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

born for victory

and dominion, and looked down with scorn on the nation before

which his ancestors had trembled. Even those knights of Gascony

and Guienne who had fought gallantly under the Black Prince were

regarded by the English as men of an inferior breed, and were

contemptuously excluded from honourable and lucrative commands.

In no long time our ancestors altogether lost sight of the

original ground of quarrel. They began to consider the crown of

France as a mere appendage to the crown of England; and, when in

violation of the ordinary law of succession, they transferred the

crown of England to the House of Lancaster, they seem to have

thought that the right of Richard the Second to the crown of

France passed, as of course, to that house. The zeal and vigour

which they displayed present a remarkable contrast to the torpor

of the French, who were far more deeply interested in the event

of the struggle. The most splendid victories recorded in the

history of the middle ages were gained at this time, against

great odds, by the English armies. Victories indeed they were of

which a nation may justly be proud; for they are to be attributed

to the moral superiority of the victors, a superiority which was

most striking in the lowest ranks. The knights of England found

worthy rivals in the knights of France. Chandos encountered an

equal foe in Du Guesclin. But France had no infantry that dared

to face the English bows and bills. A French King was brought

prisoner to London. An English King was crowned at Paris. The

banner of St. George was carried far beyond the Pyrenees and the

Alps. On the south of the Ebro the English won a great battle,

which for a time decided the fate of Leon and Castile; and the

English Companies obtained a terrible preeminence among the bands

of warriors who let out their weapons for hire to the princes and

commonwealths of Italy.


Nor were the arts of peace neglected by our fathers during that

stirring period. While France was wasted by war, till she at

length found in her own desolation a miserable defence against

invaders, the English gathered in their harvests, adorned their

cities, pleaded, traded, and studied in security. Many of our

noblest architectural monuments belong to that age. Then rose

the fair chapels of New College and of Saint George, the nave of

Winchester and the choir of York, the spire of Salisbury and the

majestic towers of Lincoln. A copious and forcible language,

formed by an infusion of French into German, was now the common

property of the aristocracy and of the people. Nor was it long

before genius began to apply that admirable machine to worthy

purposes. While English warriors, leaving behind them the

devastated provinces of France, entered Valladolid in triumph,

and spread terror to the gates of Florence, English poets

depicted in vivid tints all the wide variety of human manners and

fortunes, and English thinkers aspired to know, or dared to

doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and to believe.

The same age which produced the Black Prince and Derby, Chandos

and Hawkwood, produced also Geoffrey Chaucer and John Wycliffe.


In so splendid and imperial a manner did the English people,

properly so called, first take place among the nations of the

world. Yet while we contemplate with pleasure the high and

commanding qualities which our forefathers displayed, we cannot

but admit that the end which they pursued was an end condemned

both by humanity and by enlightened policy, and that the reverses

which compelled them, after a long and bloody struggle, to

relinquish the hope of establishing a great continental empire,

were really blessings in the guise of disasters. The spirit of

the French was at last aroused: they began to oppose a vigorous

national resistance to the foreign conquerors; and from that time

the skill of the English captains and the courage of the English

soldiers were, happily for mankind, exerted in vain. After many

desperate struggles, and with many bitter regrets, our ancestors

gave up the contest. Since that age no British government has

ever seriously and steadily pursued the design of making great

conquests on the Continent. The people, indeed, continued to

cherish with pride the recollection of Cressy, of Poitiers, and

of Agincourt. Even after the lapse of many years it was easy to

fire their blood and to draw forth their subsidies by promising

them an expedition for the conquest of France. But happily the

energies of our country have been directed to better objects; and

she now occupies in the history of mankind a place far more

glorious than if she had, as at one time seemed not improbable,

acquired by the sword an ascendancy similar to that which

formerly belonged to the Roman republic.


Cooped up once more within the limits of the island, the warlike

people employed in civil strife those arms which had been the

terror of Europe. The means of profuse expenditure had long been

drawn by the English barons from the oppressed provinces of

France. That source of supply was gone: but the ostentatious and

luxurious habits which prosperity had engendered still remained;

and the great lords, unable to gratify their tastes by plundering

the French, were eager to plunder each other. The realm to which

they were now confined would not, in the phrase of Comines, the

most judicious observer of that time, suffice for them all. Two

aristocratical factions, headed by two branches of the royal

family, engaged in a long and fierce struggle for supremacy. As

the animosity of those factions did not really arise from the

dispute about the succession it lasted long after all ground of

dispute about the succession was removed. The party of the Red

Rose survived the last prince who claimed the crown in right of

Henry the Fourth. The party of the White Rose survived the

marriage of Richmond and Elizabeth. Left without chiefs who had

any decent show of right, the adherents of Lancaster rallied

round a line of bastards, and the adherents of York set up a

succession of impostors. When, at length, many aspiring nobles

had perished on the field of battle or by the hands of the

executioner, when many illustrious houses had disappeared forever

from history, when those great families which remained had been

exhausted and sobered by calamities, it was universally

acknowledged that the claims of all the contending Plantagenets

were united in the house of Tudor.


Meanwhile a change was proceeding infinitely more momentous than

the acquisition or loss of any province, than the rise or fall of

any dynasty. Slavery and the evils by which slavery is everywhere

accompanied were fast disappearing.


It is remarkable that the two greatest and most salutary social

revolutions which have taken place in England, that revolution

which, in the thirteenth century, put an end to the tyranny of

nation over nation, and that revolution which, a few generations

later, put an end to the property of man in man, were silently

and imperceptibly effected. They struck contemporary observers

with no surprise, and have received from historians a very scanty

measure of attention. They were brought about neither by

legislative regulations nor by physical force. Moral causes

noiselessly effaced first the distinction between Norman and

Saxon, and then the distinction between master and slave. None

can venture to fix the precise moment at which either distinction

ceased. Some faint traces of the old Norman feeling might perhaps

have been found late in the fourteenth century. Some faint traces

of the institution of villenage were detected by the curious so

late as the days of the Stuarts; nor has that institution ever,

to this hour, been abolished by statute.


It would be most unjust not to acknowledge that the chief agent

in these two great deliverances was religion; and it may perhaps

be doubted whether a purer religion might not have been found a

less efficient agent. The benevolent spirit of the Christian

morality is undoubtedly adverse to distinctions of caste. But to

the Church of Rome such distinctions are peculiarly odious; for

they are incompatible with other distinctions which are essential

to her system. She ascribes to every priest a mysterious dignity

which entitles him to the reverence of every layman; and she does

not consider any man as disqualified, by reason of his nation or

of his family, for the priesthood. Her doctrines respecting the

sacerdotal character, however erroneous they may be, have

repeatedly mitigated some of the worst evils which can afflict

society. That superstition cannot be regarded as unmixedly

noxious which, in regions cursed by the tyranny of race over

race, creates an aristocracy altogether independent of race,

inverts the relation between the oppressor and the oppressed, and

compels the hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual

tribunal of the hereditary bondman. To this day, in some

countries where negro slavery exists, Popery appears in

advantageous contrast to other forms of Christianity. It is

notorious that the antipathy between the European and African

races is by no means so strong at Rio Janerio as at Washington.

In our own country this peculiarity of the Roman Catholic system

produced, during the middle ages, many salutary effects. It is

true that, shortly after the battle of Hastings, Saxon prelates

and abbots were violently deposed, and that ecclesiastical

adventurers from the Continent were intruded by hundreds into

lucrative benefices. Yet even then pious divines of Norman blood

raised their voices against such a violation of the constitution

of the Church, refused to accept mitres from the hands of

William, and charged him, on the peril of his soul, not to forget

that the vanquished islanders were his fellow Christians. The

first protector whom the English found among the dominant caste

was Archbishop Anselm. At a time when the English name was a

reproach, and when all the civil and military dignities of the

kingdom were supposed to belong exclusively to the countrymen of

the Conqueror, the despised race learned, with transports of

delight, that one of themselves, Nicholas Breakspear, had been

elevated to the papal throne, and had held out his foot to be

kissed by ambassadors sprung from the noblest houses of Normandy.

It was a national as well as a religious feeling that drew great

multitudes to the shrine of Becket, whom they regarded as the

enemy of their enemies. Whether he was a Norman or a Saxon may be

doubted: but there is no doubt that he perished by Norman hands,

and that the Saxons cherished his memory with peculiar tenderness

and veneration, and, in their popular poetry, represented him as

one of their own race. A successor of Becket was foremost among

the refractory magnates who obtained that charter which secured

the privileges both of the Norman barons