The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 - Thomas Babington Macaulay (novel books to read TXT) 📗

judgment and temper, declined the contest, put

herself at the head of the reforming party, redressed the

grievance, thanked the Commons, in touching and dignified

language, for their tender care of the general weal, brought back

to herself the hearts of the people, and left to her successors a

memorable example of the way in which it behoves a ruler to deal

with public movements which he has not the means of resisting.


In the year 1603 the great Queen died. That year is, on many

accounts, one of the most important epochs in our history. It was

then that both Scotland and Ireland became parts of the same

empire with England. Both Scotland and Ireland, indeed, had been

subjugated by the Plantagenets; but neither country had been

patient under the yoke. Scotland had, with heroic energy,

vindicated her independence, had, from the time of Robert Bruce,

been a separate kingdom, and was now joined to the southern part

of the island in a manner which rather gratified than wounded her

national pride. Ireland had never, since the days of Henry the

Second, been able to expel the foreign invaders; but she had

struggled against them long and fiercely. During, the fourteenth

and fifteenth centuries the English power in that island was

constantly declining, and in the days of Henry the Seventh, sank

to the lowest point. The Irish dominions of that prince consisted

only of the counties of Dublin and Louth, of some parts of Meath

and Kildare, and of a few seaports scattered along the coast. A

large portion even of Leinster was not yet divided into counties.

Munster, Ulster, and Connaught were ruled by petty sovereigns,

partly Celts, and partly degenerate Normans, who had forgotten

their origin and had adopted the Celtic language and manners. But

during the sixteenth century, the English power had made great

progress. The half savage chieftains who reigned beyond the pale

had submitted one after another to the lieutenants of the Tudors.

At length, a few weeks before the death of Elizabeth, the

conquest, which had been begun more than four hundred years

before by Strongbow, was completed by Mountjoy. Scarcely had

James the First mounted the English throne when the last O'Donnel

and O'Neil who have held the rank of independent princes kissed

his hand at Whitehall. Thenceforward his writs ran and his judges

held assizes in every part of Ireland; and the English law

superseded the customs which had prevailed among the aboriginal

tribes.


In extent Scotland and Ireland were nearly equal to each other,

and were together nearly equal to England, but were much less

thickly peopled than England, and were very far behind England in

wealth and civilisation. Scotland had been kept back by the

sterility of her soil; and, in the midst of light, the thick

darkness of the middle ages still rested on Ireland.


The population of Scotland, with the exception of the Celtic

tribes which were thinly scattered over the Hebrides and over the

mountainous parts of the northern shires, was of the same blood

with the population of England, and spoke a tongue which did not

differ from the purest English more than the dialects of

Somersetshire and Lancashire differed from each other. In

Ireland, on the contrary, the population, with the exception of

the small English colony near the coast, was Celtic, and still

kept the Celtic speech and manners.


In natural courage and intelligence both the nations which now

became connected with England ranked high. In perseverance, in

selfcommand, in forethought, in all the virtues which conduce to

success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed. The Irish,

on the other hand, were distinguished by qualities which tend to

make men interesting rather than prosperous. They were an ardent

and impetuous race, easily moved to tears or to laughter, to fury

or to love. Alone among the nations of northern Europe they had

the susceptibility, the vivacity, the natural turn for acting and

rhetoric, which are indigenous on the shores of the Mediterranean

Sea. In mental cultivation Scotland had an indisputable

superiority. Though that kingdom was then the poorest in

Christendom, it already vied in every branch of learning with the

most favoured countries. Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food

were as wretched as those of the Icelanders of our time, wrote

Latin verse with more than the delicacy of Vida, and made

discoveries in science which would have added to the renown of

Galileo. Ireland could boast of no Buchanan or Napier. The

genius, with which her aboriginal inhabitants were largely

endowed' showed itself as yet only in ballads which wild and

rugged as they were, seemed to the judging eye of Spenser to

contain a portion of the pure gold of poetry.


Scotland, in becoming part of the British monarchy, preserved her

dignity. Having, during many generations, courageously withstood

the English arms, she was now joined to her stronger neighbour on

the most honourable terms. She gave a King instead of receiving

one. She retained her own constitution and laws. Her tribunals

and parliaments remained entirely independent of the tribunals

and parliaments which sate at Westminster. The administration of

Scotland was in Scottish hands; for no Englishman had any motive

to emigrate northward, and to contend with the shrewdest and most

pertinacious of all races for what was to be scraped together in

the poorest of all treasuries. Nevertheless Scotland by no means

escaped the fate ordained for every country which is connected,

but not incorporated, with another country of greater resources.

Though in name an independent kingdom, she was, during more than

a century, really treated, in many respects, as a subject

province.


Ireland was undisguisedly governed as a dependency won by the

sword. Her rude national institutions had perished. The English

colonists submitted to the dictation of the mother country,

without whose support they could not exist, and indemnified

themselves by trampling on the people among whom they had

settled. The parliaments which met at Dublin could pass no law

which had not been previously approved by the English Privy

Council. The authority of the English legislature extended over

Ireland. The executive administration was entrusted to men taken

either from England or from the English pale, and, in either

case, regarded as foreigners, and even as enemies, by the Celtic

population.


But the circumstance which, more than any other, has made Ireland

to differ from Scotland remains to be noticed. Scotland was

Protestant. In no part of Europe had the movement of the popular

mind against the Roman Catholic Church been so rapid and violent.

The Reformers had vanquished, deposed, and imprisoned their

idolatrous sovereign. They would not endure even such a

compromise as had been effected in England. They had established

the Calvinistic doctrine, discipline, and worship; and they made

little distinction between Popery and Prelacy, between the Mass

and the Book of Common Prayer. Unfortunately for Scotland, the

prince whom she sent to govern a fairer inheritance had been so

much annoyed by the pertinacity with which her theologians had

asserted against him the privileges of the synod and the pulpit

that he hated the ecclesiastical polity to which she was fondly

attached as much as it was in his effeminate nature to hate

anything, and had no sooner mounted the English throne than he

began to show an intolerant zeal for the government and ritual of

the English Church.


The Irish were the only people of northern Europe who had

remained true to the old religion. This is to be partly ascribed

to the circumstance that they were some centuries behind their

neighbours in knowledge. But other causes had cooperated. The

Reformation had been a national as well as a moral revolt. It had

been, not only an insurrection of the laity against the clergy,

but also an insurrection of all the branches of the great German

race against an alien domination. It is a most significant

circumstance that no large society of which the tongue is not

Teutonic has ever turned Protestant, and that, wherever a

language derived from that of ancient Rome is spoken, the

religion of modern Rome to this day prevails. The patriotism of

the Irish had taken a peculiar direction. The object of their

animosity was not Rome, but England; and they had especial reason

to abhor those English sovereigns who had been the chiefs of the

great schism, Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. During the vain

struggle which two generations of Milesian princes maintained

against the Tudors, religious enthusiasm and national enthusiasm

became inseparably blended in the minds of the vanquished race.

The new feud of Protestant and Papist inflamed the old feud of

Saxon and Celt. The English conquerors. meanwhile, neglected all

legitimate means of conversion. No care was taken to provide the

vanquished nation with instructors capable of making themselves

understood. No translation of the Bible was put forth in the

Irish language. The government contented itself with setting up a

vast hierarchy of Protestant archbishops, bishops, and rectors,

who did nothing, and who, for doing nothing, were paid out of the

spoils of a Church loved and revered by the great body of the

people.


There was much in the state both of Scotland and of Ireland which

might well excite the painful apprehensions of a farsighted

statesman. As yet, however, there was the appearance of

tranquillity. For the first time all the British isles were

peaceably united under one sceptre.


It should seem that the weight of England among European nations

ought, from this epoch, to have greatly increased. The territory

which her new King governed was, in extent, nearly double that

which Elizabeth had inherited. His empire was the most complete

within itself and the most secure from attack that was to be

found in the world. The Plantagenets and Tudors had been

repeatedly under the necessity of defending themselves against

Scotland while they were engaged in continental war. The long

conflict in Ireland had been a severe and perpetual drain on

their resources. Yet even under such disadvantages those

sovereigns had been highly considered throughout Christendom. It

might, therefore, not unreasonably be expected that England,

Scotland, and Ireland combined would form a state second to none

that then existed.


All such expectations were strangely disappointed. On the day of

the accession of James the First, England descended from the rank

which she had hitherto held, and began to he regarded as a power

hardly of the second order. During many years the great British

monarchy, under four successive princes of the House of Stuart,

was scarcely a more important member of the European system than

the little kingdom of Scotland had previously been. This,

however, is little to be regretted. Of James the First, as of

John, it may be said that, if his administration had been able

and splendid, it