England

England is the southern, the larger, and by far the more populous portion of Great Britain, the largest and most important of European islands. Separated from Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Denmark by the North Sea, from France by another 'streak of silver sea,' the Channel, and from Ireland by St George's Channel and the Irish Sea, the kingdom of England and Wales has only one short land frontier, that towards Scotland. In shape it forms an irregular triangle, of which the eastern side measures in a straight line 350 miles, the southern 325 miles, the western 425; but its shores are so deeply indented by bays and estuaries as to make the coast-line longer in proportion to the size of the land than in any other country but Scotland and Greece.

England has for hundreds of years been one of the leading powers of Europe, one of the great moving forces of the world, and, through her colonies, a veritable mother of nations; but her area is relatively very small. The area of the British Islands (121,700 sq. m.) is but $\backslash frac\{1\}\{100\}$th of the surface of the world. The colonies and dependencies of the empire of which England is the centre cover a seventh of the land-area of the globe. England without Wales (51,000 sq. m.) is about the size of Roumania, less than a fourth of France or of Germany, and is but little larger than the single state of New York (49,170 sq. m.); and England with Wales (58,000) is not equal in area to the state of Georgia (59,475), and is not a fourth of the size of Texas. Twenty-nine of the states in the Union are each larger than England, several much larger than the whole United Kingdom.

Her name 'this noble realm of England' owes to the Engle or Angles, who with the kindred Jutes (Geatas) and Saxons (Seaxe) descended on the greater part of what used to be known as Albion or Britain (see BRITANNIA), conquered and occupied it in the 5th and following centuries (see ANGLES, ANGLO-SAXONS). These kindred peoples all learned to call themselves Englisc or English, and by Englaland they understood the whole area now occupied by them—an area which in the 7th century extended over more than the half of the island from the Forth to the English Channel. South-eastern Scotland, as occupied by Angles, and not by Saxons or Jutes, was in the stricter sense English; and the people of the non-Celtic parts of Scotland, though now markedly differing from the southern English, are in blood and in mental and physical type at least as English in the wider sense as the people of Oxford or Kent. Political circumstances led the English and Anglicised Celts of North Britain beyond Solway and Tweed to become the subjects of the alien Scottish king, but their language they still called Inglis, as distinguished from the Erse of their Scottish or Gaelic fellow-countrymen.

The people of the southern kingdom constitute nearly three-fourths of the inhabitants of the three kingdoms; the English language in some form is that of all but a small minority in any of the three; the English literature is the common inheritance of the whole; the constitution and polity of England, slightly modified, is the British constitution under which the three kingdoms have unitedly become glorious, and has been the original model for the free constitutions of all free peoples the whole world over. Hence it is not strange that not merely by Englishmen, but by all foreigners, the name of England is used for what, after the union of Scotland and England in 1603, became officially Great Britain, and even for the whole empire, which, since the Irish Union of 1801, is strictly the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

The physical features, as also the geology, of the British Islands are obviously so closely connected that it is convenient to treat of them collectively under the heads of GREAT BRITAIN and of IRELAND. There also the general facts and figures fall to be given which concern the three kingdoms jointly—exports, imports, trade, shipping, &c., except in so far as they are separately discussed under such heads as AGRICULTURE, ARMY, COLONIES, COUNTY, EDUCATION, EMIGRATION, NAVY, PARLIAMENT, RAILWAYS, &c. Here, on the other hand, some of the facts distinctive of England, which admit of being succinctly stated, may well be noted.

The area of England without Wales is 50,823 sq. m.; that of Wales, 7363; together, 58,186. So that, as the area of the United Kingdom, with Scotland, Ireland, Man and the Channel Islands, is 120,382, England alone covers 42 per cent. of the whole, Wales 6, and England and Wales 48 per cent. The population of England and Wales in 1650 is estimated to have been 5,450,000, the increase up to that date having been slow. In 1750 it was probably 6,400,000. From that date the increase was rapid; and the census of 1801 showed a population of 8,892,536. In 1841 the population of England alone was 15,002,443; in 1851 it was 16,921,888; in 1861, 18,954,444; in 1871, 21,495,331. That of Wales was at the corresponding dates 911,705; 1,005,721; 1,111,780; 1,217,135. At the census of 1881, England had 24,613,926, and Wales 1,360,513, or together 25,974,439. So that in that year the population of England alone was 69.8 per cent. of the total population of the United Kingdom (35,241,482); of Wales, 3.8; and of the two 73.6. England and Wales make up 76 per cent., or three-fourths of the total population of the United Kingdom. The density of the population in England is greater than in any other European country except Belgium. In 1881 it was for England alone 540 per sq. m.; for England and Wales, 497; whereas for Scotland it was only 135 (in Belgium in 1891 it was 448; in 1893, 550). In England and Wales there were, in 1891, 24 towns with more than 100,000 inhabitants (in 1881, 20 such towns), in Scotland only 4, in Ireland 2. In England there were 62 above 50,000, in Scotland 7, in Ireland 3.

At the census of 1891 the population of England and Wales, and of the English counties separately (for the Welsh counties, see WALES), was as follows:

For the Welsh counties, see WALES. The areas of the English counties are given in square miles in the articles on the counties.

The climate of Britain is insular and comparatively equable, milder on the whole than that of any region on the same northern parallel (see CLIMATE), with smaller extremes of heat and cold, with colder summers and warmer winters. England is milder than Scotland, and though moist compared with continental countries, less moist than Ireland. In spite of its dull skies and frequent rains, it was wisely said by Charles II. that the English climate 'invited men abroad more days in the year and more hours in the day than any other country.'

The situation of Britain has been shown to be in the very centre of the land-masses of the globe, a very great advantage for commerce and navigation; England, being nearer the European shores, enjoys the advantage in higher measure than its sister-kingdoms. Its seas are less stormy, and it has a greatly more developed system of navigable rivers.

The north-west of England is mountainous and hilly, the east and south mainly a plain crossed by lines of low hills. The fertility of England is much greater than that of Scotland or Ireland, especially that of the wheat-bearing area of eastern England. The agriculturally productive area of England is estimated at 80 per cent. of its total, and of Wales 60 per cent., whereas that of Scotland is only 28.8 per cent., and of Ireland 74. England, whose surface has been said for variety to be an epitome of Europe, is very rich in minerals, of which coal and iron are incomparably the most important, making nine-tenths in value of the whole. The output of coal and iron in England is vastly greater than in Scotland, and Ireland is exceptionally poor in both.

Of the population of England it is impossible to say what proportions belong to the various racial elements that have gone to form it. A non-Aryan race, perhaps Euskarian, must have preceded the Celts, who conquered and assimilated them: the Celts (q.v.) are still the predominant race in Wales. The Roman armies introduced into the towns a considerable element, comprising doubtless Gauls, Germans, Iberians, Italians, Dacians, Phrygians, and the other various races who went to constitute the legions of the empire. Danes and Norman-French were the latest people who came in large numbers. But the great problem is: Did the Teutonic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes exterminate their predecessors the Celtic Britons, or did they over great part of the country mainly assimilate them? (See the history below.)

What is certain is that out of these various stocks a well-marked race has been formed, strenuous, self-reliant, resolute in defence of its rights, daring, laborious, industrious, and ambitious. Its essential character, with marked modifications, it has transmitted to the great daughter-nation of the United States, and to the colonies of Britain. And this race it is which has given its language and in part its institutions to over 100 millions of the world's inhabitants, and with the help of its Scottish and Irish kinsfolk, has created for its and their offspring a glorious heritage in the English literature. England became the classic land of liberty, where the power of the state, based on ancient precedent, has been developed so as least to infringe on the freedom of the individual—a development sketched in the succeeding history, and continued on similar lines in the United States.

England became also the special home and headquarters of agricultural enterprise, mineral production, machine-making of all kinds and steam-power, of commerce, navigation, and shipping.

England did not start in the race of commerce as early as many of those who are still her rivals. Long after France, Flanders, and parts of Germany were great manufacturing centres, England was an agricultural and pastoral country, wool its chief production and staple export. The woollen goods for its own use were mostly manufactured abroad. Edward I. did much to encourage such trade as there was in opening English ports to foreign merchants, and Edward III. induced many weavers, dyers, and fullers from Flanders to settle in England. In the 14th century woollen cloth was manufactured at Bristol, London, and Norwich, and began to be exported. Linen and silk weaving became of some importance. Coal was exported from Newcastle to France in 1325; but it was later ere English cutlery was known abroad. Great progress took place in Elizabeth's reign; under James I. Scotland began to have a share in the commerce of the world; and the reign of William III. marked a new era, for the immigration of French refugees after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 soon told on the quality and amount of English manufactures. But the great and rapid advance which made the commerce and manufactures of England the wonder of the world dates from the latter half of the 18th century, and is largely owing to the unparalleled development of machinery, the use of steam as a motive power, improved communication, and later, steam-navigation and railways.

It is very observable that the local distribution of the great industries of England has changed very greatly since the 17th century. At the Revolution period, most of the greater towns of England were in the south and east; but these have now been long outstripped by northern rivals, and what were then important manufacturing towns have in many cases sunk into mere villages. After London, the chief towns were Bristol and Norwich, each with some 29,000 inhabitants. Exeter with 10,000 was probably equalled by York. Worcester and Nottingham may be set down at 8000; while Leeds had but 7000, Manchester hardly 6000, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Liverpool perhaps less than 4000. Now English manufacturing industries have most of their special seats in the north. If we draw a line from the mouth of the Severn to the Wash, we find that to the south-east there are hardly ten towns, not seaports or suburbs of London, which have a population exceeding 25,000; to the north-west of the line there are above fifty inland towns of that size. It is very significant that all the coal of England is found north of the line named, about or near the populous money-making towns.

The general figures that measure the vast commerce of the United Kingdom will be given for comparison with those of other countries at GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. In many cases it is not possible to separate the shares proper to England, Scotland, and Ireland; but the greater wealth of England may be shown by a few miscellaneous figures as to textile industry, the collecting of customs, and the assessments for income-tax.

There were in the United Kingdom, in 1890, 7190 textile factories in Great Britain and Ireland, of which 6180 were in England and Wales, 747 in Scotland, and 263 in Ireland. Of the total trade (exports and imports) 90.4 per cent. falls to the 'predominant partner'; 8.1 per cent. to Scotland; and 1.4 per cent. to Ireland. Of coal raised in the United Kingdom in 1893, the total was 164,325,795 tons, of which Scotland produced 25,482,918 tons. Of iron the enormous preponderance is English. Of a gross customs revenue in 1894-95 of £20,600,029, £8,823,648 was collected at London, £3,015,126 at Liverpool, £2,902,180 at other English ports, £1,765,049 at Scottish ports, and £1,965,666 at Irish ports. Though this indicates the move- ment of shipping, it is true that a share of the vessels in English ports belongs to Scottish owners, and Scotland builds in some years almost as large a tonnage as England does. The total amount of the annual value of property and profits assessed to income-tax in 1894 in the United Kingdom was £706,130,875; the share of England being £602,338,699; of Scotland, £65,188,840; and of Ireland, £38,553,336. Other figures of a similar kind will be seen under SAVINGS-BANKS.

In no way can a better conception be formed of the state of England at different periods than from the works of topographers, foreign visitors, &c., such as Leland and Camden for the 16th century; Drayton and Fuller for the 17th; Defoe, Pennant, Pococke, Moritz, and Young for the 18th; Cobbett, Emerson, Hawthorne, Esquirois, Taine, Kohl, and Burroughs for the 19th. See also Escott, England: her People, Policy, and Pursuits (1879; 2d ed. 1886); R. Grant White, England Without and Within (1881); Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices in England (6 vols. 1866-68); T. H. Ward, The Reign of Queen Victoria (2 vols. 1887); A. Innes Shand, Half a Century of Changes (1887); W. Besant, Fifty Years Ago (1888); W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry (1882; 2d ed. 1890); Social England, edited by Traill (1893-96).

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

Though the history of England cannot properly be said to begin till the 5th century, when the Teutonic tribes who have given the country its name established themselves in the island, it is of some importance to understand the condition of the people whom they supplanted. There can be little doubt that, speaking generally, the inhabitants of the island when conquered by the Romans were of Celtic origin. They were not indeed entirely homogeneous; two distinct branches of the Celtic language were spoken, the Gauls of France are mentioned by Cæsar as having exercised authority over the island, the Belgæ had certainly established themselves there, and certain tribe-names lead to the belief that men of Teutonic origin had already formed settlements. The island lying at the extremity of Europe had probably formed a natural refuge for tribes driven from their own lands, and a natural prey of those in search of new homes. But on the whole there can be little question that the population was Celtic. It had passed beyond the age of barbarism, and when Claudius determined to complete the conquest which Cæsar's temporary raid in 55 B.C. had foreshadowed, some sort of general confederacy was in existence, a king of the name of Cunobelin reigned at Camulodunum, near Colchester, and the existence of not less than forty varieties of his coins bear witness to the greatness of his influence and the comparative civilisation of his rule. His son, Caractacus, and, eleven years later, Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, opposed a long and terrible resistance to the Roman arms; but the arrival of Agricola in 78, and his eight years of wise government, brought the country at length into the condition of a Roman province. The conquest of the whole island was, however, never completed. It seemed good to the Romans to limit their successes, and to attempt by great defensive works to exclude from their dominions the still unconquered Celts of the north. Lines were erected between the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and between Bowness and the mouth of the Tyne. The intermediate district was a scene of constant warfare, both lines were from time to time strengthened, and the more southern of the two changed during the 4th century into the great Roman Wall (see HADRIAN'S WALL). Within this limit the occupation of the country was complete. For two centuries it was probably merely a military occupation, and at no time does it appear that there were more than 20,000 Roman soldiers in the province; but as time passed on it appears certain that the influence of the conquerors became largely felt. Towns, the remains of which still exist, were built, bringing with them of necessity the close intercourse of trade, and numerous traces of villas in many parts of the country show the spread of peaceful Roman life. It was the policy of Rome in its provinces to debar the middle classes from the use of arms, and though possibly, as in India at present, the native nobles and princes were allowed to keep in some degree their rank, it was under the shelter of the Roman legionaries that civilisation advanced, and upon their prowess that safety from the threatened encroachments of unconquered Celts or marauding Teutons was secured. It is impossible to say how far civilisation had extended, or how far the language had been influenced by the Roman occupation. The close resemblance of many common agricultural terms, of the names of plants, and so on, to Latin words would lead to the belief that the language was Latinised. On the other hand, local names, the names of woods, mountains, and rivers, are largely Celtic. It seems not improbable that both high civilisation and Roman speech were chiefly concentrated along the great roads, and round the cities and stations with which these were lined.

The disturbances of the empire, and the danger which threatened it from the pressure of the outlying barbarians, compelled in 411 the withdrawal of the legions; and the half-Romanised inhabitants who had learned to rest on the support and valour of their conquerors were left to their own resources to withstand the unconquered Celts of the north, now known as Picts, and their piratical allies the Irish Scots. The movement of the barbarians had affected the people on the borders of the North Sea; the Jutes from Jutland, the Angles from Sleswick, the Saxons from Holstein and the neighbouring coasts were covering the sea with their expeditions. Summoned to the assistance of the civilised Britons, a party of Jutes found means to establish themselves in Kent. It was an example readily followed. Before the year 600 Saxons and Angles had formed settlements extending as far northward as the Forth. About that year the various principedoms may be regarded as merged in two considerable and rival powers, Northumbria and Kent; while a third, Wessex, fated ultimately to devour the other two, lay along the south, at present interested in extending its power westward. It still remains a question whether the invaders destroyed the conquered inhabitants or not. On the strength of certain expressions in the chronicler Gildas it has been held that no quarter was shown; but it is more probable that, as in other cases of conquest, the invaders settled down in the midst of the conquered population, content to rule as manorial lords over their own free followers and the slaves and dependents of their predecessors.

It was long before the various settlements of the Saxons were fused into one. Long before political union was reached, the unity of the people found expression in a single Christian church. While the powers of Northumbria and Kent were still balanced, the marriage of the king of Kent with a Frankish princess offered an opportunity for the evangelisation of the country. Augustine and his fellow-missionaries landed in Thanet in 596, and, well received by the king, found a home in Canterbury. A similar circumstance brought Christianity to the north; a Kentish princess married to Edwin of Northumbria took with her Paulinus, and established Christianity in York. The change of religion went near to destroying the Northumbrian power. Heathenism found a champion, and Penda, uniting the central tribes into the kingdom of

Mercia, for a while established his supremacy over Northumbria, and drove the Roman priesthood to flight. The gap thus left was supplied by the devoted missionaries of the Celtic Church settled in Lindisfarne. But the restoration of the Northumbrian power was fatal alike to heathenism and to the Celtic Church. After the Council of Whitby in 664, the Roman Church regained predominance, and was organised in a single archiepiscopate see by Theodore of Tarsus, holding his appointment from Rome. After the fall of Penda, the supremacy of the northern kingdom was unquestioned, till some sixty years later it gave way to Mercia. About the year 800, however, both Mercia and Northumbria had to yield to the third power. Egbert, king of Wessex, who had seen something of centralisation in the court of Charlemagne, during the thirty-six years of his reign gradually brought under his power all the English kingdoms, whether Anglian or Saxon, and continuing the hereditary struggle of his people with the British populations, established a permanent superiority over all England, with the exception of the Britons north of the Dee.

But already an enemy had made its appearance to which the newly centralised kingdom was to yield. The Danes, issuing from the Scandinavian coasts, had before the death of Egbert begun to harry the country. At first as robbers, then as settlers, and finally as conquerors, for two centuries they occupy English history. During the reign of Ethelred their incessant but isolated incursions assumed the form of an invasion, East Anglia passed into their hands, and their leader, Guthrum, took to himself the title of king. For seven years Alfred on the throne of Wessex carried on a deadly struggle with this rival power, and at length concluded a treaty of partition at the Peace of Wedmore (878), surrendering to the Danes the north and east of England to be held by them as vassals of the Saxon king. The supremacy of Wessex was thus secured, and ripened in the following reigns into something little short of an imperial authority. Edward the Elder was not only recognised as the overlord of Mercia and Northumbria, but the Welsh kings swore alliance, and the kings of Scotland and Strathclyde acknowledged him as their father and lord; he treated on equal terms and contracted marriage alliances with the greatest princes of Europe. His position was fully vindicated by his son Athelstan, under whom, perhaps, the West Saxon monarchy reached its highest point of greatness. The decisive battle of Brunanburh, in 937, won over a complicated confederation, dealt a deathblow to all opponents. The reign of Edgar the Peaceful, and the government of his great minister Dunstan, closed the period of Saxon greatness. From this time onwards weak kings, factious nobles, and a broken organisation were unable to resist the renewed incursions of the Scandinavian tribes. The jealousies between the various sections of the people, restrained by the strong central authority of the late kings, broke out afresh. The northern kingdoms where Danish law prevailed afforded a natural support for the invaders. The alliance of King Ethelred with the Normans, and his marriage with Emma, a Norman princess, only added a fresh element of weakness by the presence of her foreign followers. Recourse was had in vain to large payments to the Danes, and to the cruel and treacherous murder, on St Brice's Day, 1002, of the Danes settled in Wessex. Ten years later all opposition had been overcome, and Sweyn, the leader of the invaders, was practically king of England. He was succeeded by his son Canute, and though a brief outburst of vigour under Edmund Ironside enabled the English to secure a division of the country, the death of their leader compelled them to submit to Canute. Under its Danish king England was ably ruled, and was in some respects the head of a Scandinavian empire. But Canute's two sons failed to continue their father's work. Opportunity was allowed for the rise of Godwine, Earl of Wessex, and on the death of Hardicanute in 1042, Edward the Confessor, the son of Ethelred, resting on the support of the great earl, re-established the house of Cerdic on the throne. Educated in Normandy, he surrounded himself with foreign friends, and filled the high places of the kingdom with Frenchmen. As leader and representative of the national feeling, Godwine succeeded after a while in driving the foreigners from the country, and establishing himself in a predominant position over the south of England. In the north the influence of the earls of Mercia prevented his absolute supremacy. He handed on both his power and his rivalry with the northern earls to his son Harold. Successful against his rivals, Harold placed most of the earldoms in the hands of his brothers. So completely was he recognised as the first of Englishmen, that upon the death of the king the Witan had no hesitation in electing him to the throne.

In thus choosing a king from beyond the limits of the royal family the Witan had transgressed a well-established English custom. A formidable rival claimant at once appeared. William, Duke of Normandy, a cousin of the late king, demanded the throne as next of kin, and pleaded the promise of the Confessor. A second enemy threatened Harold: his brother Tostig had proved a traitor and had been banished; he now returned in company with the Norwegian fleet. The northern earls opposed him, and Harold, hastening to their assistance, won the battle of Stamford Bridge over the invaders. But the decentralised character of the English constitution and the strength of family rivalry made lengthened union impossible. When, three days after, on the 28th of September 1066, the Norman duke landed at Pevensey, it was single-handed and with hastily collected forces that Harold met him. The great battle of Senlac, near Hastings, was decisive, Harold and his brothers were slain, and England was left without a king. Again the jealousy between Wessex and Mercia prevented either a combined national opposition or the election to the throne of a native prince. William had little difficulty in slipping into the vacant post and securing his election by the Witan. The series of local efforts at opposition which followed his election proved unsuccessful, and by 1070 his authority was recognised throughout the country.

The change of dynasty thus effected connected England with the great movements of the Continent. Up to this time it had been somewhat isolated. Though its church was in communion with Rome, and had frequent intercourse with it, it was distinctly a national church; though feudalism was rapidly advancing, it had pursued an independent and national course of development. It was in some degree as the champion of the great system of Western Christianity that William had put forward his claims, and he brought with him followers imbued with all the principles and forms of continental feudalism. All the varieties of class and of land tenure which had arisen spontaneously in England were now assimilated to those existing where complete feudalism was in force; the connection with Rome was ratified by an entire change in the episcopacy. But William had no idea of assuming the position of a chief among equals, or of subordinating his authority to that of the church. He found in the organisation of the conquered kingdom principles which enabled him, while using feudal language, to be in fact an absolute king, and to set such limits to the power of Rome as to keep the church virtually in subordination. The Norman kings, when not engrossed in foreign enterprises, were occupied in establishing, in opposition to the nobility and the church, that powerful monarchy which the Conqueror had established. They found in the old institution of the national militia an instrument with which to oppose the feudal levies of the barons. An administrative system centred in the crown, and working chiefly through the machinery of the exchequer, went far to centralise the government. Triumphant suppression of insurrections enabled them to get rid of the feudal baronage of the Conquest, while a new nobility of administrative origin and attached to the national system gradually took its place. But the death of Henry I. leaving only a daughter, Matilda, gave room for a disputed succession. All the discordant elements which the royal power had held in repression burst into life. The reign of Stephen was a time of constant civil war, during which the nation learned from the intolerable tyranny under which it groaned the value of the repressing hand of royalty. The miserable time was brought to a close chiefly by the mediation of the church. Matilda's son Henry, already a powerful prince in France, was accepted as the heir to the throne, and practically intrusted with the restoration of order. It was with the general concurrence of the nation that he was able to re-establish upon a broader and better basis the powerful monarchy of his predecessors. A series of great administrative reforms brought justice and finance into the hands of the king and his intimate council or Curia Regis, and went far to break through the quasi-independence of the land-owners. The suppression of a great insurrection affecting all his possessions, and supported by the kings of France and Scotland, left him unquestioned master of his kingdom so far as the baronage was concerned. His attempts to reduce the church to subordination were less successful; the opposition of Becket to the enactments of the Council of Clarendon produced a disastrous struggle with Rome. But though technically worsted, Henry's power suffered no serious diminution from his defeat. He handed on to his son a powerful and well-organised monarchy, in which the feeling of national unity had made great advances. His system proved strong enough to support the continued absence of Richard in the Crusades and in his French dominions; national life even acquired increased strength by the self-government which was thus forced on the administration.

In the hands of Richard's successor the evil effects of the enormous power concentrated in the crown became obvious. Boastful, tyrannical, and weak, John excited the anger of all classes. The disgrace he brought upon England, the shock thus given to the rising feeling of national pride, afforded an opportunity for the exhibition of the discontent he had roused. He allowed himself to be stripped of all his French possessions; he plunged into a struggle with the Papal See, was excommunicated and deposed, and formally surrendered his crown into the hands of the pope. The nobility, freed from connection with the Continent and supported by all parties smarting alike from the evils of misgovernment and the shame of disaster, appeared as the true leaders of the nation, and wrung from the humbled king that great charter which secured, in the form of a solemn treaty, the foundations of the future liberties of England. To make the charter a reality, and to secure the orderly development of these liberties, was the work of the great king Edward I. John's compact with the people proved insufficient to restrain the personal and capricious exercise of the royal power in the hands of his son, Henry III. The surrender of the crown proved more of a reality than was expected; the Papal See, unable to establish a temporal suzerainty, mercilessly fleeced the people and the church, and the country was filled as of old with foreigners, on whom wealth and high places were lavished. The finances fell into utter decay. At length a demand for money to support, in the interest of Rome, the claims of the king's son to the throne of Sicily brought matters to a crisis, and in 1258 the barons passed the Provisions of Oxford, drove Henry's foreign friends from the kingdom, and virtually superseded the crown by a committee of government. Henry's attempts to break from the restrictions laid on him produced an armed insurrection, and Simon de Montfort, at the head of the barons and the commonalty of the towns, defeating the royal forces at Lewes, established a revolutionary government of which he was practically the master. But the jealousy with which the nobility regarded the rise of Montfort allowed Edward the Prince of Wales to come forward as the leader of a party at once conservative and reforming. His accession to the throne gave him an opportunity of carrying out his views. In the parliament of 1295, a complete assembly of all estates, he gathered into a national centre all the scattered elements of representation and self-government which had long existed in the county courts. The principle that where all were concerned all should have a voice was acknowledged, and the national liberties were placed in the charge of an assembly in which all orders were included. At the same time the position of the crown was maintained and rendered effective by the large powers still left in the hands of the king's council. For many years the struggle between parliament and prerogative remained undecided; but armed with the power of taxation, and taking advantage of the wants or weaknesses of the sovereign, the parliament continued to make good its position as the national council. At the close of Edward III.'s reign it was able to attack and impeach the ministry. The success of Richard II. in ridding himself of the influence of his uncles by which his youth had been surrounded, and his vehement assertion of the powers of the crown, produced a revolution which closed the struggle, and Henry IV. came to the throne with a parliamentary title, while the council nominated in parliament became in fact a body of national ministers.

The rise of parliament had gone hand in hand with the assertion of national life. Edward I. had not only marked out the lines the constitution was to follow, he had rid England of foreign influences. Busying himself but little with the Continent, he had devoted his attention to the conquest of Wales and Scotland. His death before the completion of his conquest of the northern kingdom allowed the Scots to inflict a final defeat upon his weaker son at Bannockburn. But the national feeling of the English, in abeyance during the political disturbances of Edward II.'s reign, reasserted itself in the ambitious efforts of Edward III. to place himself upon the throne of France, and was strengthened by the brilliant victories which attended them. Though the victories were useless, and the war a series of raids rather than a well-considered conquest, the effects at home were of great importance. The continual want of money forced the crown to frequent concessions to the parliament; the spirit of the people was raised by success; and the life of the soldier played an important part in liberating the lower orders from serfdom. The villeinage of earlier times had been gradually declining, and rent and wages were taking the place of villein tenure and forced service. The terrible ravages of the Black Death upset for a while the economic arrangements of the country, and the attempt to drive back the liberated serf to his old position caused the great rising of Wat Tyler in 1381. The insurrection was suppressed, but a death-blow was practically dealt to serfdom. In close connection with this upheaval of the working-classes was the movement in opposition to the church. The doctrines of Wyclif and the Lollards, so much in harmony with the democratic movement, could not fail largely to influence it, and for a while hostility to the church played a considerable part in parliamentary history.

The completion of the constitutional system marked by the accession of Henry IV. did not prevent the recurrence of disorder, but during the reign of his son full harmony existed between the king and people. The disturbances which had broken out in France afforded an opportunity for renewing the war, and Henry V. found no difficulty in carrying the people with him in his victorious attacks upon that country. A statesman as well as a conqueror, his progress was very different from that of Edward III. The Treaty of Troyes seemed to promise the ultimate union of the two kingdoms, but the work of consolidation was scarcely begun when the great king died, intimating to those who should carry on the work that the occupation of Normandy should be the limit of their aims. The foreign success and domestic harmony was of short duration. Though the power of the nobles as feudalists had disappeared, they were still too strong to accept easily the co-operation of the other orders in a national system except from the hands of a powerful ruler. Their strength had been increased by the great position given to the royal princes. The parliamentary establishment of the younger branch upon the throne had opened the door to the rival claims of hereditary succession. A strong government was scarcely possible during the infancy of Henry VI., especially as the council of regency found in the Duke of Gloucester, a man of ill-regulated ambition, an opponent with whom it was difficult to deal. His greater brother, the Duke of Bedford, devoted himself chiefly to the affairs of France, and though he had succeeded in maintaining some degree of order in England, his early death was the signal for an outbreak with which the council and subsequently the young king proved unable to cope. Continual disaster in France still further discredited the government. Taking advantage of the claim of hereditary right, the Duke of York came forward as the champion of order. The nobility ranged themselves on one side or the other of the contending parties, and the country became the seat of a cruel dynastic war. The Yorkists were victorious in the struggle. The death of their old and moderate leader placed at their head his son Edward, a man of great ability imbued with the morality and principles of an Italian despot, and as the long regency had inevitably replaced in the hands of the council much of its independent power, Edward IV. found little difficulty in employing it for his own purposes. Parliament ceased to have much importance except to register the sovereign's will or to grant submissively the taxes he required. In the earlier struggles for national liberty the king had found his chief opponent in the baronage, and subsequently as leaders of the nation the nobles had exercised a great restraining influence. But in the internecine struggle of the Wars of the Roses they had committed political suicide, and Edward IV., surrounded by a nobility of his own creation, and armed with the powers of prerogative, which had never been formally abrogated, found himself able to establish a practical absolutism. The family dispute had not, however, reached its last act; Edward's successor, Richard III., rendered himself odious to all classes of the people, and the battle of Bosworth placed upon the throne a prince who claimed to be a representative of the Lancastrian House, and whose position was so far less absolute than his predecessors that he acknowledged that he was king by the will of the people.

The accession of Henry VII. and the Tudor House opens the second act of the drama of English history. The great principles of the middle ages had passed away; it was the age of the rebirth of learning; printing had been invented; firearms were superseding the lance and bow; the discovery of the western world was soon to excite the spirit of nautical enterprise; capital was taking the place of the restricted guild system; the inclosure of commons was changing the face of the country, depopulating the fields and filling the cities; the church had begun to be shaken from its foundations. In the midst of this changed society the new dynasty had ascended the throne, claiming to rest upon the popular will, but invested with all the absolute authority with which the late reigns had surrounded the crown. It is not perhaps going too far to say that the king was endowed with a temporary dictatorship. The typical representative of this phase of government is Henry VIII., a man in whom gross passion and unscrupulous determination to gratify his own will were curiously blended with a certain amount of culture and a real desire for the well-being of his people. Charged as it were with the duty of re-establishing an orderly national life upon a strong monarchical basis, he plunged into war as a ready means of asserting national power. France and Spain were already on the threshold of their great struggle for the supremacy of Europe, and it was in strict accordance with the tradition of English policy that Henry allied himself with the Spanish house. But a change was speedily to pass over the foreign relations of England. Instigated by his passion for Anne Boleyn, Henry demanded a divorce from his Spanish wife; the opposition of the papacy precipitated the Reformation in England, and transferred the national hostility from France to Spain. The difficulties he encountered in his pursuit of the divorce brought him face to face with the one weak point in his position as absolute monarch. The possibility of the assertion of paramount authority by a foreign prince had been studiously hidden from him by his ecclesiastical minister Cardinal Wolsey, who, himself master of the church, had thought to avoid all contest of authorities by devoting his power to the service of the crown. Such a possibility was now suddenly revealed to him. The fall of Wolsey and the substitution in his place of Thomas Cromwell supplied the king with a very able instrument for a high-handed assertion of the independence of the English Church. The movement found support in the excited animosity to the doctrines and practice of Rome which was filling Europe. Led by the energy of Cromwell, Henry proceeded beyond mere separation to the destruction of much of the apparatus of the old church. Reformed liturgies, an English Bible, the dissolution of the monasteries, seemed to secure a triumph for the advanced reformers. But the minister had overshot the desire of his master, and the reign closed amid Henry's efforts by even-handed severity to establish the supremacy of the crown without allowing the predominance of either party. So delicate an equilibrium could not be maintained. A burst of reforming zeal, supported by ministers of questionable character and still more questionable prudence, went far to destroy the position of England; and it was not without a very general consensus in her favour that Mary, the champion of the old faith, ascended the throne. Unfortunately, her birth and natural prejudices led her to ally herself closely with Spain. A great reaction in favour of Roman Catholicism throughout Europe had begun; Spain was at the head of the movement, and there seemed every probability that England would lose its national independence and be bound not only to the ecclesiastical supremacy of Rome, but to the temporal supremacy of Spain. Religious persecutions of a severity unknown in England added strength to the angry feelings then excited. Protestantism and national independence were forced into connection, and it became the inevitable duty of Elizabeth on her accession to play her part as the supporter of this twofold cause. With the aid of her great minister Lord Burghley, she acted with consummate ability. Far too weak to oppose at once the powerful forces of united Catholicism, she contrived by a temporising policy to avoid the dangers which would have attended an open defiance. She took advantage abroad of every opening for indirect support of the Protestant cause; at home, skilfully mingling politics and religion, without direct religious persecution she treated her opponents as traitors. She encouraged with all her woman's wit the feeling for nautical enterprise which was rife in the country; and at length, with the obstacles which had met her early course removed, firmly seated on her throne, and regarded both at home and abroad as the champion of Protestantism, she was able to bid defiance to the power of Spain and establish the supremacy of the English navy in the repulse of the Spanish Armada.

In carrying out the sweeping changes of his reign, Henry VIII. had found the support of his people necessary. Even the settlement of the succession, though intrusted to Henry and carried out according to his wish, was arranged with parliamentary sanction. The co-operation of the people was still more necessary for Elizabeth. Throughout her reign the influence of parliament had been rising. Social changes had still further tended in this direction; if the old nobility had chiefly disappeared, a new nobility had taken its place, and the gentlemen of England, with property often increased from the monastic spoils, had become an important class. Though Elizabeth constantly assumed a masterful position with regard to her parliaments, she none the less listened to them and at times yielded to their remonstrances. It remained for the House of Stuart to force by unwise opposition this rising power into a position of supremacy. The death of the Virgin Queen seemed likely to open the question of the succession, but the crown passed without difficulty to the Scottish king, and the long-delayed union of the two kingdoms under one ruler was accomplished. The parliamentary settlement of Henry VIII. had set aside the Scottish line; it was therefore by strict law of inheritance only that James found himself called to the throne. Trained in a different school of politics, and apparently succeeding by what it was the fashion of the time to speak of as 'divine right,' he failed entirely to understand the position of his predecessors. This miscomprehension of his historical position handed on to his descendants was the cause of the disasters which attended their dynasty. Conceiving themselves possessed of the powers inherent in the old English crown, and determined to make them good, they forced the nation to fight over again the battle which had already been decided in the time of the Lancastrians. The contest between personal monarchy and constitutional government was terminated only by the removal of the Stuarts from the throne. A battlefield was found in nearly every department of government. James I. himself ran counter to many of the national prejudices. Thoroughly Protestant at heart, he favoured the new High Church party, who looked for support in a powerful crown; easily influenced by favourites, he fell in with the fashion of the monarchies abroad, and ruled through the hands of a great minister; in disregard of the wishes of the nation, he contracted a friendship for Spain, which was now regarded as the hereditary foe. But his weaknesses were not untempered by sagacity, and he succeeded in avoiding any overt breach with his people. His more obstinate son was less fortunate. From the beginning of his reign he found his parliament arrayed against him; it succeeded even in wringing from him the great Petition of Right. Weary of the struggle in which he seemed to be worsted, he believed himself strong enough to stand alone, and for some years ruled without a parliament and in disregard of the most important liberties of his subjects. Financial difficulties, caused in part by his ill-advised efforts to establish the Episcopalian form of worship in his northern kingdom, compelled him at length to seek parliamentary aid. The long-repressed discontent of the nation thus found a means of expression, and the edifice of personal government fell before it. A grudging consent to hotly pressed reforms, an unfortunate laxity in observing his promises, and unwise efforts at resuming his power drove Charles into open hostility with the people, and the country was plunged into the horrors of civil war. Revolution ran its inevitable course; the constitutional leaders of the early movement gave place to men who dreamed of much more radical changes, and whose politics were deeply tinged with religious fervour. The war brought to the surface successful generals, and in one of them was found a man who united vast practical ability with the subversive views and religious enthusiasm of the advanced party.

The parliamentary enemies of Charles, having completed their work by the execution of the king, found themselves mastered by the overwhelming ability of Oliver Cromwell. Raised to what was practically the throne, he set himself to reconstitute upon a new basis the constitutional structure which had been swept away. His large and tolerant views, and his determination to produce order, excited the hostility of the narrow sectarians who had formed the majority of the Long Parliament. By all men of conservative mind, or who shared in the loyal sentiment so prevalent among Englishmen, he was regarded with aversion. His efforts to bring well-ordered liberty out of the jarring elements with which he was surrounded failed; he was forced throughout his tenure of power to rely upon his own iron will. He succeeded in raising England to a high place among nations; it again assumed the position of leader of the Protestant interest, and again sought its allies among the enemies of Spain. But on the death of the great Protector, and at the prospect of a succession of military tyrannies, a wave of reaction swept over the country. Enthusiasm had died out, and that majority which at all times loves the old ways and prefaces the easy paths of habit to the strenuous effort necessary to complete reforms insisted on the restoration of the banished house. With general acclamation, though not without some attempts to restrain his power within legitimate limits, Charles II. was brought back to Whitehall. Less arbitrary than his father, and far more capable of bending to the storm, he proved no less determined to maintain in his own way the fullness of the power he had inherited. He had to contend with much more formidable opponents. Though the full restoration of the church and crown had followed upon his accession, the Rebellion had not been without permanent results. It was impossible that the parliament which had for years been regarded as the source of government should sink back into the position it had occupied in the reign of Charles I.; the king could no longer hope to rule without it or to raise the revenue from illegitimate sources. The reign was one long dispute. The character of Charles, licentious, extravagant, and ready to waste the national resources upon his own pleasures, afforded ample ground of complaint. Surrounded by advisers as unscrupulous as himself, he sold himself to the French king to supply his financial wants. At the instigation of his paymaster, he plunged the country into a disastrous war with its Protestant neighbour Holland, and by his mismanagement allowed the enemy's fleet to ride undisturbed at the very threshold of the capital. He tampered with the national credit, and attempted by an exercise of high prerogative to set aside the laws against the Catholics. The enthusiastic parliament elected upon his return became before the close of its long life his bitter opponent.

The assaults of the opposition, Whigs as they were now called, were directed against the Duke of York, the king's Roman Catholic brother. Nothing would satisfy them but his absolute exclusion from the throne. To bring discredit upon the Catholics they were not ashamed to lend themselves to the infamous perjuries of Titus Oates. They thought of placing the king's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, upon the throne; but their insolence defeated itself. Charles, never deficient in political insight, understood the national love for the rights of legitimacy, the dread of a disputed succession, and the sympathy with which his efforts to support his brother were regarded. He dissolved his refractory parliament, and even thought of vengeance. He drove Shaftesbury, the leader of the opposition, from the country, and assaulted the strongholds of his enemies by finding excuses to confiscate the charters of London and other great cities. The Whigs, who saw that such a step by changing the constituencies might easily change the character of future parliaments, were driven to despair. The more statesmanlike among them began to think of seeking for the assistance of the king's nephew, the Prince of Orange. Some of the wilder spirits sought for a speedier remedy in assassination. The discovery and punishment of the Rye-house Plot, and the skilful mingling of the aspirations of patriots with the atrocious schemes of vulgar murderers, for a while discredited the Whigs, and Charles died to all appearance triumphant. It remained for his brother to bring into action the deep-seated discontent which underlay the seeming success of the crown. With a want of judgment little short of judicial blindness, he proceeded in a few years to alienate every class in England. The open insurrections of Monmouth and Argyll were punished with reckless and bloody severity. The Test Acts were set at defiance, and Catholics filled the army. He maintained the shameful attitude his brother had adopted towards France. He laid his hand upon the freehold offices of the universities and the church, asserted the power of the crown to dispense with statutes, re-established the court of High Commission, called upon the clergy to read publicly his illegal declaration of religious indulgence, and established a standing army to overawe the capital. Such a series of tyrannical actions brought about the crisis. The Whig leaders betook themselves to William of Orange. This great statesman, who had devoted his life to restrain within due limits the power of Louis XIV., at once accepted with joy the opportunity of adding the strength of England to his great combinations. Protestant in religion, tolerant both by nature and by political necessity, the powerful chief of a republican government, he was well fitted to rule a kingdom torn by religious and political faction. The heads of all the English parties had sought his aid; his mere appearance was sufficient to close the Stuart dynasty and drive James a fugitive from the country.

The nation had again entered upon the full exercise of its powers. Taught by experience, before it deposited them in the hands of the king, it formulated the liberties of the country in a great and binding charter which should at once and for ever put an end to those efforts at personal rule which had rendered its previous history so stormy. The victory of parliament was thus completed. The reign of the first parliamentary king was indeed disturbed throughout by conspiracies, and rendered unrestful by the efforts of the exiled house, and at the close of the reign of Queen Anne for one critical moment there was a possibility that the Tories under Bolingbroke would succeed in re-establishing the Stuarts; but the rapid action of the great Whig nobles thwarted the attempt, and the failure of the Jacobite insurrection in 1715 secured in accordance with the settlement of parliament the Hanoverian House upon the throne. From that time onward, through the reigns of the four Georges, of William IV., and of Victoria, what we now regard as constitutional government has constantly prevailed. The contests of parties, however severe, have been over differences of opinion of a less vital character than those involved in a change of dynasty. It has been possible, without revolution, without impeachment, to allow of the quiet and orderly change of ministers as a regular part of the working of the parliamentary machine. Such a process implies little short of the complete disappearance of the personal wishes or opinions of the monarch as a factor in the political life of the nation. It was not without resistance that the crown consented to assume this attitude. Neither William III. nor the statesmen who had secured his accession understood the full results of what had been done. Nor was William himself, bent upon using the wealth of his new dominions to aid him in his great continental schemes, inclined to resign any of the powers of the crown or to throw himself into the arms of a single party; he attempted, like his predecessors, to employ as his ministers the ablest men of all parties. It was almost by accident that what is known as 'party government,' by which the king chooses his ministers from the majority in the House of Commons, and thus puts himself in harmony with his parliament, was discovered. The lesson which the success attending the great Whig government of 1696 taught was strengthened by experience. It was not till the Duke of Marlborough, the heir of the views and objects of William, found himself supported by the homogeneous ministry of 1708, that he met with unqualified success. From that time the ministry, virtually a committee of the majority of the house, and known as the Cabinet, has formed a recognised part of the machinery of government.

But it was not only in the establishment of constitutional government that the Revolution of 1688 produced a change in the attitude of England. It introduced the country as a first-rate power into the politics of Europe; no important complications have since arisen in which it has not played its part. Throughout William's reign, as a matter of course, its strength was employed against France. The war of the Spanish Succession opened to its armies under the leading of Marlborough a glorious career of victory. The Whig leaders, who had not shrunk from impeaching the authors of the Peace of Utrecht which closed it, yet appropriated the advantages then acquired, and forced England in support of the treaty to the very head of the European powers. In the war of the Austrian Succession, the national energies, directed chiefly against

France, secured British supremacy upon the ocean, which ripened under the great Pitt in his alliance with Frederick of Prussia into the unquestioned command of the colonial world both in the east and west. Though paralysed for a moment by the disasters of the American rebellion, the military enterprise of the country revived under the younger Pitt. Forced into opposition to the French Revolution, he was the soul of the great coalitions by which the proselytising vehemence of the Jacobins was held in check. The appearance of Napoleon upon the scene, and the extraordinary successes which attended his arms, changed the character of the war; it became a struggle for existence. It was again English subsidies, English troops, and English successes in Spain which tended more than anything else to bring the great powers into action, and to rouse that feeling of national life which produced the overthrow of the Napoleonic empire. Once again England stood at the very head of European powers.

One cause of these vast successes, unexpected in a country under popular rule, is to be found in the character of the government which sprang from the Revolution. That event was in its essence an aristocratic rather than a popular movement. The restriction of the constituencies and the influence of the possession of land threw power into the hands of a comparatively limited class. It was more as an oligarchy than as a democracy that England was able to prove itself so powerful abroad. But great social changes were gradually working themselves out, a revolution was taking place in the industrial world. The enlarged application of steam, the invention of machinery, improved methods of agriculture, the extended use of coal, the removal of the iron trade from the south to the north, and its great increase, were all tending to bring into greater prominence the trading, manufacturing, and artisan classes. The strange anomalies of the representation became still more glaring; change of occupation was not effected without much individual hardship, and the discontent arising from suffering was joined with that engendered by a sense of political exclusion. The ideas fostered by the French Revolution played their part in the general ferment. The determined and successful effort of the Irish Catholics to obtain religious emancipation laid bare the increasing weakness of the governing classes. And at length the leaders of the Whig party made common cause with the classes hitherto excluded from government, and, backed at once by the traders and the artisans, forced upon an unwilling parliament the great Reform Bill of 1832. From this time there has been a marked change both in the position of England and in the character of the questions which have excited public interest. Still mistress of the sea, and possessed through its colonies of an empire distributed in every corner of the globe, England has found enough to do in the preservation and improvement of this gigantic dominion, and has as far as possible abstained from interference in continental quarrels. Once and again it has shown its influence. In 1848, the year of revolutions, and in the subsequent consolidation of Italy, its sympathies were not hidden, but there was no thought of active interference. It allowed the great American republic to settle its disputes uninterrupted. It adopted the same attitude of non-intervention in the Prussian wars against Denmark, against Austria, and against France. It has only been in questions which seemed to touch the safety of its Eastern empire that it has drawn the sword. The Crimean war was avowedly for the maintenance of Turkey as a check upon Russia, which was threatening the road to India. Of the same class have been the wars in Egypt and

Afghanistan. Still more directly when India itself burst into insurrection was England called upon to interfere and engage in the victorious but terrible campaigns which marked the suppression of the Mutiny. The other wars, and they are not few, have all been connected with mercantile and colonial interests; the principal was the war with the Transvaal and Orange Free State in 1899-1900, ending in both these republics being annexed to the crown as British colonies. The extension of the electoral franchise, the reform of municipalities, the repeal of the Corn Laws, the establishment of Free Trade, the improvement of the condition of the working-classes, the regulation of strikes and trades-unions, an equitable system of compensation for injuries, a national system of education, and the management of Ireland have been the points round which political interest has centred. During the South African war of 1899-1900 a great impulse was given to the feeling of solidarity between the mother-country and those colonies which are already to all intents and purposes independent, and to the determination to preserve to the empire the magnificent position which the gradual development of physical and political forces has secured.

SOVEREIGNS OF ENGLAND.

This sketch excludes from its view the history both of Scotland and of Ireland; separate articles will be found under these headings. For a more detailed account of the events of each reign, and of the character and deeds of each important person, the reader is referred to special articles, at the end of which a list of authorities will be given. See the Introduction to the Study of English History (1881), by S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, the second part containing a list of authorities. For special periods the following books will be found useful.

Before the Conquest.—Guest's Origines Celtice (1883); Pearson's Early and Middle Ages, vol. i. (1867); Kemble's Saxons in England (1849; new ed. 1876); Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons from the earliest period to the Conquest (1852); Lappenberg's History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (1845; new ed. 1880); Green's Making of England, 449-829 (1881); Green's Conquest of England, 758-1071 (1883); Stubbs' Constitutional History, vol. i. (1874); Hook's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. i. (1860); Elton's Origins of English History (1882).

1066-1485.—Stubbs' Constitutional History, vols. ii. iii. (1875-78); Lingard's History of England, vols. i.-v. (1819); Freeman's Norman Conquest (1867-70; new ed. 1877-79); Freeman's William Rufus (1882); Bright's Medieval Monarchy (1875); Sharon Turner's Early and Middle Ages to 1307 (1853); Gairdner's Richard III. (1878); Hook's Lives of the Archbishops (1860).

1485-1688.—Froude's History of England, 1527-88 (1856-69; new ed. 1881-82); Lingard's History of England, vols. vi.-xiv. (1819-31; new ed. 1883); Mackintosh's History of England (1834; new ed. 1846); Bright's Personal Monarchy (1876); Ranke's History of England in the 17th Century (1875-76); Gardiner's History of England, 1603-42 (1869-82; new ed. 1883-84), and History of the Great Civil War (1886 et seq.); Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of Cromwell (1845; new ed. 1872); Macaulay's History of England, 1660-1702 (1849-55); Hallam's Constitutional History, 1485-1760 (1827).

1688-1837.—Lecky's History of England in the 18th Century (1878-87); Stanhope's Queen Anne (1870; new ed. 1880), and History of England, 1713-83 (1836-54); Massey's History of England, 1745-1802 (1855-63); Martineau's History of the Peace (1849-50); Bright's Constitutional Monarchy (1877); Erskine May's Constitutional History, 1760-1860 (1861-63); Walpole's History of England from 1815, vols. i.-iii. (1878-80); Justin M'CCarthy's Four Georges (1889 et seq.).

1837-80.—M'CCarthy's History of our own Times (1879-97); Walpole's History, vols. iv. v. (1886); Bright's Democracy (1888); Molesworth's History of England, 1830-74 (1866-73); Ward's Reign of Victoria (1887).

Compendious general histories are those of J. R. Green (1874; illust. ed. 1892-94), J. F. Bright (1877-88), and R. S. Gardiner (1890-92), besides The Student's Hume (1869; new ed. 1884). See also Social England, edited by Trail (5 vols. 1893-96); Seeley's Expansion of England (1883) and Growth of British Policy (1892); and the article RECORDS.