PART VI.--AFTER THE REFORMATION

The Reformation theory of charity.

During the Reformation, which extended, it should be understood, from the middle of the 14th century to the reign of James I., the groundwork of the theory of charity was being recast. The old system and the narrow theory on which it had come to depend were discredited. The recoil is startling. To a very large extent charitable administration had been in the hands of men and women who, as an indispensable condition to their participation in it, took the vows of obedience, chastity and "wilful" poverty. Now this was all entirely set aside. It was felt (see _Homilies on Faith and Good Works, &c._, A.D. 1547) that socially and morally the method had been a failure. The vow of obedience, it was argued, led to a general disregard of the duties of civic and family life. Those who bound themselves by it were outside the state and did not serve it. In regard to chastity the _Homily_ states the common opinion: "How the profession of chastity was kept, it is more honesty to pass over in silence and let the world judge of what is well known." As to wilful poverty, the regulars, it is urged, were not poor, but rich, for they were in possession of much wealth. Their property, it is true, was held _in communi_, and not personally, but nevertheless it was practically theirs, and they used it for their personal enjoyment; and "for all their riches they might never help father nor mother, nor others that were indeed very needy and poor, without the license of their father abbot" or other head. This was the negative position. The positive was found in the doctrine of justification--the central point in the discussions of the time, a plant from the garden of St Augustine. Justification was the personal conviction of a lively (or living) faith, and was defined as "a true trust and confidence of the mercy of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and a stedfast hope of all good things to be received at His hands." Without this justification there could be no good works. They were the signs of a lively faith and grew out of it. Apart from it, what seemed to be "good works" were of the nature of sin, phantom acts productive of nothing, "birds that were lost, unreal." So were the works of pagans and heretics. The relation of almsgiving to religion was thus entirely altered. The personal reward here or hereafter to the actor was eliminated. The deed was good only in the same sense in which the doer was good; it had in itself no merit. This was a great gain, quite apart from any question as to the sufficiency or insufficiency of the Protestant scheme of salvation. The deed, it was realized, was only the outcome of the doer, the expression of himself, what he was as a whole, neither better nor worse. Logically this led to the discipline of the intelligence and the emotions, and undoubtedly "justification" to very many was only consistent with such discipline and implied it. Thus under a new guise the old position of charity reasserted itself. But there were other differences.

The relation of charity to prayer, fasting, almsgiving and penance was altsred. The prayerful contemplation of the Christ was preserved in the mysticism of Protestantism; but it was dissociated from the "historic Christ," from the fervent idealization of whom St Francis drew his inspiration and his active charitable impulse. The tradition did not die out, however. It remained with many, notably with George Herbert, of whom it made, not unlike St Francis, a poet as well as a practical parish priest; but the absence of it indicated in much post-Reformation endeavour a want, if not of devotion, yet of intensity of feeling which may in part account for the fact that sectarianism in relief has since proved itself stronger than charity, instead of yielding to charity as its superior and its organizer. Fasting was parted from prayer and almsgiving. It was "a thing not of its own proper nature good as the love of father or mother or neighbour, but according to its end." Almsgiving also as a "work" disappeared and with it a whole series of inducements that from the standpoint of the pecuniary and material supply of relief had long been active. It was no wonder that the preachers advocated it in vain, and reproached their hearers with their diminished bounty to the poor; the old personal incentive had gone, and could only gradually be superseded by the spontaneous activity of personal religion very slowly wedding itself to true views of social duty and purpose. Penance, once so closely related to almsgiving, passed out of sight. Charity, the love of God and our neighbour, had two offices, it was said, "to cherish good and harmless men" and "to correct and punish vice without regard to persons." Correction as a means of discipline takes the place of penance, and it becomes judicial, regulating and controlling church membership by the authority of the church, a congregation, minister or elder; or dealing with laziness or ill-doing through the municipality or state, in connexion with what now first appear, not prisons, but houses of correction.

The religious life was to be democratic--not in religious bodies, but in the whole people; and in a new sense--in relation to family and social life--it was to be moral. That was the significance of the Reformation for charity.

The organization of municipal relief.

Consistently with this movement of religious activity towards a complete fulfilment of the duties of civic life, the older classical social theory, fostered by the Renaissance, assumed a new influence--the great conception of the state as a community bound together by charity and friendship, "We be not born to ourselves," it was said, "but partly to the use of our country, of our parents, of our kinsfolk, and partly of our friends and neighbours; and therefore all good virtues are grafted on us naturally, whose effects be to do good to others, when it showeth forth the image of God in man, whose property is ever to do good to others" (Lamond, p. 14). Economic theory also changed. Instead of the medieval opinion of the "theologian or social preacher," that "trade could only be defended on the ground that honestly conducted it made no profit" (Green, ii. 71), we have a recognition of the advantages resulting from exchange, and individual interests, it is argued, are not necessarily inconsistent with those of the state, but are, on the contrary, a source of solid good to the whole community.

Municipal laws for the suppression of the mendicity of the able-bodied and the organization of relief on behalf of the infirm were common in England and on the continent (Colmar, 1362; Nuremberg, 1478; Strassburg, 1523; London, 1514). Vives (Ehrle, _Beitrage zur Geschichte und Reform der Armenpflege_, p. 26), a Spaniard, who had been at the court of Henry VIII., in a book translated into several languages and widely read, seems to have summed up the thought of the time in regard to the management of the poor. He divided them into three classes: those in hospitals and poor-houses, the public homeless beggars and the poor at home. He would have a census taken of the number of each class in the town, and information obtained as to the causes of their distress. Then he would establish a central organization of relief under the magistrates. Work was to be supplied for all, while begging was strictly forbidden. Non-settled poor who were able-bodied were to be sent to their homes. Able-bodied settled poor who knew no craft were to be put on some public work--the undeserving being set to hard labour. For others work was to be found, or they were to be assisted to become self-supporting. The hospitals provided with medical advice and necessaries were to be classified to meet the needs of the sick, the blind and lunatics. The poor living at home were to work with a view to their self-support. What they earned, if insufficient, might be supplemented. If a citizen found a case of distress he was not to help it, but to send it for inquiry to the magistrate. Children were to be taught. Private relief was to be obtained from the rich. The funds of endowed charities were to be the chief source of income; if more was wanted, bequests and church collections would suffice. The scheme was put in force in Ypres in 1524. The Sorbonne approved it, and similar plans were adopted in Paris and elsewhere. It is in outline the scheme of London municipal charity promoted by Edward VI., by which the poor were classified, St Bartholomew's and St Thomas's hospitals appropriated for the sick, Christ's hospital for the children of the poor, and Bridewell for the correction of the able-bodied. Less the institutional arrangements and plus the compulsory rate, the methods are those of the Poor Relief Act of Queen Elizabeth of 1601. At first the attempt had been made to introduce state relief in reliance on voluntary alms (1 Mary 13, 5 Eliz. 3, 1562-1563), subject to the right of assessment if alms were refused. But the position was anomalous. Charity is voluntary, and spontaneously meets the demands of distress. Such demands have always a tendency to increase with the supply. Hence the very limitations of charitable finance are in the nature of a safeguard. At most economic trouble can only be assuaged by relief, and it can only be met or prevented by economic and social reforms. If a compulsory rate be not enforced, as in Scotland and formerly in some parishes in England, a voluntary rate may be made in supplementation of the local charities. In Scotland, where the compulsory clauses of the Poor Relief Act of James I. were not put in force, the country weathered the storm without them, and the compulsory rate, which was extended throughout the country by the Poor Act of 1844, came in very slowly in the 18th and 19th centuries. In France (1566) a similar act was passed and set aside. If a compulsory rate be enforced, it is inevitable that the resources of charity, unless kept apart from the poor-law and administered on different lines from it, will diminish, and at the same time, as has happened often in the case of endowed charities, the interest in charitable administration will lapse, while the charges for poor-law relief, drawn without much scruple from the taxation of the community, will mount to millions either to meet increasing demands or to provide more elaborate institutional accommodation. The principle once adopted, it was enacted (1572-1573) that the aged and infirm should be cared for by the overseers of the poor, a new authority; and in 1601 the duplicate acts were passed, that for the relief of the poor (43 Eliz. 2), and that for the furtherance and protection of endowed charities. Thus the poor were brought into the dependence of a legally recognized class, endowed with a claim for relief, on the fulfilment of which, after a time, they could without difficulty insist if they were so minded. The civic authority had indeed taken over the alms of the parish, and an _eleemosyna civica_ had taken the place of the _annona civica_. It was a similar system under a different name.

Poor Relief Acts and statutory serfdom.

A phrase of Robert Cecil's (1st earl of Salisbury) indicates the minute domestic character of the Elizabethan legislation (D'Ewes, 674). The question (1601) was the repeal of a statute of tillage. Cecil says: "If in Edward I.'s time a law was made for the maintenance of the fry of fish, and in Henry VII.'s for the preservation of the eggs of wild fowl, shall we now throw away a law of more consequence and import? If we debar tillage, we give scope to the depopulating. And then, if the poor being thrust out of their houses go to dwell with others, straight we catch them with the statute of inmates; if they wander abroad, they are within the danger of the statute of the poor to be whipt. So by this undo this statute, and you endanger many thousands." A strong central government, a local authority appointed directly by the government, and a network of legislation controlled the whole movement of economic life. On this reliance was placed to meet economic difficulties. The local authorities were the justices of the peace; and they had to carry out the statutes for this purpose, to assess the wages of artisans and labourers, and to enforce the payment of the wages they had fixed; to ensure that suitable provision was made for the relief of the poor at the expense of rates which they also fixed; and to suppress vagabondage. Since 23 Edw. III. there had been labour statutes, and in 1563 a new statute was passed, an "Act containing divers orders for Artificers, Labourers, Servants of Husbandry and Apprentices" (5 Eliz. c. 4). It recognized and upheld a social classification. On the one hand there was the gentleman or owner of property to which the act was not to apply; and on the other the artisan and labouring class. This class in turn was subdivided, and the justices were to assess their wages annually according to "the plenty and scarcity of the time and other circumstances." Persons between the ages of twelve and sixty, who were not apprentices or engaged in certain specified employments, were compelled to serve in husbandry by the year "with any person that keepeth husbandry." The length of the day's work and the conditions of apprenticeship were fixed. The assessed rate of wages was enforceable by fine and imprisonment, and refusal to be apprenticed by imprisonment. Thus there was created a life control over labour with an industrial settlement and a wage fixed by the justices annually. There are differences of opinion in regard to the extent to which this act was enforced; and the evidence on the point is comparatively scanty. It was enforced throughout the century in which it was passed, and it probably continued in force generally until the Restoration, while subsequently it was put in operation to meet special emergencies, such as times of distress when some settlement of wages seemed desirable (cf. Rogers, v. 611; Hewins, _English Trade and Finance_, p. 82; Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce: Modern Times_, i. 168). It was not repealed till 1814.

From 1585 to 1622 there was, it is said, a slight increase in labourers' wages, which fluctuated from 5s. 3/8d. to 5s. 8-1/4d. a week, with a declining standard of comfort and at times great distress. Then there was a marked increase of wage till 1662 and "a very marked improvement; the rate of increase being very nearly double that of the earlier periods," and reaching 9s., "as the highest weekly rate for the whole period." Then from 1662 to 1702 there was "a slight improvement" (Hewins, p. 89). It would seem indeed that the stir of the times between 1622 and 1662 may have caused a great demand for labour. But with the Restoration, when the assessment system was falling into desuetude, came the Poor Relief Act of 1662 (13 & 14 Car. II. cap. 62), which brought in the law of settlement, and a settlement for relief of a very strict nature was added to the industrial settlement of the Artificers and Labourers Act. Thus, if the influence of that act, which had so long controlled labour, was waning, its place was now taken by an act which, though it had nothing to do with the assessment of wage, yet so settled the labourer within the bounds of his parish that he had practically to rely, if not upon a wage fixed by the justices, yet upon a customary wage limited and restricted as a result of the law of settlement. And the assessment by the justices, in so far as it may have continued, would therefore be of little or no consequence. Settlement also, like the Artificers and Labourers Act, would prevent the country labourer from passing to the towns, or the townsmen passing to other towns. At least they would do so at the risk of forfeiting their right to relief if they lost their settlement without acquiring a new one. Hence the industrial control, though under another name and other conditions, remained in force to a large extent in practice.

By the Artificers and Labourers Act then, in conjunction with other measures, the labouring classes were finally committed to a new bondage, when they had freed themselves from the serfdom of feudalism, and when the control exercised over them by the gild and municipality was relaxed. The statute was so enforced that to earn a year's livelihood would have taken a labourer not 52 weeks, but sometimes two years, or 58 weeks, or 80 weeks, or 72 weeks; sometimes, however, less--48 or 35. It followed that on such a system the country could only with the utmost good fortune free itself from the economic difficulties of the century, and that the need of a poor-law was felt the more as these difficulties persisted. A voluntary or a municipal system could not suffice, even as a palliative, while such statutes as these were in force to render labour immobile and unprogressive. Also, while wages were fixed by statute or order, whether chiefly in the interest of the employers or not, obviously any shortage on the wages had to be made good by the community. The community, by fixing the wages to be earned in a livelihood, made itself responsible for their sufficiency. And it is suggestive to find that in the year in which the Artificers and Labourers Act (1563) was passed, the act for the enforcement of assessments of poor-rate (5 Eliz. cap. 3) was also enacted. The Law of Settlement, to which we have referred, passed in the reign of Charles II., was due, it is said, to a migration of labourers southward from counties where less favourable statutory wages prevailed; but it was, in fact, only a corollary of the Artificers and Labourers Act of 1563 and the Poor Relief Act of 1601. These laws, it may be said, were the means of making the English labourer, until the poor-law reform of 1834, a settled but landless serf, supported by a fixed wage and a state bounty. By the poor-law it was possible to continue this state of things till, in consequence of an absolute economic breakdown, there was no alternative but reform.

The philanthropic nature of the poor-law is indicated by its antecedents: once enacted, its bounties became a right; its philanthropy disappeared in a quasi-legal claim. Its object was to relieve the poor by home industries, apprentice children, and provide necessary relief to the poor unable to work. The act was commonly interpreted so as to include the whole of that indefinite class, the "poor"; by a better and more rigid interpretation it was, at least in the 19th century, held to apply only to the "destitute," that is, to those who required "necessary relief"--according to the actual wording of the statute. The economic fallacy of home industries founded on rate-supplied capital early declared itself, and the method could only have continued as long as it did because it formed part of a general system of industrial control. When in the 18th century workhouses were established, the same industrial fallacy, as records show, repeated itself under new conditions. Within the parish it resulted in the farmer paying the labourer as small a wage as possible, and leaving the parish to provide whatever he might require in addition during his working life and in his old age. Thus, indeed, a gigantic experiment in civic employment was made for at least two centuries on a vast scale throughout the country--and failed. As was natural, the lack of economic independence reacted on the morals of the people. With pauperism came want of energy, idleness and a disregard for chastity and the obligations of marriage. The law, it is true, recognized the mutual obligations of parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren; but in the general poverty which it was itself a means of perpetuating such obligations became practically obsolete, while at all times they are difficult to enforce. Still, the fact that they were recognized implies a great advance in charitable thought. The act, passed at first from year to year, was very slowly put in force. Even before it was passed the poor-rate first assessed under the act of 1563 was felt to be "a greater tax than some subsidies," and in the time of Charles II. it amounted to a third of the revenue of England and Wales (Rogers, v. 81).

The service of villein and cottar was, as we have now seen, in part superseded by what we have called a statutory wage-control, founded on a basis of wage supplemented by relief, provided by a rate-supported poor-law. But it follows that with the decay of this system the poor-law itself should have disappeared, or should have taken some new and very limited form. Unfortunately, as in Roman times, state relief proved to be a popular and vigorous parasite that outlived the tree on which it was rooted: assessments of wage under the Statute of Labourers fell into disuse after the Restoration, it is said, and the statute was finally repealed in 1814, and sixty years later the act against illegal combinations of working men; but the serfdom of the poor-law, the _eleemosyna civica_, remained, to work the gravest evil to the labouring classes, and even after the reform of 1834 greatly impeded the recovery of their independence. Nevertheless, by a new law of state alms for the aged, or by statutory outdoor relief with, as some would wish, a regulated wage, it is now proposed to bring them once again under a thraldom similar to that from which they have so slowly emancipated themselves.

The endowed charities.

The policy adopted by Queen Elizabeth for the relief of the poor (1601) included a scheme for the reorganization of voluntary charity as well as plans for the extension of rate-aided relief. During the century, as we have seen, endeavours had been made to create a system of voluntary charity. This it was proposed to safeguard and promote concurrently with the extension of the poor-rate. Accordingly, in the poor-law it was arranged that the overseers, the new civic authority, and the churchwardens, the old parochial and charitable authority, should act in conjunction, and, subject to magisterial approval, together "raise weekly or otherwise" the necessary means "by taxation of every inhabitant." The old charitable organization was based on endowment, and the churchwarden was responsible for the administration of many such endowments. What was not available from these and other sources was to be raised "by taxation." The object of the new act was to encourage charitable gifts.

Towards the end of the 18th century, when the administration of poor relief fell into confusion, many charities were lost, or were in danger of being lost, and many were mismanaged. In 1786 and 1788 a committee of the House of Commons reported on the subject. In 1818, chiefly through the instrumentality of Lord Brougham, a commission of inquiry on educational charities was appointed, and in 1819 another commission to investigate (with some exceptions) all the charities for the poor in England and Wales. These and subsequent commissions continued their inquiries till 1835, when a select committee of the House of Commons made a strong report, advocating the establishment of a permanent and independent board, to inquire, to compel the production of accounts, to secure the safe custody of charity property, to adapt it to new uses on cy-pres lines, &c. A commission followed in 1849, and eventually in 1853 the first Charitable Trusts Act was passed, under which "The Charity Commissioners of England and Wales" were appointed.

The following are details of importance:--(1) _Definition._--The definition of the act of 1601 (Charitable Uses, 43 Eliz. 4) still holds good. It enumerates as charitable objects all that was once called "alms": (a) "The relief of aged, impotent and poor people"--the normal poor; "the maintenance of sick and maimed soldiers and mariners"--the poor chiefly by reason of war, sometime a class of privileged mendicants; (b) education, "schools of learning, free schools and scholars in universities"; and then (c) a group of objects which include general civic and religious purposes, and the charities of gilds and corporations; "the repair of bridges, ports, havens, causeways, churches, sea-banks and highways; the education and preferment of orphans; the relief, stock, or maintenance for houses of correction; marriages of poor maids, supportation, aid, and help of young tradesmen, handicraftsmen, and persons decayed"; and there follows (d) "the relief or redemption of prisoners or captives"; and, lastly, (e) "the aid and ease of any poor inhabitants concerning payment of fifteens" (the property-tax of Tudor times), setting out of soldiers, and other taxes. The definition might be illustrated by the charitable bequests of the next 60, or indeed 225, years. It is a fair summary of them. (2) _Charitable Gifts._--A public trust and a charitable trust are, as this definition shows, synonymous. It is a trust which relates to public charities, and is not held for the benefit of private persons, e.g. relations, but for the common good, and, subject to the instructions of the founder, by trustees responsible to the community. Gifts for charitable purposes, other than those affected by the law of mortmain, have always been viewed with favour. "Where a charitable bequest is capable of two constructions, one of which would make it void and the other would make it effectual, the latter will be adopted by the court" (Tudor's _Charitable Trusts_, ed. 1906, by Bristowe, Hunt and Burdett, p. 167). Gifts to the poor, or widows, or orphans, indefinitely, or in a particular parish, were valid under the act, or for any purpose or institution for the aid of the "poor." Thus practically the act covered the same field as the poor-law, though afterwards it was decided that, "as a rule, persons receiving parochial relief were not entitled to the benefit of a charity intended for the poor" (Tudor, p. 167). (3) _Religious Differences._--In the administration of charities which are for the poor the broadest view is taken of religious differences. (4) _Superstitious Uses._--The superstitious use is one that has for its object the propagation of the rights of a religion not tolerated by the law (Tudor, p. 4). Consequently, so far as charities were held or left subject to such rights, they were illegal, or became legal only as toleration was extended. Thus by degrees, since the Toleration Act of 1688, all charities to dissenters have become legal--that is, trusts for schools, places for religious instruction, education and charitable purposes generally. But bequests for masses for the soul of the donor, or for monastic orders, are still void. (5) _Administration._--The duty of administering charitable trusts falls upon trustees or corporations, and under the term "eleemosynary corporations" are included endowed hospitals and colleges. Under schemes of the Charity Commissioners, where charities have been remodelled, besides trustees elected by corporations, there are now usually appointed _ex-officio_ trustees who represent some office or institution of importance in connexion with the charity. (6) _Jurisdiction by Chancery and Charity Commission._--The Court of Chancery has jurisdiction over charities, under the old principle that "charities are trusts of a public nature, in regard to which no one is entitled by an immediate and peculiar interest to prefer a complaint for compelling the performance by the trustees of their obligations." The court, accordingly, represents the crown as _parens patriae_. Now, by the Charitable Trusts Act 1853, and subsequent acts, a charity commission has been formed which is entrusted with large powers, formerly enforced only by the Court of Chancery. (7) _Jurisdiction by Visitor._--A further jurisdiction is by the "visitor," a right inherent in the founder of any eleemosynary corporation, and his heirs, or those whom he appoints, or in their default, the king. The object of the visitor is "to prevent all perverting of the charity, or to compose differences among members of the corporation." Formerly the bishop's ordinary was the recognized visitor (2 Henry V. I, 1414) of hospitals, apart from the founder. Subsequently his power was limited (14 Eliz. c. 5, 1572) to hospitals for which the founders had appointed no visitors. Then (1601) by the Charitable Uses Act commissions were issued for inquiry by county juries. Now, apart from the duty of visitors, inquiry is conducted by the charity commissioners and the assistant commissioners. By subsequent acts (see below) ecclesiastical and eleemosynary charities have been still further separated and defined. (8) _Advice._--"Trustees, or other persons concerned in the management of a charity, may apply to the charity commissioners for their opinion, advice or direction; and any person acting under such advice is indemnified, unless he has been guilty of misrepresentation in obtaining it." (9) _Limitation of Charity Commissioners' Powers_,--The commissioners cannot, however, make any order with respect to any charity of which the gross annual income amounts to L50 or upwards, except on the application (in writing) of the trustees or a majority of them. Their powers are thus very limited, except when put in motion by the trustees. If a parish is divided they can apportion the charities if the gross income does not exceed L20. (10) _General Powers of the Charity Commission._--Subject to the limitation of L50, &c., the charity commissioners have power (Charitable Trusts Act 1860) to make orders for the appointment or removal of trustees, or of any officer, and for the transfer, payment and vesting of any real or personal estate, or "for the establishment of any scheme for the administration" of the charity, (11) _Schemes and Remodelling of Charities._--Under this power charities are remodelled, and small and miscellaneous charities put into one fund and applied to new purposes. The cy-pres doctrine is applied, by which if a testator leaves directions that are only indefinite, or if the objects for which a charity was founded are obsolete, the charity is applied to some purpose, as far as possible, in accordance with the charitable intention of the founder. This doctrine probably received its widest application in the City of London Parochial Charities Act of 1883. Under other acts doles have been applied to education and to allotments. About 380 schemes are issued in the course of a year. (12) _Objects adopted in remodelling Charities._--In the remodelling of charities for the general benefit of the poor some one or more of thirteen objects are usually included in the scheme. These are subscriptions to a medical charity, to a provident club or coal or clothing society, to a friendly society; for nurses, for annuities, for outfit for service, &c.; for emigration; for recreation grounds, clubs, reading-rooms, museums, lectures; for temporary relief to a limited amount in each year; for clothes fuel, tools, medical aid, food, &c., or in money "in cases of unexpected loss or sudden destitution"; for pensions. (13) _Parochial Charities._--By the Local Government Act of 1892, local ecclesiastical charities, i.e. endowments for "any spiritual purpose that is a legal purpose" (for spiritual persons, church and other buildings, for spiritual uses, &c.), are separated from parochial charities, "the benefits of which are, or the separate distribution of the benefits of which is, confined to inhabitants of a single parish, or of a single ancient ecclesiastical parish, or not more than five neighbouring parishes." These charities, since the Local Government Act 1894, are under the supervision of the parish councils, who appoint trustees for their management in lieu of the former overseer or vestry trustees, or, under certain conditions, "additional trustees." The accounts have to be submitted to the parish meeting, and the names of the beneficiaries of dole charities published. (14) _Official Trustees._--There is also "an official trustee of charity lands," who as "bare trustee" may hold the land or stock of the charity managed by the trustees or administrators. In 1905 the stock transferred to the official trustees amounted to L24,820,945. (15) _Audit_.--The charity commissioners have no power of audit, but the trustees of every charity have to prepare a statement of accounts annually, and transmit it to the commission. The accounts have to be "certified under the hand of one or more of the trustees and by the auditor of the charity." (16) _Taxation_.--In the case of rents and profits of lands, &c., belonging to hospitals or almshouses, or vested in trustees for charitable purposes, allowances are made in diminution of income-tax (56 Vict. 35 S 61). From the inhabited house duty any hospital charity school, or house provided for the reception or relief of poor persons, is exempted (House Tax Act 1808). Also there is an exemption from the land-tax in regard to land rents, &c., in possession of hospitals before 1693. (17) _The Digest._--A digest of endowed charities in England and Wales was compiled in the years 1861 to 1876. A new digest of reports and financial particulars has since been completed.

The income of endowed charities in 1876 was returned at L2,198,463. It is now, no doubt, considerably larger than it was in 1876. Partial returns show that at least a million a year is now available in England and Wales for the assistance of the aged poor and for doles. Between the poor-law, which, as it is at present administered, is a permanent endowment provided from the rates for the support of a class of permanent "poor," and endowed charities, which are funds available for the poor of successive generations, there is no great difference. But in their resources and administration the difference is marked. Local endowed charities were constantly founded after Queen Elizabeth's time till about 1830, and the poor-rate was at first supplementary of the local charities. When corn and fuel were dear and clothes very expensive, what now seem trivial endowments for food, fuel, coal and clothes were important assets in the thrifty management of a parish. But when the poor were recognized as a class of dependants entitled by law to relief from the community, the rate increased out of all proportion to the charities. A distinction then made itself felt between the "parish" poor and the "second" poor, or the poor who were not relieved from the rates, and relief from the rates altogether overshadowed the charitable aid. Charitable endowments were ignored, ill-administered, and often were lost. After 1834 the poor-law was brought under the control of the central government. Poor relief was placed in the hands of boards of guardians in unions of parishes. The method of co-operation between poor-law and charity suggested by the acts of Queen Elizabeth was set aside, and, as a responsible partner in the public work of relief, charity was disestablished. In the parishes the endowed charities remained in general a disorganized medley of separate trusts, jealously guarded by incompetent administrators. To give unity to this mass of units, so long as the principles of charity are misunderstood or ignored, has proved an almost impossible and certainly an unpopular task. So far as it has been achieved, it has been accomplished by the piecemeal legislation of schemes cautiously elaborated to meet local prejudices. Active reform has been resented, and politicians have often accentuated this resentment. In 1894 a select committee was appointed to inquire whether it was desirable to take measures to bring the action of the Charity Commission more directly under the control of parliament, but no serious grievances were substantiated. The committees' reports are of interest, however, as an indication of the initial difficulties of all charitable work, the general ignorance that prevails in regard to the elementary conditions that govern it, the common disregard of these principles, and the absence of any accepted theory or constructive policy that should regulate its development and its administration.

Charity in the parish after 1601.

After the Poor-Law Act of 1601 the history of the voluntary parochial charities in a town parish is marked by their decreasing amount and utility, as poor-law relief and pauperism increased. The act, it would seem, was not adopted with much alacrity by the local authorities. From 1625 to 1646 there were many years of plague and sickness, but in St Giles's, London, as late as 1649, the amount raised by the "collectors" (or overseers) was only L176. They disbursed this to "the visited poor" as "pensions." In 1665 an extra levy of L600 is mentioned. In the accounts of St Martin's-in-the-Fields, where, as in St Giles's, gifts were received, the change wrought by another half-century (1714) is apparent. The sources of charitable relief are similar to those in all the Protestant churches--English, Scottish or continental: church collections and offertories; correctional fines, such as composition for bastards and conviction money for swearers; and besides these, income from annuities and legacies, the parish estate, the royal bounty, and "petitions to persons of quality." In all L2041 was collected, but, so far as relief was concerned, the parish relied not on it, but on the poor-rate, which produced L3765. All this was collected and disbursed on their own authority by collectors, to orphans, "pensioners" or the "known or standing" poor, or to casual poor (L1818), including nurse children and bastards. The begging poor were numerous and the infant death-rate enormous, and each year three-fourths of those christened were "inhumanly suffered to die by the barbarity of nurses." The whole administration was uncharitable, injurious to the community and the family, and inhuman to the child. If one may judge from later accounts of other parishes even up to 1834, usually it remained the same, purposeless and unintelligent; and it can hardly be denied that, generally speaking, only since the middle of the 19th century has any serious attention been paid to the charitable side of parochial work. Parallel to the parochial movement of the poor-law in England, in France (about 1617) were established the _bureaux de bienfaisance_, at first entirely voluntary institutions, then recognized by the state, and during the Revolution made the central administration for relief in the communes.

Charitable movements after 1601.

In the 17th century in England, as in France, opinion favoured the establishment of large hospitals or _maisons Dieu_ for the reception of the poor of different classes. In France throughout the century there was a continuous struggle with mendicancy, and the hospitals were used as places into which offenders were summarily driven. A new humanity was, however, beginning its protest. The pitiful condition of abandoned children attracted sympathy in both countries. St Vincent de Paul established homes for the _enfants trouves_, followed in England by the establishment of the Foundling hospital (1739). In both countries the method was applied inconsiderately and pushed to excess, and it affected family life most injuriously. Grants from parliament supported the foundling movement in England, and homes were opened in many parts of the country. The demand soon became overwhelming; the mortality was enormous, and the cost so large that it outstripped all financial expedients. The lesson of the experiment is the same as that of the poor-law catastrophe before 1834; only, instead of the able-bodied poor of another age, infants were made the object of a compassionate but undiscerning philanthropy. With widespread relief there came widespread abandonment of duty and economic bankruptcy. Had the poor-rates instead of charitable relief been used in the same way, the moral injury would have been as great, but the annual draft from the rates would have concealed the moral and postponed the economic disaster. To amend the evil, changes were made by which the relation between child and mother was kept alive, and a personal application on her part was required; the character of the mother and her circumstances were investigated, and assistance was only given when it would be "the means of replacing the mother in the course of virtue and the way of an honest livelihood." General reforms were also made, especially through the instrumentality of Jonas Hanway, to check infant mortality, and metropolitan parishes were required to provide for their children outside London. A kindred movement led to the establishment of penitentiaries (1758), of lock hospitals and lying-in hospitals (1749-1752).

In Queen Anne's reign there was a new educational movement, "the charity school"--"to teach poor children the alphabet and the principles of religion," followed by the Sunday-school movement (1780), and about the same time (1788) by "the school of industry"--to employ children and teach them to be industrious. In 1844 the Ragged School Union was established, and until the Education Act of 1870 continued its voluntary educational work. As an outcome of these movements, through the efforts of Miss Mary Carpenter and many others, in 1854-1855 industrial and reformatory schools were established, to prevent crime and reform child criminals. The orphanage movement, beginning in 1758, when the Orphan Working Home was established, has been continued to the present day on a vastly extended scale. In 1772 a society for the discharge of persons imprisoned for small debts was established, and in 1773 Howard began his prison reforms. This raised the standard of work in institutional charities generally. After the civil wars the old hospital foundations of St Bartholomew and St Thomas, municipalized by Edward VI., became endowed charities partly supported by voluntary contributions. The same fate befell Christ's Hospital, in connexion with which the voting system, the admission of candidates by the vote of the whole body of subscribers--that peculiarly English invention--first makes its appearance.

A new interest in hospitals sprang up at the end of the 17th century. St Thomas's was rebuilt (1693) and St Bartholomew's (1739); Guy's was founded in 1724, and on the system of free "letters" obtainable in exchange for donations, voluntary hospitals and infirmaries were established in London (1733 and later) and in most of the large towns. Towards the end of the 18th century the dispensary movement was developed--a system of local dispensaries with fairly definite districts and home visiting, a substitute for attendance at a hospital, where "hospital fever" was dreaded, and an alternative to what was then a very ill-administered system of poor-law medical relief. After 1840 the provident dispensary was introduced, in order that the patients by small contributions in the time of health might provide for illness without having to meet large doctors' bills, and the doctor might receive some sufficient remuneration for his attendance on poor patients. This movement was largely extended after 1860. Three hospital funds for collecting contributions for hospitals and making them grants, a movement that originated in Birmingham in 1859, were established in London in 1873 and 1897.

Since 1868 the poor-law medical system of Great Britain has been immensely improved and extended, while at the same time the number of persons in receipt of free medical relief in most of the large towns has greatly increased. The following figures refer to London: at hospitals, 97 in number, in-patients (1904) during the year, 118,536; out-patients and casualty cases, 1,858,800; patients at free, part-pay, or provident dispensaries, about 280,000; orders issued for attendance at poor-law dispensaries and at home, 114,158. The number of beds in poor-law infirmaries (1904) was 16,976. There are in London 12 general hospitals with, 18 without, medical schools, and 67 special hospitals. Thus the population in receipt of public and voluntary medical relief is very large, indeed altogether excessive.

Each religious movement has brought with it its several charities. The Society of Friends, the Wesleyans, the Baptists have large charities. With the extension of the High Church movement there have been established many sisterhoods which support penitentiaries, convalescent homes and hospitals, schools, missions, &c.

The magnitude of this accumulating provision of charitable relief is evident, though it cannot be summed up in any single total.

At the beginning of the 19th century anti-mendicity societies were established; and later, about 1869, in England and Scotland a movement began for the organization of charitable relief, in connexion with which there are now societies and committees in most of the larger towns in Great Britain, in the colonies, and in the United States of America. More recently the movement for the establishment of settlements in poor districts, initiated by Canon Barnett at Toynbee Hall--"to educate citizens in the knowledge of one another, and to provide them with teaching and recreation"--has spread to many towns in England and America.

Progress of thought in 18th and 19th centuries.

These notes of charitable movements suggest an altogether new development of thought. On behalf of the charity school of Queen Anne's time were preached very formal sermons, which showed but little sympathy with child life. After the first half of the century a new humanism with which we connect the name of Rousseau, slowly superseded this formal beneficence. Rousseau made the world open its eyes and see nature in the child, the family and the community. He analysed social life, intent on explaining it and discovering on what its well-being depended; and he stimulated that desire to meet definite social needs which is apparent in the charities of the century. Little as it may appear to be so at first sight, it was a period of charitable reformation. Law revised the religious conception of charity, though he was himself so strangely devoid of social instinct that, like some of his successors, he linked the utmost earnestness in belief to that form of almsgiving which most effectually fosters beggardom. Howard introduced the era of inspection, the ardent apostle of a new social sagacity; and Bentham, no less sagacious, propounded opinions, plans and suggestions which, perhaps it may be said, in due course moulded the principles and methods of the poor-law of 1834. In the broader sense the turn of thought is religious, for while usually stress is laid on the religious scepticism of the century, the deeper, fervent, conscientious and evangelical charity in which Nonconformists, and especially "the Friends," took so large a part, is often forgotten. Sometimes, indeed, as often happens now, the feeling of charity passed into the merest sentimentality. This is evident, for instance, from so ill-considered a measure as Pitt's Bill for the relief of the poor. On the other hand, during the 18th century the poor-law was the object of constant criticism, though so long as the labour statutes and the old law of settlement were in force, and the relief of the labouring population as state "poor" prevailed, it was impossible to reform it. Indeed, the criticism itself was generally vitiated by a tacit acceptance of "the poor" as a class, a permanent and irrevocable charge on the funds of the community; and at the end of the 18th century, when the labour statutes were abrogated, but the conditions under which poor relief was administered remained the same, serfdom in its later stage, the serfdom of the poor-law, asserted itself in its extremest form in times of dearth and difficulty during the Napoleonic War. In 1802-1803 it was calculated (Marshall's _Digest_) that 28% of the population were in receipt of permanent or occasional relief. Those in receipt of the former numbered 734,817, including children--so real had this serfdom of the poor become.

In 1832 the expenditure on pauperism in England and Wales was L7,036,968. In the early years of the 19th century the mendicity societies, established in some of the larger towns, were a sign of the general discontent with existing methods of administration. The Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor--representing a group of men such as Patrick Colquhoun, Sir I. Bernard, Dr Lettsom, Dr Haygarth, James Neald, Count Rumford and others--took a more positive line and issued many useful publications (1796). After 1833 the very atmosphere of thought seems changed. There was a general desire to be quit of the serfdom of pauperism. The Poor-law Amendment Act was passed in 1834, and since then male able-bodied pauperism has dwindled to a minimum. The bad years of 1860-1870 revived the problem in England and Scotland, and the old spirit of reform for a time prevailed. Improved administration working with economic progress effected still further reductions of pauperism, till on the 1st of January 1905 (exclusive of lunatics in county asylums and casual paupers) the mean number of paupers stood at 764,589, or 22.6 per thousand of the population, instead of 41.8 per thousand as in 1859 (see POOR-LAW).

Charity organization societies were formed after 1869, with the object of "improving the condition of the poor," or, in other words, to promote independence by an ordered and co-operative charity; and the Association for Befriending Young Servants, and workhouse aid committees, in order to prevent relapse into pauperism on the part of those who as children or young women received relief from the poor-law. The Local Government Board adopted a restricted out-door relief policy, and a new interest was felt in all the chief problems of local administration. The movement was general. The results of the Elberfeld system of municipal relief administered by unpaid almoners, each dealing with but one or two cases, influenced thought both in England and America. The experience gained by Mr Joseph Tuckerman of Boston of the utility of registering applications for relief, and the teaching of Miss Octavia Hill, led to the foundation of the system of friendly visiting and associated charity at Boston (1880) and elsewhere. Since that time the influence of Arnold Toynbee and the investigations of Charles Booth have led to a better appreciation of the conditions of labour; and to some extent, in London and elsewhere, the spirit of charity has assumed the form of a new devotion to the duties of citizenship. But perhaps, in regard to charity in Great Britain, the most important change has been the revival of the teaching of Dr Chalmers (1780-1847), who (1819) introduced a system of parochial charity at St John's, Glasgow, on independent lines, consistent with the best traditions of the Scottish church. In the development of the theory of charitable relief on the economic side this has been a main factor. His view, which he tested by experience, may be summed up as follows: Society is a growing, self-supporting organism. It has within it, as between family and family, neighbour and neighbour, master and employee, endless links of sympathy and self-support. Poverty is not an absolute, but a relative term. Naturally the members of one class help one another; the poor help the poor. There is thus a large invisible fund available and constantly used by those who, by their proximity to one another, know best how to help. The philanthropist is an alien to this life around him. Moved by a sense of contrast between his own lot, as he understands it, and the lot of those about him, whom he but little understands, he concludes that he should relieve them. But his gift, unless it be given in such a way as to promote this self-support, instead of weakening it, is really injurious. In the first place, by his interference he puts a check on the charitable resources of another class and lessens their social energy. What he gives they do not give, though they might do so. But next, he does more harm than this. He stimulates expectation, so that by a false arithmetic his gift of a few shillings seems to those who receive it and to those who hear of it a possible source of help in any difficulty. To them it represents a large command of means; and where one has received what, though it be little, is yet, relative to wage, a large sum to be acquired without labour, many will seek more, and with that object will waste their time and be put off their work, or even be tempted to lie and cheat. So social energy is diverted from its proper use. Alms thus given weakens social ties, diminishes the natural relief funds of mutual help, and beggars a neighbour instead of benefiting him. By this argument a clear and well-defined purpose is placed before charity. Charity becomes a science based on social principles and observation. Not to give alms, but to keep alive the saving health of the family, becomes its problem: relief becomes altogether subordinate to this, and institutions or societies are serviceable or the reverse according as they serve or fail to serve this purpose. Not poverty, but distress is the plea for help; not almsgiving, but charity the means. To charity is given a definite social aim, and a desire to use consistently with this aim every method that increasing knowledge and trained ability can devise.

Under such influences as these, joined with better economic conditions, a great reform has been made. The poor-law, however, remains--the modern _eleemosyna civica_. It now, indeed, absorbs a proportionately lesser amount of the largely increased national income, but, excluding the maintenance of lunatics, it costs Great Britain more than twelve millions a year; and among the lower classes of the poor, directly or indirectly, it serves as a bounty on dependence and is a permanent obstacle to thrift and self-reliance. The number of those who are within the circle of its more immediate attraction is now perhaps, in different parts of the country or different districts in a town, not more than, say, 20% of the population. Upon that population the statistics of a day census would show a pauperism not of 2.63, the percentage of the mean day pauperism on the population in 1908, but of 13.15%; and the percentage would be much greater--twice as large, perhaps--if the total number of those who in some way received poor relief in the course of a year were taken into account. The English poor-law is thus among the lower classes, those most tempted to dependence--say some six or seven millions of the people--a very potent influence definitely antagonistic to the good development of family life, unless it be limited to very narrow proportions; as, for instance, to restricted indoor or institutional relief for the sick, for the aged and infirm, who in extreme old age require special care and nursing, and for the afflicted, for whom no sufficient charitable provision is procurable. As ample experience shows, only on these conditions can poor-law relief be justified from the point of view of charity and the common good. In marked contrast to this opinion is the English movement for Old Age pensions, which came to its first fruition in 1908--a huge charity started on the credit of the state, the extension of which might ultimately involve a cost comparable with that of the army or the navy. Schemes of the kind have been adopted in the Australasian colonies with limitations and safeguards; and they seem likely to develop into a new type of poor-relief organization for the aged and infirm (Report: Royal Commission on Old Age Pensions, Commonwealth of Australia, 1906). In England, partly to meet the demand for better state provision for the aged, the Local Government Board in 1900 urged the boards of guardians to give more adequate outdoor relief to aged deserving people, and laid no stress on the test of destitution, or, in other words, the limitation of relief to what was actually "necessary," the neglect of which has led to new difficulties. History has proved that demoralization results from the wholesale relief whether of the mass of the citizens, or of the able-bodied, or of the children, and the proposal to limit the endowment to the aged makes no substantial difference. The social results must be similar; but social forces work slowly, and usually only the unanswerable argument of financial bankruptcy suffices to convert a people habituated to dependence, though the inward decay of vitality and character may long before be manifest. Ultimately the distribution of pensions by way of out-door relief, corrupting a far more independent people, is calculated to work a far greater injury than the _annona civica_. Such an endowment of old age might indeed be justified as part of a system of regulated labour, which, as in earlier times, could not be enforced without some such extraneous help, but it could not be justified otherwise. It is naturally associated, therefore, with socialistic proposals for the regulation of wage.

In the light of the principles of charity, which we have considered historically, we have now to turn to two questions: charity and economics, and charity and socialism.

The economics of charity.

The object of charity is to render to our neighbour the services and duties of goodwill, friendship and love. To prevent distress charity has for its further object to preserve and develop the manhood and womanhood of individuals and their self-maintenance in and through the family; and any form of state intervention is approved or disapproved by the same standard. By self-maintenance is meant self-support throughout life in its ordinary contingencies--sickness, widowhood, old age, &c. Political economy we would define as the science of exchange and exchange value. Here it has to be considered in relation to the purposes of charity. By way of illustration we take, accordingly, three points: distribution and use, supplementation of wage, and the standard of well-being or comfort in relation to wage.

(1) _Distribution and Use._--Economy in the Greek sense begins at this point--the administration and the use of means and resources. Political economy generally ignores this part of the problem. Yet from the point of view of charity it is cardinal to the whole issue. The distribution of wage may or may not be largely influenced by trades unions; but the variation of wage, as is generally the case, by the increase or decrease of a few pence is of less importance than its use. Comparing a careful and an unthrifty family, the difference in use may amount to as much as a third on the total wage. Mere abstention from alcohol may make, in a normal family, a difference of 6s. in a wage of 25s. On the other hand, membership of a friendly society is at a time of sickness equivalent to the command of a large sum of money, for the common stock of capital is by that means placed at the disposal of each individual who has a share in it. Further, even a small amount saved may place the holder in a position to get a better market for his labour; he can wait when another man cannot. Rent may be high, but by co-operation that too may be reduced. Other points are obvious and need not be mentioned. It is evident that while the amount of wage is important, still more important is its use. In use it has a large expansive value. (2) _Supplementation of Wage._--The exchange between skill and wage must be free if it is to be valid. The less the skill the greater is the temptation to philanthropists to supplement the lesser wage; and the more important is non-supplementation, for the skilled can usually look after their own interests in the market, while the less skilled, because their labour is less marketable, have to make the greater effort to avoid dependence. But the dole of endowed charities, outdoor relief, and any constant giving, tend to reduce wage, and thus to deprive the recipients of some part of the means of independence. The employer is pressed by competition himself, and in return he presses for profit through a reduced wage, if circumstances make it possible for the workman to take it. And thus a few individuals may lower the wages of a large class of poorly skilled or unskilled hands. In these conditions unionism, even if it were likely to be advantageous, is not feasible. Unionism can only create a coherent unit of workers where there is a limited market and a definite saleable skill. Except for the time, insufficient wage will not be remedied in the individual case by supplementation in any form--doles, clothes, or other kinds of relief; and in that case, too, the relief will probably produce lessened energy after a short time, or in other words lessened ability to live. An insufficient wage may be prevented by increasing the skill of the worker, who will then have the advantage of a better series of economic exchanges, but hardly otherwise. If the supplementation be not immediate, but postponed, as in the case of old-age pensions, its effect will be similar. To the extent of the prospective adventitious gain the attraction to the friendly society and to mutual help and saving will grow less. Necessity has been the inventor of these; and where wage is small, a little that would otherwise be saved is quickly spent if the necessity for saving it is removed. Only necessity schools most men, especially the weak, to whom it makes most difference ultimately, whether they are thrifty or whether or not they save for the future in any way. (3) _The Standard of Well-being or Comfort in Relation to Wage._--With an increase of income there has to be an increase in the power to use income intelligently. Whatever is not so used reacts on the family to its undoing. Constantly when the wife can earn a few shillings a week, the husband will every week idle for two or three days; so also if the husband finds that in a few days he can earn enough to meet what he considers to be his requirements for the week. In these circumstances the standard of well-being falls below the standard of wage; the wage is in excess of the energy and intelligence necessary to its economic use, and in these cases ultimately pauperism often ensues. The family is demoralized. Thus, with a view to the prevention of distress in good times, when there is the less poverty there is the more need of charity, rightly understood; for charity would strive to promote the right use of wage, as the best means of preventing distress and preserving the economic well-being of the family.

Charity and socialism.

The theory of charity separates it entirely from socialism, as that word is commonly used. Strictly socialism means, in questions affecting the community, a dominant regard for the common or social good in so far as it is contrary to private or individual advantage. But even so the antithesis is misleading, for the two need not be inconsistent. On the contrary, the common good is really and ultimately only individual good (not advantage) harmonized to a common end. The issue, indeed, is that of old Greek days, and the conditions of a settlement of it are not substantially different. Using modern terms one may say that charity is "interventionist." It has sought to transform the world by the transformation of the will and the inward life in the individual and in society. It would intensify the spirit and feeling of membership in society and would aim at improving social conditions, as science makes clear what the lines of reform should be. So it has constantly intervened in all kinds of ways, and, in the 19th century for instance, it has initiated many movements afterwards taken up by public authorities--such as prison reform, industrial schools, child protection, housing, food reform, &c., and it has been a friendly ally in many reforms that affect industry very closely, as, for instance, in the introduction of the factory acts. But it has never aimed at recasting society itself on a new economic plan, as does socialism. Socialism indeed offers the people a new state of social security. It recognizes that the _annona civica_ and the old poor-law may have been bad, but it would meet the objection made against them by insisting on the gradual creation of a new industrial society in which wage would be regulated and all would be supported, some by wage in adult life, some by allowance in old age, and others by maintenance in childhood. Accordingly for it all schemes for the state maintenance of school children, old age pensions, or state provision for the unemployed are, like municipal trading, steps towards a final stage, in which none shall want because all shall be supported by society or be dependent on it industrially. To charity this position seems to exclude the ethical element in life and to treat the people primarily or chiefly as human animals. It seems also to exclude the motives for energy and endeavour that come from self-maintenance. Against it, on the other hand, socialism would urge, that only by close regulation and penalty will the lowest classes be improved, and that only the society that maintains them can control them. Charity from its experience doubts the possibility of such control without a fatal loss of initiative on the part of those controlled, and it believes both that there is constant improvement on the present conditions of society and that there will be constantly more as science grows and its conclusions are put in force. Thus charity and socialism, in the usual meaning of the word, imply ultimately two quite different theories of social life. The one would re-found society industrially, the other would develop it and allow it to develop.

The organization of charity.

The springs of charity lie in sympathy and religion, and, one would now add, in science. To organize it is to give to it the "ordered nature" of an organic whole, to give it a definite social purpose, and to associate the members of the community for the fulfilment of that purpose. This in turn depends on the recognition of common principles, the adoption of a common method, self-discipline and training, and co-operation. In a mass of people there may be a large variation in motives coincident with much unity in action. Thus there may be acceptance of a common social purpose in charity, while in one the impulse is similar to that which moved St Francis or George Herbert, in another to that which moved Howard or Dr Chalmers, or a modern poor-law reformer like Sir G. Nicholls or E. Denison. Accepting, then, the principles of charity, we pass to the method in relation to assistance and relief. Details may vary, but on the following points there is general agreement among students and workers:--

(1) _The Committee or Conference._--There are usually two kinds of local relief: the public or poor-law relief, and relief connected with religious agencies. Besides, there is the relief of endowments, societies and charitable persons. Therefore, as a condition precedent to all organization, there must be some local centre of association for information and common help. A town should be divided for this purpose into manageable areas coincident with parishes or poor-law divisions, or other districts. Subject to an acceptance of general principles, those engaged in charity should be members of a local conference or committee, or allied to it. The committee would thus be the rallying-point of a large and somewhat loosely knit association of friends and workers. (2) _Inquiry, Aid and Registration_.--The object of inquiry is to ascertain the actual causes of distress or dependence, and to carry on the work there must usually be a staff of several honorary and one or two paid workers. Two methods may be adopted: to inquire in regard to applications for help with a view to forming some plan of material help or friendly aid, or both, which will lead to the ultimate self-support of the family and its members, and, under certain conditions, in the case of the aged or sick, to their continuous or their sufficient help; or to ascertain the facts partly at once, partly by degrees, and then to form and carry out some plan of help, or continue to befriend the family in need of help, in the hope of bringing them to conditions of self-support, leaving the work of relief entirely to other agencies. The committee in neither case should be a relief committee--itself a direct source of relief. On the former method it has usually no relief fund, but it raises from relations, employers, charities and charitable persons the relief required, according to the plan of help agreed upon, unless, indeed, it is better not to relieve the case, or to leave it to the poor-law. The committee thus makes itself responsible for endeavouring to the best of its ability to raise the necessary relief, and acts as trustee for those who co-operate without it, in such a way as to keep intact and to give play to all the natural obligations that lie within the inner circles of a self-supporting community. On the latter method the work of relief is left to general charity, or to private persons, or to the poor-law; and the effort is made to help the family to self-support by a friendly visitor. This procedure is that adopted by the associated charities in Boston, Mass., and other similar societies in America and elsewhere. It is akin also to that adopted in the municipal system of relief in Elberfeld--which has become with many variations in detail the standard method of poor relief in Germany. The method of associated help, combined with personal work, represents the usual practice of charity organization societies. _Mutatis mutandis_, the plan can be adopted on the simplest scale in parochial or other relief committees, subject to the safeguards of sufficient training and settled method. The inquiry should cover the following points: names and address, and ages of family, previous addresses, past employment and wages, present income, rent and liabilities, membership of friendly or other society, and savings, relations, relief (if any) from any source. These points should be verified, and reference should be made to the clergy, the poor-law authorities, and others, to ascertain if they know the applicant. The result should be to show how the applicant has been living, and what are the sources of possible help, and also what is his character. The problem, however, is not whether the person is "deserving" or "undeserving," but whether, granted the facts, the distress can be stayed and self-support attained. If the help can be given privately from within the circle of the family, so much the better. Often it may be best to advise, but not to interfere. In some cases but little help may be necessary; in others again the friendly relation between applicant and friend may last for months and even years. Usually in charitable work the question of the kind of relief available--money, tickets, clothes, &c.--governs the decision how the case should be assisted. But this is quite wrong: the opposite is the true rule. The wants of the case, rightly understood, should govern the decision as to what charity should do and what it should provide. Cases are overwhelming in number, as at the out-patient and casualty departments of a hospital, where the admissions are made without inquiry, and subject practically to no restrictions; but when there is inquiry, and each case is seriously considered and aided with a view to self-support, the numbers will seldom be overwhelming. On this plan appeal is made to the strength of the applicant, and requires an effort on his part. Indiscriminate relief, on the other hand, attracts the applicant by an appeal to his weakness, and it requires of him no effort. Hence, apart even from the differentiating effect of inquiry, one method makes applicants, the other limits their number, although on the latter plan much more strenuous endeavours be made to assist the lesser number of claimants. For the routine work of the office an extremely simple system of records with card index, &c., has been devised. In some cities, particularly in the United States of America, there is a central registration of cases, notified by individual charities, poor-relief authorities and private persons. The system of charity organization or associated charity, it will be seen, allows of the utmost variety of treatment, according to the difficulties in each instance and the remedies available, and the utmost scope for personal work. (3) _Training._--If charitable work is an art, those who undertake it must needs be trained both in practice and method and in judgment. It requires, too, that self-discipline which blends intelligence with emotion, and so endows emotion with strength and purpose. In times of distress a reserve of trained workers is of the utmost service. At all times they do more and produce, socially, better results; but when there is general distress of any kind they do not lose their heads like new recruits, but prevent at least some of the mischief that comes of the panic which often takes possession of a community, when distress is apprehended, and leads to the wildest distribution of relief. Also trained workers make the most useful poor-law guardians, trustees of charities, secretaries of charitable societies and district visitors. All clergy and ministers and all medical men who have to be engaged in the administration of medical relief should learn the art of charity. Poor-law guardians are usually elected on political or general grounds, and have no special knowledge of good methods of charity; and trustees are seldom appointed on the score of their qualifications on this head. To provide the necessary education in charity there should be competent helpers and teachers at charity organization committees and elsewhere, and an alliance for this purpose should be formed between them and professors and teachers of moral science and economics and the "settlements." Those who study social problems in connexion with what a doctor would call "cases" or "practice" see the limits and the falsity of schemes that on paper seem logical enough. This puts a check on the influence of scheme-building and that literary sensationalism which makes capital out of social conditions. (4) _Co-operation._--Organization in charity depends on extensive co-operation, and ultimately on the acceptance of common views. This comes but slowly. But with much tribulation the goal may be reached, if in case after case the effort is made to provide friendly help through charities and private persons,--unless, as may well be, it should seem best not to interfere, but to leave the applicant to apply to the administrators of public relief. Experience of what is right and wrong in charity is thus gained on both sides. Many sources may have to be utilized for aid of different kinds even in a single case, and for the prevention of distress co-operation with members of friendly societies and with co-operative and thrift agencies is indispensable.

The poor law.

Where there is accord between charity and the poor-law pauperism may be largely reduced. The poor-law in most countries has at its disposal certain institutional relief and out-door allowances, but it has no means of devising plans of help which may prevent application to the rates or "take" people "off the rates." Thus a widow in the first days of widowhood applies and receives an allowance according to the number of her children. Helped at the outset by charity on some definite plan, she may become self-supporting; and if her family be large one or two of her children may be placed in schools by the guardians, while she maintains the remaining children and herself. As far as possible there should be a division of labour between the poor-law and charity. Except where some plan such as that just mentioned is adopted, one or the other should take whole charge of the case relieved. There should be no supplementation of poor-law relief by charity. This will weaken the strength and dissipate the resources of charity without adding to the efficiency of the poor-law. Unless the guardians adopt a restrictive out-door relief policy, there is no scope for any useful division of labour between them and charity; for the many cases which, taken in time, charity might save from pauperism, they will draw into chronic dependence by their allowances a very much larger number. But if there is a restrictive out-door policy, so far as relief is necessary, charity may undertake to meet on its own lines distress which the poor-law would otherwise have met by allowances, and, subject to the assistance of urgent cases, poor-law relief may thus by degrees become institutional only. Then, in the main, natural social forces would come into play, and dependence on any form of _annona civica_ would cease.

Hospitals.

Open-handed hospitality always creates mendicants. This is what the hospitals offer in the out-patient and casualty departments, and they have created a class of hospital mendicants. The cases are quickly dealt with, without inquiry and without regard to home conditions. The medical man in the hospital does not co-operate with any fellow-workers outside the hospital. Where his physic or advice ceases to operate his usefulness ceases. He regards no conditions of morality. In a large number of cases drink or vice is the cause of application, and the cure of the patient is dependent on moral conditions; but he returns home, drinks and may beat his wife, and then on another visit to the hospital he will again be physicked and so on. The man is not even referred to the poor-law infirmary for relief. Nor are conditions of home sanitation regarded. One cause of constant sickness is thus entirely overlooked, while drugs, otherwise unnecessary, are constantly given at the hospital. The hospitals are thus large isolated relief stations which are creating a new kind of pauperism. So far as the patients can pay--and many can do so--the general practitioners, to whom they would otherwise go, are deprived of their gains. Still worse is it when the hospital itself charges a fee in its out-patient department. The relief is then claimed even more absolutely as a right, and the general practitioners are still further injured. The doctors, as a medical staff, are not only medical men, but whether they recognize the fact or not, they are also almsgivers or almoners; what they give is relief. Yet few or none of them have ever been trained for that work, and consequently they do not realize how very advantageous, even for the cure of their own patients, would be a thorough treatment of each case both at the hospital and outside it. Nor can they understand how their methods at present protract sickness and promote habitual dependence. Were this side of their work studied by them in any way they would be the first, probably, to press upon the governors of their hospitals the necessity for a change. Unfortunately, at present the governors are themselves untrained, and to finance the hospital and to make it a good institution is their sole object. Hospitals, however, are, after all, only a part of the general administration of charity, though as they are now managed they have seldom any systematic connexion with that administration. Nor is there any co-ordination between the several hospitals and dispensaries. If one rightly refuses further treatment to certain applicants, they have only to wander to some other hospital, there to be admitted with little or no scrutiny. For usually out-patients and casualty patients are not even registered, nor can they be identified if they apply again. Practically they come and go at will. The definite limitation of cases, according to some standard of effectual work, association with general charity, trained almonership and inquiry, and a just regard for the interests of general practitioners, are stepping-stones to reform. In towns where medical charities are numerous a representative board would promote mutual help and organization.

Endowed charities.

Like the poor-law, endowed charities may be permanent institutions established to meet what should be passing and decreasing needs (cf. the arguments in _The State and Charity_, by T. Mackay). Administered as they usually are in isolation--apart from the living voluntary charities of the generation, and consisting often of small trusts difficult to utilize satisfactorily, they tend to create a permanent demand which they meet by fixed quantities of relief. Also, as a rule, they make no systematic inquiries with a view to the verification of the statements of the applicants, for they have no staff for these purposes; nor have they the assistance of almoners or friendly visitors. Nor does the relief which they give form part of any plan of help in conjunction with other aid from without; nor is the administration subject to frequent inspection, as in the case of the poor-law. All these conditions have led to a want of progress in the actual administration of endowed charities, in regard to which it is often very difficult to prevent the exercise of an undue patronage. But there is no reason why these charities should not become a responsible part of the country's administration, aiding it to reduce outdoor pauperism. It was never intended that the poor-law should extinguish the endowed charities, still less, as statistics now prove, that where endowments abound the rate of pauperism should be considerably above the average of the rest of the country. This shows that these charities often foster pauperism instead of preventing it. As a step to reform, the publication of an annual register of endowed charities in England and Wales is greatly needed. The consolidating schemes of the charity commissioners have done much good; still more may be done in some counties by extending to the county the benefits of the charities of well-endowed towns, as has been accomplished by the extension of the eleemosynary endowments of the city of London to the metropolitan police area. Nor, again, until quite lately, and that as yet only in a few schemes, has the principle been adopted that pensions or other relief should be given only in supplementation of the relief of relations, former employers and friends, and not in substitution of it. This, coupled with good methods of inquiry and supervision, has proved very beneficial. Hitherto, however, to a large extent, endowed charities, it must be admitted, have tended to weaken the family and to pauperize.

Relief to children at school.

In many places funds are raised for the relief of school children by the supply of meals during the winter and spring; and an act has now been passed in England (1906) enabling the cost to be put upon the rates. Usually a very large number of children are said to be underfed, but inquiry shows that such statements may be taken as altogether excessive. They are sometimes based on information drawn from the children at school; or sometimes on general deductions; they are seldom founded on any systematic and competent inquiry at the homes. When this has been made, the numbers dwindle to very small proportions. Teachers of experience have noted the effect of the meals in weakening the independence of the family. While they are forthcoming women sometimes give up cooking meals at home, use their money for other things, and tell the child he can get his meal at school. Great temptations are put before a parent to neglect her family, and very much distress is due to this. The meals--just at a time when, owing to the age of her children, the mother's care is most needed, and just in those families where the temptation is greatest, and where the family instinct should be strengthened--stimulate this neglect. Considered from the point of view of meeting by eleemosynary provision a normal economic demand for food, intervention can only have one result. The demand must continue to outstrip the supply, so long as there are resources available on the one side, and until on the other side the desire of the social class that is chiefly exposed to the temptations of dependence in relation to such relief has been satisfied. If the provision be made from the resources of local or general taxation the largeness of the fund available will allow practically of an unlimited expansion of the supply of food. If the provision be made from voluntary sources, in some measure limited therefore and less certain, this very fact will tend to circumscribe demand and limit the offer of relief. It is indeed the problem of poor-law relief in 1832 over again. The relief provided by local taxation practically unlimited will create a mass of constant claimants, with a kind of assumed right to aid based on the payment of rates; while voluntary relief, whatever its short-comings, will be less injurious because it is less amply endowed. In Paris the municipal subvention for meals rose from 545,900 francs in 1892 to 1,000,000 in 1904. Between 1894 and 1904 there was an increase of 9% in the school population; and an increase of 28% in the municipal grant. In that period the contributions from the local school funds (_caisses des ecoles_) decreased 36%; while the voluntary contributions otherwise received were insignificant; and the payments for meals increased 2%.

The subject has been lately considered from a somewhat different standpoint (cf. the reports of the Scottish Royal Commission on Physical Education, 1903; of the Inter-departmental committees on Physical Deterioration, 1905, and on Medical Inspection and the Feeding of School Children, 1905; also the report of the special committee of the Charity Organization Society on "the assistance of school children," 1893). After careful investigations medical officers especially have drawn attention to the low physical condition of children in schools in the poorer parts of large English towns, their low stature, their physical defects, the improper food supplied to them at home, their uncleanliness, and their want of decent bringing-up, and sometimes their want of food. Other inquiries have shown that, as women more usually become breadwinners their children receive less attention, and the home and its duties are neglected, while in the lowest sections of the poorer classes social irresponsibility reaches its maximum. Cheap but often quite improper food is provided, and infant mortality, which is largely preventable, remains as high as ever, though adult life is longer. This with a marked decrease in the birth-rate in recent years, has, it may be said, opened out a new field for charitable effort and social work. Science is at each revision of the problem making its task more definite. Actually the mere demand for meals stands for less; the reform of home conditions for more. So it was hoped that instead of making school meals a charge on taxation, as parliament has done, it would be content to leave it a voluntary charge, while the medical inspection of elementary Schools will be made universal; representative relief committees formed for schools or groups of schools; the cases of want or distress among the school children dealt with individually in connexion with their families, and, where necessary, day schools established on the lines of day industrial schools.

Exceptional distress.

At a time of exceptional distress the following suggestions founded on much English experience may be of service (cf. Report of special committee of the Charity Organization Society on the best means of dealing with exceptional distress, 1886). Usually at such a time proposals are made to establish special funds, and to provide employment to men and women out of work. But it is best, if possible and as long as possible, to rely on existing agencies, and to strengthen them. Round them there are usually workers more or less trained. A new fund usually draws to it new people, many of whom may not have had any special experience at all. If a new fund is inevitable, it is best that it should make its grants to existing agencies after consultation with them. In any case, a clear policy should be adopted, and people should keep their heads. The exaggeration of feeling at a time of apprehended or actual distress is sometimes extraordinary, and the unwise action which it prompts is often a cause of continuing pauperism afterwards. Where there is public or poor-law relief the following plan may be adopted:--In any large town there are usually different recognized poor-law, charitable or other areas. The local people already at work in these areas should be formed into local committees. In each case a quick inquiry should be made, and the relieving officer communicated with, some central facts verified, and the home visited. Roughly, cases may be divided into three classes: the irresponsible casual labouring class, a middle class of men with decent homes, who have made no provision for the future, and are not members of either friendly society or trades union; and a third class, who have made some provision. These usually are affected last of all; at all hazards they should be kept from receiving public relief, and should be helped, as far as possible, privately and personally. If there are public works, the second class might be referred to them; if there are not, probably some should be left to the poor-law, some assisted in the same way as members of class three. Much would turn upon the family and the home. The first class should be left to the poor-law. If there is no poor-law system at work they should be put on public works. Working men of independent position, not the creatures of any political club, but such as are respected members of a friendly society, or are otherwise well qualified for the task, should be called into consultation. The relief should be settled according to the requirements of each case, but if the pressure is great, at first at least it may be necessary to make grants according to some generally sufficient scale. There should be as constant a revision of cases as time permits. Great care should be taken to stop the relief as soon as possible, and to do nothing to make it the stepping-stone to permanent dependence.

If employment be provided it should be work within the skill of all; it should be fairly remunerated, so that at least the scantiness of the pay may not be an excuse for neglect; and it should be paid for according to measured or piece work. The discipline should be strict, though due regard should be paid at first to those unaccustomed to digging or earthwork. In England and Wales the guardians have power to open labour yards. These, like charities which provide work, tend to attract and keep in employment a low class of labourer or workman, who finds it pays him to use the institution as a convenience. It is best, therefore, to avoid the opening of a labour yard if possible. If it is opened, the discipline should be very strict, and when there is laziness or insubordination, relief in the workhouse should at once be offered. The relief furnished to men employed in a labour yard, of which in England at least half has to be given ih kind, should, it has been said, be dealt out from day to day. This leads to the men giving up the work sooner than they otherwise would. They have less to spend.

Unemployment.

In Great Britain a great change has taken place in regard to the provision of employment in connexion with the state. Since about 1890 there has been a feeling that men in distress from want of employment should not be dealt with by the poor-law. A circular letter issued by the Local Government Board in 1886, and subsequently in 1895, coincided with this feeling. It was addressed to town councils and other local authorities, asking them to provide work (1) which will not involve the stigma of pauperism, (2) which all can perform whatever may have been their previous avocations, and (3) which does not compete with that of other labourers at present in employment. This circular led to the vestries and subsequently the borough councils in many districts becoming partially recognized relief authorities for the unemployed, concurrently with the poor-law. Much confusion resulted. The local authorities had seldom any suitable organization for the investigation of applications. It was difficult to supply work on the terms required; and the work was often ill-done and costly. Also it was found that the same set of people would apply year after year, unskilled labourers usually out of work part of the winter, or men habitually "unemployed." As on other occasions when public work was provided, very few of the applicants were found to be artisans, or members of trades unions or of friendly societies. In 1904 Mr Long, then president of the Local Government Board, proposed that local voluntary distress committees should be established in London consisting of poor-law guardians and town councillors and others, more or less supervised by a central committee and ultimately by the Local Government Board. This organization was set on foot and large sums were subscribed for its work. The report on the results of the movement was somewhat doubtful (Report, London Unemployed Fund, 1904-1905, p. 101, &c.), but in 1905 the Unemployed Workmen's Act was passed, and in London and elsewhere distress committees like the voluntary committees of the previous year were established by statute. It was enacted that for establishment expenses, emigration and removal, labour exchanges, and the acquisition of land a halfpenny rate might be levied, but that the rate would not be available for the remuneration of men employed. For this purpose (1905-1906) a large charitable fund was raised. A training farm at Hollesley Bay was acquired, and it was hoped to train Londoners there to become fit for agricultural work. It is impossible to judge this experiment properly, on the evidence available up to 1908. But one or two points are important: (1) something very like the "right to labour" has been granted by the legislature; (2) this has been done apart from the conditions required by the poor-laws and orders of the Local Government Board on poor relief and without imposing disfranchisement on the men employed; (3) a labour rate has not been levied, but a rate has been levied in aid of the provision of employment; (4) if the line of development that the act suggests were to be followed (as the renewed Labour agitation in 1908-1909 made probable) it must tend to create a class of "unemployed," unskilled labourers of varying grades of industry who may become the dependent and state-supported proletariat of modern urban life. Thus, unless the administration be extremely rigorous, once more will a kind of serfdom be established, to be, as some would say, taken over hereafter by the socialist state.

Vagrancy.

In some of the English colonies Homeric hospitality still prevails, but by degrees the station-house or some refuge is established in the towns as they grow more populous. Finally, some system of labour in exchange for relief is evolved. At first this is voluntary, afterwards it is officially recognized, and finally it may become part of the system of public relief. As bad years come, these changes are made step by step. In England the vagrant or wayfarer is tolerated and discouraged, but not kept employed. He should be under greater pressure to maintain himself, it is thought. The provision made for him in different parts of the country is far from uniform, and now, usually, at least in the larger towns, after he has had a bath and food, he is admitted to a separate room or cell in a casual ward. Before he leaves he has to do a task of work, and, subject to the discretion of the master, he is detained two nights. This plan has reduced vagrancy, and if it were universally adopted clean accommodation would everywhere be provided for the vagrant without the attractions of a common or "associated" ward; and probably vagrancy would diminish still further. It seems almost needless to say that, in these circumstances at any rate, casual alms should not be given to vagrants. They know much better how to provide for themselves than the almsgiver imagines, for vagrancy is in the main a mode of life not the result of any casual difficulty. Vagrancy and criminality are also nearly allied. The magistrate, therefore, rather than the almsgiver, should usually interfere; and, as a rule, where the magistrates are strict, vagrancy in a county diminishes. An inter-departmental committee (1906) taking generally this line, reported in favour of vagrants being placed entirely under police control, and it recommended a system of wayfarers' tickets for men on the roads who are not habitual vagrants, and the committal of men likely to become habitual vagrants to certified labour colonies for not less than six months. Still undoubtedly vagrancy has its economic side. In a bad year the number of tramps is increased by the addition of unskilled and irresponsible labourers, who are soonest discharged when work is slack. As a part-voluntary system under official recognition the German _Arbeiter-colonien_ are of interest. This in a measure has led to the introduction of labour homes in England, the justification of which should be that they recruit the energy of the men who find their way to them, and enable them to earn a living which they could not do otherwise. In a small percentage of cases their result may be achieved. Charitable refuges or philanthropic common lodging-houses, usually established in districts where this class already congregate, only aggravate the difficulty. They give additional attractions to a vagrant and casual life, and make it more endurable. They also make a comfortable avoidance of the responsibilities of family life comparatively easy, and in so far as they do this they are clearly injurious to the community.

American conditions and methods.

The English colonists of the New England states and Pennsylvania introduced the disciplinary religious and relief system of Protestantism and the Elizabethan poor-law. To the former reference has already been made. With an appreciation of the fact that the cause of distress is not usually poverty, but weakness of character and want of judgment, and that relief is in itself no remedy, those who have inherited the old Puritan traditions have, in the light of toleration and a larger social experience, organized the method of friendly visiting, the object of which is illustrated by the motto, "Not alms, but a friend." To the friendship of charity is thus given a disciplinary force, capable of immense expansion and usefulness, if the friendship on the side of those who would help is sincere and guided by practical knowledge and sagacity, and if on the side of those in distress there is awakened a reciprocal regard and a willingness to change their way of life by degrees. Visiting by "districts" is set aside, for "friendliness" is not a quality easily diffused over a wide area. To be real it must be limited as time and ability allow. Consequently, a friendly visitor usually befriends but one or two, or in any case only a few, families. The friendly visitor is the outcome of the movement for "associated charities," but in America charity organization societies have also adopted the term, and to a certain extent the method. Between the two movements there is the closest affinity. The registration of applicants for relief is much more complete in American cities than in England, where the plan meets with comparatively little support. At the office of the associated charities in Boston there is a central and practically a complete register of all the applications made to the public authority for poor relief, to the associated charities, and to many other voluntary bodies.

The Elizabethan poor-law system, with the machinery of overseers, poor-houses and out-door relief, is still maintained in New England, New York state and Pennsylvania, but with many modifications, especially in New York. A chief factor in these changes has been immigration. While the County or town remained the administrative area for local poor relief, the large number of immigrant and "unsettled" poor, and the business connected with their removal from the state, entailed the establishment of a secondary or state system of administration and aid, with special classes of institutions to which the counties or towns could send their poor, as, for instance, state reform schools, farms, almshouses, &c. For the oversight of these institutions, and often of prisons also and lunatic asylums, in many states there have been established state boards of "charity or corrections and charity." The members of these boards are selected by the state for a term of years, and give their services honorarily. There are state boards in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, North Carolina and elsewhere. There is also a district board of charities in the district of Columbia. These boards publish most useful and detailed reports. Besides the state board there is sometimes also, as in New York, a State Charities Aid Association, whose members, in the counties in which they reside, have a legal right of entry to visit and inspect any public or charitable institution owned by the state, and any county and other poor-house. A large association of visitors accustomed to inspect and report on institutions has thus been created. Further, the counties and towns in New York state, for instance, and Massachusetts, and the almshouse districts in Pennsylvania, are under boards of supervision. Usually the overseers give out-door relief, and the pauperism of some areas is as high as that in some English unions, 3, 4 and 5%. On the whole population of the United States, however, and of individual states, consisting to a great extent of comparatively young and energetic immigrants, the pauperism is insignificant. In Massachusetts "it has been the general policy of the state to order the removal to the state almshouse of unsettled residents of the several cities and towns in need of temporary aid, thus avoiding some of the abuses incident to out-door relief." In New York state, in the city of New York, including Brooklyn, the distribution of out-door relief by the department of charities is forbidden, except for purposes of transportation and for the adult blind. Most counties in the state have an almshouse, and the county superintendents and overseers of the poor "furnish necessary relief to such of the county poor as may require only temporary assistance, or are so disabled that they cannot be safely removed to the almshouse." Public attention is in many cases being drawn to the inutility and injury of out-door relief.

In some states and cities the system of subsidizing voluntary institutions is in full force, and it is in force also in many English colonies. At first sight it has the advantage of providing relief for public purposes without the creation of a new staff or establishment. There is thus an apparent economy. But the evils are many. Political partisanship and favour may influence the amount and disposition of the grants. The grants act as a bounty on the establishment and continuance of charitable institutions, homes for children, hospitals, &c., but not on the expansion of the voluntary charitable funds and efforts that should maintain them; and thus charitable homes exist in which charity in its truer sense may have little part, but in which the chief motive of the administration may be to support sectarian interests by public subsidies. Claimants for relief have little scruple in turning such institutions to their own account; and the institutions, being financially irresponsible, are not in these circumstances scrupulous on their side to prevent a misdirection of their bounties. "Parents unload their children upon the community more recklessly when they know that such children will be provided for in private orphan asylums and protectories, where the religious training that the parents prefer will be given them" (Amos G. Warner, in _International Congress: Charities and Correction_, 1893). Past history in New York city illustrates the same evil. The admission was entirely in the hands of the managers. They admitted; the city paid. In New York city the population between 1870 and 1890 increased about 80%; the subsidies for prisoners and public paupers increased by 43%, but those for paupers in private institutions increased from $334,828 to $1,845,872, or about 461%. The total was at that time $3,794,972; in 1898 it was rather less, $3,132,786. The alternative to this system is either the establishment of state or municipal institutions, and possibly in special cases payments to voluntary homes for the maintenance of inmates admitted at the request of a state authority, as at certified and other homes in England, with grants made conditional on the work being conducted on specified lines, and subject to a certain increasing amount of voluntary financial support; or a close general and financial inspection of charitable institutions--the method of reform adopted in New York; or payment for only those inmates who are sent by public authorities and admitted on their request.

The enormous extent to which children's aid societies have been increased in the United States, sometimes with the help of considerable public grants, suggests the greatest need for caution from the point of the preservation of the family as the central element of social strength in the community. The problem of charity in relation to medical relief in the large towns of the United States is similar to that of England; its difficulties are alike.

LITERATURE.--As good translations of the classics become accessible it is easy for the general reader or student to combine a study of the principles of charity in relation to the community with a study of history. Thus, and in connexion with special investigations and the conditions of practical charity, social economics may best be studied. In N. Masterman, _Chalmers on Charity_ (1900); T. Mackay, _Methods of Social Reform_ (1896); B. Bosanquet and others, _Some Aspects of the Social Problem_ (1894); and C.S. Loch, _Methods of Social Advance_ (1904), this point of view is generally assumed. Special investigations of importance may be found in the reports of medical officers of health. See Report of Committee on Physical Deterioration referred to above, and, for instance, Dr Newsholme's _Vital Statistics_ and Charles Booth's _Labour and Life in London_. For the history of charity there is no good single work. On details there are many good articles in Daremberg's _Dictionary of Classical Antiquities_, and similar works. _Modern Methods of Charity_, by C.H. Henderson and others (1904), supplies much general information in regard to poor relief and charity in different countries. Apart from books and official documents mentioned in the text as indicating the present state of charitable and public relief, or as aids to practical work, the following may be of service. England:--_Annual Charities' Register and Digest, with Introduction on "How to help Cases of Distress"_; the _Charity Organization Review; Occasional Papers_ (3 vols.), published by the London Charity Organization Society (1896-1906); _Reports of Proceedings of Conferences of Poor-Law Guardians; The Strength of the People_, by Helen Bosanquet; _Homes of the London Poor_ and _Our Common Land_, by Miss Octavia Hill; _The Queen's Poor_, by M. Loane. United States of America:--_The Proceedings of the International Conference on Charities and Correction_ (1894), and the proceedings of the annual conferences; _Friendly Visiting among the Poor_, by Mary E. Richmond (1899); _American Charities_, by Amos G. Warner (1908); _The Practice of Charity_, by E.T. Devine; _Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften_, by Dr J. Conrad, &c., vol. ii.; _Das Armenwesen in den Vereinigten Staaten von America_, by Dr Francis G. Peabody (1897); the _Charities Review_, published monthly by the New York Charity Organization Society; the Papers and Reports of the Boston and Baltimore societies. France:--_La Bibliographie charitable_, by Camille Granier (1891); _La Charite avant et depuis 1789_, by P. Hubert Valleroux; Fascicules of the _Conseil superieur de l'assistance publique, Revue d'assistance_, published by the _Societe Internationale pour l'etude des questions d'assistance_. Germany:--Reports and Proceedings of the _Deutsche Vereine fur Armenpflege und Wohltatigkeit; Die Armenpflege_, a practical handbook, by Dr E. Munsterberg (1897). Austria:--_Osterreichs Wohlfahrtseinrichtungen, 1848-1898_, by Dr Ernest Mischler (1899). (C. S. L.)

CHARIVARI, a French term of uncertain origin, but probably onomatopoeic, for a mock serenade "rough music," made by beating on kettles, fire-irons, tea-trays or what not. The charivari was anciently in France a regular wedding custom, all bridal couples being thus serenaded. Later it was reserved for ill-assorted and unpopular marriages, for widows or widowers who remarried too soon, and generally as a mockery for all who were unpopular. At the beginning of the 17th century, wedding charivaris were forbidden by the Council of Tours under pain of excommunication, but the custom still lingers in rural districts. The French of Louisiana and Canada introduced the charivari into America, where it became known under the corrupted name of "shivaree."

CHARKHARI, a native state in the Bundelkhand agency of Central India. Area, 745 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 123,594; estimated revenue L33,000. It is surrounded on all sides by other states of Central India, except near Charkhari town, where it meets the United Provinces. It was founded by Bijai Bahadur (vikramaditya), a _sanad_ being granted him in 1804 and another in 1811. The chief, whose title is maharaja, is a Rajput of the Bundela clan, descended from Chhatar Sal, the champion of the independence of Bundelkhand in the 18th century. In 1857 Raja Ratan Singh received a hereditary salute of 11 guns, a _khilat_ and a perpetual _jagir_ of L1300 a year in recognition of his services during the Mutiny. The town of Charkhari (locally _Maharajnagar_) is 40 m. W. of Banda; pop. (1901) 11,718.

CHARLATAN (Ital. _ciarlatano_, from _ciarlare_, to chatter), originally one who "patters" to a crowd to sell his wares, like a "cheap-jack" or "quack" doctor--"quack" being similarly derived from the noise made by a duck; so an impostor who pretends to have some special skill or knowledge.

CHARLEMAGNE [CHARLES THE GREAT] (c. 742-814), Roman emperor, and king of the Franks, was the elder son of Pippin the Short, king of the Franks, and Bertha, or Bertrada, daughter of Charibert, count of Laon. The place of his birth is unknown and its date uncertain, although some authorities give it as the 2nd of April 742; doubts have been cast upon his legitimacy, and it is just possible that the marriage of Pippin and Bertha took place subsequent to the birth of their elder son. When Pippin was crowned king of the Franks at St Denis on the 28th of July 754 by Pope Stephen II., Charles, and his brother Carloman were anointed by the pope as a sign of their kingly rank. The rough surroundings of the Frankish court were unfavourable to the acquisition of learning, and Charles grew up almost ignorant of letters, but hardy in body and skilled in the use of weapons.

In 761 he accompanied his father on a campaign in Aquitaine, and in 763 undertook the government of several counties. In 768 Pippin divided his dominions between his two sons, and on his death soon afterwards Charles became the ruler of the northern portion of the Frankish kingdom, and was crowned at Noyon on the 9th of October 768. Bad feeling had existed for some time between Charles and Carloman, and when Charles early in 769 was called upon to suppress a rising in Aquitaine, his brother refused to afford him any assistance. This rebellion, however, was easily crushed, its leader, the Aquitainian duke Hunold, was made prisoner, and his territory more closely attached to the Frankish kingdom. About this time Bertha, having effected a temporary reconciliation between her sons, overcame the repugnance with which Pope Stephen III. regarded an alliance between Frank and Lombard, and brought about a marriage between Charles and a daughter of Desiderius, king of the Lombards. Charles had previously contracted a union, probably of an irregular nature, with a Frankish lady named Himiltrude, who had borne him a son Pippin, the "Hunchback." The peace with the Lombards, in which the Bavarians as allies of Desiderius joined, was, however, soon broken. Charles thereupon repudiated his Lombard wife (Bertha or Desiderata) and married in 771 a princess of the Alamanni named Hildegarde. Carloman died in December 771, and Charles was at once recognized at Corbeny as sole king of the Franks. Carloman's widow Gerberga had fled to the protection of the Lombard king, who espoused her cause and requested the new pope, Adrian I., to recognize her two sons as the lawful Frankish kings. Adrian, between whom and the Lombards other causes of quarrel existed, refused to assent to this demand, and when Desiderius invaded the papal territories he appealed to the Frankish king for help. Charles, who was at the moment engaged in his first Saxon campaign, expostulated with Desiderius; but when such mild measures proved useless he led his forces across the Alps in 773. Gerberga and her children were delivered up and disappear from history; the siege of Pavia was undertaken; and at Easter 774 the king left the seat of war and visited Rome, where he was received with great respect.

During his stay in the city Charles renewed the donation which his father Pippin had made to the papacy in 754 or 756. This transaction has given rise to much discussion as to its trustworthiness and the extent of its operation. Our only authority, a passage in the _Liber Pontificalis_, describes the gift as including the whole of Italy and Corsica, except the lands north of the Po, Calabria and the city of Naples. The vast extent of this donation, which, moreover, included territories not owning Charles's authority, and the fact that the king did not execute, or apparently attempt to execute, its provisions, has caused many scholars to look upon the passage as a forgery; but the better opinion would appear to be that it is genuine, or at least has a genuine basis. Various explanations have been suggested. The area of the grant may have been enlarged by later interpolations; or it may have dealt with property rather than with sovereignty, and have only referred to estates claimed by the pope in the territories named; or it is possible that Charles may have actually intended to establish an extensive papal kingdom in Italy, but was released from his promise by Adrian when the pope saw no chance of its fulfilment. Another supposition is that the author of the _Liber Pontificalis_ gives the papal interpretation of a grant that had been expressed by Pippin in ambiguous terms; and this view is supported by the history of the subsequent controversy between king and pope.

Returning to the scene of hostilities, Charles witnessed the capitulation of Pavia in June 774, and the capture of Desiderius, who was sent into a monastery. He now took the title "king of the Lombards," to which he added the dignity of "Patrician of the Romans," which had been granted to his father. Adalgis, the son of Desiderius, who was residing at Constantinople, hoped the emperor Leo IV. would assist him in recovering his father's kingdom; but a coalition formed for this purpose was ineffectual, and a rising led by his ally Rothgaud, duke of Friuli, was easily crushed by Charles in 776. In 777 the king was visited at Paderborn by three Saracen chiefs who implored his aid against Abd-ar-Rahman, the caliph of Cordova, and promised some Spanish cities in return for help. Seizing this opportunity to extend his influence Charles marched into Spain in 778 and took Pampeluna, but meeting with some checks decided to return. As the Frankish forces were defiling through the passes of the Pyrenees they were attacked by the Wascones (probably Basques), and the rear-guard of the army was almost annihilated. It was useless to attempt to avenge this disaster, which occurred on the 15th of August 778, for the enemy disappeared as quickly as he came; the incident has passed from the domain of history into that of legend and romance, being associated by tradition with the pass of Roncesvalles. Among the slain was one Hruodland, or Roland, margrave of the Breton march, whose death gave rise to the _Chanson de Roland_ (see ROLAND, LEGEND OF).

Charles now sought to increase his authority in Italy, where Frankish counts were set over various districts, and where Hildebrand, duke of Spoleto, appears to have recognized his overlordship. In 780 he was again in the peninsula, and at Mantua issued an important _capitulary_ which increased the authority of the Lombard bishops, relieved freemen who under stress of famine had sold themselves into servitude, and condemned abuses of the system of vassalage. At the same time commerce was encouraged by the abolition of unauthorized tolls and by an improvement of the coinage; while the sale of arms to hostile peoples, and the trade in Christian slaves were forbidden. Proceeding to Rome, the king appears to have come to some arrangement with Adrian about the donation of 774. At Easter 781, Carloman, his second son by Hildegarde, was renamed Pippin and crowned king of Italy by Pope Adrian, and his youngest son Louis was crowned king of Aquitaine; but no mention was made at the time of his eldest son Charles, who was doubtless intended to be king of the Franks. In 783 the king, having lost his wife Hildegarde, married Fastrada, the daughter of a Frankish count named Radolf; and in the same year his mother Bertha died. The emperor Constantine VI. was at this time exhibiting some interest in Italian affairs, and Adalgis the Lombard was still residing at his court; so Charles sought to avert danger from this quarter by consenting in 781 to a marriage between Constantine and his own daughter Rothrude. In 786 the entreaties of the pope and the hostile attitude of Arichis II., duke of Benevento, a son-in-law of Desiderius, called the king again into Italy. Arichis submitted without a struggle, though the basis of Frankish authority in his duchy was far from secure; but in conjunction with Adalgis he sought aid from Constantinople. His plans were ended by his death in 787, and although the empress Irene, the real ruler of the eastern empire, broke off the projected marriage between her son and Rothrude, she appears to have given very little assistance to Adalgis, whose attack on Italy was easily repulsed. During this visit Charles had presented certain towns to Adrian, but an estrangement soon arose between king and pope over the claim of Charles to confirm the election to the archbishopric of Ravenna, and it was accentuated by Adrian's objection to the establishment by Charles of Grimoald III. as duke of Benevento, in succession to his father Arichis.

These journeys and campaigns, however, were but interludes in the long and stubborn struggle between Charles and the Saxons, which began in 772 and ended in 804 with the incorporation of Saxony in the Carolingian empire (see SAXONY). This contest, in which the king himself took a very active part, brought the Franks into collision with the Wiltzi, a tribe dwelling east of the Elbe, who in 789 was reduced to dependence. A similar sequence of events took place in southern Germany. Tassilo III., duke of the Bavarians, who had on several occasions adopted a line of conduct inconsistent with his allegiance to Charles, was deposed in 788 and his duchy placed under the rule of Gerold, a brother-in-law of Charles, to be governed on the Frankish system (see BAVARIA). Having thus taken upon himself the control of Bavaria, Charles felt himself responsible for protecting its eastern frontier, which had long been menaced by the Avars, a people inhabiting the region now known as Hungary. He accordingly ravaged their country in 791 at the head of an army containing Saxon, Frisian, Bavarian and Alamannian warriors, which penetrated as far as the Raab; and he spent the following year in Bavaria preparing for a second campaign against them, the conduct of which, however, he was compelled by further trouble in Saxony to entrust to his son king Pippin, and to Eric, margrave of Friuli. These deputies succeeded in 795 and 796 in taking possession of the vast treasures of the Avars, which were distributed by the king with lavish generosity to churches, courtiers and friends. A conspiracy against Charles, which his friend and biographer Einhard alleges was provoked by the cruelties of Queen Fastrada, was suppressed without difficulty in 792, and its leader, the king's illegitimate son Pippin, was confined in a monastery till his death in 811. Fastrada died in August 794, when Charles took for his fourth wife an Alamannian lady named Liutgarde.

The continuous interest taken by the king in ecclesiastical affairs was shown at the synod of Frankfort, over which he presided in 794. It was on his initiative that this synod condemned the heresy of _adoptianism_ and the worship of images, which had been restored in 787 by the second council of Nicaea; and at the same time that council was declared to have been superfluous. This policy caused a further breach with Pope Adrian; but when Adrian died in December 795, his successor, Leo III., in notifying his elevation to the king, sent him the keys of St Peter's grave and the banner of the city, and asked Charles to send an envoy to receive his oath of fidelity. There is no doubt that Leo recognized Charles as sovereign of Rome. He was the first pope to date his acts according to the years of the Frankish monarchy, and a mosaic of the time in the Lateran palace represents St Peter bestowing the banners upon Charles as a token of temporal supremacy, while the coinage issued by the pope bears witness to the same idea. Leo soon had occasion to invoke the aid of his protector. In 799, after he had been attacked and maltreated in the streets of Rome during a procession, he escaped to the king at Paderborn, and Charles sent him back to Italy escorted by some of his most trusted servants. Taking the same journey himself shortly afterwards, the king reached Rome in 800 for the purpose (as he declared) of restoring discipline in the church. His authority was undisputed; and after Leo had cleared himself by an oath of certain charges made against him, Charles restored the pope and banished his leading opponents.

The great event of this visit took place on the succeeding Christmas Day, when Charles on rising from prayer in St Peter's was crowned by Leo and proclaimed emperor and _augustus_ amid the acclamations of the crowd. This act can hardly have been unpremeditated, and some doubt has been cast upon the statement which Einhard attributes to Charles, that he would not have entered the building had he known of the intention of Leo. He accepted the dignity at any rate without demur, and there seems little doubt that the question of assuming, or obtaining, this title had previously been discussed. His policy had been steadily leading up to this position, which was rather the emblem of the power he already held than an extension of the area of his authority. It is probable therefore that Charles either considered the coronation premature, as he was hoping to obtain the assent of the eastern empire to this step, or that, from fear of evils which he foresaw from the claim of the pope to crown the emperor, he wished to crown himself. All the evidence tends to show that it was the time or manner of the act rather than the act itself which aroused his temporary displeasure. Contemporary accounts lay stress upon the fact that as there was then no emperor, Constantinople being under the rule of Irene, it seemed good to Leo and his counsellors and the "rest of the Christian people" to choose Charles, already ruler of Rome, to fill the vacant office. However doubtful such conjectures concerning his intentions may be, it is certain that immediately after his coronation Charles sought to establish friendly relations with Constantinople, and even suggested a marriage between himself and Irene, as he had again become a widower in 800. The deposition and death of the empress foiled this plan; and after a desultory warfare in Italy between the two empires, negotiations were recommenced which in 810 led to an arrangement between Charles and the eastern emperor, Nicephorus I. The death of Nicephorus and the accession of Michael I. did not interfere with the relations, and in 812 an embassy from Constantinople arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle, when Charles was acknowledged as emperor, and in return agreed to cede Venice and Dalmatia to Michael.

Increasing years and accumulating responsibilities now caused the emperor to alter somewhat his manner of life. No longer leading his armies in person he entrusted the direction of campaigns in various parts of his empire to his sons and other lieutenants, and from his favourite residence at Aix watched their progress with a keen and sustained interest. In 802 he ordered that a new oath of fidelity to him as emperor should be taken by all his subjects over twelve years of age. In 804 he was visited by Pope Leo, who returned to Rome laden with gifts. Before his coronation as emperor, Charles had entered into communications with the caliph of Bagdad, Harun-al-Rashid, probably in order to protect the eastern Christians, and in 801 he had received an embassy and presents from Harun. In the same year the patriarch of Jerusalem sent him the keys of the Holy Sepulchre; and in 807 Harun not only sent further gifts, but appears to have confirmed the emperor's rights in Jerusalem, which, however, probably amounted to no more than an undefined protectorate over the Christians in that part of the world. While thus extending his influence even into Asia, there was scarcely any part of Europe where the power of Charles did not make itself felt. He had not visited Spain since the disaster of Roncesvalles, but he continued to take a lively interest in the affairs of that country. In 798 he had concluded an alliance with Alphonso II., king of the Asturias, and a series of campaigns mainly under the leadership of King Louis resulted in the establishment of the "Spanish march," a district between the Pyrenees and the Ebro stretching from Pampeluna to Barcelona, as a defence against the Saracens. In 799 the Balearic Islands had been handed over to Charles, and a long warfare was carried on both by sea and land between Frank and Saracen until 810, when peace was made between the emperor and El-Hakem, the emir of Cordova. Italy was equally the scene of continuous fighting. Grimoald of Benevento rebelled against his overlord; the possession of Venice and Dalmatia was disputed by the two empires; and Istria was brought into subjection.

With England the emperor had already entered into relations, and at one time a marriage was proposed between his son Charles and a daughter of Offa, king of the Mercians. English exiles were welcomed at his court; he was mainly instrumental in restoring Eardwulf to the throne of Northumbria in 809; and Einhard includes the Scots within the sphere of his influence. In eastern Europe the Avars had owned themselves completely under his power in 805; campaigns against the Czechs in 805 and 806 had met with some success, and about the same time the land of the Sorbs was ravaged; while at the western extremity of the continent the Breton nobles had done homage to Charles at Tours in 800. Thus the emperor's dominions now stretched from the Eider to the Ebro, and from the Atlantic to the Elbe, the Saale and the Raab, and they also included the greater part of Italy; while even beyond these bounds he exercised an acknowledged but shadowy authority. In 806 Charles arranged a division of his territories among his three legitimate sons, but this arrangement came to nothing owing to the death of Pippin in 810, and of the younger Charles in the following year. Charles then named his remaining son Louis as his successor; and at his father's command Louis took the crown from the altar and placed it upon his own head. This ceremony took place at Aix on the 11th of September 813. In 808 the Frankish authority over the Obotrites was interfered with by Gudrod (Godfrey), king of the Danes, who ravaged the Frisian coasts and spoke boastfully of leading his troops to Aix. To ward off these attacks Charles took a warm interest in the building of a fleet, which he reviewed in 811; but by this time Gudrod had been killed, and his successor Hemming made peace with the emperor.

In 811 Charles made his will, which shows that he contemplated the possibility of abdication. The bulk of his possessions were left to the twenty-one metropolitan churches of his dominions, and the remainder to his children, his servants and the poor. In his last years he passed most of his days at Aix, though he had sufficient energy to take the field for a short time during the Danish War. Early in 814 he was attacked by a fever which he sought to subdue by fasting; but pleurisy supervened, and after partaking of the communion, he died on the 28th of January 814, and on the same day his body was buried in the church of St Mary at Aix. In the year 1000 his tomb was opened by the emperor Otto III., but the account that Otto found the body upright upon a throne with a golden crown on the head and holding a golden sceptre in the hands, is generally regarded as legendary. The tomb was again opened by the emperor Frederick I. in 1165, when the remains were removed from a marble sarcophagus and placed in a wooden coffin. Fifty years later they were transferred by order of the emperor Frederick II. to a splendid shrine, in which the relics are still exhibited once in every six years. The sarcophagus in which the body originally lay may still be seen at Aix, and other relics of the great emperor are in the imperial treasury at Vienna. In 1165 Charles was canonized by the antipope Paschal III. at the instance of the emperor Frederick I., and Louis XI. of France gave strict orders that the feast of the saint should be observed.

The personal appearance of Charles is thus described by Einhard:--"Big and robust in frame, he was tall, but not excessively so, measuring about seven of his own feet in height. His eyes were large and lustrous, his nose rather long and his countenance bright and cheerful." He had a commanding presence, a clear but somewhat feeble voice, and in later life became rather corpulent. His health was uniformly good, owing perhaps to his moderation in eating and drinking, and to his love for hunting and swimming. He was an affectionate father, and loved to pass his time in the company of his children, to whose education he paid the closest attention. His sons were trained for war and the chase, and his daughters instructed in the spinning of wool and other feminine arts. His ideas of sexual morality were primitive. Many concubines are spoken of, he had several illegitimate children, and the morals of his daughters were very loose. He was a regular observer of religious rites, took great pains to secure decorum in the services of the church, and was generous in almsgiving both within his empire and without. He reformed the Frankish liturgy, and brought singers from Rome to improve the services of the church. He had considerable knowledge of theology, took a prominent part in the theological controversies of the time, and was responsible for the addition of the clause _filioque_ to the Nicene Creed. The most attractive feature of his character, however, was his love of learning. In addition to his native tongue he could read Latin and understood Greek, but he was unable to write, and Einhard gives an account of his futile efforts to learn this art in later life. He loved the reading of histories and astronomy, and by questioning travellers gained some knowledge of distant parts of the earth. He attended lectures on grammar, and his favourite work was St Augustine's _De civitate Dei_. He caused Frankish sagas to be collected, began a grammar of his native tongue, and spent some of his last hours in correcting a text of the Vulgate. He delighted in the society of scholars--Alcuin, Angilbert, Paul the Lombard, Peter of Pisa and others, and in this company the trappings of rank were laid aside and the emperor was known simply as David. Under his patronage Alcuin organized the school of the palace, where the royal children were taught in the company of others, and founded a school at Tours which became the model for many other establishments. Charles was unwearying in his efforts to improve the education of clergy and laity, and in 789 ordered that schools should be established in every diocese. The atmosphere of these schools was strictly ecclesiastical and the questions discussed by the scholars were often puerile, but the greatness of the educational work of Charles will not be doubted when one considers the rude condition of Frankish society half a century before. The main work of the Carolingian renaissance was to restore Latin to its position as a literary language, and to reintroduce a correct system of spelling and an improved handwriting. The manuscripts of the time are accurate and artistic, copies of valuable books were made and by careful collation the texts were purified.

Charles was not a great warrior. His victories were won rather by the power of organization, which he possessed in a marked degree, and he was eager to seize ideas and prompt in their execution. He erected a stone bridge with wooden piers across the Rhine at Mainz, and began a canal between the Altmuhl and the Rednitz to connect the Rhine and the Danube, but this work was not finished. He built palaces at Aix (his favourite residence), Nijmwegen and Ingelheim, and erected the church of St Mary at Aix, modelled on that of St Vitalis at Ravenna and adorned with columns and mosaics brought from the same city. He loved the simple dress and manners of the Franks, and on two occasions only did he assume the more stately attire of a Roman noble. The administrative system of Charles in church and state was largely personal, and he brought to the work an untiring industry, and a marvellous grasp of detail. He admonished the pope, appointed the bishops, watched over the morals and work of the clergy, and took an active part in the deliberations of church synods; he founded bishoprics and monasteries, was lavish in his gifts to ecclesiastical foundations, and chose bishops and abbots for administrative work. As the real founder of the ecclesiastical state, he must be held mainly responsible for the evils which resulted from the policy of the church in exalting the ecclesiastical over the secular authority.

In secular affairs Charles abolished the office of duke, placed counts over districts smaller than the former duchies, and supervised their government by means of _missi dominici_, officials responsible to himself alone. Marches were formed on all the borders of the empire, and the exigencies of military service led to the growth of a system of land-tenure which contained the germ of feudalism. The assemblies of the people gradually changed their character under his rule. No longer did the nation come together to direct and govern, but the emperor summoned his people to assent to his acts. Taking a lively interest in commerce and agriculture, Charles issued various regulations for the organization of the one and the improvement of the other. He introduced a new system of weights and measures, which he ordered should be used throughout his kingdom, and took steps to reform the coinage. He was a voluminous lawgiver. Without abolishing the customary law of the German tribes, which is said to have been committed to writing by his orders, he added to it by means of _capitularies_, and thus introduced certain Christian principles and customs, and some degree of uniformity.

The extent and glamour of his empire exercised a potent spell on western Europe. The aim of the greatest of his successors was to restore it to its pristine position and influence, while many of the French rulers made its re-establishment the goal of their policy. Otto the Great to a considerable extent succeeded; Louis XIV. referred frequently to the empire of Charlemagne; and Napoleon regarded him as his prototype and predecessor. The empire of Charles, however, was not lasting. In spite of his own wonderful genius the seeds of weakness were sown in his lifetime. The church was too powerful, an incipient feudalism was present, and there was no real bond of union between the different races that acknowledged his authority. All the vigilance of the emperor could not restrain the dishonesty and the cupidity of his servants, and no sooner was the strong hand of their ruler removed than they began to acquire territorial power for themselves.

AUTHORITIES.--The chief authorities for the life and times of Charlemagne are Einhard's _Vita Karoli Magni_, the _Annales Laurissenses majores_, the _Annales Fuldenses_, and other annals, which are published in the _Monumenta Germaniae historica_. _Scriptores_, Band i. and ii., edited by G.H. Pertz (Hanover and Berlin, 1826-1892). For the capitularies see _Capitularia regum Francorum_, edited by A. Boretius in the _Monumenta. Leges_. Many of the songs of the period appear in the _Poetae Latini aevi Carolini_, edited by E. Dummler (Berlin, 1881-1884). The _Bibliotheca rerum Germanicarum_, tome iv., edited by Ph. Jaffe (Berlin, 1864-1873), contains some of the emperor's correspondence, and Hincmar's _De ordine palatii_, edited by M. Prou (Paris, 1884), is also valuable.

The best modern authorities are S. Abel and B. Simson, _Jahrbucher des frankischen Reiches unter Karl dem Grossen_ (Leipzig, 1883-1888); G. Richter and H. Kohl, _Annalen des frankischen Reichs im Zeitalter der Karolinger_ (Halle, 1885-1887); E. Muhlbacher, _Deutsche Geschichte unter den Karolingern_ (Stuttgart, 1886); H. Brosien, _Karl der Grosse_ (Leipzig and Prague, 1885); J.I. Mombert, _History of Charles the Great_ (London, 1888); M. Lipp, _Das frankische Grenzsystem unter Karl dem Grossen_ (Breslau, 1892); J. von Dollinger, _Das Kaiserthum Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_ (Munich, 1864); F. von Wyss, _Karl der Grosse als Gesetzgeber_ (Zurich, 1869); Th. Sickel, _Lehre von den Urkunden der ersten Karolinger_ (Vienna, 1867); E. Dummler in the _Allgemeine deutsche Biographie_, Band xv.; Th. Lindner, _Die Fabel von der Bestattung Karls des Grossen_ (Aix-la-Chapelle, 1893); J.A. Ketterer, _Karl der Grosse und die Kirche_ (Munich and Leipzig, 1898); and J.B. Mullinger, _The Schools of Charles the Great and the Restoration of Education in the 9th century_ (London, 1877).

The work of the monk of St Gall is found in the _Monumenta_, Band ii.; an edition of the _Historia de vita Caroli Magni et Rolandi_, edited by F. Castets, has been published (Paris, 1880), and an edition of the _Kaiserchronik_, edited by E. Schroder (Hanover, 1892). See also P. Clemen, _Die Portratdarstellung Karls des Grossen_ (Aix-la-Chapelle, 1896). (A. W. H.*)

THE CHARLEMAGNE LEGENDS

Innumerable legends soon gathered round the memory of the great emperor. He was represented as a warrior performing superhuman feats, as a ruler dispensing perfect justice, and even as a martyr suffering for the faith. It was confidently believed towards the close of the 10th century that he had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and, like many other great rulers, it was reported that he was only sleeping to awake in the hour of his country's need. We know from Einhard (_Vita Karoli_, cap. xxix.) that the Frankish heroic ballads were drawn up in writing by Charlemagne's order, and it may be accepted as certain that he was himself the subject of many such during his lifetime. The legendary element crept even into the Latin panegyrics produced by the court poets. Before the end of the 9th century a monk of St Gall drew up a chronicle _De gestis Karoli Magni_, which was based partly on oral tradition, received from an old soldier named Adalbert, who had served in Charlemagne's army. This recital contains various fabulous incidents. The author relates a conversation between Otkar the Frank (Ogier the Dane) and the Lombard king Desiderius (Didier) on the walls of Pavia in view of Charlemagne's advancing army. To Didier's repeated question "Is this the emperor?" Otkar continues to answer "Not yet," adding at last "When thou shalt see the fields bristling with an iron harvest, and the Po and the Ticino swollen with sea-floods, inundating the walls of the city with iron billows, then shall Karl be nigh at hand." This episode, which bears the marks of popular heroic poetry, may well be the substance of a lost Carolingian _cantilena_.[1]

The legendary Charlemagne and his warriors were endowed with the great deeds of earlier kings and heroes of the Frankish kingdom, for the romancers were not troubled by considerations of chronology. National traditions extending over centuries were grouped round Charlemagne, his father Pippin, and his son Louis. The history of Charles Martel especially was absorbed in the Charlemagne legend. But if Charles's name was associated with the heroism of his predecessors he was credited with equal readiness with the weaknesses of his successors. In the earlier _chansons de geste_ he is invariably a majestic figure and represents within limitations the grandeur of the historic Charles. But in the histories of the wars with his vassals he is often little more than a tyrannical dotard, who is made to submit to gross insult. This picture of affairs is drawn from later times, and the sympathies of the poet are generally with the rebels against the monarchy. Historical tradition was already dim when the hypothetical and much discussed _cantilenae_, which may be taken to have formed the repository of the national legends from the 8th to the 10th century, were succeeded in the 11th and the early l2th centuries by the _chansons de geste_. The early poems of the cycle sometimes contain curious information on the Frankish methods in war, in council and in judicial procedure, which had no parallels in contemporary institutions. The account in the _Chanson de Roland_ of the trial of Ganelon after the battle of Roncesvalles must have been adopted almost intact from earlier poets, and provides a striking example of the value of the _chansons de geste_ to the historian of manners and customs. In general, however, the trouvere depicted the feeling and manners of his own time.

Charlemagne's wars in Italy, Spain and Saxony formed part of the common epic material, and there are references to his wars against the Slavs; but especially he remained in the popular mind as the great champion of Christianity against the creed of Mahomet, and even his Norman and Saxon enemies became Saracens in current legend. He is the Christian emperor directly inspired by angels; his sword Joyeuse contained the point of the lance used in the Passion; his standard was Romaine, the banner of St Peter, which, as the oriflamme of Saint Denis, was later to be borne in battle before the kings of France; and in 1164 Charles was canonized at the desire of the emperor Frederick I. Barbarossa by the anti-pope Pascal III. This gave him no real claim to saintship, but his festival was observed in some places until comparatively recent times. Charlemagne was endowed with the good and bad qualities of the epic king, and as in the case of Agamemnon and Arthur, his exploits paled beside those of his chief warriors. These were not originally known as the twelve peers[2] famous in later Carolingian romance. The twelve peers were in the first instance the companions in arms of Roland in the Teutonic sense.[3] The idea of the paladins forming an association corresponding to the Arthurian Round Table first appears in the romance of _Fierabras_. The lists of them are very various, but all include the names of Roland and Oliver. The chief heroes who fought Charlemagne's battles were Roland; Ganelon, afterwards the traitor; Turpin, the fighting archbishop of Reims; Duke Naimes of Bavaria, the wise counsellor who is always on the side of justice; Ogier the Dane, the hero of a whole series of romances; and Guillaume of Toulouse, the defender of Narbonne. Gradually most of the _chansons de geste_ were attached to the name of Charlemagne, whose poetical history falls into three cycles:--the _geste du roi_, relating his wars and the personal history of himself and his family; the southern cycle, of which Guillaume de Toulouse is the central figure; and the feudal epic, dealing with the revolts of the barons against the emperor, the rebels being invariably connected by the trouveres with the family of Doon de Mayence (q.v.).

The earliest poems of the cycle are naturally the closest to historical truth. The central point of the _geste du roi_ is the 11th-century _Chanson de Roland_ (see ROLAND, LEGEND OF), one of the greatest of medieval poems. Strangely enough the defeat of Roncesvalles, which so deeply impressed the popular mind, has not a corresponding importance in real history. But it chanced to find as its exponent a poet whose genius established a model for his successors, and definitely fixed the type of later heroic poems. The other early _chansons_ to which reference is made in _Roland--Aspremont, Enfances Ogier, Guiteclin, Balan_, relating to Charlemagne's wars in Italy and Saxony--are not preserved in their original form, and only the first in an early recension. _Basin_ or _Carl el Elegast_ (preserved in Dutch and Icelandic), the _Voyage de Charlemagne a Jerusalem_ and _Le Couronnement Looys_ also belong to the heroic period. The purely fictitious and romantic tales added to the personal history of Charlemagne and his warriors in the 13th century are inferior in manner, and belong to the decadence of romance. The old tales, very much distorted in the 15th-century prose versions, were to undergo still further degradation in 18th-century compilations.

According to _Berte aus grans pies_, in the 13th-century _remaniement_ of the Brabantine trouvere Adenes li Rois, Charlemagne was the son of Pippin and of Berte, the daughter of Flore and Blanchefleur, king and queen of Hungary. The tale bears marks of high antiquity, and presents one of the few incidents in the French cycle which may be referred to a mythic origin. On the night of Berte's marriage a slave, Margiste, is substituted for her, and reigns in her place for nine years, at the expiration of which Blanchefleur exposes the deception; whereupon Berte is restored from her refuge in the forest to her rightful place as queen. _Mainet_ (12th century) and the kindred poems in German and Italian are perhaps based on the adventures of Charles Martel, who after his father's death had to flee to the Ardennes. They relate that, after the death of his parents, Charles was driven by the machinations of the two sons of Margiste to take refuge in Spain, where he accomplished his _enfances_ (youthful exploits) with the Mussulman king Galafre under the feigned name of Mainet. He delivered Rome from the besieging Saracens, and returned to France in triumph. But his wife Galienne, daughter of Galafre, whom he had converted to the Christian faith, died on her way to rejoin him. Charlemagne then made an expedition to Italy (_Enfances Ogier_ in the Venetian _Charlemagne_, and the first part of the _Chevalerie Ogier de Dannemarche_ by Raimbert of Paris, 12th century) to raise the siege of Rome, which was besieged by the Saracen emir Corsuble. He crossed the Alps under the guidance of a white hart, miraculously sent to assist the passage of the army. _Aspremont_ (12th century) describes a fictitious campaign against the Saracen King Agolant in Calabria, and is chiefly devoted to the _enfances_ of Roland. The wars of Charlemagne with his vassals are described in _Girart de Roussillon, Renaus de Montauban_, recounting the deeds of the four sons of Aymon, _Huon de Bordeaux_, and in the latter part of the _Chevalerie Ogier_, which belong properly to the cycle connected with Doon of Mayence.

The account of the pilgrimage of Charlemagne and his twelve paladins to the Holy Sepulchre must in its first form have been earlier than the Crusades, as the patriarch asks the emperor to free Spain, not the Holy Land, from the Saracens. The legend probably originated in a desire to authenticate the relics in the abbey of Saint Denis, supposed to have been brought to Aix by Charlemagne, and is preserved in a 12th-century romance, _Le Voyage de Charlemagne a Jerusalem et a Constantinople_.[4] This journey forms the subject of a window in the cathedral of Chartres, and there was originally a similar one at Saint-Denis. On the way home Charles and his paladins visited the emperor Hugon at Constantinople, where they indulged in a series of _gabs_ which they were made to carry out. _Galien_, a favourite 15th-century romance, was attached to this episode, for Galien was the son of the amours of Oliver with Jacqueline, Hugon's daughter. The traditions of Charlemagne's fights with the Norsemen (Norois, Noreins) are preserved in _Aiquin_ (12th century), which describes the emperor's reconquest of Armorica from the "Saracen" king Aiquin, and a disaster at Cezembre as terrible in its way as those of Roncesvalles and Aliscans. _La destruction de Rome_ is a 13th-century version of the older _chanson_ of the emir Balan, who collected an army in Spain and sailed to Rome. The defenders were overpowered and the city destroyed before the advent of Charlemagne, who, however, avenged the disaster by a great battle in Spain. The romance of _Fierabras_ (13th century) was one of the most popular in the 15th century, and by later additions came to have pretensions to be a complete history of Charlemagne. The first part represents an episode in Spain three years before Roncesvalles, in which Oliver defeats the Saracen giant Fierabras in single combat, and converts him. The hero of the second part is Gui de Bourgogne, who recovers the relics of the Passion, lost in the siege of Rome. _Otinel_ (13th century) is also pure fiction. _L'Entree en Espagne_, preserved in a 14th-century Italian compilation, relates the beginning of the Spanish War, the siege of Pampeluna, and the legendary combat of Roland with Ferragus. Charlemagne's march on Saragossa, and the capture of Huesca, Barcelona and Girone, gave rise to _La Prise de Pampelune_ (14th century, based on a lost _chanson_); and _Gui de Bourgogne_ (12th century) tells how the children of the barons, after appointing Guy as king of France, set out to find and rescue their fathers, who are represented as having been fighting in Spain for twenty-seven years. The _Chanson de Roland_ relates the historic defeat of Roncesvalles on the 15th of August 778, and forms the very crown of the whole Carolingian legend. The two 13th-century romances, _Gaidon_, by Herbert Leduc de Dammartin, and _Anseis de Carthage_, contain a purely fictitious account of the end of the war in Spain, and of the establishment of a Frankish kingdom under the rule of Anseis. Charlemagne was recalled from Spain by the news of the outbreak of the Saxons. The contest between Charlemagne and Widukind (_Guiteclin_) offered abundant epic material. Unfortunately the original _Guiteclin_ is lost, but the legend is preserved in _Les Saisnes_ (c. 1300) of Jehan Bodel, which is largely occupied by the loves of Baudouin and Sibille, the wife of Guiteclin. The adventures of Blanchefleur, wife of Charlemagne, form a variation of the common tale of the innocent wife falsely accused, and are told in _Macaire_ and in the extant fragments of _La Reine Sibille_ (14th century). After the conquest of the Saracens and the Saxons, the defeat of the Northmen, and the suppression of the feudal revolts, the emperor abdicated in favour of his son Louis (_Le Couronnement Looys_, 12th century). Charles's harangue to his son is in the best tradition of epic romance. The memory of Roncesvalles haunts him on his death-bed, and at the moment of death he has a vision of Roland.

The mythic element is practically lacking in the French legends, but in Germany some part of the Odin myth was associated with Charles's name. The constellation of the Great Bear, generally associated with Odin, is Karlswagen in German, and Charles's Wain in English. According to tradition in Hesse, he awaits resurrection, probably symbolic of the triumph of the sun over winter, within the Gudensberg (Hill of Odin). Bavarian tradition asserts that he is seated in the Untersberg in a chair, as in his tomb at Aix-la-Chapelle. His white beard goes on growing, and when it has thrice encircled the stone table before him the end of the world will come; or, according to another version, Charles will arise and after fighting a great battle on the plain of Wals will reign over a new Germany. There were medieval chroniclers who did not fear to assert that Charles rose from the dead to take part in the Crusades. In the MS. _Annales S. Stephani Frisingenses_ (15th century), which formerly belonged to the abbey of Weihenstephan, and is now at Munich, the childhood of Charlemagne is practically the same as that of many mythic heroes. This work, generally known as the chronicle of Weihenstephan, gives among other legends a curious history of the emperor's passion for a dead woman, caused by a charm given to Charles by a serpent to whom he had rendered justice. The charm was finally dropped into a well at Aix, which thenceforward became Charles's favourite residence. The story of Roland's birth from the union of Charles with his sister Gilles, also found in German and Scandinavian versions, has abundant parallels in mythology, and was probably transferred from mythology to Charlemagne.

The Latin chronicle, wrongly ascribed to Turpin (Tilpinus), bishop of Reims from 753 to 800, was in reality later than the earlier poems of the French cycle, and the first properly authenticated mention of it is in 1165. Its primary object was to authenticate the relics of St James at Compostella. Alberic Trium Fontium, a monk of the Cistercian monastery of Trois Fontanes in the diocese of Chalons, embodied much poetical fiction in his chronicle (c. 1249). A large section of the _Chronique rimee_ (c. 1243) of Philippe Mousket is devoted to Charlemagne's exploits. At the beginning of the 14th century Girard of Amiens made a dull compilation known as _Charlemagne_ from the _chansons de gests_, authentic history and the pseudo-Turpin. _La Conqueste que fit le grand roi Charlemaigne es Espaignes_ (pr. 1486) is the same work as the prose compilation of _Fierabras_ (pr. 1478), and Caxton's _Lyf of Charles the Grete_ (1485).

The Charlemagne legend was fully developed in Italy, where it was to have later a great poetic development at the hands of Boiardo, Ariosto and Tasso. There are two important Italian compilations, MS. XIII. of the library of St Mark, Venice (c. 1200), and the _Reali di Francia_ (c. 1400) of a Florentine writer, Andrea da Barberino (b. 1370), edited by G. Vandelli (Bologna, 1892). The six books of this work are rivalled in importance by the ten branches of the Norse _Karlamagnus saga_, written under the reign of Haakon V. This forms a consecutive legendary history of Charles, and is apparently based on earlier versions of the French Charlemagne poems than those which we possess. It thus furnishes a guide to the older forms of stories, and moreover preserves the substance of others which have not survived in their French form. A popular abridgment, the _Keiser Karl Magnus Kronike_ (pr. Malmo, 1534), drawn up in Danish, serves in some cases to complete the earlier work. The 2000 lines of the German _Kaiserchronik_ on the history of Charlemagne belong to the first half of the 12th century, and were perhaps the work of Conrad, the poet of the _Ruolantes Liet_. The German poet known as the Stricker used the same sources as the author of the chronicle of Weihenstephan for his _Karl_ (c. 1230). The earliest important Spanish version was the _Chronica Hispaniae_ (c. 1284) of Rodrigo de Toledo.

The French and Norman-French chansons circulated as freely in England as in France, and it was therefore not until the period of decadence that English versions were made. The English metrical romances of Charlemagne are:--_Rowlandes Song_ (15th century); _The Taill of Rauf Coilyear_ (c. 1475, pr. by R. Lekpreuik, St Andrews, 1472), apparently original; _Sir Ferumbras_ (c. 1380) and the _Sowdone of Babylone_ (c. 1400) from an early version of _Fierabras_; a fragmentary _Roland and Vernagu_ (Ferragus); two versions of _Otuel_ (Otinel); and a _Sege of Melayne_ (c. 1390), forming a prologue to Otinel unknown in French.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The most important works on the Charlemagne cycle of romance are:--G. Paris, _Hist. poetique de Charlemagne_ (Paris, 1865; reprint, with additional notes by Paris and P. Meyer, 1905); L. Gautier, _Les Epopees francaises_ (Paris, 4 vols. new ed., 1878, 1892, 1880, 1882) and the supplementary _Bibliographie des chansons de geste_ (1897). The third volume of the _Epopees francaises_ contains an analysis and full particulars of the _chansons de geste_ immediately connected with the history of Charlemagne. See also G. Rauschen, _Die Legende Karls des Grossen im 11ten und 12ten Jahrhundert_ (Leipzig, 1890); Kristoffer Nyrop, _Den oldfranske Heldedigtning_ (Copenhagen, 1883; Ital. trans. Turin, 1886); Pio Rajna, _Le Origini dell' epopea francese_ (Florence, 1884); G.T. Graesse, "Die grossen Sagenkreise des Mittelalters," in his _Litterargeschichte_ (Dresden, 1842); _Histoire litteraire de la France_ (vol. xxii., 1852); H.L. Ward, _Catalogue of Romances in the Dept. of MSS. in the British Museum_ (1883), vol. i. pp. 546-689; E. Muntz, _La Legende de Charlemagne dans l'art du moyen age_ (Paris, 1885); and for the German legend, vol. iii. of H.F. Massmann's edition of the _Kaiserchronik_ (Quedlinburg, 1849-1854). _The English Charlemagne Romances_ were edited (extra series) for the Early Eng. Text Soc. by Sidney J. Herrtage, Emil Hausknecht, Octavia Richardson and Sidney Lee (1879-1881), the romance of _Duke Huon of Bordeaux_ containing a general account of the cycle by Sidney Lee; the _Karlamagnussaga_, by C.R. Unger (Christiania, 1860), see also G. Paris in _Bibl. de l'Ecole des Charles_ (1864-1865). For individual _chansons_ see _Anseis de Carthage_, ed. J. Alton (Tubingen, 1892); _Aiquin_, ed. F. Jouon des Longrais (Nantes, 1880); _Aspremont_, ed. F. Guessard and L. Gautier (Paris, 1885); _Basin_, or _Charles et Elegast_ or _Le Couronnement de Charles_, preserved only in foreign versions (see Paris, _Hist. Poet._ pp. 315, seq.); _Berta de li gran pie_, ed. A. Mussafia, in _Romania_ (vols. iii. and iv., 1874-1875); _Berte aus grans pies_, ed. A. Scheler (Brussels, 1874); _Charlemagne_, by Girard d'Amiens, detailed analysis in Paris, _Hist. Poet._ (Appendix iv.); _Couronnement Looys_, ed. E. Langlois (Le Puy, 1888); _Desier_ (Desiderius or Didier), lost songs of the wars of Lombardy, some fragments of which are preserved in _Ogier le Danois; Destruction de Rome_, ed. G. Grober in _Romania_(1873); A. Thomas, _Nouvelles recherches sur "l'entree de Spagne_," in _Bibl. des ecoles francaises de Rome_ (Paris, 1882); _Fierabras_, ed. A. Krober and G. Servois (Paris, 1860) in _Anciens poetes de la France_, and Provencal text, ed. I. Bekker (Berlin, 1829); _Galien_, ed. E. Stengel and K. Pfeil (Marburg, 1890); _Gaydon_, ed. F. Guessard and S. Luce (_Anciens poetes_ ... 1862); _Gui de Bourgogne_, ed. F. Guessard and H. Michelant (same series, 1859); _Mainet_ (fragments only extant), ed. G. Paris, in _Romania_ (1875); _Otinel_, ed Guessard and Michelant _(Anciens poetes_, 1859), and _Sir Otuel_, ed. S.J. Herrtage (_E.E.T.S._, 1880); _Prise de Pampelune_ (ed. A. Mussafia, Vienna, 1864); for the Carolingian romances relating to Roland, see ROLAND; _Les Saisnes_, ed. F. Michel (1839); _The Sege of Melaine_, introductory to Otinel, preserved in English only (ed. _E.E.T.S._, 1880); _Simon de Pouille_, analysis in _Epop. fr._ (iii. pp. 346 sq.); _Voyage de C. a Jerusalem_, ed. E. Koschwitz (Heilbronn, 1879). For the chronicle of the Pseudo-Turpin, see an edition by Castets (Paris, 1881) for the "Societe des langues romanes," and the dissertation by G. Paris, _De Pseudo-Turpino_ (Paris, 1865). The Spanish versions of Carolingian legends are studied by Mila y Fontanals in _De la poesia heroico-popular castellana_ (Barcelona, 1874). (M. Br.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A remnant of the popular poetry contemporary with Charlemagne and written in the vernacular has been thought to be discernible under its Latin translation in the description of a siege during Charlemagne's war against the Saracens, known as the "Fragment from the Hague" (Pertz, _Script._ iii. pp. 708-710).

[2] The words _douze pairs_ were anglicized in a variety of forms ranging from douzepers to dosepers. The word even occurred as a singular in the metrical romance of _Octavian_:--"Ferst they sent out a doseper." At the beginning of the 13th century there existed a _cour des pairs_ which exercised judicial functions and dated possibly from the 11th century, but their prerogatives at the beginning of the 14th century appear to have been mainly ceremonial and decorative. In 1257 the twelve peers were the chiefs of the great feudal provinces, the dukes of Normandy, Burgundy and Aquitaine, the counts of Toulouse, Champagne and Flanders, and six spiritual peers, the archbishop of Reims, the bishops of Laon, Chalons-sur-Marne, Beauvais, Langres and Noyon. (See Du Cange, _Glossarium_, s.v. "Par.").

[3] See J. Flach, _Le Compagnonnage dans les chansons de geste_ (Paris, 1891).

[4] For clerical accounts of Charles's voyage to the Holy Land see the _Chronicon_ (c. 968) of Benedict, a monk of St Andre, and _Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus clavum et coronam Domini ... detulerit_, by an 11th-century writer.

CHARLEMAGNE, JEAN ARMAND (1753-1838), French dramatic author, was born at Bourget (Seine) on the 30th of November 1753. Originally intended for the church, he turned first to being a lawyer's clerk and then a soldier. He served in the American War of Independence, and on returning to France (1783) began to employ his pen on economic subjects, and later in writing for the stage. He became the author of a large number of plays, poems and romances, among which may be mentioned the comedies _M. de Crac a Paris_ (1793), _Le Souper des Jacobins_ (1795)and _L'Agioteur_ (1796) and _Observations de quelques patriotes sur la necessite de conserver les monuments de la litterature et des arts_ (1794), an essay written in collaboration with M.M. Chardin and Renouard, which induced the Convention to protect books adorned with the coats of arms of their former owners and other treasures from destruction at the hands of the revolutionists. He died in Paris on the 6th of March 1838.

CHARLEMONT, JAMES CAULFEILD, 1ST EARL OF (1728-1799), Irish statesman, son of the 3rd viscount Charlemont, was born in Dublin on the 18th of August 1728, and succeeded his father as 4th viscount in 1734. The title of Charlemont descended from Sir Toby Caulfeild (1565-1627) of Oxfordshire, England, who was given lands in Ireland, and created Baron Charlemont (the name of a fort on the Blackwater), for his services to King James I. in 1620, and the 1st viscount was the 5th baron (d. 1671), who was advanced by Charles II. Lord Charlemont is historically interesting for his political connexion with Flood and Grattan; he was a cultivated man with literary and artistic tastes, and both in Dublin and in London his amiable character gave him considerable social influence. For various early services in Ireland he was made an earl in 1763, but he disregarded court favours and cordially joined Grattan in 1780 in the assertion of Irish independence. He was president of the volunteer convention in Dublin in November 1783, having taken from the first a leading part in the embodiment of the volunteers; and he was a strong opponent of the proposals for the Union. He died on the 4th of August 1799; his eldest son, who succeeded him, being subsequently (1837) created an English baron.

His _Life_, by F. Hardy, appeared in 1810.

CHARLEROI (_Carolus Rex_), a town in the province of Hainaut, Belgium. Pop. (1904) 26,528. It was founded in 1666 on the site of a village called Charnoy by the Spanish governor Roderigo and named after his sovereign Charles II. of Spain. Charleroi is the centre of the iron industry of Belgium. It is connected by a canal with Brussels, and from its position on the Sambre enjoys facilities of communication by water with France as well as Belgium. It was ceded soon after its foundation to France by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and Vauban fortified it. During the French occupation the town was considerably extended, and the fortifications were made so strong that Charleroi twice successfully resisted the strenuous attacks of William of Orange. In 1794 Charleroi again fell into the hands of the French, and on this occasion instead of fortifying they dismantled it. In 1816 Charleroi was refortified under Wellington's direction, and it was finally dismantled in 1859. Some portions of the old ramparts are left near the railway station. There is an archaeological museum with a miscellaneous collection of Roman and Frank antiquities.

CHARLEROI, a borough of Washington county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Monongahela river, near the S.W. corner of the state, about 20 m. S. of Pittsburgh. Pop. (1900) 5930, (1749 foreign-born); (1910) 9615. It is served by the Pennsylvania railway. The surrounding country has good farming land and large coal mines. In 1905 the borough ranked fifth among the cities of the United States in the manufacture of glass (plate-glass, lamp chimneys and bottles), its product (valued at $1,841,308) being 2.3% of that of the whole country. Charleroi was settled in 1890 and was incorporated in 1891.

CHARLES (Fr. _Charles_; Span. _Carlos_; Ital. _Carlo_; Ger. _Karl_; derived from O.H.G. _Charal_, latinized as _Carolus_, meaning originally "man": cf. Mod. Ger., _Kerl_, "fellow," A.S. _ceorl_, Mod. Eng. "churl"), a masculine proper name. It has been borne by many European princes, notices of the more important of whom are given below in the following order: (1) Roman emperors, (2) kings of England, (3) other kings in the alphabetical order of their states, (4) other reigning princes in the same order, (5) non-reigning princes. Those princes who are known by a name in addition to Charles (Charles Albert, &c.) will be found after the private individuals bearing Charles as a surname.

CHARLES II.[1] called THE BALD (823-877), Roman emperor and king of the West Franks, was the son of the emperor Louis the Pious and of his second wife Judith and was born in 823. The attempts made by his father to assign him a kingdom, first Alamannia (829), then the country between the Meuse and the Pyrenees (839), at the expense of his half-brothers Lothair and Louis led to a rising on the part of these two (see LOUIS I., the Pious). The death of the emperor in 840 was the signal for the outbreak of war between his sons. Charles allied himself with his brother Louis the German to resist the pretensions of the emperor Lothair, and the two allies conquered him in the bloody victory of Fontenoy-en-Puisaye (25 June 841). In the following year, the two brothers confirmed their alliance by the celebrated oaths of Strassburg, made by Charles in the Teutonic language spoken by the subjects of Louis, and by Louis in the Romance tongue of Charles's subjects. The war was brought to an end by the treaty of Verdun (August 843), which gave to Charles the Bald the kingdom of the western Franks, which practically corresponded with what is now France, as far as the Meuse, the Saone and the Rhone, with the addition of the Spanish March as far as the Ebro. The first years of his reign up to the death of Lothair I. (855) were comparatively peaceful, and during them was continued the system of "confraternal government" of the sons of Louis the Pious, who had various meetings with one another, at Coblenz (848), at Meersen (851), and at Attigny (854). In 858 Louis the German, summoned by the disaffected nobles, invaded the kingdom of Charles, who fled to Burgundy, and was only saved by the help of the bishops, and by the fidelity of the family of the Welfs, who were related to Judith. In 860 he in his turn tried to seize the kingdom of his nephew, Charles of Provence, but met with a repulse. On the death of Lothair II. in 869 he tried to seize his dominions, but by the treaty of Mersen (870) was compelled to share them with Louis the German. Besides this, Charles had to struggle against the incessant rebellions in Aquitaine, against the Bretons, whose revolt was led by their chief Nomenoe and Erispoe, and who inflicted on the king the defeats of Ballon (845) and Juvardeil (851), and especially against the Normans, who devastated the country in the north of Gaul, the valleys of the Seine and Loire, and even up to the borders of Aquitaine. Charles was several times compelled to purchase their retreat at a heavy price. He has been accused of being incapable of resisting them, but we must take into account the unwillingness of the nobles, who continually refused to join the royal army; moreover, the Frankish army does not seem to have been sufficiently accustomed to war to make any headway against the pirates. At any rate, Charles led various expeditions against the invaders, and tried to put a barrier in their way by having fortified bridges built over all the rivers. In 875, after the death of the emperor Louis II., Charles the Bald, supported by Pope John VIII., descended into Italy, receiving the royal crown at Pavia and the imperial crown at Rome (29th December). But Louis the German, who was also a candidate for the succession of Louis II., revenged himself for Charles's success by invading and devastating his dominions. Charles was recalled to Gaul, and after the death of Louis the German (28th August 876), in his turn made an attempt to seize his kingdom, but at Andernach met with a shameful defeat (8th October 876). In the meantime, John VIII., who was menaced by the Saracens, was continually urging him to come to Italy, and Charles, after having taken at Quierzy the necessary measures for safeguarding the government of his dominions in his absence, again crossed the Alps, but this expedition had been received with small enthusiasm by the nobles, and even by Boso, Charles's brother-in-law, who had been entrusted by him with the government of Lombardy, and they refused to come with their men to join the imperial army. At the same time Carlo man, son of Louis the German, entered northern Italy. Charles, ill and in great distress, started on his way back to Gaul, and died while crossing the pass of the Mont Cenis on the 5th or 6th of October 877. He was succeeded by his son Louis the Stammerer, the child of Ermentrude, daughter of a count of Orleans, whom he had married in 842, and who had died in 869. In 870 he had married Richilde, who was descended from a noble family of Lorraine, but none of the children whom he had by her played a part of any importance. Charles seems to have been a prince of education and letters, a friend of the church, and conscious of the support he could find in the episcopate against his unruly nobles, for he chose his councillors for preference from among the higher clergy, as in the case of Guenelon of Sens, who betrayed him, or of Hincmar of Reims. But his character and his reign have been judged very variously. The general tendency seems to have been to accept too easily the accounts of the chroniclers of the east Frankish kingdom, which are favourable to Louis the German, and to accuse Charles of cowardice and bad faith. He seems on the contrary not to have lacked activity or decision.

AUTHORITIES.--The most important authority for the history of Charles's reign is represented by the _Annales Bertiniani_, which were the work of Prudentius, bishop of Troyes, up to 861, then up to 882 of the celebrated Hincmar, archbishop of Reims. This prince's charters are to be found published in the collections of the _Academie des Inscriptions_, by M.M. Prou. The most complete history of the reign is found in E. Dummler, _Geschichte des ostfrankischen Reiches_ (3 vols., Leipzig, 1887-1888). See also J. Calmette, _La Diplomatie carolingienne du traite de Verdun a la mort de Charles le Chauve_ (Paris, 1901), and F. Lot, "Une Annee du regne de Charles le Chauve," in _Le Moyen-Age_, (1902) pp. 393-438.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] For Charles I., Roman emperor, see CHARLEMAGNE; cf. under Charles I. of France below.

CHARLES III., THE FAT[1] (832-888), Roman emperor and king of the West Franks, was the youngest of the three sons of Louis the German, and received from his father the kingdom of Swabia (Alamannia). After the death of his two brothers in succession, Carloman (881) and Louis the Young (882), he inherited the whole of his father's dominions. In 880 he had helped his two cousins in the west Frankish realm, Louis III. and Carloman, in their struggle with the usurper Boso of Provence, but abandoned them during the campaign in order to be crowned emperor at Rome by Pope John VIII. (February 881). On his return he led an expedition against the Norsemen of Friesland, who were entrenched in their camp at Elsloo, but instead of engaging with them he preferred to make terms and paid them tribute. In 884 the death of Carloman brought into his possession the west Frankish realm, and in 885 he got rid of his rival Hugh of Alsace, an illegitimate son of Lothair II., taking him prisoner by treachery and putting out his eyes. However, in spite of his six expeditions into Italy, he did not succeed in pacifying the country, nor in delivering it from the Saracens. He was equally unfortunate in Gaul and in Germany against the Norsemen, who in 886-887 besieged Paris. The emperor appeared before the city with a large army (October 886), but contented himself by treating with them, buying the retreat of the invaders at the price of a heavy ransom, and his permission for them to ravage Burgundy without his interfering. On his return to Alamannia, however, the general discontent showed itself openly and a conspiracy was formed against him. He was first forced to dismiss his favourite, the chancellor Liutward, bishop of Vercelli. The dissolution of his marriage with the pious empress Richarde, in spite of her innocence as proved by the judicial examination, alienated his nobles still more from him. He was deposed by an assembly which met at Frankfort or at Tribur (November 887), and died in poverty at Neidingen on the Danube (18th January 888).

See E. Dummler, _Geschichte des ostfrankischen Reiches_ vol. iii. (Leipzig 1888).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This surname has only been applied to Charles since the 13th century.

CHARLES IV. (1316-1378), Roman emperor and king of Bohemia, was the eldest son of John of Luxemburg, king of Bohemia, and Elizabeth, sister of Wenceslas III., the last Bohemian king of the Premyslides dynasty. He was born at Prague on the 14th of May 1316, and in 1323 went to the court of his uncle, Charles IV., king of France, and exchanged his baptismal name of Wenceslas for that of Charles. He remained for seven years in France, where he was well educated and learnt five languages; and there he married Blanche, sister of King Philip VI., the successor of Charles IV. In 1331 he gained some experience of warfare in Italy with his father; and on his return to Bohemia in 1333 he was made margrave of Moravia. Three years later he undertook the government of Tirol on behalf of his brother John Henry, and was soon actively concerned in a struggle for the possession of this county. In consequence of an alliance between his father and Pope Clement VI., the relentless enemy of the emperor Louis IV., Charles was chosen German king in opposition to Louis by some of the princes at Rense on the 11th of July 1346. As he had previously promised to be subservient to Clement he made extensive concessions to the pope in 1347. Confirming the papacy in the possession of wide territories, he promised to annul the acts of Louis against Clement, to take no part in Italian affairs, and to defend and protect the church. Meanwhile he had accompanied his father into France and had taken part in the battle of Crecy in August 1346, when John was killed and Charles escaped wounded from the field. As king of Bohemia he returned to Germany, and after being crowned German king at Bonn on the 26th of November 1346, prepared to attack Louis. Hostilities were interrupted by the death of the emperor in October 1347, and Gunther, count of Schwarzburg, who was chosen king by the partisans of Louis, soon abandoned the struggle. Charles, having made good use of the difficulties of his opponents, was recrowned at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 25th of July 1349, and was soon the undisputed ruler of Germany. Gifts or promises had won the support of the Rhenish and Swabian towns; a marriage alliance secured the friendship of the Habsburgs; and that of Rudolph II., count palatine of the Rhine, was obtained when Charles, who had become a widower in 1348, married his daughter Anna.

In 1350 the king was visited at Prague by Cola di Rienzi, who urged him to go to Italy, where the poet Petrarch and the citizens of Florence also implored his presence. Turning a deaf ear to these entreaties, Charles kept Rienzi in prison for a year, and then handed him as a prisoner to Clement at Avignon. Four years later, however, he crossed the Alps without an army, received the Lombard crown at Milan on the 6th of January 1355, and was crowned emperor at Rome by a cardinal on the 5th of April in the same year. His sole object appears to have been to obtain the imperial crown in peace, and in accordance with a promise previously made to Pope Clement he only remained in the city for a few hours, in spite of the expressed wishes of the Romans. Having virtually abandoned all the imperial rights in Italy, the emperor recrossed the Alps, pursued by the scornful words of Petrarch but laden with considerable wealth. On his return Charles was occupied with the administration of Germany, then just recovering from the Black Death, and in 1356 he promulgated the Golden Bull (q.v.) to regulate the election of the king. Having given Moravia to one brother, John Henry, and erected the county of Luxemburg into a duchy for another, Wenceslas, he was unremitting in his efforts to secure other territories as compensation and to strengthen the Bohemian monarchy. To this end he purchased part of the upper Palatinate of the Rhine in 1353, and in 1367 annexed Lower Lusatia to Bohemia and bought numerous estates in various parts of Germany. On the death in 1363 of Meinhard, duke of Upper Bavaria and count of Tirol, Upper Bavaria was claimed by the sons of the emperor Louis IV., and Tirol by Rudolph IV., duke of Austria. Both claims were admitted by Charles on the understanding that if these families died out both territories should pass to the house of Luxemburg. About the same time he was promised the succession to the margraviate of Brandenburg, which he actually obtained for his son Wenceslas in 1373. He also gained a considerable portion of Silesian territory, partly by inheritance through his third wife, Anna, daughter of Henry II., duke of Schweidnitz. In 1365 Charles visited Pope Urban V. at Avignon and undertook to escort him to Rome; and on the same occasion was crowned king of Burgundy, or Arles, at Arles on the 4th of June 1365.

His second journey to Italy took place in 1368, when he had a meeting with Urban at Viterbo, was besieged in his palace at Siena, and left the country before the end of the year 1369. During his later years the emperor took little part in German affairs beyond securing the election of his son Wenceslas as king of the Romans in 1376, and negotiating a peace between the Swabian league and some nobles in 1378. After dividing his lands between his three sons, he died on the 29th of November 1378 at Prague, where he was buried, and where a statue was erected to his memory in 1848.

Charles, who according to the emperor Maximilian I. was the step-father of the Empire, but the father of Bohemia, brought the latter country to a high state of prosperity. He reformed the finances, caused roads to be made, provided for greater security to life and property, and introduced or encouraged various forms of industry. In 1348 he founded the university of Prague, and afterwards made this city the seat of an archbishop, and beautified it by the erection of several fine buildings. He was an accomplished diplomatist, possessed a penetrating intellect, and was capable of much trickery in order to gain his ends. By refusing to become entangled in Italian troubles and confining himself to Bohemia, he proved that he preferred the substance of power to its shadow. Apparently the most pliant of men, he had in reality great persistence of character, and if foiled in one set of plans readily turned round and reached his goal by a totally different path. He was superstitious and peace-loving, had few personal wants, and is described as a round-shouldered man of medium height, with black hair and beard, and sallow cheeks.

His autobiography the "Vita Caroli IV.," which deals with events down to the year 1346, and various other documents relating to his life and times, are published in the _Fontes rerum Germanicarum_, Band I., edited by J.F. Bohmer (Leipzig, 1885). For other documents relating to the time see _Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter Kaiser Karl IV._, edited by J.F. Bohmer and A. Huber (Innsbruck, 1889); _Acta Karoli IV. imperatoris inedita_ (Innsbruck, 1891); E. Werunsky, _Excerpta ex registris Clementis VI. et Innocentii VI._ (Innsbruck, 1885). See also E. Werunsky, _Geschichte Kaiser Karls IV. und seiner Zeit_ (Innsbruck, 1880-1892); H. Friedjung, _Kaiser Karl IV. und sein Antheil am geistigen Leben seiner Zeit_ (Vienna, 1876); A. Gottlob, _Karls IV. private und politische Beziehungen zu Frankreich_ (Innsbruck, 1883); O. Winckelmann, _Die Beziehungen Kaiser Karls IV. zum Konigreich Arelat_ (Strassburg, 1882); K. Palm, "Zu Karls IV. Politik gegen Baiern," in the _Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte_, Band XV. (Gottingen, 1862-1866); Th. Lindner, "Karl IV. und die Wittelsbacher," and S. Stienherz, "Die Beziehungen Ludwigs I. von Ungarn zu Karl IV.," and "Karl IV. und die osterreichischen Freiheitsbriefe," in the _Mittheilungen des Instituts fur osterreichische Geschichtsforschung_ (Innsbruck, 1880).

CHARLES V. (1500-1558), Roman emperor and (as CHARLES I.) king of Spain, was born at Ghent on the 24th of February 1500. His parents were Philip of Burgundy and Joanna, third child of Ferdinand and Isabella. Philip died in 1506, and Charles succeeded to his Netherland possessions and the county of Burgundy (Franche Comte). His grandfather, the emperor Maximilian, as regent, appointed his daughter Margaret vice-regent, and under her strenuous guardianship Charles lived in the Netherlands until the estates declared him of age in 1515. In Castile, Ferdinand, king of Aragon, acted as regent for his daughter Joanna, whose intellect was already clouded. On the 23rd of January 1516 Ferdinand died. Charles's visit to Spain was delayed until the autumn of 1517, and only in 1518 was he formally recognized as king conjointly with his mother, firstly by the cortes of Castile, and then by those of Aragon. Joanna lived to the very eve of her son's abdication, so that he was only for some months technically sole king of Spain. During this Spanish visit Maximilian died, and Charles succeeded to the inheritance of the Habsburgs, to which was shortly added the duchy of Wurttemberg. Maximilian had also intended that he should succeed as emperor. In spite of the formidable rivalry of Francis I. and the opposition of Pope Leo X., pecuniary corruption and national feeling combined to secure his election in 1519. Charles hurriedly left Spain, and after a visit to Henry VIII. and his aunt Catherine, was crowned at Aix on the 23rd of October 1520.

The difficulty of Charles's reign consists in the complexity of interests caused by the unnatural aggregate of distinct territories and races. The crown of Castile brought with it the two recently conquered kingdoms of Navarre and Granada, together with the new colonies in America and scattered possessions in northern Africa. That of Aragon comprised the three distinct states of Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia, and in addition the kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, each with a separate character and constitution of its own. No less than eight independent cortes or parliaments existed in this Spanish-Italian group, adding greatly to the intricacy of government. In the Netherland provinces again the tie was almost purely personal; there existed only the rudiments of a central administration and a common representative system, while the county of Burgundy had a history apart. Much the same was true of the Habsburg group of states, but Charles soon freed himself from direct responsibility for their government by making them over, together with Wurttemberg, to his brother Ferdinand. The Empire entailed serious liabilities on its ruler without furnishing any reliable assets: only through the cumbrous machinery of the diet could Charles tap the military and financial resources of Germany. His problem here was complicated by the growth of Lutheranism, which he had to face at his very first diet in 1521. In addition to such administrative difficulties Charles had inherited a quarrel with France, to which the rivalry of Francis I. for the Empire gave a personal character. Almost equally formidable was the advance of Sultan Suliman up the Danube, and the union of the Turkish naval power with that of the Barbary States of northern Africa. Against Lutheran Germany the Catholic emperor might hope to rely upon the pope, and against France on England. But the attitude of the popes was almost uniformly disagreeable, while from Henry VIII. and Edward VI. Charles met with more unpleasantness than favour.

The difficulty of Charles himself is also that of the historian and reader of his reign. It is probably more instructive to treat it according to the emperor's several problems than in strict chronological order. Yet an attempt to distinguish the several periods of his career may serve as a useful introduction. The two best dividing lines are, perhaps, the coronation as emperor at Bologna in 1530, and the peace of Crepy in 1544. Until his visit to Italy (1529) Charles remained in the background of the European stage, except for his momentous meeting with Luther at the diet of Worms (1521). This meeting in itself forms a subdivision. Previously to this, during his nominal rule in the Netherlands, his visit to Spain, and his candidature for the Empire, he seemed, as it was said, spell-bound under the ferule of his minister Chievres. Almost every report represented him as colourless, reserved and weak. His dependence on his Flemish counsellors provoked the rising in Castile, the feebleness of his government the social war in Aragon. The religious question first gave him a living interest, and at this moment Chievres died. Aleander, the papal nuncio at Worms, now recognized that public opinion had been wrong in its estimate of Charles. Never again was he under tutelage. The necessity, however, of residence in Spain prevented his taking a personal part in the great fight with Francis I. for Italy. He could claim no credit for the capture of his rival at Pavia. When his army sacked Rome and held Pope Clement VII. prisoner, he could not have known where this army was. And when later the French overran Naples, and all but deprived him of his hold on Italy, he had to instruct his generals that they must shift for themselves. The world had become afraid of him, but knew little of his character. In the second main division of his career Charles changed all this. No monarch until Napoleon was so widely seen in Europe and in Africa. Complexity of problems is the characteristic of this period. At the head of his army Charles forced the Turks backwards down the Danube (1532). He personally conquered Tunis (1535), and was only prevented by "act of God" from winning Algiers (1541). The invasion of Provence in 1536 was headed by the emperor. In person he crushed the rebellion of Ghent (1540). In his last war with Francis (1542-44) he journeyed from Spain to the Netherlands, brought the rebellious duke of Cleves to his knees, and was within easy reach of Paris when he made the peace of Crepy (1544). In Germany, meanwhile, from the diet of Augsburg (1530) onwards, he had presided at the diets or conferences, which, as he hoped, would effect the reunion of the church.

Peace with France and the Turk and a short spell of friendliness with Pope Paul III. enabled Charles at last to devote his whole energies to the healing of religious schism. Conciliation proving impossible, he led the army which received the submission of the Lutheran states, and then captured the elector of Saxony at Muhlberg, after which the other leader, Philip of Hesse, capitulated. The Armed Diet of 1548 was the high-water mark of Charles's power. Here, in defiance of the pope, he published the Interim which was meant to reconcile the Lutherans with the church, and the so-called Reform which was to amend its abuses. During the next four years, owing to ill-health and loss of insight, his power was ebbing. In 1552 he was flying over the Brenner from Maurice of Saxony, a princeling whose fortunes he had made. Once again the old complications had arisen. His old enemy's son, Henry II., had attacked him indirectly in Piedmont and Parma, and then directly in Germany in alliance with Maurice. Once more the Turk was moving in the Danube and in the western Mediterranean. The humiliation of his flight gave Charles new spirit, and he once more led an army through Germany against the French, only to be checked by the duke of Guise's defence of Metz. Henceforth the waves of his fortune plashed to and fro until his abdication without much ostensible loss or gain.

Charles had abundance of good sense, but little creative genius, and he was by nature conservative. Consequently he never sought to impose any new or common principles of administration on his several states. He took them as he found them, and at most, as in the Netherlands, improved upon what he found. So also in dealing with rival powers his policy may be called opportunist. He was indeed accused by his enemies of emulating Charlemagne, of aiming at universal empire. Historians have frequently repeated this charge. Charles himself in later life laughingly denied the imputation, and facts are in favour of his denial. When Francis I. was in his power he made no attempt to dismember France, in spite of his pledges to his allies Henry VIII. and the duke of Bourbon. He did, indeed, demand the duchy of Burgundy, because he believed this to have been unrighteously stolen by Louis XI. from his grandmother when a helpless girl. The claim was not pressed, and at the height of his fortunes in 1548 he advised his son never to surrender it, but also never to make it a cause of war. When Clement VII. was his prisoner, he was vehemently urged to overthrow the temporal power, to restore imperial dominion in Italy, at least to make the papacy harmless for the future. In reply he restored his enemy to the whole of his dominions, even reimposing him by force on the Florentine republic. To the end of his life his conscience was sensitive as to Ferdinand's expulsion of the house of Albret from Spanish Navarre, though this was essential to the safety of Spain. Though always at war he was essentially a lover of peace, and all his wars were virtually defensive. "Not greedy of territory," wrote Marcantonio Contarini in 1536, "but most greedy of peace and quiet." For peace he made sacrifices which angered his hot-headed brother Ferdinand. He would not aid in expelling the sultan's puppet Zapolya from Ferdinand's kingdom of Hungary, and he suffered the restoration of the ruffianly duke of Wurttemberg, to the grave prejudice of German Catholicism. In spite of his protests, Henry VIII. with impunity ill-treated his aunt Catherine, and the feeble government of Edward VI. bullied his cousin Mary, who had been his fiancee. No serious efforts were made to restore his brother-in-law, Christian II., to the throne of Denmark, and he advised his son Philip to make friends with the usurper. After the defeat of the Lutheran powers in 1547 he did not gain a palm's breadth of territory for himself. He resisted Ferdinand's claim for Wurttemberg, which the duke had deserved to forfeit; he disliked his acceptance of the voluntary surrender of the city of Constance; he would not have it said that he had gone to war for the benefit of the house of Habsburg.

On the other hand, Charles V.'s policy was not merely negative. He enlarged upon the old Habsburg practice of marriage as a means of alliance of influence. Previously to his election as emperor, his sister Isabella was married to Christian II. of Denmark, and the marriages of Mary and Ferdinand with the king of Hungary and his sister had been arranged. Before he was twenty Charles himself had been engaged some ten times with a view to political combinations. Naturally, therefore, he regarded his near relations as diplomatic assets. The federative system was equally familiar; Germany, the Netherlands, and even Spain, were in a measure federations. Combining these two principles, he would within his more immediate spheres of influence strengthen existing federations by intermarriage, while he hoped that the same means would convert the jarring powers of Europe into a happy family. He made it a condition of the treaty of Madrid (1526) that Francis I. should marry his sister Eleanor, Manuel of Portugal's widow, in the hope, not that she would be an ally or a spy within the enemy's camp, but an instrument of peace. His son's marriage with Mary Tudor would not only salve the rubs with England, but give such absolute security to the Netherlands that France would shrink from war. The personal union of all the Iberian kingdoms under a single ruler had long been an aim of Spanish statecraft. So Charles had married his sister Eleanor, much against her will, to the old king Manuel, and then his sister Catherine to his successor. The empress was a Portuguese infanta, and Philip's first wife was another. It is thus small wonder that, within a quarter of a century of Charles's death, Philip became king of Portugal.

In the wars with Francis I. Italy was the stake. In spite of his success Charles for long made no direct conquests. He would convert the peninsula into a federation mainly matrimonial. Savoy, the important buffer state, was detached from France by the marriage of the somewhat feeble duke to Charles's capable and devoted sister-in-law, Beatrice of Portugal. Milan, conquered from France, was granted to Francesco Sforza, heir of the old dynasty, and even after his treason was restored to him. In the vain hope of offspring Charles sacrificed his niece, Christina of Denmark, to the valetudinarian duke. In the long negotiations for a Habsburg-Valois dynasty which followed Francesco's death, Charles was probably sincere. He insisted that his daughter or niece should marry the third rather than the second son of Francis I., in order, apart from other reasons, to run less risk of the duchy falling under French dominion. The final investiture of Philip was forced upon him, and does not represent his saner policy. The Medici of Florence, the Gonzaga of Mantua, the papal house of Farnese, were all attached by Habsburg marriages. The republics of Genoa and Siena were drawn into the circle through the agency of their chief noble families, the Doria and Piccolomini; while Charles behaved with scrupulous moderation towards Venice in spite of her active hostility before and after the League of Cognac. Occasional acts of violence there were, such as the participation in the murder of Pierluigi Farnese, and the measures which provoked the rebellion of Siena. These were due to the difficulty of controlling the imperial agents from a distance, and in part to the faults of the victim prince and republic. On the whole, the loose federation of viceroyalties and principalities harmonized with Italian interests and traditions. The alternative was not Italian independence, but French domination. At any rate, Charles's structure was so durable that the French met with no real success in Italy until the 18th century.

Germany offered a fine field for a creative intellect, since the evils of her disintegration stood confessed. On the other hand, princes and towns were so jealous of an increase of central authority that Charles, at least until his victory over the League of Schmalkalden, had little effective power. Owing to his wars with French and Turks he was rarely in Germany, and his visits were very short. His problem was infinitely complicated by the union of Lutheranism and princely independence. He fell back on the old policy of Maximilian, and strove to create a party by personal alliances and intermarriage. In this he met with some success. The friendship of the electors of Brandenburg, whether Catholic or Protestant, was unbroken. In the war of Schmalkalden half the Protestant princes were on Charles's side or friendly neutrals. At the critical moment which preceded this, the lately rebellious duke of Cleves and the heir of Bavaria were secured through the agency of two of Ferdinand's invaluable daughters. The relations, indeed, between the two old enemies, Austria and Bavaria, were permanently improved. The elector palatine, whose love affairs with his sister Eleanor Charles as a boy had roughly broken, received in compensation a Danish niece. Her sister, widow of Francesco Sforza, was utilized to gain a hold upon the French dynasty which ruled Lorraine. More than once there were proposals for winning the hostile house of Saxony by matrimonial means. After his victory over the League of Schmalkalden, Charles perhaps had really a chance of making the imperial power a reality. But he lacked either courage or imagination, contenting himself with proposals for voluntary association on the lines of the defunct Swabian League, and dropping even these when public opinion was against them. Now, too, he made his great mistake in attempting to foist Philip upon the Empire as Ferdinand's successor. Gossip reported that Ferdinand himself was to be set aside, and careless historians have given currency to this. Such an idea was impossible. Charles wished Philip to succeed Ferdinand, while he ultimately conceded that Ferdinand's son Maximilian should follow Philip, and even in his lifetime exercise the practical power in Germany. This scheme irritated Ferdinand and his popular and ambitious son at the critical moment when it was essential that the Habsburgs should hold together against princely malcontents. Philip was imprudently introduced to Germany, which had also just received a foretaste of the unpleasant characteristics of Spanish troops. Yet the person rather than the policy was, perhaps, at fault. It was natural that the quasi-hereditary succession should revert to the elder line. France proved her recuperative power by the occupation of Savoy and of Metz, Toul and Verdun, the military keys of Lorraine. The separation of the Empire and Spain left two weakened powers not always at accord, and neither of them permanently able to cope on equal terms with France. Nevertheless, this scheme did contribute in no small measure to the failure of Charles in Germany. The main cause was, of course, the religious schism, but his treatment of this requires separate consideration.

The characteristics of Charles's government, its mingled conservatism and adaptability, are best seen in Spain and the Netherlands, with which he was in closer personal contact than with Italy and Germany. In Spain, when once he knew the country, he never repeated the mistakes which on his first visit caused the rising of the communes. The cortes of Castile were regularly summoned, and though he would allow no encroachment on the crown's prerogatives, he was equally scrupulous in respecting their constitutional rights. They became, perhaps, during the reign slightly more dependent on the crown. This has been ascribed to the system of gratuities which in later reigns became a scandal, but was not introduced by Charles, and as yet amounted to little more than the payment of members' expenses. Indirectly, crown influence increased owing to the greater control which had gradually been exercised over the composition of the municipal councils, which often returned the deputies for the cortes. Charles was throughout nervous as to the power and wealth of the greater nobles. They rather than the crown had conquered the communes, and in the past they rather than the towns had been the enemies of monarchy. He earnestly warned his son against giving them administrative power, especially the duke of Alva, who in spite of his sanctimonious and humble bearing cherished the highest ambitions: in foreign affairs and war he might be freely used, for he was Spain's best soldier. In the cortes of 1538 Charles came into collision with the nobles as a class. They usually attended only on ceremonial occasions, since they were exempted from direct taxation, which was the main function of the cortes. Now, however, they were summoned, because Charles was bent upon a scheme of indirect taxation which would have affected all classes. They offered an uncompromising opposition, and Charles somewhat angrily dismissed them, nor did he ever summon them again. The peculiar Spanish system of departmental councils was further developed, so that it may be said that the bureaucratic element was slightly increasing just as the parliamentary element was on the wane. The evils of this tendency were as yet scarcely apparent owing to Charles's personal intervention in all departments. The councils presented their reports through the minister chiefly concerned; Charles heard their advice, and formed his own conclusions. He impressed upon Philip that he should never become the servant of his ministers: let him hear them all but decide himself. Naturally enough, he was well served by his ministers, whom he very rarely changed. After the death of the Piedmontese Gattinara he relied mainly on Nicolas Perrenot de Granvella for Netherland and German affairs, and on Francisco de los Cobos for Spanish, while the younger Granvella was being trained. From 1520 to 1555 these were the only ministers of high importance. Above all, Charles never had a court favourite, and the only women who exercised any influence were his natural advisers, his wife, his aunt Margaret and his sister Mary. In all these ladies he was peculiarly fortunate. Charles was never quite popular in Spain, but the empress whom he married at his people's request was much beloved. Complaints were made of his absenteeism, but until 1543 he spent the greater portion of his reign in Spain, or on expeditions such as those against Tunis and Algiers which were distinctively in Spanish interests. Spaniards disliked his Netherland and German connexions, but without the vigorous blows which these enabled him to strike at France, it is improbable that Spain could have retained her hold on Italy, or her monopoly of commerce with the Indies. The wars with Francis I. were, in spite of the rival candidature for the Empire, Spanish wars entailed by Ferdinand's retention of Roussillon, his annexation of Navarre, his summary eviction of the French from Naples. The Netherlands had become convinced on commercial grounds of the wisdom of peace with France, and the German interest in Milan was not sufficiently active to be a standing cause of war. Charles and Francis had inherited the hostility of Ferdinand and Louis XII.

The reign of Charles was in America the age of conquest and organization. Upon his accession the settlements upon the mainland were insignificant; by 1556 conquest was practically complete, and civil and ecclesiastical government firmly established. Actual expansion was the work of great adventurers starting on their own impulse from the older colonies. To Charles fell the task of encouraging such ventures, of controlling the conquerors, of settling the relations between colonists and natives, which involved those between the colonists and the missionary colonial church. He must arrest depopulation, provide for the labour market, regulate oceanic trade, and check military preponderance by civil and ecclesiastical organization. In America Charles took an unceasing interest; he had a boundless belief in its possibilities, and a determination to safeguard the interests of the crown. Cortes, Alvarado and the brothers Pizarro were brought into close personal communication with the emperor. If he bestowed on Cortes the confidence which the loyal conqueror deserved, he showed the sternest determination in crushing the rebellious and autonomous instincts of Almagro and the Pizarros. But for this, Peru and Chile must have become independent almost as soon as they were conquered. Throughout he strove to protect the natives, to prevent actual slavery, and the consequent raids upon the natives. Legislation was not, indeed, always consistent, because the claims of the colonists could not always be resisted, but on the whole he gave earnest support to the missionaries, who upheld the cause of the natives against the military, and sometimes the civil and ecclesiastical elements. His humane care for his native subjects may well be studied in the instructions sent to Philip from Germany in 1548, when Charles was at the summit of his power. If Charles had had his will, he would have opened the colonial trade to the whole of his wide possessions. The Castilians, however, jealously confined it to the city of Seville, artificially fostering the indolence of the colonists to maintain the agricultural and manufacturing monopoly of Castile, and by extreme protective measures forcing them to live on smuggled goods from other countries. Charles did actually attempt to cure the exclusive interest of the colonists in mineral wealth by the establishment of peasant and artisan colonies. If in many respects he failed, yet the organization of Spanish America and the survival of the native races were perhaps the most permanent results of his reign. It is a proof of the complexity of his interests that the march of the Turk upon Vienna and of the French on Naples delayed until the following reign the foundation of Spain's eastern empire. Charles carefully organized the expedition of Magellan, which sailed for the Moluccas and discovered the Philippines. Unfortunately, his straits for money in 1529 compelled him to mortgage to Portugal his disputed claim to the Moluccas, and the Philippines consequently dropped out of sight.

If in the administration of Spain Charles did little more than mark time, in the Netherlands advance was rapid. Of the seven northern provinces he added five, containing more than half the area of the later United Provinces. In the south he freed Flanders and Artois from French suzerainty, annexed Tournai and Cambrai, and closed the natural line of French advance through the great bishopric of Liege by a line of fortresses across its western frontier. Much was done to convert the aggregate of jarring provinces into a harmonious unity by means of common principles of law and finance, and by the creation of a national army. While every province had its own assembly, there were at Charles's accession only the rudiments of estates general for the Netherlands at large. At the close of the reign the common parliamentary system was in full swing, and was fast converting the loosely knit provinces into a state. By these means the ruler had wished to facilitate the process of supply, but supply soon entailed redress, and the provinces could recognize their common interests and grievances. Under Philip II. all patriotic spirits passionately turned to this creation of his father as the palladium of Netherland liberty. This process of consolidation was infinitely difficult, and conflicts between local and central authorities were frequent. That they were safely tided over was due to Charles's moderation and his legal mind, which prompted him to draw back when his case was bad. The harshest act of his life was the punishment of the rebellion of Ghent. Yet the city met with little or no sympathy in other quarters, because she had refused to act in concert with the other members of Flanders and the other provinces. It was no mere local quarrel, but a breach of the growing national unity.

In the Netherlands Charles showed none of the jealousy with which he regarded the Spanish nobles. He encouraged the growth of large estates through primogeniture; he gave the nobles the provincial governorships, the great court offices, the command of the professional cavalry. In the Order of the Golden Fleece and the long established presence of the court at Brussels, he possessed advantages which he lacked in Spain. The nobility were utilized as a link between the court and the provinces. Very different was it with the church. By far the greater part of the Netherlands fell under foreign sees, which were peculiarly liable to papal exactions and to the intrigues of rival powers. Thus the usual conflict between civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction was peculiarly acute. To remedy this dualism of authority and the consequent moral and religious abuses, Charles early designed the creation of a national diocesan system, and this was a darling project throughout his life. He was doing what every German territorial prince, Catholic or Lutheran, attempted, making bishoprics and abbeys dependent on the crown, with nomination and institution in his hands, and with reasonable control over taxation and jurisdiction. The papacy unfortunately thwarted him, and the scheme, which under Charles would have been carried with national assent, and created a national church, took the appearance under Philip of alien domination.

If in Germany Charles was emperor, he was in the Netherlands territorial prince, and thus his interests might easily be at disaccord with those of the Empire. Consequently, just as he had shaken off French suzerainty from Flanders and Artois, so he loosened the tie of the other provinces to Germany. In 1548 they were declared free and sovereign principalities not subject to imperial laws, and all the territories were incorporated in the Burgundian circle. It was, indeed, agreed that they should contribute to imperial taxation, and in return receive imperial protection. But this soon became a dead letter, and the Netherlands were really severed from the Empire, save for the nominal feudal tie in the case of some provinces. Thus some writers have dated their independence from Charles's convention of 1548 rather than from the peace of Westphalia, a century later. Having converted his heterogeneous territories into a self-sufficient state, Charles often contemplated the formation of a middle kingdom between France and Germany. At the last moment he spoiled his own work by granting the Netherlands to Philip. It was indeed hard to set aside the order of inheritance, and the commercial interests of the provinces were closely bound with Spain, and with England, whose queen Philip had married. Under any other ruler than Philip the breach might not have come so early. Yet it must be regretted that Charles had not the courage of his convictions, and that he lost the opportunity of completing the new nation which he had faithfully laboured to create.

Charles V. is in the eyes of many the very picture of a Catholic zealot. Popular opinion is probably mainly based upon the letters written from Yuste in 1558, when two hot-beds of heresy had been discovered in Spain herself, and on the contemporary codicil to his will. These were, perhaps, really in part responsible for the later persecution. Yet the circumstances were far from being typical of the emperor's career. Death was very near him; devotional exercises were his main occupation. The letters, moreover, were cries of warning, and not edicts. Charles was not then the responsible authority. There is a long step between a violent letter and a violent act. Few men would care to have their lives judged by letters written in the last extremities of gout. Less pardonable was the earlier persecution of the Valencian Moriscoes in 1525-1526. They had fought for their landlords in the cause of order, had been forcibly converted by the revolutionaries, and on the suppression of revolution had naturally relapsed. But for this momentary conversion the Inquisition would have had no hold upon them. The edict of persecution was cruel and unnecessary, and all expert opinion in Valencia was against it. It was not, however, actually enforced until after the victory of Pavia. It seems likely that Charles in a fit of religious exaltation regarded the persecution as a sacrificial thank-offering for his miraculous preservation. It is characteristic that, when in the following year he was brought into personal contact with the Moors of Granada, he allowed them to buy themselves off from the more obnoxious measures of the Inquisition. Henceforth the reign was marked by extreme leniency. Spain enjoyed a long lull in the activity of her Inquisition. At Naples in 1547 a rumour that the Spanish Inquisition was to be introduced to check the growth of heresy in influential quarters produced a dangerous revolt. The briefs were, however, issued by Paul III., no friend of Charles, and when a Neapolitan deputation visited the emperor he disclaimed any intention of making innovations. Of a different type to all the above was the persecution in the Netherlands. Here it was deliberate, chronic, and on an ascending scale. It is not a sufficient explanation that heresy also was persistent, ubiquitous and increasing, for this was also the case in Germany where Charles's methods were neither uniform nor drastic. But in the Netherlands the heretics were his immediate subjects, and as in every other state, Catholic or Lutheran, they must conform to their prince's religion. But there was more than this. After the suppression of the German peasant revolt in 1525 many of the refugees found shelter in the teeming Netherland cities, and heresy took the form, not of Lutheranism, but of Anabaptism, which was believed to be perilous to society and the state. The government put down Anabaptism, as a modern government might stamp out Anarchism. The edicts were, indeed, directed against heresy in general, and were as harsh as they could be--at least on paper. Yet when Charles was assured that they were embarrassing foreign trade he let it be understood that they should not affect the foreign mercantile communities. Prudential considerations proved frequently a drag upon religious zeal.

The relations of Charles to heresy must be judged in the main by his treatment of German Lutheranism. Here he had to deal, not with drawing-room imprudences nor hole-and-corner conventicles, not with oriental survivals nor millenary aspirations, but with organized churches protected by their princes, supported by revenues filched from his own church and stiffened by formulae as rigid as those of Catholicism. The length and stubbornness of the conflict will serve to show that Charles's religious conservatism had a measure of elasticity, that he was not a bigot and nothing more. It should be remembered that all his principal ministers were inclined to be Erasmian or indifferent, that one of his favourite confessors, Loaysa, advised compromise, and that several intimate members of his court and chapel were, after his death, victims of the Inquisition. The two more obvious courses towards the restoration of Catholic unity were force and reconciliation, in other words, a religious war or a general council. Neither of these was a simple remedy. The latter was impossible without papal concurrence, inoperative without the assistance of the European powers, and merely irritant without the adhesion of the Lutherans. It was most improbable that the papacy, the powers and the Lutherans would combine in a measure so palpably advantageous to the emperor. Force was hopeless save in the absence of war with France and the Turk, and of papal hostility in Italian territorial politics. Charles must obtain subsidies from ecclesiastical sources, and the support of all German Catholics, especially of the traditional rival, Bavaria. Even so the Protestants would probably be the stronger, and therefore they must be divided by utilizing any religious split, any class distinction, any personal or traditional dislikes, or else by bribery. Force and reconciliation seeming equally difficult, could an alternative be found in toleration? The experiment might take the form either of individual toleration, or of toleration for the Lutheran states. The former would be equally objectionable to Lutheran and Catholic princes as loosening their grip upon their subjects. Territorial toleration might seem equally obnoxious to the emperor, for its recognition would strengthen the anti-imperial particularism so closely associated with Lutheranism. If Charles could find no permanent specific, he must apply a provisional palliative. It was absolutely necessary to patch, if not to cure, because Germany must be pulled together to resist French and Turks. Such palliatives were two--suspension and comprehension. Suspension deferred the execution of penalties incurred by heresy, either for a term of years, or until a council should decide. Thus it recognized the divorce of the two religions, but limited it by time. Comprehension instead of recognizing the divorce would strive to conceal the breach. It was a domestic remedy, German and national, not European and papal. To become permanent it must receive the sanction of pope and council, for the Roman emperor could not set up a church of Germany. Yet the formula adopted might conceivably be found to fall within the four corners of the faith, and so obviate the necessity alike of force or council. Such were the conditions of the emperor's task, and such the methods which he actually pursued. He would advance now on one line, now on another, now on two or three concurrently, but he never definitely abandoned any. This fusion of obstinacy and versatility was a marked feature of his character.

Suspension was of course often accidental and involuntary. The two chief stages of Lutheran growth naturally corresponded with the periods, each of nine years, when Charles was absent. Deliberate suspension was usually a consequence of the failure of comprehension. Thus at Augsburg in 1530 the wide gulf between the Lutheran confession and the Catholic confutation led to the definite suspensive treaty granted to the Lutherans at Nuremberg (1532). Charles dared not employ the alternative of force, because he needed their aid for the Turkish war. In 1541, after a series of religious conferences, he personally presented a compromise in the so-called Book of Regensburg, which was rejected by both parties. He then proposed that the articles agreed upon should be compulsory, while on others toleration should be exercised until a national council should decide. Never before nor after did he go so far upon the path of toleration, or so nearly accept a national settlement. He was then burning to set sail for Algiers. His last formal suspensive measure was that of Spires (Speyer) in 1544, when he was marching against Francis. He promised a free and general council to be held in Germany, and, as a preparation, a national religious congress. The Lutherans were privately assured that a measure of comprehension should be concluded with or without papal approval. Meanwhile all edicts against heresy were suspended. No wonder that Charles afterwards confessed that he could scarcely reconcile these concessions with his conscience, but he won Lutheran aid for his campaign. The peace of Crepy gave all the conditions required for the employment of force. He had peace with French and Turk, he won the active support of the pope, he had deeply divided the Lutherans and reconciled Bavaria. Finding that the Lutherans would not accept the council summoned by the pope to Trent, he resorted to force, and force succeeded. At the Armed Diet of 1548 reunion seemed within reach. But Paul III. in direct opposition to Charles's wish had withdrawn the council from Trent to Bologna. Charles could not force Lutherans to submit to a council which he did not himself recognize, and he could not bring himself to national schism. Thus, falling back upon his old palliatives, he issued the Interim and the accompanying Reform of the Clergy, pending a final settlement by a satisfactory general council. These measures pleased neither party, and Charles at the very height of his power had failed. He was conscious of failure, and made few attempts even to enforce the Interim. Henceforward political complications gathered round him anew. The only remedy was toleration in some form, independent of the papacy and limitless in time. To this Charles could never assent. His ideal was shattered, but it was a great ideal, and the patience, the moderation, even at times the adroitness with which he had striven towards it, proved him to be no bigot.

The idea of abdication had long been present with Charles. After his failure to eject the French from Metz he had not shrunk from a wearisome campaign against Henry II., and he was now tired out. His mother's death removed an obstacle, for there could now be no question as to his son's succession to the Spanish kingdoms. Religious settlement in Germany could no longer be postponed, and he shrank from the responsibility; the hand that should rend the seamless raiment of God's church must not be his. To Ferdinand he gave his full authority as emperor, although at his brother's earnest request formal abdication was delayed until 1558. In the Hall of the Golden Fleece at Brussels on the 25th of October 1555 he formally resigned to Philip the sovereignty of his beloved Netherlands. Turning from his son to the representatives of the estates he said, "Gentlemen, you must not be astonished if, old and feeble as I am in all my members, and also from the love I bear you, I shed some tears." In the Netherlands at least the love was reciprocal, and tears were infectious among the thousand deputies who listened to their sovereign's last speech. On the 16th of January 1556, Charles resigned his Spanish kingdoms and that of Sicily, and shortly afterwards his county of Burgundy. On the 17th of September he sailed from Flushing on the last of his many voyages, an English fleet from Portland bearing him company down the Channel. In February 1557 he was installed in the home which he had chosen at Yuste in Estremadura.

The excellent books which have been written upon the emperor's retirement have inspired an interest out of all proportion to its real significance. His little house was attached to the monastery, but was not within it. He was neither an ascetic nor a recluse. Gastronomic indiscretions still entailed their inevitable penalties. Society was not confined to interchange of civilities with the brethren. His relations, his chief friends, his official historians, all found their way to Yuste. Couriers brought news of Philip's war and peace with Pope Paul IV., of the victories of Saint Quentin and Gravelines, of the French capture of Calais, of the danger of Oran. As head of the family he intervened in the delicate relations with the closely allied house of Portugal: he even negotiated with the house of Navarre for reparation for the wrong done by his grandfather Ferdinand, which appeared to weigh upon his conscience. Above all he was shocked by the discovery that Spain, his own court, and his very chapel were infected with heresy. His violent letters to his son and daughter recommending immediate persecution, his profession of regret at having kept his word when Luther was in his power, have weighed too heavily on his reputation. The feverish phrases of religious exaltation due to broken health and unnatural retirement cannot balance the deliberate humanity and honour of wholesome manhood. Apart from such occasional moments of excitement, the emperor's last years passed tranquilly enough. At first he would shoot pigeons in the monastery woods, and till his last illness tended his garden and his animal pets, or watched the operations of Torriani, maker of clocks and mechanical toys. After an illness of three weeks the call came in the early hours of the feast of St Matthew, who, as his chaplain said, had for Christ's sake forsaken wealth even as Charles had forsaken empire. The dying man clasped his wife's crucifix to his breast till his fingers lost their hold. The archbishop held it before his eyes, and with the cry of "_Ay Jesus!_" died, in the words of his faithul squire D. Luis de Quijada, "the chief of men that had ever been or would ever be." Posterity need not agree, but no great man can boast a more honest panegyric.

In character Charles stands high among contemporary princes. It consists of pairs of contrasts, but the better side is usually stronger than the worse. Steadfast honesty of purpose was occasionally warped by self-interest, or rather he was apt to think that his own course must needs be that of righteousness. Self-control would give way, but very rarely, to squalls of passion. Obstinacy and irresolution were fairly balanced, the former generally bearing upon ends, the latter upon means. His own ideals were constant, but he could gradually assimilate the views of others, and could bend to argument and circumstance; yet even here he had a habit of harking back to earlier schemes which he had seemed to have definitely abandoned. Intercourse with different nationalities taught him a certain versatility; he was dignified with Spaniards, familiar with Flemings, while the material Italians were pleased with his good sense. His sympathies were neither wide nor quick, but he was a most faithful friend, and the most considerate of masters. For all who sought him his courtesy and patience were unfailing. At his abdication he dwelt with reasonable pride upon his labours and his journeyings. Few monarchs have lived a more strenuous life. Yet his industry was broken by fits of indolence, which were probably due to health. In his prime his confessor warned him against this defect, and it caused, indeed, the last great disaster of his life. Fortunately he was conscious of his obstinacy, his irresolution and his indolence. He would accept admonition from the chapter of the Golden Fleece, would comment on his failings as a warning to his son. When Cardinal Contarini politely assured him that to hold fast to good opinions is not obstinacy but firmness, the emperor replied, "Ah! but I sometimes stick to bad ones." Charles was not cruel, indeed the character of his reign was peculiarly merciful. But he was somewhat unforgiving. He especially resented any slight upon his honour, and his unwise severity to Philip of Hesse was probably due to the unfounded accusation that he had imprisoned him in violation of his pledge. The excesses of his troops in Italy, in Guelders and on the Austrian frontiers caused him acute pain, although he called himself "hard to weep." No great nobleman, statesman or financier was executed at Charles's order. He was proud of his generalship, classing himself with Alva and Montmorenci as the best of his day. Yet his failures nearly balanced his successes. It is true that in his most important campaign, that against the League of Schmalkalden, the main credit must be ascribed to his well-judged audacity at the opening, and his dogged persistency at the close. As a soldier he must rank very high. It was said that his being emperor lost to Spain the best light horseman of her army. At every crisis he was admirably cool, setting a truly royal example to his men. His mettle was displayed when he was attacked on the burning sands of Tunis, when his troops were driven in panic from Algiers, when in spite of physical suffering he forded the Elbe at Muhlberg, and when he was bombarded by the vastly superior Lutheran artillery under the walls of Ingolstadt. When blamed for exposing himself on this last occasion, "I could not help it," he apologized; "we were short of hands, 1 could not set a bad example." Nevertheless he was by nature timid. Just before this very action he had a fit of trembling, and he was afraid of mice and spiders. The force of his example was not confined to the field. Melanchthon wrote from Augsburg in 1530 that he was a model of continence, temperance and moderation, that the old domestic discipline was now only preserved in the imperial household. He tenderly loved his wife, whom he had married for pecuniary and diplomatic reasons. Of his two well-known illegitimate children, Margaret was born before he married, and Don John long after his wife's death, but he felt this latter to be a child of shame. His sobriety was frequently contrasted with the universal drunkenness of the German and Flemish nobles, which he earnestly condemned. But on his appetite he could place no control, in spite of the ruinous effects of his gluttony upon his health. In dress, in his household, and in his stable he was simple and economical. He loved children, flowers, animals and birds. Professional jesters amused him, and he was not above a joke himself. Maps and mechanical inventions greatly interested him, and in later life he became fond of reading. He takes his place indeed among authors, for he dictated the commentaries on his own career. Of music he possessed a really fine knowledge, and his high appreciation of Titian proves the purity of his feeling for art. The little collection of books and pictures which he carried to Yuste is an index of his tastes. Charles was undeniably plain. He confessed that he was by nature ugly, but that as artists usually painted him uglier than he was, strangers on seeing him were agreeably disappointed. The protruding lower jaw and the thin pale face were redeemed by the fine open brow and the bright speaking eyes. He was, moreover, well made, and in youth had an incomparable leg. Above all no man could doubt his dignity; Charles was every inch an emperor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--_Commentaries de Charles-quint_, ed. by Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1862); _Memoirs_ written by Charles in 1550, and treating somewhat fully of the years 1543-1548; W. Robertson, _History of the Emperor Charles V._ (latest ed., London, 1887), an English classic, which needs supplementing by later authorities; F.A. Mignet, _Rivalite de Francois I et de Charles-quint_ (2 vols., Paris, 1875); E. Armstrong, _The Emperor Charles V._ (2 vols., London, 1902), to which reference may be made for monographs and collections of documents bearing on the reign; H. Baumgarten, _Geschichte Karls V._ (3 vols., Stuttgart, 1885-1893), very full but extending only to 1539; G. de Leva, _Storia documentata di Carlo V. in correlazione all' Italia_ (5 vols., Venice, 1862-1894), a general history of the reign, though with special reference to its Italian aspects, and extending to 1552; article by L.P. Gachard in _Biographie nationale_, vol. iii., 1872, an excellent compressed account. The life of Charles V. at Yuste may be studied in L.P. Gachard's _Retraite et mort de Charles-quint au monastere de Yuste_ (Brussels, 1854-1855), and in Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell's _The Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles V._ (London, 4 editions from 1852); also in W.H. Prescott's edition of Robertson's _History_ (1857). (E. Ar.)

CHARLES VI. (1685-1740), Roman emperor, was born on the 1st of October 1685 at Vienna. He was the second son of the emperor Leopold I. by his third marriage with Eleanore, daughter of Philip William of Neuburg, elector palatine of the Rhine. When the Spanish branch of the house of Habsburg became extinct in 1700, he was put forward as the lawful heir in opposition to Philip V., the Bourbon to whom the Spanish dominions had been left by the will of Charles II. of Spain. He was proclaimed at Vienna on the 19th of September 1703, and made his way to Spain by the Low Countries, England and Lisbon, remaining in Spain till 1711, mostly in Catalonia, where the Habsburg party was strong. Although he had a certain tenacity of purpose, which he showed in later life, he displayed none of the qualities required in a prince who had to gain his throne by the sword (see SPANISH SUCCESSION, WAR OF). He was so afraid of appearing to be ruled by a favourite that he would not take good advice, but was easily earwigged by flatterers who played on his weakness for appearing independent. In 1708 he was married at Barcelona to Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel (1691-1750), a Lutheran princess who was persuaded to accept Roman Catholicism by the assurances of Protestant divines and of the philosopher Leibnitz, that she could always give an Evangelical meaning to Catholic ceremonies. On the death of his elder brother Joseph I. on the 17th of April 1711, Charles inherited the hereditary possessions of the house of Habsburg, and their claims on the Empire. The death of Joseph without male issue had been foreseen, and Charles had at one time been prepared to give up Spain and the Indies on condition that he was allowed to retain Naples, Sicily and the Milanese. But when the case arose, his natural obstinacy led him to declare that he would not think of surrendering any of the rights of his family. It was with great difficulty that he was persuaded to leave Spain, months after the death of his brother (on the 27th of September 1711). Only the emphatic refusal of the European powers to tolerate the reconstruction of the empire of Charles V. forced him to give a sullen submission to necessity. He abandoned Spain and was crowned emperor in December 1711, but for a long time he would not recognize Philip V. It is to his honour that he was very reluctant to desert the Catalans who had fought for his cause. Some of their chiefs followed him to Vienna, and their advice had an unfortunate influence on his mind. They almost succeeded in arousing his suspicions of the loyalty of Prince Eugene at the very moment when the prince's splendid victories over the Turks had led to the peace of Passarowitz on the 28th of July 1718, and a great extension of the Austrian dominions eastward. Charles showed an enlightened, though not always successful, interest in the commercial prosperity of his subjects, but from the date of his return to Germany till his death his ruling passion was to secure his inheritance against dismemberment. As early as 1713 he had begun to prepare the "Pragmatic Sanction" which was to regulate the succession. An only son, born on the 13th of April 1716, died in infancy, and it became the object of his policy to obtain the recognition of his daughter Maria Theresa as his heiress. He made great concessions to obtain his aim, and embarked on complicated diplomatic negotiations. His last days were embittered by a disastrous war with Turkey, in which he lost almost all he had gained by the peace of Passarowitz. He died at Vienna on the 20th of October 1740, and with him expired the male line of his house. Charles VI. was an admirable representative of the tenacious ambition of the Habsburgs, and of their belief in their own "august greatness" and boundless rights.

For the personal character of Charles VI. see A. von Arneth, _Geschichte Maria Theresias_ (Vienna, 1863-1879). Dr Franz Krones, R. v. Marchland, _Grundriss der dsterreichischen Geschichte_ (Vienna, 1882), gives a very copious bibliography.

CHARLES VII. (1697-1745), Roman emperor, known also as Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria, was the son of the elector Maximilian Emanuel and his second wife, Theresa Cunigunda, daughter of John Sobieski, king of Poland. He was born on the 6th of August 1697. His father having taken the side of Louis XIV. of France in the War of the Spanish Succession (q.v.), Bavaria was occupied by the allies. Charles and his brother Clement, afterwards archbishop of Cologne, were carried prisoners to Vienna, and were educated by the Jesuits under the name of the counts of Wittelsbach. When his father was restored to his electorate, Charles was released, and in 1717 he led the Bavarian contingent of the imperial army which served under Prince Eugene against the Turks, and is said to have distinguished himself at Belgrade. On the 25th of September 1722 he was betrothed to Maria Amelia, the younger of the two orphan daughters of the emperor Joseph I. Her uncle Charles VI. insisted that the Bavarian house should recognize the Pragmatic Sanction which established his daughter Maria Theresa as heiress of the Habsburg dominions. They did so, but with secret protests and mental reservations of their rights, which were designed to render the recognition valueless. The electors of Bavaria had claims on the possessions of the Habsburgs under the will of the emperor Ferdinand I., who died in 1564.

Charles succeeded his father on the 26th of February 1726. As a ruler of Bavaria, he showed a vague disposition to improve the condition of his subjects, but his profuse habits and his efforts to rival the splendour of the French court crippled his finances. His policy was one of much duplicity, for he was constantly endeavouring to keep on good terms with the emperor while slipping out of his obligation to accept the Pragmatic Sanction and intriguing to secure French support for his claims whenever Charles VI. should die. On hearing of the emperor's last illness, he ordered his agent at Vienna to renew his claim to the Austrian inheritance. The claim was advanced immediately after the death of Charles VI. on the 20th of October 1740. Charles Albert now entered into the league against Maria Theresa, to the great misfortune of himself and his subjects. By the help of her enemies he was elected emperor in opposition to her husband Francis, grand duke of Tuscany, on the 24th of January 1742, under the title of Charles VII., and was crowned at Frankfort-on-Main on the 12th of February. But as his army had been neglected, he was utterly unable to resist the Austrian troops. While he was being crowned his hereditary dominions in Bavaria were being overrun. He described himself as attacked by stone and gout, ill, without money or land, and in distress comparable to the sorrows of Job. During the War of the Austrian Succession (q.v.) he was a mere puppet in the hands of the anti-Austrian coalition, and was often in want of mere necessaries. In the changes of the war he was able to re-enter his capital, Munich, in 1743, but had immediately afterwards to take flight again. He was restored by Frederick the Great in October 1744, but died worn out at Munich on the 20th of January 1745.

See A. von Arneth, _Geschichte Maria Theresias_ (Vienna, 1863-1879); and P.T. Heigel. _Der osterreichische Erbfolgestreit und die Kaiserwahl Karls VII._ (Munich, 1877).

CHARLES I. (1600-1649), king of Great Britain and Ireland, second son of James I. and Anne of Denmark, was born at Dunfermline on the 19th of November 1600. At his baptism he was created duke of Albany, and on the 16th of January 1605 duke of York. In 1612, by the death of his elder brother Henry, he became heir-apparent, and was created prince of Wales on the 3rd of November 1616. In 1620 he took up warmly the cause of his sister the queen of Bohemia, and in 1621 he defended Bacon, using his influence to prevent the chancellor's degradation from the peerage. The prince's marriage with the infanta Maria, daughter of Philip III. of Spain, had been for some time the subject of negotiation, James desiring to obtain through Spanish support the restitution of his son-in-law, Frederick, to the Palatinate; and in 1623 Charles was persuaded by Buckingham, who now obtained a complete ascendancy over him in opposition to wiser advisers and the king's own wishes, to make a secret expedition himself to Spain, put an end to all formalities, and bring home his mistress himself: "a gallant and brave thing for his Highness." "Steenie" and "Baby Charles," as James called them, started on the 17th of February, arriving at Paris on the 21st and at Madrid on the 7th of March, where they assumed the unromantic names of Mr Smith, and Mr Brown. They found the Spanish court by no means enthusiastic for the marriage[1] and the princess herself averse. The prince's immediate conversion was expected, and a complete religious tolerance for the Roman Catholics in England demanded. James engaged to allow the infanta the right of public worship and to use his influence to modify the law, but Charles himself went much further. He promised the alteration of the penal laws within three years, conceded the education of the children to the mother till the age of twelve, and undertook to listen to the infanta's priests in matters of religion, signing the marriage contract on the 25th of July 1623. The Spanish, however, did not trust to words, and Charles was informed that his wife could only follow him to England when these promises were executed. Moreover, they had no intention whatever of aiding the Protestant Frederick. Meanwhile Buckingham, incensed at the failure of the expedition, had quarrelled with the grandees, and Charles left Madrid, landing at Portsmouth on the 5th of October, to the joy of the people, to whom the proposed alliance was odious. He now with Buckingham urged James to make war on Spain, and in December 1624 signed a marriage treaty with Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV. of France. In April Charles had declared solemnly to the parliament that in case of his marriage to a Roman Catholic princess no concessions should be granted to recusants, but these were in September 1624 deliberately promised by James and Charles in a secret article, the first instance of the duplicity and deception practised by Charles in dealing with the parliament and the nation. The French on their side promised to assist in Mansfeld's expedition for the recovery of the Palatinate, but Louis in October refused to allow the men to pass through France; and the army, without pay or provisions, dwindled away in Holland to nothing.

On the 27th of March 1625 Charles I. succeeded to the throne by the death of his father, and on the 1st of May he was married by proxy to Henrietta Maria. He received her at Canterbury on the 13th of June, and on the 18th his first parliament assembled. On the day of his marriage Charles had given directions that the prosecutions of the Roman Catholics should cease, but he now declared his intention of enforcing the laws against them, and demanded subsidies for carrying on the war against Spain. The Commons, however, responded coldly. Charles had lent ships to Louis XIII. to be used against the Protestants at La Rochelle, and the Commons were not aware of the subterfuges and fictitious delays intended to prevent their employment. The Protestant feelings of the Commons were also aroused by the king's support of the royal chaplain, Richard Montagu, who had repudiated Calvinistic doctrine. They only voted small sums, and sent up a petition on the state of religion and reflecting upon Buckingham, whom they deemed responsible for the failure of Mansfeld's expedition, at the same time demanding counsellors in whom they could trust. Parliament was accordingly dissolved by Charles on the 12th of August. He hoped that greater success abroad would persuade the Commons to be more generous. On the 8th of September 1625 he made the treaty of Southampton with the Dutch against Spain, and sent an expedition to Cadiz under Sir Edward Cecil, which, however, was a failure. In order to make himself independent of parliament he attempted to raise money on the crown jewels in Holland, and to diminish the opposition in the Commons he excluded the chief leaders by appointing them sheriffs. When the second parliament met, however, on the 6th of February 1626, the opposition, led by Sir John Eliot, was more determined than before, and their attack was concentrated upon Buckingham. On the 29th of March, Charles, calling the Commons into his presence, accused them of leading him into the war and of taking advantage of his difficulties to "make their own game." "I pray you not to be deceived," he said, "it is not a parliamentary way, nor 'tis not a way to deal with a king. Remember that parliaments are altogether in my power for their calling, sitting, and dissolution; therefore as I find the fruits of them good or evil, they are to continue or not to be." Charles, however, was worsted in several collisions with the two houses, with a consequent loss of influence. He was obliged by the peers to set at liberty Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, whom he had put into the Tower, and to send a summons to the earl of Bristol, whom he had attempted to exclude from parliament, while the Commons compelled him, with a threat of doing no business, to liberate Eliot and Digges, the managers of Buckingham's impeachment, whom he had imprisoned. Finally in June the Commons answered Charles's demand for money by a remonstrance asking for Buckingham's dismissal, which they decided must precede the grant of supply. They claimed responsible ministers, while Charles considered himself the executive and the sole and unfettered judge of the necessities of the state. Accordingly on the 15th Charles dissolved the parliament.

The king was now in great need of money. He was at war with Spain and had promised to pay L30,000 a month to Christian IV. of Denmark in support of the Protestant campaign in Germany. To these necessities was now added a war with France. Charles had never kept his promise concerning the recusants; disputes arose in consequence with his wife, and on the 31st of July 1626 he ordered all her French attendants to be expelled from Whitehall and sent back to France. At the same time several French ships carrying contraband goods to the Spanish Netherlands were seized by English warships. On the 27th of June 1627 Buckingham with a large expedition sailed to the Isle of Re to relieve La Rochelle, then besieged by the forces of Louis XIII. Though the success of the French Protestants was an object much desired in England, Buckingham's unpopularity prevented support being given to the expedition, and the duke returned to Plymouth on the 11th of November completely defeated. Meanwhile Charles had endeavoured to get the money refused to him by parliament by means of a forced loan, dismissing Chief Justice Crewe for declining to support its legality, and imprisoning several of the leaders of the opposition for refusing to subscribe to it. These summary measures, however, only brought a small sum into the treasury. On the 2nd of January 1628 Charles ordered the release of all the persons imprisoned, and on the 17th of March summoned his third parliament.

Instead of relieving the king's necessities the Commons immediately proceeded to discuss the constitutional position and to formulate the Petition of Right, forbidding taxation without consent of parliament, arbitrary and illegal imprisonment, compulsory billeting in private houses, and martial law. Charles, on the 1st of May, first demanded that they should "rest on his royal word and promise." He obtained an opinion from the judges that the acceptance of the petition would not absolutely preclude in certain cases imprisonments without showing cause, and after a futile endeavour to avoid an acceptance by returning an ambiguous answer which only exasperated the Commons, he gave his consent on the 7th of June in the full and usual form. Charles now obtained his subsidies, but no real settlement was reached, and his relations with the parliament remained as unfriendly as before. They proceeded to remonstrate against his government and against his support of Buckingham, and denied his right to tonnage and poundage. Accordingly, on the 26th of June they were prorogued. New disasters befell Charles, in the assassination of Buckingham and in the failure of the fresh expedition sent to Re. In January 1629 the parliament reassembled, irritated by the exaction of the duties and seizure of goods during the interval, and suspicious of "innovations in religion," the king having forbidden the clergy to continue the controversy concerning Calvinistic and Arminian doctrines, the latter of which the parliament desired to suppress. While they were discussing these matters, on the 2nd of March 1629, the king ordered them to adjourn, but amidst a scene of great excitement the speaker, Sir John Finch, was held down in his chair and the doors were locked, whilst resolutions against innovations in religion and declaring those who levied or paid tonnage and poundage enemies to their country were passed. Parliament was immediately dissolved, and Charles imprisoned nine members, leaders of the opposition, Eliot, Holles, Strode, Selden, Valentine, Coryton, Heyman, Hobart and Long, his vengeance being especially shown in the case of Eliot, the most formidable of his opponents, who died in the Tower of consumption after long years of close and unhealthy confinement, and whose corpse even Charles refused to give up to his family.

For eleven years Charles ruled without parliaments and with some success. There seemed no reason to think that "that noise," to use Laud's expression concerning parliaments, would ever be heard again by those then living. A revenue of about L618,000 was obtained by enforcing the payment of tonnage and poundage, and while avoiding the taxes, loans, and benevolences forbidden by the petition of right, by monopolies, fines for knighthood, and for pretended encroachments on the royal domains and forests, which enabled the king to meet expenditure at home. In Ireland, Charles, in order to get money, had granted the Graces in 1628, conceding security of titles of more than sixty years' standing, and a more moderate oath of allegiance for the Roman Catholics, together with the renunciation of the shilling fine for non-attendance at church. He continued, however, to make various attempts to get estates into his possession on the pretext of invalid title, and on the 12th of May 1635 the city of London estates were sequestered. Charles here destroyed one of the most valuable settlements in Ireland founded by James I. in the interests of national defence, and at the same time extinguished the historic loyalty of the city of London, which henceforth steadily favoured the parliamentary cause. In 1633 Wentworth had been sent to Ireland to establish a medieval monarchy and get money, and his success in organization seemed great enough to justify the attempt to extend the system to England. Charles at the same time restricted his foreign policy to scarcely more than a wish for the recovery of the Palatinate, to further which he engaged in a series of numerous and mutually destructive negotiations with Gustavus Adolphus and with Spain, finally making peace with Spain on the 5th of November 1630, an agreement which was followed on the 2nd of January 1631 by a further secret treaty, the two kings binding themselves to make war on the Dutch and partition their territories. A notable feature of this agreement was that while in Charles's portion Roman Catholicism was to be tolerated, there was no guarantee for the security of Protestantism in the territory to be ceded to Spain.

In 1634 Charles levied ship-money from the seaport towns for the increase of the navy, and in 1635 the tax was extended to the inland counties, which aroused considerable opposition. In February 1637 Charles obtained an opinion in favour of his claims from the judges, and in 1638 the great Hampden case was decided in his favour. The apparent success, however, of Charles was imperilled by the general and growing resentment aroused by his exactions and whole policy, and this again was small compared with the fears excited by the king's attitude towards religion and Protestantism. He supported zealously Laud's rigid Anglican orthodoxy, his compulsory introduction of unwelcome ritual, and his narrow, intolerant and despotic policy, which was marked by several savage prosecutions and sentences in the Star Chamber, drove numbers of moderate Protestants out of the Church into Presbyterianism, and created an intense feeling of hostility to the government throughout the country. Charles further increased the popular fears on the subject of religion by his welcome given to Panzani, the pope's agent, in 1634, who endeavoured unsuccessfully to reconcile the two churches, and afterwards to George Conn, papal agent at the court of Henrietta Maria, while the favour shown by the king to these was contrasted with the severe sentences passed upon the Puritans.

The same imprudent neglect of the national sentiment was pursued in Scotland. Charles had already made powerful enemies there by a declaration announcing the arbitrary revocation of former church estates to the crown. On the 18th of June 1633 he was crowned at Edinburgh with full Anglican ceremonial, which lost him the hearts of numbers of his Scottish subjects and aroused hostility to his government in parliament. After his return to England he gave further offence by ordering the use of the surplice, by his appointment of Archbishop Spotiswood as chancellor of Scotland, and by introducing other bishops into the privy council. In 1636 the new _Book of Canons_ was issued by the king's authority, ordering the communion table to be placed at the east end, enjoining confession, and declaring excommunicate any who should presume to attack the new prayer-book. The latter was ordered to be used on the 18th of October 1636, but it did not arrive in Scotland till May 1637. It was intensely disliked both as "popish" and as English. A riot followed its first use in St Giles' cathedral on the 23rd of July, and Charles's order to enforce it on the 10th of September was met by fresh disturbances and by the establishment of the "Tables," national committees which now became the real though informal government of Scotland. In 1638 the national covenant was drawn up, binding those that signed it to defend their religion to the death, and was taken by large numbers with enthusiasm all over the country. Charles now drew back, promised to enforce the canons and prayer-book only in a "fair and legal way," and sent the marquis of Hamilton as a mediator. The latter, however, a weak and incapable man, desirous of popularity with all parties, and unfaithful to the king's interests, yielded everything, without obtaining the return of Charles's subjects to their allegiance. The assembly met at Glasgow on the 21st of November, and in spite of Hamilton's opposition immediately proceeded to judge the bishops. On the 28th Hamilton dissolved it, but it continued to sit, deposed the bishops and re-established Presbyterianism. The rebellion had now begun, and an appeal to arms alone could decide the quarrel between Charles and his subjects. On the 28th of May 1639 he arrived at Berwick with a small and ill-trained force, thus beginning what is known as the first Bishops' War; but being confronted by the Scottish army at Duns Law, he was compelled to sign the treaty of Berwick on the 18th of June, which provided for the disbandment of both armies and the restitution to the king of the royal castles, referring all questions to a general assembly and a parliament. When the assembly met it abolished episcopacy, but Charles, who on the 3rd of August had returned to Whitehall, refused his consent to this and to other measures proposed by the Scottish parliament. His extreme financial necessities, and the prospect of renewed hostilities with the Scots, now moved Charles, at the instigation of Strafford, who in September had left Ireland to become the king's chief adviser, to turn again to parliament for assistance as the last resource, and on the 13th of April 1640 the Short Parliament assembled. But on its discussing grievances before granting supplies and finally refusing subsidies till peace was made with the Scots, it was dissolved on the 5th of May. Charles returned once more to measures of repression, and on the 10th imprisoned some of the London aldermen who refused to lend money. He prepared for war, scraping together what money he could and obtaining a grant through Strafford from Ireland. His position, however, was hopeless; his forces were totally undisciplined, and the Scots were supported by the parliamentary opposition in England. On the 20th of August the Scots crossed the Tweed, beginning the so-called second Bishops' War, defeated the king's army at Newburn on the 28th, and subsequently occupied Newcastle and Durham. Charles at this juncture, on the 24th of September, summoned a great council of the peers; and on the 21st of October a cessation of arms was agreed to by the treaty of Ripon, the Scots receiving L850 a day for the maintenance of the army, and further negotiations being transferred to London. On the 3rd of November the king summoned the Long Parliament.

Such was the final issue of Charles's attempt to govern without parliaments--Scotland in triumphant rebellion, Ireland only waiting for a signal to rise, and in England the parliament revived with almost irresistible strength, in spite of the king, by the force of circumstances alone. At this great crisis, which would indeed have taxed the resolution and resource of the most cool-headed and sagacious statesman, Charles failed signally. Two alternative courses were open to him, either of which still offered good chances of success. He might have taken his stand on the ancient and undoubted prerogative of the crown, resisted all encroachments on the executive by the parliament by legal and constitutional means, which were probably ample, and in case of necessity have appealed to the loyalty of the nation to support him in arms; or he might have waived his rights, and, acknowledging the mistakes of his past administration, have united with the parliament and created once more that union of interests and sentiment of the monarchy with the nation which had made England so powerful. Charles, however, pretended to do both simultaneously or by turns, and therefore accomplished neither. The illegally imprisoned members of the last parliament, now smarting with the sense of their wrongs, were set free to stimulate the violence of the opposition to the king in the new assembly. Of Charles's double statecraft, however, the series of incidents which terminated the career of the great Strafford form the most terrible example. Strafford had come to London in November, having been assured by Charles that he "should not suffer in his person, honour or fortune," but was impeached and thrown into the Tower almost immediately. Charles took no steps to hinder the progress of the proceedings against him, but entered into schemes for saving him by bringing up an army to London, and this step exasperated Strafford's enemies and added new zeal to the prosecution. On the 23rd of April, after the passing of the attainder by the Commons, he repeated to Strafford his former assurances of protection. On the 1st of May he appealed to the Lords to spare his life and be satisfied with rendering him incapable of holding office. On the 2nd he made an attempt to seize the Tower by force. On the 10th, yielding to the queen's fears and to the mob surging round his palace, he signed his death-warrant. "If my own person only were in danger," he declared to the council, "I would gladly venture it to save my Lord Strafford's life; but seeing my wife, children, all my kingdom are concerned in it, I am forced to give way unto it." On the 11th he sent to the peers a petition for Strafford's life, the force of which was completely annulled by the strange postscript: "If he must die, it were a charity to reprieve him until Saturday." This tragic surrender of his great and devoted servant left an indelible stain upon the king's character, and he lived to repent it bitterly. One of his last admonitions to the prince of Wales was "never to give way to the punishment of any for their faithful service to the crown." It was regarded by Charles as the cause of his own subsequent misfortunes, and on the scaffold the remembrance of it disturbed his own last moments. The surrender of Strafford was followed by another stupendous concession by Charles, the surrender of his right to dissolve the parliament without its own consent, and the parliament immediately proceeded, with Charles's consent, to sweep away the star-chamber, high commission and other extra-legal courts, and all extra-parliamentary taxation. Charles, however, did not remain long or consistently in the yielding mood. In June 1641 he engaged in a second army plot for bringing up the forces to London, and on the 10th of August he set out for Scotland in order to obtain the Scottish army against the parliament in England; this plan was obviously doomed to failure and was interrupted by another appeal to force, the so-called Incident, at which Charles was suspected (in all probability unjustly) of having connived, consisting in an attempt to kidnap and murder Argyll, Hamilton and Lanark, with whom he was negotiating. Charles had also apparently been intriguing with Irish Roman Catholic lords for military help in return for concessions, and he was suspected of complicity in the Irish rebellion which now broke out. He left Scotland more discredited than ever, having by his concessions made, to use Hyde's words, "a perfect deed of gift of that kingdom," and without gaining any advantage.

Charles returned to London on the 25th of November 1641 and was immediately confronted by the Grand Remonstrance (passed on the 22nd), in which, after reciting the chief points of the king's misgovernment, the parliament demanded the appointment of acceptable ministers and the constitution of an assembly of divines to settle the religious question. On the 2nd of January 1642 Charles gave office to the opposition members Colepeper and Falkland, and at the same time Hyde left the opposition party to serve the king. Charles promised to take no serious step without their advice. Nevertheless, entirely without their knowledge, through the influence of the queen whose impeachment was intended, Charles on the 4th made the rash and fatal attempt to seize with an armed force the five members of the Commons, Pym, Hampden, Holies, Hesilrige and Strode, whom, together with Mandeville (afterwards earl of Manchester) in the Lords, he had impeached of high treason. No English sovereign ever had (or has since that time) penetrated into the House of Commons. So complete and flagrant a violation of parliamentary liberties, and an appeal so crude and glaring to brute force, could only be justified by complete success; but the court plans had been betrayed, and were known to the offending members, who, by order of the House, had taken refuge in the city before the king's arrival with the soldiers. Charles, on entering the House, found "the birds flown," and returned baffled, having thrown away the last chance of a peaceful settlement (see LENTHALL, WILLIAM). The next day Charles was equally unsuccessful in obtaining their surrender in the city. "The king had the worst day in London yesterday," wrote a spectator of the scene, "that ever he had, the people crying 'privilege of parliament' by thousands and prayed God to turn the heart of the king, shutting up their shops and standing at their doors with swords and halberds."[2] On the 10th, amidst general manifestations of hostility, Charles left Whitehall to prepare for war, destined never to return till he was brought back by his victorious enemies to die.

Several months followed spent in manoeuvres to obtain the control of the forces and in a paper war of controversy. On the 23rd of April Charles was refused entry into Hull, and on the 2nd of June the parliament sent to him the "Nineteen Propositions," claiming the whole sovereignty and government for the parliament, including the choice of the ministers, the judges, and the control of the army, and the execution of the laws against the Roman Catholics. The military events of the war are described in the article GREAT REBELLION. On the 22nd of August the king set up his standard at Nottingham, and on the 23rd of October he fought the indecisive battle of Edgehill, occupying Oxford and advancing as far as Brentford. It seemed possible that the war might immediately be ended by Charles penetrating to the heart of the enemy's position and occupying London, but he drew back on the 13th of November before the parliamentary force at Turnham Green, and avoided a decisive contest.

Next year (1643) another campaign, for surrounding instead of penetrating into London, was projected. Newcastle and Hopton were to advance from the north and west, seize the north and south banks of the river below the city, destroy its commerce, and combine with Charles at Oxford. The royalist force, however, in spite of victories at Adwalton Moor (June 30th) and Roundway Down (July 13th), did not succeed in combining with Charles, Newcastle in the north being kept back by the Eastern Association and the presence of the enemy at Hull, and Hopton in the west being detained by their successful holding out at Plymouth. Being too weak to attempt anything alone against London, Charles marched to besiege Gloucester, Essex following him and relieving the place. Subsequently the rival forces fought the indecisive first battle of Newbury, and Charles failed in preventing the return of Essex to London. Meanwhile on the 1st of February the parliament had submitted proposals to Charles at Oxford, but the negotiations came to nothing, and Charles's unwise attempt at the same time to stir up a rising in his favour in the city, known as Waller's Plot, injured his cause considerably. He once more turned for help to Ireland, where the cessation of the campaign against the rebels was agreed upon on the 15th of September 1643, and several English regiments became thereby available for employment by the king in England. Charles also accepted the proposal for bringing over 2000 Irish. On the 22nd of January 1644 the king opened the rival parliament at Oxford.

The campaign of 1644 began far less favourably for Charles than the two last, principally owing to the alliance now made between the Scots and the parliament, the parliament taking the Solemn League and Covenant on the 25th of September 1643, and the Scottish army crossing the border on the 19th of January 1644. No attempt was this year made against London, and Rupert was sent to Newcastle's succour in the north, where the great disaster of Marston Moor on the 2nd of July ruined Charles's last chances in that quarter. Meanwhile Charles himself had defeated Waller at Cropredy Bridge on the 29th of June, and he subsequently followed Essex to the west, compelling the surrender of Essex's infantry at Lostwithiel on the 2nd of September. With an ill-timed leniency he allowed the men to go free after giving up their stores and arms, and on his return towards Oxford he was confronted again by Essex's army at Newbury, combined now with that of Waller and of Manchester. Charles owed his escape here from complete annihilation only to Manchester's unwillingness to inflict a total defeat, and he was allowed to get away with his artillery to Oxford and to revictual Donnington Castle and Basing House.

The negotiations carried on at Uxbridge during January and February 1645 failed to secure a settlement, and on the 14th of June the crushing defeat of the king's forces by the new model army at Naseby practically ended the civil war. Charles, however, refused to make peace on Rupert's advice, and considered it a point of honour "neither to abandon God's cause, injure my successors, nor forsake my friends." His chief hope was to join Montrose in Scotland, but his march north was prevented by the parliamentary forces, and on the 24th of September he witnessed from the walls of Chester the rout of his followers at Rowton Heath. He now entered into a series of intrigues, mutually destructive, which, becoming known to the different parties, exasperated all and diminished still further the king's credit. One proposal was the levy of a foreign force to reduce the kingdom; another, the supply through the marquis of Ormonde of 10,000 Irish. Correspondence relating to these schemes, fatally compromising as they were if Charles hoped ever to rule England again, was discovered by his enemies, including the Glamorgan treaty, which went much further than the instructions to Ormonde, but of which the full responsibility has never been really traced to Charles, who on the 29th of January 1646 disavowed his agent's proceedings. He simultaneously treated with the parliament, and promised toleration to the Roman Catholics if they and the pope would aid in the restoration of the monarchy and the church. Nor was this all. The parliamentary forces had been closing round Oxford. On the 27th of April the king left the city, and on the 5th of May gave himself up to the Scottish army at Newark, arriving on the 13th with them at Newcastle. On the 13th of July the parliament sent to Charles the "Newcastle Propositions," which included the extreme demands of Charles's acceptance of the Covenants, the abolition of episcopacy and establishment of Presbyterianism, severer laws against the Roman Catholics and parliamentary control of the forces, with the withdrawal of the Irish Cessation, and a long list of royalists to be exempted from pardon. Charles returned no definite answer for several months. He imagined that he might now find support in Scottish royalism, encouraged by Montrose's series of brilliant victories, but these hopes were destroyed by the latter's defeat at Philiphaugh on the 3rd of September. The Scots insisted on the Covenant and on the permanent establishment of Presbyterianism, while Charles would only consent to a temporary maintenance for three years. Accordingly the Scots, in return for the payment of part of their army arrears by the parliament, marched home on the 30th of January 1647, leaving Charles behind, who under the care of the parliamentary commissioners was conducted to Holmby House. Thence on the 12th of May he sent his answer to the Newcastle Propositions, offering the militia to the parliament for ten years and the establishment of Presbyterianism for three, while a final settlement on religion was to be reached through an assembly of twenty divines at Westminster. But in the midst of the negotiation with the parliament Charles's person was seized, on the 3rd of June 1647, by Cornet Joyce under instructions of the army, which soon afterwards occupied London and overpowered the parliament, placing Charles at Hampton Court.

If Charles could have remained firm to either one or the other faction, and have made concessions either to Presbyterianism or on the subject of the militia, he might even now have prevailed. But he had learned nothing by experience, and continued at this juncture his characteristic policy of intrigue and double-dealing, "playing his game," to use his own words, negotiating with both parties at once, not with the object or wish to arrive at a settlement with either, but to augment their disputes, gain time and profit ultimately by their divisions. The "Heads of the Proposals," submitted to Charles by the army on the 28th of July 1647, were terms conceived on a basis far broader and more statesmanlike than the Newcastle Propositions, and such as Charles might well have accepted. The proposals on religion anticipated the Toleration Act of 1689. There was no mention of episcopacy, and its existence was thereby indirectly admitted, but complete religious freedom for all Protestant denominations was provided, and the power of the church to inflict civil penalties abolished, while it was also suggested that dangers from Roman Catholics and Jesuits might be avoided by means other than enforcing attendance at church. The parliament was to dissolve itself and be succeeded by biennial assemblies elected on a reformed franchise, not to be dissolved without their own consent before 120 days, and not to sit more than 240 days in the two years. A council of state was to conduct the foreign policy of the state and conclude peace and war subject to the approval of parliament, and to control the militia for ten years, the commanders being appointed by parliament, as also the officers of state for ten years. No peer created since May the 21st, 1642, was to sit in parliament without consent of both Houses, and the judicial decisions of the House of Lords were to be ratified by the Commons. Only five persons were excepted from amnesty, but royalists were not to hold office for five years and not to sit in the Commons till the end of the second biennial parliament. Proposals for a series of reforms were also added. Charles, however, was at the same time negotiating with Lauderdale for an invasion of England by the Scots, and imagined he could win over Cromwell and Fairfax by "proffers of advantage to themselves." The precious opportunity was therefore allowed to slip by. On the 9th of September he rejected the proposals of the parliament for the establishment of Presbyterianism. His hopes of gaining advantages by playing upon the differences of his opponents proved a complete failure. Fresh terms were drawn up by the army and parliament together on the 10th of November, but before these could be presented, Charles, on the 11th, had escaped to Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. Thence on the 16th he sent a message offering Presbyterianism for three years and the militia for his lifetime to the parliament, but insisting on the maintenance of episcopacy. On the 28th of December he refused his assent to the Four Bills, which demanded the militia for parliament for twenty years and practically for ever, annulled the honours recently granted by the king and his declarations against the Houses, and gave to parliament the right to adjourn to any place it wished. On the 3rd of January 1648 the Commons agreed to a resolution to address the king no further, in which they were joined by the Lords on the 15th.

Charles had meanwhile taken a further fatal step which brought about his total destruction. On the 26th of December 1647 he had signed at Carisbrooke with the Scottish commissioners the secret treaty called the "Engagement," whereby the Scots undertook to invade England on his behalf and restore him to the throne on condition of the establishment of Presbyterianism for three years and the suppression of the sectarians. In consequence the second civil war broke out and the Scots invaded England under Hamilton. The royalist risings in England were soon suppressed, and Cromwell gained an easy and decisive victory over the Scots at Preston. Charles was now left alone to face his enemies, with the whole tale of his intrigues and deceptions unmasked and exposed. The last intrigue with the Scots was the most unpardonable in the eyes of his contemporaries, no less wicked and monstrous than his design to conquer England by the Irish soldiers; "a more prodigious treason," said Cromwell, "than any that had been perfected before; because the former quarrel was that Englishmen might rule over one another; this to vassalize us to a foreign nation." Cromwell, who up to this point had shown himself foremost in supporting the negotiations with the king, now spoke of the treaty of Newport, which he found the parliament in the act of negotiating on his return from Scotland, as "this ruining hypocritical agreement." Charles had engaged in these negotiations only to gain time and find opportunity to escape. "The great concession I made this day," he wrote on the 7th of October, "was made merely in order to my escape." At the beginning he had stipulated that no concession from him should be valid unless an agreement were reached upon every point. He had now consented to most of the demands of the parliament, including the repudiation of the Irish Cessation, the surrender of the delinquents and the cession of the militia for twenty years, and of the offices of state to parliament, but remained firm in his refusal to abolish episcopacy, consenting only to Presbyterianism for three years. Charles's devotion to the church is undoubted. In April 1646, before his flight from Oxford, inspired perhaps by superstitious fears as to the origin of his misfortunes, he had delivered to Sheldon, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, a written vow (now in the library of St Paul's cathedral) to restore all church lands held by the crown on his restoration to the throne; and almost his last injunction to the prince of Wales was that of fidelity to the national church. His present firmness, however, in its support was caused probably less by his devotion to it than by his desire to secure the failure of the whole treaty, and his attempts to escape naturally weakened the chances of success. Cromwell now supported the petitions of the army against the treaty. On the 16th of November the council of officers demanded the trial of the king, "the capital and grand author of our troubles," and on the 27th of November the parliamentary commissioners returned from Newport without having secured Charles's consent. Charles was removed to Hurst Castle on the 1st of December, where he remained till the 19th, thence being taken to Windsor, where he arrived on the 23rd. On the 6th "Pride's Purge" had removed from the Commons all those who might show any favour to the king. On the 25th a last attempt by the council of officers to come to terms with him was repulsed. On the 1st of January the remnant of the Commons resolved that Charles was guilty of treason by "levying war against the parliament and kingdom of England"; on the 4th they declared their own power to make laws without the lords or the sovereign, and on the 6th established a "high court of justice" to try the king. On the 19th Charles was brought to St James's Palace, and on the next day his trial began in Westminster Hall, without the assistance of any of the judges, who all refused to take part in the proceedings. He laughed aloud at hearing himself called a traitor, and immediately demanded by what authority he was tried. He had been in treaty with the parliament in the Isle of Wight and taken thence by force; he saw no lords present. He was told by Bradshaw, the president of the court, that he was tried by the authority of the people of England, who had elected him king; Charles making the obvious reply that he was king by inheritance and not by election, that England had been for more than 1000 years an hereditary kingdom, and Bradshaw cutting short the discussion by adjourning the court. On the 22nd Charles repeated his reasoning, adding, "It is not my case alone; it is the freedom and liberty of the people of England, and do you pretend what you will, I stand more for their liberties, for if power without law may make laws ... I do not know what subject he is in England that can be sure of his life or anything that he calls his own." On the 23rd he again refused to plead. The court was adjourned, and there were several signs that the army in their prosecution of the king had not the nation at their back. While the soldiers had shouted "Justice! justice!" as the king passed through their ranks, the civilian spectators from the end of the hall had cried "God save the king!" There was considerable opposition and reluctance to proceed among the members of the court. On the 26th, however, the court decided unanimously upon his execution, and on the 27th Charles was brought into court for the last time to hear his sentence. His request to be heard before the Lords and Commons was rejected, and his attempts to answer the charges of the president were silenced. Sentence was pronounced, and the king was removed by the soldiers, uttering his last broken protest: "I am not suffered to speak. Expect what justice other people will have."

In these last hours Charles, who was probably weary of life, showed a remarkable dignity and self-possession, and a firm resignation supported by religious faith and by the absolute conviction of his own innocence, which, says Burnet, "amazed all people and that so much the more because it was not natural to him. It was imputed to a very extraordinary measure of supernatural assistance....; it was owing to something within himself that he went through so many indignities with so much true greatness without disorder or any sort of affectation." Nothing in his life became Charles like the leaving it. "He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene." On the morning of the 29th of January he said his last sad farewell to his younger children, Elizabeth and Henry, duke of Gloucester. On the 30th at ten o'clock he walked across from St James's to Whitehall, calling on his guard "in a pleasant manner" to walk apace, and at two he stepped upon the scaffold from a window, probably the middle one, of the Banqueting House (see ARCHITECTURE, Plate VI., fig. 75). He was separated from the people by large ranks of soldiers, and his last speech only reached Juxon and those with him on the scaffold. He declared that he had desired the liberty and freedom of the people as much as any; "but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consists in having government. ... It is not their having a share in the government; that is nothing appertaining unto them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things." These, together with his declaration that