must be in her sphere as intact and as
free as the State in hers."-Guizot (quoted in Fuller's 'Court of
Final Appeal.')
M 2
164
INCREASED FREEDOM OF THE STATE MUST
LECT. IV.
Charlemagne, a Saint Louis, or even an Elizabeth, and
when wielded by a body of rulers many of whom are not
by profession Churchmen, and they will see that, if things
are not to come to a dead lock, forbearance is necessary
in the use of their undeniably great power. On the
part of the Church as well as of the State, there must
be the greatest moderation in pushing claims, a spirit
of conciliation rather than a reckless rushing to ex-
tremities.
No one can imagine that civil liberty ought to cease
to be as jealously guarded as ever, but common sense is
daily shewing that much of the jealousy of ecclesiastical
agency on this score is a mere bugbear, too often dis-
honestly flaunted by designing men. If we may ven-
ture to look a little into the future we may prophesy
that the management of Church affairs will very soon
be left more and more to Churchmen, and instead of
enfeebling, from a vague fear of some latent injury to
the State, every effort on their part to attain a condition
of healthy action, that the love of freedom and open-
ness and discussion, which has led to such great results
in English politics, will, as time goes on, extend itself
to the feelings of Englishmen generally in reference to
the Church; while in the Church's own free, independent
action, and free debate, will be found the true antidote
to those poisonous errors over which men have mourned
in past history and which they dread in the future.
In short, the increased freedom of the State must neces-
sarily bring with it increased freedom to the Church;
and within that body itself the difficulties which beset
the reconciliation of authority and liberty will be over-
come through the organized co-operation of the dif-
ferent ranks of the clergy and Church-laity, through
LECT. IV. BRING INCREASED FREEDOM OF THE CHURCH. 165
the increased efficiency of Church institutions too long
disused.
For the Church herself no one need fear when she
is once aroused. As Parliament and people did not
make her, so, as Archbishop Trench in his Primary
Charge has nobly said, Parliament and people cannot
mar her.* The danger of the day, the danger which
every educated man should set himself to combat, is
for the State. If it does not solve the problem of its
time, a problem no more difficult than those of many
another time, it may cut itself off from what at present
forms its chief strength, its main title to respect. It
is not easy to see how the connection of Church and
State, if it is once broken, can ever be repaired.
* And yet, true as this is, the danger of so-called Erastianism is not
a dream. It was said by perhaps the acutest of the champions of
the faith at a dark period of our history, that "the Erastian prin-
ciple has had two visible effects in England; it has turned the gentry
Deists, and the common people Dissenters; for the Dissenters, one
and all, from Presbyterians down to Muggletonians, pretend to
Divine Commission independent of all the powers upon the earth;
therefore the people run to them and look upon the Church of
England as a Parliamentary religion and establishment of the State;
and the Deists, when they find themselves in committees of religion,
can never think that there is anything Divine in that which they
see stand or fall by their vote."-Leslie's Case of the Regale,'
p. 611.
•
For an unanswerable defence of the liberties of the Church see the
speeches of Bishops Blomfield and Wilberforce, and the Earl of
Derby, then Lord Stanley, in the debate in the House of Lords in
1850. (This has been lately made more accessible by being quoted
almost in extenso in Fuller's 'Court of Final Appeal.')
166
THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZED MAN DUE
LECTURE V.
LECT. V.
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE IMPERIAL AND NATIONAL
PRINCIPLES, OR, THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE PAPACY.
NOVEMBER 10, 1866.
ITALIAN Nationality! The loss of the Pope's Temporal
Power! How strange, how dream-like would these
words have sounded a very few years ago! Yet how
familiar are we already beginning to be with the ideas
they convey! How, in a University where Mediæval
History has become a study, can such ideas fail to con-
nect themselves with the long past? Putting aside the
ordinary controversial points of view, without for a
moment denying their importance, let us glance at
the history which these words call up. If we are
witnesses to the climax of many centuries, if this is the
first time for a thousand years that the conjunction of
these two phenomena has been-we will not say ac-
complished, but imminent-we may well ask ourselves
what has hindered the conjunction up to this time; and
the consideration of this question may afford us some
dim light as to the future. If we can trace the gradual
unfolding of a scheme, one marked epoch of which
is even now drawing on itself the attention of the world,
it must naturally occur to us that this scheme is likely
to have a still further development.
That the history of the world has been the history of
an education no one will deny; and what does that
mean but an education for an end? The universal
LECT. V. TO THE CONFLICT BETWEEN TWO PRINCIPLES. 167
voice of mankind puts in a claim for Progress. It
may be intellectual, religious, material, political; but in
one form or other we all admit a Progress. Even when
we trace recurrences and parallels in history we cannot
help perceiving that they are like the periodical return
of the spoke of a wheel to the ground. There is a
certain uniformity in the details of the movement, but
it is still forward. Further, the line of this progress is
evolved along the course of man's experimental train-
ing; he is permitted to work out the problem for him-
self. The solution of it is a process of growth and
development, not indeed in the sphere of the Christian
Faith, which was given once for all, but in all those
relations of social and political life with which that
Faith is mixed up, and this process seems to be con-
nected with a perpetual conflict of principles, an ever-
present clashing of two opposite ideas.
We may
observe the conflict in Philosophy, in Politics, in the
religious training of mankind. It is part of a great law
of our Nature, meeting us at every turn. These
principles are represented in a variety of forms by what
in philosophical analysis is known as the One and the
Many. The history of Politics, the history of the Church,
is nothing else but a history of this eternal struggle.
How to reconcile Law and Liberty, System and the
claims of the Individual, Centralization and Local Go-
vernment, Dependence and Independence, the Imperial
and the Regal, the Ecumenical and the National, is
the problem of every age,—as old as the infancy of the
human race, as young as the society of to-day, confined
to no clime, to be comprised in no formula equally avail-
able at different times. Men may not perceive how they
are working it out; they may mistake the relative
K
168
NEGATIVE PROOF FROM AFRICA.
LECT. V.
position of their age; but as time unrolls the whole, the
progress made in solving the problem becomes visible.
It is visible, however, as yet only in the heirs of the
civilization which travelled from the original Asiatic
centre, in the heirs of the Christianity for which all pre-
vious Dispensations had existed. Not all men at once
were to receive this education. Some seem to be waiting
till the great lesson has been learnt by the favoured
branches of the one family. Take Africa as the con-
trast, and at the same time the illustration, of this view.
There no settled government from generation to genera-
tion trains the character of her children from father to
son, from son to grandson. No Revelation has pre-
pared the way for a further and a further light. And
thus no ideas are perpetuated and improved; no
political traditions carry conviction with the training of
infancy; no great natural gifts-and it is false to deny
their existence in Africa-germinate and reproduce
themselves, but on the contrary they die out with their
possessor; no gradual enlargement of the faculties till
they obtain a full and complete development takes
place, but Africans remain for ever children. And men
of our day, forgetful of their own progenitors, ignoring
the vast history of their own branch of the great family,
shutting their eyes to the commonest effects of educa-
tion, are tempted to deny that "God hath made of one
blood all the nations upon Earth."
And are we not witnesses of the very process of trans-
fer from the more favoured to the less? Is it not a fact,
that just as all Europe to her remotest corners has re-
ceived this inheritance, just when law, order, and to some
extent self-government, have prevailed over European
barbarism, just when the Celtic, the Teutonic, and the
میشه
LECT. V.
་
·
UNITY AND INDIVIDUALISM.
*
169
Sclavonic races have become thoroughly penetrated with
Greek and Roman influences, and distinctively marked
with the prevailing hue of their own religion and poli-
tics-just when this consummation is taking place, the
word has gone forth, and the faint efforts which have
been of late years spasmodically made to extend Europe
to Africa, Eastern Asia, and the Isles, is growing before
our eyes into a united movement which gives token
of the Future that is to be. Is it not a fact that
America, Russia, and the European Colonies are just at
this period commencing a glorious rivalry with Europe
in the effort? Do we not see that the processes by
which heathen Greece and Rome extended themselves
over the adjacent parts of Europe and Asia, and by
which Christian Greece and Rome spread their influ-
ences over a larger area, are now being repeated on the
grandest scale over the whole world?
What is the central idea underlying the main
agencies in this progressive conquest? What is the
central idea of Law and Order? What of Christianity?
We shall all agree that it is Unity. The material upon
which Christianity and Law and Order are brought
to bear represents the principle of Diversity, Indi-
vidualism, Plurality. As in man's own individual
nature, so in societies of men, however small, however
large, there is the same constant effort to throw off and
burst asunder the bonds which the principle of Unity is
for ever weaving around them. There must always be
some method of reconciling these principles more suited
than another for each particular age and condition
of society. If the method in vogue is not suitable,
it has to give way to one that is. The progress is not
stopped. It is no wonder then that men should find it
:
LECT. V.
difficult to discern in each age how this reconciliation is
to be effected, and that they should be sorely tempted
to give more weight than is due to one or other of the
principles. It would be strange if they did not con-
stantly exhibit a reluctance to give up a particular
form of reconciliation which had once appeared practi-
cally all-important, and which had perhaps come down
to them as absolutely essential to all notion of growth
and progress.
We are about to trace the conflict of principles working
out their great end in our own Continent, but we must
not forget that the history of Europe is but a part
of the great drama of the Past, as it is but a step in the
progress towards the Future. No one of the pre-
Roman Empires existed for itself alone. Each exhibited
a progress. Each passed on something to its successor.
It is a common-place of history, but it is necessary for
our purpose to remark that the last, the Roman, gather-
ing up all that had preceded it, gathering up all lessons
of Eastern and Greek civilization on the one hand,
all the pregnant power destined to be exercised by
Christianity on the other, launched both on their
glorious path by an impulse the world had never
before seen, a refined political system of Imperial
Administration, the result of long centuries of gradual
growth.
So great was the impulse thus given, so lasting its
effect, so completely had the theory of Imperialism
been grafted into the European mind as the normal
state of things, that though the Empire was shattered
to pieces, though a modern Europe was formed by the
settlement of the hosts which received the inheritance
of power, there was always, for many ages afterwards, a
170
PRE-ROMAN AND ROMAN IMPERIALISM.
LECT. V. ABIDING POWER OF IMPERIAL IDEAS.
171
tendency, manifested by violent recurring efforts, to
revive the Imperial idea. The European history of the
last fourteen hundred years has been nothing more nor
less than a history of attempts to restore a visible
religious and political Unity, a history of Individualism
and then of Nationality surging up against these
attempts, a history of assumptions of old Roman power
by those who had no right to it, assumptions resting on
a rehabilitation of what were once facts, but which had
really passed away, or built upon theories made for the
occasion, built often on the most shameless frauds. The
conflict of these principles went hand-in-hand in the
sphere of Ecclesiastical Organization and that of
Politics, the two spheres being often apparently, but
perhaps never really separated. There has been one
grand perpetual struggle to restore once more what
will never be again, Visible Universal Empire. Per-
haps,-for we must not dogmatize, possibly, we are now
arrived at the time when we may see not only that these
efforts must fail, but that it is best they should fail;
when it will be plain to all alike, that the ends which
Imperialism and Visible Unity in Christendom were first
intended to fulfil have long since been attained, and that
the further progress of Christianity and civilization will
be best secured by a Union of a different kind, more
adapted to the age at which mankind has arrived.
The Fourth Empire, which, though shattered to
pieces, was not to be wholly destroyed until the end,
has shewn in its broken condition the marvellous vitality
which was predestined. The visions of Empire, vain
and delusive as they have been, have tenaciously clung
in some form or other to the original centre. Rome
has been for ever the plaything of Popes and Princes,
•
.
172
PERIODS OF LATER IMPERIALISM.
LECT. V.
Italy the principal arena of the furious struggle for so
many ages of the two grand conflicting principles.
How often has her unhappy fate excited the imagination
of the poet and the philosopher! How dearly has she
paid for her once proud superiority! How ill has her
mission to humanize the rude masses across her frontier
been repaid! We have almost become tired of the
mournful tale. Yet if it carries aloft a light let us not
refuse to follow it once more. Let us very briefly trace
the progress of the undying struggle, as we are now,
after those violent oscillations which have not even yet
perhaps subsided into perfect equilibrium, able to read it.
We often lose our sense of the whole by dwelling on par-
ticular parts. Let us weave it into one short narrative.
There are three distinct periods in which the contest
of the two principles just mentioned must be indicated.
I. The Period which lay between the extinction of
the old Roman Empire and the formation under
Charlemagne of that Western Medieval Empire which
usurped its name, 476-800.
II. The Period of Medieval Empire under its three
phases (1) Frank, 800-840* (2) Germano-Italian, 964
-1250, and (3) German, 1250-1494.
III. The Modern Period.
The Church has its own distinct phases falling exactly
parallel with these divisions. Let us now speak of the
first Period.
I. The Fifth Century witnessed the real break-up of
what had been known through all previous ages as Im-
perial power. Imperial influences survived the wreck,
and affected all subsequent institutions; Ecclesiastical
* "The Carlovingian Empire expired with Louis the Pious."
-Milman's 'Latin Christianity,' Book v. ch. 3.
LECT. V.
FEUDALISM AND NATIONALITY.
173
influences aided in the transformation of society. But
the invasion and settlement of the Teutonic barbarians
gave the final blow to permanent Imperial govern-
ment in Western Europe. The attempts to resuscitate
it in later times on some different system, by which the
ancient Empire might be imitated, have been transient.
They have been failures as to the object which they
proposed to attain; they could not last; but they have
not been without their use to the world. Far from it.
They have been parts of the great scheme. Each
revival of Imperialism had its work to do.
Instead, then, of this old and sacred principle by
which hitherto law and order had prevailed over
anarchy, and along with which, though from no one
visible Western centre, Christianity had made its way,
now, in the Fifth Century, reared its head the principle
of Individualism, Independence, Local Government;
at first bringing back the West to the anarchy out of
which Imperi 1 Rome had raised it, soon emerging into
a system which, the joint and healthy progeny of Rome
and Teutonism, got to be called the Feudal System,
and finally, when the mockery of Imperialism had
passed away, became Nationality. Numbers, military
energy, intellectual life, elasticity which raised it up
again after each evanescent triumph of Imperialism,
the moral weight of ever-recurring success, lay with
this principle. It was destined to prevail.
During the period of which we are now speaking,
some have seen, in the pompous claim of the feeble
Emperors of the East to be recognized in the seat
vacated by the Emperors of the West, and in the titles
they amused themselves by conferring on the barbaric
conquerors of Roman provinces, a true mark of Im-
174
LECT. V.
perialism. The writers who seem to take the most
philosophical view of this period refuse to attach import-
ance to such empty boasts. They see, and surely with
justice, simply an independent, practical government by
the Teutonic sword, a mere convenient stroke of cun-
ning in the occasional acceptance of Roman titles, play-
ing upon that fondness with which men will desperately
cling to a theory long after it has become a dream.
One, and one only partial and brief triumph of Im-
perialism took place, and of that Italy was the principal
scene. A man of genius, a perverted genius, at least
in politics, arose to arrest for a moment the decadence
of the Eastern Empire. He knew not the part he was
performing in the drama. Italy, like the rest of the
Roman provinces, had been conquered and settled by
Teutons; and a career like that of her neighbours seemed
about to open when Justinian turned his arms against
the West. His great generals gave him the govern-
ment of Italy for fourteen years, and then a new people,
the Lombards, crossing the Alps, once more restored
Teutonic supremacy. But what had this brief domina-
tion carried with it? It was not the only cause, but it
had no slight effect on the subsequent separation of the
East and West; it destroyed at the critical moment the
military strength of Italy and Africa. On what might
have been the case had the genius of a Justinian,
a Belisarius, and a Narses, been employed in reducing
those barbarians on the Eastern frontier who afterwards
enfeebled the Byzantine Empire for so many ages, it is
vain to speculate, but the actual result of the policy
pursued was the triumph of Mahometanism, the schism
of the Church, a sickly East, an ever hostile West, the
mediæval fabric of Rome.
་;
EFFECTS OF JUSTINIAN'S POLICY.
LECT. V.
·
PRINCIPLE OF UNITY IN THE CHURCH.
175
The feeble Exarchate of Ravenna, Justinian's legacy,
was but the ghost of departing Imperialism, the last
shadow of the old form, useful as securing a few centres
of civilization which the new invaders, the Lombards,
(who could scarcely have entered Italy had the Goths
repulsed the Imperialists) might have destroyed. But
the Exarchate was doing its appointed work. It kept
alive that sense of the unnatural insult which the West
had suffered by being conquered from the East, a feeling
which never, after that moment of conquest, faded away.
Rome had been the mistress of the world, and had ill
brooked a rival in her daughter. That daughter was now
a cruel mistress, and yet impotent to afford protection.
That Lombards and Saracens might plunder unhappy
Italy in spite of her was not calculated to produce
respect. The Iconoclastic struggle which ejected the
Byzantines was but the accidental termination of an en-
tire anachronism, the inevitable conclusion of that which
was concluding itself. The schism was to be. Rome
was to rule the West. Mahometanism was to obtain a
footing. The education of the world required that a
fresh shoot of the old fruit-bearing Imperialism should
be grafted into the vigorous trunk of medieval Europe.
Just as in the social and political condition of the
West the two principles were thus shifting and confused,
the influences of Roman Law and Imperial institutions
moulding and modifying Teutonic Individualism, so
was it with the Church. If the principle of Unity
was to be found anywhere it was here. Though its
early simplicity was lost, there was still to be found
some echo of the Unity of Primitive times. The
gradual and steady growth of the claims made by
Rome to Supremacy has been traced by the hand of
176
CHANGE COMING OVER THE PAPACY.
LECT. V.
a master, the late lamented Professor Hussey.* He
has shown how the precedence, the Primacy which the
Popes of primitive times had alone claimed, was, by
a series of frauds and impostures and by the constant
reassertion of such frauds and impostures till their
character was forgotten, changed into à claim to Supre-
macy during this very period. It can indeed scarcely
be denied that she took advantage of her position at
every turn of affairs, that she made each of her just
claims to respect and affection, claims as the Mother of
Churches amongst the barbarous invaders of the Empire,
the foe to heresy, the centre of ecclesiastical order in
the midst of political anarchy, the preserver and ally of
Roman civilization,-stepping stones to another position,
wholly opposed to that of earlier times. But it is also
true, as we all know, that her greatest and best Pope,
St. Gregory, in his letters to the Byzantine Patriarch,
utterly repudiated such a claim; that, though adopted
soon after his time, it was resisted in various countries;
and that, harassed by Lombards and Greeks, Rome was
ill able to sustain it. Though the long series of spiritual
assumptions by which she was creeping up into the
Medieval Papacy had indeed been accumulating, and
though the wealth of the Church was already great, no
solid and permanent territorial power as yet tempted
her to the lordly acts of later times.
But towards the end of this period many causes were
at work which placed these pretensions on a wholly
different footing. Monasticism, which was of undoubted
service as long as monks were laymen, was already
weakening the National Churches and proportionately
adding to the strength of Rome; the Mahometan con--
* 'Rise of the Papal Supremacy' (Parkers).
LECT. V.
NATIONALITIES FORMED.
177
quests were more and more shutting out the Eastern
Church from the horizon of the West; the African and
Spanish Churches at the very door of Rome lay prostrate
under the followers of the False Prophet. Rome was
becoming more and more a visible centre for what was
left. By the time the period closes we find her winged
for a fresh flight. Already the voice of a Pope has pro-
nounced the fall of an effete dynasty. The withdrawal
of Byzantine pressure has encouraged the growth
of long-cherished ambitious designs. The National
Churches are beginning to lose their freedom. The
principle of a central ecclesiastical standard of reference,
co-existing with local ecclesiastical self-government,
and hitherto harmonized with it to some extent, is
beginning to merge in a gigantic attempt at Ecclesias-
tical Absolutism.
During these centuries the Nations of modern Europe
assumed the rude outline of their present shape. Most
of Gaul has become West France. The Rhenish Pro-
vinces are commencing a national life. Britain is now
the land of the Anglo-Saxons. Spain, in the hands of
the Mahometans, is fringed with a band of independent
Teutons commencing that long education of religious
warfare which was to stamp its mark for ever on a
nation separate and distinct from all others. Perhaps
hers was a happier fate than that of Italy, which, torn
and bleeding from the struggles of others than Italians,
waited for the still further development of the great
world-conflict upon her soil. North and Central Ger-
many, Scandinavian and North-Eastern Europe, had
not yet awoke from their barbaric sleep. With the
change of masters had come a change of language.
Latin had ceased to be spoken in the old Roman pro-
N
178
THE FRANK PHASE OF IMPERIALISM.
LECT. V.
vinces. A corrupt lingua rustica, varying in each, had
taken its place. The old Literature had disappeared.
A vast growth of Legendary lore had superseded it.
A whole new system of Ecclesiastical life had sprung
into being. Fresh channels of trade and commerce had
been opened. Barbarous dynasties had succeeded one
another. The means of communication between town
and town, society and society, had been broken up
or materially diminished. Isolation had succeeded to the
place of fellow-citizenship. A new and hostile religion
had spread round the Mediterranean. What a gulf sepa-
rated the men of the eighth from the men of the fifth
century! Let us measure it by comparing the Europe
of three or four centuries ago with that of to-day; and
no change anything like so great has taken place.
However plainly we perceive the fragments of Im-
perialism still strewed about, we must surely associate
the approaching development rather with the ideas of
novelty, imitation, adaptation, skilful statecraft, subtle
contrivance, than with that of continuance from some-
thing which had never stopped.
II. (1) In the ears of such a Europe, we have
arrived at our Second Period,-was sounded in loudest
notes the old watchword of Imperialism; the old watch-
word, and yet not the same, for it was linked with a new
one-Papal Supremacy, a Supremacy wielded in concert
with Imperial power, and resting on a territorial basis.
of its own. Church and State are to be visibly united,
not Nationally but Imperially. We might be inclined
to ask-Why was not Europe allowed to work out her
Nationality in Church and State unhindered by this
recurrence of Imperialism which, marching along with
a Papacy soon to lose its title to respect, brought with
Maje
LECT. V. COMPACT BETWEEN CHARLES AND THE POPES. 179
it so much evil along with the good? As well might
we ask why evil is permitted at all. At least the same
answer must be given. It seems to have been part of
the world's probation, its moral education. We may
see even more. Europe was not ripe for a full and
unchecked development of Nationality. She certainly
did not feel herself so. The principle of Visible Unity
had yet a work to do both in the sphere of politics and
religion. The old and the new, the civilized and the
barbarous, were not sufficiently welded together. To
use the old illustration, the schoolmistress was still
wanted for the infantine and yet vigorous mind of
mediæval Europe. The orders of society were not yet
coherent in Constitutions. The Feudal System was but
a rude and severe, though a true and faithful prepa-
ration for civilization. It was already at work, and it
evidently required more than the gentle voice of the
Church to tame and soften it. That Church must be
armed with power; its guardians must speak with
authority, and they must look for assistance beyond
their own boundaries.
A combination of causes brought about this wonderful
phenomenon of Medieval Imperialism in Church and
State. It was not only that the liberated Papacy,
having now raised its head to Supremacy, had begun to
look about for the strongest secular arm on which it
could rely; nor only that the Eastern Franks, having
been trained to greatness by their position as the bul-
wark between half-civilized France and barbarous non-
Frankish Germany, and being the acknowledged heirs
of their already decrepit Western brethren, held the
foremost place in Europe as the champions of order and
religion. The Church and the State were ready, but
•
N 2
180
I
CIVILIZATION RALLIES ROUND
LECT. V.
what was that without the instrument, without the man
who could combine the two in a splendid but unreal and
unstable union, a union which was, however, in its effects,
to colour the future of the world? At this juncture he
also appeared. Such men are only produced at rare
intervals; since the Christian era Constantine and
Justinian alone can be compared with Charlemagne in
the influence they have exercised on the world's history.
European society was also well prepared for the new
state of things. We shall best understand how the
revival of the old idea could have taken such a sudden
hold on the medieval mind, if we think for a moment
what it was, in that age of fearful struggle and invasion
and unsettlement, to have a standard of order and
religious unity set up by a powerful hand. It was this
instinct which, from the very extinction of the Roman
Empire, had led Europe to rally round each chief who
proved himself the centre of resistance to the ever-
surging tide of barbarism, behind each strong barrier
which could preserve what still lingered on of the
Civilization and the Christianity of Roman times. Such
a man at the head of his tribe or his nation was, whether
called Emperor or not, the leading figure of the age,
and to him all eyes were turned.
Thus Clovis, when he drove back the Alemanni from
the gates of Gaul, earned his place as the earliest
founder of a modern Nation, the leader in the race of
modern civilization. To France, in memory of that
struggle, has Germany been ever since Allemagne.
Thus Charles Martel, by his victory over the Saracens,
established the pre-eminence of the Austrasian Franks
as the leading people of Western Europe. Thus, in a
far higher degree, by his marvellous campaigns against
LECT. V..
THE REPRESENTATIVES OF UNITY.
181
every enemy of order and Christianity in succession,
was Charles the Great recognized as Emperor by the
voice of Europe. Thus, when Charles's work had long
ago fallen to pieces, the Saxon dynasty, as the only
power which could save Europe from the Hungarian
scourge, was permitted to make one more feeble imita-
tion of Imperialism. Thus, even in their expiring
agonies, the Hohenstaufen made a last appeal to Europe
by stemming the tide once and for ever of Mongol inva-
sion. What men sighed for was rest and peace.
The
plaintive cry is forced from the heart of every chronicler
whose work has come down to us. To procure rest and
peace the old titles were once and again revived, only to
lose their significance the moment after the necessity
had passed away. A convenient idea was seized without
too close an inspection of its meaning. Each century
meanwhile was nursing into sufficient strength to stand
by itself the principle of Nationality.
Parallel with this revival of Secular Imperialism ran,
as we have said, the movement of the Western Church.
The two can never be separated in mediæval history.
Though on a more spacious foundation, the Ecclesiastical
fabric was still more based than its ally on an unreality,
still more occupied a false position, still more was tainted
by the parentage of craft and fraud. A supply always
follows a demand. Men demanded vigour and visible
unity. The Carlovingian Chiefs and the Papacy met
the demand. The alliance equally suited both parties.
The Popes desired an advocate. A lay advocate for the
local Churches had become an institution; the Popes
must have theirs. The strongest must be their
champion. A Pepin must be crowned to cement the
alliance, and a Pope must receive territorial power at
A
2
182
RESULTS OF CHARLES' WORK,
LECT. V.
his hands. A Charles must be raised to Empire in order
to consummate the exchange of gifts. "Henceforth,"
says Milman, “the Pope, if not a temporal Sovereign,
is a temporal Potentate." On the side of the Church
the modest claim of earlier days issues in the hoarse
tones of a Supremacy to be wielded by force, and that
force was now at his disposal. If the title is not good
enough, another shall be invented, no matter how. On
the side of the ally, the Teutonic might, which had
repelled the foes of Christendom, finds its advantage in
clothing itself with the ancient majesty of bygone cen-
turies, under the sanction of an Ecclesiastical power of
which, in this capacity, those centuries knew nothing. It
was but a parody of the old idea. A centre of dynastic
Imperialism was now formed in the far North with which
Rome had nothing to do but to give a name.
From this period a new order of things arises which
is so complex, so shifting, that it will appear in a
different light almost from whatever point of view we
regard it. Each nation has its own view of the Mediæval
Empire. There is a German,* an Italian, a French
standpoint. There is a purely secular, a purely Eccle-
siastical aspect. Schools of writers spring up round
each. Most persons will, however, agree that one result
at least of Charlemagne's extraordinary career may be
well expressed thus. What he accomplished for the pro-
tection of North Roman civilization, what he did for the
Franks, remained. What he attempted of Imperialism
،
* The German view, introduced into English literature chiefly
through Sir F. Palgrave, has been lately well put out by Mr. Bryce
in his Holy Roman Empire.' It supposes a continuity of the
Empire very different from that taken by most of our standard
authors, as well as in this Lecture.
s
LECT. V.
ESPECIALLY IN ITALY.
183
broke to pieces after his death. None but he who had
drawn the bond round the discordant elements of bar-
barism might retain it in its place. It must also be said
for recalcitrant society that Unity had been effected at
the cost of so much freedom as well as licence, that in
no hand but his were men willing to lodge their treasure.
But though his Empire broke to pieces like the worn-
out system which it had imitated, his work was not
destroyed. We know how the various parts of this vast
fabric retained his mark, how the broken fragments of
the mirror still gave back the image he had impressed, the
image coloured and harmonized with all the German,
all the Roman, all the Ecclesiastical hues of the period;
how, in short, the feudal Sovereignties which emerged
from the chaos were higher types of civilization than
before, and only wanting time to form into Nationalities.
The fusion of the two principles, short as it had been,
had done its work once more, and another stage had
been reached.
In no one of these fragments of the Empire is it
easier to trace the effects of the great mediæval alliance
than in Italy. If she gained along with others some
coherence of society, some links of order; if her Capital
once more professed to bestow crowns; if she indulged in
the fond imagination that, without the right of conquest,
she was to rule as of yore, she assuredly received one
fatal inheritance. The Goth and the Lombard had,
indeed, conquered Italy, but they had settled there;
their blood had mingled with that of the natives, and
their language had lent its part in the formation of the
new tongue. Now, however, from this time, a precedent
had been formed,-nay, a right had been given, for inter-
ference in Italy by a Northern people who made no
UorM
184
WAS CHARLES MORE FRENCH OR GERMAN? LECT. V.
pretence of dwelling within her borders. She, or rather
the Popes in her name, had bartered for immediate
deliverance, for a loftier position in Europe, the inde-
pendence of a thousand years to come!
Charlemagne has been claimed exclusively both by
French and Germans, claimed exclusively with an
assurance and a bitterness which would be surprising if
we did not know how tempting it is to push our own
ideas under the sanction of a great name. He belonged
to both. The name of the people of whom he was chief
has settled down upon the left of the Rhine, and thus
the French are apt to forget that his own branch of
that people dwelt principally on the banks of the river,
and extended far to the right of it. The Germans,
relying on the latter fact, forget that the Gallo-
Roman population of Neustrian France, impregnated
during more than three centuries by the Frank con-
quest, was the comparatively civilized centre and basis
of the great monarch's dominions. Subsequent history
is marked in every page by this dualism. Of the three
vertical sections into which the Empire of Charles was
divided, the centre from the Adriatic to the Ocean was
the bone, the long narrow back-bone over which the
people on either side immediately began to contend, and
over which they have contended down to our own day.
What is the perpetual demand of France for the left
bank of the Rhine but the quarrel for Lothaire's strip
of territory? What the constant readiness to snap at
Belgium, what the long and bitter contest for Italy,
what the frequent violations of Swiss independence, but
the reproduction of mediæval history? Of those Car-
lovingian chiefs indeed who, after Louis le Débonnaire,
sported with the name of Emperor, chiefs often as feeble
as any in their so-called dominions, one only was a
Maou
LECT. V.
EACH HIS HEIR IN ITS TURN.
185
Sovereign of France; while it was in the German
portion of the Frank Empire that were found, at a later
date, the vigorous Saxon, Franconian, and Suabian
chiefs, whose claim to be the protectors of civiliza-
tion was acknowledged by Christendom. The Othos,
the Henrys, and the Fredericks, were strong while the
feudal sovereigns of France were weak, and thus for the
greater part of three centuries we have a German pre-
dominance of force accepted by Europe as the only
alternative. But no sooner had the French Sovereignty
begun in its turn to triumph over the elements of
disorder, than the latent claims to interference in Italy
which the French deduced from Charlemagne began to
be exercised. And so the assumption of Papal power over
France, which had grown out of the Imperial position of
the Popes during the ages of French weakness, power
often exerted with wisdom, but much oftener unworthily
and selfishly, began to be resisted with greater and
greater unanimity. It was resisted with the more
resolution in proportion as the Papal pretensions became
more preposterous. When the Empire and the Papacy
were united in policy, that circumstance alone afforded
ground for opposition; when engaged in their numerous
bitter struggles with one another, the Papacy was ignored
or insulted. Thus a strong Gallican feeling arose once
more, a feeling which had already been strong in the
Carlovingian period, the "age of the Bishops," but
which, while the gigantic fabric was being reared under
a Hildebrand, an Alexander, and an Innocent, was for a
time in abeyance. When the Papacy and the Empire
alike had passed their zenith, this sentiment became not
only general, but visible in its effects on the most pious
of French princes. It is notorious that no sovereigns
asserted the liberties of the French National Church
•
•
186
HISTORY OF THE PAPACY SHAMEFUL,
LECT. V.
more effectively than Blanche and St. Louis. A much
further step was taken when the long and bitter strife
between Guelf and Ghibeline brought the Pope on his
knees, and introduced Charles of Anjou (1266). Hence-
forth French politics are never separated from Italy.
With the fierce and cruel Charles come fresh masters.
Italy is the centre round which French, German, and
Spanish contests rage, and have raged, down to our
own day.
That, during this Imperial phase of the world's history,
this double Empire of Pope and Teutonic King in fitful
starts of grandeur and mockery, broken by many an
interregnum, a great work was done for the good of
Europe along with and in spite of much evil, can
scarcely be disputed. We are ourselves a part of what
was done. It is not for us to speculate how the result
might have been brought about by purer means.
No doubt it was an unnatural Priest-Kingdom in its
very essence which was thus built up. No doubt the
very notion of ecclesiastics bearing the sword and govern-
ing a people as secular sovereigns is repugnant to that
sense of fitness, that common sense to which all such
matters are in the end referable. Nothing but a spe-
cious show of reasoning against which multitudes
revolted then, and still greater multitudes now, nothing
but the flagrant abuse of applying to the Papacy wholly
irrelevant precedents drawn from the Jewish polity,
nothing but that strange confusion of ideas which attends
a transition stage of society, could have permitted such
a theory to shape itself into an accomplished fact. This
Priest-Kingdom, beginning in a crafty and worldly
policy, raised into a high-handed Supremacy by the very
worst of all possible means, the astounding Forgery of
LECT. V.
YET OVERRULED FOR GOOD.
187
the Decretals, could not but take up more of the earthly
dross with every accretion of temporal power; and in
exact proportion it could not but lose its title to spiritual.
respect. Leaning upon a staff which at first appeared
able to give support, it soon found that its side was
pierced. Assuming to be, by the very nature of the
case, the superior in virtue and lofty motive, it had the
humiliation of being again and again put to shame by
the superior qualities of its secular ally. Scarcely ever
in accord with the Emperors it had set up, its history is
one long dreadful record of wars and intrigues. Its
highest title to respect, its zeal for the transmission
of the Faith, was ruined by the frequent and open
display of the worst motives; the noblest Popes were
ill able to stem the tide of deterioration. Corruptions
of the Faith only made their progress too easily under
such a system. The way was only too surely prepared
for the further schism of the West, while it was not
without significance that, exactly in proportion as this
Priest-Kingdom advanced, the schism of the East and
West gained more and more of its envenomed and
irremediable character.
And yet, hollow as it was-as hollow as the unreal
Empire of the West so often reconstructed, so often
falling to pieces,-fearful as was their joint participation
in the violence of forced conversions, the torture and
murder of heretics, the crimes of all kinds committed in
the name of religion, we yet see, and we cannot shut our
eyes to it, a progress on the whole towards good. At
the end of the time nearly all Europe had at any rate
received Christianity; National political life, with the
germs of National Churches, had been planted from
North to South, from East to West (the Eastern Church
188
DAWN OF ITALIAN NATIONALITY.
LECT. V.
doing also its work of a similar kind in more or less
honourable rivalry); a common language and a common
law, which existed almost entirely through the Church,
formed a bond of union in the midst of variety, and left
Europe, in spite of the break-up of Imperialism, in many
respects a brotherhood of nations; the rights of the
people, championed by the Church, made themselves
felt in every State; humanizing truces were forced by the
Church on sanguinary warriors; the arbitration of Popes
sometimes effected a peace; the civilization in which
Italy rose superior to all crossed the Alps; the litera-
ture of Italy in two great streams of the eleventh and
the fourteenth centuries fertilized the ruder soils beyond.
How did Italy look upon these reconstructions of the
shattered Empire of the mighty Frank? During the
decadence of his House it has become a congeries of
feudal Sovereignties, with a Pope, himself a feudal chief,
only far more contemptible than the worst and weakest,
with an Emperor whose name was a sport and a shadow
in the midst of conflicting petty potentates. At length
the very name departs as it came. Kings of Italy take
the place of Emperors, and the Italians, or at least that
portion of them over which the Empire of the West had
extended, begin to look on Italy once more as their own.
Soon walled cities grow up under the necessity of repel-
ling Hungarian invasion, and under their shelter grew
the spirit of self-defence, independence, Nationality.
(2) But the hour has come again. The elements of
power in Italy are still unbalanced. Its bitter intestine
divisions, and, still more, the horrible state of the
Papacy, again tempt interference from without. The
Saxon dynasty has arisen in its might. Europe owes
that dynasty its salvation from the terrible Hungarians,
LECT. V.
GERMANO-ITALIAN IMPERIALISM.
189
and tacitly rewards it by the fatal gift of Charles's
crown; a gift fatal alike to Germany and Italy if
measured by its effects in medieval times, though serv-
ing a momentary purpose, and part, as we must admit,
of the great plan by which good was to be evolved at
last. The second phase of Medieval Imperialism, the
Germano-Italian, has commenced. For half a century,
with many a struggle, with but the briefest temporary
accord, the Trans-alpine people holds its supremacy.
What took place at this period was but the type of the
future connection, a connection made by force, defended
on a specious theory, retained only by frequent invasions
of German armies, full of the most obvious evils far
outweighing any immediate advantages. The necessity
under which the Emperors of this Holy Roman Empire
continually lay to cross the Alps and keep up their con-
nection with Italy, was for them in its very nature a
ruinous source of trouble and distress. Though not so
fully developed in the Saxon dynasty as afterwards, it was
plain even then that it was the fatal blot in the theory.
An elective head of a feudal society could not possibly
leave his unquiet realm and cross such a vast barrier as
the Alps without disastrous consequences. No sooner
was his back turned on one part of his dominions than
conspiracy and rebellion broke out in another; no sooner
were these quelled than the Germany or the Italy he
had just left broke out again. But this was only a part
of the difficulty. The position of the Pope both as a
temporal and spiritual Sovereign gave him a hold on
Germany and Italy often far more powerful than that
of the Emperor himself. If one arm failed, the other
was brought into play. The Norman settlers, the
Italian cities, the discontented feudal chiefs of Germany,
190
1
NEITHER PRINCIPLE LOST.-—SAXON,
LECT. V.
were mere puppets in his hands. No minorities en-
feebled the Papal Government. A succession of astute
and often conscientious as well as able men, who believed
they were doing God the highest service, gradually
changed the notion of a Governor of Christendom co-
ordinate with the Emperor, into one of Supremacy, not
only over all other Potentates, but over the Emperor
himself. All crowns alike were held to be feudally
subject to God's Vicegerent. Thus the Emperors pre-
sented the pitiable spectacle of some powerful animal
baited-sometimes baited to death, by inferior beasts,
who are set on, combined, and whipped into the con-
flict by the consummate skill of the higher intelli-
gence, man. Yet, in spite of all, it is equally true
that the name of Emperor was of service in the recla-
mation of the still uncivilized parts of Germany; no
doubt to the outlying populations something was trans-
mitted both of order and Christianity through the
Germano-Papal connection. It is not for us to say
whether this work could have been done otherwise.
Once more, when the Othos had ceased to reign,
Italian independence delusively gleamed forth; and the
brief sovereignty of Ardoin was added to those of Odoacer,
of Theodoric, of the Berengarii. Another stormy pre-
cedent was made for that which has now at last and far
more fully been carried into act. Thus it is evident
that the principle of Nationality was never wholly lost
in the far more general prevalence, during these ages, of
the Imperial idea. It was always underlying the other,
often practically superior, and sometimes, in these
interregna, a patent fact. Though never a compact
Nation, Italy was not always a "geographical ex-
pression."
LECT. V. FRANCONIAN, AND SUABIAN EMPERORS.
Ľ
191
Again Italian quarrels, introduce the foreigners.
Again a German dynasty, the Franconian, establishes
itself for a moment secure. Under Henry III. we find
for the last time the Empire and the Papacy in strict
accord. But now the alliance is more than ever embar-
rassed with a faulty principle. For, in addition to the
radical vice of the connection, an arbitrary system of
Papal appointments by the Emperor is attempted.
Other Emperors had confirmed Popes; Henry appointed.
This brought its own embitterment of the 'struggle.
The next reigns, in the fearful War of Investitures,
witness the consequence. All Europe is convulsed with
the conflict; all Europe at length accepts the com-
promise which closes the sanguinary strife. That
compromise gave the Popes their period of highest
grandeur. But it was short-lived. The Papacy had
triumphed only to mount to the pinnacle of its glory,
and then as suddenly to collapse.
The Hohenstaufen inherited the task of the Danaids
-to fill with water a cask full of holes. The Imperial
idea was strengthened afresh with every available help
from the laws of Justinian, but the rents were more
numerous than ever. Every Italian city supplied a rift.
The Popes, too, had learnt a policy. They had leaped
to power on the back of the Germans; they had shared
power with them; they had quarrelled, triumphed;
they were to destroy the Empire. In vain a gallant
and honourable Barbarossa, embracing in good faith
the most exalted idea of Imperialism, addresses him-
self to his task with heroic courage. The Pope
and the Lombard cities humble him to the dust. In
vain the grand political stroke of the Hohenstaufen
is made, and the possession of South Italy along with
LECT. V.
Germany appears certain at last to hem in and sub-
due the patriots; for such the Italians of the north
and centre of the Peninsula,—the Pope himself would
be a patriot now,-assuredly are; it is too late. The
Crown of Sicily and Jerusalem does but add impetus to
the fall of the Imperial House. No brilliant Frederick
the Second with his glories of legislation, art, science,
commerce, Universities, can arrest the fall. Italian in-
terests are now too well united. The Lombard League
and the Tuscan League are vigorous shoots of a National
life, the noble promise of that which was one day to be.
At length the most splendid, if not the greatest of the
Emperors, the last of those whose representation of
Imperialism has any reality, is hunted down, deposed
in solemn council at Lyons, baffled in fight, dies miser-
ably. The Great Interregnum, the German policy of
Rodolph of Hapsburg, prevent its reimposition. The
Imperial yoke is thrown off. The Holy Roman Empire
is henceforth but a name. The French are to take its
place in the affairs of Italy.
(3.) The Crusades had done much, not only to elevate
the Papacy and depress the Empire, but to bring for-
ward France. The War of Investitures prevented the
Emperors from leading Europe at a time when they
would have been the natural leaders. France, the
French and Italian Normans, the Flemings, the minor
German princes, came proportionably to the front.
When an Emperor was able to take his Imperial
place it was only to make an ignominious failure.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem was French rather than
Imperial. When at last a Barbarossa led the most
hopeful enterprise yet attempted, he fell at the threshold
of his destination. The Popes are the true heads of
192
FRANCE PRACTICALLY SUPERSEDES
LECT. V.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.
193
Christendom, and not the Emperors. All had issued
in favour of the Papacy. But that Papacy failed to
perceive that the new arm on which it now relied must
be to it once more what the German had been, first its
tool and then its master. Puffed and swollen by a
thousand successes, it was making its highest preten-
sions at the very moment of its collapse. Imagining
that it could wield the weapons of an Innocent, it was
ruined by the combined arrogance and impotence of a
Boniface. It survived its old enemy scarcely half a
century, and fell by the very means it had used in his
destruction. When the fourteenth century opened with
a French Pope at Avignon, it might have been per-
ceived that the grandeur of the Papacy had for ever
passed away. Men could hardly fail to observe that the
balance had settled down at last in favour of the elder
branch of the Franks, whose Kings were not called
Emperors, but who had, perhaps, quite as much right
as their neighbours to represent the Imperial idea.
This rise of French power was, directly or indirectly,
the chief reason why all subsequent attempts to resus-
citate the worn-out scheme of German Imperialism, and
to make it practical south of the Alps, were each more
and more ridiculous. They are chiefly interesting as
they serve to note how poets and men of letters in the
revival of literature were possessed with the ideas they
discovered in their new studies, and how wonderfully
their genius availed to give those ideas a fictitious im-
portance. The Imperialist revival for some half-dozen
years under Henry VII. was a romantic and feeble
episode, a galvanized imitation of life, in great measure
the handiwork of Dante and his compeers. The strug-
gles of Louis IV. scarcely affected Italy.
"He ran
0
194
THE EMPERORS BECOME MERELY GERMAN,
LECT. V.
the same course as his predecessors-a splendid coro-
nation, the creation of an anti-Pope, an ignominious
retreat quickening into flight, the wonder of mankind
sinking at once into contempt." * The still more igno-
minious flight of Charles IV. through Italy was still
more unheeded amidst the clash of the French and
English wars. "All the Imperial rights in Italy were
virtually abandoned."† Long before this, in reality
long before the opening of the fourteenth century, the
Germano-Italian Empire had sunk into the German.
To view it in any other light is mere pedantry.
We have said that the Papacy, or at least the great
mediæval fabric raised along with the Holy Roman
Empire, fell with, or immediately after, its ally and
rival. What the residence of the Popes at Avignon
commenced, the schism in the Papacy completed. The
period of General Councils announced that Nationali-
ties had succeeded to the place of Imperialism. Ger-
many and Italy voted at Constance as Nations. The
form of an Emperor indeed remained. He was still the
Premier Prince of Christendom, and received the honour
of precedence, but he was now only the head of a Nation,
often less potent than its other princes, and unrecognized
as sovereign beyond the Alps. The form of the Papacy
also remains, but how changed! During the "Cap-
tivity," the Popes had well-nigh lost even self-respect.
When they returned to Rome it was but to divide
Christendom into parties acknowledging different Popes.
Side by side with their lowered pretensions went a de-
cline of their powers in matters merely spiritual. The
scandals of their courts had eaten into the very heart of
* Latin Christianity,' Book xii., chap. 7.
“Ibid.' Book xii., chap. 11.
LECT. V.
THE POPES MERE ITALIAN PRINCES.
195
Europe. The old Imperial idea of the Church had
worn out. Henceforth the Papal dominion was to be
retained over but a portion of Western Europe, and to be
of a different character over that part. Long before the
Reformation, England and a great part of Germany
owned but a qualified allegiance; and with the rest of
Western Christendom the relations of Rome were too
delicate to admit of much real interference on her part.
With the growing Nationalities were reviving on all
sides the claims of the National Churches, long in
abeyance, but never forgotten. The Papal position
which had been taken up under the Medieval Empire
of the West subsided and fell back into something of
its pre-Carlovingian state.
Again let us turn to Italy. What was the effect in
Italy of this collapse of Imperialism in Church and
State? What legacy did it leave there? The direct
rule of Transalpine Sovereigns had ceased for a time,
but the Peninsula was filled with Transalpine troops,
demoralized by the "Free Companies." Instead of
one feeble master, each successful Captain of Condot-
tieri acted, and in reality governed, as he pleased. But
this also was working out an end. In various, and some-
times opposite, ways it gradually strengthened the petty
Sovereignties which were taking the place of the Re-
publics, and which, full of shameful and distressing
history as they are, formed a link in that education
which the principle of a whole Italian Nationality
required. The parts must be integrated before the
whole could bear the process.
It is indeed no pleasing picture which these various
tyrannies present. The Popes, escaping with the skin
of their teeth from the Councils, eagerly take refuge
2
o 2
196
in the new political system of Italy. Commencing a
career of personal aggrandisement, they had their full
share amongst the other tyrants in trampling out the
liberties of Italy. It is true that the wealth and the
material civilization of Italy make progress under this
system; but individual freedom, self-government, com-
plete Nationality,-above all, a National Church, are
non-existent. They are to be repressed, that a longing
for them may take a deeper root, and the ideas of the
people expand beyond their own immediate sphere.
Through the independent relations of Italian States
is to be introduced by slow degrees that larger Italian
spirit which was one day to be triumphant. Much the
same process went on in Germany. The two countries,
so long unnaturally connected, now stood in a very dif-
ferent relation both to Pope and Emperor from that in
which they stood before. Neither Pope nor Emperor
exercised in either country any of the power or even
influence of previous centuries. The rivalry, the inter-
communion, the wars and alliances of the various
German and semi-German principalities which made
up that shadowy and unwieldy Empire were of very
much the same kind as those of Milan and Florence, of
Venice and the Papal States, and French, afterwards
Spanish, Naples. International law took its birth from
these relations, and acquired a strength which was soon
to be developed on a larger scale.
For a time, till the great nations of Europe were
sufficiently consolidated, till the decaying notes of me-
diæval Imperialism had wholly passed away, Italy was
permitted to gather up the fragments of her local
strength. France, torn to pieces by the English and
Burgundian wars, was as yet satisfied with the power
GROWTH OF GERMAN AND ITALIAN STATES. LECT. V.
LECT. V.
POPES AGAIN RUIN ITALY.
197
she exerted in Italy through the Papacy, and with the
struggles of her royal princes for the Neapolitan crown.
Aragon, the advanced guard of Spain, had planted her-
self in Sicily, and then in Naples, over provinces which,
having obeyed Greeks, Saracens, Normans, Suabians,
and French, were now to be that Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies whose chequered history has left them an ever-
recurring problem down to our own day. But though
this was the most extensive and often the strongest
power in Italy, it was but one part of her political
system, a system held together by the balance of power
within the Peninsula.
III. This brief phase of independence was also to
pass away. The Modern Period begins. The National
feeling, in times of feudal anarchy, had been sustained
against foreign domination by occasional nominal sove-
reigns, later on, by the leagues of Republican cities,
lastly, by the relations of independent States of great
power. The increasing wealth and importance of these
Principalities, and their ambitious cultivation of foreign
alliances, once more draw down Transalpine hosts.
Transalpine masters, no longer indeed professing to
rule from Rome, content to dominate the Peninsula
from the stronghold of the Italian Principalities, never
again (till the year in which this Lecture is delivered)
depart from the soil. The Papacy becomes the centre
of all the intrigues which, during the fearful struggle of
the nations in Italy, destroy its resources. At the end
of those fatal five-and-thirty years (1494-1529), it is
left no less a wreck than when, a thousand years before,
the wars of Justinian and the Goths laid prostrate the
civilization of the previous centuries. The Popes had
raised themselves to this central position by means
•
198
SHOCKING STATE OF THE PAPACY.
LECT. V.
worse, if possible, than any other in their long career.
The crimes of their neighbours were imitated and even
exceeded by the Priest-Kings. The violent policy of a
Sixtus IV., the shocking depravity of the Borgias, the
sanguinary wars of the martial Julius, the lettered in-
difference, to say the least, of a Leo X., were, at this
period, to the moral reputation of the Papacy what the
scandals of the courtesans Marozia and Theodora had
been to it in earlier times. But its new political
position, won at such cost of blood, treasure, and cha-
racter, was too firmly fixed to be disturbed. It became
the policy of the balanced forces of Europe to keep
the Papacy as an established Italian power. And so,
sometimes one great sovereign getting possession of it,
sometimes another, sometimes these potentates agreeing
upon joint or alternate elections, it has remained to
our own day. The Pope himself trampled out the
last spark of Italian liberty when, in conjunction with
Charles V., he enslaved Florence (1529).
What are the new relations of this Italian principality
and its head to Europe now that nations are formed
under powerful monarchs? What becomes of the scat-
tered fragments of the Papal Imperialism now that
the Reformation has hammered it to pieces? The
history may be summed up in a few words. The sepa-
rate States gain what the Papacy had lost. In each
country which still acknowledges the connection the
State gains by Concordats much of that power which
once the National Church, and then the Popes, had
exercised. In France, for example, the Gallican Liber-
ties are pretty equally divided between the Pope and
the King. The governments generally became the
agencies through which the Popes worked; and through
LECT. V.
:
SLAVERY OF ITALY.
199
these governments, by the help of the Jesuits, they
thus in time regain in these countries some portion
of their ancient power.* The nations of the Reforma-
tion, cast off by Rome, or casting her off, go their
own way, restoring their own National Churches after
the Primitive model with more or less success, with
more or fewer safeguards for the foundations of the faith
in place of that which, such as it was, had been lost in
the fall of the Papacy.
Meanwhile, the world becomes accustomed to a Pope
in the position of an absolute Italian Prince, to Cardinals
as Generals and Ambassadors, to a people under their
rule devoid of liberty, a people handed over to them
by the strong arm of the foreign powers with which
they had intrigued. As a political power the Papacy
becomes more and more insignificant. The Popes take
a far higher moral position than of old, but they have
dragged Italy down to their own political level. They
share its insignificance. What is the history of that
country ever since the Reformation but the history of
other nations? What but the dull seat of Austrian,
French, or Spanish rule or misrule, occasionally varied
by the contests of their armies upon her plains? What
but one long story of the struggle of French and German
interests? Then at length the French Revolution bursts
upon Italy as on the rest of the world, and the inter-
ference of the elder branch of the Franks once more
becomes effective in destroying the dominion of the
younger. Fresh ideas germinate. Another Empire is
raised on the ruins of another Republic. The claim of
Charlemagne is once more repeated with much about the
same right as in the Germany of former days. The
* See Ranke's 'Popes,' passim.
.
200
THE TWO NAPOLEONS AND THE PAPACY. LECT. V.
chief difference is that it is by so many more years an
anachronism. Strange old, along with strange new titles
are heard for a time in the Italian Peninsula. Again a
Pope must attend the coronation of an Emperor; again
the Papacy must be chained, whether it will or not, to
Imperialism—the Imperialism of the nineteenth cen-
tury; again the residence of the Pope shall be on the
soil of France. And, again, the mighty fabric of a day
dissolves like snow.
Napoleon is gone. Once more, and for the last time,
the heel of triumphant Germany presses on Italy. Her
education is not completed. Long years of slavery
must not be forgotten in a moment. The stern Austrian
repression of that larger National sentiment which the
Revolution had called forth again threatens to prevail.
But the time had passed. The last effort of the Ger-
mans and of the Spanish Bourbons is also the briefest.
Again waves of convulsion, echoes of the Revolution,
shake down the thrones of Europe. A Pope himself
leads the way to liberty. The House of Savoy which,
chiefly by the accidents of its position, had alone of
Italian houses escaped slavery, and which had in the
course of ages slowly grown to the first place in Italy,
again plays the part of Berengarius and Ardoin, but
with better success. And now a new French Emperor
pants to reproduce Napoleon and Charlemagne. He
also must chase a monarch from Lombardy. He also
must take up the place in Italy due to the elder branch
of the Franks. He also must represent the Roman
element, which his people so largely share, at the great
old Roman centre from whence it first radiated. He
also must exhibit to Europe his patronage of a Pope, and
keep down with French bayonets that Roman popu-
201
LECT. V. FALL OF THE PAPACY; RISE OF ITALY.
lation which has seldom obeyed a Pope except when it
was obliged.
But what, spite of himself, seems to enlarge and modify
each of the ideas of this last Napoleon, to carry a step
further what he apparently intended should stand still?
As men say, events are too strong for him! Is this all?
Can we give no other account of it? Surely we are wit-
nessing, we of to-day, the ripening of the great design!
Surely all things have been working up to this Italian
Unity and Independence which is now at last, under our
very eyes, all but accomplished! Surely all things
have been working up to this virtual dissolution of the
Temporal Power of the Papacy now gradually but surely
taking place! As each phase of the long series passes
away, a recurrence seems more and more impossible.
The spell of a designed settlement seems to hang upon
the approaching order of things.
Has not a consideration of the past prepared us for
this conclusion? The Temporal Sovereignty of the
Popes, as we may see even from this brief survey, has
certainly been hitherto the main cause of Transalpine
interference with Italy, of Italian disunion, Italian
slavery. At every crisis we trace its influence. If it
turns against the power it has introduced, the effect of
the introduction nevertheless too surely remains. So far
from having made the Pope independent, this position has
made him the puppet of kings. It has been the fertile
excuse for every crime. Even from a Roman Catholic
point of view it has surrounded the true dignity of the
Papacy with all the vulgar accessories of temporal
government. It has been an anomaly, an unnatural
phenomenon. It has turned Popes into warriors and
intriguing statesmen, the Papal clergy into secular
202
-AUGURY OF SOME GREAT CHANGE.
LECT. V.
functionaries, men who profess to be above family ties
into unblushing nepotists, men who claim infallibility
into the deliverers of the most contradictory judgments.
Is it not logical to suppose that when this cause of
error is removed, some at least of the evils it has carried
with it may be removed too? Without approving of
all the means by which the change has been effected,
may we not look forward to happier days for Italy,
"free from the Alps to the Adriatic"? Is there not
something which tells every Englishman that foreign
domination can exist no longer there after such a de-
liverance? Has not the public opinion of all Europe-a
daily increasing power-settled down into a conviction
that there must be an entire and final withdrawal of
France and Germany from the new kingdom? May
we not also look forward to some alteration of position
on the part of the Papacy in this far humbler but far
more honourable stage of its existence? Who can
refuse to feel at least some sympathy with him on
whom, in his old age, the whole weight of the chequered
past is now falling? May we not hope from him or his
successors some return to primitive times, some recog-
nition of the independence of those National Churches
which, having retained the ancient inheritance, have
never ceased to appeal to an Ecumenical Council?
May we not expect some attempt at solving the problem
of combining Universality and Nationality suited to
the age at which mankind has arrived? Surely we
may, though as yet we see it not. All history points
to it. The Nations will demand it-Clergy and Laity
alike-and who shall say them nay?
We cannot conclude this rapid sketch of the conflicts
of Western Christendom without turning our thoughts
LECT. V. WHY THE SCHISM WAS PERHAPS PERMITTED. 203
once more to the East. Does not a candid survey
of the great Schism of East and West confirm the
views expressed above? Nothing is so futile, nothing
so superficial, as to gather up the causes of that
separation into a single act, or even series of acts,
to speak of the Oriental Church as the "Photian
Heresy," to name a date, or a reign, or a Pontificate,
or a Council, or a Crusade, as the point of departure.
It was no doubt the result of a multitude of causes,
each woven into the other, and extending over hun-
dreds of years. It was as much National as Ecclesi-
astical, political as religious. It was part of that
gradual unfolding of the relations between Unity and
Individuality of which we have spoken in Western
Europe. It is vain for us to see in it nothing but what
is distressing. A particular notion of Visible Unity was
to be destroyed, and we may, perhaps, see why. Such
fragments of it as were still suited to the needs of the
world were to be preserved for a time. But the rivalry
of capitals, the jealousy of races, the passions of par-
ticular men, the profound influence of apparently trivial
points of custom and ceremonial, the so-called accidents
of war, the rise of fresh Nationalities (border-lands of
territory between the two communions, embittering the
strife for their own interests), the hollow, polished,
decaying civilization of the one population as contrasted
with the rude, vigorous, progressive character of the
other, the different views entertained by either party
in the common struggle with the various developments
of Mahometan force-all these and a thousand other
such things for ever baffled the political and the re-
ligious attempts at union so often made on both sides.
They baffled the policy of Emperors, German and Byzan-
204
INTERCOMMUNION OF NATIONAL CHURCHES
LECT. V.
tine, the strenuous efforts of Councils, the honest, pious
endeavours of good men, Popes and Patriarchs, clergy
and laity alike. If we may so dare to interpret history,
we see that through all the elements of opposition the
Christian world was to learn that the "faith once de-
livered" was to be preserved by the balance of more Com-
munions than one; that when the National Churches
were sufficiently organized, when the old idea of Visible
Unity had played its appointed part, these Churches
were to be a mutual support and protection, to supply
what was deficient in one another from the basis of
Intercommunion. The position to which every event
has been gradually leading up, the position of National
Church Independence freely and mutually recognised,
with all the modifications of liturgy and rite and cus-
tom peculiar to each, a Union of all such Churches on
the footing of the Primitive Creeds and the Primitive
Councils, seems at last, by the force of events in the
East and in the West, to be dawning upon the age.
What a future will then be in store for the world
when this last act of the closing drama is announced!
What force will Christendom then exert on the masses
of heathendom! And, if aroused by the separate, yet
harmonious action of the Churches, the rebel powers of
Secularism join those of ignorant Paganism and modern-
ised Mahometanism, and gather themselves up for one
last struggle, what will this be but the expected sign
that the end is near, and that the "stone cut out without
hands "is at last about to "consume all these kingdoms,"
and to "stand for ever"?
That there are signs abroad of a realization of some
of these notions, which a very few years ago would have
been thought perfectly Utopian, no one will deny. An
LECT. V.
WAS TO SUPERSEDE PAPAL SUPREMACY.
205
age seldom fully perceives what it is actually producing,
and this age is crowding vast events one upon another
with a rapidity accorded to few of its predecessors. It
is not beyond the province of history to take notice of
such facts. History is, indeed, concerned with the past,
but it reads the past in the light of the present. The
connection between that past and this present is a fair
subject for our consideration. At any rate we shall not
be the worse for raising our eyes to an elevation which
may shew us something on either side of the enclosed
highway. If the view here given of the conflict of the
Imperial and National principles, of the rise and growth
of the Temporal Power of the Papacy, and its historical
relations with Germany, France, and Italy, if the con-
nection of this mighty past with the extraordinary
changes now going on are any assistance towards the
formation of worthy expectations for the future, a few
minutes' attention will not have been bestowed in
vain.
206
GERMAN UNIVERSITIES
LECTURE VI.
LECT. VI.
THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF THE OLD ENGLISH
UNIVERSITIES.
NOVEMBER 16, 1867.*
DR. DÖLLINGER, in a recent work,† after explaining
the difference between the German and English Uni-
versities (very much, of course, to the disadvantage of
the latter), proceeds thus :-
"In mentioning these points I have no desire to find
fault with the English Universities. On the contrary,
I consider them excellent of their sort, and well adapted
to supply what the nation demands from them. I
would only point out that they are totally different from
the German institutions of the same name-that, at
any rate, they approach more nearly to the medieval
Universities, and have retained more medieval charac-
teristics than the German Societies; and that these last
correspond to the idea of a 'High School,' as it may
and ought to be realised in the nineteenth century, far
better than the English Universities. At the same time
I will not conceal the fact that those renovated and
improved editions of the old, and now unfortunately.
extinct, German bursaries, the Colleges of Oxford and
*This Lecture appeared in 'Blackwood's Magazine,' March, 1868.
† 'Universities Past and Present.' By J. J. Ignatius Döllinger,
D.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History, &c. Translated by C. E. C. R.
Appleton, B.C.L. Rivingtons.
LECT. VI.
CONTRASTED WITH ENGLISH.
207
Cambridge, have many a time, as I observed their
working on the spot, awakened in me feelings' of envy,
and led me to long for the time when we might again
have something of the kind; for I could plainly per
ceive that their effect was to make instruction take
root in the mind and become a part of it, and that their
influence extended beyond the mere communication
of knowledge, to the ennobling elevation of life and
character. I have often asked myself why we Germans
are so slow to adopt an institution recommended alike
by reason and experience-an institution which saves
thousands of fathers and mothers from sleepless nights
of anxiety and sorrow, which rescues many a young man
from ruin or from life-long remorse."
Whether we agree with this great German authority
or not, whether we accept his praise or his blame, or
both, it may not be amiss to attempt to gather within
the compass of a Lecture the main causes of a pheno-
menon which calls forth such remarkable words. How
is it that while, according to this competent author's
own account, the life of the German Universities is
deficient in the important elements which he finds in
ours, and is, after all, but a thing of yesterday—a fitful
life of little more than a century - a life, as other
witnesses tell us, of wild, turbulent, ever-fluctuating
excitement, which concentrates the intellectual life of
the whole people very much within University walls,
and certainly fails in diffusing it through the mass of
upper-class society,* while the Universities of all other
countries except Germany and England have fallen into
S
* Evidence of Dr. Perry before the Select Committee of the House
of Commons on the Oxford and Cambridge Universities Education
Bill. Special Report, &c., 1867.
208
LECT. VI.
ANTIQUITY AND NATIONALITY
decay, being either travestied by a ministerial bureau-
cracy as in France, or existing elsewhere in a state
admitted by all to be beneath contempt,-how is it
that, while all this is so on the Continent, Oxford and
Cambridge are still, after surviving revolution upon
revolution, and after presenting an unbroken line of
continuity from the remotest period of our history, still
“excellent of their sort, and well adapted to supply
what the nation demands from them"? History must
give us the answer. It is in considerations arising out
of the history of these great institutions that we shall
find what we are seeking. It is by a calm review of
such considerations that those who have to deal with
their reform or improvement will best fulfil their re-
sponsibilities.
Happily there is at hand as much material as could
be expected in tracing back so ancient a history. No
institution has ever had such antiquarians as those of
whom Oxford boasts. There is little probability of any
serious addition being made to their researches. His-
tories have been compiled from their materials, from
the Statutes of the Realm, from the stray hints of medi-
æval chroniclers, and from the archives of Colleges, as
well as from more modern biographies and local tra-
ditions; and this by every variety of writer. Later
still we have had the elaborate Report of a Royal Com-
mission, which has based many of its suggestions upon
history; while, to balance its somewhat one-sided
conclusions, we have the Report of the University
Authorities, who were put on their defence by the Re-
formers of 1850. And now a new Blue-book on Uni-
versity questions* brings us up to the point from which
* Special Report, &c., 1867.
LECT. VI.
OF OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE.
209
we may best regard the contrast between our own and
the foreign Universities which Dr. Döllinger has made.
If we refer more to the University of Oxford than to
that of Cambridge, we must shelter ourselves under
the excuse of the latest and best historian of the Uni-
versities, Professor Huber-viz., that on all main points
the history of one is that of the other. It may be
added that their points of difference do but illustrate
the considerations with which we are chiefly concerned
in this Lecture.*
The vitality of the English Universities must no
doubt be ascribed very largely to what we must call,
for want of a better word, their Nationality. They have
grown with the growth, strengthened with the strength,
decayed with the decay, risen with the rise of the
Nation, from the earliest moment of their history down to
the last. Every pulse of the national life has throbbed
through these bodies; every prejudice, every national
fault, has found its image there; every reform has been
initiated or furthered there,-sometimes not the less
furthered because for the moment opposed. If England
has been governed by her Parliaments, she has been
also governed, more than is generally thought, by her
Universities. Either in her past or present, England
would be scarcely England without them. It has
been so both in Church and State. The Universities
have equally shared the progress, the vicissitudes of
* Since this Lecture was delivered, a collection of "Munimenta
Academica, or Documents illustrative of Academical Life and Stu-
dies at Oxford," has been printed, in the series of publications by
the Master of the Rolls, under the superintendence of the Rev. H.
Anstey, who has contributed a useful Preface, stating what may be
gathered from these documents as to the internal condition of the
University in the Middle Ages.
P
*
210
THEY FORM AN INTEGRAL PART
LECT. VI.
both. In dealing with the English Universities, men
touch the very nerves and fibres which lace and inter-
lace the whole Constitution of the realm.
We will not stop to discuss the antiquity of these
venerable bodies. We may be content to make a pro-
test against the pedantry which refuses to acknowledge
the importance of Oxford as a place of education in
Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman times, merely because
no public document in which it is recognized as a Uni-
versity is found earlier than the thirteenth century. It
is only necessary to quote the carefully-formed opinion
of Huber, that the traditional connection between Oxford
as a place of education and King Alfred has never been
disproved, and that there are sufficient indirect proofs
of it to satisfy any reasonable mind.* That Oxford
shared with the entire country, and had more than her
proper share, of the horrors of the Danish and Norman
Conquests, and that these affected the inhabitants of
Oxford, not merely like any other city, but the city
through the scholars assembled there; that the re-
establishment of the city by the Normans as a place of
military strength was quickly succeeded by a resump-
tion of its scholastic character under the auspices of the
astute Beauclerc, whose palace at Beaumont sufficiently
proves his close connection with the place; and that,
if all other evidence were wanting, an ancient and im-
portant history must necessarily be supposed, if we are
to understand how Oxford could have become, except
by magic, a centre in which the new study of Civil Law
* It has been somewhat too hastily concluded that the discovery
of the spuriousness of certain authorities on which the old cham-
pions of the antiquity of Oxford relied, has invalidated all other
grounds of belief.
LECT. VI.
OF ENGLISH HISTORY.
211
could make itself a home in a reign of bitter and scarce
intermitted civil war like that of Stephen ;-all this we
shall take for granted. It is sufficient for our purpose
to observe, that when the new Norman family had fairly
established itself,-when, under its first four princes,
the rude elements of force in the body politic had so far
completed their struggle that the way was prepared
for the operations of the great founder of the English
Constitution,—that founder, Henry II., amongst the
various portions of the national fabric which he left in
shape, left also the two Universities. With the earliest
infancy of our august Courts of Law,-with the forma-
tion of the Common, and the introduction of the Civil
and Canon Law,—with the institution of orderly legal
trials in place of the rude Norman appeal of battle and
the Saxon ordeal,-with the great settlement of the re-
lations of Church and State effected by Henry,-with
the close French connection and the initiation of a
foreign policy, traceable from that time through all
periods of our history, which we equally owe to him,-
with the rise of the Scholastic Philosophy, and the
vast impulse given by it and the Civil Law to the
mind of the twelfth century;-with all this-and these
are but a few of the leading characteristics of that
central epoch-the Universities of England, no longer
in their infancy, but in the pride of a vigorous and well-
developed existence, are synchronous. Fitted by a long
past history for her task, and having, as we cannot but
believe, already borne a considerable part in the progress
of the nation, Oxford now started on that career which
we are henceforth able to trace with ever-increasing
light, while Cambridge began to emulate her activity,
and both to cultivate the closest intercourse with the
P 2
212
NATIONAL BY ROYAL PATRONAGE.
LECT. VI.
greater, though but little older, University of Paris,
from which so many of their early customs were de-
rived.
We have lingered a moment over this confessedly
indistinct period of University life, because it is scarcely
possible to overrate the importance of such institutions
as Universities being connected with the actual birth
and infancy of a nation. On the points of early Uni-
versity life, growth, identification with a nation, and
continuousness for many centuries, the glorious history
of Paris offers the only parallel with that we have just
noticed; but the retrospect is clouded by the memory
of its fall. It had concentrated everything within itself.
It had no sister University.to support it when the storm
of the Revolution came. Its roots had long ceased to
strike into the more fertile portions of French soil. Its
fall was irremediable.*
The most conspicuous mark of the Nationality of the
English Universities at this period (the end of the
twelfth and the thirteenth century), is the increasing
frequency and regularity of their connection with the
strongest power in the nation-the Crown. This was
chiefly brought about under the pressure of the un-
ceasing struggle which was taking place between the
Universities and the towns in which they had been
founded. Under the earlier Plantagenets, indeed, the
patronage of the Crown seems to have been pretty
equally divided between the University of Oxford and
* A popular sketch in English of the history of the University of
Paris is a desideratum. The bulky folios of Bulæus still remain-
like those of Wood for Oxford-the source to which inquirers are
obliged to turn. Neither Crevier nor Dubarle has done for Paris
what Huber has done for the English Universities; Dubarle, indeed,
was dealing with a body already dead.
LECT. VI.
STRUGGLES WITH CITIZENS.
213
*
the City, for we find Richard I., in grateful memory of his
birth and early education at that place, not only grant-
ing incorporation to the scholars, the seal of which
charter is referred to in authentic documents, but also
to the civic authorities, placing them on the same footing
as those of London, and making the mayor butler at his
coronation,† while his successors frequently knighted
that functionary. It is clear that the City of Oxford was
within a very little of taking a place in the civic history
of England only second to that of London, and that it
only lost its place by that connection with the Uni-
versity which first gave it importance. The fierce, con-
tinuous, traditional struggles between the two bodies,
pent up within the same walls, and neither of them
willing, nor indeed able, without the application of some
force external to themselves, to give way, necessi-
tated the humiliation of one or the other; and as
the nation could not do without the Universities, the
strength of the Crown was put forth in their favour.
They had always one remedy, which, like the Romans
of old, they never failed to apply when hard pressed,-
that of Secession. Unsupported in the struggle with the
city in the reign of John,-who, instead of befriend-
ing, exercised his accustomed reckless tyranny on the
scholars,―a large portion migrated to Cambridge, giving
a great impulse to that University, just as Oxford itself,
"Sigillum Cancellarii et Universitatis Oxoniensis.” This is
referred to by Wood, p. 48, who says the document mentioning the
common seal of the University of Oxford, and dated 1190, was in
manibus authoris.
† ‘Ayliffe,' p. 34. Wood assigns the grant of this privilege to
Henry II., and says it was taken from the city by Richard I. at his
second coronation in 1194. Hoveden only speaks of the citizens of
London as doing the butlery at Richard's coronations.
2.
214
DEFENCE BY MEANS OF SECESSIONS.
LECT. VI.
both before and after that time, received valuable ac-
cessions from Paris. Later on, great numbers migrated
from Oxford to Northampton, and, later still, to Stam-
ford.* Reading, Maidstone, and Salisbury also received
Oxford scholars, though not to the same extent as the
places first named. But the Nation had made up its
mind. Through its kings, using force when necessary,
the drain was stopped, and the scholars were always
sent back to their old homes. From the beginning
of the thirteenth century downwards, charters upon
charters, confirmations upon confirmations, almost with
the regularity of the confirmations of Magna Charta
itself, attested the royal and national sense of the im-
portance of the Universities.
The separation of England from North France, with
which the thirteenth century opened, changed the form
of connection which had hitherto subsisted between
Paris and the English Universities,-
"Et procul et propius jam Francus et Anglicus eque,
Norunt Parisiis quid feceris Oxonieque;"†
but the rivalry of the two States which now prevailed
offered a ready opportunity for one or the other literary
republic, whenever the strong arm of its own State was
felt to be intolerable, to throw its migratory bodies across
the Channel. The long reign of Henry III. was to the
Universities what it was to everything else in England,
the period of struggle between the various forces of
society, now organised in the form which they were, in
* Some notices of the collegiate character impressed on Stamford
by these migrations will be found in the 'Memorials of Stamford,'
by the Rev. Mackenzie Walcott.
† Wood, i. 207.
LECT. VI.
PRINCIPLE OF A COMMON LIFE.
215
the main, afterwards to retain. The royal power had
dwindled to the smallest proportions it had exhibited
since the Conquest, and the Nationality of England,
produced by the loss of Normandy, had begun to develop
itself freely on every side. The blood of the nation
rallied to the heart. Oxford became the intellectual
and political centre of the great contest. The halls,
inns, or hostels, which Huber declares distinguished
from their earliest infancy the English from all other
Universities, began to multiply exceedingly; thus,
under a rude form, ripening and strengthening that
principle of a common life which was afterwards to bear
such important fruits. The Friars were now firmly
planted in addition to the Monks, whose institutions
had so powerfully influenced the early days of the
Universities. Scholars flocked in from all parts of the
world. The ancient system of division into two Nations,
North and South, each with its Proctor, is found in full
operation. The Universities are the great centres of
education, doing the duty of schools for the young, as
well as homes for adult students, in an age when every-
body was inquiring and learning with an activity of
mind more remarkable, it has been said, than in our
own day. They swallow up the Cathedral Schools, and
draw all within their vortex.
Never were the Universities more truly National than
at this time; but it was the nationality of an age from
which our own is separated by a huge gulf of manners
and customs as well as years. Herded in these halls or
inns, much after the fashion of cattle, or living in holes
and corners such as are nowadays inhabited by the most
degraded class of the poor, the young noble with his
military pomp of retainers jostling against the poor
216
CONSTANT BATTLES, PRODUCING
student supported on daily alms, and the confusion of
the whole realm only too truly typified in its intellectual
centres, it was a wild tumultuous life, an encampment
rather than a settlement, a swarm of wild bees rather
than an orderly hive. Tumults and battles of course
there were under these circumstances almost without
end; battles, not with fists or stones (or even life-pre-
servers), but with swords, and bows and arrows, and
many killed and wounded on either side; the organiza-
tion of armies, the wild rough habits of civil war. There
never was wanting an occasion for a combat. The old
hereditary feuds between the University and the city
offered of course the most frequent opportunities; but
if that failed, there were numerous excellent quarrels in
reserve. The Seculars against the Regulars, and especi-
ally against the Friars, with whom for a century after
their introduction there was a constant struggle, the
University against the officers of the Archbishop of
Canterbury or the Bishop of the diocese; School
against School, as the Nominalists against the Realists;
Faculty against Faculty, as Law against Medicine; above
all, Nation against Nation, or parts of a Nation against
other parts.
LECT. VI.
It was this latter sort of faction fight which probably
gave rise to the well-known proverb which connects
Oxford disturbances with those of the realm. The
North and South of England had each its own charac-
teristics proceeding from National circumstances, dating,
indeed, from the rivalry of the Angles and Saxons, and
ready to break out in Oxford, or in the nation at large,
* "Chronica si penses, cum pugnant Oxonienses,
Post paucos menses volat ira per Angligenenses."
-Wood, i. 258.
*
LECT. VI. NATIONAL RESULTS OF IMPORTANCE.
217
on the slightest provocation. Thus in times of civil war,
which a very little historical knowledge will enable us
to connect with this old quarrel of race, Oxford of course
took its part; while at other times the local causes of
division already named rallied on either side the heredi-
tary enemies who had come to Oxford from either side
of the Trent. The resistance to the Papacy came chiefly
from the Northerners, who included the Scotch, while
the South English, reinforced by the Welsh, Irish, and
Continental scholars, were its supporters. Even Nomi-
nalism and Realism were found to have a hidden connec-
tion with the points of the compass; and Northerners,
by a strange fatality, were bound to be Realists, though
reformers; while Southerners must be Nominalists, in
spite of the use so often made of Nominalism against the
Romanism they supported. It would be interesting, if
we had time, to follow up the hints given us by the
historians, and trace in detail how these prime differences
shaded off, as time went on and local distinctions disap-
peared, the Popery of the one party into Jacobitism and
Toryism, the Reforming proclivities of the other into
Hanoverianism and Whiggery. Nor were the studies
which succeeded the Scholastic Philosophy exempt from
the same partisanship; the introduction of Greek being
patronized fiercely by the Southerners, while as stoutly
resisted by the men of the North, under the name of
Trojans.
Hence also is deduced the difference between Oxford
and Cambridge; and the tendencies of the Scotch Uni-
versities, when the time came for their foundation, may
be traced to the same source. The Northerners, drawing
their forces from a smaller and poorer area, were gene-
rally in a minority, and more often went to the wall.
218
EFFECT OF BATTLES ON UNIVERSITIES. LECT. VI.
Unable to brook inferiority, they migrated elsewhere-
to Cambridge, or, later on, to Scotland, carrying with
them their traditional principles, their ancient enmities.
There was, however, a better side of the picture. Not
only in Oxford itself, but throughout the island, the
antagonism of the two great principles of stability and
progress was diffused. The inestimable advantage was
secured throughout our medieval and modern history, of
having both sides of these great principles thoroughly
advocated. Public opinion formed itself under the aus-
pices of a literary class. Our political Constitution felt
the impulse. The great divisions of party government
to which this country owes so much of its later glory
and advancement may not indeed have had their sole or
even principal origin in, but they certainly derived
vigour from, this root,-deep down below the surface,
unobserved and forgotten, but none the less surely doing
its work.
What, however, was the effect on the Universities
themselves of this tumultuous life? No doubt it fixed
deep in their constitution the sentiment that they had
rights and privileges to guard-the truly English sense
of being bound to stand up and do battle for principles,
whatever they are. No doubt it fostered the idea of a
republic of letters-the conception of the dignity of
literature. No doubt there was a charm about this
boisterous, swash-buckler life, an expansion of ideas
arising from the fact of being in the very centre of the
life of the nation. No doubt the rivalry of the renowned
teachers of Philosophy and Theology was a stimulus to
their own exertions and the attention of the scholars.
No doubt, in short, the system, or rather no-system, was
not unsuitable for the rude age in which it flourished.
LECT. VI.
STEPS TOWARDS A REFORM.
219
But the evils were palpable; they soon became intole-
rable. As manners improved, public opinion declared
against this tumultuous life; order was to take the
place of disorder-kings and their chancellors were to
vie with each other in remedying the abuses of these
now great and famous Universities. As under the three
Edwards the old rude outline of the Constitution was
moulded into the shape it still for the most part retains,
so under these monarchs the present Collegiate charac-
ter of the Universities took its development. Let us
trace the events of this period in some detail.
"9
In the Civil War of Henry III.'s reign we find Oxford
in the main a faithful representative of the nation in
resisting that happy series of "Papal aggressions
which once and for ever opened the eyes of Englishmen
to the true nature of the Papacy. In 1238 the Bishops
of England take the part of Oxford against the vindic-
tive Legate (who, indeed, had not been too well treated),
declaring it to be "the second school of the Church "
Paris being the first-" the maintainer of piety and
learning most famous over the world." Later on, the
influence of Grosseteste and Montfort carries the whole
University with it, and makes Oxford the centre of the
national struggle. No less than four Parliaments are
held there in Henry III.'s reign. With the rest of the
nation its glad obedience to Edward I. showed that
resistance had been founded on real grievances, and was
unconnected with any disaffection to the Crown as such.
One of the steps taken by our Kings at this period-it
was first taken at Cambridge-was to inhibit tourna-
ments in both Universities-a step towards discounte-
nancing their warlike habits. Exemption from tallages
is also claimed and gained. Edward I. so far favours the
220
EDWARD III. PREVENTS SECESSIONS.
LECT. VI.
scholars at the expense of the citizens, that he inhibits
the latter from using for any other purpose dwellings
once let to scholars. As a part of his war policy in the
conquest of Scotland, he refused to let the Scotch
students leave the place, for fear they might "by a
foreign education be poisoned with State innovations."
Before he became king* he had mediated between the
University and citizens of Cambridge.
Edward II. seems to have taken great interest in
Oxford. Oriel College is said to have owed its
foundation to the vow he made during his flight of
sixty miles, with the Douglas at his heels, from Ban-
nockburn. This may or may not be true; but, at
his deposition, while the University takes his part and
the citizens that of Mortimer, it is certain that all
lectures are stopped for several months. Edward III.
had, it is said, studied at Oxford as a boy, under Walter
Burley, and owed much of his education to Richard
of Bury, a great benefactor of Oxford. He thus natu-
rally took that place under his special protection as soon
as his throne was secure. It is he who refuses to allow
Stamford to erect itself, as it ardently desired, into a
rival University, well knowing the danger of a centre for
Northern feeling. "It is not our pleasure that schools or
studies be held anywhere than in places where the Uni-
versities now are a resolution similar to that he took
with regard to staple-towns. If the infancy of commerce
required protection and concentration at the bidding of
what was a sound political economy for that day, much
more did the young manhood of University education.
"Edward III.," says Ayliffe, "deserves to be preferred
before all his predecessors on account of his patronage
Cooper's 'Annals of Cambridge.'
""
LECT. VI. THE great coNFLICT WORKS A CURE.
GREAT
221
and many liberalities conferred hereon." Some go so far
as to reckon him amongst the Oxford authors of this
period, as having written a work on laws, and some
epistles.
To him belonged the task of putting an end to the
battles of centuries between the University and
City of Oxford. The wars of Edward I., as well as his
own, had turned Englishmen of the middle class into
skilled soldiers. Welles in the first reign, and Bereford
in the second, were fit captains for battles such as were
now fought. We need not dwell on the terrors of the
"Great Conflict" of St. Scholastica's Day, 1353, which
the graphic pages of Wood have made sufficiently fami-
liar; but it may be remarked, that the way seems to
have been prepared for this frightful struggle* (which
reminds us rather of a Sepoy Mutiny or the French
Revolution than of an ordinary English fight) by the in-
ternecine contests which had shortly before taken place
between, not only the rival factions of scholars, but the
masters and scholars-the last being one of the most
sanguinary as well as discreditable of the whole series.
The terrible plague of 1350, which reduced the Univer-
sity to less than one-fourth of its usual numbers, had
also, in all probability, a great effect on the issue; for
the disparity of numbers when the City was reinforced by
the rude inhabitants of the surrounding villages, tempted
the one party to a desperate resistance and the other to
an indiscriminate vengeance. All this was to cease. The
very gravity of the evil worked its cure. Henceforth
the City was unmistakably to submit to the University,
* The battle lasted three days, and ended in the complete victory
of the City, aided as it was by some two thousand rustics marshalled
under a black banner.
222
FOUNDATION OF COLLEGES.
LECT. VI.
and the sign of its submission, long a galling badge of its
humiliation, has only been removed in our own day.*
These wars, however, left another and a much more
permanent as well as important mark. The necessity
of a Collegiate life was, as we have said, forced upon
the minds of all thoughtful men. The scandals attach-
ing to a Republican Church Militant were too much
even for that fighting age, and the contrast presented
on the one hand by the Colleges, as they were founded
one after another, and on the other hand by the inha-
bitants of the old Halls and the loose hordes of "Cham-
berdekyns" (camera degentes) outside the walls of both
Halls and Colleges, was daily becoming more remark-
able. The work achieved by Walter de Merton at
Oxford in the thirteenth century, carrying with it issues
so far beyond what that great man could have foreseen,
and soon afterwards wisely imitated by the foundation
of Peterhouse at Cambridge, had made itself felt by the
end of the fourteenth century. Six noble institutions
(University, Balliol, Merton, Exeter, Oriel, and Queen's)
had witnessed at Oxford to the public spirit of kings
and queens, clergymen and statesmen ; and now William
of Wykeham was to surpass them all. His College,
founded on a grander scale than its predecessors, and
with statutes of a more stringent character, "so that it
well deserved to be called New," became the model of
The oath to respect the privileges of the University taken each
year since the “Great Conflict" by the incoming Mayor to the Vice-
Chancellor was dispensed with by the University a few years ago.
Within the memory of the present generation the Mayor used
annually to present the Vice-Chancellor at St. Mary's Church with
sixty-three silver pennies, in memory of the number of masters
and scholars slain in the Great Conflict. The number slain was,
however, in all probability much greater.
LECT. VI.
CAUSES OF DECREASE IN NUMBERS.
223
the great founders of the next century. It gave a most
serious blow to the non-Collegiate system, which dragged
on but a degraded existence till the reign of Elizabeth.
By that time the Colleges had practically become the
University. The statutes of Laud did but surround
with the force of law what custom and circumstances
had brought about of themselves.
Among these circumstances we must give a promi-
nent place to the vast and sudden diminution of the
number of students which occurred soon after the middle
of the fourteenth century, and to which we have already
referred. Without endorsing the celebrated statement
about the 30,000 scholars who are said to have been at
Oxford in the earlier part of the century, there is plenty
of evidence that the numbers were very great, and that
they had been very greatly reduced by the end of it.
This diminution has been ascribed to various causes,
such as the allurements of the Friars, who attracted
students to their Societies without the consent of their
parents, to the dearness of provisions, and to the pre-
valence of another sort of Provisions, the system by
which the Pope "provided" for the incumbency of
Livings, and thus prevented University men from ob-
taining them. The state of constant warfare above
described, added to the incessant pestilences brought
on by the filthy state of the place, would be of them-
selves, however, sufficient to account for it, if the same
causes had not existed all along. But they had become
intensified at this period, and the civil disorders of the
country after the failure of the French wars, culminat-
ing in the disturbances of Richard II.'s reckless reign,
could not but have their effect on the Universities. If
these storms of the larger area had not been felt in the
224
FAME OF COLLEGES: WICLIFF:
LECT. VI.
smaller, it would indeed have been one mark the less of
that Nationality which we are now tracing. The decline
in the number of University students favoured the rise
of the Colleges, whilst the rise of these latter reacted
against any rally in the numbers of the former. On
the one hand the unused Halls were easily bought up,
and their sites absorbed by the Colleges, while the
larger space these bodies began to fill as the others
sank away gave the recommendation of success. Nor
only had they in their favour the fashion of the day,
the patronage of the great, and the visible space they
filled in the public eye, but they might well claim the
lion's share of the great names of which the University
had had to boast. Before any other College had time
to make a fame, Merton counts among the 8 men of
Oxford most celebrated during Edward I.'s reign for
being versed in the learning of their day, 2 of her own
sons; in Edward II.'s reign she reckoned 4 out of 21;
and in Edward III.'s, 9 out of 52, and amongst these
are the greatest names of the age. The other Colleges
were beginning to emulate Merton.
to further this great change.
Everything went
Two other circumstances, coincident with the rise of
the Colleges, throw light upon the movement. Oxford
had been the centre of the great Pre-Reformation
struggle. Round Wicliff had gathered all those North-
ern elements of opposition to Papal oppression which
had existed from the first, the old Anglo-Saxon Na-
tional-Church feeling. The struggle was perhaps even
more severe than when the Reformation at last came.
Richard II.'s letters to the University, urging the expul-
sion of Wicliff and his friends, are constant and press-
ing. All eyes were directed towards the scene of a
LECT. VI.
ANTI-FRENCH FEELING: INSULARITY.
225
conflict such as the world had not witnessed for a
thousand years. The silencing of the Reformers was
at last achieved, but at the expense of the numbers of
the University. And, secondly, this Collegiate system
took its rise, or rather obtained its development, at a time
when the French wars of Edward III. had completed
the separation between this country and France. Hence-
forth the hostility between the two nations was con-
tinuous. No dynasty could hold its own unless it made
war, or pretended to make war, with the national enemy.
French disappeared from our Courts of law; and Wicliff
and Chaucer, two thoroughbred University men, reduced
our vernacular nearly to its present form; England rose
to the measure of its full height; became more self-
contained, more self-sufficing. The Universities felt
the National change. The French and Continental
students were now seldom seen within their precincts;
and even the provincials took up a different position
at Oxford. Some of the last faction fights were between
the Welsh and the Northerners, and between the Uni-
versity and the Irish Chamberdekyns. This again
acted in furtherance of the new Collegiate system,
which was more aristocratic and exclusive, though de-
signed and still chiefly used for poor men, than the
democratic Republic. We are at no loss then to per-
ceive how at this period the Universities presented a
true image of the Nation.
The Fifteenth Century may be taken as standing by
itself, as much in University as in National history. It
is the period of transition from mediæval to modern
times, the period of reaction from the turmoil which
* had attended the Wicliff struggle, the period of repres-
sion, only to be succeeded by a far more tremendous
226
NATIONAL CHANGES: RISE OF LONDON.
LECT. VI.
explosion, of attempts to govern the Church by General
Councils, quickly followed by assertions of Papal power
more intolerable than ever before, of new discoveries, of
changes in the routes of commerce and the organization
of States, of foreign and civil wars, under cover of which
English society was marching out of its ancient into its
modern condition. How completely do the Universities
in this century reflect the Nation! If kings and states-
men are rallying round the old Church in the cause of
order, they combine in making these institutions the
very centre of their operations. If the English voice is
to be heard, fresh from the fame of Agincourt, at the
European Councils, to the Universities it must look for
a tongue.* If the grievous troubles of the nation have
depressed the cultivation of literature, it is here where
such depression is most felt. The very drain by which
so much of the life of the Universities is drawn off, is
significant. The metropolis, so influential in determin-
ing the issues of many a national struggle, fast growing
in wealth and importance in spite of all the national
woes, carries off in this century the professions of Law
and Medicine, now becoming divorced from their eccle-
siastical connection,† never to return in any force to
their old homes. Parallel with the social movement
which, when the people emerged out of the Wars of
the Roses, threw off the national feudality and chivalry,
Hallam, the famous Bishop of Salisbury, who so ably repre-
sented England at the Council of Constance, "the right hand of the
Emperor," who alone held together the Germans and the English
(Milman's 'Latin Christianity,' vi. 19, 62), and Abendon, who
carried the precedence of England over Spain at the Council, were
Oxford men.
† Ayliffe's History of the University of Oxford,' and Hook's
'Archbishops of Canterbury,' vols. iv. and v. passim.
LECT. VI.
PATRONAGE BY LANCASTRIAN HOUSE.
227
the Universities cast off the old literature and took
up the new. The Colleges, under the shadow of which
the Theology and Philosophy of the Middle Ages had
withered and decayed, became, at the end of the century,
the homes of the "new learning," the living centres
from which that learning, and the Reformation of which
it was the parent, were diffused throughout the land.
The rapid sequence of the foundation of Colleges
marks this era at both Universities. Archbishop Chi-
chele proved a worthy successor of Wykeham, and
seems to have set the tone of Oxford almost as influ-
entially as that remarkable man. Waynflete passed on
the torch from him to Wolsey. With these great eccle-
siastical statesmen for patrons, the Universities were
now more than ever identified with the Nation ecclesi-
astically. In 1437 Henry VI., under Chichele's guid-
ance, directs a letter from Woodstock to the Archbishop
and his suffragans, complaining of the diminution of
the number of students at both Universities, and ex-
horting them to make such provision from the Church's
patrimony as would make the University degree an
advantage. Next year, in consequence, it was decreed
in Synod that all patrons should be obliged for ten
years to confer benefices exclusively on Graduates, and
the time was extended still further in a later Synod.
The Lancastrian family was in all its branches emi-
nently favourable to the Universities. Beaufort and
Gloucester, if they agreed on no other point, vied with
each other on this. Cardinal Beaufort is as clearly
associated with our Divinity School as Gloucester with
the Bodleian Library. Their work has been super-
seded, but what we possess owes its origin to them.
"Gloucester," says Ayliffe, "was never wanting to sup-
Q 2
228
GROWTH OF COLLEGIATE SYSTEM.
LECT. VI.
""
port us in cases of the greatest difficulty." Henry V. is
stated to have been Beaufort's pupil at Oxford, and pro-
bably owed some of his great conceptions both to tutor
and University. Both he and his father left marks of
their reign at that place. In consequence of the plot laid
by Richard's friends at Oxford, Henry IV. forbade the
attendance of any great number of servants except on
certain occasions, including the meeting of Convoca-
tion; and in Henry V.'s reign, in order to put an end
to the constant plague of the Irish Chamberdekyns, a
University statute was passed, based on an Act of Par-
liament, by which "whoever had their diet in any
college or hall, they should stay there all night
"whence the halls of these" (Chamberdekyns), "of
which there were many, sensibly decayed apace." Thus
the way was left completely open for the new Colleges
springing up on every side. Henry VI., himself edu-
cated (it is said) at Oxford, and brought up at the feet
of Beaufort and Chichele, ill-qualified as he was for the
weight of a Crown at such a period, seemed born for the
task of promoting the cause of education and religion.
His magnificent works at Cambridge and Eton at the
present moment attest his devotion, but his patronage
of Oxford was also both consistent and wise. Finding
Oxford statesmen able and willing to give of their sub-
stance for their own University, he applied himself to
that which required his aid most, but he also bestowed
benefactions on All Souls, Magdalen, and New College,
the three fashionable Oxford Colleges of that century.
The Wars of the Roses stopped these great works,
and played their part in diminishing the number of
* Anonymous 'History of the University of Oxford,' p. 135, and
Wood, sub anno 1422.
LECT. VI. NATIONAL IN OPPOSITION TO THE PAPACY. 229
students. Edward IV. and Henry VII., the children
of the strife, had no taste for this sort of expenditure;
though they, as well as Richard III., each in turn,
visited Oxford in great state, and recognised its import-
ance, and though Henry VII. sent his son Arthur to
study at Magdalen, which had become by that time the
leading College. In the state apartments of Magdalen
(beautifully restored of late years) each of these kings
on their visits lodged. Margaret, Countess of Richmond,
however, true to her Lancastrian blood, supplied the
place of kings, and besides her foundation at Cambridge,
her famous Professorships ushered in a new period of
life at both Universities.
Still more clearly may National characteristics be
traced in the constant struggle which raged upon the
question of University jurisdiction. As in so many
other cases, the Papal and the National claims over
Oxford and Cambridge had never been very clearly
defined. The Crown, the Pope, the Archbishop of Can-
terbury, had each some grounds for maintaining their
exclusive rights. Resistance to the Papal claims had
been successful so long as a Lollard House of Com-
mons was able to lead the nation, and while the Councils
of the West were asserting their supremacy over Popes.
But the Councils passed away, and the Popes remained.
Again the Roman bulls asserted their authority. Even
Chichele, who had once shown much national spirit, was
obliged to bend before the storm. If the National Church
could not hold out, an effective resistance could scarcely
be expected from the Universities. Till the Reforma-
tion thundered over the land, Rome kept her own re-
covered sway in these seats of learning, and the old
National rights were lost.
230
FIRST TO RECEIVE THE NEW LEARNING.
LECT. VI.
No doubt the Universities had fallen low in the first
half of this century, but there is some reason to think
that their depression has been exaggerated by those
authors from whom most of the history of Oxford is
derived. At any rate, it is certain that the Colleges,
long before the end of the century, had somehow or
other sufficient vigour to receive, first of all European
nations except Italy, the Greek literature which the
fall of Constantinople had set free, and to educate the
men who were to pass it on to the next generation. It
does not look like a dead body when it produces at a
birth such men as Grocyn, Linacre, Latimer, Tunstall,
Colet, Lily, and Sir Thomas More. We have been
lately recalled to a grateful memory of some of the
'Oxford Reformers of 1498.'*
If these great men, with the foreign accession of
Erasmus, give the impulsive stroke which sets the Uni-
versities in motion, Wolsey stands alone in the magnifi-
cence of his schemes for their benefit, and the success
of his efforts to place them at the head of the National
progress. We need not here dwell on the grandeur of
his conception, nor stop to endorse the complaint which
rises in the minds of most who hear in the Christchurch
Bidding Prayer the name of the tyrant copyist sub-
stituted for that of the gifted originator.† It is enough
for our purpose that we trace once more in the Fellow
of Magdalen the influence of Oxford on the Nation,
By Mr. Seebohm.
6
+ The Bidding Prayer,' used by the preacher before a University
sermon, is based upon the form given in the 55th Canon, but varies
slightly according to the use of different Colleges, and even the will
of the preacher himself. Henry VIII. is of course the legal founder
of Christchurch.
LECT. VI.
WOLSEY: THE PROFESSORIATE.
231
and, in the efforts of himself and his master, the reflex
influence of the Nation on the Universities. From this
period the Universities date, and have preserved in un-
broken succession, the connection of University Pro-
fessorships and College foundations, the system of general
education along with particular supervision under which
they now flourish. The Collegiate and Tutorial system
has indeed been at times, perhaps, till this century,
pretty generally, a hard stepmother to the Professoriate,
but they have somehow or other worked together. At
any rate, from this time, though the Colleges had so
far absorbed the students as to have become practically
the University, the connection between the Colleges,
the uniting link, was to be found at least as much in
the Professors as in the Chancellors and the University
officers.
That the Universities survived the fall of this magni-
ficent patron, that when the monasteries were swept
away they were themselves allowed to stand, has often
been a matter of, perhaps somewhat ignorant, surprise.
We shall account for it presently. But that the tem-
porary prosperity they had enjoyed under Fox and
Wolsey should now be exchanged for a period of decided
adversity was to have been expected. The pestilences
again played their part. No less than twelve are re-
corded in the reign of Henry VIII. And the ejection
from the Universities of so many of those stiffer spirits
which would not bend to every opposite blast, as it
blew from the Courts of Henry, Edward VI., and Mary,
could not but deteriorate them for a time. Still they
suffered with the Nation, supplying the leading combat-
ants on either side-a Cranmer and a Ridley, a Latimer
and a Pole. They were still the home and refuge of
232
THE REFORMATION: ELIZABETH.
LECT. VI.
learning. It was reserved for Elizabeth to build up
the old Universities as she built up the Church and the
State.
Few things are more interesting than the accounts
which have reached us of Queen Elizabeth's stately
visits to Oxford, the meeting of perhaps the best edu-
cated, and certainly not the least capable, mind of the
age, with those to whom she looked for the renovation
of her harassed dominions. Within twelve years of her
Accession the marks of past disorders had been oblite-
rated, and the independent privileges of the Universities
secured by Act of Parliament. If Leicester made in
some respects an indifferent Chancellor, his mistress
took good care to govern through him, as she after-
wards did through Hatton and Buckhurst. Under the
abler management of Burleigh, Parker, and Whitgift,
Cambridge, however, for a time took the lead. By
means of these Chancellors most of the old abuses were
removed at both Universities. The principle of con-
formity to the now firmly-established Reformed Church
of the realm was strictly laid down, and thus an end
was put to the fatal interruptions of the work of the
place occasioned by religious dissensions. All students
were now to sign the Statutes, and be entered on the
Matriculation books; and no Degree was to be conferred
unless the proper exercises had been performed.
Such as Elizabeth left them have the Universities
in all substantial points remained. Connected, chiefly
in her reign, with the fast multiplying schools of the
country, they no longer professed to be what they had
once been, almost the sole educators of the nation, but
contented themselves with supplying the highest culture
the times could afford to the clergy, the gentry, and a
LECT. VI.
DIVINITY: LAW: MEDICINE.
233
sprinkling of the middle and lower classes. Protected
by the Crown through the revolution that had taken
place, they transferred their allegiance, without losing
their ancient privileges, from the Pope to the Sovereign.
They did indeed but return, like the Nation, to a former
position, though to one now no longer disputed. Since
that time they have been the strongest bulwarks of
Church and Crown.
It has been the fashion to decry the work done by
the Universities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries; but it was in reality little, if at all, less glorious
than any in their history. The number of learned
Divines they produced will scarcely be believed, except
by those who have been at the pains to examine the
list for themselves; and the gentry they educated were
certainly not inferior to any in Europe. The professions
of Law and Medicine had, as we have seen, been all
but lost before the Reformation. The abstraction of
Church preferment at the commencement of that move-
ment did indeed for a moment set University students
once more upon the pursuit of the medical profession; but
so great was the number of quacks thus thrown upon the
public, that in hasty self-defence the London College
of Physicians was established. The Universities, though
they have never relinquished the attempt, have never
since been able to rival that Institution for one of their
ancient Faculties, or the Inns of Court for the other.
The practical mind of Englishmen preferred men bred
at the place where practice could be got. The increased
demand for schoolmasters, and the growth of literature as
a profession, though slight indeed compared to what they
have since become, redressed in some degree the balance.
The country acquiesced in what it could not help.
;
.
·
234
LAUD: THE STUARTS: PARLIAMENTS.
LECT. VI.
How the first Stuarts identified themselves with the
Universities, how Lord Bacon was the glory of Cam-
bridge, how Laud acted over again the part played before
him by Wolsey and by Queen Elizabeth, surrounding
custom, as we have said, by the framework of law, and
giving a still more ecclesiastical tone-perhaps too
strictly so-to the University he loved so well; how
the Universities repaid the debt when the storm, which
their patrons had, it must be admitted, too much share
in producing, came; how they shared in the general
struggle, and rose with the Nation when the storm had
passed; how the Restoration naturally became the period
of reward for faithful services-the period of princely
benefactions (though not at the hands of the restored
kings), of beautifying and perfecting the visible struc-
tures which now meet the eye-for a very great part of
what is not quite modern is the work of Stuart times-
is an oft-told tale, and we shall not repeat it. As the
last of the great National Assemblies held at Oxford
for purposes either of Church or State was held at this
period, 1680, we may, however, sum them up in this
place. The list affords some indication of the political
importance which the convenient central position of
Oxford, and its ancient traditions, combined to create.
In Saxon times the Witenagemote met there on, at least,
three occasions of sufficient importance to deserve the
notice of chroniclers. In Plantagenet and Stuart times,
without reckoning the doubtful assembly of Charles I.'s
reign, twelve Parliaments have met at Oxford, besides
several Conferences and other political gatherings.
Fifteen Ecclesiastical Councils have also met there at
different periods of our history.
After this time it is enough to refer to their conduct
LECT. VI. BOYLE: NEWTON: BENTLEY: LOCKE.
under James II. to be reminded that the heart of the
Nation, when the limbs were paralyzed by the surprise
of an unparalleled audacity, still beat high at the Uni-
versities, and to point to the way in which Oxford clung
to the old dynasty, while Cambridge readily accepted
the new, in order to illustrate the conflict of National
feeling which they faithfully represented. It is still
more to our purpose to remark how the new studies
which came in with the later Stuarts found their head-
quarters at Oxford and Cambridge; how the University
which had been far before its age in the persons of
Grosseteste and Bacon, was the leader of its generation
in the persons of Robert Boyle and the founders of the
Royal Society, and thus how Physical Science went
forth from its walls winged for its modern conquests;
how the study of Mathematics leaped to its full height
at Cambridge in the persons of Newton and his peers;
how Bentley, at the same University, became the
parent of Classical Criticism; how Locke from Oxford
set free the Philosophic thought which Germany has
so often claimed as her own.
235
If we follow on the history still later, we observe the
same synchronism between the sluggishness of the
Nation in the eighteenth century and that of the Uni-
versities, the period of moral corruption in Church and
State, only broken by the wild war-cry of the French
Revolution. But no sooner is the spell broken than
with the Nation the Universities also start to life, and
from the commencement of this century run their
career side by side, urging each other with
1
"advancing tread,
Till, like twin stars, with even pace,
Each lucid course"
236
SHARE IN NATIONAL DECAY AND RISE.
LECT. VI.
66
runs abreast of the progress of the age, stimulated by
searching examinations and hard-fought honours,"
developing the best Tutorial staff in the world, and, by
degrees, a working Professoriate, adding to the number
of students, embracing larger and larger areas of
society,* and firmly fixed in the respect of the nation.†
The formation of new Universities leaves them un-
changed. It does not affect them. They are still,
though capable of further improvement, National.
* The number of matriculations at Oxford and Cambridge is
nearly equal, and steadily increasing. Reckoning the average time
taken to obtain an Oxford degree at three years and a half, and that
taken to obtain a Cambridge degree at a little less, they were each
educating about 1800 undergraduates when this lecture was given.
The numbers are higher now. The extension of University influence
through the "Local Examinations" is matter of notoriety.
† The eighteenth century, says Lord Stanhope, is to the Univer-
sities as ""
a valley between hills, in each of which" (the seventeenth
and nineteenth centuries) "one must own their intellectual eleva-
tion."
"At either of these periods a traveller from London might,
as he left the uplands and crossed the Cherwell Bridge, have wan-
dered through the proud array before him of pinnacles and battle-
ments-from where spread the cloisters of Magdalen and the groves
that bear Addison's name-to the books and the galleries of the
Bodleian, to that unequalled chapel of New College, or to that noble
bequest of Wolsey, the wide quadrangle of Christchurch, and all
the way have met nothing that misbecame the genius of the place
-nothing to clash with the lofty and reverent thoughts which it
suggested." After describing what the traveller would have seen
in the seventeenth century, he says “If he had visited Oxford
under the fourth George or the fourth William, he would then,
amidst some indefensible abuses, have found much, very much, to
admire and commend. He would have found most indefatigable
tutors, most searching examinations, most hard-fought honours. He
would have found on all sides a true and growing zeal for the repu-
tation and wellbeing of the place.”—' History of England,' vol. vii.
p. 317.
LECT. VI.
NATIONAL, BUT NOT DEPENDENT.
237
In using the word "National," it is necessary to
guard against misconstruction. The brief outline of
history given above will afford no countenance to the
view that the Universities are the creatures of the State.
The existence of a power, lodged somewhere external
to the Universities, which could step in upon occasion
and redress abuses, has been, indeed, an obvious fact.
This power, in matters of civil right, has, of course,
been exerted by the State, though even here it is im-
portant to observe that the Universities have always
had their own special and independent Courts of Law,
recognized by the law of the land. But the power to
interfere with the proceedings of the Universities has
been claimed, as we have seen, by various parties; and
in the conflict of claims the Universities found, before
the Reformation, a constant argument for maintaining
more or less of freedom. At the Reformation itself the
direct interference of the Crown was, of course, much
more exercised; but the Act of 13 Elizabeth recognized
their independence to the fullest extent ever previously
known, and since then there have been numerous occa-
sions when that independence has been successfully
asserted. It may throw light on the question if we recall
some of the more salient instances of such assertion.
The position taken up by the Universities in early
times was marked out for them by the feudal institu-
tions of which they formed a part. The right of resist-
ance to the smallest encroachment on the privileges of
a privileged person or corporation was, as we know, not
only recognized, but a solemn duty. It was the basis
of the whole system. Each institution dwelt apart, so
to speak, protecting itself, and looking to no one but
its feudal superior for aid in so doing. The inbred
238 CONSTANT PROOFS OF THEIR INDEPENDENCE LECT. VI.
Anglo-Saxon devotion to law strengthened the feudal
principle of mutual obligations. The Universities, with
their dim antiquity and rights gained by custom long
before they were theirs by grant, exhibited this in-
domitable independence more vigorously than any other
body. We have referred to their ever-ready method
of Secession. Nor were they satisfied with so trouble-
some a mode of defence alone. They called to their aid
the superstition of the times. The cunning of the eccle-
siastics had invented what they called the "Curse of
St. Frideswide," which would light on the head of any
monarch who should dare to sleep at Oxford. Henry III.
was the first to brave this curse. Edward I. braved
a similar curse at Cambridge.* The spell was thus
broken, but the spirit which did not fear to brave the
Pope and Legate, which did not hesitate to hold Oxford,
and then Northampton, against the forces of a King,
was never wanting in expedients; and the exceeding
jealousy with which these literary republics unceasingly
struggled for their real or supposed rights forms per-
haps the main feature in a great portion of their his-
tory. Nor do we find the spirit crushed even under
the heavy hand of Henry VIII. The resistance of the
younger Masters of Arts when their seniors quailed
before him is an episode never to be forgotten; while,
later on, the sturdy resistance of the whole University
to the dominant Puritans, when each College had to be
taken possession of, one after another, by military force,
and this long after the rest of the nation had submitted,
tells the same tale. The resistance to James II., which
saved the nation from a French government as well as
* Stow.
LECT. VI.
BEING RECOGNISED BY THE NATION.
239
from Papal domination, was scarcely stronger, though
more famous, at one University than at the other. If
Oxford clung to the fallen family, after having done
its best to resist its tyranny, with a tenacity which was
open to the charge of being sometimes bigoted or over-
scrupulous, there was at least something more respect-
able at bottom than empty bravado. There was a noble
affection for a house with whose better deeds the Uni-
versity had been identified; there was a dread of the
return of Puritan ascendancy; there was a determina-
tion to support the rights of the Church against the
chilling hand of Hanoverian statesmanship. Even the
solitary charge of subserviency made so maliciously
against Oxford by Pope, in the 'Dunciad,' on account of
the expulsion of Locke, and repeated by those who
ought to have known better, has been amply disproved
by Lord Grenville *-Dr. Fell alone being responsible
for abetting the tyrannical act of Charles II. as Visitor
of Christchurch. So well understood, indeed, was this
independent position, that some hold that our kings
have never used the language of command in reference
to the acts of the University. This can hardly be
proved; but even Charles I., who, if any one, might
have urged his requests after the manner of a sovereign,
was contented, when he wished the honour of a degree
to be conferred on an Oxford Bachelor of Arts for a
distinguished service, to "write on his behalf."
If, then, we may interpret the relations existing for
so many ages between the State and the Universities,
they may be summed up thus. Their right to indepen-
dent self-government was always recognised and re-
* 'Oxford and Locke.'
240 PROPERTY PRIVATE: NO PATERNAL RULE. LECT. VI.
*
spected; but when disorders of peculiar virulence
occurred, with the causes of which they were unable or
unwilling to deal, or when a change of dynasty or
a National Reform of religion rendered direct inter-
ference absolutely necessary, on such occasions the
Crown interfered. If any such interference was plainly
contrary to law, the resistance of the Universities was
considered by the country to be a duty; and it was
generally successful. While, then, the Universities
have been National in the sense of being Representative,
Privileged, Cared-for, and Used by the Nation, they
have also been Independent and Self-governed. As their
property was not derived from the State, but has been
the gift of munificent individuals, so the State has not
assumed any further control over it than was positively
necessary from time to time in order to put a stop
to gross abuses. Nothing approaching to the "paternal"
treatment of the Continental Universities has been
so much as attempted by the State, except on such rare
and special occasions as have been mentioned. It was
then but temporary, and withdrawn when no longer
needed; the wise English mind perceiving clearly
enough that the free independent action of great literary
corporations was a thing to be preserved by all means,
that such a jewel was not to be bought for money, and
that they had at least as much right to the free
enjoyment of their privileges as other corporations.
These historical relations between the two parties
explain a part of the phenomena which have at-
tracted the admiration of the German Professor, but
The exceptions are quite trifling.
LECT. VI.
CLOSE RELATION TO THE CHURCH.
241
only a part.
The connection between the Universi-
ties and the Church of England fills up the blank.
Oxford and Cambridge have passed through three
phases. They have existed as single and simple cor-
porations; as single corporations, with smaller corpor-
ations (the colleges) growing up within them; and, if
we may use the expression, as compound corporations
-i.e., the smaller corporations having become co-ex-
tensive and commensurate in the aggregate with the
larger ones.* In all phases, alike they have been in the
eye of the Canon Law, Ecclesiastical-in the eye of the
Common Law, Lay Corporations. In all phases alike
they have until our own day consisted of Churchmen,
and of Churchmen only. This circumstance was pro-
vided for, before the Reformation, by the Ecclesiastical
Headship of the Pope, the Archbishop, or the Bishop of
the diocese, by the condition of the age which placed all
education, all learning, and all professions, as a matter
of course, in the hands of ecclesiastics; and by the dis-
cipline of the united Western Church, which admitted
of no dissent. Since the Reformation, it has been pro-
vided for by the act of the Universities themselves,
under the indirect guidance and sanction of the Crown.
Thus the Nation and the Universities have grown up
together, accustomed, through whatever changes, to this
ecclesiastical aspect of the latter bodies. During the
* Yet to speak of the Colleges, under the modern phase, as being
co-extensive with the University is not strictly accurate. The
Oxford Halls still represent a non-Collegiate element. It is true
they have become very like Colleges, but they are the old Halls
still. They have no separate corporate existence. They are frag-
ments of the University. Since this Lecture was delivered both
Universities have resolved to try the experiment of "unattached
students."
R
:
242
COLLEGES FOUNDED FOR PAROCHIAL
LECT. VI.
first phase of University existence, the monks and friars,
whose establishments were rich and numerous both at
Oxford and Cambridge, had powerfully aided in stamp-
ing upon them this ecclesiastical character. The
Universities were always represented in the Synods
of the Church. Laymen were absorbed and lost in
the great ecclesiastical body. During the second
phase, as we have seen, the two Faculties of Law
and Medicine gradually melted away from their old
homes, and re-formed themselves in London. Thus,
at the very time when the Ecclesiastical body was
itself growing weaker, the disappearance of its rivals
gave it secure possession. We have seen also that
the foundation of the Colleges was synchronous with
the National struggle against the monks, and espe-
cially against the friars, the Pope's body-guard; as
also with the great social disorders of the fourteenth
century. Their founders had in view not only the dis-
cipline and regular education of students, ill provided
for under the older system, but also the provision for
Divine Worship throughout the land, the supply of
secular clergy, and the substitution of such National
clergy, trained in accordance with their statutes, for the
monks and friars who swarmed over the country and
were more or less anti-national. The kings and states-
men who founded Colleges were the men of all others
to see the need of this substitution. The statutes of
many Colleges bear witness to this feeling, and it
is probably implied in other cases where it is not ex-
pressed. A few instances will suffice.
G
The objects of the great founder of the Collegiate
System, Walter de Merton, have been thus happily
summed up by Bishop Hobhouse, in his Sketch of the
LECT. VI.
CLERGY AS OPPOSED TO MONASTIC.
243
*
Life of that great man." "His conception was that of an
incorporated body of secular students, endowed with all
the attributes of the great corporations of Regulars-self-
support, self-government, self-replenishment,-settled
locally in connection with a great seat of study, acquir-
ing a share of that influence in the University which
the establishment of powerful monasteries within its
bounds had almost monopolised in the hands of the
Regulars, and wielding that influence for the benefit of
the Church in the advancement of the Secular clergy,
who, for lack of support and encouragement in the
Universities, were sadly decayed in learning."
"He
forbade his scholars even to take vows." "They were
to keep themselves free from every other institution.”
(His words are, that they should forfeit their scholar-
ships "si quis eorum religionem intraverit," "si reli-
gionis habitum assumant."†) "He looked forward to
their going forth to labour in sæculo, and acquiring pre-
ferment and property. Study being the function of the
inmates of his house, their time was not to be taken up
by ritual or ceremonial duties, for which special chap-
lains were appointed; neither was it to be bestowed on
any handicrafts, as in some monastic orders. Voluntary
poverty was not enjoined, though poor circumstances
were a qualification for a fellowship. No austerity was
required, though contentment with simple fare was
enforced as a duty." "The proofs of the founder's
* Sketch of the Life of Walter de Merton,' &c. By Edmund,
Bishop of Nelson, New Zealand, late Fellow of Merton College,
D.D. (Parkers.)
† 'Statutes of the Colleges of Oxford.' Printed by desire of H. M.
Commissioners for inquiring into the state of the University of Oxford.
(Parker and Longmans, 1853.) Merton Coll., pp. 6, 11, 27.
R 2
:
244 MERTON: ORIEL: QUEEN'S: NEW: LINCOLN :
design to benefit the Church through a better-educated
secular priesthood are to be found, not in the letter
of the Statutes, but in the tenor of their provisions,
especially as to studies, in the direct averments of some
of the subsidiary documents, in the fact of his providing
Church patronage as part of his system, and in the
readiness of prelates and chapters to grant him impro-
priations of the rectorial endowments of the Church."
"The Statutes, like many a document set forth by
a man thoroughly possessed with a leading idea, never
expressly set forth that idea." 'In honorem Divini
nominis, in profectionem ecclesiæ, pro utilitate eccle-
siastici regiminis,' are the wide phrases conveying his
general purpose, which is much more closely described
by their patrons in their grants and confirmations."
Clearly his main end was the benefiting the Church by
erecting a nursery for her parochial priesthood in the
bosom of the University, a band (not of 'religiosi stu-
diose viventes,' but) of 'studiosi, religiose viventes.'
Merton, it is well known, was the model for all. In
Oriel we find the same idea, "the increase of Divine
Worship." Its scholars must study Theology, and
of these three might study Canon Law. The Statutes
of Queen's use the same words, "increase of Divine
Worship."
66
"""*
The great head of the next series of founders, William
of Wykeham, remarks that he had convinced himself,
after a most careful study of the rules of the old reli-
gious institutions, that they had been grievously ill-kept,
and if wise and provident statutes could secure the per-
manency of his own, he certainly deserved to succeed.
LECT. VI.
* See also 'Arms of the Oxford Colleges,' with Notes and Illus-
trations by the Rev. J. W. Burgon.
LECT. VI. ALL SOULS: MAGDALEN: BRASENOSE, &c.
He assigns in his Charter of 1379, says Ayliffe,* “the
paucity of the secular clergy here in England to be the
chief cause of this charity of his, forbidding his fellows
to enter into religious houses." Lincoln is especially
founded for a theological purpose, the defence of the
faith against heretics. The Patent Roll of Henry VI.
grants Archbishop Chichele's prayer for a charter to All
Souls on the ground of the desire to "increase the
clergy of our kingdom;" and we find a reference to
"the impoverished condition of the clergy of our king-
dom, which is daily becoming more conspicuous." The
expressions about Magdalen are of the same character.
It is founded for the "extirpation of heresies and errors,
the increase of the clergy, and the honour of Holy
Mother Church;""the support and exaltation of the
Church, and the increase of Divine Worship;" and,
again, “for the honour of God and the increase of the
clergy and of Divine Worship." The Letters Patent
of Brasenose indulge in a flight of poetry, and remark
that "as flowers and fruits are nourished from roots of
trees, so each and all who desire to study Sacred Theo-
logy derive their excellence from the faculties of the
sciences, sophistry, logic, and philosophy;" and Sir
Richard Sutton declares the foundation to be for "the
support and exaltation of the Christian faith, the profit
of Holy Church, and the increase of Divine Worship."
Bishop Fox is less direct. He compares Corpus to
a beehive, where his students "shall day and night
make wax and sweet honey for the honour of God and
the ease of all Christians." Wolsey declares his one
reason for founding Cardinal College was his perceiving
the necessity of training youth "as well in moral cha-
* I. 113.
245
246
OBJECTS ATTESTED BY CHAUCER, AND
racter as in literature, that they might commend
and confirm the faith of Christ their Saviour in simple
minds not less by the example of their life, than by the
true and sincere preaching of the gospel." The entirely
ecclesiastical character of his magnificent foundation
was acknowledged without reservation in the completion
of the work by Henry VIII. St. John's is founded for
"the increase of the Christian faith; " Jesus, for "the
amplification and establishment of the Christian faith
and sincere religion, for the extirpation of errors and
false opinions, and for the increased and continued cul-
tivation of piety, . . for the common usefulness and
felicity of Christ's Church and Kingdom, and our sub-
jects." In Pembroke all fellows and scholars were
bound by the statutes to study theology, and to take
priest's orders.*
In short, in all alike, while the assistance of "
pan-
peres et indigentes scholares" is especially recognised,
while the notion of study, the studies being specified ac-
cording to the mode of the time, is carefully put forth,
while a rule of life is a part of each scheme, the religious
element is more or less definitely opposed to the so-
called "religious life" of the day, that of the monas-
teries and religious houses. To them they are in fact
rival institutions, peculiarly English and National, as
opposed to what was Foreign and Papal. They are de-
signed to produce the sort of character drawn once and
for ever by the founder of English poetry, "The Clerk
of Oxenfoorde," and the "Poure Persone of a Toun.”
They did produce it. The Colleges, eleemosynary
foundations as they all were, opened the door for a cer-
LECT. VI.
* See 'Statutes of the Colleges of Oxford' passim for these quota-
tions and summaries.
C
LECT. VI. PROVED BY THE RESULT OF THE REFORMATION. 247
tain number of youths of the lower classes to come to
the Universities, and be carefully trained for the good of
the Church and Nation; and as the need of systematic
provision for the clergy of the land became more and
more pressing, the duty of teaching as well as studying,
a duty little recognized in the earliest foundations, be-
came more and more recognized.
Lastly, we have the most complete proof of the dis-
tinction between the ecclesiastical function which the
Colleges were meant to discharge, and that of the
Monastic institutions, in their different fate at the Re-
formation. While every one of the latter bodies at the
Universities was swept away, such as at Oxford, Durham,
and St. Bernard's Colleges, Canterbury and Gloucester
Halls, those which retained even the strongest mediæval
character, such as All Souls, where the services for the
faithful departed formed a leading element, but which
had no bond of connection with the "Religious Houses,"
were suffered to remain. In short, the connection
between the Colleges and the secular clergy, the fixed
clergy of towns and villages, is as marked in the later
middle ages as it has been since.
These facts are all-important in the history of the
Reformation. At that epoch the Colleges, which were
already almost identical with the Universities, favoured,
or but slightly opposed, the overthrow of that which
they were long before founded in order to supersede, the
Monastic system; and that carried with it the Papal
system. The keen-sighted Tudors saw the need of
retaining and using them for establishing the Reforma-
tion. These monarchs resisted the strongest efforts
made for their suppression; hence they passed by a
natural process, with wonderfully little change, into the
I
248
SUBSEQUENT CHURCH CONNECTION.
Universities of the Reformed Church of England. The
Church of the Nation had reformed itself. It was still
the Church of England, the Church of the Nation. The
Universities marched along with the Church. They
were still the Universities of the Church, the Univer-
sities of the Nation. "In most instances," says Mr.
Goldwin Smith, "there is nothing to show that the
founders of Roman Catholic Colleges would not have
changed with the main body of the Church of England
at the Reformation. Too much stress has probably been
laid on this connection." *
LECT. VI.
We need not trace with any minuteness the Post-
Reformation connection between the Universities and
the Church of England. That is well known in its length
and breadth. The history of the Church is in this
country the history of the State in most respects, and
the Universities shared the fortunes of both. Nurses of
the heroes who fought the battle of Church and State
against Romanism and Puritanism, they supplied, with
scarcely an exception, every man amongst that galaxy of
Stuart Divines with which we are all familiar. When, in
Hanoverian times, the Church staggered under the
onslaught of her enemies, it was the University men
who fought for her to the last. Through these cham-
pions Convocation gave its last utterances in the days
of the first George. Even in the evil times which suc-
ceeded the suppression of the Church's voice, a Bishop
Butler was raised up to illuminate the gloom of Theo-
logy, a Wesley to relight the lamp of Christian zeal, a
Dr. Johnson to lead the way in the reformation of
letters, a Blackstone to lay anew, in a noble, religious
spirit, the foundations of law. The knowledge of Theo-
Statement appended to University Commissioners' Report.
LECT. VI.
FOUR CARDINAL CHARACTERISTICS.
249
logy, Classical literature, the exact sciences, and mental
philosophy, was at least kept alive in the English bi-
valved heart during the general chill of the English
dark age.
When the Universities once more awoke with the
Nation, their vitality instantly reacted on the Church.
From them issue the awakening notes which are echoed
from every town and village in the realm. The Nation
recognises their value as religious and moral agents.
Men attempt to found similar institutions, but find it as
hard as to create from political chaos spick-and-span
English Constitutions, and for the same reason,—these
things have not been made. They have grown. They
have become what they are through a course of ages, a
piece of mechanism of far too delicate a nature to be
rudely handled.
We have thus marked off the four great historical
aspects of the English Universities. We have traced
their NATIONALITY politically and socially, their COL-
LEGIATE CHARACTER, their INDEPENDENCE, and their
IDENTIFICATION WITH THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
We recur to Dr. Döllinger's statement, and we put
the two together. That our system should, as he
says, "make instruction take root in the mind, and
become a part of it, and that the influence of our
training should extend beyond the mere communica-
tion of knowledge to the ennobling elevation of the
life and character," is the simple result of the above-
mentioned facts. The people have had confidence in
a system which was protected by the State, while
allowed to retain its independence; which protected
the character of students at the most impressible age;
and which was identified with the Church. The Uni-
250
MODERN MARKS OF ANTIQUITY.
LECT. VI.
versities, in other words, have established a character
of their own in the course of ages, and the Professor
has drawn it for us.
Does the sketch of University history here given
strike any one as of little use in accounting for the
phenomena of our existing institutions, and their posi-
tion with regard to the nation? Let him, if he is a
University man, reflect on the extraordinary influence
the past had on the bearings of the commonest cir-
cumstances which encompassed his University life.
Let him remember how impossible it is to get to the
bottom of any question, still more such a complex
one as this, without giving full attention to its history.
In the old English Universities a man is reminded
of the past at every turn of his life. To say nothing
of the hallowed memorials of predecessors and bene-
factors all around, the quaint forms which have in
reality so much meaning, and the antique customs
which still excite so much interest, we can only
understand such phenomena as, for example, the
obstinately recurring town-and-gown rows, unmeaning
as they now seem, when we remember the traditions
of real, constant, and sanguinary conflict of which
University annals are full. We cease to wonder at
the extraordinary persistence of Bacchanalian Com-
memorations when we reflect on the ancient institution
of the privileged jesters, the Terræ Filii,* who, year
after year, for so long a series, were allowed, on these
occasions, amidst the shouts of their compeers, to lam-
poon the gravest dignitaries of the University. We are
* Of these Terræ Filii a very interesting account has appeared
in 'Macmillan's Magazine' for January, 1868.
LECT. VI.
DEFENCE OF ENGLISH SYSTEM.
251
less astonished at the remarkable tendency which our
educational system shows, whatever changes may have
been introduced into it, to recur to ancient types, when
we reckon up the main facts of its marvellous history.
Perhaps we may conclude this Lecture by a word
or two in reference to the German Professor's general
criticism of the old Universities, contained in his
interesting pamphlet. If the process of improvement
be still going on too slowly to satisfy the ardour of
our critics—if it is alleged (with much exaggeration)
that they are still only big boys' schools, have no
"learned class," and do but little in return for their
noble revenues,-candid observers will allow that the
improvements, even of the last very few years, have
been neither few nor unimportant,-that these im-
provements have not yet had sufficient time to develop
themselves, that the men trained under the new
system have not yet found their full employment,
-that bodies which have confessedly preserved a
valuable system, lost or never possessed by other
nations, may be pardoned if they have still something
to learn from those which have made a wholly dif
ferent system their all in all,—that the effort to combine
both systems (the Collegiate and Tutorial, with the
Professorial) has already made some progress, and is in
a fair way of making more,-that if so many great books
are not written at our English Universities as in Ger-
many, the men who write our best books have at least
received their training at these institutions,-that our
boast of making men rather than books is not an un-
worthy theory of education,-and that, the German
States having hitherto been small and despotically
governed, the terms of comparison do not in reality
•
al
252 PRESENT CHURCH CHARACTER: RECIPROCAL
apply, since the openings for educated men in public
life have not been, and cannot be, what they are in a
self-governed country like England, while the activity
of the first of commercial and colonising States supplies
employment for youth which is not found in Germany.
It must also be admitted, further, that English ideas
revolt at the notion of State-governed and State-nursed
Universities—that laws which insist on public servants,
or members of the liberal professions, being educated in
one particular way, as in Germany,* and that alone,
would never find favour in our freer soil-that the
number of educated men amongst our clergy and gentry
is, after all, very far greater than in Germany-that the
extension of the Universities to all classes of our com-
munity has already commenced with vigour; and,
finally, that the deeply ingrained principle with Eng-
lishmen, that religion should form part of all education,
at all its stages, has made them insist on placing their
sons where clergymen take at least the leading part, and
where that ecclesiastical character which, as we have
seen, has attracted men to the Universities from their
earliest foundation down to our own times, is still
retained.
LECT. VI.
The revolutions of ages may have rendered it impos-
sible to keep to the minutest points of the wills of
founders, and to some even of the leading purposes they
had in view. The mere education of young men for a
short period may have become far more the business of
the Colleges than was contemplated in the earlier foun-
dations; but the reconstruction of Collegiate buildings
* See Dr. Perry's Evidence in the 'Special Report, &c.,' of the
Committee of the House of Commons on Mr. Ewart's University
Extension Bill.
LECT. VI. INFLUENCE OF NATION AND UNIVERSITIES.
AND
253
on their present scale, which has been going on for
several centuries, proves to demonstration that this
change has long been accepted and approved. At any
rate, the common sense of Englishmen has taught them
the pedantry of destroying or injuring vast agencies for
good, because they are doing that good in a way which
was not exactly intended or foreseen, but which the
course of ages has developed, and the desirableness of
rather devoting themselves to the recovery, in a manner
suited to the age, of any of the old uses which have been
suffered to pass away, and which may yet be worthy of
resuscitation. Englishmen are not willing to break
with the past, when the history of that past is such as
we have described it. Like the mutual compensation
afforded by the different temperatures of the sea and
land, the English Universities and the Nation have
exchanged with each other the hot and cold breezes
which were necessary in order to keep up the equili-
brium of a healthy atmosphere. If one was behind the
age, the other may have temporarily fallen with it, but
had a reserve force within which gave the impulse to
fresher gales; if one was too far in advance of the
medium, the calmer and cooler influence of the other
before long restored the balance. Men hesitate to part
with what has thus become a sort of second nature.
At any rate, if some of our neighbours despise the
old Universities a little too much, some of our own
keen-sighted progeny take a very different view. There
is no English institution which the Americans so much
admire. Mr. Everett has lately told us what an
American thinks about Cambridge.* To be sure, Oxford
fares differently at his hands; but as he confesses his
* "On the Cam.'
254
OPINION OF AMERICANS.
LECT. VI.
entire ignorance of it, that need not disturb the peace
of Oxford men. Not long since, however, the lecturer
had the honour of meeting an American judge, sent
over to England on a diplomatic mission by the Presi-
dent of the United States-a man of ripe experience,
wisdom, and high cultivation. He said something of
this sort: "Don't you believe, sir, what the American
newspapers say about England. They do not represent
our people. Americans have the deepest reverence for
your institutions, and especially for Oxford. They look
upon it as the property of the race. They would
deplore the touch which injured it. Keep your Oxford,
sir-the Oxford which we know. Remove all abuses, if
there are any, but beware how you allow it to be
revolutionized to suit the theories of modern experi-
ment-makers."
LECT. VII.
ENGLISH POLITICS HAVE ALWAYS
LECTURE VII.
255
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE RELIGIOUS AND THE
POLITICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
NOVEMBER 7, 1868.
In some former Lectures we attempted to trace the re-
lations of Church and State through successive periods
of English history* with reference to the question, how
far the essential Freedom of the Church had been re-
tained in the midst of political changes. We return to
the subject under another aspect. Let us inquire what
position the Church of England has held in direct re-
lation to British politics; noticing also, as far as their
religious influence has affected politics, the opponents
of the Church. The English have sometimes been
represented as an irreligious people. It would be diffi-
cult to repel the accusation on many points which could
be alleged. But hostile critics are apt to regard too
much the external aspect of a people who take a delight
in making the worst of themselves, and thus are led to
disregard the real condition of the heart of the nation.
In no country has the connection of Religion with Poli-
* It has been impossible to avoid a certain amount of repetition
in running over the same ground, though with a different object :
but it is hoped that this will be found to have been reduced to the
narrowest limits.
256
TURNED ON RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS.
LECT. VII.
tics been stronger or more continuous;* and while we
have an instinctive repugnance to many of the circum-
stances which degrade this connection, the unreality,
factiousness, intrigue and turbulence which confront us
at every step, it can hardly be denied that for a whole
people, from generation to generation, to make religious
questions the centre round which their National strug-
gles are grouped, betokens an earnestness of belief
which should at least protect them from this reproach.
It is the steady undercurrent which marks the charac-
ter. The troubled waves are accidental and superficial.
Other countries have had more religious wars. England,
saved from war at the Reformation by the vigorous
government of the Tudors, has had but one, "the Great
Rebellion." Our struggle has taken the form of a
Party warfare. In that Party warfare the question of
Religion has almost always been paramount, though not
always equally observable.
As this fundamental connection has not been fully
developed by the standard authors to whom we should
naturally look,† it may not be useless to pursue the
traces of it as a clue through our national history, con-
fining our attention to the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, with only a word or two of remark upon the
previous period.
* “With us religion has been a power, and has often generated
that spirit of self-sacrifice which must take the lead more or less in
all great changes."-Vaughan's 'Revolutions of History,' iii. 597.
† To mention only a few, we cannot expect a proper treatment of
this subject from Hallam, who does not attempt to conceal that he
is a Whig partisan'; from Macaulay, whose sympathies are in the
same direction, though he is more fair than Hallam ; or from Guizot,
as a French Protestant. For the later portion, on the other hand,
Lord Stanhope's 'History' gives us the most valuable assistance.
LECT. VII.
THREE PERIODS: THE FIRST.
257
The Reformation must always be considered the
grand central event which separates the history of
England after the Conquest into two parts. But the
political and Constitutional history of England rather
requires a triple division; from the Conquest to
Richard II.; from Richard II. to Charles I.; and from
thence down to our own day: or we may divide it (a
little more roughly) under different dynasties. The
Normans and hereditary Plantagenets cover the first;
the Lancastrian, Yorkist, and Tudor princes the second ;
the Stuarts and Hanoverians the third. Wicliff divides
the second from the first; Laud, or the two first Stuarts,
the third from the second.
In that First Period we must look for the connection
between Religion and Politics, not so much in the
government of the State by great ecclesiastics, as in
the struggle of kings and nobles, supported by the
Anglo-Saxon traditions of the class below, against the
ecclesiastical system introduced with the Conquest and
centred at Rome. Clericis laicos infestos," as the bull
of Pope Boniface VIII. had it, was true enough, but it
was a general, a National hostility to the political sys-
tem of Rome and the growing corruptions of her venal
Courts. The civil and foreign wars, the popular and
parliamentary struggles of the period may be largely
traced to this cause. The doctrines of the Church
were little questioned, and certainly, till the time of
Wicliff, did not affect politics. But the latter part of the
fourteenth century witnessed a great religious change.
The translation of the Bible and the rapid growth of
the Pre-Reformation marshalled nearly half the people
in opposition to Roman doctrine. Hence a change in
the direction of politics, a change which received an
S
1
258
THE SECOND COMMENCES WITH WICLIFF. LECT. VII.
enormous impulse when the fifteenth century ushered
in the horrible spectacle of so-called heretics tortured
at the stake for their religious opinions. Hitherto the
nation as a whole had exhibited its merely political
antagonism to Rome. Now, joined with the doctrinal
rebellion, comes the rude organization of political
parties within the State, banded together upon dis-
tinct religious principles.
In our Second Period we find, then, a sturdy spirit
of resistance to the arbitrary power both of Crown and
clergy very frequently exhibited in the House of Com-
mons. We trace it all through the troubled reigns of
Richard II. and the three Lancastrian monarchs. The
religious element in this resistance is intimately con-
nected with the political progress of the age, the French
war and the struggles of statesmen. Merged for a
moment in the War of the Roses, though we may trace
even in that obscure period something of a political bond
formed by religious opinion, heard but in faint mutter-
ings while the iron hand of the first Tudor reorganized
the civil policy of the realm, the outburst of the Conti-
nental Reformation, itself the child of the English move-
ment, found the Religious character of English Politics
largely developed. The religious mind of the country
was now fully prepared and eagerly anxious to join in
the mighty struggle. It had become an affair of State.
But the century and more which had elapsed since
Wicliff's death had given men time to think out the
subject. It was no hasty, crazy change in England. Two
parties had gradually developed amongst the Reformers,
at first united; and here lay the germs of all that has
characterized English history in modern times. Two
main streams of unequal size parted off at last from the
LECT. VII.
THE TWO SPECIES OF REFORMERS.
259
Roman obedience. By far the largest and most im-
portant cherished the ancient English feeling of devotion
to the National Church, but to that Church as indepen-
dent of Rome, accepting the reform of her doctrinal and
practical errors without relinquishing the slightest hold
of, rather vigorously reasserting, Primitive Truth and
Order. Led by the Sovereign, the peerage, the gentry
and the more enlightened of the clergy, this party may
almost be called the Nation; for, as the Reformed
Church became settled and established under Elizabeth,
these men gathered strength from every quarter, and
for a time formed the one visible representation of the
Reformation. Nor only so. The Reformation, as we
have received it, the Prayer-book which contains it, is
theirs; theirs were the Convocation and the Parlia-
ment which prepared and ratified our authoritative
documents.
But side by side with this party, often apparently
absorbed in it, ran, during the sixteenth century, the
much thinner stream of the descendants of the
Lollards, the more violent Reformers, whose zeal
took the impress of fanaticism, and whose notion of
right in matters of religion may not unfairly be
described as an attempt to reach the point farthest
removed from Rome. Sullenly bending to the strength
of the greater body, this party lay by and waited
its opportunity. As the strong arm of Henry VIII.
grew weak it took courage from the more pronounced
reformers of the Continent, flamed in the furious van
of iconoclasm with Protector Somerset, lent a large
proportion to the roll of martyrs under Mary, and
claimed to be represented as a party in the House
of Commons before Elizabeth vacated her throne.
s 2
260
THE THIRD COMMENCES WITH LAUD.
*
LECT. VII.
The Puritans of the seventeenth century were only a
more powerful and outspoken body than their prede-
cessors of the sixteenth; they were the same people.
They had hitherto worked in comparative obscurity,
more felt than perceived by the governing classes, and
giving a tone to the movement more marked than their
numbers or importance justified. For in fact they
knew what they meant, and their energy often pre-
vailed where more moderate counsels were at fault.
Could James I., had he been as wise as he was the con-
trary, have absorbed this growing party? Probably not.
Doubtless his measures accelerated its rise to power,
but they were very far from causing its existence.
Our Third Period opens with the emergence of this
party into a leading position. The country gentlemen
threw their weight into its scale. From henceforth we
trace the political division of the Nation into two dis-
tinct bodies. The modern names were as yet unknown,
but they were subsequently imposed on what had
existed from the commencement of the Stuart era.
The mischievous policy of the first Stuarts, in raising
the Church to a political position it had no right to
occupy, alienated all its best friends. The clergy
brought certain ruin on their order by accepting the
position which Laud had made for them. The most
moderate men began to perceive that the demand for
civil and religious liberty was now sacred and legitimate.
For a time the nation was led by its natural leaders in
the path of resistance to the Church and Crown. And
so, owing to the follies of their opponents, the Puritans
gradually worked their way to a temporary supremacy.
The times demanded great changes, and, above all,
a man of genius to make them. But the statesmen,
LECT. VII.
THE GREAT REBELLION.
1
261
as it happened, and, finally, the man of genius, ap-
peared on the Puritan side; the absolute government
of their fellow-countrymen fell into their hands. Then,
splitting into sections, forced, by the disgust of the
great mass of the people at their proceedings, from a
position which was in reality but accidental,-they sank
back again more speedily than they rose. No longer
pretending to influence the Church from within, the
beaten faction formed a separate camp. The Non-
conformists were to subside into the humbler position
of a single element of one of the two great parties which
have governed England by the process of mutual an-
tagonism from the time of Charles II. to our own day.
The Great Rebellion, the Restoration, the intervening
period between that and the Revolution, the Revolution
itself, and the Party struggles which have succeeded it,
-all alike bear witness to the religious character of
the influences which have determined English politics,
and all alike display the presence of that divided stream
in which the waters of the Reformation flowed.
The great Civil War, or "Great Rebellion," we are
all now learning to regard in its religious aspect. The
time has passed when political writers could treat it as
a mere revolt against the illegal proceedings of the
Sovereign. We are returning to the truer view, which
indeed we can hardly help gathering from the contem-
porary writers, the view which discovers the causes of
that movement in the deep springs of traditional
religious thought, and accounts for its phenomena
quite as much by the love or hatred of the Church
of England as by the mistakes of Charles and the
genius of Cromwell. It is unnecessary to dwell further
on this point.
262
PARTY NAMES GIVEN ON A RELIGIOUS ISSUE. LECT. VII.
The Restoration saw the triumph of the Church of
England at full tide, and its opponents sunk so low as
to be utterly useless for several years in balancing the
party which now represented pretty nearly the whole
Nation. Of the leading principle of the Royalists
Hallam speaks thus, and his admission is important:
"The Church of England, distinctly and exclusively,
was their rallying point; the Crown itself stood only
second in their affections."* There can be no doubt on
this point. If we required any proof that the bitter
struggle of the previous twenty years had been rather
religious than political we should find it here. It was
round the old National Church, as the Reformation had
left it in Elizabeth's reign, that the whole political
machinery of England revolved; and thus, when parties
and party-government began to take definite shape,
when the follies of Churchmen had again sufficiently
compacted a new opposition out of the wrecks of the
old, it was thus that the meaning of the cries on one
side was-"The Church shall be kept National;" on
the other, under different euphemisms-" Down with
the Nationality of the Church."
The names of Whig and Tory are not heard till the
latter part of Charles II.'s reign. They are the oppro-
brious nicknames, borrowed from the most contemptible
sources, which the bitterness of the conflict upon the
Exclusion Bill put into men's mouths. But what was
the occasion which thus left its mark upon English
history? It was a great Religious question, the turning-
point of the Politics of Englishmen. Should the country
be handed over once more, through the blind zeal of a
too loyal party, to the Papal faction? Had the powerful
'Constitutional History of England,' chap. xi.
LECT. VII. MISTAKES MADE AT THE RESTORATION.
263
Church party used its opportunities with the sagacity
and straightforwardness which seldom flourish in times
of prosperity, it would not have given such an opening
to its assailants. It had forgotten that on one point
the nation was quite resolved. If it insisted on having
back its old Church, it was still more determined that it
would not have a return to Romanism. If the two
things were to be confused, it had no difficulty in making
up its mind. It would accept the Nonconformists rather
than the Pope. What had blinded and for a moment
ruined the Church party? We have said, in one
word-prosperity. Let us pursue the analysis a little
further.
The clergy of the Church having been restored, with
too little consideration for the ejected intruders, its
Prayer-book and Rubrics resettled, with, perhaps, too
little attempt to conciliate in non-essentials; the Cor-
poration Act ensuring a political power for the
Church, necessary, perhaps, for the times, but which
assuredly carried as much danger as protection; the
Conventicle and Five Mile Acts forced upon a prostrate
party almost like a badge of slavery, the better sense of
Churchmen had become obscured. The Test Act put
the seal, as they fondly believed, on their perfect secu-
rity. As the Corporation Act had protected the Church
from the Dissenters, so did the Test Act from the
Papists.* Churchmen learned to accept, without much
inquiry, the doctrines only two generations old, the doc-
trines unknown to the better days of English history,
the slavish doctrines of Passive Obedience and the Divine
Right of Kings. Brought into existence, at least in a
* The Dissenters supported the latter.
'Const. Hist.' chap. xi.
264
REIGN OF CHARLES II.
LECT. VII.
*
definite form, by James I. and his courtly divines to
cover the defect of Parliamentary title under which he
conceived himself to labour, these doctrines had
become sentimentally dear to the Royalists, and espe-
cially to the clergy, who connected them with the
sufferings of their martyr-King. They were now
accepted, by a sort of unsifted claim of natural right,
as a creed. Was not this, they said, the true justifica-
tion of all the acts of the Restoration? The ruler by
Divine right, and the sacred body which was the guardian
of that right, had been eclipsed together, and they must
rise together and rule. Thus the ill-disguised Romanist
tendencies of the one royal brother and the avowed
Romanism of the other were tolerated; thus the dis-
grace of their monarch's becoming a pensioner of the
French King was winked at; thus no efficient resistance
was made to the multitude of arbitrary acts by which
Charles and his Cabinet shamefully and ungenerously
tried the patience of a too confiding people.
The series of Plots which disgraced this reign were so
many indications of the extent to which the period of
the Commonwealth had left its mark on the nation.
A people nervously timid from the memories of the past,
and without the least confidence in its rulers, rushed
from one extreme of violence to another with headlong
rapidity. Parties had not yet sufficiently formed to
control the executive with effect. The path between
insurrection and servile obedience had not yet been
marked out. But from the midst of this melancholy
struggle, this sad series of judicial murders, perjuries and
intrigues, started forth that beneficent system of Party-
* Lord Dartmouth in 'Burnet's History of his Own Time.'
Book iii. Oxford Edition.
LECT. VII. STRUGGLE ON THE EXCLUSION BILL.
265
government for which England had so long been pre-
paring. It was to take the place of alternate tyranny
and revolt, of civil war and cruel proscription. Each
side began to shape out a distinct policy. The attempt
to govern without Parliaments, to subsist upon foreign
bribes and to trade upon the affection of the nation,
had called up once more the remnants of that powerful
faction which had long since appropriated, though when
in power they could not put in practice, the watchwords
of Civil and Religious Freedom. The Church party
had brought it on themselves. They were again to sink
for a time from the dimensions of almost the whole
nation to that of a party; powerful indeed, but only a
party. Among their opponents were, it is true, included
a large proportion of Churchmen, but they were Church-
men who rejected most of what had hitherto been
considered the characteristics of the Church, and who
scrupled not to make common cause with the Noncon-
formists. Thus were taken up into the political party
to which they have ever since belonged, the men who
composed that smaller stream of the Reformation which
we have already watched in progress.
The enormous vantage-ground yielded by their oppo-
nents, gave this party for the moment the ear of the
nation. The doctrine of Passive Obedience completely
broke down under the strain. Never was the country
nearer to a civil war without actually fighting. "The
Exclusion Bill," says Hallam,* "was the rock on which
English liberty was nearly shipwrecked." Burnet
believes in the imminence of an armed conflict. The
Parliament of a week at Oxford was almost as near a
"mad Parliament" in arms as its predecessor of four
* 'Const. Hist.' chap. xii.
266
THE FATHERS OF PARTY-GOVERNMENT.
LECT. VII.
centuries before. "The war," says Bolingbroke, "would
have been of uncertain event; the best cause would
have been the worst supported; the King, united with
his brother, would have prevailed. The religion and
liberty of Great Britain would have been destroyed.'
"" #
To Lord Shaftesbury was due, and whatever his
motives and his faults, we must give him the credit of
being a benefactor to his country for it,—this formation
of the great Whig party, the party of resistance to the
headlong course of the restored Stuarts. To Lord
Danby was due, at this crisis, the policy of "rallying
the Cavaliers and the clergy round the Throne, by iden-
tifying the cause of the Church with that of the Court." †
He thus formed into a compact party the scattered
elements of what had not long before been supreme,
but which had been necessarily broken up by the
circumstances which we have noticed. These, however
little they are generally recognized as such, are the true
fathers of party-government in England. Their names
should never be forgotten. The instruments were not
of the finest temper. Probably neither of them under-
stood the importance of what they were doing. They
cannot claim the laurels reserved for the less blame-
able of our Constitutional benefactors, but they at least
cut the Gordian knot; they commenced the system
under which alone a free and educated people can
exist in happiness and security; they commenced it,
not for England alone, but for the civilized world.
Where shall we place a limit to the work which they
began ?
But the success of the Whigs had been too sudden and
* Dissertation on Parties,' Works, ii. 84.
† Lingard, vol. ix. c. 4. Burnet, folio, p. 248.
LECT. VII. CAUSES OF ERRORS OF CHURCH PARTY.
rapid for permanence in the then state of the country.
The various Plots for which the times were infamous
exploded at last in that which sent Russell and Sidney
to the scaffold, and banished Shaftesbury for ever. The
danger to which the King had been subjected awoke
the whole slumbering loyalty of the nation. The
danger of a return to the old dreaded despotism of
anti-Churchmen terrified the people. The no-Popery
cry of the Whigs, righteous as it was at bottom, had been
wholly discredited by the exposure of the Plots. Clergy
and lawyers, town and country, peer and peasant, joined
alike in one great burst of Tory feeling. "The Whigs,"
says Hallam, “so late in the heyday of their pride, lay,
like the fallen angels, prostrate upon the fiery lake.”
The shocking state of our Law Courts presented only too
great facilities for revenge; and the last years of
Charles II.'s reign displayed a very general acceptance
of the same absolute principles which ushered it in.
The cessation of Convocation must be regarded as
one, and perhaps a very potent reason for this failure of
Churchmen to act with wisdom and moderation. A
vent for these alarms and suspicions was required.
Discussion might have done much to reclaim men from
headlong courses; the denunciations in which the
country clergy indulged would have stirred up less
intemperate zeal; the extreme danger into which that
zeal was leading the Church might have been exposed.
But no effort was made in this reign to place the clergy
in the position they were entitled to occupy in the
restored polity, and all parties acquiesced in the neglect.
The King was delighted to be saved trouble. The
clergy were satisfied with protection, and thankful to be
* 'Const. Hist.,' chap. xii.
267
268
ITS PRINCIPLES TESTED.
LECT. VII.
relieved of the inconvenient privilege of self-taxation-
a necessary change, but fatal to the existing relations of
Church and State* without some readjustment, which
was never made. But how can we wonder at the neglect
of the Clerical Parliament, when the Civil Parliament,
as well as the King, were pensioned by France, and
when the policy of the Court was a mere trick of playing
upon the loyalty of Churchmen, while, under pretence
of a zeal for Toleration, the King was advancing steadily
towards his goal, the free establishment of Romanism?
But the age, though superficially corrupt and irre-
ligious, was less so at bottom than is sometimes thought.
Perhaps it might really be called a religious age with
an irreligious varnish. The middle and lower classes
were not so much infected as the upper. Religion made
itself felt at the crises of politics in a way which often
entirely disconcerted the schemes of those who imagined
they were pulling the strings. Shall we be told that
this was a mere political religion? No doubt it was so
to a certain extent. But this was nothing new. Truly
regarded, that age had succeeded to one of political
religion, though disguised under high-flown sentiment
and Scriptural phrases. In other words, Religion and
Politics were united. The country cared more about its
religion than anything else; and, what is to our present
purpose, it was under this aspect that the latest develop-
ment of our Constitution, the existing phase of it, took
place.
The trial that was to test the strength of the National
allegiance to the Church was now at hand. James II.,
at his accession, found the Church party completely
in the ascendant, its doctrines scarcely disputed, its
* See the former Lecture, p. 146.
•
LECT. VII. THE NATION AT ONE WITH THE CHURCH.
269
recently-gained popularity still fresh. It would stand
by the King, Papist as he was, as it had stood by his
brother, if he only gave his word that he would not
disturb the settlement of the Church. Happily for
England, but in an evil hour for himself, misunder-
standing this loyalty, he broke his word and almost at
once showed his true colours. Even the success of his
arms against rebellion could only beckon back the old
feeling for a moment. The Church, as soon as it was
sure it was betrayed, definitely pronounced against him;
while the Dissenters, despairing of any legitimate vic-
tory, grasped at the shadow treacherously offered them
in order to cover the introduction of Popery, meanly
forgot their late cry, and abetted the crooked policy of
the infatuated monarch. But the heart of the Nation
was with the Church. Rising in its might, it recognized
the Bishops and the Universities as its natural expo-
nents. Under their leadership it conquered. Whig
nobles were but its tools. Never was a great political
issue more definitely and unmistakably mixed up with
a religious question. But no other forms of religion
were heard of in the struggle besides the Church of
England on one side and Romanism on the other.
When the issue was seriously joined, the Dissenters had
too much patriotism and too much Protestantism to
hold back. They knew well enough what was England's
barrier against Rome. From this time, however, must
be dated that alliance between Romanism and Dissent,
that alliance of extremes against the mean, which the
Whig party has so constantly fostered.
Both political parties were alike concerned in the
Revolution, though the motives which swayed them
were dissimilar. The Tories chiefly regarded the safety
270
JUNCTION OF BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES.
LECT. VII.
of the nation in its Church aspect, and threw to the
winds the unfortunate doctrines which had given such
a handle to their Kings. The Whigs chiefly regarded
the civil liberties of the people, and discarded that mis-
placed zeal for Toleration which they saw could be so
easily turned into an engine of oppression.
"Though
the King," says a great writer, "was not the better for
his experience, Parties were. Both saw their errors.
The Tories stopped short in pursuit of a bad principle.
The Whigs reformed the abuse of a good one. Both
had sacrificed their country to their party. Both sacri-
ficed on this occasion their party to their country. The
Revolution was a fire which purged off the dross of
both parties; and, the dross being purged off, they ap-
peared to be of the same metal and answered the same
standard." In short, the difficulties attending the
change from the medieval to the modern form of the
Constitution had at last found a solution. It had taken
a century to produce it. Tyranny, civil and ecclesi-
astical, had been followed by revolt. A worse tyranny,
civil and ecclesiastical, had succeeded the old. The
sick nation turning, like Florence, as described by the
poet, from side to side, and finding the disease had
laid too great a hold to be expelled, learnt to be
content with balancing one set of evils against the
other. The first grating friction of the new machinery
having worn off by use, and the violent jerk of the
Revolution having been safely surmounted, it was found
that the permanent remedy lay in the perfecting of the
temporary expedient, and the good sense of the country
gradually developed the system under which we live.
But it is plain that this great landmark of Constitu-
tional progress, the Revolution, is far more the token of
LECT. VII.
RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE REVOLUTION.
271
a religious than a political high tide. Hallam indeed
warns us against too narrowly regarding that event "as
grounded upon the danger of the Anglican Church from
the bigotry of a hostile religion," and he lays much
stress on the fact that the leaders of the Revolution in
its "final result" were mostly Whigs.† But what could
the Whigs have done had not the Nation been at their
back? We have seen pretty clearly what was the
temper of the nation. But we need not hesitate to
follow him when he says, that the Revolution was more
entitled to honour for having secured our religious than
our civil liberty. Yes, no doubt. Very little did the
people at large understand about the Constitutional
questions with which the Whigs were identified. What
they did understand, as proved by the whole previous
and subsequent course of events, and what carried
the Revolution, was the deliverance of England from
Popery and wooden shoes," from Roman and French
dictation. This was the fundamental English instinct.
All else was accidental and superficial.
66
The Religious character of this great Political change
is, as we have said, easily traceable in the acts which
accompanied and followed the Revolution. The Bill of
Rights laid down the all-important principle that our
Sovereign can never himself be, nor can he marry, a
Papist. The new form of the Coronation Oath stereo-
typed the Sovereign's connection with the Church of
England. The Toleration Act solved the long-vexed
* Const. Hist.,' chap. xv.
† Ibid., chap. xiv. For the really popular character of the
Revolution, as distinguished from the work of the aristocratic agents,
see 'Vaughan's Revolutions of History,' iii. 566.
'Const. Hist.,' chap. xv.
272
HALLAM UNFAIR ON THIS QUESTION.
religious problem inherited from the Reformation, re-
taining the political safeguards of the National Church,
and yet ceasing to proscribe its rivals. The summon-
ing of Convocation, after so many years of practical
suppression, showed that William thoroughly understood
the importance of the clergy in the Constitution of his
new realm; while the withdrawal of the scheme of
Comprehension, on which he had set his heart, rather
than incur the risk of forcing the mass of the clergy
into the Non-juring Schism, showed that he distinctly
perceived what was the political influence of the Church.
Happily, the clergy, like the nation in general, were on
the whole convinced that the Revolution was the only
resource from impending ruin, while sufficiently resolved
to hold their own to deter the monarch and the Whigs
from affronting them. "Thus the Church was saved
from a national proscription and from a Latitudinarian
manipulation."* The whole treatment of this part of
the subject by Hallam, who forgets his usual decorum
in his attack on the clergy, is notoriously partial.†
Perry's History of the Church of England since the Reign of
Elizabeth,' iii. 137.
"
† Why is the Lower House of Convocation to be stigmatized as
"ill-affected"? Ill-affected to what? Certainly not to the King as
King, for it was a party to placing him on the throne; it was
it was "ill-
affected" to the King as forcing on the Church the Latitudinarian
principles held by a very small minority of its members. With
what shadow of fairness can it be said that the deliberations of the
Royal Commission of Divines were " doubtless the more honest and
rational" for the absence of the "High Church faction" which had
seceded from it? This "High Church faction," though it doubtless
included some of those who afterwards became Non-jurors, did in
reality represent the vast body of the National Church, and William
knew it. They were the supporters of Church Nationality. The
“Low Church” faction represented the political equality of all reli-
LECT. VII. DECAY AND RENOVATION OF RELIGION.
273
Against him we may quote Lord Macaulay,* who
perceives plainly enough that the Church could not
have accepted the Comprehension without destroying
her own position, and thus depriving the Nation of that
guarantee for civil and religious liberty which it pos-
sesses in the Establishment.
The suspension of Convocation which ensued on the
failure of this attempt to dilute and change the cha-
racter of the Church, though perhaps necessary for the
success of the Revolution, had the same effect as in
the previous reigns. The clergy did not work with
the Government. They were more dangerous as they
were driven in upon themselves, and brooded over the
Jacobite principles which were still so powerfully repre-
sented in the country. The loss of the Non-jurors was
all but irreparable. The Church staggered beneath the
stroke. The state of society deteriorated as the prin-
ciples which had kept it together were loosened. These
were now more vigorously attacked and less forcibly
defended. A decided moral retrogression had set in.
If religion without morality is hypocrisy, a popular
morality without religion is a simple impossibility.
Happily this was well known to some good men who did
not despair of their country. They knew that there was
deep religious sentiment left in the country, if it were
only evoked and organized. Just as things seemed at
their worst, they succeeded in awakening this religious
life. They taught the nation to see that everything
gions. Nowadays the terms (invented in the days of which we are
speaking) represent a very different thing. They indicate only
doctrinal differences, often exaggerated by party spirit and by the
tendency of ardent men on both sides to fly off into extremes. The
two meanings must not be confused.
* History of England,' vol. v. p. 122.
T
274
CHURCH CORPORATE ACTION REVIVES. LECT. VII.
would be lost while they were disputing over the Oath
of Allegiance. They formed themselves into Societies of
various kinds for the purpose of stemming the tide of
general corruption. Voluntary societies sprang up for
the reformation of manners, for the education of the
people, for promoting Christian Knowledge, for the Pro-
pagation of the Gospel; societies some of which, existing
to this day, have united that age with our own by
links of gold. William and Mary powerfully promoted
these noble efforts. Finding his plans for widening the
Church and absorbing the Dissenters to be imprac-
ticable, the King did his best to support what he saw,
with his accustomed sagacity, to be the true safeguard
of the common weal.
But renewed activity within the Church, proving
itself successful in coping with the evil of the times,
soon produced activity of the corporate body. As men
felt the stirring of spiritual life, they evinced more zeal
in defending what they felt to be right. Controversy
set in. Fearing its effects the King stepped in with pro-
clamations to stop it, but this Byzantine or Papal way
of dealing with the subject could scarcely stand. The
incongruity of such a mode of Church government could
hardly fail to strike those whose ancient institutions,
guaranteed to them by Crown and Parliament, were
provided for the very purpose of self-government. The
Tory party, which on the whole had been favoured
by the King quite as much as the Whig, took up the
cause of freedom. It represented the feeling of the
Nation on this point; public opinion soon began to
make itself felt,—one of the first and best products
of a press recently unfettered; and the King wisely
listened to the advice of his Ministers. Convocation
275
LECT. VII. IMPORTANCE OF QUEEN ANNE'S REIGN.
was revived, and the connection of Religion and Politics
was once more signalized by the steady beating of the
national pulse. The Jacobite sympathies which lent
acrimony to the Clerical Parliament when it met might
be objected against the policy of summoning it; but it
must be observed that the agitation was equally per-
ceptible in Parliament itself. The clergy naturally
relinquished more slowly than laymen their sympathy
with the House that had favoured them, but the heaving
of the sea after the gale was, after all, a slight inconveni-
ence. The disquiet produced by a few ardent men was
a small price to pay for the one only Revolution of such
a magnitude in the history of the world accomplished
without blood. In free countries there must be an
outlet. If government is on the whole secure, there can
be no greater mark of shortsightedness than to close the
vent by which ill humours may escape.
The reign of Anne brings out the connection of which
we have been speaking more plainly still. The last
years of William III. had prepared the nation for its
development, and the accession to the throne of a
hearty English Churchwoman gave it an immense im-
pulse. Never, even in the Reformation era itself, were
the springs of Political movements more palpably trace-
able to the influences of Religion.
Few reigns have been so little elucidated by the pen
of philosophical history as that of the "good" Queen
Anne.* An unjust depreciation of this Sovereign has
surely too long been allowed to pass current. A sweep-
ing accusation of feebleness and bigotry is easily caught
by one writer from another in an age when bigotry, not
* This reproach is about to be wiped away. Lord Stanhope has
announced a History of the reign.
T 2
276 HER ALLEGED BIGOTRY AND FEEBLENESS. LECT. VII.
unaccompanied by feebleness, is too generally found in
the literature which professes to be most free from it.
Her "feebleness" seems chiefly to resolve itself into
a habit of taking counsel with female favourites. This,
no doubt, was not the sign of a strong mind; but,
though more constant, it was not worse in itself, or
so bad for the nation, as the able William being
swayed by Dutchmen, or George I. and II. by their
mistresses. If Elizabeth stands out in vivid contrast
with Anne, the Nation might after all prefer the clever,
imperious Duchess of Marlborough, or the intriguing
Masham, to the corrupt and wicked Leicester. It
certainly loved the domestic purity of the feminine wife
better than the indecent flirtations of the masculine
virgin. Never were the English people more prosperous,
more satiated with glory. But then, though she did
not by any means commit herself to one party alone,
she was, no doubt, a Tory at heart, and she was bigot
enough to have, as the Duchess of Marlborough says,
"a passion for what she called the Church"-quite
sufficient crimes! There was at least this difference
between her favouritism and that of other monarchs.
The Queen did not seek these companions for the mere
promotion of her whims and pleasures. Candour will
admit that she was exceedingly attentive to public busi-
ness; that she effectually governed the country at a most
difficult period, and that too in the old sense of govern-
ing, by her own personal exercise of power; and above
all, that she possessed that clear perception of what her
people wanted, that instinct or intuition, often more
developed in women than men, which made her defy
obstacles in order to attain the end which she knew
* Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough,' vol. i. p. 6.
LECT. VII.
AN ENTIRELY ENGLISH QUEEN.
277
would some day be regarded as wise and good. She
was, in short, more guided by her conscience than
any of our Sovereigns, except one or two. It was no
idle boast that she made when she addressed her Parlia-
ment for the first time, "My heart is entirely English.'
That people had borne with William for the sake of
a great object. They had no liking for the Dutch, and
a very particular dislike to a break in the Succession;
but they submitted to necessity, and received his grow-
ing Anglicanism with gratitude as something they had
no right to expect. Now, however, they had a Sove-
reign of the old English Stuart blood, yet honest and
hearty in their own religion, born and bred amongst
them, yet free from the vices which had so painfully
tried their loyalty.†
""*
The first Parliament of Anne, not unaptly nick-
named the Highflyer, represented to the utmost
degree the affection for Church and Queen. The
reign opened like that of Charles II. The Church
party was once more supreme. But the Queen's attach-
ment to Marlborough and his celebrated wife gradually
""
* 'Burnet's Hist. of His Own Time,' vol. v. p. 3, Oxford Edition.
Scotland was not yet united to England, and no Bute was at hand to
change "English "into" British." When the Union took place, Swift
"The Queen has lately lost a part
Of her 'entirely English' heart.'
wrote:
+ It has been well said of Anne that "her conduct as a wife and
mother was exemplary; her court at once elegant, refined, and
virtuous; her charities munificent. Her reign has this happy distinc-
tion from all preceding ones, that in it no arm was raised against the
Sovereign, and no subject's blood was shed for treason." 'Annals of
England,' iii. 174. Swift who, but for Queen Anne, would certainly
have been a Bishop, speaks of her in his Will, dated 1737, as "the
real nursing-mother of her kingdoms."-"Scott's Swift's Works,' vol.
i. p. cxxxiv., Appendix.
278
THE CHURCH IN DANGER.
99
LECT. VII.
66
led her into the arms of the Whigs, not in consequence
of any alienation from the Church, but in connection
with the war-policy which had been inherited from
William and become the property of that party. The
disappointment natural to men who had lost power so
rapidly and, as it seemed, undeservedly, shewed itself in
a political violence which again reminds us of the period
succeeding the Restoration; while the final triumph of
the party towards the close of the reign similarly proved
how widely and deeply the Nation was imbued with
their sentiments. It was now that the famous cry was
first heard, "The Church in danger." No doubt this
was in some respects a mere cry." No doubt all such
general sentiments, when taken up by a multitude of
people religious and irreligious, are chargeable with
hypocrisy and open to ridicule. But it is possible to be
too wise in these matters. Some of the leading actors
on the scene may be stripped bare and detected, but
when a "cry
arouses a nation there is always some-
thing behind, something, linked on to the past and
pointing to the future, which deserves respect and
demands inquiry. Not that, as we have already seen,
the doctrines of Divine Right and Passive Obedience,
which now again found audacious expression, could
be justified, but the true meaning of the recurrence to
these doctrines was not at this time what the words ex-
pressed. It meant that the Nation believed the Queen
to be overborne by her counsellors, and, knowing what
Constitutional power was still left in the Crown, resolved
to engage that power in the support of the cause which
it believed to be endangered.
This complicated struggle will become clearer if we
recount the steps by which parties had arrived at their
LECT. VII.
RATIONALE OF THE STRUGGLE.
279
present condition. The Revolution had endowed the
Whigs with an enormous power. The Tories, at the
critical moment, had actively, but soon only passively
and sullenly, supported the movement, leaving the
Whigs to usurp all the credit which they might fairly
have claimed to share. As William's reign proceeded, the
Whig party gained consistency and experience. Poli-
tical opposition to the Tories or High Church party had
thrown them entirely into the Low Church, Dissenting
and Latitudinarian interest. But this was rather a
busy, intellectual, and active interest, than one which
extended very deeply or widely. So that when the
mass of the people were once aroused, the effect of their
old indignation at the long suppression of so-called
66
High Church" principles during the greater part of
William's reign, and their proportionate delight at the
Tory resumption of power, laid them open to a severe
shock when, in the reign of the Queen from whom they
expected so much, disappointment came, a shock which
operated over a very large area, and consequently exhi-
bited itself in a very tumultuous manner. Hence the
bitterness of feeling now shown at the dismissal of the
Tory Ministry, at the repression of the High Church
Clergy of Convocation, and against the tyrannical hand
stretched over the Church by the Whig Bishops who
had been so liberally imposed upon it by King William.
To bring the nation into an acutely inflammatory state
it only required the further alarm produced by the
Union with Scotland, which it was foreseen would vastly
strengthen the Presbyterian interest, and the unpopu-
larity of war-taxes which no intoxication of glory could
make the people forget. Hence the fury which burst
forth when the spark was applied; for the trial of
280
LECT. VII.
THE QUEEN UNDERSTANDS THE CRY.
(C
Sacheverell was but a trifle in itself, and wholly inade-
quate to account for the agitation displayed. Hence the
ill-temper” which so distressed the Queen, who had
never given any real cause for suspicion of her attach-
ment to the Church, and who sympathized most heartily
with her Parliament when it voted by large majorities
in both Houses that "the Church is not in danger."
The Whigs, however, were not to be outdone in
violence. They made it penal to say that the Church
was in danger. This violence, and their folly in setting
fire to such combustible material by the trial of a man
who has been ever since equally condemned by both
sides, cost them their short-lived power and changed
the face of Europe. If we are to assign any single
cause, which is, surely, to take a superficial view of
the subject,-to the blunder of the Whigs must the
mighty issue be credited, rather than, as pronounced by
Hallam and Macaulay, to Mrs. Masham.
The Queen herself gradually discovered the meaning
of the "cry." It struck a chord which, during the
thunders of the French war, had been little heeded.
She recognized in this "cry" the same overpowering
voice of the Nation which, in her father's reign, had
backed up the Bishops and the Universities, the voice
which, when once raised, had always been powerful
enough to make the Church's opponents shrink into in-
significance. She took her line. Soon, with consum-
mate management, under Harley's advice, the Whig
Ministers were one by one dismissed. Soon follows the
great and victorious General himself; (of course, no one
can praise the agents or admire the circumstances of
the hero's disgrace); a Tory Ministry finds itself once
more at the head of affairs; and the Peace of Utrecht,
LECT. VII. REAL CAUSES OF THE PEACE OF UTRECHT.
281
the last European settlement before that of our own
day in which England took an important part, was
brought about under the direction of the Queen herself,
supported by her new Ministers, and backed up by the
great bulk of the Nation.
So intimately was the Peace of Utrecht mixed up
with the question we are considering, that a few words
upon the causes which produced it will be rather an
apparent than a real digression. No Treaty this country
has ever made has excited anything like the same
amount of controversy. At the time every literary
device was brought to bear upon it, and the greatest
authorities were drawn up on opposite sides. It has
been much the same ever since. Amongst the best
known moderns we find Hallam and Lord Stanhope on
one side, Lord Macaulay on the other.
The Peace of Utrecht, was in the first place, a National
movement,—not a mere shuffle of cards by politicians,
the superficial aspect under which it is too generally
regarded. Next, it was the termination, not so much
of a particular French war, as of a series. Many cob-
webs will be swept away by bearing in mind these two
considerations.
The National indignation at the disgraceful, un-
English policy of Charles II. and James II. (itself the.
result of the foreign education of those princes conse-
quent on the Civil War) had found a representative in
William III. Had that prince been more successful in
his heroic efforts to stem the tide of French aggran-
dizement, the numerous grounds of his unpopularity in
England would perhaps have been forgotten. As it
was, the Tory feeling of the nation on ecclesiastical and
political matters chimed in very naturally with disgust
282
IT WAS A DEEP NATIONAL MOVEMENT. LECT. VII.
at his ill success and the expense of his wars. By con-
cessions to the Toryism of the nation he had once more
combined all parties on a war policy. At that very
moment he died. The brilliant success of Marlborough
and the popularity of the Queen kept the nation for
some years steady in the same track. But it was, as
we have said, a Whig war after all. William and his
Whig Ministers had fostered it; Marlborough could
only obtain his supplies by the help of a Whig Ministry.
The seeds of a speedy change were thus self-contained
in the war. They were fast ripening under the uneasy
feeling produced, not only by war-taxes, but by the
unreadiness to believe in the honesty of the new system,
imported from Holland, of making posterity pay for
present deficiencies. A National Debt was a new and
a suspicious thing to Englishmen. We have noticed
the ecclesiastical discontents of the people, and the burst
of Toryism produced by the trial of Sacheverell. This was
immediately followed by the great change in European
affairs effected by the death of the Emperor, yet accom-
panied by no change of policy in the measures of the
war-party. Thus it is easy to account for the sudden
and violent turn of the whole tide of national feeling
towards peace. The people had been drunk with the
glory of Blenheim and Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malpla-
quet. Sober thought had now convinced the thoughtful,
passion the thoughtless, that the time had come to put
an end to the war. Their eyes had been opened to the
way in which they had been (to use the phrase of the
day) "bubbled" by their allies. They learned, under
the influence of the ablest political writers this country
has ever seen, to suspect their heroes, and, with the in-
gratitude of mobs, to turn their indignation upon those
LECT. VII.
EFFECT ON PARTIES,
who had only yesterday been lauded to the skies. Hence
the Peace of Utrecht. It was a National movement.
The extreme difficulty of giving effect to it is the only
excuse for the tortuous and unsatisfactory means em-
ployed. Surely it is a mistake to ascribe these changes
to particular men or women. They are the result of a
complication of causes acting upon the masses, and back-
ing up the agents who are supposed,-and that not by
the vulgar alone to be pulling the strings. These
Harleys and St. Johns and Mrs. Mashams are but the
exponents and representatives of the National Will.
The reaction which followed this National movement
is even more important in its effect on the destinies of
England than the movement itself; for we owe to it
the peaceable establishment of the House of Hanover, and
the preservation of the Whigs from the political extinc-
tion which appeared imminent. Let us again attempt
to sum up the causes of a remarkable phenomenon.
We have seen how and why the Nation had desired
war, why it quarrelled with those who gave it its wish,
and unprecedented glory to boot, and why it desired
peace. The glory had come from the wrong quarter,
and with very disagreeable accompaniments. The Peace
was gained, but how? It had come from the right
hands, but in the wrong way. The disclosures which
followed that network of intrigue shocked and irritated
the people. The old war-fever had not quite died out.
The hated French who had been so beaten seemed to
have come off too well. The national character had
suffered on the Continent, especially by our desertion
of the gallant Catalans. Shame seized the nation for
its treatment of Marlborough. "A plague o' both your
houses," men muttered between their teeth. And now a
283
284
AND ON THE HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION. LECT. VII.
new element of confusion intervened. The Queen was
about to die. The Tory party was divided. The great
mass acted in the same way as at the Revolution, and
showed that it valued the Protestantism of Church and
State even higher than a continuance of the dynasty
with which it sympathized. A smaller section intrigued
with the Pretender, though even that, at least the
greater part of it, if we may take Bolingbroke at this
period as its exponent, only on the condition that he
should change his religion.
In exact proportion to the paralysing effect of these
conflicting sentiments on the part of the Tories was the
strength and consistency gained by the Whigs. No
such entanglements hampered them. Their policy was
clear. They saw they had only to act with prompti-
tude; there could be no united resistance; the victory
was theirs, it might be for ever. The clever movement of
Shrewsbury, Somerset and Argyle, was successful simply
because the Nation saw it had no choice. Hence its
sullen acquiescence in the Hanoverian Succession.
Hence its indifference to the fate of the Tory leaders.
The good sense of the people perceived that if the very
existence of the Established Church was to be preserved,
the political degradation of the High Churchmen must
be permitted. Their sympathies were with them in
their affection for the Stuarts, and especially for the
good Queen, but they dared not back them up. They
saw that the Church could not be safe under the Pre-
tender. They had borne with William and his Dutch-
men, and they would bear with George and his Germans,
rather than once more be the victims of Jesuits or
plunged into Civil War. They would swallow the in-
bred Lutheranism of one who only conformed to the
LEOT. VII. RELIGION AND POLITICS FOR A TIME DISSEVERED. 285
Church of England on becoming king; they would
suffer that party to be triumphant which had uniformly
patronized Dissenters and adopted the policy of keeping
religious questions wholly subordinate in matters of
State, rather than endanger what was essential to the
good of the nation. "Protestantism, and freedom from
French dictation before all things," was still the convic-
tion, the common sense at bottom of the English mind.
But the struggle it had cost to acquiesce in this
Settlement of the Crown was plainly visible when the
Rebellion of 1715 took place, in the supine, passive
position taken up by the people of England,—not in one
place or another, but throughout the land. It was
visible when crowds attended Atterbury to the shore
upon his banishment. It found frequent expression
during the next half century. It suggested sufficient
danger to Whig ministers to make them seize the
earliest pretext for drowning the voice of the clergy by
closing their Convocation. It caused the formation of
a settled policy which succeeded for many years in
damming up the current of National feeling.
We shall not, therefore, be able to trace during the
first two Hanoverian reigns with anything like the same
distinctness the connection between the Religious and
Political history of England. We have seen the Whig
party formed under Charles II., learning its policy under
William III., and occasionally practising it under Anne.
It now reigns supreme under the next two Kings, dis-
tastefully to the Nation, no doubt, but that Nation was
exhausted with half a century of struggle, and required
half a century of repose. It was content to grow rich
and cultivate the arts of peace without any more Con-
tinental embroilments than the family of its sullen
286
THE HANOVERIAN POLICY.
LECT. VII.
choice must inevitably bring with it. It was content
to see the National Church protected by the continu-
ance of its legal position, the measures to secure which
were but little enforced and not very strenuously op-
posed. It was the policy of Walpole, who shaped that
of his successors, to keep things quiet, and to allow no
stirrings of life in the corporate action of the Church,
while he bought acquiescence by protecting it. Alien
sovereigns, corrupted Parliaments, and a growing mo-
neyed interest, fell in very naturally with this scheme.
The Latitudinarian clergy (the name by which they
had become known in the reign of Charles II.), brought
forward into high places, become dominant. The more
decided Churchmen shrink away into the country or
vegetate in the Universities, at this time at their lowest
ebb. Generations grow up under the new influences.
Political vigour decays with that of the Church. So-
ciety creeps back into the condition out of which it had
been not a little raised at the beginning of the century.
Literary and theological controversy,-Deistical, Arian,
Socinian,-occupied the foremost Churchmen of the age.
The spiritual life of the Church seemed dying out. The
Bangorian and Warburtonian controversies were simply
degrading. In 1747 even Bishop Butler, thinking it
too late to attempt to save the Church of England, re-
fused the Primacy. That Primacy was spoken of by
contemporaries as the "richest sinecure in the country."
When we at last thought it time to commence a Mission
in our conquered Indian territories, we had to go to
Germany for missionaries. The orthodoxy of the Church
was, however, almost miraculously saved through this
time of trial; and its spirituality was gradually to re-
ceive an entirely new impulse from a new quarter, the
LECT. VII.
INFLUENCE OF BOLINGBROKE ON
287
indirect agency of John Wesley. But the reconstruc-
tion of Parties, and thereby the renewed connection
between Religion and Politics, was due to one to whom
religion certainly owed but little during his life, and
who little understood what he was about to do for it
after his death.
The posthumous works of Lord Bolingbroke came
out in 1753 and the next year. Johnson has immor-
talized the act of the man who left half-a-crown to a
beggarly Scotchman to fire off the blunderbuss he was
afraid to fire himself. His mischievous philosophy has
justly prejudiced posterity against him, but the import-
ance of his political works has scarcely been sufficiently
recognized either by politicians or Church writers.*
During the last years of the reign of George II. his
writings were in every hand, and made an indelible
mark. His hatred of the Whigs, and especially of
Walpole, who, from a well-founded dread of Boling-
broke's abilities, had assiduously blocked up every
avenue by which he could return to power,—turned
the fretful leisure of this most gifted man into an
opportunity for reconsidering the whole question of
Party-government, and reconstructing a basis on which
it might afterwards be worked. It was his to place
before his countrymen, with all the recommendations
of style and personal experience of politics, the true
political history of the better ages of England, to apply
the lessons of the past to the present, to point out the
place of the Church in the Constitution, to recover for
the Tories their proper share in the great Revolution
* To Mr. Disraeli, beyond any other writer, belongs the merit of
drawing attention (in his novels and political works) to Boling-
broke's position in English political history.
*
288 GEORGE III. THE NATION RETURNS TO ITS LECT. VII.
Settlement, to prove that Jacobitism was a mere ex-
crescence of their system, and that they were as much
obliged to support the Hanoverian House as the Whigs,
to show that they had really represented the Nation
when most taunted with being partisans, and that to
them had been especially due some of the greatest
political benefits the country had received. In the
mind of many a leading statesman, as the reign of
George III. advanced, we may see the leaven of this
political teaching at work, but nowhere more than in
that of the youthful monarch himself, whose boyhood
had ripened into manhood under the influences of the
author of The Patriot King.'
It would be out of place here to enter into any detailed
criticism of the political teaching of that work. Some
of it is mere chimera. For a King to govern in a free
country without Party is a simple contradiction of terms.
But the great truths contained in 'The Patriot King,'
that there was much really in common between the
two great parties, that their common basis of agreement
had been for many years obscured under the corrupt, un-
challenged dominion of one party alone, and that it was
the province of the Crown to see that its Constitutional
place was not destroyed by a Whig oligarchy, were
pregnant with future life. The crude notions with
which the earnest young King started forth in quest
of this ideal led him and the country through many
bitter passages, but the end was substantially attained:
By the long-unwonted exertion of royal power the
oligarchy was broken up. The long-crushed Tory party,
its old stain of Jacobitism now worn out, was reani-
mated. The long-dormant, wholesome action of party-
warfare was developed. The Church again showed
LECT. VII. OLD TRACK. STRUGGLE ON THE TEST ACTS. 289
signs of life; and when the Whigs once more, rallying
the Romanists and Dissenters round their standard,
attacked her political position, she found her interests
adopted as of old by the Tories.
Thus we find the Nation, by the time the King has
reigned some fifteen years, completely in the old track.
While Religion was half-dead, the connection between it
and Politics was untraceable. It had taken some years
to break through the barriers so carefully reared against
the ancient alliance; but we now observe the con-
nection as strongly developed as ever. The old feeling
of national loyalty to Church and King might now be
indulged by men without any dread of being entrapped
into unpatriotic courses; and the greatest statesmen
England has ever seen were ranked together in defence
of the old institutions. The cry of " Church in danger
was more than once raised during this long reign, and,
as of old, never failed to rally the Nation to the defence.
Pitt, Burke, and Wilberforce, the ablest, the wisest,
and the best men of their day, joined in resisting the
Abolition of the Test Acts. Theoretically, the Church
should have been independent of such enactments, which
were questionable enough when made, but, practically,
the times were by no means propitious for the change.*
* In the great debate which took place on Fox's motion, Pitt
said, "A repeal of the Test laws could not take place consistently
with safety to the Church." Burke declared that “ a variety of cir-
cumstances made it appear imprudent to meddle with it." Wilber-
force that "it was his firm conviction that the establishment of religion
would be endangered by granting the Dissenters' request."- · Parlia-
mentary History,' vol. xxviii. Pitt also said: "So far was he from
agreeing with the Right Honourable gentleman (Mr. Fox), that no
danger whatsoever was to be apprehended, that he could easily con-
ceive a man with all the abilities of the Right Honourable gentle-
•
"9
U
290
NO POPERY RIOTS: FRENCH REVOLUTION. LECT. VII.
The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts was
thrown back for a whole generation by the No-Popery
Riots and the French Revolution. The former of these
are more suggestive upon the subject of which we are
treating than might be supposed. They are generally
regarded as unmitigated examples of the folly of a
crack-brained nobleman and the brutality of mobs. But
Lord Stanhope pronounces that, while we deplore the
excesses into which they ran, "we may be willing to ac-
knowledge that they proceeded from a just attachment
to the Reformed Faith and Established Churches of the
country." There is no doubt that, however shocking
the effect of the demonstration, these Riots did in fact
represent in their wild way the same instinctive dread
of Romanism, and distrust in the statesmanship which
was once more bringing it back to political power, as
was witnessed in the reign of Charles II. In a country
which can never forget the reigns of Mary and James II.,
such instinctive dread is at least natural. They did
not, however, represent the mere dread of Popery, not
the old Lollard and Puritan feeling which we have seen
running in its own special stream of Nonconformity and
Dissent, not the jealousy and dislike of the National
Church, but the dread of seeing Romanism set up in
a position of political equality with the Establishments
of England and Scotland, the conviction that civil and
man, but without the integrity of his principle, who, influenced by
ambitious and corrupt views, might exercise his powerful talents in
rousing the disaffected to an attack upon the Church."-Ibid.,
p. 414. Fox, in his opening speech, committed himself to a rash
prophecy :- "If the Test Laws were once repealed, the very name
of Dissenter would be no more.”—Ibid. p. 402.
* History of England,' vol. vi., p. 240.
LECT. VII.
DIFFICULTIES OF THE WHIGS.
291
religious liberty could only be secured by its exclusion.
Hence these Riots illustrate another characteristic of
English party history. They furnish one more in ad-
dition to the other numerous instances of the disturbing
.force by which the Whig party has, ever since its for-
mation, been so cruelly torn. In order to balance the
party of Church and State, Church and King, or what-
ever the formula by which the English Nation has for
the time been rallied round the Tory party, they have
called in the aid of Scotland and Ireland, of Noncon-
formists and Romanists. But no sooner have their
forces been marshalled than its different squadrons have
begun to attack one another. The opposition to the
relief of Romanists came in this instance first from
Scotch Presbyterians, and soon gathered up those lower
sections of the Whig party whose Protestantism was
stronger than party ties. United with the party of the
Church the movement becomes irresistible, and all
progress towards political enfranchisement is suspended
till some fresh opportunity occurs.
The French Revolution only clinched the feeling of
the Nation. It had begun to discern more and more
plainly that in the Church it had the barrier so much
needed at the most critical period England had yet
experienced, against the two ancient enemies, Roman
and French influences. In the revival of the old
instinct of Loyalty and Religion, it found itself strong
enough not only to suppress Anarchy at home, but to
strike down the Scourge of Europe abroad.
No investigation could be more in keeping with the
subject of this Lecture than that of the process by which
the Church became fitted for the great work thus
designed for it in the latter part of the last century.
U 2
292
RENEWED LIFE OF THE CHURCH HAS
LECT. VII.
We might trace in detail the growth of that better
spirit by which it gradually emerged out of the position
of a body supported by authority, protected by enact-
ments, holding its own rather by custom and tradition
than affection, and accepted rather as a refuge from
something hateful than from any higher feeling, into a
living power of which the nation felt secure and proud,
and under whose banners the more respectable poli-
ticians of both parties were after a time content to fight;
but we must sum it up in a quotation from Lord
Stanhope. "The reflecting few," says he, "could per-
ceive (in the earlier Hanoverian period) that the Church
of England, though pure as ever in doctrine, was im-
paired in energy, and must have either help or oppo-
sition to stir it. That impulse was in a great measure
given by the Methodists.
The clergy caught their
spirit, but refined it from the alloy of enthusiasm. The
discipline of the Church was gradually revived, and its
deficiencies supplied. Every year the Establishment
rose higher and higher in efficiency and usefulness; and
it has checked and arrested the progress of the Me-
thodists, not so much by their faults as its own merits.
At no period had it lost its hold upon the great body of
the people; but it now struck still deeper root into their
hearts-roots of which the unconquerable strength will
be found if ever an attempt be made to pluck it out."*
And here we leave the subject. It will be best not
to follow the connection of Religion and Politics into
the present century. Let us conclude by pointing out
that before every recurring phase of the renewed Con-
nection which we have traced, there has been a period
of disaster and depression, a torpid vitality amongst the
* Hist. of Eng.,' ii. 248.
LECT. VII. BROUGHT RENEWED LIFE TO THE STATE.
293
clergy, an abundant crop of abuses in Church matters,
accompanied by a decay of morals in the nation, and
generally by a sense of degradation in the relative posi-
tion of England towards other nations. The renewed
political life, the life of a wholesome party conflict,—
for it has ever been useful to the Church that a strong
political party should be allied with its enemies,-has
been ushered in by a renewed Church life, by the going
forth of the Church into the dark places of the land and
making sacrifices for the good of the people. The great
Societies which remain as landmarks of these move-
ments, long after the movements have themselves been
forgotten, the landmarks of the reigns of William III.,
of Anne, and of George III., the churches and parson-
ages which have been built and restored, the vast educa-
tional efforts of Churchmen, the steadily increasing
spirit of missionary enterprise, and the social improve-
ments in all classes, have sprung from the growth of
earnest religion in the case of individuals who have not,
in the darkest times, despaired of their Church and
country, and who have devoted themselves to the pro-
pagation of their own warmth with a truly public spirit.
The sense of renewed life in the Church thus awakened,
the zeal of the people has been stirred up in its defence.
Political combinations have been the natural, the legiti-
mate, nay, in a free country, the only means of orga-
nising that defence. The Church and the Nation have
each found its account in the connection. Each has
suffered when the connection has been weakened. Each
would have gained far more than it has, had the proper
terms of that connection been sufficiently recognised.*
* See Lectures III, and IV.
294
WARNINGS OF HISTORY.
LECT. VII.
Whenever the connection between the Church and
the Nation has been misunderstood or overstrained;
as, for example, when the Constitution, in the reigns of
James I. and Charles I., was seriously endangered;
when the arrogance of political power, as in the reign
of Charles II., has sapped the National respect for the
Church; when Churchmen have lost sight of the welfare
of the Nation in a sentimental affection, however honour-
able, for a particular family, as in the case of Jacobitism;
when controversy, often necessarily prominent in the
defence of truth, and as such a sign of healthy life,
has become the one marked and leading feature of
the Church, as in the earlier Hanoverian reigns, the
time for the enemies of the Church has arrived. They
do not find it difficult to collect the old weapons. It
may have cost ages of labour to build up a religious
fabric: there are plenty of avenues by which it can be
attacked, and, perhaps, in any particular nation, de-
stroyed. Whatever appeals to Faith, to the Unseen, can
always be appealed against by the votaries of Sense and
the slaves of Materialism. The progress of knowledge
will always supply means of offence, especially during
the earlier stages of such progress, when its heralds are
led into mistakes from immature inductions; and the
power exerted by such influences forms the ever-ready
basis of opposition for the hostile ranks openly con-
fronting the Church.* That Church must always, by its
* A late writer previously quoted, though by no means regarding
the Church as the one commissioned teacher of the nation, expresses
himself very clearly on the prospects of creedless intelligence. "Nor
is there anything in modern intelligence, if what is Christian in it
were taken out of it, that could ensure us against the lapse of Europe
into its old Paganism, or into forms of heathenism which would be
very near akin to it."— Vaughan's Revolutions of History,' iii. 646.
LECT. VII.
IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT.
295
very charter, be in its spiritual capacity a Church
Militant. In our country it has been, from its continued
Nationality through so many ages, a political power also,
and in that sense too a Church Militant. It is easy for
friends to depict its part in this struggle too favourably,
for enemies too unfavourably. Party spirit sees such
things through its own coloured spectacles. We have
here only to do with facts. We have been regarding
a chequered history, but its good and evil are only a
faithful transcript and outcome of human nature itself.
At any rate it is the history of England, the history of
that English people who have certainly not effected the
least of any people for politics, religion, war, science,
art, literature. If religious influences and passions, if,
distinguished above all such influences, the Church of
the Nation has played a conspicuous part in that history;
if the connection of that Church with our Political and
Constitutional Progress has been constant and powerful,
it certainly cannot be a thing to be sneered down by
"philosophers," whether historians or others.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, DUKE STREET, STAMFORD STREET ·
AND CHARING CRÔSS.
ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON,
September, 1868.
MR. MURRAY'S
GENERAL LIST OF WORKS.
ALBERT'S (PRINCE) SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES ON
PUBLIC OCCASIONS; with an Introduction giving some Outlines
of his Character. Portrait. 8vo. 108. 6d.; or Popular Edition. Portrait.
Fcap. 8vo. 18.
ABBOTT'S (REV. J.) Philip Musgrave; or, Memoirs of a Church of
England Missionary in the North American Colonies. Post 8vo. 28.
ABERCROMBIE'S (JOHN) Enquiries concerning the Intellectual
Powers and the Investigation of Truth. Fcap. 8vo. 68. 6d.
Philosophy of the Moral Feelings. Fcap.
8vo. 48.
ACLAND'S (REV. CHARLES) Popular Account of the Manners and
Customs of India. Post 8vo. 2s.
ESOP'S FABLES. A New Translation.
With Historical
Preface. By Rev. THOMAS JAMES. With 100 Woodcuts, by TENNIEL
and WOLF. 50th Thousand. Post 8vo. 2s. 6d.
AGRICULTURAL (THE ROYAL) SOCIETY'S JOURNAL. 8vo.
Published half-yearly.
AIDS TO FAITH: a Series of Theological Essays. By various
Writers. Edited by WILLIAM THOMSON, D.D., Archbishop of York.
8vo. 98.
AMBER-WITCH (THE). A 'most interesting Trial for Witch-
craft. Translated from the German by Lady Duff Gordon. Post
8vo. 28.
ܝ
ARMY LIST (THE). Published Monthly by Authority. 18mo. 18.6d.
ARTHUR'S (LITTLE) History of England. By LADY CALLCOTT.
New Edition, continued to 1862. Woodcuts. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
ATKINSON'S (MRS.) Recollections of Tartar Steppes and their
Inhabitants. Illustrations. Post 8vo. 128.
AUNT IDA'S Walks and Talks; a Story Book for Children. By
8 LADY. Woodcuts. 16mo. 58.
AUSTIN'S (JOHN) Lectures on JURISPRUDENCE; or, the Philosophy
of Positive Law. New and Cheaper Edition. 2 Vols. 8vo.
(SARAH) Fragments from German Prose Writers.
With Biographical Notes. Post 8vo. 108.
B
2
LIST OF WORKS
ADMIRALTY PUBLICATIONS; Issued by direction of the Lords
Commissioners of the Admiralty:-
A MANUAL OF SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRY, for the Use of Travellers.
Edited by Sir JOHN F. HERSCHEL, and Rev. ROBERT Main, M.A.
Third Edition. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 98.
AIRY'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS made at GREENWICH.
1836 to 1847. Royal 4to. 508. each.
ASTRONOMICAL RESULTS. 1848 to 1858. 4to. 8s. each.
APPENDICES TO THE ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVA-
TIONS.
1836.-I. Bessel's Refraction Tables.
•}.8.
II. Tables for converting Errors of R.A. and N.P.D. 88.
into Errors of Longitude and Ecliptic P.D.
1837.-I. Logarithms of Sines and Cosines to every Ten
Seconds of Time.
II. Table for converting Sidereal into Mean Solar Time.
1842.-Catalogue of 1439 Stars. 88.
1845.-Longitude of Valentia. 8s.
1847.-Twelve Years' Catalogue of Stars. 148.
1851.-Maskelyne's Ledger of Stars. 68.
1852.-I. Description of the Transit Circle.
II. Regulations of the Royal Observatory. 28.
1853.-Bessel's Refraction Tables. 3s.
1854.-I. Description of the Zenith Tube. 3s.
II. Six Years' Catalogue of Stars. 10s.
1856.-Description of the Galvanic Apparatus at Greenwich Ob-
servatory. 8s.
58.
1862.-I. Seven Years' Catalogue of Stars. 10s.
II. Plan of the Building and Ground of the Royal Ob-
servatory, Greenwich.
ob-}
III. Longitude of Valentia.
8s.
38.
MAGNETICAL AND METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVA-
TIONS. 1840 to 1847. Royal 4to. 50s. each.
ASTRONOMICAL, MAGNETICAL, AND METEOROLO-
GICAL OBSERVATIONS, 1848 to 1864. Royal 4to. 50s. each.
ASTRONOMICAL RESULTS. 1848 to 1864. 4to.
MAGNETICAL AND METEOROLOGICAL RESULTS.
1848 to 1864. 4to. 8s. each.
REDUCTION OF THE OBSERVATIONS OF PLANETS.
1750 to 1830. Royal 4to. 50s.
to 1830. 2 Vols. Royal 4to. 50s. each.
1831 to 1851. 4to. 208.
LUNAR OBSERVATIONS. 1750
BERNOULLI'S SEXCENTENARY TABLE. London, 1779. 4to.
BESSEL'S AUXILIARY TABLES FOR HIS METHOD OF CLEAR-
ING LUNAR DISTANCES. 8vo.
FUNDAMENTA ASTRONOMIA: Regiomontii, 1818. Folio. 608.
BIRD'S METHOD OF CONSTRUCTING MURAL QUADRANTS.
London, 1768. 4to. 28. 6d.
METHOD OF DIVIDING ASTRONOMICAL INSTRU-
MENTS. London, 1767. 4to. 2s. 6d.
COOK, KING, and BAYLY'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS.
London, 1782. 4to. 218.
ENCKE'S BERLINER JAHRBUCH, for 1830. Berlin, 1828. 8vo. 98.
GROOMBRIDGE'S CATALOGUE OF CIRCUMPOLAR STARS.
4to. 108.
HANSEN'S TABLES DE LA LUNE. 4to. 208.
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
ADMIRALTY PUBLICATIONS—Continued.
HARRISON'S PRINCIPLES OF HIS TIME-KEEPER. PLATES.
1797. 4to. 58.
HUTTON'S TABLES OF THE PRODUCTS AND POWERS OF
NUMBERS. 1781. Folio. 7s. 6d.
LAX'S TABLES FOR FINDING THE LATITUDE AND LONGI-
TUDE. 1821. 8vo. 108.
3
LUNAR OBSERVATIONS at GREENWICH. 1783 to 1819. Compared
with the Tables, 1821. 4to. 78. 6d.
MASKELYNE'S ACCOUNT OF THE GOING OF HARRISON'S
WATCH. 1767. 4to. 2s. 6d.
from the
MAYER'S DISTANCES of the MOON'S CENTRE from
PLANETS. 1822, 3s.; 1823, 48. 6d. 1824 to 1835, 8vo. 48. each.
THEORIA LUNÆ JUXTA SYSTEMA NEWTONIANUM.
4to. 2s. 6d.
TABULÆ MOTUUM SOLIS ET LUNÆ. 1770. 4to. 5s.
ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS MADE AT GOT-
TINGEN, from 1756 to 1761. 1826. Folio. 78. 6d.
NAUTICAL ALMANACS, from 1767 to 1871. 8vo. 2s. 6d. each.
SELECTIONS FROM THE ADDITIONS
up to 1812. 8vo. 58. 1884-54. 8vo. 58.
SUPPLEMENTS, 1828 to 1833, 1837 and 1838
TABLE requisite to be used with the N.A.
1781. 8vo. 5s.
POND'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS. 1811 to 1835. 4to. 218.
8vo. 28. each.
each.
RAMSDEN'S ENGINE for DIVIDING MATHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS.
4to. 58.
ENGINE for DIVIDING STRAIGHT LINES. 4to. 58.
SABINE'S PENDULUM EXPERIMENTS to DETERMINE THE FIGURE
OF THE EARTH. 1825. 4to. 408.
SHEPHERD'S TABLES for Correcting LUNAR DISTANCES. 1772.
Royal 4to. 218.
TABLES, GENERAL, of the MOON'S DISTANCE
from the SUN, and 10 STARS. 1787. Folio. 58. 6d.
TAYLOR'S SEXAGESIMAL TABLE. 1780. 4to. 158.
TABLES OF LOGARITHMS. 4to. 3l.
TIARK'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS for the LONGITUDE
of MADEIRA. 1822. 4to. 58.
CHRONOMETRICAL OBSERVATIONS for DIFFERENCES
of LONGITUDE between DOVER, PORTSMOUTH, and FALMOUTH. 1823.
4to. 5s.
VENUS and JUPITER: OBSERVATIONS of, compared with the TABLES.
London, 1822. 4to. 28.
WALES' AND BAYLY'S ASTRONOMICAL
1777. 4to. 218.
OBSERVATIONS.
WALES' REDUCTION OF ASTRONOMICAL
OBSERVATIONS
MADE IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. 1764-1771. 1788. 4to.
10s. 6d.
B 2
4
LIST OF WORKS
BARBAULD'S (MRS.) Hymns in Prose for Children. With 112
Original Designs. Small 4to. 58.; or Fine Paper, 78. 6d.
BARROW'S (SIR JOHN) Autobiographical Memoir. From Early
Life to Advanced Age. Portrait. 8vo. 168.
(JOHN) Life, Exploits, and Voyages of Sir Francis
Drake. With numerous Original Letters. Post 8vo. 2s.
BARRY'S (SIR CHARLES) Life. By ALFRED BARRY, D.D. With
Portrait, and Illustrations. Medium 8vo. 248.
BATES' (H. W.) Records of a Naturalist on the River Amazons
during eleven years of Adventure and Travel. Second Edition. Illus-
trations. Post 8vo. 128.
BEAUCLERK'S (LADY DI) Summer and Winter in Norway.
Second Edition. With Illustrations. Small 8vo. 6s.
BEES AND FLOWERS.
Two Essays. By REV. THOMAS JAMES.
Reprinted from the "Quarterly Review." Fcap. 8vo. 18. each.
BERTHA'S Journal during a Visit to her Uncle in England.
Containing a Variety of Interesting and Instructive Information. Seventh
Edition. Woodcuts. 12mo. 7s. 6d.
BERTRAM'S (JAS. G.) Harvest of the Sea: a Contribution to the
Natural and Economic History of British Food Fishes. Second and
Cheaper Edition. With 50 Illustrations. 8vo.
BICKMORE'S (ALBERT S., M.A.) Travels in the East Indian Archi-
pelago. With Maps and Illustrations. 8vo. (In preparation.)
BIRCH'S (SAMUEL) History of Ancient Pottery and Porcelain :
Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, and Etruscan. With 200 Illustra-
tions. 2 Vols. Medium 8vo. 42s.
BISSET'S (ANDREW) History of the Commonwealth of England,
from the Death of Charles I. to the Expulsion of the Long Parliament
hy Cromwell. Chiefly from the MSS. in the State Paper Office. 2 vols.
8vo. 308.
BLAKISTON'S (CAPT.) Narrative of the Expedition sent to ex-
plore the Upper Waters of the Yang-Tsze. Illustrations. 8vo. 188.
BLOMFIELD'S (BISHOP) Memoir, with Selections from his Corre-
spondence. By his Son. Second Edition. Portrait, post 8vo. 12s.
BLUNT'S (REV. J. J.) Undesigned Coincidences in the Writings of
the Old and New Testament, an Argument of their Veracity: containing
the Books of Moses. Historical and Prophetical Scriptures, and the
Gospels and Acts. Ninth Edition. Post 8vo. 68.
History of the Church in the First Three Centuries.
Third Edition. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
Parish Priest; His Duties, Acquirements and Obliga-
tions. Fourth Edition. Post 8vo. 78.6d.
Lectures on the Right Use of the Early Fathers.
Second Edition. 8vo. 15s.
Plain Sermons Preached to a Country Congregation.
Fifth and Cheaper Edition. 2 Vols. Pest 8vo.
Essays on various subjects.
8vo. 128.
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.
Borders, Initial Letters, and Woodcuts.
cloth; 318. 6d. calf; 36s. morocco.
Illustrated with Coloured
A new edition. 8vo. 18s.
BORROW'S (GEORGE) Bible in Spain; or the Journeys, Adventures,
and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to circulate the
Scriptures in the Peninsula. 3 Vols. Post 8vo. 27s.; or Popular Edition,
16mo, 38. 6d.
Zincali, or the Gipsies of Spain; their Manners,
Customs, Religion, and Language. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 188.; or Popular
Edition, 16mo, 38. 6d.
5
WILD WALES: its People, Language, and Scenery.
Third Edition. With Introductory Remarks. Post 8vo. 68.
Lavengro; The Scholar-The Gipsy-and the Priest.
Portrait. 3 Vols. Post 8vo. 30s.
Second
Romany Rye; a Sequel to Lavengro.
Edition. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 218.
Includ-
BOSWELL'S (JAMES) Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
ing the Tour to the Hebrides. Edited by Mr. CROKER. Portraits. Royal
8vo. 108.
BRACE'S (C. L.) History of the Races of the Old World. Post
8vo. 98.
BRAY'S (MRS.) Life of Thomas Stothard, R.A. With Personal
Reminiscences. Illustrated with Portrait and 60 Woodcuts of his
chief works. 4to. 218.
BREWSTER'S (SIR DAVID) Martyrs of Science; or, Lives of
Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 48. 6d.
More Worlds than One. The Creed of the Philo-
sopher and the Hope of the Christian. Eighth Edition. Post 8vo. 68.
Stereoscope: its History, Theory, Construction,
and Application to the Arts and to Education. Woodcuts. 12mo.
58. 6d.
BRITISH ASSOCIATION REPORTS.
York and Oxford, 1831-32, 138. 6d.
Cambridge, 1833, 128.
Edinburgh, 1834, 158.
Dublin, 1835, 138. 6d.
Bristol, 1836, 128.
Liverpool, 1837, 168. 6d.
Newcastle, 1838, 158.
Birmingham, 1839, 13s. 6d
Glasgow, 1840, 158.
Plymouth, 1841, 138. 6d.
Manchester, 1842, 10s. 6d.
Cork, 1843, 128.
York, 1844, 208.
Cambridge, 1845, 12s.
Southampton, 1846, 15s.
Oxford, 1847, 18s.
Swansea, 1848, 9s.
Birmingham, 1849, 108.
Kaleidoscope: its History, Theory, and Construction,
with its application to the Fine and Useful Arts. Second Edition.
Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 58. 6d.
8vo.
Edinburgh, 1850, 15s.
Ipswich, 1851, 16s. 6d.
Belfast, 1852, 15s.
Hull, 1853, 10s. 6d.
Liverpool, 1854, 188.
Glasgow, 1855, 158.
Cheltenham, 1856, 18s.
Dublin, 1857, 158.
Leeds, 1858, 20s.
Aberdeen, 1859, 15s.
Oxford, 1860, 25s.
Manchester, 1861, 15s.
Cambridge, 1862, 20s.
Newcastle, 1863, 25s.
Bath, 1864, 18s.
Birmingham, 1865, 25s
Nottingham 1863, 248.
Dundee, 1867, 26s.

6
LIST OF WORKS
:
BROUGHTON'S (LORD) Journey through Albania and other
Provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople, 1809-10.
Third Edition. Illustrations. 2 Vols. 8vo. 308.
Visits to Italy. 3rd Edition. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 188.
BROWNLOW'S (LADY) Reminiscences of a Septuagenarian.
From the year 1802 to 1815. Third Edition. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
BUBBLES FROM THE BRUNNEN OF NASSAU. By Sir
FRANCIS B. HEAD, Bart. 7th Edition, with Illustrations.
78. 6d.
Post 8vo.
BUNYAN (JOHN) and Oliver Cromwell. Select Biographies. By
ROBERT SOUTHEY. Post 8vo. 28.
BURGON'S (REV. J. W.). Christian Gentleman; or, Memoir of
Patrick Fraser Tytler. Second Edition. Post 8vo.. 98.
Letters from Rome. Post 8vo. 128.
BURN'S (COL.) Dictionary of Naval and Military Technical
Terms, English and French-French and English. Fourth Edition.
Crown 8vo. 158.
BUXTON'S (CHARLES) Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton,
Bart. With Selections from his Correspondence. By his Son. Portrait.
8vo. 16s. Or Popular Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
ANALYSED AND
IDEAS OF THE DAY ON POLICY,
ARRANGED. Third Edition. 8vo. 68.
BYRON'S (LORD) Life, Letters, and Journals. By THOMAS MOORE.
Plates. 6 Vols. Fcap. 8vo. 18s.
Life, Letters, and Journals. By THOMAS MOORE.
Portraits. Royal 8vo. 9s.
Poetical Works. Library Edition. Portrait. 6 Vols.
Svo. 45s.
Poetical Works. Plates. 10 Vols. Fcap. 8vo. 30s.
Poetical Works. 8 Vols. 24mo. 208.
Poetical Works. Plates. Royal 8vo. 98.
Poetical Works. (PEARL EDITION.) Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.
Childe Harold. With 80 Engravings. Crown 8vo.
Childe Harold. Vignettes. 16mo. 18.
Childe Harold. Portrait. 16mo. 6d.
Childe Harold.16mo. 28. 6d.
Tales and Poems. 24mo. 2s. 6d.
Miscellaneous. 2 Vols. 24mo. 58.
Dramas and Plays. 2 Vols. 24mo. 58.
Don Juan and Beppo. 2 Vols. 24mo. 58.
Beauties. Portrait. Fcap. 8vo. 38. 6d.
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
BURR'S (G. D.) Instructions in Practical Surveying, Topogra-
phical Plan Drawing, and on sketching ground without Instruments.
Fourth Edition. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 68.
7
BUTTMAN'S LEXILOGUS; a Critical Examination of the
Meaning of numerous Greek Words, chiefly in Homer and Hesiod.
Translated by Rev. J. R. FISHLAKE. Fifth Edition. Svo. 128.
CATALOGUE OF IRREGULAR GREEK VERBS.
With all the Tenses extant-their Formation, Meaning, and Usage,
accompanied by an Index. Translated, with Notes, by Rev. J. R.
FISHLAKE. Fifth Edition. Revised by Rev. E. VENABLES. Post 8vo. 68.
CALLCOTT'S (LADY) Little Arthur's History of England.
New Edition, brought down to 1862. With Woodcuts. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
CAMPBELL'S (LORD) Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers
of the Great Seal of England. From the Earliest Times to the Death of
Lord Eldon in 1838. Fourth Edition. 10 Vols. Crown 8vo. 6s.each.
Lives of the Chief Justices of England. From the
Norman Conquest to the Death of Lord Tenterden. Second Edition.
3 Vols. 8vo. 428.
Shakspeare's Legal Acquirements
Legal Acquirements Considered.
8vo. 58. 6d.
Life of Lord Chancellor Bacon. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
(GEORGE) Modern India. A Sketch of the System
of Civil Government. With some Account of the Natives and Native
Institutions. Second Edition. 8vo. 16s.
India as it may be. An Outline of a proposed
Government and Policy. 8vo. 12s.
With an
CARNARVON'S (LORD) Portugal, Gallicia, and the Basque
Provinces. From Notes made during a Journey to those Countries.
Third Edition. Post 8vo. 3s. 6d.
(THOS.) Short Lives of the British Poets.
Essay on English Poetry. Post 8vo. 38. 6d.
Recollections of the Druses of Lebanon. With
Notes on their Religion. Third Edition. Post 8vo. 58. 6d.
CASTLEREAGH (THE) DESPATCHES, from the commencement
of the official career of the late Viscount Castlereagh to the close of his
life. Edited by the MARQUIS OF LONDONDERRY. 12 Vols. 8vo. 148. each.
CATHCART'S (SIR GEORGE) Commentaries on the War in Russia
and Germany, 1812-13. Plans. 8vo. 14s.
CAVALCASELLE AND CROWE'S History of Painting in
Italy, from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, from recent re-
searches, as well as from personal inspection of the Works of Art in
that Country. With 100 Illustrations. 3 Vols. 8vo. 638.
History of Painting in North Italy, includ-
ing Venice, Lombardy, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Parma, Friuli,
Ferrara, and Bologna. With Illustrations. 2 Vols. 8vo. (In preparation.)
•
Notices of the Lives and Works of the
Early Flemish Painters. Woodcuts. Post 8vo.
128.
::
8
LIST OF WORKS
CHILD (G. CHAPLIN, M.D.) Benedicite; or, Song of the Three
Children; being Illustrations of the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of
the Creator. New and Cheaper Edition. Post 8vo.
CHURTON'S (ARCHDEACON) Gongora. An Historical Essay on the
Age of Philip III. and IV. of Spain. With Translations. Portrait.
2 Vols. Small 8vo. 158.
CICERO'S LIFE AND TIMES.
With his Character viewed
as a Statesman, Orator, and Friend, and a Selection from his Corres-
pondence and Orations. By WILLIAM FORSYTH, Q.C. New Edition.
With Illustrations. 8vo. 16s.
CLIVE'S (LORD) Life. By REV. G. R. GLEIG, M.A. Post 8vo. 38. 6d.
COLCHESTER (THE) PAPERS. The Diary and Correspondence
of Charles Abbott, Lord Colchester, Speaker of the House of Commons,
1802-1817. Portrait. 3 Vols. 8vo. 42s.
New Edition.
COLERIDGE'S (SAMUEL TAYLOR) Table-Talk.
Portrait. Fcap. 8vo. 6s.
COLLINGWOOD'S (CUTHBERT) Rambles of a Naturalist on the
Shores and Waters of the China Sea. Being Observations in Natural
History during a Voyage to China, Formosa, Borneo, Singapore, &c.,
during 1866-67. With Illustrations. 8vo. 16s.
COLONIAL LIBRARY. [See Home and Colonial Library.]
COOK'S (Canon) Sermons Preached at Lincoln's Inn Chapel,
and on Special Occasions. 8vo. 9s.
COOKERY (MODERN DOMESTIC). Founded on Principles of Economy
and Practical Knowledge, and adapted for Private Families. By a
Lady. New Edition. Woodcuts. Fcap. 8vo. 58.
CORNWALLIS (THE) Papers and Correspondence during the
American War,-Administrations in India,-Union with Ireland, aud
Peace of Amiens. Second Edition. 3 Vols. 8vo. 63s.
COWPER'S (MARY, COUNTESS) Diary while Lady of the Bedchamber
to Caroline Princess of Wales, 1714-20. Edited by Hon. SPENCER
COWPER. Second Edition. Portrait. 8vo. 108. 6d.
CRABBE'S (REV. GEORGE) Life and Poetical Works. Plates.
8 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 24s.; or Complete in 1 Vol. Plates. Royal
8vo. 78.
CREE'S (E. D.) Portrait of the Primitive Church. Fcap. 8vo. 18.
CROKER'S (J. W.) Progressive
Geography for Children.
Fifth Edition. 18mo. 1s. 6d.
Stories for Children, Selected from the History of
England. Fifteenth Edition. Woodcuts. 16mo. 2s. 6d.
Boswell's Life of Johnson. Including the Tour to
the Hebrides. Portraits. Royal 8vo. 108.
Essays on the Early Period of the French Revolution.
8vo. 158.
Historical Essay on the Guillotine. Fcap. 8vo. 18.
CROMWELL (OLIVER) and John Bunyan. By ROBERT SOUTHEY.
Post 8vo. 28.
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
CROWE'S AND CAVALCASELLE'S Notices of the Early Flemish
Painters. Woodents. Post 8vo.
128.
History of Painting in Italy, from 2nd to 16th
Century. Derived from Historical Researches as well as Inspection of
the Works of Art in that Country. With 100 Illustrations. 3 Vols.
8vo. 218. each.
North Italy, including Venice,
Lombardy, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Parma, Friuli, Ferrara, and Bo-
logna. With Illustrations. 2 Vols. 8vo. (In preparation.)
CUMMING'S (R. GORDON) Five Years of a Hunter's Life in the
Far Interior of South Africa; with Anecdotes of the Chace, and Notices
of the Native Tribes. New Edition. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 53.
CUNNINGHAM'S (ALLAN) Poems and Songs. Now first col-
lected and arranged, with Biographical Notice. 24mo. 2s. 6d.
CURTIUS' (PROFESSOR) Student's Greek Grammar, for Colleges
and the Upper Forms. Edited by Dr. WM. SMITH. Third Edition.
Post 8vo. 68.
Smaller Greek Grammar for the Middle and Lower
Forms. 12mo, 38. 6d.
CURZON'S (HON. ROBERT) ARMENIA AND ERZEROUM.
A Year on
the Frontiers of Russia, Turkey, and Persia. Third Edition. Wood-
cuts. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d.
•
Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant. Fifth Edition.
Illustrations. Post 8vo. 78.6d.
CUST'S (GENERAL) Warriors of the 17th Century—The Thirty Years'
War-and the Civil Wars of France and England. 4 Vols. Post 8vo.
88. each.
Annals of the Wars-18th & 19th Century, 1700-1815.
Compiled from the most Authentic Sources. With Maps. 9 Vols. Post
8vo. 58. each.
DARWIN'S (CHARLES) Journal of Researches into the Natural
History of the Countries visited during a Voyage round the World.
Post 8vo. 98.
Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection;
or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Fourth
Edition, revised. Post 8vo. 158.
Fertilization of Orchids through Insect Agency, and
as to the good of Intercrossing. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 98.
Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication.
With Illustrations. 2 Vols. 8vo. 28s.
Fact and Argument for. By FRITZ MULLER. With
numerous Illustrations and Additions by the Author. Translated from
the German by W. S. DALLAS. 8vo. (Nearly ready.)
DAVIS'S (NATHAN) Visit to the Ruined Cities of Numidia and
Carthaginia. Illustrations. 8vo 168.
(SIR J. F.) Chinese Miscellanies: a Collection of Essays
and Notes. Post 8vo. 68.
DAVY'S (SIR HUMPHRY) Consolations in Travel; or, Last Days
of a Philosopher. Fifth Edition. Woodcuts. Fcap. 8vo. 68.
Salmonia; or, Days of Fly Fishing. Fourth Edition.
Woodcuts. Fcap. 8vo. 6s.
10
LIST OF WORKS
DELEPIERRE'S (OCTAVE) History of Flemish Literature. From
the Twelfth Century. 8vo. 98.
Historical Difficulties and Contested
Events.
Being Notes on some Doubtful Points of History. Post 8vo. 68.
DENISON'S (E. B.) Life of Bishop Lonsdale, D.D. With Selec-
tions from his Writings. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d.
DERBY'S (EARL OF) Translation of the Iliad of Homer into
English Blank Verse. Fifth Library Edition, 2 vols. 8vo. 24s.; or Seventh
Edition, with Translations from the Poets, Ancient and Modern. 2 Vols.
Post 8vo. 108.
*** Translations from the Poets, may be had separately. 8vo. 3s. 6d.
DE ROS'S (LORD) Memorials of the Tower of London.
Second
Edition. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 128.
Young Officer's Companion; or, Essays on Military
Duties and Qualities: with Examples and Illustrations from History.
New Edition. Post 8vo.
DIXON'S (W. HEPWORTH) Story of the Life of Lord Bacon. Second
Edition. Portrait. Fcap. 8vo. 7s. 6d.
DOG-BREAKING; the Most Expeditious, Certain, and Easy
Method, whether great excellence or only mediocrity be required. With
a Few Hints for those who Love the Dog and the Gun. By LIEUT.-
GEN. HUTCHINSON. Fourth Edition. With 40 Woodcuts. Crown 8vo. 15s.
DOMESTIC MODERN COOKERY. Founded on Principles of
Economy and Practical Knowledge, and adapted for Private Families.
New Edition. Woodcuts. Fcap. 8vo. 5s.
DOUGLAS'S (SIR HOWARD) Life and Adventures.
By S. W.
FULLOM. Portrait. 8vo. 15s.
8vo. 218.
Theory and Practice of Gunnery. Fifth Edition. Plates.
-Military Bridges. Third Edition. Plates. 8vo. 218.
Naval Warfare with Steam. 8vo. 8s. 6d.
Modern Systems of Fortification. Plans. 8vo. 128.
DRAKE'S (SIR FRANCIS) Life, Voyages, and Exploits, by Sea and
Land. By JOHN BARROW. Third Edition. Post 8vo. 28.
DRINKWATER'S (JOHN) History of the Siege of Gibraltar,
1779-1783. With a Description and Account of that Garrison from the
Earliest Periods. Post 8vo. 28.
DU CHAILLU'S (PAUL B.) EQUATORIAL AFRICA, with
Accounts of the Gorilla, the Nest-building Ape, Chimpanzee, Croco-
dile, &c. Illustrations. 8vo. 21s.
Journey to Ashango Land; and Further Pene-
tration into Equatorial Africa. Illustrations. 8vo. 218.
DUFFERIN'S (LORD) Letters from High Latitudes; an Account
of a Yacht Voyage to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitzbergen. Fifth
Edition. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
DYER'S (THOS. H.) History of Modern Europe, from the taking
of Constantinople by the Turks to the close of the War in the
Crimea. 4 Vols. 8vo.
EASTLAKE'S (SIR CHARLES) Italian Schools of Painting. From
the German of KUGLER. Edited, with Notes. Third Edition. Illus-
trated from the Old Masters. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 30s.
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
11
EDWARDS' (W. H.) Voyage up the River Amazon, including a
Visit to Para. Post 8vo. 28.
ELDON'S (LORD) Public and Private Life, with Selections from
his Correspondence and Diaries. By HORACE TWISS. Third Edition.
Portrait. 2 Vols. Post 8vo.
218.
ELLESMERE'S (LORD) Two Sieges of Vienna by the Turks.
Translated from the German. Post 8vo. 28.
ELLIS'S (W.) Visits to Madagascar, including a Journey to
the Capital, with notices of Natural History, and Present Civilisation
of the People. Fifth Thousand. Map and Woodcuts. 8vo. 168.
Madagascar Revisited. Setting forth the Persecutions and
Heroic Sufferings of the Native Christians. Illustrations. 8vo. 16s.
(MRS.) Education of Character, with Hints on Moral
Training. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
ELPHINSTONE'S (HON. MOUNTSTUART) History of India—the
Hindoo and Mahomedan Periods. Fifth Edition. Map. 8vo. 188.
ENGEL'S (CARL) Music of the Most Ancient Nations; particularly
of the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Hebrews; with Special Reference to
the Discoveries in Western Asia and in Egypt. With 100 Illustrations.
8vo. 168.
ENGLAND (HISTORY OF) from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace
of Versailles, 1713-83. By LORD MAHON (now Earl Stanhope). Library
Edition, 7 Vols. 8vo. 938.; or Popular Edition, 7 Vols. Post 8vo. 358.
From the First Invasion by the Romans. By MRS.
MARKHAM. New and Cheaper Edition, continued to 1863. Woodcuts.
12mo. 48.
From the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolu-
tion of 1688. By DAVID HUME. Corrected and continued to 1858.
Edited by WM. SMITH, LL.D. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
(Smaller History of). By WM. SMITH, LL.D.
New Edition, continued to 1865. Woodcuts. 18mo. 3s. 6d.
Little Arthur's. By LADY CALLCOTT. New Edition,
continued to 1862. Woodcuts. 18mo. 28. 6d.
ENGLISHWOMAN IN AMERICA. Post 8vo. 108. 6d.
ESKIMAUX and English Vocabulary, for Travellers in the Arctic
Regions. 16mo. 3s. 6d.
2 vols.
ESSAYS FROM "THE TIMES." Being a Selection from the
LITERARY PAPERS which have appeared in that Journal,
Fcap. 8vo. 88.
ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY'S TRANSACTIONS. New Series.
Vols. I, to VI. 8vo. 10s. 6d. each.
EXETER'S (BISHOP OF) Letters to Charles Butler, on his Book of
the Roman Catholic Church. New Edition. Post 8vo. 68.
FAMILY RECEIPT-BOOK. A Collection of a Thousand Valuable
and Useful Receipts. Fcap. 8vo. 58. 6d.
12
LIST OF WORKS
FARRAR'S (A. S.) Critical History of Free Thought in
reference to the Christian Religion. Being the Bampton Lectures, 1852.
8vo. 168.
(F. W.) Origin of Language, based on Modern
Researches. Fcap. 8vo. 5s.
FERGUSSON'S (JAMES) Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis
Restored. Woodcuts. 8vo. 16s.
History of Architecture in all Countries: from the
Earliest Times to the Present Day. With 1200 Illustrations and au
Index. Vols. I. and II. 8vo. 428. each.
History of Architecture. Vol. III.-The Modern
Styles. With 312 Illustrations, and an Index. 8vo. 31s. 6d.
Holy Sepulchre and the Temple at Jerusalem ;
being the Substance of Two Lectures delivered at the Royal Institu-
tion, 1862 and '65. Woodcuts. 8vo. 7s. 6d.
FISHER'S (REV. GEORGE) Elements of Geometry, for the Use of
Schools. Fifth Edition. 18mo. 1s. 6d.
First Principles of Algebra, for the Use of Schools.
Fifth Edition. 18mo. 1s. 6d.
FLEMING (WM.) Student's Manual of Moral Philosophy. Post
8vo. 78. 6d.
FLOWER GARDEN (THE). By REV. THOS. JAMES. Feap. 8vo. 1s.
FONNEREAU'S (T. G.) Diary of a Dutiful Son. Fcap. 8vo.
4s. 6d.
FORBES' (C. S.) Iceland; its Volcanoes, Geysers, and Glaciers.
Illustrations. Post 8vo. 148.
FORSTER'S (JOHN) Arrest of the Five Members by Charles the
First. A Chapter of English History re-written. Post 8vo.
Grand Remonstrance, 1641. With an Essay on
English freedom under the Plantagenet and Tudor Sovereigns. Second
Edition. Post 8vo. 128.
Sir John Eliot: a Biography, 1590-1632. With
Portraits. 2 Vols. Crown 8vo. 308.
Biographies of Oliver Cromwell, Daniel De Foe,
Sir Richard Steele, Charles Churchill, Samuel Foote. Third Edition.
Post 8vo. 12s.
FORD'S (RICHARD) Gatherings from Spain. Post 8vo. 38. 6d.
FORSYTH'S (WILLIAM) Life and Times of Cicero. With Selections
from his Correspondence and Orations. New Edition. Illustrations.
8vo. 168.
FORTUNE'S (ROBERT) Narrative of Two Visits to the Tea
Countries of China, 1843-52. Third Edition. Woodcuts. 2 Vols. Post
8vo. 188.
Third Visit to China. 1853-6. Woodcuts. 8vo. 16s.
Yedo and Peking. With Notices of the Agricul
ture and Trade of China, during a Fourth Visit to that Country. Illus-
trations. 8vo. 168.
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
FOSS' (Edward) Judges of England. With Sketches of their
Lives, and Notices of the Courts at Westminster, from the Conquest to
the Present Time. 9 Vols. 8vo. 1268.
Tabulæ Curiales; or, Tables of the Superior Courts
of Westminster Hall. Showing the Judges who sat in them from 1066
to 1864; with the Attorney and Solicitor Generals of each reign. To
which is prefixed an Alphabetical List of all the Judges during the
same period. 8vo. 10s. 6d.
13
FRANCE (HISTORY OF). From the Conquest by the Gauls.
By Mrs. MARKHAM. New and Cheaper Edition, continued to 1856. Wood-
cuts. 12mo. 48.
From the Earliest Times to the Establishment of the
Second Empire, 1852. By W. H. PEABSON. Edited by WM. SMITH,
LL.D. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
FRENCH (THE) in Algiers; The Soldier of the Foreign Legion—
and the Prisoners of Abd-el-Kadir. Translated by Lady DUFF GORDON.
Post 8vo. 28.
FRERE'S (M.) Old Deccan Days; or, Hindoo Fairy Legends
Current in Southern India. Collected from Oral Tradition. Illustrated
by C. F. FRERE. With an Introduction and Notes, by SIr Bartle
FRERE. Crown 8vo. 128.
GALTON'S (FRANCIS) Art of Travel; or, Hints on the Shifts and
Contrivances available in Wild Countries. Fourth Edition. Wood-
cuts. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d.
(MODERN).
Post 8vo. In the Press.
GEOGRAPHY (ANCIENT). By Rev. W. L. BEVAN.
Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
By Rev. W. L. Bevan.
Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of
Bevan. Woodcuts.
Woodcuts.
London, 8vo.
GERMANY (HISTORY OF). From the Invasion by Marius, to Recent
times. By Mrs. MARKHAM. New and Cheaper Edition. Woodcuts.
12mo. 48.
GIBBON'S (EDWARD) History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire. A New Edition. Preceded by his Autobiography. And
Edited, with Notes, by Dr. WM. SMITH. Maps. 8 Vols. 8vo. 608.
(The Student's Gibbon); Being an Epitome of the
above work, incorporating the Researches of Recent Commentators. By
Dr. Wм. SMITH. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
GIFFARD'S (EDWARD) Deeds of Naval Daring; or, Anecdotes of
the British Navy. Fcap. 8vo. 38. 6d.
GLADSTONE'S (W. E.) Financial Statements of 1853, 60, 63,
and 64; with Speeches on Tax-Bills and Charities. Second Edition.
8vo. 128.
Edition. Post 8vo. 58.
Speeches on Parliamentary Reform. Third
1
GLEIG'S (G. R.) Campaigns of the British Army at Washington
and New Orleans. Post 8vo. 28.
Story of the Battle of Waterloo. Post 8vo. 38. 6d.
Narrative of Sale's Brigade in Affghanistan. Post 8vo. 28.
Life of Robert Lord Clive. Post 8vo. 38. 6d.
Sir Thomas Munro. Post 8vo. 3s. 6d.
1
14
LIST OF WORKS
GOLDSMITH'S (OLIVER) Works. A New Edition. Edited with
Notes by PETER CUNNINGHAM. Vignettes. 4 Vols. 8vo. 308.
GONGORA; An Historical Essay on the Times of Philip III. and
IV. of Spain. With Illustrations. By ARCHDEACON CHURTON. Por-
trait. 2 vols. Post 8vo. 158.
GORDON'S (SIR ALEX. DUFF) Sketches of German Life, and Scenes
from the War of Liberation. From the German. Post 8vo. 3s. 6d.
(LADY DUFF) Amber-Witch: A Trial for Witch-
craft. From the German. Post 8vo. 2s.
French in Algiers. 1. The Soldier of the Foreign
Legion. 2. The Prisoners of Abd-el-Kadir. From the French.
Post 8vo. 28.
GOUGER'S (HENRY) Personal Narrative of Two Years' Imprison-
ment in Burmah. Second Edition. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 12s.
GRAMMARS (LATIN and GREEK).
EDWARD VITH., &c. &c.
GREECE (HISTORY OF). From the
Conquest. By Wм. SMITH, LL.D.
(SMALLER HISTORY OF).
cuts. 16mo. 3s. 6d.
See CURTIUS; SMITH; KING
Earliest Times to the Roman
Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d.
By WM. SMITH, LL.D. Wood-
GRENVILLE (THE) PAPERS. Being the Public and Private
Correspondence of George Grenville, including his PRIVATE Diary.
Edited by W. J. SMITH. 4 Vols. 8vo. 16s. each.
GREY'S (EARL) Correspondence with King William IVth. and
Sir Herbert Taylor, from November, 1830, to the Fassing of the Reform
Act in 1832. 2 Vols. 8vo. 30s.
Parliamentary Government and Reform; with
Suggestions for the Improvement of our Representative System.
Second Edition. 8vo. 98.
(SIR GEORGE) Polynesian Mythology, and Ancient
Traditional History of the New Zealand Race. Woodcuts. Post
8vo. 108. 6d.
GRUNER'S (LEWIS) Terra-Cotta Architecture of North Italy,
From careful Drawings and Restorations. With Illustrations, engraved
and printed in Colours. Small folio. 57. 58.
From the Earliest Times
to the close of the generation contemporary with the death of Alexander
the Great. Fourth Edition. Maps. 8 Vols. 8vo. 1128.
GROTE'S (GEORGE) History of Greece.
PLATO, and the other Companions of Socrates.
Second Edition. 3 Vols. 8vo. 45s.
(MRS.) Memoir of Ary Scheffer.
Post 8vo. 88. 6d.
GUIZOT'S (M.) Meditations on Christianity, and on the Religious
Questions of the Day. Part I. The Essence. Part II. The Present
State. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 20s.
Meditations on Christianity. Part III. Its Relation
to the State of Society and Progress of the Human Mind. Post 8vo.
(Nearly Ready.)
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
HALLAM'S (HENRY) Constitutional History of England, from the
Accession of Henry the Seventh to the Death of George the Second.
Seventh Edition. 3 Vols. 8vo. 30s.
Tenth Edition. 3 Vols. 8vo. 308.
History of Europe during the Middle
The Student's Hallam.
of Europe during the Middle Ages.
trations. By WM. SMITH, LL.D.
dent's Hume." (In Preparation.)
15
An Epitome of the History
With Additional Notes and Illus-
Post 8vo. Uniform with the "Stu-
17th Centuries. Fourth Edition. 3 Vols. 8vo. 368.
Middle Ages.
Literary History of Europe, during the 15th, 16th and
Historical Works. Containing
Containing History of England,
-Middle Ages of Europe,-Literary History of Europe. 10 Vols.
Post 8vo. 6s. each.
||
(ARTHUR) Remains; in Verse and Prose. With Pre-
face, Memoir, and Portrait. Fcap. 8vo. 78. 6d.
HAMILTON'S (JAMES) Wanderings in North Africa. With Illustra-
tions. Post 8vo. 128.
HANNAH'S (REV. DR.) Bampton Lectures for 1863; the Divine
and Human Elements in Holy Scripture. 8vo. 108. 6d.
HART'S ARMY LIST. (Quarterly and Annually.) 8vo.
Bubbles from the Brunnen of Nassau.
Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
HAY'S (J. H. DRUMMOND) Western Barbary, its Wild Tribes and
Savage Animals. Post 8vo. 28.
HEAD'S (SIR FRANCIS) Horse and his Rider. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 58.
Rapid Journeys across the Pampas. Post 8vo. 28.
Illustrations.
Emigrant. Fcap. 8vo. 28. 6d.
Stokers and Pokers; or, the London and North Western
Railway. Post 8vo, 28.
(SIR EDMUND) Shall and Will; or, Future Auxiliary
Verbs. Fcap. 8vo, 48.
HEBER'S (BISHOP) Journey through the Upper Provinces of India,
from Calcutta to Bombay, with an Account of a Journey to Madras
and the Southern Provinces. Twelfth Edition. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 78.
Poetical Works, including Palestine, Europe, The Red
Sea, Hymns, &c. Sixth Edition. Portrait. Fcap. 8vo. 63.
Hymns adapted to the Weekly Church Service of the
Year. 16mo. 18. 6d.
HERODOTUS. A New English Version.
A New English Version. Edited, with Notes
and Essays, historical, ethnographical, and geographical, by Rev. G.
RAWLINSON, assisted by SIR HENRY RAWLINSON and SIB J. G. WIL-
KINSON. Second Edition. Maps and Woodcuts. 4 Vols. 8vo. 488.
16
FOREIGN HANDBOOKS.
HAND-BOOK-TRAVEL-TALK. English, French, German, and
Italian. 18mo. 88. 6d.
LIST OF WORKS
NORTH GERMANY,-HOLLAND, BELGIUM, PRUS-
SIA, and the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland. Map. Post 8vo. 10s.
SOUTH GERMANY, Bavaria, Austria, Styria,
Salzberg, the Austrian and Bavarian Alps, the Tyrol, Hungary, and the
Danube, from Ulm to the Black Sea. Map. Post 8vo. 108.
KNAPSACK GUIDE TO THE TYROL. Post 8vo.
6s.
PAINTING. German, Flemish, and Dutch Schools.
Woodcuts. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 248.
8vo. 5s.
LIVES OF THE EARLY FLEMISH PAINTERS.
By CROWE and CAVALCASELLE. Illustrations. Post 8vo. 128.
SWITZERLAND, Alps of Savoy, and Piedmont.
Maps. Post 8vo. 10s.
KNAPSACK GUIDE TO SWITZERLAND. Post
FRANCE, Normandy, Brittany, the French Alps,
the Rivers Loire, Seine, Rhone, and Garonne, Dauphiné, Provence, and
the Pyrenees. Maps. Post 8vo. 128.
CORSICA and SARDINIA. Maps. Post 8vo. 4s.
PARIS, and its Environs. Map and Plans. Post
8vo. 38. 6d.
*** MURRAY'S PLAN OF PARIS, mounted on canvas. 3s. 6d.
SPAIN, Andalusia, Ronda, Granada, Valencia, Cata-
lonia, Gallicia, Arragon, and Navarre. Maps. Post 8vo. (In the Press.)
PORTUGAL, LISBON, &c. Map. Post 8vo. 98.
NORTH ITALY, Piedmont, Liguria, Venetia,
Lombardy, Parma, Modena, and Romagna. Map. Post 8vo. 12s.
CENTRAL ITALY, Lucca, Tuscany, Florence, The
Marches, Umbria, and the Patrimony of St. Peter's. Map. Post 8vo. 108.
ROME AND ITS ENVIRONS. Map. Post 8vo. 98.
SOUTH ITALY, Two Sicilies, Naples, Pompeii,
Herculaneum, and Vesuvius. Map. Post 8vo. 108.
KNAPSACK GUIDE TO ITALY.
Post 8vo. 68.
SICILY, Palermo, Messina, Catania, Syracuse, Etna,
and the Ruins of the Greek Temples. Map. Post 8vo. 128.
PAINTING. The Italian Schools. Edited by Sir
CHABLES EASTLAKE, R. A. Woodcuts. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 308.
LIVES OF ITALIAN PAINTERS, FROM CIMABUE
to Bassano. By Mrs. JAMESON. Portraits. Post 8vo. 108. 6d.
DENMARK, SWEDEN, and NORWAY. New Edition.
Maps. Post 8vo. (In Preparation.)
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
17
HAND-BOOK-KNAPSACK GUIDE TO NORWAY. Map.
Post 8vo. 53.
GREECE, the Ionian Islands, Albania, Thessaly,
and Macedonia. Maps. Post 8vo. (In preparation.)
TURKEY, Malta, Asia Minor, Constantinople,
Armenia, Mesopotamia, &c. Maps. Post 8vo. (In preparation.)
EGYPT, Thebes, the Nile, Alexandria, Cairo, the
Pyramids, Mount Sinai, &c. Map. Post 8vo. 158.
HOLY LAND-SYRIA AND PALESTINE, Peninsula
of Sinai, Edom, and Syrian Desert. Maps. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 248.
INDIA. BOMBAY AND MADRAS.
Map. 2 Vols.
Post. 8vo. 24s.
—
RUSSIA, ST. PETERSBURGH, Moscow, POLAND, and
FINLAND. Maps. Post 8vo. 15s.
ENGLISH HANDBOOKS.
HAND-BOOK-MODERN LONDON. Map. 16mo. 3s. 6d.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. Woodcuts. 16mo. 18.
KENT AND SUSSEX, Canterbury, Dover, Rams-
gate, Sheerness, Rochester, Chatham, Woolwich, Brighton, Chichester,
Worthing, Hastings, Lewes, Arundel, &c. Map. Post 8vo. 108.
SURREY AND HANTS, Kingston, Croydon, Rei-
gate, Guildford, Winchester, Southampton, Portsmouth, and ISLE OF
WIGHT. Maps. Post 8vo. 10s.
WILTS, DORSET, AND SOMERSET, Salisbury,
Chippenham, Weymouth, Sherborne, Wells, Bath, Bristol, Taunton,
&c. Map. Post 8vo.
DEVON AND CORNWALL, Exeter, Ilfracombe,
Linton, Sidmouth, Dawlish, Teignmouth, Plymouth, Devonport, Tor-
quay, Launceston, Truro, Penzance, Falmouth, &c. Maps. Post 8vo. 10s.
BERKS, BUCKS, AND OXON, Windsor, Eton,
Reading, Aylesbury, Uxbridge, Wycombe, Henley, the City and Uni-
versity of Oxford, and the Descent of the Thames. Map. Post 8vo.
78. 6d.
GLOUCESTER, HEREFORD, AND WORCESTER
Cirencester, Cheltenham, Stroud, Tewkesbury, Leominster, Ross, Mal-
vern, Kidderminster, Dudley, Bromsgrove, Evesham, Map. Post 8vo.
68. 6d.
CATHEDRALS
OF GLOUCESTER, HERE-
FORD and WORCESTER. Illustrations. 2s. 6d. each, or in 1 Vol., Post
8vo. 88. 6d.
NORTH AND SOUTH WALES, Bangor, Car-
narvon, Beaumaris, Snowdon, Conway, Menai Straits, Carmarthen,
Pembroke, Tenby, Swansea, The Wye, &c. Maps. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 12s.
DERBY, NOTTS, LEICESTER, AND STAFFORD,
Matlock, Bakewell, Chatsworth, The Peak, Buxton, Hardwick, Dove
Dale, Ashborne, Southwell, Mansfield, Retford, Burton, Belvoir, Melton
Mowbray, Wolverhampton, Lichfield, Walsall, Tamworth. Map.
Post 8vo. 78.6d.
YORKSHIRE, Doncaster, Hall, Selby, Beverley,
carborough, Whitby, Harrogate, Ripon, Leeds, Wakefield, Bradford,
Halifax, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Map and Plans. Post 8vo. 12s.
O
18
LIST OF WORKS
HAND-BOOK-DURHAM AND NORTHUMBERLAND, New-
castle, Darlington, Gateshead, Bishop Auckland, Stockton, Hartlepool,
Sunderland, Shields, Berwick-on-Tweed, Morpeth, Tynemouth, Cold-
stream, Alnwick, &c. Map. Post 8vo. 98.
WESTMORLAND AND CUMBERLAND-Lan-
caster, Furness Abbey, Ambleside, Kendal, Windermere, Coniston,
Keswick, Grasmere, Carlisle, Cockermouth, Penrith, Appleby. Map.
Post 8vo. 6s.
MURRAY'S MAP OF THE LAKES, on canvas. 3s. 6d.
EASTERN COUNTIES, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk,
and Cambridge. Map. Post 8vo. (In the Press.)
SCOTLAND, Edinburgh, Melrose, Kelso, Glasgow,
Dumfries, Ayr, Stirling, Arran, The Clyde, Oban, Inverary, Loch
Lomond, Loch Katrine and Trossachs, Caledonian Canal, Inverness,
Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen, Braemar, Skye, Caithness, Ross, Suther-
land, &c. Maps and Plans. Post 8vo. 98.
IRELAND, Dublin, Belfast, Donegal, Galway,
Wexford, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, the Lakes of Killarney, Coast of
Munster, &c. Maps. Post 8vo. 12s.
EASTERN CATHEDRALS, Oxford, Peterborough,
Norwich, Ely, and Lincoln. With 90 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 18s.
SOUTHERN CATHEDRALS, Winchester, Salisbury,
Exeter, Wells, Chichester, Rochester, Canterbury. With 110 Illustra-
tions, 2 Vols. Crown 8vo. 248.
WESTERN CATHEDRALS, Bristol, Gloucester,
Hereford, Worcester, and Lichfield. With 50 Illustrations. Crown 8vo.
168.
NORTHERN CATHEDRALS, York, Ripon, Dur-
ham, Carlisle, Chester, and Manchester. With Illustrations. Crown
8vo. (In preparation.)
HAND-BOOK OF FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS. From English
Authors. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 58.
HESSEY (REV. DR.). Sunday-Its Origin, History, and Present
Obligations. Being the Bampton Lectures for 1860. Second Edition.
8vo. 16s. Or Popular Edition. Post 8vo. 9s.
HICKMAN'S (WM.) Treatise on the Law and Practice of Naval
Courts-Martial. 8vo. 108. 6d.
HOLLWAY'S (J. G.) Month in Norway. Fcap. 8vo. 28.
HONEY BEE (THE). An Essay. By REV. THOMAS JAMES.
Reprinted from the "Quarterly Review." Fcap. 8vo. 18.
HOOK'S (DEAN) Church Dictionary. Ninth Edition. 8vo. 168.
(THEODORE) Life. By J. G. LOCKHART. Fcap. 8vo. 1s.
HOPE'S (A. J. B.) English Cathedral of the Nineteenth Century.
With Illustrations. 8vo. 128.
HOPE'S (T. C.) ARCHITECTURE OF AHMEDABAD, with
Historical Sketch and Architectural Notes by T. C. HOPE, and JAMES
FERGUSSON, F.R.S. With 2 Maps, 120 Photographs, and 22 Woodcuts.
4to. 57. 58.
BEJAPOOR, with Historical Sketch and Ar-
chitectural Essay by Col. MEADOWS TAYLOR and Jas. FERGUSSON.
With 2 Maps, 78 Photographs, and 13 Woodcuts. Folio. 107. 108.
DHARWAR and MYSORE. With Historical
Sketch and Architectural Essay by Col. MEADOWS Taylor and Jas.
FERGUSSON. With 2 Maps, 100 Photographs, and numerous Woodcuts.
Folio. 127, 12s
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
HOME AND COLONIAL LIBRARY. A Series of Works
adapted for all circles and classes of Readers, having been selected
for their acknowledged interest and ability of the Authors. Post 8vo
Published at 28. and 38. 6d. each, and arranged under two distinctive
heads as follows:-
CLASS A.
HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND HISTORIC
1. SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR. By
JOHN DRINKWATER. 28.
2. THE AMBER-WITCH. By
LADY DUFF Gordon. 28.
3. CROMWELL AND BUNYAN.
By ROBERT SOUTHEY. 28.
4. LIFE OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.
By JOHN BARROW, 28.
5. CAMPAIGNS AT WASHING-
TON. BY REV. G. R. GLEIG. 28.
6. THE FRENCH IN ALGIERS.
By LADY DUFF GORDON. 28.
7. THE FALL OF THE JESUITS.
28.
8. LIVONIAN TALES. 2s.
9. LIFE OF CONDE. BY LORD MA-
HON. 38. 6d.
10. SALE'S BRIGADE. By Rev.
G. R. GLEIG. 28.
1. BIBLE IN SPAIN. By GEORGE
BORROW. 38. 6d.
2. GIPSIES OF SPAIN. BY GEORGE
Borrow. 38. 6d.
CLASS B.
VOYAGES, TRAVELS, AND ADVENTURES.
3 & 4. JOURNALS IN INDIA. By
BISHOP HEBER. 2 Vols. 78.
5. TRAVELS IN THE HOLY LAND.
By IRBY and MANGLES. 28.
6. MOROCCO AND THE MOORS.
By J. DRUMMOND HAY. 28.
7. LETTERS FROM THE BALTIC.
By a LADY. 28.
8. NEW SOUTH WALES. BY MRS.
MEREDITH. 2s.
9. THE WEST INDIES. By M. G.
LEWIS. 28.
10. SKETCHES OF PERSIA. By
SIR JOHN MALCOLM. 38. 6d.
11. MEMOIRS OF FATHER RIPA.
28.
12. 13. TYPEE AND OMOO. By
HERMANN MELVILLE. 2 Vols. 78.
14. MISSIONARY LIFE IN CAN-
ADA. By REV. J. ABBOTT. 28.
TALES.
11. THE SIEGES OF VIENNA.
BY LORD ELLESMERE. 28.
12. THE WAYSIDE CROSS.
CAPT. MILMAN. 28.
By
13. SKETCHES OF GERMAN LIFE.
By SIR A. GORDON. 38. 6d.
14. THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO.
By REV. G. R. GLEIG. 38.6d.
15. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF STEF.
FENS. 28.
16. THE BRITISH POETS. By
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 38. 6d.
17. HISTORICAL ESSAYS.
By
LORD MAHON. 38. 6d.
18. LIFE OF LORD CLIVE. By
REV. G. R. Gleig. 38. 6d.
19. NORTH
WESTERN RAIL-
WAY: By SIB F. B. HEAD. 2s.
20. LIFE OF MUNRO. By REV. G.
R. GLEIG. 88. 6d.
-
19
15. LETTERS FROM MADRAS. By
& LADY. 28.
16. HIGHLAND
SPORTS. By
CHARLES ST. JOHN. 3s. 6d.
17. PAMPAS JOURNEYS. By SIR
F. B. HEAD. 28.
18. GATHERINGS FROM SPAIN.
By RICHARD FORD. 38. 6d.
19. THE RIVER AMAZON. By
W. H. EDWARDS. 28.
20. MANNERS & CUSTOMS OF
INDIA. By REV. C. ACLAND. 28.
21. ADVENTURES IN MEXICO.
By G. F. RUXTON. 38. 6d.
22. PORTUGAL AND GALLICIA.
By LORD CARNARVON. 38. 6d.
23. BUSH LIFE IN AUSTRALIA.
By Rev. H. W. HAYGARTH. 28.
24. THE LIBYAN DESERT. By
BAYLE ST. JoHx. 28.
25. SIERRA LEONE. By & LADY.
38. 6d.
** Each work may be had separately.
c 2
20
LIST OF WORKS
HORACE (WORKS OF.) Edited by DEAN MILMAN. With 100
Woodcuts. Crown 8vo. 78. 6d.
(Life of). By DEAN MILMAN.
Woodcuts, and coloured
Fcap. 8vo. 68.
HOUGHTON'S (LORD) Poetical Works.
HUME (THE STUDENT'S) A History of England, from the Invasion
of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution of 1688. Corrected and continued
to 1858. Edited by Dв. WM. SMITH. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
HUTCHINSON (GEN.) on the most expeditious, certain, and
easy Method of Dog-Breaking. Fourth Edition. Enlarged and
revised, with 40 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 15s.
Borders. 8vo. 98.
HUTTON'S (H. E.) Principia Græca; an Introduction to the Study
of Greek. Comprehending Grammar, Delectus, and Exercise-book,
with Vocabularies. Sixth Edition. 12mo. 38. Ed.
IRBY AND MANGLES' Travels in Egypt, Nubia, Syria, and
the Holy Land. Post 8vo. 28.
JAMES' (REV. THOMAS) Fables of Esop. A New Translation, with
Historical Preface. With 100 Woodcuts by TENNIEL and WOLF.
Fiftieth Thousand. Post 8vo. 2s. 6d.
JAMESON'S (MRS.) Lives of the Early Italian Painters—
and the Progress of Painting in Italy-Cimabue to Bassano.
Edition. With 50 Portraits. Post 8vo. 10s. 6d.
New
JENNINGS' (L. J.) Eighty Years of Republican Government in
the United States. Post 8vo. 108. 6d.
JESSE'S (EDWARD) Gleanings in Natural History. Eighth Edition.
Fcp. 8vo. 68.
JOHNS' (REV. B. G.) Blind People; their Works and Ways. With
Sketches of the Lives of some famous Blind Men. With Illustrations.
Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
JOHNSON'S (DR. SAMUEL) Life. By James Boswell. Including
the Tour to the Hebrides.
Royal 8vo. 108.
Edited by Mr. Croker. Portraits.
Lives of the English Poets. Edited by PETER
CUNNINGHAM. 3 vols. 8vo. 22s. 6d.
KEN'S (BISHOP) Life. By a LAYMAN. Portrait. 2 Vols. 8vo. 18s.
Exposition of the Apostles' Creed. Fcap. 1s. 6d.
Approach to the Holy Altar. Fcap. 8vo. 18. 6d.
KENNEDY'S (GENERAL) Notes on the Battle of Waterloo. With
a Memoir of his Life and Services, and a Plan for the Defence of Canada.
With Map and Plans. 8vo. 78. 6d.
KERR'S (ROBERT) GENTLEMAN'S HOUSE; OR, HOW TO PLAN
ENGLISH RESIDENCES, FROM THE PARSONAGE TO THE PALACE. With
Tables and Cost. Views and Plans. Second Edition. 8vo. 24s.
Ancient Lights; a Book for Architects, Surveyors,
Lawyers, and Landlords. 8vo. 58. 6d.
(R. MALCOLM) Student's Blackstone. A Systematic
Abridgment of the entire Commentaries, adapted to the present state
of the law. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
KING'S (REV. C. W.) Antique Gems; their Origin, Use, and
Value, as Interpreters of Ancient History, and as illustrative of Ancient
Art. Second Edition. Illustrations. 8vo. 24s.
KING EDWARD VITH's Latin Grammar; or, an Introduction
to the Latin Tongue. Seventeenth Edition. 12mo. 3s. 6d.
First Latin Book; or, the Accidence,
Syntax, and Prosody, with an English Translation. Fifth Edition. 12mo.
28. 6d.
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
KING GEORGE THE THIRD'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH
LORD NORTH, 1769-82. Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by
W. BODHAM DONNE. 2 vols. 8vo. 32s.
KIRK'S (J. FOSTER) History of Charles the Bold, Duke of Bur-
gundy. Portrait. 3 Vols. 8vo. 45s.
KUGLER'S Italian Schools of Painting.
SIR CHARLES EASTLAKE. Third Edition.
8vo. 308.
21
Edited, with Notes, by
Woodcuts. 2 Vols. Post
German, Dutch, and Flemish Schools of Painting.
Edited, with Notes, by DR. WAAGEN. Second Edition. Woodcuts. 2
Vols. Post 8vo. 24s.
LAYARD'S (A. H.) Nineveh and its Remains. Being a Nar-
rative of Researches and Discoveries amidst the Ruins of Assyria.
With an Account of the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan; the Yezedis,
or Devil-worshippers; and an Enquiry into the Manners and Arts of
the Ancient Assyrians. Sixth Edition. Plates and Woodcuts. 2 Vols.
8vo. 368.
** A POPULAR EDITION. With Illustrations.
Nineveh and Babylon; being the
Second Expedition to Assyria. Plates. 8vo. 21s.
** A POPULAR EDITION. With Illustrations. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
LEATHES' (STANLEY) Short Practical Hebrew Grammar. With an
Appendix, containing the Hebrew Text of Genesis i.—vi., and Psalms
i.—vi. Grammatical Analysis and Vocabulary. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d.
LENNEP'S (REV. H. J. Van) Missionary Travels in Asia Minor.
With Illustrations. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. (In preparation.)
LESLIE'S (C. R.) Handbook for Young Painters. With Illustra-
tions. Post 8vo. 108. 6d.
Autobiographical Recollections, with Selections
from his Correspondence. Edited by TOM TAYLOR. Portrait. 2 Vols.
Post 8vo. 18s.
traits and Illustrations. 2 Vols. 8vo. 42s.
Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
Narrative of a
Life and Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Por-
28.
LETTERS FROM THE BALTIC. By a LADY. Post 8vo.
MADRAS. By a LADY. Post 8vo. 28.
SIERRA LEONE. By a LADY. Post 8vo. 38. 6d.
LEVI'S (LEONE) Wages and Earnings of the Working Classes.
With some Facts Illustrative of their Economic Condition. 8vo. 68.
LIDDELL'S (DEAN) History of Rome.
to the Establishment of the Empire.
and Art. 2 Vols. 8vo. 28s.
LEWIS (SIR G. C.) On the Government of Dependencies. 8vo. 128.
Glossary of Provincial Words used in Herefordshire, &c.
12mo. 48. 6d.
(M. G.) Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the
West Indies. Post 8vo. 28.
From the Earliest Time3
With the History of Literature
above Work. With Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
Student's History of Rome, abridged from the
LINDSAY'S (LORD) Lives of the Lindsays; or, a Memoir of the
Houses of Crawfurd and Balcarres. With Extracts from Official Papers
and Personal Narratives. Second Edition. 3 Vols. 8vo. 248.
LISPINGS from LOW LATITUDES; or, the Journal of the Hon.
Impulsia Gushington. Edited by LORD DUFFERIN. With 24 Plates. 4to.218.
22
LIST OF WORKS
LITTLE ARTHUR'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
BY LADY
CALLCOTT. New Edition, continued to 1862. With 20 Woodcuts.
Fcap..8vo. 2s. 6d.
LIVINGSTONE'S (DR.) Popular Account of his Missionary
Travels in South Africa. Illustrations. Post 8vo. 6s.
Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi and
its Tributaries; and of the Discovery of Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa.
1858-64. Map and Illustrations. 8vo. 21s.
LIVONIAN TALES. By the Author of "Letters from the
Baltic." Post 8vo. 2s.
Historical and
Post 8vo. 2s. 6d.
18.
LOCKHART'S (J. G.) Ancient Spanish Ballads.
Romantic. Translated, with Notes. New Edition.
Life of Theodore Hook. Fcap. 8vo.
LONDON (OLD). A series of Essays on its Archæology and
Antiquities, by DEAN STANLEY; A. J. BERESFORD HOPE, M.P.; G. G.
SCOTT, R. A.; R. WESTMACOTT. R.A.; E. Foss, F.S.A.; G. T. CLARK;
JOSEPH BURTT; REV. J. R GREEN; and G. SCHARF, F.S.A. 8vo. 12s.
LONDON'S (BISHOP OF) Dangers and Safeguards of Modern
Theology. Containing Suggestions to the Theological Student under
present difficulties. Second Edition. 8vo. 9s.
LONSDALE'S (BISHOP) Life. With Selections from his Writings.
By E. B. DENISON, Q.C. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d.
LOUDON'S (MRS.) Instructions in Gardening. With Directions
and Calendar of Operations for Every Month. Eighth Edition. Wood-
cuts. Fcap. 8vo. 58.
LUCAS' (SAMUEL) Secularia; or, Surveys on the Main Stream of
History. 8vo. 12s.
LUCKNOW: a Lady's Diary of the Siege. Fcap, 8vo. 48. 6d.
LYELL'S (SIR CHARLES) Elements of Geology; or, the Ancient
Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants as illustrated by Geological
Monuments. Sixth Edition. Woodcuts. 8vo. 18s.
Principles of Geology; or, the Modern Changes
of the Earth and its Inhabitants considered as illustrative of Geology.
Tenth Edition. With Illustrations. 2 Vols. 8vo. 32s.
Antiquity of Man.
Geological Evidences
Evidences of the
Third Edition. Illustrations. 8vo. 14s.
A
LYTTELTON'S (LORD) Ephemera. Post 8vo. 10s. 6d.
LYTTON'S (LORD) Poems. New Edition. Post 8vo. 10s. 6d.
Lost Tales of Miletus. Second Edition. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
MACPHERSON'S (MAJOR S. C.) Memorials of Service in India,
while Political Agent at Gwalior during the Mutiny. With Portrait
and Illustrations. 8vo. 12s.
See STANHOPE (Earl of).
MAHON'S (LORD) Works.
MCCLINTOCK'S (SIR L.) Narrative of the Discovery of the
Fate of Sir John Franklin and his Companions in the Arctic Seas.
Twelfth Thousand. Illustrations. 8vo. 16s.
McCULLOCH'S (J. R.) Collected Edition of RICARDO'S Political
Works. With Notes and Memoir. 8vo. 16s.
MACDOUGALL'S (COL.) Modern Warfare as Influenced by Modern
Artillery. With Plans. Post 8vo. 12s.
MAINE (H. SUMNER) On Ancient Law: its Connection with the
Early History of Society, and its Relation to Modern Ideas. 8vo. 12s.
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
MALCOLM'S (SIR JOHN) Sketches of Persia. Post 8vo. 38. 6d.
MANSEL (CANON) Limits of Religious Thought Examined.
Being the Bampton Lectures for 1858. Post 8vo. 88. 6d.
MANSFIELD (SIR WILLIAM) On a Gold Currency for India.
. 8vo. 3s. 6d.
*
MANTELL'S (GIDEON A.) Thoughts on Animalcules; or, the
Invisible World, as revealed by the Microscope. Plates. 16mo. 68.
For the Use of
MANUAL OF SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRY.
23
Travellers. Edited by Sir J. F. HERSCHEL and Rev. R. MAIN. Maps.
Post 8vo. 98. (Published by order of the Lords of the Admiralty.)
MARKHAM'S (MRS.) History of England. From the First Inva-
New Edition, continued to
sion by the Romans, down to Recent Times.
1863. Woodcuts. 12mo. 48.
History of France. From the Conquest by
the Gauls, to Recent Times. New Edition, continued to 1856. Wood-
cuts. 12mo. 4s.
P
History of Germany. From the Invasion by Marius,
to Recent Times. New Edition. Woodcuts. 12mo. 48.
(CLEMENTS R.) Travels in Peru and India. Maps
and Illustrations. 8vo. 16s.
MARRYAT'S (JOSEPH) History of Modern and Medieval Pottery
and Porcelain. With a Description of the Manufacture. Third and
revised and enlarged Edition. Plates and Woodcuts. 8vo. (Nearly Ready.)
(HORACE) Jutland, the Danish Isles, and Copen-
hagen. Illustrations. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 248.
Sweden and Isle of Gothland.
Illustrations. 2
Vols. Post 8vo. 28s.
MARSH'S (G. P.) Student's Manual of the English Language.
Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
MAUREL'S (JULES) Essay on the Character, Actions, and Writings
of the Duke of Wellington. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 18. 6d.
MAYNE'S (CAPT.) Four Years in British Columbia and Van-
couver Island. Its Forests, Rivers, Coasts, and Gold Fields, and
Resources for Colonisation. Illustrations. 8vo. 16s.
MELVILLE'S (HERMANN) Typee and Omoo; or, Adventures
amongst the Marquesas and South Sea Islands. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 78.
MILLS' (REV. JOHN) Three Months' Residence at Nablus, with
an Account of the Modern Samaritans. · Illustrations. Post 8vo. 10s. 6d.
·
MILMAN'S (DEAN) Historical Works. Containing: 1. History of
the Jews, 3 Vols. 2. History of Early Christianity, 3 Vols. 3. His-
tory of Latin Christianity, 9 Vols. Post 8vo. 68. each.
Portrait and Illus-
Annals of St. Paul's Cathedral.
trations. Svo. (In preparation.)
Character and Conduct of the Apostles considered
as an Evidence of Christianity. 8vo. 10s. 6d.
Translations from the Agamemnon of Eschylus
and Bacchanals of Euripides. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 128.
Works of Horace. With 100 woodcuts. Small 8vo. 78.6d.
Life of Horace. Woodcuts. 8vo. 9s.
Poetical Works. Plates. 3 Vols. Fcap. 8vo. 188.
Fall of Jerusalem. Fcap. 8vo. 18.
(CAPT. E. A.) Wayside Cross. A Tale of the Carlist
War. Post 8vo. 28.
21
LIST OF WORKS
MEREDITH'S (MRS. CHARLES) Notes and Sketches of New South
Wales. Post 8vo. 28.
MESSIAH (THE): A Narrative of the Life, Travels, Death,
Resurrection, and Ascension of our Blessed Lord. By the Author of
"Life of Bishop Ken." Map. 8vo. 18s.
MICHIE'S (ALEXANDER) Siberian Overland Route from Peking
to Petersburg, through the Deserts and Steppes of Mongolia, Tartary,
&c. Maps and Illustrations. 8vo. 168.
MODERN DOMESTIC COOKERY. Founded on Principles of
Economy and Practical Knowledge and adapted for Private Families.
New Edition. Woodcuts. Fcap. 8vo. 58.
Plates.
MOORE'S (THOMAS) Life and Letters of Lord Byron.
6 Vols. Fcap. 8vo. 18s.; or 1 Vol. Portraits. Royal 8vo. 9s.
MOTLEY'S (J. L.) History of the United Netherlands: from the
Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce, 1609. Embrac-
ing the English-Dutch struggle against Spain; and a detailed Account
of the Spanish Armada. Portraits. 4 Vols. 8vo. 60s. Or Popular
Edition. 4 Vols. Post 8vo. 6s. each.
MOUHOT'S (HENRI) Siam, Cambojia, and Lao; a Narrative of
Travels and Discoveries. Illustrations. 2 vols. 8vo. 32s.
MOZLEY'S (REV. J. B.) Treatise on Predestination. 8vo. 148.
Primitive Doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. 8vo. 7s.6d.
MUNDY'S (GENERAL) Pen and Pencil Sketches in
in India.
Third Edition. Plates. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
MUNRO'S (GENERAL SIR THOMAS) Life and Letters. By the REV.
G. R. GLEIG. Post 8vo. 3s. 6d.
MURCHISON'S (SIR RODERICK) Russia in Europe and the Ural
Mountains. With Coloured Maps, Plates, Sections, &c. 2 Vols.
Royal 4to. 57. 58.
Siluria; or, a History of the Oldest Rocks con-
taining Organic Remains. Fourth Edition. Map and Plates. Evo. 30s.
MURRAY'S RAILWAY READING. Containing:
WELLINGTON. BY LORD ELLESMERE. 6d.
NIMROD ON THE CHASE, 18.
ESSAYS FROM "THE TIMES." 2 Vols. 88.
MUSIC AND DRESS. 18.
•
LAYARD'S ACCOUNT OF NINEVEH. 58.
MILMAN'S FALL OF JERUSALEM. 18.
MAHON'S "FORTY-FIVE." 38.
LIFE OF THEODORE Hook. 18.
DEEDS OF NAVAL DARING, 38. 6d.
THE HONEY BEE. 18.
JAMES' ESOP'S FABLES. 28. 6d.
NIMROD ON THE TURF. 18. 6d.
ART OF DINING. 18. 6d.
BALLAM'S LITERARY ESSAYS. 28.
MAHON'S JOAN OF ARC. 18.
HEAD'S EMIGRANT. 28. 6d.
NIMROD On the Road. 18.
CROKER ON THE GUILLOTINE. 18.
HOLLWAY'S NORWAY. 28.
MAUREL'S WELLINGTON. 18. 6d.
CAMPBELL'S LIFE OF BACON. 28. 6d.
THE FLOWER GARDEN. 18.
LOCKHART'S SPANISH BALLADS. 2s. 6d.
TAYLOR'S NOTES FROM LIFE. 28.
REJECTED ADDRESSES. 18.
PENN'S HINTS ON ANGLING. 18.
MUSIC AND DRESS. By a LADY. Reprinted from the " Quarterly
Review." Fcap. 8vo. 1s.
NAPIER'S (SIR CHAS.) Life;
chiefly derived from his Journals
and Letters. By SIR W. NAPIER. Second Edition. Portraits. 4 Vols.
Post 8vo. 48s.
(SIR WM.) Life and Letters. Edited by H. A. BRUCE,
M.P. Portraits. 2 Vols. Crown 8vo. 28s.
English Battles and Sieges of the Peninsular
War. Fourth Edition, Portrait. Post 8vo. 98.
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
Royal 8vo.
Royal 8vo. 28. 6d.
25
NAUTICAL (THE) ALMANACK.
(THE) ALMANACK.
Authority.)
NAVY LIST (THE). (Published Quarterly, by Authority.) 16mo.
28. 6d.
28. 6d. (By
NEW TESTAMENT (ILLUSTRATED). With Explanatory Com-
mentary. Edited by ARCHDEACON Churton, M.A., and Basil Jones,
M.A. With 110 authentic Views of Places, from Sketches and Photo-
graphs taken on the spot. 2 Vols. Crown 8vo. 308, cloth; 52s. 6d.
calf; 638. morocco.
NICHOLLS' (SIR GEORGE) History of the English, Irish and
Scotch Poor Laws. 4 Vols. 8vo.
(Rev. H. G.) Historical Account of the Forest of
Dean. Woodcuts, &c. Post 8vo. 108. 6d.
NICOLAS' (SIR HARRIS) Historic Peerage of England. Exhi
biting the Origin, Descent, and Present State of every Title of Peer-
age which has existed in this Country since the Conquest. By
WILLIAM Courthope. 8vo. 30s.
NIMROD On the Chace-The Turf-and The Road.
Woodcuts.
Fcap. 8vo. 38. 6d.
OLD LONDON; Papers read at the London Congress of the
Archæological Institute, July, 1866. By A. J. B. BERESFord Hope,
M.P.; DEAN STANLEY, D.D.; G. T. CLARK, Esq.; G. Gilbert Scott,
R. A.; PROFESSOR WESTMACOTT, R.A.; EDWARD FOSS, F.S.A.; JOSEPH
BURTT, Esq.; Rev. J. R. GREEN; GEORGE SCHARF, F.S.A. With
Illustrations. 8vo. 128.
PEEL'S (SIR ROBERT) Memoirs.
OXENHAM'S (REV. W.) English Notes for Latin Elegiacs; designed
for early Proficients in the Art of Latin Versification, with Prefatory
Rules of Composition in Elegiac Metre. Fourth Edition. 12mo. 88. 6d.
OXFORD'S (BISHOP OF) Popular Life of William Wilberforce.
Portrait. Post 8vo. 10s. 6d.
PARIS' (Dr.) Philosophy in Sport made Science in Earnest;
or, the First Principles of Natural Philosophy inculcated by aid of the
Toys and Sports of Youth. Ninth Edition. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
PARKYNS' (MANSFIELD) Life in Abyssinia: During a Three Years'
Residence and Travels in that Country. New Edition, with Map and
30 Illustrations. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
and Mr. CARDWELL. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d. each.
Edited by EARL STANHOPE
PENN'S (RICHARD) Maxims and Hints for an Angler and Chess-
player. New Edition. Woodcuts. Fcap. 8vo. 18.
PENROSE'S (F. C.) Principles of Athenian Architecture, and the
Optical Refinements exhibited in the Construction of the Ancient
Buildings at Athens, from a Survey. With 40 Plates. Folio. 57. 58.
PERCY'S (JOHN, M.D.) Metallurgy of Fuel, Coal, Fire-Clays,
Copper, Zinc, Brass, &c. Illustrations. 8vo. 218.
Metallurgy of Iron and Steel. Illustrations. 8vo. 42s.
Metallurgy of Lead, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Nickel, Cobalt,
Antimony, Bismuth, Arsenic, &c. Illustrations. 8vo. (In the Press.)
PHILLIPP (C. S. M.) On Jurisprudence. 8vo. 128.
PHILLIPS' (JOHN) Memoirs of William Smith, (the Father of Geo-
logy). Portrait. 8vo. 78. 6d.
Geology of Yorkshire, The Coast, and Limestone
District. Plates. 4to. Part I., 20s.-Part II., 308.
Rivers, Mountains, and Sea Coast of Yorkshire.
With Essays on the Climate, Scenery, and Ancient Inhabitants.
Second Edition, Plates. 8vo. 158.
26
LIST OF WORKS
PHILPOTTS' (BISHOP) Letters to the late Charles Butler, on his
"Book of the Roman Catholic Church." New Edition. Post 8vo. 68.
POPE'S (ALEXANDER) Life and Works. A New Edition. Con-
taining nearly 500 unpublished Letters. Edited, with a NEW LIFE,
Introductions and Notes, by REV. WHITWELL ELWIN. Portraits
8vo. (In the Press.)
PORTER'S (REV. J. L.) Five Years in Damascus. With Travels to
Palmyra, Lebanon and other Scripture Sites. Map and Woodcuts.
2 Vols. Post 8vo. 218.
Handbook for Syria and Palestine: including an Account
of the Geography, History, Antiquities, and Inhabitants of these Countries,
the Peninsula of Sinai, Edom, and the Syrian Desert. Maps. 2 Vols.
Post 8vo. 24s.
PRAYER-BOOK (ILLUSTRATED), with Borders, Initials, Vig-
nettes, &c. Edited, with Notes, by REV. THOS. JAMES. Medium
8vo. 18s. cloth; 318. 6d. calf; 368. morocco.
PUSS IN BOOTS. With 12 Illustrations. By OTTO SPECKTER.
16mo. 18. 6d. or Coloured, 2s. 6d.
QUARTERLY REVIEW (THE). 8vo. 6s.
RAMBLES among the Turkomans and Bedaweens of the Syrian
Deserts. Post 8vo. 10s. 6d.
RANKE'S (LEOPOLD) History of the Popes of Rome during the
16th and 17th Centuries. Translated from the German by SARAH
AUSTIN. 3 Vols. 8vo. 30s.
RAWLINSON'S (REV. GEORGE) Herodotus. A New English
Version. Edited with Notes and Essays. Assisted by Sir Henry
RAWLINSON and SIR J. G. WILKINSON. Second Edition. Maps and
Woodcut. 4 Vols. 8vo. 48s.
Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World,
Chaldæa, Assyria, Media, Babylonia, and Persia. With Maps and 650
Illustrations. 4 Vols. 8vo. 168. each.
Historical Evidences of the truth of the Scripture
Records stated anew. Second Edition. 8vo. 14s.
REED'S (E. J.) Practical Treatise on Shipbuilding in Iron and
Steel. With 250 Illustrations. Svo. (In the Press.)
REJECTED ADDRESSES (THE). By JAMES AND HORACE SMITH.
Fcap. 8vo. 1s.
RENNIE'S (D. F.) British Arms in Peking, 1860; Kagosima,
1862. Post 8vo. 128.
Peking and the Pekingese: Being a Narrative of
the First Year of the British Embassy in China. Illustrations. 2 Vols.
Post 8vo. 24s.
Story of Bhotan and the Dooar War; includ-
ing Sketches of a Residence in the Himalayas and Visit to Bhotan in
1865. Map and Woodcut. Post 8vo. 128.
REYNOLDS' (SIR JOSHUA) Life and Times. Commenced by
C. R. LESLIE, R.A., continued and concluded by Tom TAYLOR. Portraits
and Illustrations. 2 Vols. 8vo. 428.
.
Descriptive Catalogue of his Works.
With Notices
of their present owners and localities. By TOM TAYLOR and CHARLES
W. FRANKS. With Illustrations. Fcap. 4to. (In the Press.)
RICARDO'S (DAVID) Political Works. With a Notice of his
Life and Writings. By J. R. M'CULLOCH. New Edition. 8vo. 168.
RIPA'S (FATHER) Memoirs during Thirteen Years' Residence at the
Court of Peking. From the Italian. Post 8vo. 2s.
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
ROBERTSON'S (CANON) History of the Christian Church, from
the Apostolic Age to the Death of Boniface VIII., A.D. 1122–1304.
8 Vols. 8vo.
ROBINSON'S (REV. DR.) Biblical Researches in Palestine and the
Adjacent Regions; a Journal of Travels in 1838 and 1852. Third Edi-
tion. Maps. 3 Vols. 8vo. 428.
Physical Geography of the Holy Land.
Post 8vo.
108. 6d.
ROME (STUDENT'S HISTORY OF).
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE
cuts. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
27
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO
EMPIRE. BY DEAN LIDDELL. Wood-
(SMALLER HISTORY OF). By WM. SMITH, LL.D. Wood-
cuts. 16mo. 3s. 6d.
ROWLAND'S (DAVID) Manual of the English Constitution;
Its Rise, Growth, and Present State. Post 8vo. 10s. 6d.
Laws of Nature the Foundation of Morals. Post
8vo. 68.
RUNDELL'S (MRS.) Domestic Cookery, adapted for Private
Families. New Edition. Woodcuts. Fcap. 8vo. 58.
RUSSELL'S (Rutherfurd) History of the Heroes of Medicine.
Portraits. 8vo. 148.
RUXTON'S (GEORGE F.) Travels in Mexico; with Adventures
among the Wild Tribes and Animals of the Prairies and Rocky Moun-
tains. Post 8vo. 38. 6d.
SALE'S (SIR ROBERT) Brigade in Affghanistan. With an Account of
the Defence of Jellalabad. By REV. G. R. GLEIG. Post 8vo. 28.
SALLESBURY'S (EDWARD) "Children of the Lake." A Poem.
Fcap. 8vo. 43. 6d.
SANDWITH'S (HUMPHRY) Siege of Kars. Post 8vo. 3s. 6d.
SCOTT'S (G. GILBERT) Secular and Domestic Architecture, Pre-
sent and Future. 8vo. 98.
(Master of Baliol) University Sermons. Post 8vo. 88. 6d.
SCROPE'S (G. P.) Geology and Extinct Volcanoes of Central
France. Illustrations. Medium 8vo. 308.
SHAW'S (T. B.) Manual of English Literature. Edited, with
Notes and Illustrations, by DR. WM. SMITH. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
Specimens of English Literature. Selected from the
Chief Writers. Edited by Wм. SMITH, LL.D. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
SHIRLEY (EVELYN P.) on Deer and Deer Parks, or some Account
of English Parks, with Notes on the Management of Deer.
trations. 4to. 218.
Illus-
SIERRA LEONE; Described in Letters to Friends at Home. By
A LADY. Post 8vo. 38. 6d.
SIMMONS (CAPT. T. F.) on the Constitution and Practice of
Courts-Martial; with a Summary of the Law of Evidence. Sixth and
Revised Edition. 8vo. (In the Press.)
SMITH'S (REV. A. C.) Attractions of the
Journal of Travels in Egypt and Nubia.
SOUTH'S (JOHN F.) Household Surgery;
Nile and its Banks. A
Woodcuts. 2 Vols. Post 8vo.
or, Hints on Emergen-
cies. Seventeenth Thousand. Woodcuts. Fcp. 8vo. 48. 6d.
28
LIST OF WORKS
SMILES' (SAMUEL) Lives of British Engineers; from the Earliest
Period to the Present Time, with an account of their Principal Works;
including a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Steam
Engine. With 9 Portraits and 400 Illustrations. 4 Vols. 8vo. 218. each.
Lives of George and Robert Stephenson. With Portraits
and Illustrations. Medium 8vo. 218. Or Popular Edition, with Wood-
cuts. Post 8vo. 6s.
Lives of Boulton and Watt. With Portraits and Illus-
trations. Medium 8vo. 21s.
Lives of Brindley and the Early Engineers. With Portrait
and 50 Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 68.
Life of Telford. With a History of Roads and Travelling
in England. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 6s.
Self-Help. With Illustrations of Character and Conduct.
Post 8vo. 6s. Or in French. 5s.
Industrial Biography: Iron-Workers and Tool Makers.
A sequel to " Self-Help." Post 8vo. 6s.
Huguenots in England and Ireland: their Settlements,
Churches and Industries. Third Thousand. 8vo. 16s.
Workmen's Earnings-Savings-and Strikes. Fcap. 8vo.
18. 6d.
SOMERVILLE'S (MARY) Physical Geography. Fifth Edition.
Portrait. Post 8vo. 98.
Connexion of the Physical Sciences. Ninth
Edition. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 98.
Molecular and Microscopic Science. Illustra-
tions. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. (In the Press.)
SOUTHEY'S (ROBERT) Book of the Church. Seventh Edition.
Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
Lives of Bunyan and Cromwell. Post 8vo. 28.
SPECKTER'S (Orro) Puss in Boots. With 12 Woodcuts. Square
12mo. 18. 6d. plain, or 2s. 6d. coloured.
STANLEY'S (DEAN) Sinai and Palestine.
Map. 8vo. 14s.
Bible in the Holy Land; being Extracts from the
above Work. Woodcuts, Fcap. 8vo, 2s. 6d.
St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians. With Disser-
tations and Notes. 8vo. 18s.
History of the Eastern Church. Plans. 8vo. 128.
Jewish Church. 2 Vols. 8vo. 16s. each.
Historical Memorials of Canterbury. Woodcuts.
Memorials of Westminster Abbey. Illus
Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
trations. 8vo. 18s.
Sermons in the East, 8vo. 98.
on Evangelical and Apostolical Teaching.
Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
ADDRESSES AND CHARGES OF BISHOP STANLEY. With
Memoir. 8vo. 108. 6d.
·
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
·
SMITH'S (DR. WM.) Dictionary of the Bible; its Antiquities,
Biography, Geography, and Natural History. Illustrations. 3 Vols.
8vo. 1058.
Concise Bible Dictionary, for Families and Students.
Illustrations. Medium 8vo. 21s.
29
Smaller Bible Dictionary, for Schools and Young Persons.
Illustrations. Post 8vo. 73.61.
Dictionary of Christian Antiquities: from the Times
of the Apostles to the Age of Charlemagne. Illustrations. Medium.
8vo. (In preparation.)
Biblical Atlas. Folio. (In preparation.)
Greek and Roman Antiquities. Woodcuts. 8vo. 42s.
Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Wood-
cuts. 3 Vols. 8vo. 57. 15s. 6d.
Greek and Roman Geography. Woodcuts. 2 Vols.
8vo. 80s.
Classical Atlas. Folio. (In preparation.)
Classical Dictionary, for the Higher Forms. With 750
Woodcuts. 8vo. 188.
Smaller Classical Dictionary. With 200 Woodcuts.
Crown 8vo. 78. 6d.
Smaller Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.
With 200 Woodcuts. Crown 8vo. 78. 6d.
Copious and Critical English-Latin Dictionary. 8vo and
12mo. (Nearly Ready.)
Complete Latin English Dictionary. With Tables of
the Roman Calendar, Measures, Weights, and Money. 8vo. 218.
Smaller Latin-English Dictionary. 12mo. 78. 6d.
Latin-English Vocabulary; for Phædrus,
Phædrus, Cornelius
Nepos, and Cæsar. 12mo. 3s. 6d.
Principia Latina-Part I. A Grammar, Delectus, and
Exercise Book, with Vocabularies. Sixth Edition. 12mo. 38. 6d.
Part II. A Reading-book of Mytho-
logy, Geography, Roman Antiquities, and History. With Notes and
Dictionary. Third Edition. 12mo. 38. 6d.
Part III. A Latin Poetry Book.
Hexameters and Pentameters; Eclog. Ovidianæ; Latin Prosody,
&c. Second Edition. 12mo. 38. 6d.
Part IV. Latin Prose Composition.
Examples, Explanations of Synonyms, and
Second Edition. 12mo. 38. 6d.
Part V. Short Tales and Anecdotes
12mo. 38.
for Translation into Latin.
Student's Latin Grammar for the Higher Forms.
Post 8vo. 68.
Rules of Syntax, with
Exercises on the Syntax.
Smaller Latin Grammar, for the Middle and Lower
Forms. 12mo. 38. 6d.
Initia Græca, Part I. An Introduction to Greek;
comprehending Grammar, Delectus, and Exercise-book. With Voca-
bularies. 12mo. 38. 6d.
Initia Græca, Part II. A Reading Book. Containing
Short Tales, Anecdotes, Fables, Mythology, and Grecian History.
Arranged in a systematic Progression, with a Lexicon. 12mo. 38. 6d.
Initia Græca, Part III. Greek Prose Composition. Con-
taining the Rules of Syntax, with copious Examples and Exercises.
12mo. (In preparation.)
30
SMITH'S (DR. WM.) Student's Greek Grammar for the Higher
Forms. By Professor CURTIUS. Post 8vo. 6s.
Smaller Greek Grammar for the Middle and Lower
Forms. 12mo. 38. 6d.
Smaller History of England.
With Illustrations.
16mo. 3s. 6d.
3s. 6d.
LIST OF WORKS
3s. 6d.
History of Greece. With Illustrations.
16mo.
History of Rome. With Illustrations. 16mo.
Classical Mythology. With Translations from
the Ancient Poets. Illustrations. 12mo. 3s. 6d.
Scripture History. With Woodcuts. 16mo.
(In preparation.)
STUDENT'S HUME. A History of England from the Invasion
of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution of 1688. By DAVID HUME. Corrected
and continued to 1858. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
*** Questions on the above Wolk, 12mo. 2s.
HISTORY OF FRANCE; from the Earliest Times
to the Establishment of the Second Empire, 1852. By W. H. PEARSON,
M.A. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d.
HISTORY OF GREECE;
from the Earliest
Times to the Roman Conquest. With the History of Literature and Art.
By WM. SMITH, LL.D. Woodcuts. Crown 8vo. 78. 6d.
**Questions on the above Work, 12mo. 28.
HISTORY OF ROME; from the Earliest Times
to the Establishment of the Empire. With the History of Literature
and Art. By Dean LIDDELL. Woodcuts. Crown 8vo. 78. 6d.
GIBBON ; an Epitome of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire. Incorporating the Researches of Recent Commentators.
Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d.
OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY; from the Creation
to the Return of the Jews from Captivity. Maps and Woodcuts. Post
8vo. 7s. 6d.
NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. With an Intro-
duction connecting the History of the Old and New Testaments. Maps
and Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d.
BLACKSTONE: a Systematic Abridgment of the
Entire Commentaries. By R. MALCOLM KERR, LL.D. Post 8vo. 78.6d.
MANUAL OF ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY. By REV.
W. L. BEVAN, M.A. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d.
MODERN GEOGRAPHY. By REV.
W. L. BEVAN. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. (In the Press.)
ECCLESIASTICAL
HISTORY.
Containing the History of the Christian Church from the Close of the
New Testament Canon to the Reformation. Post 8vo. (In preparation.)
MORAL PHILOSOPHY. With
Quotations and References. By WILLIAM FLEMING, D.D. Post 8vo. 78.6d.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By GEO.
P. MARSH. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
ENGLISH LITERATURE. By T. B.
SHAW, M.A. Post 8vo. 78. 6d.
SPECIMENS OF
Selected from the Chief Writers.
8vo. 78. 6d.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
By THOMAS B. SHAW, M.A. Post
PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
STANHOPE'S (EARL) History of England, from the Peace of
Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, 1713-83. Library Edition. 7 vols.
8vo. 93s. Or Popular Edition. 7 Vols. Post 8vo. 58. each.
British India, from its Origin till the Peace of
1783. Post 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Scotland. Post 8vo. 38.
"Forty-Five;" a Narrative of the Rebellion in
1
Spain under Charles the Second.
Historical and Critical Essays.
Life of Belisarius. Post 8vo.
31
Post 8vo. 68. 6d.
Post 8vo. 38. 6d.
108. 6d.
Condé. Post 8vo. 38. 6d.
William Pitt. With Extracts from his MS.
Papers. Portraits. 4 Vols, Post 8vo. 248.
Miscellanies. Post 8vo.
58. 6d.
Story of Joan of Arc. Fcap. 8vo.
18.
ST. JOHN'S (CHARLES) Wild Sports and Natural History of the
Highlands. Post 8vo. 38. 6d.
STOTHARD'S (THOS.) Life.
(BAYLE) Adventures in the Libyan Desert and the
Oasis of Jupiter Ammon. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 28.
STEPHENSONS' (GEORGE and ROBERT) Lives. By SAMUEL
SMILES. With Portraits and 70 Illustrations. Medium 8vo. 218.
Or Popular Edition with Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 68.
With Personal Reminiscences.
By Mrs. BRAY. With Portrait and 60 Woodcuts. 4to. 218.
STREET'S (G. E.) Gothic Architecture in Spain. From Personal
Observations during several journeys through that country. Illus-
trations, Medium 8vo. 508.
SULLIVAN'S (SIR EDWARD) Princes, Warriors, and Statesmen
of India; an Historical Narrative of the most Important Events, from
the Invasion of Mahmoud of Ghizni to that of Nadir Shah. 8vo. 128.
SUMNER (GEORGE HENRY), M.A. Principles at Stake, being
Essays on the Church Questions of the day. By various Writers. 8vo.
(In the Press.)
By
JOHN FORSTER. 8vo. (In Preparation.)
SYBEL'S (VON) History of Europe during the French Revolution,
1789-1795. Translated from the German. By Walter C. PERRY.
Vols. 1 & 2. 8vo. 248.
SWIFT'S (JONATHAN) Life, Letters, Journals, and Works.
SYME'S (PROFESSOR) Principles of Surgery. 5th Edition. 8vo. 128.
TAIT'S (BISHOP) Dangers and Safeguards of Modern Theology,
containing Suggestions to the Theological Student under Present Diffi-
culties. 8vo. 98.
TAYLOR'S (HENRY) Notes from Life-on Money, Humility and
Independence, Wisdom, Choice in Marriage, Children, and Life Poetic.
Fcap. 8vo. 28.
THOMSON'S (ARCHBISHOP) Sermons, Preached at Lincoln's Inn.
8vo. 10s. 6d.
Life in the Light of God's Word. Post 8vo. 68.
THREE-LEAVED MANUAL OF FAMILY PRAYER; arranged
so as to save the trouble of turning the Pages backwards and forwards.
Royal 8vo. 28.
TREMENHEERE (H. S.); The Franchise a Privilege and not a Right,
proved by the Political Experience of the Ancients. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
TRISTRAM'S (H. B.) Great Sahara, or Wanderings South of the
Atlas Mountains. Map and Illustrations. Post 8vo. 158.
32 LIST OF WORKS PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY.
TWISS' (HORACE) Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon, with Selections
from his Correspondence. Portrait. Third Edition. 2 Vols. Post
8vo. 218.
TYTLER'S (PATRICK FRASER) Memoirs. By REV. J. W. BURGON,
M.A. 8vo. 98.
VAMBERY'S (ARMINIUS) Travels in Central Asia, from Teheran
across the Turkoman Desert on the Eastern Shore of the Caspian to
Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand in 1863. Map and Illustrations. 8vo. 21s.
VAN LENNEP (HENRY J.) Missionary Travels in Little Known
Parts of Asia Minor. With Map and Illustrations. 2 Vols. Post 8vo.
(In preparation.)
VAUGHAN'S (REV. DR.) Sermons preached in Harrow School.
8vo. 108. 6d.
WAAGEN'S (DR.) Treasures of Art in Great Britain. Being an
Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Sculpture, Manuscripts,
Miniatures, &c. &c., in this Country. Obtained from Personal Inspec-
tion during Visits to England. 4 Vols. 8vo.
WELLINGTON'S (THE DUKE OF) Despatches during his various
Campaigns. 8 Vols. 8vo. 218. each.
Supplementary Despatches.
Vols. I. to XII.
Civil and Political Correspondence. Vols. I. to
Selections from Despatches and General Orders.
Speeches in Parliament. 2 Vols. 8vo. 428.
WHITE'S (HENRY) Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Preceded by a
History of the Religious Wars in the Reign of Charles IX. Based on
a Personal Examination of Documents in the Archives of France.
With Illustrations. 8vo. 168,
WHYMPER'S (FREDERICK) Travels and Adventures in Alaska and
on the Kiver Yukon, the Russian Territory, now ceded to the United
States, and Visits to other parts of the North Pacific. With Illustra-
tions. 8vo. (In preparation.)
WILKINSON'S (SIR J. G.) Popular Account of the Private Life,
Manners, and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians. With 500 Woodcuts.
2 Vols. Post 8vo. 128.
8vo. 20s. each.
III. 8vo. 20s. each.
8vo. 188.
WILSON'S (BISHOP DANIEL) Life, Letters, and Journals. By
Rev. JOSIAH BATEMAN. Second Edition. Illustrations. Post 8vo. 98.
(GENL. SIR ROBERT) Secret History of the French
Invasion of Russia, and Retreat of the French Army, 1812. Second
Edition. 8vo. 15s.
Private Diary of Travels, Personal Services, and
Public Events, during Missions and Employments in Spain, Sicily,
Turkey, Russia, Poland, Germany, &c. 1812-14. 2 Vols. 8vo. 26s.
Autobiographical Memoirs. Containing an Account of
his Early Life down to the Peace of Tilsit. Portrait. 2 Vols. 8vo.
268.
WOOD (SIR W. P.) On the Continuity of Scripture, as Declared
by the Testimony of Our Lord and of the Evangelists and Apostles.
Second Edition. Post 8vo. 6s.
WORDSWORTH'S (ARCHDEACON) Journal of a Tour in Athens and
Attica. Third Edition. Plates. Post 8vo. 88. 6d.
Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical Account
of Greece. New and Cheaper Edition. With 600 Woodcuts. Royal 8vo.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
se
Villilandan es
IM
Pined by Freservation NEH 1992
***
::
"""
.
***
སྙན་ནས།

EDMO
BO'
Ai Skonit,wRADARKOLINS, macard" in Kaune: kommenters Coronas atvirtina tandang sa
by swathes of the Java Reyna med
•**¨*••****e bote notwings a fine and
"-" ". Montey" 21.
Mild and with outgo's” fituesve n
!
„Patent whole "y what, which tower to thank shows one toate care avery" "ween 789f="w what shows that camere to be had a la e Zotit a 4.
:
:
{x} to do \\ como sapien mást él, ha dengan han in the fanden napig med et Say to the potentiaikai immottar -
3 9015 02011 5864
.
UNIVERSITY gr
Filmed by Preservation NEH 1999