chapter 1._
ALSO IN: _J. M. Lappenberg, History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, volume 1, pages 67-101._
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A Logical Outline of English History
IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.
Physical or material (Orange). Ethnological (Dark Blue). Social and political (Green). Intellectual, moral and religious (Tan). Foreign (Black).
5th-7th centuries. Conquest: and settlement by Saxons, Angles and Jutes.
The Island of Britain, separated from the Continent of Europe by a narrow breadth of sea, which makes friendly commerce easy and hostile invasion difficult;--its soil in great part excellent; its northern climate tempered by the humid warmth of the Gulf Stream; its conditions good for breeding a robust population, strongly fed upon corn and meats; holding, moreover, in store, for later times, a rare deposit of iron and coal, of tin and potter's clay, and other minerals of like utility; was occupied and possessed by tribes from Northern Europe, of the strongest race in history; already schooled in courage and trained to enterprise by generations of sea-faring adventure; uncorrupted by any mercenary contact with the decaying civilization of Rome, but ready for the knowledge it could give.
7th-11th Centuries.
Fused, after much warring with one another and with their Danish kin, into a nation of Englishmen, they lived, for five centuries, an isolated life, until their insular and independent character had become deeply ingrained, and the primitive system of their social and political organization--their Townships, their Hundreds, their Shires, and the popular Moots, or courts, which determined and administered law in each--was rooted fast; though their king's power waxed and the nobles and the common people drew farther apart.
A. D. 1066.--Norman conquest.
Then they were mastered (in the last successful invasion that their Island ever knew) by another people, sprung from their own stock, but whose blood had been warmed and whose wit had been quickened by Latin and Gallic influences in the country of the Franks.
11th-18th Centuries.
A new social and political system now formed itself in England as the result:--Feudalism modified by the essential democracy inherent in Old English institutions--producing a stout commonality to daunt the lords, and a strong aristocracy to curb the king.
A. D. 1215. Magna Oharta.
English royalty soon weakened itself yet more by ambitious strivings to maintain and extend a wide dominion over-sea, in Normandy and Aquitaine; and was helpless to resist when barons and commons came together to demand the signing and sealing of the Great Charter of Englishmen's rights.
A. D. 1265-1295--Parliament.
Out of the conditions which gave birth to Magna Charta there followed, soon, the development of the English Parliament as a representative legislature, from the Curia Regis of the Normans and the Witenagemot of the older English time.
A. D. 1337-1453--The Hundred Years War.
From the woful wars of a hundred years with France, which another century brought upon it, the nation, as a whole, suffered detriment, no doubt, and it progress was hindered in many ways; but politically the people took some good from the troubled times, because their kings were more dependant on them for money and men.
A. D. 1453-1485--War of the Roses
So likewise, they were bettered in some ways by the dreadful civil Wars of the Roses, which distracted England for thirty years. The nobles well-nigh perished, as an order, in these wars, while the middle-class people at large suffered relatively little, in numbers or estate.
A. D. 1348--The Great Plague.
But, previously, the great Plague, by diminishing the ranks of the laboring class, had raised wages and the standard of living among them, and had helped, with other causes, to multiply the small landowners and tenant farmers of the country, increasing the independent common class.
A. D. 1327-1377--Immigration of Flemish weavers.
Moreover, from the time of Edward III., who encouraged Flemish weavers to settle in England and to teach their art to his people, manufactures began to thrive; trade extended; towns grew in population and wealth, and the great burgher middle-class rose rapidly to importance and weight in the land.
A. D. 1485-1603--Absolutism of the Tudors.
But the commons of England were not prepared to make use of the actual power which they held. The nobles had led them in the past; it needed time to raise leaders among themselves, and time to organize their ranks. Hence no new checks on royalty were ready to replace those constraints which had been broken by the ruin of great houses in the civil wars, and the crown made haste to improve its opportunity for grasping power. There followed, under the Tudors, a period of absolutism greater than England had known before.
15th-16th Centuries--Renaissance.
But this endured only for the time of the education of the commons, who conned the lessons of the age with eagerness and with understanding. The new learning from Greece and Rome; the new world knowledge that had been found in the West; the new ideas which the new art of the printer had furnished with wings,--all these had now gained their most fertile planting in the English mind. Their flower was the splendid literature of the Elizabethan age; they ripened fruits more substantial at a later day.
The intellectual development of the nation tended first toward a religious independence, which produced two successive revolts--from Roman Papacy and from the Anglican Episcopacy that succeeded it.
This religious new departure of the English people gave direction to a vast expansion of their energies in the outside world. It led them into war with Spain, and sent forth Drake and Hawkins and the Buccaneers, to train the sailors and pilot the merchant adventurers who would soon make England mistress of all the wide seas.
A. D. 1608-1688. The Stuarts. The Civil War. The Commonwealth. The Revolution.
Then, when these people, strong, prosperous and intelligent, had come to be ripely sufficient for self-government, there fell to them a foolish race of kings, who challenged them to a struggle which stripped royalty of all but its fictions, and established the sovereignty of England in its House of Commons for all time.
18th-19th Centuries. Science Invention. Material progress. Economic enlightenment.
Unassailable in its island,--taking part in the great wars of the 18th century by its fleets and its subsidies chiefly,--busy with its undisturbed labors at home,--vigorous in its conquests, its settlements and its trade, which it pushed into the farthest parts of the earth,--creating wealth and protecting it from spoliation and from waste,--the English nation now became the industrial and economic school of the age. It produced the mechanical inventions which first opened a new era in the life of mankind on the material side; it attained to the splendid enlightenment of freedom in trade; it made England the workshop and mart of the world, and it spread her Empire to every Continent, through all the seas.
--------- End: A Logical Outline of English History --------------------
ENGLAND: A. D. 477-527. The conquests of the Saxons. The founding of the kingdoms of Sussex, Wessex and Essex.
"Whilst the Jutes were conquering Kent, their kindred took part in the war. Ship after ship sailed from the North Sea, filled with eager warriors. The Saxons now arrived--Ella and his three sons landed in the ancient territory of the Regni (A. D. 477-491). The Britons were defeated with great slaughter, and driven into the forest of Andreade, whose extent is faintly indicated by the wastes and commons of the Weald. A general confederacy of the Kings and 'Tyrants' of the Britons was formed against the invaders, but fresh reinforcements arrived from Germany; the city of Andreades-Ceastre was taken by storm, all its inhabitants were slain and the buildings razed to the ground, so that its site is now entirely unknown. From this period the kingdom of the South Saxons was established in the person of Ella; and though ruling only over the narrow boundary of modern Sussex, he was accepted as the first of the Saxon Bretwaldas, or Emperors of the Isle of Britain. Encouraged, perhaps, by the good tidings received from Ella, another band of Saxons, commanded by Cerdic and his son Cynric, landed on the neighbouring shore, in the modern Hampshire (A. D. 494). At first they made but little progress. They were opposed by the Britons; but Geraint, whom the Saxon Chroniclers celebrate for his nobility, and the British Bards extol for his beauty and valour, was slain (A. D. 501). The death of the Prince of the 'Woodlands of Dyfnaint,' or Damnonia, may have been avenged, but the power of the Saxons overwhelmed all opposition; and Cerdic, associating his son Cynric in the dignity, became the King of the territory which he gained. Under Cynric and his son Ceaulin, the Saxons slowly, yet steadily, gained ground. The utmost extent of their dominions towards the North cannot be ascertained; but they had conquered the town of Bedford; and it was probably in consequence of their geographical position (A. D. 571) with respect to the countries of the Middle and East Saxons, that the name of the West Saxons was given to this colony. The tract north of the Thames was soon lost; but on the south of that river and of the Severn, the successors of Cerdic, Kings of Wessex, continued to extend their dominions. The Hampshire Avon, which retains its old Celtic name, signifying 'the Water,' seems at first to have been their boundary. Beyond this river, the British princes of Damnonia retained their power; and it was long before the country as far as the Exe became a Saxon March-land, or border. About the time that the Saxons under Cerdic and Cynric were successfully warring against the Britons, another colony was seen to establish itself in the territory or kingdom which, from its geographical position, obtained the name of East Saxony; but whereof the district of the Middle Saxons, now Middlesex, formed a part. London, as you well know, is locally included in Middle Saxony; and the Kings of Essex, and the other sovereigns who afterwards acquired the country, certainly possessed many extensive rights of sovereignty in the city. Yet, I doubt much whether London was ever incorporated in any Anglo-Saxon kingdom; and I think we must view it as a weak, tributary, vassal state, not very well able to resist the usurpations of the supreme Lord or Suzerain, Æscwin, or Ercenwine, who was the first King of the East Saxons (A. D. 527). His son Sleda was married to Ricola, daughter to Ethelbert of Kent, who afterwards appears as the superior, or sovereign of the country; and though Sleda was King, yet Ethelbert joined in all important acts of government. This was the fate of Essex--it is styled a kingdom, but it never enjoyed any political independence, being always subject to the adjoining kings."
_F. Palgrave, History of the Anglo Saxons,