England and Wales
England and Wales, Vegetation and Agriculture
A large part of the surface of England consists of wide valleys and plains. Beginning in the north, the first valleys on the east side are those of the Coquet, Tyne, and Tees; on the west the beautiful valley of the Eden, which, at first hemmed in between the Cumbrian range and Pennine chain, gradually widens out into a plain of about 470 sq. miles, with the town of Carlisle in its centre. The most important of the northern plains is the Vale of York, which has an area of nearly 1000 sq. miles. Properly speaking it is still the same plain which stretches, with scarcely a single interruption, across the counties of Lincoln, Suffolk, and Essex, to the mouth of the Thames, and to a considerable distance inland, comprising the Central Plain and the region of the Fens. On the west side of the island, in South Lancashire and Cheshire, is the fertile Cheshire Plain. In Wales there are no extensive plains, the valleys generally having a narrow rugged form favourable to romantic beauty, but not compatible with great fertility. Wales, however, by giving rise to the Severn, can justly claim part in the vale, or series of almost unrivalled vales, along which it pursues its romantic course through the counties of Montgomery, Salop, Worcester, and Gloucester. South-east of the Cotswold Hills is Salisbury Plain, but it is only in name that it can be classed with the other plains and level lands of England, being a large elevated plateau, of an oval shape, with a thin chalky soil only suitable for pasture. In the south-west the only vales deserving of notice are those of Taunton in Somerset and Exeter in Devon. A large portion of the south-east may be regarded as a continuous plain, consisting of what are called the Wealds of Sussex, Surrey, and Kent, between the North and South Downs, and containing an area of about 1000 sq. miles. The south-east angle of this district is occupied by the Romney Marsh, an extensive level tract composed for the most part of a rich marine deposit. Extensive tracts of a similar nature are situated on the east coast, in Yorkshire and Lincoln, where they are washed by the Humber; and in the counties which either border the Wash, or, like Northampton, Bedford, Huntingdon, and Cambridge, send their drainage into it by the Nene and the Ouse. Many of these lands are naturally the richest in the kingdom, but have been utilized only by means of drainage.
England is well supplied with rivers, many of them of great importance to industry and commerce. Most of them carry their waters to the North Sea. If we consider the drainage as a whole, four principal river basins may be distinguished, those of the Thames, Wash, andHumber belonging to the North Sea; and the Severn belonging to the Atlantic. The basin of the Thames has its greatest length from east to west, 130 miles, and its average breadth about 50 miles, area 6160 sq. miles. The river itself, which is the chief of English rivers, has a length of 215 miles. The basin of the Wash consists of the subordinate basins of the Great Ouse, Nene, Welland, and Witham, which all empty themselves into that estuary, and has an area computed at 5850 sq. miles. The basin of the Severn consists of two distinct portions, that on the right bank, of an irregularly oval shape, and having for its principal tributaries the Teme and the Wye; and that on the left, of which the Upper Avon is the principal tributary stream. The area of the whole basin is 8580 sq. miles. The next basin, that of the Humber, the largest of all, consists of the three basins of the Humber proper, the Ouse, and the Trent, and its area is 9550 sq. miles, being about one-sixth of the whole area of England and Wales. Other rivers unconnected with these systems are the Tyne, Wear, and Tees in the north-east; the Eden, Ribble, Mersey, and Dee in the north-west. The south-coast streams are very unimportant except for their estuaries.
For the minerals, climate, agriculture, manufactures, &c., of England, see the articleBritain.
England and Wales, Mean Annual Rainfall
Civil History.—The history of England proper begins when it ceased to be a Roman possession. (SeeBritain.) On the withdrawal of the Roman forces, about the beginning of the fifth centuryA.D., the South Britons, or inhabitants of what is now called England, were no longer able to withstand the attacks of their ferocious northern neighbours, the Scots and Picts. They applied for assistance to Aëtius, but the Roman general was too much occupied in the struggle with Attila to attend to their petition. In their distress they appear to have sought the aid of the Saxons; and according to the Anglo-Saxon narratives three ships, containing 1600 men, were dispatched to their help under the command of the brothers Hengist and Horsa. Vortigern, a duke or prince of the Britons, assigned them the Isle of Thanet for habitation, and, marching against the northern foe, they obtained a complete victory. The date assigned to these events by the later Anglo-Saxon chronicles isA.D.449, the narratives asserting further that the Saxons, finding the land desirable, turned their arms against the Britons, and, reinforced by new bands, conquered first Kent and ultimately the larger part of the island. Whatever the credibility of the story of Vortigern, it is certain that in the middle of the fifth century the occasional Teutonic incursions gave place to persistent invasion with a view to settlement. These Teutonic invaders were Low German tribes from thecountry about the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, the three most prominent being the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. Of these the Jutes were the first to form a settlement, taking possession of part of Kent and the Isle of Wight; but the larger conquests of the Saxons in the south and the Angles in the north gave to these tribes the leading place in the kingdom. The struggle continued 150 years, and at the end of that period the whole southern part of Britain, with the exception of Strathclyde, Wales, and West Wales (Cornwall), was in the hands of the Teutonic tribes. This conquered territory was divided among a number of small states or petty chieftaincies, seven of the most conspicuous of which are often spoken of as theHeptarchy. These were: 1. The kingdom of Kent; founded by Hengist in 455; ended in 823. 2. Kingdom of South Saxons, containing Sussex and Surrey; founded by Ella in 477; ended in 689. 3. Kingdom of East Angles, containing Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Ely (Isle of); founded by Uffa in 571 or 575; ended in 792. 4. Kingdom of West Saxons, containing Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wilts, Hants, Berks, and part of Cornwall; founded by Cerdic 519; swallowed up the rest in 827. 5. Kingdom of Northumbria, containing York, Durham, Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland, and the east coast of Scotland to the Firth of Forth; founded by Ida 547; absorbed by Wessex in 827. 6. Kingdom of East Saxons, containing Essex, Middlesex, Hertford (part); founded by Erchew in 527: ended in 823. 7. Kingdom of Mercia, containing Gloucester, Hereford, Worcester, Warwick, Leicester, Rutland, Northampton, Lincoln, Huntingdon, Bedford, Buckingham, Oxford, Stafford, Derby, Salop, Nottingham, Chester, Hertford (part); founded by Cridda about 584; absorbed by Wessex in 827. Each state was, in its turn, annexed to more powerful neighbours; and at length, in 827, Egbert, by his valour and superior capacity, united in his own person the sovereignty of what had formerly been seven kingdoms, and the whole came to be called England, that is Angle-land.
Britain after the coming of the English
While this work of conquest and of intertribal strife had been in progress towards the establishment of a united kingdom, certain important changes had occurred. The conquest had been the slow expulsion of a Christian race by a purely heathen race, and the country had returned to something of its old isolation with regard to the rest of Europe. But before the close of the sixth century Christianity had secured a footing in the south-east of the island. Ethelberht, King of Kent and suzerain over the kingdoms south of the Humber, married a Christian wife, Bertha, daughter of Charibert of Soissons, and this event indirectly led to the coming of St. Augustine. The conversion of Kent, Essex, and East Anglia was followed by that of Northumberland and then by that of Mercia, of Wessex, of Sussex, and lastly of Wight, the contest between the two religions being at its height in the seventh century. The legal and political changes immediately consequent upon the adoption of Christianity were not great, but there resulted a more intimate relation with Europe and the older civilizations, the introduction of new learning and culture, the formation of a written literature, and the fusion of the tribes and petty kingdoms into a closer and more lasting unity than that which could have been otherwise secured.
The kingdom, however, was still kept in a state of disturbance by the attacks of the Danes, who had made repeated incursions during the whole of the Saxon period, and about half a century after the unification of the kingdom became for the moment masters of nearly the whole of England. But the genius of Alfred the Great, who had ascended the throne in 871, speedily reversed matters by the defeat of the Danes at Ethandune (878). Guthrum, their king, embraced Christianity, became the vassal of the Saxon king, and retired to a strip of land on the east coast including Northumbria and called the Danelagh. The two immediate successors of Alfred, Edward (901-925) and Athelstan (925-940), the son and the grandson of Alfred, both vigorous and able rulers, had each in turn to direct his arms against these settlers of the Danelagh. The reigns of the next five kings, Edmund, Edred, Edwy, Edgar, andEdward the Martyr, are chiefly remarkable on account of the conspicuous place occupied in them by Dunstan, who was counsellor to Edmund, minister of Edred, treasurer under Edwy, and supreme during the reigns of Edgar and his successor. It was possibly due to his policy that from the time of Athelstan till after the death of Edward the Martyr (978 or 979) the country had comparative rest from the Danes. During the tenth century many changes had taken place in the Teutonic constitution. Feudalism was already taking root; the king's authority had increased; the folkland was being taken over as the king's personal property; the nobles by birth, or ealdormen, were becoming of less importance in administration than the nobility of thegns, the officers of the king's court. Ethelred (978-1016), who succeeded Edward, was a minor, the government was feebly conducted, and no united action being taken against the Danes, their incursions became more frequent and destructive. Animosities between the English and the Danes who had settled among them became daily more violent, and a general massacre of the latter took place in 1002. The following year Sweyn invaded the kingdom with a powerful army and assumed the crown of England. Ethelred was compelled to take refuge in Normandy; and though he afterwards returned, he found in Canute an adversary no less formidable than Sweyn. Ethelred left his kingdom in 1016 to his son Edmund, who displayed great valour, but was compelled to divide his kingdom with Canute; and when he was assassinated in 1017 the Danes succeeded the sovereignty of the whole.
Britain in the time of Alfred the Great
Canute (Knut), who espoused the widow of Ethelred, that he might reconcile his new subjects, obtained the name of Great, not only on account of his personal qualities, but from the extent of his dominions, being master of Denmark and Norway as well as England. In 1035 he died, and was followed in England by two other Danish kings, Harold and Hardicanute, whose joint reigns lasted till 1042, after which the English line was again restored in the person of Edward the Confessor. Edward was a weak prince, and in the latter years of his reign had far less real power than his brother-in-law Harold, son of the great Earl Godwin. On Edward's death in 1066 Harold accordingly obtained the crown. He found, however, a formidable opponent in the second-cousin of Edward, William of Normandy, who instigatedthe Danes to invade the northern counties, while he, with 60,000 men, landed in the south. Harold vanquished the Danes, and hastening southwards met the Normans near Hastings, at Senlac, afterwards called Battle. Harold and his two brothers fell (14th Oct., 1066), and William (1066-87) immediately claimed the government as lawful King of England, being subsequently known as William I, the Conqueror. For some time he conducted the government with great moderation; but being obliged to reward those who had assisted him, he bestowed the chief offices of government upon Normans, and divided among them a great part of the country. The revolts of the native English which followed were quickly crushed, Continental feudalism in a modified form was established, and the English Church reorganized under Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canterbury.
At his death, in 1087, William II, commonly known by the name of Rufus, the Conqueror's second son, obtained the crown, Robert, the eldest son, receiving the duchy of Normandy. In 1100, when William II was accidentally killed in the New Forest, Robert was again cheated of his throne by his younger brother Henry (Henry I), who in 1106 even wrested from him the duchy of Normandy. Henry's power being secured, he entered into a dispute with Anselm the Primate, and with the Pope, concerning the right of granting investure to the clergy. He supported his quarrel with firmness, and brought it to a not unfavourable issue. His reign was also marked by the suppression of the greater Norman nobles in England, whose power (like that of many Continental feudatories) threatened to overshadow that of the king, and by the substitution of a class of lesser nobles. In 1135 he died in Normandy, leaving behind him only a daughter, Matilda.
By the will of Henry I his daughter Maud or Matilda, wife of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, and frequently styled the Empress Matilda, because she had first been married to Henry V, Emperor of Germany, was declared his successor. But Stephen, son of the Count of Blois, and of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, raised an army in Normandy, landed in England, and declared himself king. After years of civil war and bloodshed an amicable arrangement was brought about, by which it was agreed that Stephen should continue to reign during the remainder of his life, but that he should be succeeded by Henry, son of Matilda and the Count of Anjou. Stephen died in 1154, and Henry Plantagenet ascended the throne with the title of Henry II, being the first of the Plantagenet or Angevin kings. A larger dominion was united under his sway than had been held by any previous sovereign of England, for at the time when he became King of England he was already in the possession of Anjou, Normandy, and Aquitaine.
Henry II found far less difficulty in restraining the licence of his barons than in abridging the exorbitant privileges of the clergy, who claimed exemption not only from the taxes of the State, but also from its penal enactments, and who were supported in their demands by the Primate Becket. The king's wishes were formulated in the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), which were at first accepted and then repudiated by the Primate. The assassination of Becket, however, placed the king at a disadvantage in the struggle, and after his conquest of Ireland (1171) he submitted to the Church, and did penance at Becket's tomb. Henry was the first who placed the common people of England in a situation which led to their having a share in the Government. The system of frank-pledge was revived, trial by jury was instituted by the Assize of Clarendon, and the Eyre courts were made permanent by the Assize of Nottingham. To curb the power of the nobles he granted charters to towns, freeing them from all subjection to any but himself, thus laying the foundation of a new order in society.
Richard I, called Cœur de Lion, who in 1189 succeeded to his father, Henry II, spent most of his reign away from England. Having gone to Palestine to join in the third crusade, he proved himself an intrepid soldier. Returning homewards in disguise through Germany, he was made prisoner by Leopold, Duke of Austria, but was ransomed by his subjects. In the meantime John, his brother, had aspired to the crown, and hoped, by the assistance of the French, to exclude Richard from his right. Richard's presence for a time restored matters to some appearance of order; but having undertaken an expedition against France, he received a mortal wound at the siege of Châlons, in 1199.
John was at once recognized as King of England, and secured possession of Normandy; but Anjou, Maine, and Touraine acknowledged the claim of Arthur, son of Geoffrey, second son of Henry II. On the death of Arthur, while in John's power, these four French provinces were at once lost to England. John's opposition to the Pope in electing a successor to the see of Canterbury in 1205 led to the kingdom being placed under anInterdict; and, the nation being in a disturbed condition, he was at last compelled to receive Stephen Langton as archbishop, and to accept his kingdom as a fief of the papacy (1213). His exactions and misgovernment had equally embroiled him with the nobles. In 1213 they refused to follow him to France, and, on his return defeated, they at once took measures to secure their own privileges and abridgethe perogatives of the Crown. King and barons met at Runnymede, and on 15th June, 1215, the Great Charter (Magna Charta) was signed. It was speedily declared null and void by the Pope and war broke out between John and the barons, who were aided by the French king. In 1216, however, John died, and his turbulent reign was succeeded by the almost equally turbulent reign of his son Henry III.
During the first years of the reign of Henry III the abilities of the Earl of Pembroke, who was regent until 1219, retained the kingdom in tranquillity; but when, in 1227, Henry assumed the reins of government he showed himself incapable of managing them. The Charter was three times reissued in a modified form, and new privileges were added to it, but the king took no pains to observe its provisions. The struggle, long maintained in the Great Council (henceforward called Parliament) over money grants and other grievances, reached an acute stage in 1263, when civil war broke out. Simon de Montfort, who had laid the foundations of the House of Commons by summoning representatives of the shire communities to the Mad Parliament of 1258, had by this time engrossed the sole power. He defeated the king and his son Edward at Lewes in 1264, and in his famous Parliament of 1265 still further widened the privileges of the people by summoning to it burgesses as well as knights of the shire. The escape of Prince Edward, however, was followed by the battle of Evesham (1265), at which Earl Simon was defeated and slain, and the rest of the reign was undisturbed.
On the death of Henry III, in 1272, Edward I succeeded without opposition. From 1276 to 1284 he was largely occupied in the conquest and annexation of Wales, which had become practically independent during the barons' wars. In 1292 Baliol, whom Edward had decided to be rightful heir to the Scottish throne, did homage for the fief to the English king; but when, in 1294, war broke out with France, Scotland also declared war. The Scots were defeated at Dunbar (1296), and the country placed under an English regent; but the revolt under Wallace (1297) was followed by that of Bruce (1306), and the Scots remained unsubdued. The reign of Edward was distinguished by many legal and legislative reforms, such as the separation of the old king's court into the Court of Exchequer, Court of King's Bench, and Court of Common Pleas, and the passage of the Statute of Mortmain. In 1295 the first perfect Parliament was summoned, the clergy and barons by special writ, the commons by writ to the sheriffs directing the election of two knights from each shire, two citizens from each city, two burghers from each borough. Two years later the imposition of taxation without consent of Parliament was forbidden by a special Act (De Tallagio non Concedendo). The great aim of Edward, however, to include England, Scotland, and Wales in one kingdom proved a failure, and he died in 1307 marching against Robert Bruce.
The reign of his son Edward II was unfortunate to himself and to his kingdom. He made a feeble attempt to carry out his father's last and earnest request to prosecute the war with Scotland, but the English were almost constantly unfortunate; and at length, at Bannockburn (1314), they were defeated by Robert Bruce, which ensured the independence of Scotland. The king soon proved incapable of regulating the lawless conduct of his barons; and his wife, a woman of a bold, intriguing disposition, joined in the confederacy against him, which resulted in his imprisonment and death in 1327.
The reign of Edward III was as brilliant as that of his father had been the reverse. The main projects of the third Edward were directed against France, the crown of which he claimed in 1328 in virtue of his mother, the daughter of King Philip. The victory won by the Black Prince at Crécy (1346), the capture of Calais (1347), and the victory of Poitiers (1356), ultimately led to the Peace of Brétigny in 1360, by which Edward III received all the west of France on condition of renouncing his claim to the French throne. (SeeBrétigny.) Before the close of his reign, however, these advantages were all lost again, save a few principal towns on the coast.
Edward III was succeeded in 1377 by his grandson Richard II, son of Edward the Black Prince. The people of England now began to show, though in a turbulent manner, that they had acquired just notions of government. In 1380 an unjust and oppressive poll-tax brought their grievances to a head, and 100,000 men, under Wat Tyler, marched towards London (1381). Wat Tyler was killed while conferring with the king, and the prudence and courage of Richard appeased the insurgents. Despite his conduct on this occasion, Richard was deficient in the vigour necessary to curb the lawlessness of the nobles. In 1398 he banished his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke; and on the death of the latter's father, the Duke of Lancaster, unjustly appropriated his cousin's patrimony. To avenge the injustice Bolingbroke landed in England during the king's absence in Ireland, and at the head of 60,000 malcontents compelled Richard to surrender. He was confined in the Tower, and despite the superior claims of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, Henry was appointed king (1399), the first of the House of Lancaster. Richard was, in all probability, murdered early in 1400.
The manner in which the Duke of Lancaster,now Henry IV, acquired the crown rendered his reign extremely turbulent, but the vigour of his administration quelled every insurrection. The most important—that of the Percies of Northumberland, Owen Glendower, and Douglas of Scotland—was crushed by the battle of Shrewsbury (1403). During the reign of Henry IV the clergy of England first began the practice of burning heretics under the Actde haeretico comburendo, passed in the second year of his reign. The Act was chiefly directed against the Lollards, as the followers of Wycliffe now came to be called. Henry died in 1413, leaving his crown to his son, Henry V, who revived the claim of Edward III to the throne of France in 1415, and invaded that country at the head of 30,000 men. The disjointed councils of the French rendered their country an easy prey; the victory of Agincourt was gained in 1415; and after a second campaign a peace was concluded at Troyes in 1420, by which Henry received the hand of Katherine, daughter of Charles VI, was appointed regent of France during the reign of his father-in-law, and declared heir to the throne on his death. The two kings, however, died within a few weeks of each other in 1422, and the infant son of Henry thus became King of England (as Henry VI) and France at the age of nine months.
England, during the reign of Henry VI, was subjected, in the first place, to all the confusion incident to a long minority, and afterwards to all the misery of a civil war. Henry allowed himself to be managed by anyone who had the courage to assume the conduct of his affairs, and the influence of his wife, Margaret of Anjou, a woman of uncommon capacity, was of no advantage either to himself or the realm. In France (1422-53) the English forces lost ground, and were finally expelled by the celebrated Joan of Arc, Calais alone being retained. The rebellion of Jack Cade in 1450 was suppressed, only to be succeeded by more serious trouble. In that year Richard, Duke of York, the father of Edward, afterwards Edward IV, began to advance his pretensions to the throne, which had been so long usurped by the House of Lancaster. His claim was founded on his descent from the third son of Edward III, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, who was his great-great-grandfather on the mother's side, while Henry was the great-grandson on the father's side of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the fourth son of Edward III. Richard of York was also grandson on the father's side of Edmund, fifth son of Edward III. The wars which resulted, called the Wars of the Roses, from the fact that a red rose was the badge of the House of Lancaster and a white one that of the House of York, lasted for thirty years, from the first battle of St. Albans, 22nd May, 1455, to the battle of Bosworth, 22nd Aug., 1485. Henry VI was twice driven from the throne (in 1461 and 1471) by Edward of York, whose father had previously been killed in battle in 1460. Edward of York reigned as Edward IV from 1461 till his death in 1483, with a brief interval in 1471; and was succeeded by two other sovereigns of the House of York, first his son Edward V, who reigned for eleven weeks in 1483; and then by his brother Richard III, who reigned from 1483 till 1485, when he was defeated and slain on Bosworth field by Henry Tudor, of the House of Lancaster, who then became Henry VII.
Henry VII was at this time the representative of the House of Lancaster, and in order at once to strengthen his own title, and to put an end to the rivalry between the Houses of York and Lancaster, he married, in 1486, Elizabeth, the sister of Edward V and heiress of the House of York. His reign was disturbed by insurrections attending the impostures of Lambert Simnel (1487), who pretended to be a son of the Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV, and of Perkin Warbeck (1488), who affirmed that he was the Duke of York, younger brother of Edward V; but neither of these attained any magnitude. The king's worst fault was the avarice which led him to employ in schemes of extortion such instruments as Empson and Dudley. His administration throughout did much to increase the royal power and to establish order and prosperity. He died in 1509.
The authority of the English Crown, which had been so much extended by Henry VII, was by his son Henry VIII exerted in a tyrannical and capricious manner. The most important event of the reign was undoubtedly the Reformation; though it had its origin rather in Henry's caprice and in the casual situation of his private affairs than in his conviction of the necessity of a reformation in religion, or in the solidity of reasoning employed by the reformers. Henry had been espoused to Catherine of Spain, who was first married to his elder brother Arthur, a prince who died young. Henry became disgusted with his queen, and enamoured of one of her maids of honour, Anne Boleyn. He had recourse, therefore, to the Pope to dissolve a marriage which had at first been rendered legal only by a dispensation from the Pontiff; but, failing in his desires, he broke away entirely from the Holy See, and in 1534 got himself recognized by Act of Parliament as the head of the English Church. He died in 1547. He was married six times, and left three children, each of whom reigned in turn. These were: Mary, by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon; Elizabeth, by his second wife, Anne Boleyn; and Edward, by his third wife, Jane Seymour.
Edward, who reigned first, with the title of Edward VI, was nine years of age at the time of his succession, and died in 1553, when he was only sixteen. His short reign, or rather the reign of the Earl of Hertford, afterwards Duke of Somerset, who was appointed regent, was distinguished chiefly by the success which attended the measures of the reformers, who acquired great part of the power formerly engrossed by the Catholics. The intrigues of Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, during the reign of Edward, caused Lady Jane Grey to be declared his successor; but her reign, if it could be called such, lasted only a few days. Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, was placed upon the throne, and Lady Jane Grey and her husband were both executed. Mary, a bigoted Catholic, seems to have wished for the crown only for the purpose of re-establishing the Roman Catholic faith. Political motives had induced Philip of Spain to accept of her as a spouse; but she could never prevail on her subjects to allow him any share of power. She died in 1558.
Elizabeth, who succeeded her sister Mary, was attached to the Protestant faith, and found little difficulty in establishing it in England. Having concluded peace with France (1559), Elizabeth set herself to promote the confusion which prevailed in Scotland, to which her cousin Mary had returned from France as queen in 1561. In this she was so far successful that Mary placed herself in her power (1568), and after many years imprisonment was sent to the scaffold (1587). As the most powerful Protestant nation, and as a rival to Spain in the New World, it was natural that England should become involved in difficulties with that country. The dispersion of the Armada by the English fleet under Howard, Drake, and Hawkins was the most brilliant event of a struggle which abounded in minor feats of valour. In Elizabeth's reign London became the centre of the world's trade, the extension of British commercial enterprise being coincident with the ruin of Antwerp in 1585. The Parliament was increased by the creation of sixty-two new boroughs, and its members were exempted from arrest. In literature not less than in politics and in commerce the same full life displayed itself, and England began definitely to assume the characteristics which distinguish her from the other European nations of to-day.
To Elizabeth succeeded (in 1603) James VI of Scotland and I of England, son of Mary Queen of Scots and Darnley. His accession to the crown of England in addition to that of Scotland did much to unite the two nations, though a certain smouldering animosity still lingered. His dissimulation, however, ended in his satisfying neither of the contending ecclesiastical parties—the Puritans or the Catholics; and his absurd insistence on his divine right made his reign a continuous struggle between the prerogative of the Crown and the freedom of the people. His extravagance kept him in constant disputes with the Parliament, who would not grant him the sums he demanded, and compelled him to resort to monopolies, loans, benevolences, and other illegal methods. The nation at large, however, continued to prosper through the whole of his reign. His son Charles I, who succeeded him in 1625, inherited the same exalted ideas of royal prerogative, and his marriage with a Catholic, his arbitrary rule, and illegal methods of raising money provoked bitter hostility. Under the guidance of Laud and Strafford things went from bad to worse. Civil war broke out in 1642 between the king's party and that of the Parliament, and the latter proving victorious, in 1649 the king was beheaded.
A Commonwealth or republican government was now established, in which the most prominent figure was Oliver Cromwell. Mutinies in the army among Fifth-monarchists and Levellers were subdued by Cromwell and Fairfax, and Cromwell, in a series of masterly movements, subjugated Ireland and gained the important victories of Dunbar and Worcester. At sea Blake had destroyed the Royalist fleet under Rupert, and was engaged in an honourable struggle with the Dutch under van Tromp. But within the governing body matters had come to a deadlock. A dissolution was necessary, yet Parliament shrank from dissolving itself, and in the meantime the reform of the law, a settlement with regard to the Church, and other important matters remained untouched. In April, 1653, Cromwell cut the knot by forcibly ejecting the members and putting the keys of the House in his pocket. From this time he was practically head of the Government, which was vested in a council of thirteen. A Parliament—the Little or Barebones Parliament—was summoned, and in the December of the same year Cromwell was installed Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. With more than the power of a king, he succeeded in dominating the confusion at home, and made the country feared throughout the whole of Europe. Cromwell died in 1658, and the brief and feeble protectorate of his son Richard followed.
There was now a widespread feeling that the country would be better under the old form of government, and Charles II, son of Charles I, was called to the throne by the Restoration of 1660. He took complete advantage of the popular reaction from the narrowness and intolerance of Puritanism, and even endeavoured to carry it to the extreme of establishing the Catholic religion. The promises of religious freedom madeby him before the Restoration in the Declaration Breda were broken by the Test and Corporation Acts, and by the Act of Uniformity, which drove two thousand clergymen from the Church and created the great dissenting movement of modern times. The Conventicle and Five-mile Acts followed, and the 'Drunken Parliament' restored Episcopacy in Scotland. At one time even civil war seemed again imminent. The abolition of the censorship of the press (1679) and the reaffirmation of the Habeas Corpus principle are the most praiseworthy incidents of the reign.
England in 1643
As Charles II left no legitimate issue, his brother the Duke of York succeeded him as James II (1685-8). An invasion by an illegitimate son of Charles, the Duke of Monmouth who claimed the throne, was suppressed, and the king's arbitrary rule was supported by the wholesale butcheries of such instruments as Kirke and Jeffreys. The king's zealous countenance of Roman Catholicism and his attempts to force the Church and the universities to submission provoked a storm of opposition. Seven prelates were brought to trial for seditious libel, but were acquitted amidst general rejoicings. The whole nation was prepared to welcome any deliverance, and in 1688 William of Orange, husband of James's daughter Mary, landed in Torbay. James fled to France, and a convention summoned by William settled the crown upon him, he thus becoming William III. Annexed to this settlement was a Declaration of Rights circumscribing the royal prerogative by depriving him of the right to exercise dispensing power, or to exact money, or maintain an army without the assent of Parliament. This placed henceforward the right of the British sovereign to the throne upon a purely statutory basis. The Toleration Act, passed in 1689, released dissent from many penalties. An armed opposition to William lasted for a short time in Scotland, but ceased with the fall of Viscount Dundee, the leader of James's adherents; and though the struggle was prolonged in Ireland, it was brought to a close before the end of 1691. The following year saw the origination of the national debt, the exchequer having been drained by the heavy military expenditure. A Bill for triennial Parliaments was passed in 1694, the year in which Queen Mary died. For a moment after her death William's popularity was in danger, but his successes at Namur and elsewhere, and the obvious exhaustion of France, once more confirmed his power. The Treaty of Ryswick followed in 1697, and the death of James II in exile in 1701 removed a not unimportant source of danger. Early in the following year William also died, and by the Act of Settlement Anne succeeded him.
The closing act of William's reign had beenthe formation of the grand alliance between England, Holland, and the German Empire, and the new queen's rule opened with the brilliant successes of Marlborough at Blenheim (1704) and Ramilies (1706). Throughout the earlier part of her reign the Marlboroughs practically ruled the kingdom, the duke's wife, Sarah Jennings, being the queen's most intimate friend and adviser. In 1707 the history of England becomes the history of Britain, the Act of Union passed in that year binding the Parliaments and Realms of England and Scotland into a single and more powerful whole. SeeBritain.
Ecclesiastical History.—The first religion of the Celts of England was Druidism. It has been conjectured that Christianity may have reached Britain by way of France (Gaul) before the conclusion of the first, or not long after the commencement of the second century, but the period and manner of its introduction are uncertain. It had, however, made considerable progress in the island previous to the time of Constantine the Great (306-337). Several bishops from Britain sat in the Councils of Nice (325), Sardica (347), and Ariminum, in Italy (359); and in 519 an ecclesiastical synod of all the British clergy was held by St. David, Archbishop of Caerleon, for extirpating the remains of the Pelagian heresy.
A period of almost total eclipse followed the inroad of the pagan Saxons, and it was not tillA.D.570 that signs of change showed themselves in the new nationality. On the coming of Austin, or St. Augustine, sent over in 596 by Gregory the Great, a residence at Canterbury was assigned to him, and Ethelberht, King of Kent, and most of his subjects, adopted Christianity. Other missionaries followed; East Saxons were soon after converted by Mellitus; and a bishop's see was established at London, their capital, early in the seventh century. The Northumbrians were next converted, an event accelerated by the marriage of their king, Edwin, with a daughter of Ethelberht, and by the labours of the missionary Paulinus. The influence of Edwin and Paulinus also secured the conversion of Carpwald, King of the East Angles; and, as a reward to Paulinus, Edwin erected a see at York, and obtained an archbishop's pall for him from Pope Honorius I, who sent one at the same time to Canterbury. The conversion of the other kingdoms followed in the course of the seventh century.
As Kent and Wessex received Christianity from Roman and Frankish missionaries, and Mercia and Northumberland through the Scottish St. Aidan (for Northumbria had apostatized after the death of its first Christian king, and received Christianity anew from a Scottish source), there were certain differences between the Churches, especially concerning the time of keeping Easter. To promote the union of the Churches thus founded in England with the Church of Rome, a grand council was summoned by Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Hertford,A.D.673, when uniformity was secured among all the English Churches, and the see of Canterbury made supreme.
The clergy in course of time attained, particularly after the Norman Conquest, to such a height of domination as to form animperium in imperio. Under Anselm (1093-1109) the Church was practically emancipated from the control of the State, and the power of the Pope became supreme. The result was a considerable increase of monasticism in England, and the prevalence of the greatest abuses under the cloak of Church privilege. Several monarchs showed themselves restive under the Papal control, but without shaking off the yoke; and though Henry II succeeded in abating some evils, yet the severity of the penance exacted from him for the murder of Becket is a striking proof of the power that the Church then had in punishing offences committed against itself. The reaction set in during the reign of Henry III, when the vigorous independence of Robert Grosseteste did much to stimulate the individual life of the English Church. With the reign of Edward I the new system of Parliaments came as an effective rival of the Church Synods, and various Acts restrained the power of the clergy. In the fourteenth century the teaching of Wycliffe promised to produce a thorough revolt from Rome; but the difficulties of the House of Lancaster—which drove its members to propitiate the Church—and the Wars of the Roses, prevented matters coming to a head.
A steady decay of vital power set in, however, and when Henry VIII resolved to recast the English Church there was no effective protest. In 1531 the convocation of the clergy addressed a petition to Henry VIII as the chief protector and only and supreme lord of the English Church. Not very long after, the Parliament abolished appeals to the see of Rome, dispensations, licences, bulls of institution for bishoprics and archbishoprics, the payment of Peter's-pence, and the annates. In 1534 the Papal authority was set aside by Act of Parliament, and by another Act of Parliament, passed in 1535, Henry assumed the title of supreme head of the Church of England. These Acts, although they severed the connection between the English Church and the Holy See, did not alter the religious faith of the Church. But under Edward VI the Duke of Somerset, the protector of the realm during the minority of the king, caused a more thorough reform of the doctrines and ceremonies of the Church to be made. Athis instigation Parliament in 1547 repealed the statute of the six articles promulgated by Henry VIII, and in 1551 a new confession of faith was embodied in forty-two articles, denying the infallibility of councils, keeping only two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, and rejecting the real presence, the invocation of saints, prayer for the dead, purgatory, and the celibacy of the clergy. At the same time a new liturgy was composed, in which English was substituted for Latin.
Consecration of a Saxon ChurchConsecration of a Saxon ChurchFrom an ancient manuscript of Cædmon's poems.
From an ancient manuscript of Cædmon's poems.
With the reign of Mary the old religion was re-established; and it was not till that of Elizabeth that the Church of England was finally instituted in its present form. The doctrines of the Church were again modified, and the Forty-two Articles were reduced to thirty-nine by the convocation of the clergy in 1563. As no change was made in the episcopal form of government, and some rites and ceremonies were retained which many of the reformed considered as superstitious, this circumstance gave rise to many future dissensions. In 1559, before the close of the first year of Elizabeth's reign, the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity were passed with the object of bringing about the entire subjection of the Church and the people in religious matters to the royal authority.
From James I some relief was anticipated by Puritans and Nonconformists, but they were disappointed. Under Charles I the attempt was made, through the instrumentality of Laud, to place all the Churches of Great Britain under the jurisdiction of bishops. But after the death of Laud the Parliament abolished the episcopal government, and condemned everything contrary to the doctrine, worship, and discipline of the Church of Geneva. As soon as Charles II was restored, the ancient forms of ecclesiastical government and public worship were re-established, and three severe measures were passed against nonconformity, namely, the Corporation Act of 1661, the Act of Uniformity, passed in 1662, and the Test Act, passed in 1673 (seeAct of Uniformity, Corporation and Test Acts). In the reign of William III, and particularly in 1689, the divisions among the friends of Episcopacy gave rise to the two parties called thehigh-churchmenornon-jurors, andlow-churchmen. The former maintained the doctrine of passive obedience to the sovereign; that the hereditary succession to the throne is of divine institution; and that the Church is subject to the jurisdiction of God alone. The gradual progress of civil and religious liberty since that time has settled practically all such controversies. The measures of relief granted to those outside the Established Church include the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (1828), Catholic emancipation (1829), and the opening of the old universities to Dissenters (1871).
The Established Church of England has always adhered to Episcopacy. Under the sovereign as supreme head, the Church is governed by three archbishops and forty bishops, of Canterbury, York, and Wales. The Archbishop of Canterbury is styled thePrimate of all England, and to him belongs the privilege of crowning the kings and queens of England. The province of Canterbury comprehends 30 bishoprics; in the province of the Archbishop of York, who is styledPrimate of England, there are 12 bishoprics,the province comprising Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the other northern counties. Wales has now been formed into a separate archbishopric. An Act was passed in 1914 disestablishing and disendowing the Church in Wales and Monmouthshire. The Act, suspended during the European War, came into force on 31st March, 1920. Archbishops and bishops are appointed by the sovereign by what is called acongé d'élireor leave to elect, naming the person to be chosen and sent to the Dean and Chapter. The National Assembly of the Church of England (Powers) Act of 1919 instituted a National Assembly in England consisting of the House of Bishops, a House of Clergy, and a House of Laymen, which has power to legislate in Church matters. The archbishops and bishops, to the number of 24, have seats in the House of Lords, and are styled Lords Spiritual. The following are the bishops' sees: London, Winchester, Bangor, Bath and Wells, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Chelmsford, Chichester, Coventry, Ely, Exeter, Gloucester, Hereford, Ipswich, Lichfield, Lincoln, Llandaff, Norwich, Oxford, Peterborough, Rochester, St. Albans, St. Asaph, St. David's, Salisbury, Southwark, Southwell, Truro, Worcester, Durham, Carlisle, Chester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Ripon, Sheffield, Wakefield, Sodor and Man. To every cathedral belong several prebendaries and a dean; these together, spoken of as 'the Dean and Chapter', form the council of the bishop. The bishops are aided in their work by 36 suffragan and assistant bishops in England and Wales. The ordinary clergy are thepriests, whether curates, vicars, or rectors. Aparsonis a priest in full possession of all the rights of a parish church; if the great tithes areimpropriated, the priest is called a vicar; if not, a rector; acurate(in popular speech) is one who exercises the spiritual office under a rector or vicar. Thedeaconsform the third order of ordained clergy. The doctrines of the Church are contained in the Thirty-nine Articles; the form of worship is directed by theBook of Common Prayer. The revenue of the Church from endowments is over £6,000,000 annually. The clergy number about 27,000.—Bibliography: Wakeman,Introduction to the History of the Church of England; Newbolt and Stone,Church of England.
English Art.—As regardsarchitecturelittle can be said with regard to the style prevalent between the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest, from the fact that the remains of buildings erected in England before the Conquest are few and insignificant. The Norman style was introduced in the reign of Edward the Confessor, though the workmen, both then and after the Conquest, being English, the earlier work preserved many native characteristics. The Norman period proper extends from about 1090 to 1150, some of the best examples being parts of the cathedrals of Rochester, Winchester, Durham, and Canterbury. In the brief period 1160 to 1195 a marked change took place in the adoption of the pointed arch and what is known as theEarly English style. Improved methods of construction led to the use of lighter walls and pillars instead of the heavy masses employed in the Norman style. Narrow lancet-shaped windows took the place of the round arch; bold projecting buttresses were introduced; and the roofs and spires became more lofty and more pointed, while in the interiors pointed arches rested on lofty clustered pillars. The best Early English type is Salisbury Cathedral. The Early English style has been regarded as lasting from 1190 to 1270, when theDecorated styleof Gothic began to prevail. The transition to the Decorated style was gradual, but it may be considered as lasting to 1377. Exeter Cathedral is an excellent example of the earliest Decorated style. Between 1360 and 1399 the Decorated style gave place to thePerpendicular, which prevailed from 1377 to 1547, and was an exclusively English style. Gothic architecture, though it lingered on in many districts, practically came to an end in England in the reign of Henry VIII. TheElizabethanandJacobean styles, which followed, were transitions from the Gothic to the Italian, with which these styles were more or less freely mixed. Many palatial mansions were built in these styles. In the reign of Charles I Inigo Jones designed, among other buildings, Whitehall Palace and Greenwich Hospital in a purely classic style. After the great fire in London (1666) Sir Christopher Wren designed an immense number of churches and other buildings in Classic style, particularly St. Paul's Cathedral, the Sheldonian Theatre of Oxford, and Chelsea Hospital. Various phases of Classic or Renaissance continued to prevail during the eighteenth and earlier part of the nineteenth century. About 1836 the Gothic revival commenced, and that style has been employed with considerable success in the churches erected in recent times. The Houses of Parliament, erected between 1840 and 1860 in the Tudor style, the Law Courts of Salford, St. Pancras railway station, and the Law Courts of London (opened 1882) in the Gothic served to sustain an impetus that had been given to the use of that style. At the present day Gothic is much employed for ecclesiastical and collegiate buildings, and a modified type of Renaissance for civil buildings. Of late years a style that has received the name of 'Queen Anne' is much in vogue for private residences. It is very mixed, but withal highly picturesque. The most striking novelties in the nineteenth century have been induced by theextensive use of iron and glass, as exemplified in the Exhibition building of 1851, the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, and the great railway stations.
Very little is known of the state of the art ofpaintingamong the Anglo-Saxons; but in the ninth century Alfred the Great caused numerous MSS. to be adorned with miniatures, and about the end of the tenth century Archbishop Dunstan won reputation as a miniature painter. Under William the Conqueror and his two sons the painting of large pictures began to be studied, and Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, adorned the vault of his church with paintings. Numerous miniatures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries have come down to us, rude in execution, but not without originality. From this period down to the eighteenth century a succession of foreign painters resided in England, of whom the chief were Mabuse, Hans Holbein, Federigo Zucchero, Cornelius Jansen, Van Dyck, Lely, and Kneller. Of native artists few are of importance prior to that original genius William Hogarth (1697-1764). Throughout the eighteenth century English artists attained higher eminence in portrait painting than in other departments, and it culminated in Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88), and Romney (1734-1802). These were followed by Raeburn (1756-1823) and Lawrence (1769-1830). Barry (1741-1806), West (1738-1820), and Copley (1737-1815) gained distinction in historical compositions, especially in pictures of battles. Landscape painting was represented by Richard Wilson (1714-82), who painted classical scenes with figures from heathen mythology, and by Gainsborough, already mentioned, who painted scenes of English nature and humble life. The Royal Academy of Arts, of which Reynolds was the first president, was established in London in 1769. Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841), in what is known abroad as genre painting, gained a European reputation that is unsurpassed. In the same class of art C. R. Leslie (1794-1859), Newton (1795-1835), Collins (1788-1847), and Mulready (1786-1863) gained great distinction. In landscape the reputation of Turner (1775-1857) stands alone. Other distinguished landscape painters are Clarkson Stanfield (1798-1867); David Roberts (1796-1864), who greatly excelled in picturesque architecture; Wm. Müller (1812-45); and John Constable (1776-1837), whose works exercised great influence in France; and Calcott (1799-1844). In historical painting Hilton (1786-1839), Eastlake (1793-1865), Etty (1787-1849), E. M. Ward (1816-79), C. W. Cope (1811-90), and D. Maclise (1811-70) attained celebrity. John Philip (1817-67) greatly distinguished himself by his scenes from Spanish life and by his mastery in colour. Landseer (1802-73) stands by himself as a painter of animals.
In 1824 the nucleus of the National Gallery was formed by the purchase of the Angerstein collection, and in 1832 the vote was passed for the erection of the National Gallery building. The competitions held in Westminster Hall in 1843, 1844, and 1847, with a view to the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, exercised great influence on art. Up to this time English pictures were rather distinguished for colour and effect of light and shade than for carefulness of modelling and exactness of drawing. In aiding to bring about a more accurate and careful style of work, the Pre-Raphaelites (1840-60), while seeking to restore in their practice an early phase of Italian art, exercised a beneficial influence, while they themselves ultimately abandoned the style to which at the first they had been devoted.
The modern group of British painters may be held to date from about 1850. Prominent among these the following may be named: In historical painting Leighton, Alma-Tadema, Watts, Poynter, Long, Goodall, Holman Hunt, Noel Paton, Burne-Jones, and Madox Brown, as also W. P. Frith, whoseDerby DayandRailway Station, so descriptive of modern life, may well be classed as historical. In figure painting or genre T. Faed, Erskine Nicol, Fildes, Orchardson, Herkomer, Millais, and Pettie. In portraiture Millais, Frank Holl, Ouless, and Richmond. In landscape Linnell, Hook, W. J. Müller, Peter Graham, John Brett, Vicat Cole, H. Moore, Keeley Halswelle. In water-colours the most eminent artists have been Girtin (1773-1802), Cotman (1782-1842), Liverseege (1803-32), Stothard (1755-1834), Turner, David Cox (1788-1859), De Wint (1784-1849), Copley Fielding (1787-1855), Samuel Prout (1783-1852), W. H. Hunt (1790-1864), Louis Haghe (1806-85), W. L. Leitch (1804-83), Sam Bough (1822-78), John Gilbert (1817-97).—Bibliography: R. Muther,History of Modern Painting; S. Reinach,Apollo.
Englishsculpturewas long merely an accessory to architecture, and few English sculptors are known by name till comparatively modern times. During the Renaissance period Torregiano came from Italy and executed two masterpieces in England, the tomb of the mother of Henry VII, and that of Henry himself at Westminster. The troubles of the reign of Charles I and the Commonwealth produced a stagnation in the art, and were the cause of the destruction of many valuable works. After the Restoration two sculptors of some note appeared, Grinling Gibbons, a wood-carver, and Caius Gabriel Cibber. During the eighteenth century there was no English sculptor of great eminence till John Flaxman (1755-1826). He had for rival and successor Sir Francis Chantrey (1781-1841), who acquired renown by the busts and statues whichhe made of many of the eminent men of his time. John Carew, Sir Richard Westmacott (1775-1856), E. H. Baily (1788-1867), John Gibson (1790-1866), P. MacDowell (1799-1870), H. Weekes (1807-77), J. H. Foley (1818-74), J. Edgar Boehm (1834-90), and Thomas Woolner (1825-92) are a few of the eminent sculptors of the nineteenth century. W. H. Thorneycroft, E. Onslow Ford, C. B. Birch, Alfred Gilbert, G. F. Watts, Henry H. Armstead, G. Simons, Sir Thomas Brock, Harry Bates, and Sir George Frampton are among the foremost sculptors of the present time. The sculptures of the English school in general are characterized by a sort of romantic grace which is their distinguishing mark, and by extraordinary delicacy and finish in detail; but they frequently exhibit weakness in their treatment of the nude.—Bibliography: Wilhelm Lübke,History of Sculpture; E. H. Short,History of Sculpture.
English Language.—The language spoken in England from the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons to the Norman Conquest (say 500-1066) is popularly known as Anglo-Saxon, though simply the earliest form of English. (SeeAnglo-Saxons.) It was a highly inflected and purely Teutonic tongue presenting several dialects. The Conquest introduced the Norman-French, and from 1066 to about 1250 two languages were spoken, the native English speaking their own language, the intruders speaking French. During this period the grammatical structure of the native language was greatly broken up, inflexions fell away, or were assimilated to each other; and towards the end of the period we find a few words written in a language resembling the English of our own day in grammar, but differing from it by being purely Saxon or Teutonic in vocabulary. Finally, the two languages began to mingle, and form one intelligible to the whole population, Normans as well as English, this change being marked by a great infusion of Norman-French words, and English proper being the result. English is thus, in its vocabulary, a composite language, deriving part of its stock of words from a Teutonic source and part from a Latin source, Norman-French being in the main merely a modified form of Latin. In its grammatical structure and general character, however, English is entirely Teutonic, and is classed with Dutch and Gothic among the Low German tongues. If we divide the history of the English language into periods, we shall find three most distinctly marked: first, the Old English or Anglo-Saxon, extending down to about 1100; second, the Middle English, 1100-1400 (to this period belong Chaucer, Wycliffe, Langland); third, Modern English. A more detailed subdivision would give transition periods connecting the main ones. The chief change which the language has experienced during the modern period consists in its absorbing new words from all quarters in obedience to the requirements of advancing science, more complicated social relations, and increased subtlety of thought. At the present time the rapid growth of the sciences already existing, and the creation of new ones, have caused whole groups of words to be introduced, chiefly from the Greek, though unfortunately not a few are hybrid words, coined by some scientist who had small Latin and less Greek.—Cf. H. Sweet,New English Grammar, Logical and Historical.
English Literature.—Before any English literature, in the strict sense of the term, existed, four literatures had arisen in England—the Celtic, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-Norman. The first includes such names as those of Taliesin, Llywarch Hen, Aneurin, and Merlin or Merddhin. The Latin literature prior to the Conquest presents those of Aldhelm, Bede, Alcuin, Asser, Ethelwerd, and Nennius. For Anglo-Saxon literature, see the articleAnglo-Saxons. With the coming of the Normans, although theAnglo-Saxon Chroniclewas continued until 1154, the native language practically ceased for a time to be employed in literature, Latin being used in law, history, and philosophy, French in the lighter forms of literature. The Normantrouvèredisplaced the Saxonscop, or gleeman, introducing theFabliauand the Romance. By theFabliauthe literature was not greatly influenced until the time of Chaucer; but the Romance attained an early and striking development in the Arthurian cycle, founded upon the legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth's LatinHistory of the Britons(1147), by Geoffrey Gaimar, Wace, Walter Map, and other writers of the twelfth century. The Latin literature included important contributions to the Scholastic philosophy by Alexander Hales (died 1245), Duns Scotus (died 1308) and William of Occam (died 1347); the philosophic works of Roger Bacon (1214-92); the Golias poems of Walter Map; and a long list of chronicles or histories, either in prose or verse, by Eadmer (died 1124); Ordericus Vitalis (died 1142), William of Malmesbury (died 1143), Geoffrey of Monmouth (died 1154), Henry of Huntingdon (died after 1154), Joseph of Exeter (died 1195), Gervase of Tilbury (twelfth century), Roger of Wendover (died 1237), Roger de Hoveden (twelfth and thirteenth centuries), Giraldus Cambrensis (died 1222), Joscelin de Brakelonde (twelfth and thirteenth centuries), and Matthew Paris (died 1259).
Apart from a few brief fragments, the first English writings after the Conquest are theBrutof Layamon (about 1200), based on theBrutof Wace; and theOrmulum, a collection of metrical homilies attributed to Orm or Ormin, anAugustine monk. Next in importance come the rhyming chroniclers Robert of Gloucester (time of Henry III, Edward I) and Robert of Brunne or Mannyng (died 1340), other writers being Dan Michel of Northgate (Ayenbite of Inwyt, 1340); Richard Rolle of Hampole (Pricke of Conscience, 1340); Laurence Minot (author of eleven military ballads; died 1352); and several works of uncertain authorship, including theAncren Riwle(? Richard Poor, died 1237),The Owl and the Nightingale(? Nicholas of Guildford),The Land of Cockayne(? Michael of Kildare), the song against the King of Almaigne, and a dialogue between the Body and the Soul. To this pre-Chaucerian period belong also several English translations of French romances—Horn,Tristrem,Alisaunder,Havelok, and others. Between the beginning and middle of the fourteenth century the English speech had entered upon a new phase of development in the absorption of Norman-French words. A rapid expansion of the literature followed, having as the foremost figure that of Chaucer (1340-1400), who, writing at first under French influences, and then under Italian, became in the end the most representative English writer of the time. Contemporary with him was the satirist William Langland or Langley (1332-1400), the indefatigable John Gower (1325-1408), and the Scot John Barbour (1316-95). In prose the name of John Wycliffe (1324-84) is pre-eminent, the English version of Mandeville'sTravelsbeing apparently of later date.
The period from the time of Chaucer to the appearance of Spenser, that is, from the end of the fourteenth to near the end of the sixteenth century, is a very barren one in English literature, in part probably owing to foreign and domestic wars, the struggle of the people towards political power, and the religious controversies preceding and attending the Reformation. The immediate successors of Chaucer, Occleve (1370-1454) and Lydgate (died 1460), were neither men of genius, and the centre of poetic creation was for the time transferred to Scotland, where James I (1394-1437) headed the list which comprises Andrew de Wyntoun (fifteenth century), Henry the Minstrel or Blind Harry (died after 1492), Robert Henryson (died before 1508), William Dunbar (1460-1520), Gavin Douglas (1474-1522), and Sir David Lyndsay (1490-1557). In England the literature was chiefly polemical, the only noteworthy prose prior to that of More being that of Reginald Pecock (1390-1460); Sir John Fortescue (1395-1485); thePaston Letters(1422-1505), which are, however, much more interesting for their subject matter than their style; and Malory'sMorte d'Arthur(completed 1469-70); the only noteworthy verse, that of John Skelton (1460-1529).
It was now that several events of European importance combined to stimulate life and enlarge the mental horizon—the invention of printing, or rather of movable types, the promulgation of the Copernican system of astronomy, the discovery of America, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. The Renaissance spread from Florence to England by means of such men as Colet, Linacre, Erasmus, and Sir Thomas More (1480-1535), the last noteworthy as at the head of a new race of historians. Important contributions to the prose of the time were the TyndaleNew Testament, printed in 1525, and the CoverdaleBible(1535). The first signs of an artistic advance in poetic literature are to be found in Wyatt (1503-42) and Surrey (1516-47), who nationalized the sonnet; Surrey was also a pioneer in the use of blank verse. The drama, too, had by this time reached a fairly high stage of development. The mystery and miracle plays, after the adoption of the vernacular in the fourteenth century, passed from the hands of the clergy into those of the laity, and both stage and drama underwent a rapid secularization. The morality began to embody matters of religious and political controversy, historical characters mingled with the personification of abstract qualities, real characters from contemporary life were introduced, and at length farces on the French model were constructed, theInterludesof John Heywood (died 1565) being the most important examples. To Nicholas Udall (1504-56) the first genuine comedy,Ralph Roister Doister, was due, this being shortly afterwards followed by John Still'sGammer Gurton's Needle(1566). The first tragedy, theFerrex and Porrex, orGorboducof Sackville (died 1608) and Norton (died 1600), was performed in 1561, and the first prose play, theSupposesof Gascoigne (died 1577) in 1566. Gascoigne and Sackville were noteworthy amongst the earlier Elizabethans apart from their plays; but the figures which bulk most largely are those of Sidney (1554-86) and Spenser (1552-99). In drama Lyly, Peele, Greene, Nash, and Marlowe (1564-93) are the chief immediate precursors of Shakespeare (1564-1616), Marlowe alone, however, being at all comparable with the great master. Contemporary and later dramatic writers were Ben Jonson (1573-1637), the second great Elizabethan dramatist, Middleton (died 1627), Marston (better known as a satirist), Chapman (1557-1634), Thomas Heywood, Dekker (died 1639), Webster (seventeenth century), Ford (1586-1639), Beaumont (1586-1616) and Fletcher (1576-1625), and Massinger (1584-1640). The minor poets include Michael Drayton (1563-1631), Samuel Daniel (1562-1619), John Davies (1570-1626), John Donne (1573-1631), Giles Fletcher (1580-1623), and Phineas Fletcher (1584-1650), Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649). In Elizabethanprose the prominent names are those of Roger Ascham (1515-68), John Lyly (1553-1606), Hooker (1554-1600), Raleigh (1552-1618), Bacon (1561-1626), the founder in some regards of modern scientific method, Burton (1576-1640), Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648), and Selden (1584-1654), with Overbury, Knolles, Holinshed, Stowe, Camden, Florio, and North. The issue of the Authorized Version of the Bible in 1611 may be said to close the prose list of the period, as it represents the finest flower of English prose.
After the death of James I the course of literature breaks up into three stages, the first from 1625 to 1640, in which the survivals from the Elizabethan Age slowly die away. The 'metaphysical poets', Cowley, Wither, Herbert, Crashaw, Habbington, and Quarles, and the cavalier poets, Suckling, Carew, Denham, all published poems before the close of this period, in which also Milton's early poems were composed, and theComusandLycidaspublished. The second stage (1640-60) was almost wholly given up to controversial prose, the Puritan revolution checking the production of pure literature. In this controversial prose of the time Milton was easily chief. With the Restoration a third stage was begun. Milton turned his new leisure to the composition of his great poems; the drama was revived, and Davenant and Dryden, with Otway, Southerne, Etherege, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar in their first plays, and minor playwrights, are the most representative writers of the period. Butler established a genre in satire, and Marvell as a satirist in some respects anticipated Swift; Roscommon, Rochester, and Dorset contributed to the little poetry; while in prose we have Hobbes, Clarendon, Fuller, Sir Thomas Browne, Walton, Cotton, Pepys and Evelyn, John Bunyan, Locke, Sir William Temple, Owen Feltham, Sir Henry Wotton, James Harrington, and a crowd of theological writers, of whom the best known are Jeremy Taylor, Richard Baxter, Robert Barclay, William Penn, George Fox, Isaac Barrow, John Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Bishop Pearson, Sherlock, South, Sprat, Cudworth, and Burnet. Other features of the last part of the seventeenth century were the immense advance in physical science under Boyle, Isaac Newton, Harvey, and others, and the rise of the newspaper press.
Dryden's death in 1700 marks the commencement of the so-called Augustan Age in English literature. During it, however, no greater poet appeared than Pope (1688-1744), in whom sagacity, wit, and fancy take the place of the highest poetic faculty, but who was a supreme artist within the formal limits of his conception of the art of poetry. Against these formal limits signs of reaction are apparent in the verse of Thomson (1700-48), Gray (1716-71), Collins (1720-59), Goldsmith (1728-74), and in the productions of Macpherson and Chatterton. The poets Prior (1664-1721), Gay (1688-1732), and Ambrose Phillips (1671-1749) inherit from the later seventeenth century, Gay being memorable in connection with English opera; and there are many minor poets—Garth, John Philips, Blackmore, Parnell, Dyer, Somerville, Green, Shenstone, Blair, Akenside, Falconer, Anstey, Beattie, Allan Ramsay, and Robert Fergusson. It is in prose that the chief development of the eighteenth century is to be found. Defoe (1661-1731) and Swift (1667-1745) led the way in fiction and prose satire; Steele (1672-1729) and Addison (1672-1719), working on a suggestion of Defoe, established the periodical essay; Richardson (1689-1761), Fielding (1707-54), Smollett (1721-71), and Sterne raised the novel to sudden perfection. Goldsmith also falls into the fictional group as well as into that of the poets and of the essayists. Johnson (1709-84) exercised during the latter part of his life the power of a literary dictator, with Boswell (1740-95) as his 'Secretary of State'. The other chief prose writers were Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753), Arbuthnot (1675-1735), Shaftesbury (1671-1713), Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Burke, the historians David Hume (1711-76), William Robertson (1721-93), Edward Gibbon (1737-94); the political writers Wilkes and 'Junius', the economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723-90); the philosophical writers Hume, Bentham (1749-1832), and Dugald Stewart (1753-1828); the scholars Bentley (1662-1742), Sir William Jones (1746-94), and Richard Porson (1759-1808); the theologians Atterbury, Butler (1692-1752), Warburton, and Paley; and some playwrights, of whom the most important was Sheridan, but who also included Rowe, John Home, Colley Cibber, Colman the elder, and Foote.
With the French Revolution, or a few years earlier, the modern movement in literature may be said to have commenced. The departure from the old traditions, traceable in Gray and Collins, was more clearly exhibited in the last years of the century in Cowper (1731-1800) and Burns (1759-96), and was developed and perfected in the hands of Blake (1757-1828), Bowles (1762-1850), and the 'Lake poets' Wordsworth (1770-1850), Coleridge (1772-1834), and Southey (1774-1843); but there were at first many survivals from the poetic manner of the seventeenth century, such as Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Dr. John Wolcot (1738-1819), and Samuel Rogers (1763-1855). Amongst the earlier poets of the nineteenth century, also, were George Crabbe (1754-1832), Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Hogg (1772-1835), Campbell (1777-1844), James Montgomery, Mrs. Hemans, Bryan Waller Procter ('Barry Cornwall'), Joanna Baillie, RobertMontgomery. A more important group was that of Byron (1788-1824), Shelley (1792-1822), and Keats (1796-1821), with which may be associated the names of Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), Thomas Moore (1779-1852), and Landor (1775-1864). Among the earlier writers of fiction there were several women of note, such as Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) and Jane Austen (1775-1817). The greatest name in fiction is unquestionably that of Scott. Other prose writers were Malthus, Hallam, James Mill, Southey, Hannah More, Cobbett, William Hazlitt, Sydney Smith, Francis Jeffrey, Lord Brougham. In the literature since 1830 poetry has included as its chief names those of Praed, Hood, Sidney Dobell, Gerald Massey, Charles Mackay, Philip James Bailey, William Allingham, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Coventry Patmore, the second Lord Lytton ('Owen Meredith'), Arthur Hugh Clough, Matthew Arnold, Dante G. Rossetti, Robert Buchanan, Wm. Morris, Lewis Morris, Jean Ingelow, Swinburne, and last and greatest, Tennyson and Browning. Among more modern English poets are Stephen Phillips (1868-1915), Francis Thompson (1860-1907), Sir William Watson (born 1858), John Davidson (1857-1909), and R. Kipling (born 1865). A brilliant list of nineteenth-century novelists includes Marryat, Michael Scott, the first Lord Lytton, Ainsworth, Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield), Dickens, Thackeray, Charles Kingsley, Charlotte Brontë, Lover, Lever, Wilkie Collins, Mayne Reid, Charles Reade, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, William Black, Thomas Hardy, R. D. Blackmore, George Meredith, R. L. Stevenson, Miss Braddon, Mrs. Craik (Miss Mulock), Mrs. Oliphant, Miss Yonge, and others. Towards the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century there was a deepening interest in the drama, and the list of brilliant dramatists includes the names of Barrie, H. A. Jones, G. B. Shaw, Pinero, Granville Barker, and others. The tendency in the fiction of the twentieth century is a concrete and imaginative presentation of the social, ethical, and sentimental problems of the day. This tendency is clearly seen in the novels of John Galsworthy and H. G. Wells. To the historical and biographical list of the nineteenth century belong Macaulay, Buckle, Carlyle, Thirwall, Grote, Milman, Froude, Lecky, S. R. Gardiner, Kinglake, John Richard Green, E. A. Freeman, Stubbs, Dean Stanley, John Morley, Leslie Stephen. In science and philosophy among the chief writers of the nineteenth century have been Whewell, Sir W. Hamilton, Mansel, John Stuart Mill, Alexander Bain, Hugh Miller, Charles Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Max Müller, Herbert Spencer, T. H. Green.—Bibliography:Cambridge History of English Literature; Taine,History of English Literature; Saintsbury,Short History of English Literature; Chambers,Cyclopædia of English Literature.