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CONTENTS. 



CHArTEB. TAGE. 

I. Ancient England and the Romans 5 

II. Ancient England under the Early Saxons. 15 

III. England under the Good Saxon, Alfred. . . 20 

IV. England under Athelstan and the Six Boy 

Kings 

V. England under Canute the Dane 37 

VI. England under Harold Harefoot, Hardica- 

nute, and Edward the Confessor 39 

VII. England under Harold II., and Conquered 

bv the Normans 47 

VIII. England under William I., the Norman 

Conqueror 51 

IX. England under William II., called Rufus. . 58 
X. 1- land under Henry I., called Fine- 
Scholar 66 

XI. England under Matilda and Stephen 76 

XII. England under Henry II., 80 

land underRichard I., called the Lion- 

.rt 100 

XIV. England under King John, called Lack- 

land 109 

XV. England under Henry III., called of Win- 

r 122 

XVI. England under Edward I., called Long- 
shanks [35 

XVII. England under Edward II 152 

XVIII. England under Edward III 162 

XIX. England under Richard II 175 

XX. England under Henry IV., called Boling- 

broke 

XXI. England under Henry V 

XXII. England under Henry VI . 2 

3 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER. 
XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 



XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 

XXXII. 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV. 

XXXV. 

XXXVI. 

XXXVII. 

XXXVIII. 



PAGE. 

England under Henry VI. (continued). 217 

England under Edward IV 225 

England under Edward V 233 

England under Richard III 238 

England under Henry VII 242 

England under Henry VIII., called 
Bluff King Hall and Burly King Har- 
ry. — Part First 253 

England under Henry VIII. — Part 

Second 266 

England under Edward VI 276 

England under Mary 284 

England under Elizabeth 297 

England under James 1 323 

England under Charles 1 340 

England under Oliver Cromwell 371 

England under Charles II., called 

The Merry Monarch 388 

England under James II 410 

Conclusion 424 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER I. 

ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS. 

If you look at a map of the World, you will see, in 
the left-hand upper corner of the Eastern Hemisphere, 
two islands lying in the sea. They are England and Scot- 
land, and Ireland. England and Scotland form the 
greater of these Islands. Ireland is the next in size. 
The little neighboring islands, which are so small upon 
the map as to be mere dots, are chiefly little bits of 
Scotland — broken off, I dare say. in the course of a 
great length of time, by the power of the restless 
water. 

In the old days, a long, long while ago, before our 
Savior was born on earth and lay asleep in a manger, 
these Islands were in the same place, and the stormy 
sea roared round them, just as it roars now. But the 
sea was not alive, then, with great ships and brave 
sailors, sailing to and from all parts of the world. It 
was very lonely. The Islands lay solitarw in the great 
expanse of water. The foaming waves dashed against 
their cliffs, and the bleak winds blew over their forests; 
but the winds and waves brought no adventurers to 
land upon the Islands, and the savage Islanders knew 
nothing of the rest of the world, and the rest of the 
world knew nothing of them. 

It is supposed that the Phoenicians, who were an 
ancient people, famous for carrying on trade, came in 
ships to these islands, and found that they produced tin 
and lead; both very useful things, as you know, and 
both produced to this very hour upon the sea-coast. 
The most celebrated tin mines in Cornwall are still close 



6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

to the sea. One of them, which I have seen, is so close 
to it that it is hollowed out underneath the ocean ; and 
the miners say that in stormy weather, when they are 
at work down in that deep place, they can hear the 
noise of the waves thundering above their heads. So 
the Phoenicians, coasting about the Islands, would 
come, without much difficulty, to where the tin and lead 
were. 

The Phoenicians traded with the Islanders for these 
metals, and gave the Islanders some other aseful things 
in exchange. The Islanders were at first poor savages, 
going almost naked, or only dressed in the rough skins 
of beasts, and staining their bodies, as other savages 
do, with colored earths and the juices of plants. But 
the Phoenicians, sailing over to the opposite coasts of 
France and Belgium, and saying to the people there, 
"We have been to those white cliffs across the water, 
which you can see in fine weather, and from that 
country, which is called Britain, we bring this tin and 
lead," tempted some of the French and Belgians to 
come over also. These people settled themselves on the 
south coast of England, which is now called Kent ; and, 
although they were a rough people too, they taught the 
savage Britons some useful arts, and improved that 
part of the Islands. It is probable that other people 
came over from Spain to Ireland, and settled there. 

Thus, by little and little, strangers became mixed with 
the Islanders, and the savage Britons grew into a wild, 
bold people ; almost savage still, especially in the inte- 
rior of the country away from the sea where the foreign 
settlers seldom went ; but hardy, brave, and strong. 

The whole country was covered with forests and 
swamps. The greater part of it was very misty and 
cold. There were no roads, no bridges, no streets, no 
houses that you would think deserving of the name. A 
town was nothing but a collection of straw-covered huts, 
hidden in a thick wood, with a ditch all round, and a 
low wall, made of mud, or the trunks of trees placed 
one upon another. The people planted little or no corn, 
but lived upon the flesh of their flocks and cattle. 
They made no coins, but 'used metal rings for money. 
They were ^clever in basket work, as savage people 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 7 

often are ; and they could make a coarse kind of cloth, 
and some very bad earthenware. But in building fort- 
resses they were much more clever. 

They made boats of basket work, covered with the 
skins of animals, but seldom, if ever, ventured far from 
the shore. They made swords, of copper mixed with 
tin; but these swords were of an awkward shape, and 
so soft that a heavy blow would bend one. They made 
light shields, short pointed daggers, and spears — which 
they jerked back after they had trhown them at an 
enemy, by a long strip ot leather fastened to the stem. 
The butt end was a rattle, to frighten an enemy's horse. 
The ancient Britons, being divided into as many as 
thirty or forty tribes, each commanded by its own little 
king, were constantly fighting with one another, as sav- 
age people usually do, and they always fought with 
these weapons. 

They were very fond of horses. The standard of 
Kent was the picture of a white horse. They could 
break them in and manage them wonderfully well. In- 
deed, the horses (of which they had an abundance, 
though they were rather small) were so well taught in 
those days, that they can scarcely be said to have im- 
proved since; though the men are so much wiser. 
They understood, and obeyed, every word of command ; 
and would stand still by themselves, in all the din and 
noise of battle, while their masters went to fight on 
foot. The Britons could not have succeeded in their 
most remarkable art without the aid of these sensible 
and trusty animals. The art I mean is the construction 
and management of war-chariots or cars, for which they 
have ever been celebrated in history. Each of the best 
sort of these chariots, not quite breast high in front, and 
open at the back, contained one man to drive and two 
or three others to fight — all standing up. The horses 
who drew them were so well trained, that they would 
tear at full gallop over the most stony ways, and even 
through the woods; dashing down their masters' ene- 
mies beneath their hoofs, and cutting them. to pieces 
with the blades of swords or scythes, which were fas- 
tened to the wheels, and stretched out beyond the car 
on each side for that cruel purpose. In a moment, 



8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

while at full speed, the horses would stop at the driver's 
command. The men within would leap out, deal blows 
about them with their swords like hail, leap on the 
horses, on the pole, spring back into the chariots any- 
how ; and, as soon as they were safe, the horses tore 
away again. 

The Britons had a strange and terrible religion called 
the Religion of the Druids. It seems to have been 
brought over, in very early times indeed, from the oppo- 
site country of France, anciently called Gaul, and to 
have mixed up the worship of the Serpent, and of the 
sun and moon, with the worship of some of the Heathen 
Gods and Goddesses. Most of its ceremonies were kept 
secret by the priests, the Druids, who pretended to be 
enchanters, and who carried magicians' wands, and 
wore, each of them, about his neck, what he told the 
ignorant people was a Serpent's egg in a golden case. 
But it is certain that the Druidical ceremonies included 
the sacrifice of human victims, the torture of some sus- 
pected criminals, and, on particular occasions, even the 
burning alive in immense wicker cages, of a number of 
men and animals together. The Druid priests had 
some kind of veneration for the oak, and for the mistle- 
toe — the same plant that we hang up in houses at 
Christmas time now — when its white berries grew upon 
the oak. They met together in dark woods, which 
they called sacred groves ; and there they instructed, in 
their mysterious arts, young men who came to them as 
pupils, and who sometimes stayed with them as long as 
twenty years. 

These Druids built great temples and altars, open to 
the sky, fragments of some of which are yet remaining. 
Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire, is the 
most extraordinary of these. Three curious stones, 
called Kits Coty House, on Bluebell Hill, near Maid- 
stone, in Kent, form another. We know, from examina- 
tion of the great blocks of which such buildings are 
made, that they could not have been raised without the 
and of some ingenious machines, which are common 
now, but which the ancient Britons certainly did not use 
in making their own uncomfortable houses. I should 
not wonder if the Druids, and their pupils who stayed 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 9 

with them twenty years, knowing more than the rest of 
the Britons, kept Jthe people out of sight while they 
made these buildings, and then pretended that they 
built them by magic. Perhaps they had a hand in the 
fortresses too ; at all events, as they were very power- 
ful, and very much believed in, and as they made and 
executed the laws, and paid no taxes, I don't wonder 
that they liked their trade. And, as they persuaded the 
people the more Druids there were the better off the 
people would-be, I don't wonder that there were a good 
many of them. But it is pleasant to think that there 
are no Druids now who go on in that way, and pretend 
to carry Enchanters' Wands and Serpents' Eggs — and 
of course there is nothing of the kind, anywhere. 

Such was the improved condition of the ancient Brit- 
ons fifty-five years before the birth of Our Savior, when 
the Romans, under their great general, Julius Cassar, 
were masters of all the rest of the known world. Julius 
Caesar had then just conquered Gaul; and hearing in 
Gaul a good deal about the opposite Island with the 
white cliffs, and about the bravery of the Britons who 
inhabited it — some of whom had been fetched over to 
help the Gauls m the war against him — he resolved, as 
he was so near, to come and conquer Britain next. 

So Julius Caesar came sailing over to this island of 
ours, with eighty vessels and twelve thousand men. 
And he came from the French coast between Calais and 
Boulogne, "because thence was the shortest passage 
into Britain;" just for the same reason as our steam- 
boats now take the same track, every day. He expected 
to conquer Britain easily; but it was not such easy work 
as he had supposed — for the bold Britons fought most 
bravely ; and, what with not having his horse-soldiers 
with him (for they had been driven back by a storm), 
and what with having some of his vessels dashed to 
pieces by a high tide after they were drawn ashore, he 
ran great risk of being totally defeated. ' However, for 
once that the bold Britons beat him, he beat them twice ; 
though not so soundly but that he was very glad to 
accept their proposals of peace, and go away. 

But in the spring of the next year, he came back ; this 
time with eight hundred vessels and thirty thousand 

2 History 



10 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

men. The British tribes chose, as their general-in- 
chief, a Briton whom the Romans in their Latin lan- 
guage called Cassivellaunus, but whose British name is 
supposed to have been Caswallon. A brave general he 
was, and well he and his soldiers fought the Roman 
army ! So well, that whenever in that war the Roman 
soldiers saw a great cloud of dust, and heard the rattle 
of the rapid British chariots, they trembled in their 
hearts. Besides a number of smaller battles, there 
was a battle fought near Canterbury, in Kent; there 
was a battle fought near Chertsey, in Surrey ; there 
was a battle fought near a marshy little town in a wood, 
the capital of that part of Britain which belonged to 
Cassivellaunus, and which was probably near what is 
now St. Albans, in Hertfordshire. However, brave 
Cassivellaunus had the worst of it, on the whole ; though 
he and his men always fought like lions. As the other 
British chiefs were jealous of him, and were always quar- 
reling with him, and with one another, he gave up, and 
proposed peace. Julius Caesar was very glad to grant 
peace easily, and to go away again with all his remain- 
ing ships and men. He had expected to find pearls in 
Britain, and he may have found a few for anything I 
know ; but, at all events, he found delicious oysters, and I 
am sure he found tough Britons, of whom, I dare say, he 
made the same complaint as Napoleon Bonaparte the 
great French General did, eighteen hundred years after- 
ward, when he said they were such unreasonable fel- 
lows that they never knew when they were beaten. 
They never did know, I believe, and never will. 

Nearly a hundred years passed on, and all that time 
there was peace in Britain. The Britons improved their 
towns and mode of life; became more civilized, trav- 
eled, and learned a great deal from the Gauls and 
Romans. At last, the Roman Emperor Claudius sent 
Aulus Plautius, a skillful general, with a mighty force, 
to subde the Island, and shortly afterward arrived him- 
self. They did little; and Ostorius Scapula, another 
general, came. Some of the British Chiefs of Tribes 
submitted. Others resolved to fight to the death. Of 
these brave men, the bravest was Caractacus or Cara- 
doc, who gave battle to the Romans, with his army, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 11 

among the mountains of North Wales. '"This day," 
said he to his soldiers, "decides the fate of Britain! 
Your liberty, or your eternal slavery, dates from this 
hour. Remember your brave ancestors, who drove the 
great Csesar himself across the sea !" On hearing these 
words, his men, with a great shout, rushed upon the 
Romans. But the strong Roman swords and armor 
were too much for the weaker British weapons in 
close conflict. The Britons lost the day. The wife and 
daughter of the brave Caractacus were taken prisoners; 
his brothers delivered themselves up ; he himself was 
betrayed into the hands of the Romans by his false and 
base stepmother; and they carried him and all his 
family in triumph to Rome. 

But a great man will be great in misfortune, great in 
prison, great in chains. His noble air, and dignified 
endurance of distress, so touched the Roman people who 
thronged the streets to see him, that he and his family 
were restored to freedom. No one knows whether his 
great heart broke, and he died in Rome, or whether he 
ever returned to his own dear country. English oaks 
have grown up from acorns, and withered away, when 
they were hundreds of years old — and other oaks have 
sprung up in their places, and died too, very aged — 
since the rest of the history of the great Caractacus was 
forgotten. 

Still the Britons would not yield. They rose again 
and again, and died by thousands, sword in hand. They 
rose on every possible occasion. Suetonius, another 
Roman general, came, and stormed the Island of 
Anglesey (then called Mona) which was supposed to be 
sacred, and he burned the Druids in their own wicker 
cages, by their own fires. But, even while he was in 
Britain, with his victorious troops, the Britons rose. 
Because Boadica, a British queen, the widow of the 
King of the Norfolk and Suffolk people, [resisted the 
plundering of her property by the Romans who were 
settled in England, she was scourged, by order of Catus. 
a Roman officer ; and her two daughters were shame- 
fully insulted in her presence, and her husband's rela- 
tions were made slaves. To avenge this injury, the 
Britons rose, with all their might and rage. They 



12 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

drove Catus into Gaul ; they laid the Roman possessions 
waste; they forced the Romans out of London, then a 
poor little town, but a trading place; they hanged, 
burned, crucified, and slew by the sword, seventy thou- 
sand Romans in a few days. Suetonius strengthened 
his army, and advanced to give them battle. They 
strengthened their army, and desperately attacked his 
on the field where it was strongly posted. Before the 
first charge of the Britons was made, Boadica, in a war- 
chariot, with her fair hair streaming in the wind, and 
her injured daughters lying at her feet, drove among 
the troops, and cried to them for vengeance on their 
oppressors, the licentious Romans. The Britons fought 
to the last; but they were vanquished with great 
slaughter, and the unhappy queen took poison. 

Still, the spirit of the Britons was not broken. When 
Suetonius left the country, they fell upon his troops, 
and retook the Island of Anglesey. Agricola came, fif- 
teen or twenty years afterward, and retook it once 
more, and devoted seven years to subduing the country, 
especially that part of it which is now called Scotland ; 
but its people, the Caledonians, resisted him at every 
inch of ground. They fought the bloodiest battles with 
him ; they killed their very wives and children, to pre- 
vent his making prisoners of them ; they fell, fighting, 
in such great numbers that certain hills in Scotland are 
yet supposed to be vast heaps of stones piled up above 
their graves. Hadrian came thirty years afterward, 
and still they resisted him. Severus came, nearly a 
hundred years afterward, and they worried hi%great 
army like dogs, and rejoiced to see them die, by thou- 
sands, in the bogs and swamps. Caracalla, the son and 
successor of Severus, did the most to conquer them, for 
a time ; but not by force of arms. He knew how little 
that would do. He yielded up a quantity of land to 
the Caledonians, and gave the Britons the same privil- 
eges as the Romans possessed. There was peace, after 
this, for seventy years. 

Then new enemies arose. They were the Saxons, a 
fierce, seafaring people from the countries to the North 
of the Rhine, the great river of Germany on the banks 
of which the best grapes grow to make the German 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 13 

wine. They began to come, in pirate ships, to the sea- 
coasts of Gaul and Briton, and to plunder them. They 
were repulsed by Carausius, a native either of Belgium 
or of Britain, who was appointed by the Romans to the 
command, and under whom the Britons first began to 
fight upon the sea. But, after this time, they renewed" 
their ravages. A few years more, and the Scots (which 
was then the name for the people of Ireland) and the 
Picts, a northern people, began to make frequent plun- 
dering incursions into the South of Britain. All these 
attacks were repeated, at intervals, during two hundred 
years, and through a long succession of Roman Emper- 
ors and Chiefs; during all which length of time the Brit- 
ons rose against the Romans, over and over again. At 
last, in the days of the Roman Honorius, when the 
Roman powers all over the world was fast declining, 
and when Rome wanted all her soldiers at home, the 
Romans abandoned all hope of conquering Britain, and 
went away. And still, at last, as at first, the Britons 
rose against them, in their old brave manner ; for, a very 
little while before, they had turned away the Roman 
magistrates, and declared themselves an independent 
people. 

Five hundred years had passed, since Julius Cssear's 
first invasion of the Island, when the Romans departed 
from it forever. In the course of that time, although 
they had been the cause of terrible fighting and blood- 
shed, they had done much to improve the condition of 
the Britons. They had made great military roads ; they 
had built forts ; they had taught them how to dress, and 
arm themselves, much better than they had ever known 
how to do before; they had refined the whole British 
way of living. Agricola had built a great wall of earth, 
more than seventy miles long, extending from New- 
castle to beyond Carlisle, for the purpose of keeping out 
the Picts and Scots ; Hadrian had strengthened it ; Sev- 
erus, finding it much in want of repair, had built it 
afresh of stone. Above all, it was in the Roman time, 
and by means of Roman ships, that the Christian reli- 
gion was first brought into Britain, and its people first 
taught the great lesson that, to be good in the sight of 
God, they must love their neighbors as themselves, and 



14 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

do unto others as they would be done by. The Druids 
declared that it was very wicked to believe in any such 
thing, and cursed all the people who did believe it very 
heartily. But, when the people found that they were 
none the better for the blessings of the Druids, and none 
the worse for the curses of the Druids, but that the sun 
shone and the rain fell without consulting the Druids 
at all, they just began to think that the Druids were 
mere men, and that it signified very little whether they 
cursed or blessed. After which, the pupils of the 
Druids fell off greatly in numbers, and the Druids took 
to other trades. 

Thus I have come to the end of the Roman time in 
England. It is but little that is known of those five 
hundred years; but some remains of them are still 
found. Of ten, when laborers are digging up the ground 
to make foundations for houses or churches, they light 
on rusty money that once belonged to the Romans. 
Fragments of plates from which they ate, of goblets 
from which they drank, and of pavement on which they 
trod, are discovered among the earth that is broken by 
the plow, or the dust that is crumbled by the garden- 
er's spade. Wells that the Romans sunk still yield 
water; roads that the Romans made form part of our 
highways. In some old battle-fields British spear-heads 
and Roman armor have been found, mingled together 
in decay, as they fell in the thick pressure of the fight. 
Traces of Roman camps overgrown with grass, and of 
mounds that are the burial-places of heaps of Britons, 
are to be seen in almost all parts of the country. 
Across the bleak moors of Northumberland the wall ot 
Severus, overrun with moss and weeds, still stretches, a 
strong ruin ; and the shepherds and their dogs lie sleep- 
ing on it in the summer weather. On Salisbury Plain 
Stonehenge yet stands — a monument of the earlier time 
when the Roman name was unknown in Britain, and 
when the Druids, with their best magic wands, could 
not have written it in the sands of the wild seashore. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 15 
CHAPTER II. 

ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS. 

The Romans had scarcely gone away from Britain, 
when the Britons be.ocan to wish they had never left it. 
For, the Roman soldiers being gone, and the Britons 
being much reduced in numbers by their long wars, the 
Picts and Scots came pouring in, over the broken and 
unguarded wall of Severus, in swarms. They plundered 
the richest towns, and killed the people; and came back 
so often for more booty and more slaughter, that the 
unfortunate Britons lived a life of terror. As if the 
Picts and Scots were not bad enough on land, the Saxons 
attacked the islanders by sea; and, as if something 
more were still wanting to make them miserable, they 
quarreled bitterly among themselves as to what prayers 
they ought to say, and how they ought to say them. 
The priests, being very angry with one another on these 
questions, cursed one another in the heartiest manner ; 
and, uncommonly like the old Druids, cursed all the 
people whom they could not persuade. So, altogether, 
the Britons were very badly off, you may believe. 

They were in such distress, in short, that they sent a 
letter to Rome entreating help — which they called the 
Groans of the Britons; and in which they said, "The 
barbarians chase us into the sea, the sea throws us back 
upon the barbarians, and we have only the hard choice 
left us of perishing by the sword, or perishing by the 
waves." But the Romans could not help them, even if 
they were so inclined; for they had enough to do to 
defend themselves against their own enemies, who were 
then very fierce and strong. At last, the Britons, una- 
ble to bear their hard condition any longer, resolved to 
make peace with the Saxons, and to invite the Saxons to 
come into their country, and help them to keep out the 
Picts and Scots. 

It was a British Prince named Vortigern who took this 
resolution, and who made a treaty of friendship with 
Hengist and Horsa, two Saxon chiefs. Both of these 
.names, in the old Saxon language, signify Horse; for 



16 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the Saxons, like many other nations in a rough state, 
were fond of giving men the names of animals, as Horse, 
Wolf, Bear, Hound. The Indians of North America — a 
very inferior people to the Saxons, though — do the same 
to this day. 

Hengist and Horsa drove out the Picts and Scots; and 
Vortigern, being grateful to them for that service, made 
no opposition to their settling themselves in that part of 
England which is called the Isle of Thanet, or to their 
inviting over more of their countrymen to join them. 
But Hengist had a beautiful daughter named Rowena; 
and, when at a feast, she filled a golden goblet to the 
brim with wine, and gave it to Vortigern, saying in a 
sweet voice, "Dear King, thy health!" the King fell in 
love with her. My opinion is that the cunning Hengist 
meant him to do so in order that the Saxons might have 
greater influence with him; and that the fair Rowena 
came to that feast, golden goblet and all, on purpose. 

At any rate, they were married; and long after wa:d 
whenever the King was angry with the Saxons or jeal- 
ous of their encroachments, Rowena would put her 
beautiful arms round his neck and softly say, "Dear 
King, they are my people! Be favorable to them as 
you loved that Saxon girl who gave you the golden gob- 
let of wine at the feast!" And really I don't see how 
the King could help himself. 

Ah! We must all die! In the course of years Vorti- 
gern died — he was dethroned and put in prison first, I 
am afraid; and Rowena died; and generations of 
Saxons and Britons died; and events that happened 
during a long, long time, would have been quite forgot- 
ten but for the tales and songs of the old Bards, who 
nsed to go about from feast to feast, with their white 
beards, recounting the deeds of their forefathers. 
Among the histories of which they sang and talked, 
there was a famous one, concerning the bravery and 
virtues of King Arthur, supposed to have been a British 
Prince in those old times. But whether such a person 
really lived, or whether there were several persons 
whose histories came to be confused together under 
that one name, or whether all about him was invention, 
no one knows. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 17 

I will tell you, shortly, what is most interesting m 
the early Saxon times, as they are described in these 
songs and stories of the Bards. 

In, and long after, the days of Vortigern, fresh bodies 
of Saxons, under various chiefs, came pouring into Brit- 
ain. One body, conquering the Britons in the East, and 
settling there, called their kingdom Essex ; another body 
settled in the West and called their kingdom Wessex ; 
the Northfolk, or Norfolk people, established them- 
selves in one place; the Southfolk, or Suffolk people, 
established themselves in another; and gradually seven 
kingdoms or states arose in England, which were called 
the Saxon Heptarchy. The poor Britons, falling back 
before these crowds of fighting men whom they had 
innocently invited over as friends, retired into Wales 
and the adjacent country; into Devonshire, and into 
Cornwall. Those parts of England long remained un- 
conquered. And in Cornwall now — where the sea-coast 
is very gloom}% steep, and rugged ; where, in the dark 
winter-time, ships have often been wrecked close to the 
land, and every soul on board has perished ; where the 
winds and waves howl drearily, and split the solid rocks 
into arches and caverns — there are very ancient ruins, 
which the people call the ruins of King Arthur's Castle. 

Kent is the most famous of the seven Saxon king- 
doms, because the Christian religion was preached to the 
Saxons there (who domineered over the Britons too 
much to care for what they said about their religion, or 
anything else), by Augustine, a monk from Rome. 
King Ethelbert of Kent was soon converted ; and the 
moment he said he was a Christian, his courtiers all 
said they were Christians ; after which, ten thousand of 
his subjects said they were Christians, too. Augustine 
built a little church, close to this King's palace, on the 
ground now occupied by the beautiful cathedral of Can- 
terbury. Sebert, the King's nephew, built on a muddy, 
marshy place near London, where there had been a 
temple to Apollo, a church dedicated to St. Peter, 
which is now Westminster Abbey. And, in London 
itself, on the foundation of a temple to Diana, he built 
another little church, which has risen up, since that old 
time, to be St. Paul's. 



18 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

After the death of Ethelbert, Edwin, King of North- 
•umbria, who was such a good king that it was said a 
woman or child might openly carry a purse of gold, in 
his reign, without fear, allowed his child to be baptized, 
and held a great council to consider whether he and his 
people should all be Christians or not. It was decided 
that they should be. Coin, the chief priest of the old 
religion, made a great speech on the occasion. In this 
discourse, he told the people that he had found out the 
old gods to be impostors. "I am quite satisfied of it," 
he said. "Look at me! I have been serving them all 
my life, and they have done nothing for me; whereas, 
if they had been really powerful, they could not have 
decently done less, in return for all 1 have done for 
them, than make my fortune. As they have never 
made my fortune, I am quite convinced they are im- 
postors !" When this singular priest had finished speak- 
ing, he hastily armed himself with sword and lance, 
mounted a war-horse, rode at a furious gallop in sight 
of all the people to the temple, and flung his lance 
against it as an insult. From that time, the Christian 
religion spread itself among the Saxons, and became 
their faith. 

The next very famous prince was Egbert. He lived 
about a hundred and fifty years afterward, and claimed 
to have a better right to the throne of Wessex than 
Beortric, another Saxon prince who was at the head of 
that kingdom, and who married Edburera, the daughter 
of Offa, king of another of the seven kingdoms. This 
Queen Edburga was a handsome murderess, who pois- 
oned people when they offended her. One day, she 
mixed a cup of poison for a certain noble belonging to 
the court; but her husband drank of it, too, by mistake, 
and died. Upon this, people revolted in great crowds; 
and running to the palace, and thundering at the gates, 
cried, "Down with the wicked queen who poisons men!" 
They drove her out of the country, and abolished the 
title she had disgraced. When years had passed away, 
some travelers came home from Italy, and said that in 
the town of Pavia they had seen a ragged beggar 
woman, who had once been handsome, but was then 
shriveled, bent, and yellow, wandering about the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 19 

streets, crying for bread ; and that this beggar woman 
was the poisoning English queen. It was, indeed, Ed- 
burga; and so she died, without a shelter for her 
wretched head. 

Egbert, not considering himself safe in England, in 
consequence of his having claimed the crown of Wessex 
(for he thought his rival might take him prisoner and 
put him to death), sought refuge at the court of Charle- 
magne, king of France. On the death of Beortric, so 
unhappily poisoned by mistake, Egbert came back to 
Britain ; succeeded to the throne of Wessex ; conquered 
some of the other monarchs of the seven kingdoms; 
added their territories to his own; and, for the first 
time, called the country over which he ruled England. 

And now new enemies arose, who for a long time 
troubled England sorely. These were the Northmen, 
the people of Denmark and Norway, whom the English 
called the Danes. They were a warlike people, quite at 
home upon the sea; not Christians; very daring and 
cruel. They came over in ships, and plundered and 
burned wheresoever they landed. Once, they beat 
Egbert in battle. Once, Egbert beat them. But they 
cared no more for being beaten than the English them- 
selves. In the four following short reigns of Ethelwulf 
and his sons, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and Ethelred, they 
came back over and over again, burning and plunder- 
ing, and laying England waste. In the last-mentioned 
reign, they seized Edmund, King of East England, and 
bound him to a tree. Then they proposed to him that 
he should change his religion; but he, being a good 
Christian, steadily refused. Upon that, they beat him, 
made cowardly jests upon him, all defenseless as he 
was, shot arrows at him, and finally struck off his head. 
It is impossible to say whose head they might have 
struck off next, but for the death of King Ethelred from 
a wound he had received in fighting against them, and 
the succession to his throne of the best and wisest king 
that ever lived in England. 



20 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
CHAPTER III. 

ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED. 

Alfred the Great was a young man, three-and-twenty 
years of age, when he became king. Twice in his child- 
hood he had been taken to Rome, where the Saxon 
nobles were in the habit of going on journeys which they 
supposed to be religious; and once he had stayed for 
some time in Paris. Learning, however, was so little 
cared for then, that at twelve years old he had not been 
taught to read ; although, of the sons of King Ethelwulf , 
he, the youngest, was the favorite. But he had — as 
most men who grow up to be great and good are gener- 
ally found to have had — an excellent mother; and one 
day this lady, whose name was Osburga, happened, as 
she was sitting among htr sons, to read a book of Saxon 
poetry. The art of printing was not known until long 
and long after that period, and the book, which was 
written, was what is called "illuminated" with beautiful 
bright letters, richly painted. The brothers admiring 
it very much, their mother said, "I will give it to that 
one of you princes who first learns to read." Alfred 
sought out a tutor that very day, applied himself to 
learn with great diligence, and soon won the book. He 
was proud of it all his life. 

This great king, in the first year of his reign, fought 
nine battles with the Danes. He made some treaties 
with them, too, by which the false Danes swore they 
would quit the country. They pretended to consider 
that they had taken a very solemn oath, in swearing 
this upon the holy bracelets that they wore, and which 
were always buried with them when they died ; but they 
cared little for it, for they thought nothing of breaking 
oaths and treaties, too, as soon as it suited their pur- 
pose, and coming back again to fight, plunder, and 
burn, as usual. One fatal winter, in the fourth year of 
King Alfred's reign, they spread themselves in great 
numbers over the whole of England ; and so dispersed 
and routed the King's soldiers that the King was left 
alone, and was obliged to disguise himself as a common 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 21 

peasant and to take refuge in the cottage of one of his 
cowherds who did not know his face. 

Here King Alfred, while the Danes sought him far 
and near, was left alone one day, by the cowherd's wife, 
to watch some cakes which she put to bake upon the 
hearth. But being at work upon his bow and arrows, 
with which he hoped to punish the false Danes when a 
brighter time should come, and thinking deeply of his 
poor unhappy subjects whom the Danes chased through 
the land, his noble mind forgot the cakes, and they 
were burned. "What!" said the cowherd's wife, who 
scolded him well when she came back, and little thought 
she was scolding the King, "you will be ready enough 
to eat them by-and-by, and yet you cannot watch them, 
idle dog?" 

At length the Devonshire men made head against a 
new host of Danes who landed on their coast, killed 
their chief, and captured their flag ; on which was repre- 
sented the likeness of a Raven — a very fit bird for a 
thievish army like that, I think. The loss of their 
standard troubled the Danes greatly, for they believed 
it to be enchanted — woven by the three daughters of 
one father in a single afternoon — anc. they had a story 
among themselves that when they were victorious in 
battle, the Raven stretched his wings and seemed to 
fly; and that when they were defeated, he would droop. 
He had good reason to droop now, if he could have done 
anything half so sensible; for King Alfred joined the 
Devonshire men ; made a camp with them on a piece of 
firm ground in the midst of a bog in Somersetshire; 
and prepared for a great attempt for vengeance on the 
Danes, and the deliverance of his oppressed people. 

But, first, as it was important to know how numerous 
those pestilent Danes were, and how they were fortified 
King Alfred, being a good musician, disguised himself 
as a glee-man or minstrel, and went with his harp to the 
Danish camp. He played and sang in the very tent of 
Guthrum the Danish leader, and entertained the Danes 
as they caroused. While he seemed to think of nothing 
but his music, he was watchful of their tents, their arms, 
their discipline, everything that he desired to know. 
And right soon did this great king entertain them to a 



22 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

different tune; for, summoning all his true followers to 
meet him at an appointed place, where they received 
him with joyful shouts and tears as the monarch whom 
many of them had given up for lost or dead, he put him- 
self at their head, marched on the Danish camp, 
defeated the Danes with great slaughter, and besieged 
them for fourteen days to prevent their escape. But, 
being as merciful as he was good and brave, he then, 
instead of killing them, proposed peace on condition 
that they should altogether depart from that Western 
part of England, and settle in the East; and that Guth- 
rum should become a Christian, in remembrance of the 
Divine religion which now taught his conqueror, the 
noble Alfred, to forgive the enemy who had so often 
injured him. This Guthrum did. At his baptism. 
King Alfred was his godfather. And Guthrum was an 
honorable chief who well deserved that clemency ; for- 
ever afterward, he was loyal and faithful to the king. 
The Danes under him were faithful, too. They plun- 
dered and burned no more, but worked like honest men. 
They plowed, and sowed, and reaped, and led good, 
honest English lives. And I hope the children of those 
Danes played, many a time, with Saxon children in the 
sunny fields; and that Danish young men fell in love 
with Saxon girls, and married them; and that English 
travelers, benighted at the doors of Danish cottages, 
often went in for shelter until morning; and that Danes 
and Saxons sat by the red fire, friends, talking of King 
Alfred the Great. 

All the Danes were not like these under Guthrum ; for 
after some years more of them came over, in the old 
plundering and burning way — among them a fierce 
pirate of the name of Hastings, who had the boldness 
to sail up the Thames to Gravesend with eighty ships. 
For three years there was a war with these Danes ; and 
there was a famine in the country, too, and a plague, 
both upon human creatures and beasts. But King 
Alfred, whose mighty heart never failed him, built 
large ships, nevertheless, with which to pursue the 
pirates on the sea; and he encouraged his soldiers, by 
his brave example, to fight valiantly against them on 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 23 

the shore. At last he drove them all away ; and then 
there was repose in England. 

As great and good in peace as he was great and good 
in war, King Alfred never rested from his labors to im- 
prove his people. He loved to talk with clever men, 
and with travelers from foreign countries, and to write 
down what they told him for his people to read. He 
had studied Latin after learning to read English, and 
now another of his labors was to translate Latin books 
into the English-Saxon tongue, that his people might be 
interested and improved by their contents. He made 
just laws, that they might live more happily and freely ; 
he turned away all partial judges, that no wrong might 
be done them ; he was so careful of their property, and 
punished robbers so severely, that it was a common 
thing to say that, under the great King Alfred, garlands 
of golden chains and jewels might have hung across the 
streets, and no man would have touched one. He 
founded schools; he patiently heard causes himself in 
his Court of Justice; the great desires of his heart were, 
to do right to all his subjects, and to leave England bet- 
ter, wiser, happier in all ways, than he found it. His 
industry in these efforts was quite astonishing. Every 
day be divided into certain portions, and in each por- 
tion devoted himself to a certain pursuit. That he 
might divide his time exactly, he had wax torches or 
candles made, which were all of the same size, were 
notched across at regular distances, and were always 
kept burning. Thus, as the candles burned down, he 
divided the day into notches, almost as accurately as 
we now divide it into hours upon the clock. But when 
the candles were first invented, it was found that the 
wind and draughts of air, blowing into the palace 
through the doors and windows, and through the chinks 
in the wall, caused them to gutter and burn une- 
qually. To prevent this, the King had them put into 
cases formed of wood and white horn. And these were 
the first lanterns ever made in England. 

All this time, he was afflicted with a terrible unknown 
disease, which caused him violent and frequent pain 
that nothing could relieve. He bore it, as he had borne 
all the troubles of his life, like a brave good man, until 



24 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

he was fifty-three years old ; and then, having reigned 
thirty years, he died. He died in the year 901 ; but, 
long ago as that is, his fame, and the love and gratitude 
with which his subjects regarded him, are freshly re- 
membered to the present hour. 

In the next reign, which was the reign of Edward, 
surnamed The Elder, who was chosen in council to suc- 
ceed, a nephew of King Alfred, troubled the country by 
trying to obtain the throne. The Danes in the East of 
England took part with this usurper (perhaps because 
they had honored his uncle so much, and honored him 
for his uncle's sake), and there was hard fighting; but 
the King, with the assistance of his sister, gained the 
day, and reigned in peace for four and twenty years. 
He gradually extended his power over the whole of 
England, and so the Seven Kingdoms were united 
into one. 

When England thus became one kingdom, ruled over 
by one Saxon King, the Saxons had been settled in the 
country more than 450 years. Great changes had taken 
place in its customs during that time. The Saxons were 
still greedy eaters and great drinkers, and their feasts 
were often of a noisy and drunken kind; but many new 
comforts and even elegances had become known, and 
were fast increasing. Hangings for the walls of rooms, 
where, in those modern days, we paste up paper, are 
known to have been some times made of silk, orna- 
mented with birds and flowers in needllework. Tables 
and chairs were curiously carved in different woods; 
were sometimes decorated with gold or silver ; some- 
times even made of those precious metals. Knives and 
spoons were used at table ; golden ornaments were 
worn — with silk and cloth, and golden tissues and em- 
broideries ; dishes were made of gold and silver, brass 
and bone. There were varieties of drinking-horns, bed- 
steads, musical instruments. A harp was passed around 
at a feast, like the drinking-bowl, from guest to guest; 
and each one usually sang or played when his turn 
came. The weapons of the Saxons were stoutly made, 
and among them was a terrible iron hammer that gave 
deadly blows, and was long remembered. The Saxons 
themselves were a handsome people. The men were 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 25 

proud of their long fair hair, parted on the forehead ; 
their ample beards, their fresh complexions, and clear 
eyes. The beauty of the Saxon women filled all Eng- 
land with a new delight and grace. 

I have more to tell of the Saxons yet, but I stop to 
say this now, because under the Great Alfred all the 
best points of the English-Saxon character were first 
encouraged, and in him first shown. It has been the 
greatest character among the nations of the earth. 
Wherever the descendants of the Saxon race have 
gone, have sailed, or otherwise made their way. even to 
the remotest regions of the world, they have been 
patient, persevering, never to be broken in spirit, never 
to be turned aside from enterprises on which thty have 
resolved. In Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the' whole 
world over; in the desert, in the forest, on the sta; 
scorched by a burning sun, or frozen by ice that never 
melts; the Saxon blood remains unchanged. Whereso- 
ever that 'race goes, there law, and industry, and^safety 
for life and property, and all the great results of steady 
perseverance, are certain to arise. 

I pause to think with admiration of the noble king 
who, in his single person, possessed all the Saxon vir- 
tues. Whom misfortune could not subdue, whom pros- 
perity could not spoil, whose perseverance nothing could 
shake. Who was hopeful in defeat, and generous in 
success. Who loved justice, freedom, truth, and 
knowledge. Who, in his care to instruct his people, 
probably did more to preserve the beautiful old Saxon 
language than I can imagine. Without whom, the Eng- 
lish tongue in which I tell this story might have wanted 
half its meaning As it is said that his spirit still in- 
spires some of our best English laws, so let you and I 
pray that it may animate our English hearts, at least 
to this — to resolve, when we see any of our fellow-creat- 
ures left in ignorance, that we will do our best, while 
life is in us, to have them taught; and to tell those rulers 
whose duty it is to teach them, and who neglect their 
duty, that they have profited very little by all the years 
that have rolled away since the year 901, and that they 
are far behind the bright example of King Alfred the 
Great. 



26 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
CHAPTER IV. 

ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS. 

Athelstan, the son of Edward the Elder, succeeded 
that king. He reigned only fifteen years ; but he re- 
membered the glory of his grandfather, the great Alfred, 
and governed England well. He reduced the turbulent 
people of Wales, and obliged them to pay him a tribute 
in money, and in cattle, and to send, him their best 
hawks and hounds. He was victorious over the Cornish 
men, who were not yet quite under the Saxon govern- 
ment. He restored such of the old laws as were good 
and had fallen into disuse; made some wise new laws, 
and took care of the poor and weak. A strong alliance, 
made against him by Anlaf, a Danish prince, Constan- 
tine, King of the Scots, and the people of North Wales, 
he broke and defeated in one great battle, long famous 
for the vast number slain in it. After that, he had a 
quiet reign ; the lords and ladies about him had leisure 
to become polite and agreeable; and foreign princes 
were glad (as they have sometimes been since) to come 
to England on visits to the English court. 

When Athelstan died, at forty-seven years old, his 
brother Edmund, who was only eighteen, became king. 
He was the first of six boy-kings, as you will pres- 
ently know. 

They called him the Magnificent, because he showed 
a taste for improvement and refinement. But he was 
beset by the Danes, and had a short and troubled reign 
which came to a troubled end. One night, when he was 
feasting in his hall, and had eaten much and drunk 
deep, he saw, among the company, a noted robber 
named Leof, who had been banished from England. 
Made very angry by the boldness of this man, the 
King turned to his cup-bearer, and said, "There is a rob- 
ber sitting at the table yonder, who, for his crimes, is an 
outlaw in the land — a hunted wolf, whose life any man 
may take, at any time. Command that robber to 
depart!" 

"I will not depart!" said Leof. "No?" cried the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 27 

King. "No, by the Lord!" said Leof. Upon that the 
King rose from his seat, and, making passionately at ihe 
xobber, and seizing him by his long hair, tried to throw 
him down. But the robber had a dagger underneath his 
cloak, and in the scuffle stabbed the King to death. 
That done, he set his back against the wall, and fought 
so desperately, that although he was soon cut to pieces 
by the King's armed men, and the wall and pavement 
were splashed with his blood, yet it was not before he 
had killed and wounded many of them. You may 
imagine what \ rough lives the kings of those times led, 
when one of them could struggle, half drunk, with a 
public robber in his own dining-hall, and be stabbed in 
the presence of the company who ate and drank with 
him. 

Then succeeded the boy-king Edred, who was weak 
and sickly in body, but of a strong mind. And his 
armies fought the Northmen, the Danes, and Norwe- 
gians, or the Sea Kings, as they were called, and beat 
them for the time. And, in nine years, Edred died, and 
passed away. 

Then came the boy-king Edwy, fifteen 3 ears of age; 
but the real king, who had the real power, was a monk 
named Dunstan — a clever priest, a little mad, and not a 
little proud and cruel. 

Dunstan was then Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, whith- 
er the body of King Edmund the Magnificent was carried 
to be buried. While yet a boy, he had got out of his 
bed one night (being then in a fever), and walked about 
Glastonbury Church when it was under repair; and be- 
cause he did not tumble off some scaffolds that, were 
there, and break his neck, it was reported that he had 
been shown over the building by an angel. He had 
also made a harp that was said to play of itself — which 
it very likely did, as MoWslvl Harps, which are played 
by the wind, and are understood now, always do. For 
these wonders he had been once denounced by his ene- 
mies, who were jealous of his favor with the late King 
Athelstan, as a magician ; and he had been waylaid, 
bound hand and foot, and thrown into a marsh. But 
he got out again, somehow, to cause a great deal of 
trouble yet. 



28 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The priest of those days were generally the only 
scholars. They were learned in many things. Having 
to make their own convents and monasteries on uncul- 
tivated grounds that were granted to them by the 
Crown, it ;was necessary that they should be good far- 
mers and" good gardeners, or their lands would have 
been too poor to support them. For the decoration of 
the chapels where they prayed, and for the comfort of 
the refectories where they ate and drank, it was neces- 
sary that there should be good carpenters, good smiths, 
good painters, among them. For their greater safety 
in sickness and accident, living alone by themselves in 
solitary places, it was necessary that they should study 
the virtues of plants and herbs, and should know how 
to dress cuts, burns, scalds, and bruises, and how to set 
broken limbs. Accordingly they taught themselves, 
and one another, a great variety of useful arts ; and be- 
came skillful in agriculture, medicine, surgery, and 
handicraft. And when they wanted the aid of any little 
piece of machinery, which would be simple enough now 
but was marvelous then, to impose a trick upon the poor 
peasants, they knew very well how to make it; and did 
make it many a time and often, I have no doubt. 

Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was one of 
the most sagacious of these monks. He was an in- 
genious smith, and worked at a forge in a little cell. 
This cell was made too short to admit of his lying at full 
length when he went to sleep — as if that did any good 
to anybody ! — and he used to tell the most extraordinary 
lies about demons and spirits, who, he said, came there 
to persecute him. For instance, he related that one day 
when he was at work, the devil looked in at the little 
window, and tried to tempt him to lead a life of idle 
pleasure ; whereupon having his pincers in the fire red 
hot, he seized the devil by the nose, and put him to such 
pain, that his bellowings were heard for miles and 
miles. Some people are inclined to think this nonsense 
a part of Dunstan's madness (for his head never quite 
recovered the fever), but I think not. I observe that 
it induced the ignorant people to consider him a holy 
man, and that it made him very powerful. Which was 
exactly what he always wanted. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 29 

On the day of the coronation of the handsome boy- 
king Edwy, it was remarked by ^Odo, Archbishop of 
Canterbury (who was a Dane by birth), that the King 
quietly left the coronation feast, while all the company 
were there. Odo, much displeased, sent his friend 
Dunstan to seek him. Dunstan, finding him in the 
company of his beautiful young wife Elgiva, and her 
mother Ethelgiva, a good and virtuous lady, not only 
grossly abused them, but dragged the young King back 
into the feasting hall by force. Some, again, think 
Dunstan did this because the young King's fair wife 
was his own cousin, and the monks objected to people 
marrying their own cousins ; but I believe he did it be- 
cause he was an imperious, audacious, ill-conditioned 
priest, who, having loved a young lady himself before 
he became a sour monk, hated all love now, and every- 
thing belonging to it. 

The young King was quite old enough to feel this in- 
sult. Dunstan had been Treasurer in the last reign, 
and he soon charged Dunstan with having taken some 
of the last King's money. The Glastonbury Abbot fled 
to Belgium (very narrowly escaping some pursuers who 
were sent to put out his eyes, as you will wish they had, 
when you read what follows), and his abbey was given 
to priests who were married ; whom he always, both be- 
fore and afterward, opposed. But he quickly con- 
spired with his friend, Odo the Dane, to set up the 
King's young brother, Edgar, as his rival for the throne ; 
and not content with this revenge, he caused the beauti- 
ful queen Elgiva, though a lovely girl of only seventeen 
or eighteen, to be stolen from one of the Royal Palaces, 
branded in the cheek with a red-hot iron, and sold into 
slavery in Ireland. But the Irish people pitied and be- 
friended her; and they said, "Let us restore the girl- 
queen to the boy-king, and make the young lovers 
happy!" and they cured her of her cruel wound, and 
sent her home as beautiful as before. But the villain 
Dunstan, and that other villain Odo, caused her to be 
waylaid at Glouchester, as she was joyfully hurrying to 
join her husband, and to be hacked and hewn with 
swords, and to be barbarously maimed and lamed, 
and left to die. "When Edwy the Fair (his people 



30 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

called him so because he was so young and hand- 
some) heard of her dreadful fate, he died of a broken 
heart; and so the pitiful story of the poor young wife 
and husband ends ! Ah ! better to be two cottagers in 
these better times, than king and queen of England in 
those bad days, though never so fair. 

Then came the boy-king Edgar, called the Peaceful, 
fifteen years old. Dunstan, being still the real king, 
drove all married priests out of the monasteries and 
abbeys, and replaced them by solitary monks like him- 
self, of the rigid order called the Benedictines. He 
made himself Archbishop of Canterbury, for his greater 
glory; and exercised such power over the neighboring 
British princes, and so collected them about the King, 
that once, when the King held his court at Chester, and 
went on the river Dee to visit the monastery of St. John, 
the eight oars of his boat were pulled (as the people 
used to delight in relating in stories and songs) by eight 
crowned kings, and steered by the King of England. 
As Edgar was very obedient to Dunstan and the monks, 
they took great pains to represent him as the best of 
kings. But he was really profligate, debauched, and 
vicious. He once forcibly carried off a young lady 
from tho convent at Wilton ; and Dunstan, pretending 
to be very much shocked, condemned him not to wear 
his crown upon his head for seven years — no great pun- 
ishment, I dare say, as it can hardly have been a more 
comfortable ornament to wear than a stewpan without 
a handle. His marriage with his second wife, Elfrida 
is one of the worst events of his reign. Hearing of the 
beauty of the lady, he dispatched his favorite courtier, 
Athelwold, to her father's castle in Devonshire, to see 
if she were really as charming as fame reported. Now, 
she was so exceedingly beautiful that Athelwold fell in 
love with her himself, and married her; but he told the 
King that she was only rich — not handsome. The 
King, suspecting the truth when they came home, re- 
solved to pay the newly married couple a visit; and 
suddenly told Athelwold to prepare for his immediate 
coming. Athelwold, terrified, confessed to his young 
wife what he had said and done, and implored her to 
disguise her beauty by some ugly dress or silly manner, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 31 

that he might be safe from the King's anger. She 
promised that she would ; but she was a proud woman, 
who would far rather have been a queen than the wife 
of a courtier. She dressed herself in her best dress, and 
adorned herself with her richest jewels ; and when the 
King came, presently, he discovered the cheat. So he 
caused his false friend, Athelwold, to be murdered in a 
wood, and married his widow — this bad Elfrida. Six 
or seven years afterward he died ; and was buried, as 
if he had been all that the monks said he was, in the 
abbey of Glastonbury, which he — or Dunstan for him — 
had much enriched. 

England, in one part of this reign, was so troubled by 
wolves, which, driven out of the open country, hid 
themselves in the mountains of Wales when they were 
not attacking travelers and animals, that the tribute 
payable by the Welsh people was forgiven them on 
condition of their producing, every year, three hundred 
wolves' heads. And the Welshmen were so sharp upon 
the wolves, to save their money, that in four years there 
was not a wolf left. 

Then came the boy-king Edward, called the Martyr, 
from the manner of his death. Elfrida had a son, 
named Ethelred, for whom she claimed the throne ; but 
Dunstan did not choose to favor him, and he made 
Edward king. The boy was hunting, one day, down in 
Dorsetshire, when he rode near to Corfe Castle, where 
Elfrida and Ethelred lived. Wishing to see them 
kindly, he rode away from his attendants and galloped 
to the castle gate, where he arrived at twilight, and 
blew his hunting horn. "You are welcome, dear 
King," said Elfrida, coming out with her brightest 
smiles. "Pray you dismount and enter." "Not so, dear 
madam," said the King. "My company will miss me, 
and fear that I have met with some harm. Please you 
to give me a cup of wine, that I may drink here, in the 
saddle, to you and to my little brother, and so ride 
away with the good speed I have met riding here." 
Elfrida, going in to bring the wine, whispered to an 
armed servant, one of her attendants, who stole out of 
the darkening gateway, and crept round behind the 
King's horse. As the King raised the cup to his lips, 



32 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

saying, " Healtfy !" to the wicked woman who was smil- 
ing on him, and to his innocent brother whose hand she 
held in hers, and who was only ten years old, this armed 
man made a spring and stabbed him in the back. He 
dropped the cup and spurred his horse away ; but, soon 
fainting with loss of blood, dropped from the saddle, 
and, in his fall, entangled one of his feet in the stirrup. 
The frightened horse dashed on; trailing his rider's 
curls upon the ground ; dragging his smooth young face 
through ruts, and stones, and briers, and fallen leaves, 
and mud; until the hunters, tracking the animal's 
course by the King's blood, caught his bridle and re- 
leased the disfigured body. 

Then came the sixth and last of the boy-kings, Ethel- 
red, whom Elfrida, when he cried out at the sight of 
his murdered brother riding away from the castle gate, 
unmercifully beat with a torch, which she snatched from 
one of the attendants. The people so disliked this boy, 
on account of his cruel mother and the murder she had 
done to promote him, that Duastan would not have had 
him for king, but would have made Edgitha, the daugh- 
ter of the dead King Edgar and of the lady whom he stole 
out of the convent at Wilton, Queen of England, if she 
would have consented. But she knew the stories of the 
youthful kings too well, and would not be persuaded 
from the convent where she lived in peace ; so Dunstan 
put Ethelred on the throne, having no one else to put 
there, and gave him the nickname of the Unready — 
knowing that he wanted resolution and firmness. 

At first Elfrida possessed great influence over the 
young King, but, as he grew older and came of age, her 
influence declined. The infamous woman, not having 
it in her power to do any more evil, then retired from 
court, and according to the fashion of the time, built 
churches and monasteries to expiate her guilt. As if a 
church, with a steeple reaching to the very stars, would 
have been any sign of true repentance for the blood of 
the poor boy whose murdered form was trailed at his 
horse's heels. As if she could have buried her wicked- 
ness beneath the senseless stones of the whole world, 
piled up one upon another, for the monks to live in ! 

About the ninth or tenth year of his reign, Dunstan 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 33 

died. He was growing old then, but was as stern and 
artful as ever. Two circumstances that happened in 
connection with him, in this reign of Ethelred, made a 
great noise. Once, he was present at a meeting of the 
church, when the question was discussed whether 
priests should have permission to marry ; and, as he sat 
with his head hung down, apparently thinking about it, 
a voice seemed to come out of a crucifix in the room, and 
warn the meeting to be ot his opinion. This was some 
juggling of Dunstan's, and was probably his own voice 
disguised. But he played off a worse juggle than that 
soon afterward ; for, another meeting being held on the 
same subject, and he and his supporters being seated on 
one side of a great room, and their opponents on the other, 
he rose and said, "To Christ himself, as Judge, do I 
commit this cause !" Immediately on these words being 
spoken, the floor where the opposite party sat gave way, 
and some were killed and many wounded. You may 
be pretty sure that it has been weakened under Dunstan's 
direction, and that it fell at Dunstan's signal. His part 
of the floor did not go down. No, no. He was too 
good a workman for that. 

When he died the monks settled that he was a saint, 
and called him St. Dunstan ever afterward. They might 
just as well have settled that he was a coach-horse, and 
could just as easily have called him one. 

Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare say, 
to be rid of his holy saint ; but, left to himself, he was a 
poor, weak king, and his reign was a reign of defeat 
and shame. The restless Danes, led by Sweyn, a son of 
the King of Denmark, who had quarreled with his 
father and had been banished from home, ag£.in came 
into England, and, year after year, attacked and de- 
spoiled large towns. To coax these sea-kings away, the 
weak Ethelred paid them money; but the more money 
he paid, the more money the Danes wanted. At first he 
gave them ten thousand pounds ; on their next invasion, 
sixteen thousand pounds ; on their next invasion, four- 
and-fwenty thousand pounds ; to pay which large sums, 
the unfortunate English people were heavily taxed. 
But, as the Danes still came back and wanted more, he 
thought it would be a good plan to marry into some 

3 History 



34 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

powerful foreign family that would help him with sol- 
diers. So in the year 1002 he courted and married Emma, 
the sister of Richard, Duke of Normandy — a lady who 
was calied the Flower of Normandy. 

And now a terrible deed was done in England, the 
like of which was never done on English ground before 
or since. On the 13th of November, in pursuance of 
secret instructions sent by the King over the whole 
country, the inhabitants of every town and city armed, 
and murdered all the Danes who were their neighbors. 
Young and old, babies and soldiers, men and women, 
every Dane was killed. No doubt there were among 
them many ferocious men who had done the English 
great wrong, and whose pride and insolence, in swagger- 
ing in the houses of the English and insulting their 
wives and daughters, had become unbearable ; but no 
doubt there were also among them many peaceful 
Christian Danes who had married English women and 
become like English men. They were all slain, even to 
Gunhilda, the sister of the King of Denmark, married to 
an English lord ; who was first obliged to see the murder 
of her husband and her child, and then was killed 
herself. 

When the King of the sea-kings heard of this deed of 
blood, he swore that he would have a great revenge. 
He raised an army, and a mightier fleet of ships than 
ever yet had sailed to England; and in all his army 
there was not a slave or an old man, but every soldier 
was a free man, and the son of a free man, and in the 
prime of life, and sworn to be revenged upon the Eng- 
lish nation for the massacre of that dread 13th of Novem- 
ber, when his countrymen and countrywomen, and the 
little children whom they loved, were killed with fire 
and sword. And so, the sea-kings came to England in 
many great ships, each bearing the flag of its own com- 
mander. Golden eagles, ravens, dragons, dolphins^ 
beasts of prey, threatened England from the prows of 
those ships, as they came onward through the water ; 
and were reflected in the shining shields that hung upon 
their sides. The ship that bore the standard of the King 
of the sea-kings was carved and painted like a mighty 
serpent ; and the king in his anger prayed that the gods 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 35 

in whom he trusted might all desert him, if his serpent 
did not strike his fangs into England's heart. 

And, indeed, it did. For, the great army, landing 
from the great fleet near Exeter, went forward, laying 
England waste, and striking their lances in the earth as 
they advanced, or throwing them into rivers, in token 
of their making all the islands theirs. In remembrance 
of the black November night when the Danes were 
murdered, wheresoever the invaders came, they made 
the Saxons prepare and spread for them great feasts ; 
and when they had eaten those feasts, and had drunk a 
curse to England with wild rejoicings, they drew their 
swords and killed their Saxon entertainers, and marched 
on. For six long years they carried on this war ; burn- 
ing the crops, farm-houses, barns, mills, granaries ; kill- 
ing the laborers m the fields ; preventing the seed from 
being sown in the ground ; causing famine and starva- 
tion; leaving only heaps of ruin and smoking ashes, 
where they had found rich towns. To crown this mis- 
ery, English officers and men deserted, and even the 
favorites of Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, 
seized many of the English ships, turned pirates against 
their own country, and aided by a storm occasioned the 
loss of nearly the whole English navy. 

There was but one man of note, at this miserable pass, 
who was true to his country and the feeble King. He 
was a priest, and a brave one. For twenty days the 
Archbishop of Canterbury defended that city against 
its Danish besiegers ; and when a traitor in the town 
threw the gates open and admitted them, he said, in 
chains, "I will not buy my life with money that must 
be extorted from the suffering people. Do with me 
what you please !" Again and again he steadily refused 
to purchase his release with gold wrung from the poor. 

At last the Danes, being tired of this, and being 
assembled at a drunken merry-making, had him brought 
into the feasting-hall. 

"Now, bishop," they said, "we want gold!" 

He looked round, on the crowd of angry faces ; from 
the shaggy beards close to him, to the shaggy beards 
against the walls, where men were mounted on tables 



36 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and forms to see him over the heads of others; and he 
knew that his time was come. 

"I have no gold," said he. 

"Get it, bishop!" they all thundered. 

"That, I have often told you, I will not," said he. 

They gathered closer round him, threatening, but he 
stood unmoved. Then, one man struck him ; then 
another ; then a cursing soldier picked up from a heap 
in a corner of the hall, where fragments had been rudely 
thrown at dinner, a great ox-bone, and cast it at his 
face, from which the blood came spurting forth ; then 
others ran to the same heap, and knocked him down 
with other bones, and bruised and battered him ; until 
one soldier, whom he had baptized (willing, as I hope, 
for the sake of that soldier's soul, to shorten the suffer- 
ings of the good man), struck him dead with his 
battle-ax. 

If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the courage 
of this noble archbishop, he might have done something 
yet. But he paid the Danes forty-eight thousand 
pounds instead, and gained so little by the cowardly 
act that Sweyn soon afterward came over to subdue all 
England. So broken was the attachment of the English 
people, at this time, to their incapable King and their 
forlorn country, which could not protect them, that they 
welcomed Sweyn on all sides, as a deliverer. London 
faithfully stood out, as long as the King was within its 
walls ; but when he sneaked away, it also welcomed the 
Dane. Then all was over ; and the King took refuge 
abroad with the Duke of Normandy, who had already 
given shelter to the King's wife, once the flower of that 
country, and to her children. 

Still, the English people, in spite of their sad suffer- 
ings, could not quite forget the great King Alfred and 
the Saxon race. When Sweyn died suddenly, in little 
more than a month after he had been proclaimed King 
of England, they generously sent to Ethelred, to say 
that they would have him for their King again, "if he 
would only govern them better than he had governed 
them before." The Unready, instead of coming him- 
self, sent Edward, one of his sons, to make promises for 
him. At last he followed, and the English declared 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 37 

him King. The Danes declared Canute, the son of 
Sweyn, King. Thus, direful war began again, and 
lasted for three years, when the Unready died. And I 
know of nothing better that he did in all his reign of 
eight and thirty years. 

Was Canute to be King now? Not over the Saxons, 
they said ; they must have Edmund, one of the sons of 
the Unready, who was surnamed Ironside, because of 
his strength and stature. Edmund and Canute there- 
upon fell to, and fought five battles — oh, unhappy Eng- 
land, what a fighting-ground it was ! — and then Ironside,, 
who was a big man, proposed to Canute, who was a 
little man, that they two should fight it out in single 
combat. If Canute had been the big man, he would 
probably have said yes, but, being the little man, he 
decidedly said no. However, he declared that he was 
willing to divide the kingdom — to take all that lay 
north of Watling Street, as the old Roman military 
road from Dover to Chester was called, and to give Iron- 
side all that lay south of it. Most men being weary of 
so much bloodshed, this was done . But Canute soon 
became sole King of England; for Ironside died sud- 
denly within two months. Some think that he was 
killed, and killed by Canute's orders. No one knows. 



CHAPTER V. 

ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE. 

Canute reigned eighteen years. He was a merciless 
King at first. After he had clasped the hands of the 
Saxon chiefs, in token of the sincerity with which he 
swore to be just and good to them in return for 
their acknowledging him, he denounced and slew 
many of them, as well as many relations of the late 
King. "He who brings me the head of one of my ene- 
mies," he used to say, "shall be dearer to me than a 
brother." And he was so severe in hunting down his 
enemies, that he must have got together a pretty large 
family of these dear brothers. He was strongly inclined 
to kill Edmund and Edward, two children, sons ot poor 



38 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Ironside; but, being afraid to do so in England, he 
sent them over to the King of Sweden, with a request 
that the King would be so good as "dispose of them." 
If the King of Sweden had been like many, many other 
men of that day, he would have had their innocent 
throats cut ; but he was a kind man, and brought them 
up tenderly. 

Normandy ran much in Canute's mind. In Normandy 
were the two children of the late King — Edward and 
Alfred by name ; and their uncle the Duke might one 
day claim the crown for them. But the Duke showed 
so little inclination to do so now, that he proposed to 
Canute to marry his sister, the widow of the Unready, 
who, being but a showy flower, and caring for nothing 
so much as becoming a queen again, left her children 
and was wedded to him. 

Successful and triumphant, assisted by the valor of 
the English in his foreign wars, and with little strife to 
trouble him at home, Canute had a prosperous reign, 
and made many improvements He was a poet and a 
musician. He grew sorry as he grew older, for the 
blood he had shed at first; and went to Rome in a pil- 
grim's dress, by way of washing it out. He gave a 
great deal of money to foreigners on his journey; but 
he took it from the English before he started. On the 
whole, however, he certainly became a far better man 
when he had no opposition to contend with, and was as 
great a King as England had known for some time. 

The old writers of history relate how that Canute was 
one day disgusted with his courtiers for their flattery, 
and how he caused his chair to be set on the seashore, 
and feigned to command the tide as it came up not to 
wet the edge of his robe, for the land was his ; how the 
tide came up, of course, without regarding him; and 
how he then turned to his flatterers, and rebuked them, 
saying, what was the might of any earthly king, to the 
might ot the Creator, who could say unto the sea, 
"Thus far shalt thou go, and no further!" We may 
learn from this, I think, that a little sense will go a 
long way in a king, and that courtiers are not easily 
cured of flattery, nor kings of a liking for it. If the 
courtiers of Canute had not known long before that the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 39 

King was fond of flattery, they would have known bet- 
ter than to offer it in such large dozes. And if they had 
not know that he was vain of this speech (anything but 
a wonderful speech, it seems to me, if a good child had 
made it), they would not have been at such great pains 
to repeat it. I fancy I see them all on the seashore 
together; the King's chair sinking m the sand ; the King 
in a mighty good humor with his own wisdom; and the 
courtiers pretending to be quite stunned by it! 

It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go "thus far, 
and no further." The great command goes forth to all 
the kings upon the earth, and went to Canute in the 
year 1035, and stretched him dead upon his bed. Beside 
it stood his Norman wife. Perhaps, as the king looked 
his last upon her, he, who had so often thought distrust- 
fully of Normandy, long ago, thought once more of the 
two exiled Princes in their uncle's court and of the little 
favor they could feel for either Danes or Saxons, and of 
a rising cloud in Normandy that slowly moved toward 
England. 

CHAPTER VI. 

ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD IIAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, AND 
EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. 

Canute left three sons, by name Sweyn, Harold, and 
Hardicanute; but his Queen, Emma, once the Flower 
of Normandy, was the mother of only Hardicanute. 
Canute had wished his dominions to be divided between 
the three, and had wished Harold to have England; but 
the Saxon people in the South of England, headed by a 
nobleman with great possessions, called the powerful 
Earl Godwin, who is said to have been originally a poor 
cow-boy, opposed this, and desired to have, instead, 
either Hardicanute, or one of the two exiled Princes 
who were over in Normandy. It seemed so certain that 
there would be more bloodshed to settle this dispute, 
that many people left their homes, and took refuge in 
the woods and swamps. Happily, however, it was 
agreed to refer the whole question to a great meeting 
at Oxford, which decided that Harold should have all 



40' A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the country north of the Thames, with London for his 
capital city, and that Hardicanute should have all the 
south. The quarrel was so arranged; and, as Hardi- 
canute was in Denmark troubling himself very little 
about anything but eating and getting drunk, his mother 
and Earl Godwin governed the south for him. 

They had hardly begun to do so, and the trembling 
people who had hidden themselves were scarcely at 
home again, when Edward, the elder of the two exiled 
Princes, came over from Normandy with a few follow- 
ers, to claim the English crown. His mother Emma, 
however, who only cared for her last son Hardicanute, 
instead of assisting him, as he expected, opposed him 
so strongly with all her influence that he was very soon 
glad to get safely back. His brother Alfred was not so 
fortunate. Believing in an affectionate letter, written 
sometime afterward to him and his brother, in his 
mother's name, but whether really with or without his 
mother's knowledge is now uncertain, he allowed him- 
self to be tempted over to England, with a good force of 
soldiers, and landing on the Kentish coast, and being 
met and welcomed by Earl Godwin, proceeded into Sur- 
rey, as far as the town of Guildford. Here, he and his 
men halted in the evening to rest, having still the Earl 
in their company; who had ordered lodgings and good 
cheer for them. But, in the dead of the night, when 
they were off their guard, being divided into small par- 
ties sleeping soundly after a long march and a plentiful 
supper in different houses, they were set upon by the 
King's troops, and taken prisoners. Next morning they 
were drawn out in a line, to the number of six hundred 
men, and were barbarously tortured and killed, with the 
exception of every tenth man, who was sold into slav- 
ery. As to the wretched Prince Alfred, he was stripped 
naked, tied to a horse, and sent away into the Isle of 
Ely, where his eyes were burnt out of his head, and 
where in a few days he miserably died. I am not sure 
that the Earl had willfully entrapped him, but I suspect 
it strongly. 

Harold was now King over all England, though it is 
doubtful whether the Archbishop of Canterbury (the 
greater part of the priests were Saxons, and not friendly 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF EiNGLAND. 41 

to the Danes) ever consented to crown him. Crowned 
or uncrowned, with the Archbishop's leave or without 
it, he was King for four years ; after which short reign 
he died and was buried ; having never done much in 
life but go a-hunting. He was such a fast runner at 
this, his favorite sport, that the people called him 
Harold Harefoot. 

Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders, plotting 
with his mother, who had gone over there after the 
cruel murder of Prince Alfred, for the invasion of Eng- 
land. The Danes and Saxons finding themselves with- 
out a King, and dreading new disputes, made common 
cause, and joined in inviting him to occupy the Throne. 
He consented, and soon troubled them enough ; for he 
brought over numbers of Danes, and taxed the people 
so insupportably to enrich those greedy favorites that 
there were many insurrections, especially one at Wor- 
cester, where the citizens rose and killed his tax-collect- 
ors ; in revenge for which he burned their city. He was 
a brutal king, whose first public act was to order the 
dead body of poor Harold Harefoot to be dug up, 
beheaded, and thrown into the river. His end was 
worthy of such a beginning. He fell down drunk, with 
a goblet of wine in his hand, at a wedding-feast at Lam- 
beth, given in honor of the marriage of his standard- 
bearer, a Dane named Towed the Proud, and he never 
spoke again. 

Edward, afterward called by the monks "The Con- 
fessor," succeeded; and his first act was to oblige his 
mother Emma, who had favored him so little, to retire 
into the country ; where she died some ten years after- 
ward. He was the exiled prince whose brother Alfred 
had been so foully killed. He had been invited over 
from Normandy by Hardicanute, in the course of his 
short reign of two years, and had been handsomely 
treated at court. His cause was now favored by the 
powerful Earl Godwin, and he was soon made King. 
This Earl had been suspected by the people ever since 
Prince Alfred's cruel death ; he had even been tried in 
the last reign for the Prince's murder, but had been 
pronounced not guilty; chiefly, as it was supposed, 
because of a present he had made to the swinish King, 

i History 



42 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of a gilded whip with a figure-head of solid gold, and a 
crew of eighty splendidly armed men. It was to his 
interest to help the new King with his power, if the new 
King would help him against the popular distrust and 
hatred. So they made a bargain. Edward the Confes- 
sor got the throne. The Earl got more power and more 
land, and his daughter Editha was made queen ; for it 
was a part of their compact that the King should take 
her for his wife. 

But, although she was a gentle lady, in all things 
worthy to be beloved - good, beautiful, sensible, and 
kind — the King from the first neglected her. Her father 
and her six proud brothers, resenting this cold treat- 
ment, harassed the King greatly by exerting all their 
power to make him unpopular. Having lived so long 
in Normandy, he preferred the Normans to the English. 
He made a Norman Archbishop, and Norman Bishops ; 
his great officers and favorites were all Normans ; he 
introduced the Norman fashions and the Norman lan- 
guage ; in imitation of the state custom of Normandy, 
he attached a great seal to his state documents, instead 
of merely marking them, as the Saxon kings had done, 
with the sign of the cross— just as poor people who have 
never been taught to write, now make the same mark 
for their names. All this the powerful Earl Godwin and 
his six proud sons represented to the people as disfavor 
shown toward the English; and thus they daily in- 
creased their own power, and daily diminished the 
power of the King. 

They were greatly helped by an event that occurred 
when he had reigned eight years. Eustace, Earl ot 
Boulogne, who had married the King's sister, came to 
England on a visit. After staying at the court some 
time, [he set forth, with his numerous train of atten- 
dants, to return home. They were to embark at Dover, 
Entering that peaceful town in armor, they took posses- 
sion of the best houses, and noisily demanded to be 
lodged and entertained without payment. One of the 
bold men of Dover, who would not endure to have these 
domineering strangers jingling their heavy swords and 
iron corselets up and down his house, eating his meat 
and drinking his strong liquor, stood in his doorway and 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 43 

refused admission to the first armed man who came 
there. The armed man drew, and wounded him. The 
man of Dover struck the armed man dead. Intelligence 
of what he had dooe spreading through the streets to 
where the Count Eustace and his men were standing by 
their horses, bridle in hand, they passionately mounted, 
galloped to the house, surrounded it, forced their way 
in (the doors and windows being closed when they 
came up), and killed the man of Dover at his own fire- 
side. They then clattered through the streets, cutting 
down and riding over men, women, and children. This 
did not last long, you may believe. The men of Dover 
set upon them with great fury, killed nineteen of the 
foreigners, wounded many more, and, blockading the 
road to the port so that they should not embark, beat 
them out of the town by the way they had come. Here- 
upon u Count Eustace rides as hard as a man can ride to 
Gloucester, where Edward is, surrounded by Norman 
monks and Norman lords. "Justice!" cries the Count, 
"upon the men ot Dover, who have set upon and slain 
my people!" The King sends immediately for the 
powerful Earl Godwin, who happens to be near ; reminds 
him that Dover is under his government; and orders 
him to repair to Dover and do military execution on the 
inhabitants. "It does not become you," says the proud 
Earl in reply, "to condemn without a hearing those 
whom you have sworn to protect. I will not do it" 

The King, therefore, summoned the Earl, on pain of 
banishment and loss of his titles and property, to 
appear before the court to answer this disobedience. 
The Earl refused to appear. He, his eldest son Harold, 
and his second son Sweyn, hastily raised as many fight- 
ing men as their utmost power could collect, and de- 
manded to have Count Eustace and his followers sur- 
rendered to the justice of the country. The King, in 
his turn, refused to give them up, and raised a strong 
force. After some treaty and delay, the troops of the 
great Earl and his sons began to fall off. The Earl, 
with a |part of his family and abundance of treasure, 
sailed to Flanders; Harold escaped to Ireland; and the 
power of the great family was for that time gone in 
England. But the people did not forget them. 



44 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Then, Edward the Confessor, with the true meanness 
of a mean spirit, visited his dislike of the once power- 
ful father and sons upon the helpless daughter and sis- 
ter, his unoffending wife, whom all who saw her (her 
husband and his monks excepted) loved. He seized rapa- 
ciously upon her fortune and her jewels, and allowing her 
only one attendant, confined her in a gloomy convent, 
of which a sister of his — no doubt an unpleasant lady 
after his own heart — was abbess or jailer. 

Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well out of 
his way, the King favored the Normans more than ever. 
He invited over William, Duke of Normandy, the son 
of that Duke who had received him and his murdered 
brother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner's 
daughter, with whom that Duke had fallen in love for 
her beauty, as he saw her washing clothes in a brook. 
William, who was a great warrior, with a passion for 
fine horses, dogs, and arms, accepted the invitation; 
and the Normans in England, finding themselves more 
numerous than even when he arrived with his retinue, 
and held in still greater honor [at court than before, 
became more and more haughty toward the people, and 
were more and more disliked by them. 

The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, knew 
well how the people felt; for, with part of the treasure 
he had carried away with him, he kept spies and agents 
in his pay all over England. Accordingly, he thought 
the time was come for fitting out a great expedition 
against the Norman-loving King. With it he sailed to 
the Isle of Wight, where he was joined by his son Har- 
old, the most gallant and brave of all his f amity. And 
so the father and son came sailing up the Thames to 
South wark ; great numbers of the people declaring for 
them and shouting for the English Earl and the English 
Harold, against the Norman favorites! 

The King was at first as blind and stubborn as kings 
usually have been whensoever they have been in the 
hands of monks. But the people rallied so thickly 
round the old Earl and his son, and the old Earl was so 
steady in demanding, without bloodshed, the restora- 
tion of himself and his family to their rights, that at last 
the court took the alarm. The Norman Archbishop of 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 45 

Canterbury, and the Norman Bishop ot London, sur- 
rounded by their retainers, fought their way out of 
London, and escaped from Essex to France in a fishing 
boat. The other Norman favorites dispersed in all 
directions. The old Earl and his sons (except Sweyn, 
who had committed crimes against the law) were 
restored to their possessions and dignities. Editha, the 
virtuous and lovely Queen of the insensible King, was 
triumphantly released from her prison, the convent, and 
once more sat in her chair of state arrayed in the jewels 
of which, when she had no champion to support her 
rights, her cold-blooded husband had deprived her. 

The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his restored 
fortune. He fell down in a fit at the King's table, and 
died upon the third day afterward. Harold succ- eded 
to his power, and to a far higher place in the attach- 
ment of the people than his father had ever- held. By 
his valor he subdued the King's enemies in many 
bloody fights. He was vigorous against rebels in Scot- 
land — this is the time when Macbeth slew Duncan, upon 
which event our English Shakespeare, hundreds of years 
afterward, wrote his great tragedy: and he killed the 
restless Welsh King Griffith, and brought his head to 
England. 

What Harold was doing at sea, when he was driven 
on the French coast by a tempest, is not at all certain ; 
nor does it at all matter. That his ship was forced by 
a storm on that shore, and that he was taken prisoner, 
there is no doubt. In those barbarous days, all ship- 
wrecked strangers, were taken prisoners, and obliged to 
pay ransom. So, a certain Count Guy, who was the Lord 
of Ponthieu, where Harold's disaster happened, seized 
him, — instead ot relieving him like a hospitable and 
Christian lord, as he ought to have done, — and expected 
to make a very good thing of it. 

But Harold "sent off immediately to Duke William of 
Normandy, complaining of this treatment; and the 
Duke no sooner heard of it than he ordered Harold to be 
escorted to the ancient town of Rouen, where he then 
was, and where he received him as an honored guest. 
Now, some writers tell us that Edward the Confessor, 
who was by this time old and had no children, had made 



46 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

a will, appointing Duke William of Normandy his suc- 
cessor, and had informed the Duke of his having done so. 
There is no doubt that he was anxious about his suc- 
cessor, because [he had even invited over from abroad, 
Edward the Outlaw, a son of Ironside, who had come 
to England with his wife and three children, but whom 
the King had strangely refused to see when he did 
come, and who had died in Loudon suddenly (princes 
were terribly liable to sudden death in those days), and 
had been buried in St Paul's cathedral. The King 
might possibly have made such a will ; or, having always 
been fond of the Normans, he might have encouraged 
Norman William to aspire to the English crown, by 
something that he said to him when he was staying at 
the English court. But certainly William did aspire t( 
it; and knowing that Harold would be a powerful rival, 
he called together a great assembly of his nobles, offeree 
Harold his daughter Adele in marriage, informed him 
that he meant on King Edward's death to claim the Eng- 
lish crown as his own inheritance, and required Harolc 
then and there to swear to aid him. Harold, being ii 
the Duke's power, took this oath upon the Missal, or 
Prayer-book. It is a good example of the superstitions 
of the monks, that this Missal, instead of being placed 
upon a table, was placed upon a tub; which, when Har- 
old had sworn, was uncovered, and shown to be full o: 
dead men's bones — bones, as the monks pretended, ol 
saints. This was supposed to make Harold's oath 
great deal more impressive and binding. As if the 
great name of the Creator of heaven and earth could b« 
made more solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a double-tooth, 
or a finger-nail, of Dunstan ! 

Within a week or two after Harold's return to Eng- 
land, the dreary old Confessor was found to be dying. 
After wandering in his mind like a very weak ole 
man, he died. As he had put himself entirely in th( 
hands of the monks wLen he was alive, they praisec 
him lustily when he was dead. They had gone so far 
already, as to persuade him that he could work mira 
cles; and had brought people afflicted with a bad disor 
der of the skin, to him, to be touched and cured. This 
was called "touching for the King's Evil," which after 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 47 

ward became a royal custom. You know, however, 
Who really touched the sick, and healed them ; and you 
know His sacred name is not among the dusty line of 
human kings. 

CHAPTER VII. 

ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD II., AND CONQUERED BY THE 

NORMANS. 

Harold was crowned King of England on the very 
day of the maudlin Confessor's funeral. He had good 
need to be quick about it. When the news reached 
Norman William, hunting in his park at Rouen, he 
dropped his bow, returned to his palace, called his 
nobles to council, and presently sent ambassadors to 
Harold, calling on him to keep his oath and resign the 
Crown. Harold would do no such thing. The barons 
of France leagued together round Duke William for the 
invasion of England. Duke William promised freely 
to distribute English wealth and English lands among 
them. The Pope sent to Normandy a consecrated ban- 
ner, and a ring containing a hair, which he warranted to 
have grown on the head of St. Peter. He blessed the 
enterprise ; and cursed Harold ; and requested that the 
Normans would pay "Peter's Pence" — or a tax to him- 
self of a penny a year on every house — a little more 
regularly in future, if they could make it convenient. 

King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders, who was 
a vassal of Harold Hardrada, King of Norway. This 
brother, and this Norwegian King, joining their forces 
against England with Duke William's help, won a fight 
in which the English were commanded by two nobles; 
and then besieged York. Harold, who was waiting 
for the Normans on the coast of Hastings, with his 
army, marched to Stamford Bridge upon the river Der- 
went to give them instant battle. 

He found them drawn up in a hollow circle, marked 
out by their shining spears. Riding round this circle at 
a distance, to survey it, he saw a brave figure on horse- 
back, in a blue mantle and a bright helmet, whose horse 
suddenly stumbled and threw him. 



48 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

"Who is that man who has fallen?" Harold asked of 
one of his captains. 

"The King of Norway," he replied. 

"He is a tall and stately King," said Harold, "but his 
end is near." 

He added in a little while, "Go yonder to my brother, 
and tell him if he withdraw his troops, he shall be Earl 
of Northumberland, and rich and powerful in England.'* 

The captain rode away and gave the message. 

"What will he give to my friend the King of Nor- 
way?" asked the brother. 

"Seven feet of earth for a grave," replied the captain. 

"No more?" returned the brother, with a smile. 

"The King of Norway being a tall man, perhaps 
a little more," replied the captain. 

"Ride back!" said the brother, "and tell King Harold 
to make ready for the fight!" 

He did so, very soon. And such a fight King Harold 
led against that force, that his brother, and the Nor- 
wegian King, and every chief of note in all their host, 
except the Norwegian King's son, Olave, to whom he 
gave honorable dismissal, were left dead upon the field. 
The victorious army marched to York. As King 
Harold sat there at the feast, in the midst of all his 
company, a stir was heard at the doors; and messengers 
all covered with mire with riding far and fast through 
broken ground, came hurrying in, to report that the 
Normans had landed in England. 

The intelligence was true. They had been tossed 
about by contrary winds, and some of their ships had 
been wrecked. A part of their own shore, to which they 
had been driven back, was strewn with Norman bodies. 
But they had once more made sail, led by the Duke's 
own galley, a present from his wife upon the prow 
whereof the figure of a golden boy stood pointing toward 
England. By day, the banner of the three Lions of 
Normandy, the divers-colored sails, the gilded vanes, 
the many decorations of the gorgeous ship, had glit- 
tered in the sun and sunny water; by night, a light had 
sparkled like a star at her mast-head. And now, en- 
camped near Hastings, with their leader lying in the old 
Roman castle of Pevensey, the English retiring in all 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 49 

directions, the land for miles around scorched and smok- 
ing, fired and pillaged, was the whole Norman power, 
hopeful and strong on English ground. 

Harold broke up the feast and hurried to London 
Within a week his army was ready. He sent out spies* 
to ascertain the Norman strength. William took them, 
causing them to be led through his whole camp, and 
then dismissed. "The Normans," said these spies to 
Harold, "are not bearded on the upper lip as we Eng- 
lish are, but are shorn. They are priests. " " My men, ' * 
replied Harold with a laugh, "will find those priests 
good soldiers!" 

"The Saxons," reported Duke William's outposts of 
Norman soldiers, who were instructed to retire as King 
Harold's army advanced, "rush on us through their pil- 
laged country with the fury of madmen." 

"Let them come, and come soon!" said Duke William. 

Some proposals for a reconciliation were made, but 
were soon abandoned. In the middle of the month of 
October, in the year 1066, the Normans and the English 
came front to front. All night the armies lay en- 
camped before each other, in a part of the country then 
called Senlac, now called (in remembrance of them) Bat- 
tle. With the first dawn of day they arose. There, in 
the faint light, were the English on a hill ; a wood be- 
hind them ; in their midst, the Royal banner, represent- 
ing a fighting warrior, woven in gold thread, adorned 
with precious stones ; beneath the banner as it rustled 
tn the wind stood King Harold on foot, with two of his 
remaining brothers by his side; around them, still and 
silent as the dead, clustered the whole English army — 
every soldier covered by his shield, and bearing in his 
hand his dreaded English battle-ax. 

On an opposite hill, in three lines, archers, foot-sol- 
diers, horsemen, was the Norman force. Of a sudden, 
a great battle-cry, "God help us!" burst from the Nor- 
man lines. The English answered with their own battle- 
cry, "God's Rood! Holy Rood!" The Normans then 
came sweeping down the hill to attack the English. 

There was one tall Norman knight who rode before 
the Norman army on a prancing horse, throwing up his 
heavy sword and catching it, and singing of the bravery 



50 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of his countrymen. An English knight, who rode out 
from the English force to meet him, fell by this knight's 
hand. Another English knight rode out, and he fell too. 
But then a third rode out, and killed the Norman. 
This was in the first beginning of the fight. It soon 
raged everywhere. 

The English, keeping side by side in a great mass, 
cared no more for the showers of Norman arrows than 
if they had been showers of Norman rain. When the 
Norman horsemen rode against them, with their battle- 
axes they cut men and horses down. The Normans 
gave way. The English pressed forward. A cry went 
forth among the Norman troops that Duke William was 
killed. Duke William took off his helmet, in order that 
his face might be distinctly seen, and rode along the 
line before his men. This gave them courage. As 
they turned again to face the English, some of their 
Norman horse divided the pursuing body of the English 
from the rest, and thus all that foremost portion of the 
English army fell, fighting bravely. The main body 
still remaining firm, heedless of the Norman arrows, and 
with their battle-axes cutting down the crowds of horse- 
men when they rode up, like forests of young trees, Duke 
William pretended to retreat. The eager English fol- 
lowed. The Norman army closed again, and fell upon 
them with great slaughter. 

"Still," said Duke William, "there are thousands of 
the English, firm as rocks around their King. Shoot 
upward, Norman archers, that your arrows may fall 
down upon their faces!" 

The sun rose high, and sank, and the battle still 
raged. Through all the wild October day. the clash and 
din resounded in the air. In the red sunset, and in the 
white moonlight, heaps upon heaps of dead men lay 
strewn, a dreadful spectacle, all over the ground. King 
Harold, wounded with an arrow in the eye, was nearly 
blind. His brothers were already killed. Twenty Nor- 
man knights, whose battered armor had flashed fiery 
and golden in the sunshine all day long, and now looked 
silvery in the moonlight, dashed forward to take the 
Royal banner from the English knights and soldiers, still 
faithfully collected round their blinded King. The 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 51 

King received a mortal wound, and dropped. The Eng- 
lish broke and tied. The Normans rallied, and the day 
was lost. 

Oh, what a sight beneath the moon and stars, when 
lights were shining in the tent of the victorious Duke 
William, which was pitched near the spot where Harold 
fell — and he and his knights were carousing, within — 
and soldiers with torches, going slowly to and fro, with- 
out, sought for the corpse of Harold among piles of dead 
— and the warrior, worked in golden thread and precious 
stones, lay low, all torn and soiled with blood — and the 
three Norman Lions kept watch over the field ! 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM I., THE NORMAN CONQUEROR. 

Upon the ground where the brave Harold fell, William 
the Norman afterward founded an abbey, which, under 
the name of Battle Abbey, was a rich and splendid place 
through many a troubled year, though now it is a gray 
ruin overgrown with ivy. But the first work he had to 
do was to conquer the English thoroughly ; and that, as 
you know by this time, was hard work for any man. 

He ravaged several counties ; he burned and plundered 
many towns ; he laid waste scores upon scores of miles 
of pleasant country; he destroyed innumerable lives. 
At length Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, with 
other representatives of the clergy and the people, went 
to his camp, and submitted to him. Edgar, the insigni- 
ficant son of Edmund Ironside, was proclaimed King by 
others, but nothing came of it. He fled to Scotland 
afterward, where his sister, who was young and beauti- 
ful, married the Scottish King. Edgar himself was not 
important enough for anybody to care much about him. 

On Christmas Day William was crowned in Westmin- 
ster Abbey, under the title of William I. ; but he is best 
known as William the Conqueror. It was a strange cor- 
onation. One of the bishops who performed the cere- 
mony asked the Normans, in French, if they would have 
Duke William for their king? They answered Yes, 



52 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Another of the bishops put the same question to the 
Saxons, in English. They too answered Yes, with a 
loud shout. The noish being heard by a guard of Nor- 
man horse-soldiers outside, was mistaken for resistance 
on the part of the English. The guard instantly set 
fire to the neighboring houses, and a tumult ensued ; in 
the midst of which the King, being left alone in the 
Abbey, with a few priest, and they all being in a terri- 
ble fright together, was hurriedly crowned. When the 
crown was placed upon his head, he swore to govern the 
English as well as the best of their own monarchs. I 
dare say you think, as I do, that if we except the Great 
Alfred, he might pretty easily have done that. 

Numbers of the English nobles had been killed in the 
last disastrous battle. Their estates, and the estates of 
all the nobles who had fought against him there, King 
William seized upon, and gave to his own Norman 
knights and nobles. Many great English families of 
the present time acquired their English lands in this 
way, and are very proud of it. 

But what is got by force must be maintained by 
force. These nobles were obliged to build castles all 
over England, to defend their new property; and, do 
what he would, the King could neither soothe nor quell 
the nation as he wished. He gradually introduced the 
Norman language and the Norman customs ; yet, for a 
long time the great body of the English remained sul- 
len and revengeful. On his going over to Normandy, 
to visit his subjects there, the oppressions of his half- 
brother Odo, whom he left in charge of his English 
kirgdom, drove the people mad. The men of Kent even 
invited over, to take possession of Dover, their old 
enemy Count Eustace of Boulogne, who had led the fray 
when the Dover man was slain at his own fireside. The 
men of Hereford, aided by the Welsh, and commanded 
by a chief named Edric the Wild, drove the Normans 
out of their country. Some of those who had been dis- 
possessed of their lands, banded together in the North 
of England; some, in Scotland; some, in the thick 
woods and marshes; and whensoever they could fall 
upon the Normans, or upon the English who had sub- 
mitted to the Normans, they fought, despoiled, and 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 53 

murdered, like the desperate outlaws that they were. 
Conspiracies were set on foot for a general massacre of 
the Normans, like the old massacre of the Danes. In 
short, the English were in a murderous mood all through 
the kingdom. 

King William, fearing he might lose his conquest, 
came back, and tried to pacify the London people by 
soft words. He then set forth to repress the country 
people by stern deeds. Among the towns which he 
besieged, and where he killed and maimed the inhabit- 
ants without any distinction, sparing none, young or 
old, armed or unarmed, were Oxford, Warwick, Leices- 
ter, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, "York. In all these 
places, and in many others, fire andsword worked their 
utmost horrors, and made the land dreadful to behold. 
The streams and rivers were discolored with blood; the 
sky was blackened with smoke; the fields were wastes 
of ashes ; the waysides were heaped up with dead. Such 
are the fatal results of conquest and ambition! Although 
William was a harsh and angry man, I do not suppose 
that he deliberately meant to work this shocking ruin, 
when he invaded England. But what he had got by 
the strong hand, he could only keep by the strong hand, 
and in so doing he made England a great grave. 

Two sons of Harold, by name Edmund and Godwin, 
came over from Ireland, with some ships, against the 
Normans, but were defeated. This was scarcely done, 
when the outlaws in the woods so harassed York, that 
the Governor sent to the King for help. The King dis- 
patched a[general and a large force to occupy the town of 
Durham. " The Bishop of that place met the general 
outside the town, and warned him not to enter, 
as he would be in danger there. The general cared 
nothing for the warning, and went in with all his 
men. That night, on every hill within sight of Durham, 
signal fires were seen to blaze. When the morning 
dawned, the English, who had assembled in great 
strength, forced the gates, rushed into the town and 
slew the Normans every one. The English afterward 
besought the Danes to come and help them. The 
Danes came with 240 ships. The outlawed nobles 
joined them; they captured York, and drove the Nor- 



54 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

mans out of that city. Then William bribed the Danes 
to go away; and took such vengeance on the English, 
that all the former fire and sword, smoke and ashes, 
death and ruin, were nothing compared with it. In 
melancholy songs, and doleful stories, it was still sung 
and told by cottage fires on winter evenings, a hundred 
years afterward, how, in those dreadful days of the Nor- 
mans, there was not, from the River Humber to the 
River Tyne, one inhabited village left, nor one cultivated 
field — how there was nothing but a dismal ruin, where 
the human creatures and the beasts lay dead together. 
The outlaws had what they called a Camp of Refuge, 
in the midst of the fens of Cambridgeshire. Protected 
by those marshy grounds, which were difficult of 
approach, they lay among the reeds and rushes, and 
were hidden by the mists that rose up from the watery 
earth. Now, there also was, at that time, over the sea 
in Flanders, an Englishman named Hereward, whose 
father had died in his absence, and whose property had 
been given to a Norman. When he heard of this wrong 
that had been done him, from such of the exiled English 
as chanced to wander into, that country, he longed for 
revenge; and joining the outlaws in their Camp of 
Refuge, became their commander. He was so good a 
soldier that the Normans supposed him to be aided by 
enchantment. William, even after he had made a 
road three miles in length across the Cambridgeshire 
marshes, on purpose to attack this supposed enchanter, 
thought it necessary to engage an old lady, who pre- 
tended to be a sorceress, to come and do a little enchant- 
ment in the royal cause. For this purpose she was 
pushed on before the troops in a wooden tower; but 
Hereward very soon disposed of this unfortunate sor- 
ceress, by burning her, tower and all. The monks of 
the convent of Ely near at hand, however, who were 
fond of good living and who found it very uncomforta- 
ble to have the country blockaded and their supplies of 
meat and drink cut off, showed the King a secret way of 
surprising the camp. So Hereward was soon defeated. 
Whether he afterward died quietly, or whether he was 
killed after killing sixteen of the men who attacked him, 
as some old rhymes relate that he did, I cannot say. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 55 

His defeat put an end to the Camp of Refuge ; and, very 
soon afterward, the King, victorious both in Scotland 
and in England, quelled the last rebellious English 
noble. He then surrounded himself with Norman lords, 
enriched by the property of English nobles; had a great 
survey made of all the land in England, which was 
entered as the property of its new owners, on a roll 
called Doomsday Book ; obliged the people to put out 
their fires and candles at a certain hour every night, on 
the ringing of a bell which was called The Curfew; in- 
troduced the Norman dresses and manners ; made the 
Normans masters everywhere, and the English, serv- 
ants; turned out the English bishops, and put Normans 
in their places, and showed himself to be the Conqueror 
indeed. 

But, even with his own Normans, he had a restless 
life. They were always hungering and thirsting for the 
riches of the English ; and the more he gave, the more 
they wanted. His priests were as greedy as his sol- 
diers. We know of only one Norman who plainly told 
his master, the King, that he had come with him to 
England to do his duty as a faithful servant, and that 
property taken by force from other men had no charm 
for him. His name was Guilbert. We should not for- 
get his name, for it is good to remember and to honor 
honest men. 

Besides all these troubles, William the Conqueror was 
troubled by quarrels among his sons. He had three liv- 
ing. Robert, called Curthose, because of his short legs ; 
William, called Rufus, or the Red, from the color of his 
hair; and Henry, fond of learning, and called in the 
Norman language, Beauclerc, or Fine-scholar. "When 
Robert grew up, he asked of his father the government 
of Normandy, which he had nominally possessed, as a 
child, under his mother, Matilda. The King refusing 
to grant it, Robert became jealous and discontented; 
and happening one day, while in this temper, to be 
ridiculed by his brothers, who threw water on him from 
a balcony as he was walking before the door, he drew 
his sword, rushed upstairs, and was only prevented by 
the King himself from putting them to death. That 
same night he hotly departed with some followers from 



56 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

his father's court, and endeavored to take the Castle ot 
Rouen by surprise. Failing in this, he shut himselt up 
in another castle in Normandy, which the King be- 
sieged, and where Robert one day unhorsed and nearly 
killed him without knowing who he was. His submis- 
sion when he discovered his father, and the intercession 
of the Queen and others, reconciled them ; but not 
soundly; for Robert soon strayed abroad, and went 
from court to court with his complaints. He was a gay, 
careless, thoughtless fellow, spending all he got on 
musicians and dancers; but his mother loved him, and 
often, against the King's command, supplied him with 
money through a messenger named Samson. At length 
the incensed King swore he would tear out Samson's 
eyes; and Samson, thinking that his only hope of safety 
was in becoming a monk, became one, went on such 
errands no more, and kept his eyes in his head. 

All this time, from the turbulent day of his strange cor- 
onation, the Conqueror had been struggling, you see, at 
any cost of cruelty and bloodshed, to maintain what he 
had seized. All his reign he struggled still, with the 
same object ever before him. He was a stern, bold 
man, and he succeeded in it. 

He loved money, and was particular in his eating, but 
he had only leisure to indulge one other passion, and 
that was his love of hunting. He carried it to such a 
height that he ordered whole villages and towns to be 
swept away to make forests tor the deer. Not satisfied 
with sixty-eight Royal Forests, he laid waste an 
immense district to form another in Hampshire, called 
the New Forest. The many thousands of miserable 
peasants who saw their little houses pulled down, and 
themselves and children turned into the open country 
without a shelter, detested him for his merciless addi- 
tion to their many sufferings; and when, in the twenty- 
first year of his reign, which proved to be the last, he 
went over to Rouen, England was as full of hatred 
against him as if every leaf on every tree in all his 
Royal Forests had been a curse upon his head. In the 
New Forest, his son Richard, for he had four sons, had | 
been gored to death by a stag ; and the people said that 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 57 

this so cruelly made forest would yet be fatal to others 
of the Conqueror's race. 

He was engaged in a dispute with the King of France 
about some territory. While he stayed at Rouen, nego- 
tiating with that King, he kept his bed and took medi- 
cines; being advised by his physicians to do so on 
account of having grown to an unwieldy size. Word 
being brought to him that the King of France made 
light of this, and joked about it, he swore in a great 
rage that he should rue his jests. He assembled his 
army, marched into the disputed territory, burnt — his 
old way ! — the vines, the crops, and fruit, and set the 
town of Mantes on fire. But, in an evil hour; for, as he 
rode over the hot ruins, his horse, setting his hoofs upon 
some burning embers, started, threw him forward 
against the pommel of the saddle, and gave him a mor- 
tal hurt. For six weeks he lay dying in a monastery 
near Rouen, and then made his will, giving England to 
William, Normandy to Robert, and five thousand 
pounds to Henry. And now his violent deeds lay 
heavy on his mind. He ordered money to be given to 
many English churches and monasteries, and — which 
was much better repentance — released his prisoners of 
state, some of whom had been confined in his dungeons 
twenty years. 

It was a September morning, and the sun was rising 
when the King was awakened from slumber by the 
sound of a church bell. "What bell is that?" he faintly 
asked. They told him it was the bell of the chapel of 
St. Mary. "I commend my soul," said he, "to Mary!" 
and died. 

Think of his name, The Conqueror, and then consider 
how he lay in death! The moment he was dead, his 
physicians, priests, and nobles, not knowing what contest 
for the throne might now take place, or what might 
happen in it, hastened away, each man for himself and 
his own property ; the mercenary servants of the court 
began to rob and plunder ; the body of the king, in the 
indecent strife, was rolled from the bed, and lay alone, 
for hours, upon the ground. Oh, Conqueror, of whom 
so many great names are proud now, of whom so many 



58 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

great names thought nothing then, it were better to 
have conquered one true heart, than England ! 

By and by the priests came creeping in with prayers 
and candles; and a good knight, named Herluin, under' 
took, which on one else would do, to convey the body to 
Caen, in Normandy, in order that it might be buried in 
St. Stephen's Church there, which the Conqueror had 
founded. But fire, of which he had made such bad use 
in his life, seemed to follow him of itself in death. A 
great conflagration broke out in the town when the body 
was placed in the church ; and those present running 
out to extinguish the flames, it was once again left 
alone. 

It was not even buried in peace. It was about to be 
let down, in its royal robes, into a tomb near the high 
altar, in presence of a great concourse ot people, when 
a loud voice in the crowd cried out, "This ground is 
mine! Upon it stood my father's house. This King 
despoiled me of both ground and house to build this 
church. In the great name of God, I here forbid his 
body to be covered with the earth that is my right!" 
The priests and bishops present, knowing the speaker's 
right, and knowing that the King had often denied him 
justice, paid him down sixty shillings for the grave. 
Even then, the corpse was not at rest. The tomb was 
too small, and they tried to force it in. It broke, a 
dreadful smell arose, the people hurried out into the air, 
and, for the third time, it was left alone. 

Where were the Conqueror's three sons, that they were 
not at their father's burial? Robert was lounging 
among minstrels, dancers, and gamesters, in France or 
Germany. Henry was carrying his five thousand pounds 
safely away in a convenient chest he had got made. 
William the Red was hurrying to England to lay hands 
upon the royal treasure and the crown. 

CHAPTER IX. 

ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM II., CALLED RUFUS. 

William the Red in breathless haste secured the three 
great torts of Dover. Pevensey, and Hastings, and made 
with hot speed for Winchester, where the royal treasure 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 59 

was kept. The treasurer delivering him the keys, he 
found that it amounted to sixty thousand pounds in sil- 
ver, besides gold and jewels. Possessed of this wealth, 
he soon persuaded the Archbishop ot Canterbury to 
crown him, and became William II., King of England. 

Rufus was no sooner on the throne than he ordered 
into prison again the unhappy state captives whom his 
father had set tree, and directed a goldsmith to orna- 
ment his father's tomb profusely with gold and silver. 
It would have been more dutiful in him to have attended 
the sick Conqueror when he was dying; but England 
itself, like this Red King who once governed it, has 
sometimes made expensive tombs for dead men whom 
it treated shabbily when they were alive. 

The King's brother, Robert of Normandy, seeming 
quite content to be only Duke of that country; and the 
King's other jbrother, Fine-scholar, being quiet enough 
with his five thousand pounds in a chest; the King Mat- 
tered himself, we may suppose, with the hope of an easy 
reign. But easy reigns were difficult to have in those 
days. The turbulant Bishop Odo, who had blessed the 
Norman army at the Battle of Hastings, and who, I 
dare say, took all the credit of the victory to himself, 
soon began, in concert with some powerful Norman 
nobles, to trouble the Red King. 

The truth seems to be that this bishop and his friends, 
who had lands in England and lands in Normandy, 
wished to hold both under one sovereign ; and greatly 
preferred a thoughtless, good-natured person, such as 
Robert was, to Rufus; who, though far from being an 
amiable man in any respect, was keen, and not to be 
imposed upon. They declared in Robert's favor, and 
retired to their castles (those castles were very trouble- 
some to kings) in a sullen humor. The Red King, 
seeing the Normans thus falling from him, revenged 
himself upon them by appealing to the English; to 
whom he made a variety of promises, which he never 
meant to perform — in particular, promises to soften the 
cruelty of the Forest Laws ; and who, in return, so aided 
him with their valor, that Odo was besieged in the 
Castle of Rochester, and forced to abandon it, and to 
depart from England forever; whereupon the other 



60 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

rebellious Norman nobles were soon reduced and scat- 
tered. 

Then the Red King went over to Normandy, where 
the people suffered greatly under the loose rule of Duke 
Robert. The King's object was to seize upon the 
Duke's dominions. This the Duke, of course, prepared 
to resist; and miserable war between the two brothers 
seemed inevitable, when the powerful nobles on both 
sides, who had seen so much of war, interfered to pre- 
vent it. A treaty was made. Each of the two brothers 
agreed to give up something of his claims, and that the 
longer-liver of the two should inherit all the dominions 
of the other. When they had come to this loving un- 
erstanding, they embraced and joined their forces 
against Fine-Scholar; who had bought some territory 
of Robert with a part of his five thousand pounds, and 
was considered a dangerous individual in consequence. 

St. Michael's Mount, in Normandy (there is another 
St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall, wonderfully like it), 
was then, as it is now, a strong place perched upon the 
top of a high rock, around which, when the tide is in, 
the sea flows, leaving no road to the mainland. In this 
place Fine-Scholar shut himself up with his soldiers, 
and here he was closely besieged by his two brothers. 
At one time, when he was reduced to great distress for 
want of water, the generous Robert not only permitted 
his men to get water, but sent Fine-Scholar wine from 
his own table; and, on being remonstrated with by the 
Red King, said, "What! shall we let our own brother 
die of thirst? Where shall we get another when he is 
gone?" At another time, the Red King, riding alone 
on the shore of the bay, looking up at the Castle, was 
taken by two of Fine-Scholar's men, one of whom was 
about to kill him, when he cried out, "Hold, knave, I 
am the King of England!" The story says that the sol- 
dier raised him from the ground respectfully and 
humbly, and that the King took him into his service. 
The story may or may not be true ; but at any rate it 
is true that Fine-Scholar could not hold out against his 
united brothers, and that he abandoned Mount St. 
Michael, and wandered about — as poor and forlorn as 
other scholars have been sometimes known to be. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 61 

The Scotch became unquiet in the Red King's time, 
and were twice defeated — the second time, with the 
loss of their King, Malcolm, and his son. The Welsh 
became unquiet too. Against them Rufus was less 
successful ; for they fought among their native moun- 
tains, and did great execution on the King's troops. 
Robert of Normandy became unquiet too; and com- 
plaining that his brother the King did not faithfully 
perform his part of their agreement, took up arms, and 
obtained assistance from the King of France, wiiom 
Rufus, in the end, bought off with vast sums of money. 
England became unquiet too. Lord Mowbray, the 
powerful Earl of Northumberland, headed a great con- 
spiracy to depose the King and to place upon the throne 
Stephen, the Conqueror's near relative. The plot was 
discovered; all the chief conspirators were seized; 
some were fined, some were put in prison, some were 
put to death. The Earl of Northumberland himself 
was shut up in a dungeon beneath Windsor Castle, 
where he died, an old man, thirty long years afterward. 
The priests in England were more unquiet than any 
other class or power; for the Red King treated them 
with such small ceremony that he refused to appoint 
new bishops or archbishops when the old ones died, 
but kept all the wealth belonging to those offices in his 
own hands. In return for this, the priests wrote his 
lite when he was dead, and abused him well. I am in- 
clined to think, myself, that there was little to choose 
between the priests and the Red King ; that both sides 
were greedy and designing; and that they were fairly 
matched. 

The Red King was false of heart, selfish, covetous, 
and mean. He had a worthy minister in his favorite, 
Ralph, nicknamed — for almost every famous person had 
a nickname in those rough days — Flambard, or the 
Firebrand. Once the King, being ill, became penitent, 
and made Anselm, a foreign priest and a good man, 
Archbishop of Canterbury. But he no sooner got well 
again than he repented of his repentance, and persisted 
in wrongfully keeping to himself some of the wealth 
belonging to the archbishopric. This led to violent 
disputes, which were aggravated by their being in 



62 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Rome at that time two rival Popes; each of whom 
declared he was the only real original infallible Pope, 
who couldn't make a mistake. At last, Anselm, know- 
ing the Red King's character, and not feeling himself 
safe in England, asked leave to return abroad. The 
Red King gladly gave it; tor he knew that as soon as 
Anselm was gone he could begin to store up all the 
Canterbury money again for his own use. 

By such means, and by taxing and oppressing the 
English people in every possible way, the Red King 
became very rich. When he wanted money for any 
purpose, he raised it by some means or other, and cared 
nothing for the injustice he did or the misery he caused. 
Having the opportunity of buying from Robert the 
whole duchy of Normandy for five years, he taxed the 
English people more than ever, and made the very con- 
vents sell their plate and valuables to supply him with 
the means to make the purchase. But he was as quick 
and eager in putting down revolt as he was in raising 
money; for, a part of the Norman people objecting — 
very naturally, I think — to being sold in this way, he 
headed an army against them with all the speed and 
energy of his father. He was so impatient that he em- 
barked for Normandy in a great gale of wind. And 
when the sailors told him it was dangerous to go to sea 
in such angry weather, he replied, "Hoist sail and 
away! Did you ever hear of a King who was 
drowned?" 

You will wonder how it was that even the careless 
Robert came to sell his dominions. It happened thus: 
It had long been the custom for many English people 
to make journeys to Jerusalem, which were called pil- 
grimages, in order that they might pray beside the 
tomb of Our Savior there. Jerusalem belonging to 
the Turks, and the Turks hating Christianity, these 
Christian travelers were often insulted and ill-used. 
The pilgrims bore it patiently for some time, but at 
length a remarkable man, of great earnestness and 
eloquence, called Peter the Hermit, began to preach in 
various places against the Turks, and to declare that it 
was the duty [ot good Christians to drive away those 
unbelievers from the tomb of Our Savior, and to take 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 63 

possession of it, and protect it. An excitement such 
as the world had never known before was created. 
Thousands and thousands of men of all rank and condi- 
tions departed for Jerusalem to make war against the 
Turks. The war was called in history the first Crusade ; 
and every Crusader wore a cross marked on his right 
shoulder. 

All the crusaders were not zealous Christians. Among 
them were vast numbers of the restless, idle, profligate, 
and adventurous) spirits of the time. Some became 
crusaders for the love of change ; some in the hope of 
plunder ; some because they had nothing to do at home ; 
some because they did what the priests told them ; some 
because they liked to see foreign countries ; some be- 
cause they were fond of knocking men about, and 
would as soon knock a Turk about as a Christian. 
Robert of Normandy may have been influenced by all 
these motives ; and by a kind desire, besides, to save the 
Christian pilgrims from bad treatment in future. He 
wanted to raise a number of armed men, and to go to 
the Crusade. He could not do so without money. He 
had no money; and he sold his dominions to his brother, 
the Red King, for five years. With the large sum he 
thus obtained, he fitted out his crusaders gallantly, and 
went away to Jerusalem in martial state. The Red 
King, who made money out of everything, stayed at 
home, busily squeezing more money out of Normans 
and English. 

After three years of great hardship and suffering — 
from shipwreck at sea; from travel in strange lands; 
from hunger, thirst, and fever, upon the burning sands 
of the desert; and from the fury of the Turks — the 
valiant crusaders got possession Jot Our Savior's tomb. 
The Turks were still resisting and fighting bravely, but 
this success increased the general desire in Europe to 
join the Crusade. Another great French Duke was 
proposing to sell his dominions for a term to the rich 
Red King, when the Red King's reign came to a sudden 
and violent end. 

You have not forgotten the New Forest which the 
Conqueror made, and which the miserable people whose 
homes he had laid waste so hated. The cruelty ot the 



64 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Forest Laws, and the torture and death they brought 
upon the peasantry, increased this ^hatred. The poor 
persecuted country people believed that the New For- 
est was enchanted. They said that in thunderstorms, 
and on dark nights, demons appeared, moving beneath 
the branches of the gloomy trees. They said that a 
terrible specter had foretold to Norman hunters that the 
Red King should be punished there. And now, in the 
pleasant season of May, when the Red King had 
reigned almost thirteen years, and a second Prince of 
the Conqueror's blood — another Richard, the son of 
Duke Robert — was killed by an arrow in this dreaded 
forest, the people said the second time was not the last, 
and that there was another death to come. 

It was a lonely forest, accursed in the people's hearts 
for the wicked deeds that had been done to make it ; 
and no man, save the King and his courtiers and hunts- 
men, liked to stray there. But, in reality, it was "like 
any other forest. In the spring, the green leaves broke 
out of the buds ; in the summer, flourished heartily, and 
made deep shades ; in the winter, shriveled and blew 
down, and lay in brown heaps on the moss. Some 
trees were stately, and grew high and strong ; some had 
fallen of themselves ; some were felled by the forester's 
ax; some were hollow, and the rabbits burrowed at 
their roots; some few were struck by lightning, and 
stood white and bare. There were hill-sides covered 
with rich fern, on which the morning dew so beautifully 
sparkled ; there were brooks where the deer went down 
to drink, or over which the whole herd bounded, flying 
from the arrows of the hunstmen; there were sunny 
glades, and solemn places where but little light came 
through the rustling leaves. The songs of the birds in 
the New Forest were pjeasanter to hear than the shouts 
of fighting men outside; and even when the Red King 
and his court came hunting through its solitudes, curs- 
ing loud and riding hard, with a jingling of stirrups and 
bridles and knives and daggers, they did much less 
harm there than among the English or Normans, and 
the stags died (as they lived) far easier than the people. 

Upon a day in August, the Red King, now reconciled 
to his brother, Fine-Scholar, came with a great train to 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 65 

hunt in the New Forest. Fine-Scholar was of the 
party. They were a merry party, and had lain all night 
at Malwood-Keep, a hunting-lodge in the forest, where 
they had made good cheer, both at supper and break- 
fast, and had drunk a deal of wine. The party dis- 
persed in various directions, as the custom of hunters 
then was. The King took with him only Sir Walter 
Tyrrel, who was a famous sportsman, and to whom he 
had given, before they mounted horse that morning, 
two fine arrows. 

The last time the King was ever r seen alive he was 
riding with Sir Walter Tyrrel, and their dogs were 
hunting together. 

It was almost night when a poor charcoal-burner, 
passing through the forest with his cart, came upon the 
solitary body of a dead man. shot with an arrow in the 
breast, and still bleeding. He got it into his cart. It was 
the body of the King. Shaken and tumbled, with its 
red beard all whitened with lime and clotted with blood, 
it was driven in the cart by the charcoal-burner next 
day to Winchester Cathedral, where it was received and 
buried. 

Sir Walter Tyrrel, who escaped to Normandy and 
claimed the protection of the King of France, swore in 
France that the Red King was suddenly shot dead by 
an arrow from an unseen hand while they were hunting 
together; that he was fearful of being suspected as the 
King's murderer; and that he instantly set spars to his 
horse, and fled to the seashore. Others declared that 
the King and Sir Walter Tyrrel were hunting in com- 
pany, a little before sunset, standing in bushes opposite 
one another, when a stag came between them. That 
the King drew his bow and took aim, but the string 
broke. That the King then cried, "Shoot, Walter, in 
the Devil's name!" That Sir Walter shot. That the 
arrow glanced against a tree, was turned aside from 
the stag, and struck the King from his horse, dead. 

By whose hand the Red King really fell, and whether 
that hand dispatched the arrow to his breast by acci- 
dent or by design, is only known to God. Some think 
his brother may have caused him to be killed ; but the 
Red King had made so many enemies, both among 

5 History 



66 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

priests and people, that suspicion may reasonably rest 
upon a less unnatural murderer. Men know no more 
than that he was found dead in the New Forest, which 
the suffering people had regarded as a doomed ground 
for his race. 

CHAPTER X. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY I., CALLED FINE-SCHOLAR. 

Fine-Scholar, od hearing of the Red King's death, 
hurried to Winchester, with as much speed as Rufus 
himself had made, to seize the Royal treasure. But the 
keeper of the treasure, who had been one of the hunt- 
ing-party in the forest, made haste to Winchester, too, 
and, arriving there about the same time, refused to 
yield it up. Upon this, Fine-Scholar drew his sword, 
and threatened to kill the treasurer ; who might have 
paid for his fidelity with his life, but that he knew 
longer resistance to be useless when he found the 
Prince supported by a company of powerful barons, who 
declared they were determined to make him King. The 
treasurer, therefore, gave up the money and jewels ot 
the Crown ; and on the third day after the death of the 
Red King, being a Sunday, Fine-Scholar stood before 
the high altar in Westminster Abbey, and made a 
solemn declaration that he would resign the Church 
property which his brother had seized ; that he would do 
no wrong to the nobles ; and that he would restore to 
the people the laws of Edward the Confessor, with all 
the improvements of William the Conqueror. So began 
the reign of King Henry I. 

The people were attached to their new King, both 
because he had known distresses, and because he was 
an Englishman by birth and not a Norman. To 
strengthen this last hold upon them, the King wished 
to marry an English lady ; and could think of no other 
wife than Maud the Good, the daughter ot the King of 
Scotland. Although this good Princess did not love 
the King, she was so affected by the representations the 
nobles made to her of the great charity it would be in 
her to unite the Norman and Saxon races, and prevent 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 67 

hatred and bloodshed between them for the future, that 
she consented to become his wife. After some disput- 
ing among the priests, who said that as she had been 
in a convent in her youth, and had worn the veil of a 
nun, she could not lawfully be married — against which 
the Princess stated that her aunt, with whom she had 
lived in her youth, had indeed sometimes thrown a 
piece of black stuff over her, but for no other reason 
than because the nun's veil was the only dress the con- 
quering Normans respected in girl or woman, and not 
because she had taken the vows of a nun, which she 
never had — she was declared free to marry, and was 
made King Henry's Queen. A good Queen she was; 
beautiful, kindhearted, and worthy of a better husband 
than the King. 

For he was a cunning and unscrupulous man, though 
firm and clever. He cared very little for his word 
and took any means to gain his ends. All this is 
shown in his treatment of his brother Robert — Robert, 
who had suffered him to be refreshed with water, and 
who had sent him the wine from his own table, when 
he was shut up, with the crows flying below him, 
parched with thirst, in the castle on the top of St. 
Michael's Mount, where his Red brother would have let 
him die. 

Before the King began to deal with Robert, he re- 
moved and disgraced all the favorites of the late King; 
who were for the most part base characters, much de- 
tested by the people. Flambard, or Firebrand, whom 
the late King had made Bishop of Durham, of all things 
in the world, Henry imprisoned in the Tower; but Fire- 
brand was a great joker and a jolly companion, and 
made himself so popular with his guards that they pre- 
tended to know nothing about a long rope that was sent 
into his prison at the bottom of a deep flagon of wine. 
The guards took the wine, and Firebrand took the rope ; 
with which, when they were fast asleep, he let himself 
down from a window in the night, and so got cleverly 
aboard ship and away to Normandy. 

Now Robert, when his brother Fine-Scholar came to 
the throne, was still absent in the Holy Land. Henry 
pretended that Robert had been made sovereign of that 



68 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

country ; and he had been away so long that the igno- 
rant people believed it. But, behold, when Henry had 
been some time King of England, Robert came home to 
Normandy; having leisurely returned from Jerusalem 
through Italy, in which beautiful country he had en- 
joyed himself very much, and had married a lady as 
beautiful as itself ! In Normandy he found Firebrand 
waiting to urge him to assert his claim to the English 
crown, and declare war against King Henry. This, 
after great loss of time in feasting and dancing with 
his beautiful Italian wife among his Norman friends, he 
at last did. 

The English in general were on King Henry's side, 
though many of the Normans were on Robert's. But 
the English sailors deserted the King, and took a great 
part of the English fleet over to Normandy; so that 
Robert came to ''invade this country in no foreign ves- 
sels, but in English ships. The virtuous Anselm, how- 
ever, whom Henry had invited back from abroad, and 
made Archbishop of Canterbury, was steadfast in the 
King's cause; and it was so well supported that the two 
armies, instead of fighting, made a peace. Poor 
Robert, who trusted anybody and everybody, readily 
trusted his brother, the King; and agreed to 'go home 
and receive a pension from England, on condition that 
all his followers were fully pardoned. This the King 
very faithfully promised, but Robert was no sooner 
gone that he began to punish them. 

Among them was the Earl of Shrewsbury, who, on 
being summoned by the King to answer to five-and- 
forty accusations, rode away to one of his strong castles, 
shut himself up therein, called around him his tenants 
and vassals, and fought for his liberty, but was defeated 
and banished. Robert, with all his faults, was so true 
to his word that when he first heard of this nobleman 
having risen against his brother, he laid waste the Earl 
of Shrewsbury's estates in Normandy, to show the King 
that he would favor no breach of their treaty. Finding, 
on better information, afterward, that the Earl's only 
crime was having been his friend, he came over to Eng- 
land, in his old throughtless, warm-hearted way, to 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 69 

intercede with the King, and remind him of the solemn 
promise to pardon all his followers. 

This confidence might have put the false King to the 
blush, but it did not. Pretending to be very friendly, 
he so surrounded hi'* ^brother with spies and traps that 
Robert, who was quite in his power, had nothing for it 
but to renounce his pension and escape while he could. 
Getting home to Ncrmandy.and understanding the King 
better now, he naturally allied himself with his old 
friend the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had still thirty 
castles in that country. This was exactly what Henry 
wanted. He immediately declared that Robert had. 
broken the treaty, and next year invaded Normandy. 

He pretended that he came to deliver the Normans, at 
their own request, from his brother's misrule. There 
is reason to fear that his misrule was bad enough ; for 
his beautiful wife had died, leaving him with an infant 
son, and his court was again so careless, dissipated, and 
ill-regulated that it was said he sometimes lay in bed of 
a day for want of clothes to put on — his attendants hav- 
ing stolen all his dresses. But he headed his army like 
a brave prince and a gallant soldier, though he had the 
misfortune to be taken prisoner by King Henry, with 
four hundred of his knights. Among themj was poor 
harmless Edgar Atheling, who loved Robert well. 
Edgar was not important enough to be severe with. 
The King afterward gave him a small pension, which 
he lived upon and died upon, in peace, among the quiet 
woods and fields of England. 

And Robert — poor, kind, generous, wasteful, heedless 
Robert, with so many faults and yet with virtues that 
might have made a better and a happier man — what 
was the end of him? If the King had had the magna- 
nimity to say with a kind air, "Brother, tell me, before 
these noblemen, that from this time you will be my 
faithful follower and friend, and never raise your hand 
against me or my forces more!" he might have trusted 
Robert to the death. But the King was not a magnani- 
mous man. He sentenced his brother to be confined for 
life in one of the royal castles. In the beginning of his 
imprisonment, he was allowed to ride out, guarded ; but 
he one day broke away from his guard and galloped off. 



70 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

He had the evil fortune to ride into a swamp, where 
his horse stuck fast, and he was taken. When the King 
heard of it he ordered him to be blinded, which was 
done by putting a red-hot metal basin on his eyes. 

And so, in darkness and in prison, many years, he 
thought of all his past life, of the time he had wasted, 
of the treasure he had squandered, of the opportunities 
he had lost, of the youth he had thrown away, of the 
talents he had neglected. Sometimes, on fine autumn 
mornings, he would sit and think of the old hunting 
parties in the free forest, where he had been the fore- 
most and the gayest. Sometimes, in the still nights, he 
would wake, and mourn for the many nights that had 
stolen past him at the gaming table; sometimes would 
seem to hear, upon the melancholy wind, the old songs 
of the minstrels; sometimes would dream, in his blind- 
ness, of the light and glitter of the Norman court. Many 
and many a time he groped back, in his fancy, to Jeru- 
salem, wheie he had fought so well ; or, at the head of 
his brave companions, bowed his feathered helmet to 
the shouts of welcome greeting him in Italy, and seemed 
again to walk among the sunny vineyards, or on the 
shore of the blue sea, with his lovely wife. And then, 
thinking of her grave, and of his fatherless boy, he 
would stretch out his solitary arms and weep. 

At length one day there lay in prison dead, with cruel 
and disfiguring scars upon his eyelids, bandaged from 
his jailer's sight, but on which the eternal Heavens 
looked down, a worn old man of eighty. He had once 
been Robert of Normandy. Pity him ! 

At the time when Robert of Normandy was taken 
prisoner by his brother, Robert's little son was only five 
years old. This child was taken, too, and carried before 
the King, sobbing and crying ; for, young as he was, he 
knew he had good reason to be afraid of his royal uncle. 
The King was not much accustomed to pity those who 
were in his power, but his cold heart seemed for the 
moment to soften toward the boy. He was observed to 
make a great effort as if to prevent himself from being 
cruel, and ordered the child to be taken away ; where- 
upon a certain Baron, who had married a daughter of 
Duke Robert's, by name, Helie of St. Saen, took charge 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 71 

of him, tenderly. The King's gentleness did not last 
long. Before two years were over, he sent messengers to 
this lord's castle to seize the child and bring him away. 
The Baron was not there at the time, but his servants 
were faithful, and carried the boy off in his sleep and hid 
him. When the Baron came home, and was told what 
the King had done, he took the child abroad, and lead- 
ing him by the hand, went from king to king, and from 
court to court, relating how the child had a claim to the 
throne of England, and how his uncle the King, know- 
ing that he had that claim, would have murdered him, 
perhaps, but for his escape. 

The youth and innocence of the pretty little William 
Fitz-Robert, for that was his name, made him many 
friends at that time. When he became a young man, 
the King of France, uniting with the French Counts of 
Anjou and Flanders, supported his cause against the 
King of England, and took many of the King's towns 
and castles in Normandy. But King Henry, artful and 
cunning always, bribed some of William's friends with 
money, some with promises, some with power. He 
bought off the Count of Anjou, by promising to marry 
his eldest son, also named William, to the Count's 
daughter; and indeed the whole trust of this King's life 
was in such bargains, and he believed, as many another 
King has done since, and as one King did in France a 
very little time ago, that every man's truth and honor 
can be bought at some price. For all this, he was so 
afraid of William Fitz-Robert and his friends that for 
along time he believed his life to be in danger; and 
never lay down to sleep, even in his palace surrounded 
by his guards, without having sword and buckler at his 
bedside. 

To strengthen his power, the King with great cere- 
mony betrothed his eldest daughter Matilda, then a 
child only eight years old, to be the wife of Henry V., 
the Emperor of Germany. To raise her marriage por- 
tion he taxed the English people in a most oppressive 
manner; then treated them to a great procession to 
restore their good humor; and sent Matilda away, in 
fine state, with the German ambassadors, to be educated 
in the country of her future husband. 



72 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

And now his Queen, Maud the Good, unhappily died. 
It was a sad thought for that gentle lady, that the only 
hope with which she had married a man whom she had 
never loved — the hope of reconciling the Norman and 
English races — had failed. At the very time of her 
death, Normandy and all France was in arms against 
England, for, so soon as this last danger was over, King 
Henry had been false to all the French powers he had 
promised, bribed, and bought, and they had naturally 
united against him. After some fighting, however, in 
which few suffered but the unhappy common people, 
who always suffered, whatsoever was the matter, he 
began to promise, bribe, and buy again ; and by those 
means, and by the help of the Pope, who exerted him- 
self to save more bloodshed, and by solemnly declaring 
over and over again that he really was in earnest this 
time, and would keep his word, the King made peace. 

One of the first consequences of this peace was that 
the King went over to Normandy with his son Prince 
William and a great retinue, to have the Prince 
acknowledged as his successor by the Norman nobles, 
and to contract the promised marriage (this was one of 
the many promises the King had broken) between him 
and the daughter of the Count of Anjou. Both these 
things were triumphantly done, with great show and 
rejoicing: and on the 25th of November, in the year 
1 1 20, the whole retinue prepared to embark at the Port 
of Barfieur, for the voyage home. 

On that day, and at that place, there came to the 
King, Fitz-Stephen, a sea-captain, and said: 

"My liege, my father served your father all his life, 
upon the sea. He steered the ship with the golden boy 
upon the prow, in which your father sailed to conquer 
England. I beseech you to grant me the same office. 
I have a fair vessel in the harbor here, called the White 
Ship, manned by fifty sailors of renown. I pray you, 
sire, to let your servants have the honor of steering you 
in the White Ship to England." 

"I am sorry, friend," replied the King, "that my 
vessel is already chosen, and that I cannot, therefore, 
sail with the son of the'man who served my father. But 
the Prince and all his company shall go along with you, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 73 

in the fair White Ship, manned by the fifty sailors of 
renown." 

An hour or two afterward, the King set sail in the 
vessel he had chosen, accompanied by other vessels, 
and, sailing all night with a fair and gentle wind, 
arrived upon the coast of England in the morning. 
While it was yet night, the people in some of those 
ships heard a faint wild cry come over the sea and won- 
dered what it was. 

Now, the Prince was a dissolute, debauched young 
man of eighteen, who bore no love to the English, and 
had declared that he came to the throne he would yoke 
them to the plow like oxen. He went aboard the White 
Ship, with 140 youthful nobles like himself, among whom 
were eighteen noble ladies of the highest rank. All this 
gay company, with their servants and the fifty sailors, 
made 300 souls aboard the fair White Ship. 

"Give three casks of wine, Fitz-Stephen, " said the 
Prince, "to the fifty sailors of renown! My father the 
King has sailed out of the harbor. What time is there 
to make merry here, and yet reach England with the 
rest?" 

"Prince," said Fitz-Stephen, "before morning my 
fifty sailors and the White Ship shall overtake the swift- 
est vessel in attendance on your father the King, if we 
sail at midnight." 

Then the Prince commanded to make merry, and the 
sailors drank out the three casks of wine, and the 
Prince and all the noble company danced in the moon- 
light on the deck of the White Ship. 

When at last she shot out of the harbor of Barfieur, 
there was not a sober seaman on board. But the sails 
were all set and the oars all going merrily. Fitz- 
Stephen had the helm. The gay young nobles and the 
beautiful ladies, wrapped in mantles of various bright 
colors to protect them from the cold, talked, laughed, 
and sang. The Prince encouraged the fifty sailors to 
row harder yet, for the honor of the White Ship. 

Crash! A terrific cry broke from three hundred 
hearts. It was the cry of the people in the distant ves- 
sels of the King heard faintly on the water. The 

6 History 



74 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

White Ship had struck upon a rock — was filling — going 
down ! 

Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat, with some 
few nobles. "Push off," he whispered, "and row to the 
land. It is not far, and the sea is smooth. The rest of 
us must die." 

But, as they rowed away, fast, from the sinking ship, 
the Prince heard the voice of his sister Marie, the 
Countess of Perche, calling for help. He never in his 
life had been so good, as he was then. He cried in an 
agony, "Row back at any risk! I cannot bear to leave 
her!" 

They rowed back. As the Prince held out his arms 
to catch his sister, such numbers leaped in that the boat 
was overset. And in the same instant the White Ship 
went down. 

Only two men floated. They both clung to the main 
yard of the ship, which had broken from the mast, and 
now supported them. One asked the other who he was. 
He said, "I am a nobleman, Godfrey by name, the son 
of Gilbert de l'Aigle. And you?" said he. "I am 
Berold, a poor butcher of Rouen," was the answer. 
Then they said together, ' ' Lord, be merciful to us both !" 
and tried to encourage one another, as they drifted in 
the cold benumbing sea on that unfortunate November 
night. 

By and by another man came swimming toward them, 
whom they knew, when he pushed aside his long wet 
hair, to be Fitz-Stephen. "Where is the Prince?" said 
he. "Gone! Gone!" the two cried together. "Neither 
he, nor his brother, nor his sister, nor the King's niece, 
nor her brother, nor any one of all the brave three 
hundred, noble or commoner, except we three, has risen 
above the water!" Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly face, 
cried, "Woe, woe, to me!" and sunk to the bottom. 

The other two clung to the yard for some hours. At 
length the young noble said faintly, "I am exhausted, 
and chilled with the cold, and can hold no longer. 
Farewell, good friend! God preserve you!" So he 
dropped and sunk ; and of all the brilliant crowd, the 
poor butcher of Rouen alone was saved. In the morn- 
ing some fishermen saw him floating in his sheep-skin 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 75 

coat, and got him into their boat — the sole relater of the 
dismal tale. 

For three days no one dared to carry the intelligence 
to the King. At length they sent into his presence a 
little boy who, weeping bitterly and kneeling at his 
feet, told him that the White Ship was lost with all on 
board. The King fell to the ground like a dead man, 
and never, never afterward was seen to smile. 

But he plotted again and promised again, and bribed 
and bought again, in his old deceitful way. Having no 
son to succeed him, after all his pains ("The Prince will 
never yoke us to the plow now!" said the English 
people), he took a second wife — Adelais or Alice, a 
Duke's daughter, and the Pope's niece. Having no 
more children, however, he proposed to the barons to 
swear that they would recognize as his successor his 
daughter Matilda, whom, as she was now a widow, he 
married to the eldest son of the Count of Anjou, Geoff- 
rey, surnamed Plantagenet, from a custom he had of 
wearing a sprig 'of flowering broom, called Genet in 
French, in his cap for a feather. As one false man usu- 
ally makes many, and as a false King, in particular, is 
pretty certain to make a false Court, the barons took the 
oath about the succession of Matilda, and her children 
after her, twice over, without in the least intending to 
keep it. The King was now relieved from any remain- 
ing fears of William Fitz-Robert, by his death in the 
Monastery of St. Omer, in France, at twenty-six years 
old, of a pike-wound in the hand. And as Matilda gave 
birth to three sons, he thought the succession to the 
throne secure. 

He spent most of the latter part of his life, which was 
troubled by family quarrels, in Normandy, to be near 
Matilda. When he had reigned upward of thirty-five 
years, and was sixty-seven years old, he died of an in- 
digestion and fever, brought on by eating, when he was 
far from well, of a fish called lamprey, against which he 
had often been cautioned by his physicians. His 
remains were brought over to Reading Abbey to be 
buried. 

You may perhaps hear the cunning and promise- 
breaking of King Henry I. called "policy" by some 



76 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

people, and "diplomacy" by others. Neither of these 
fine words will in the least mean that it was true ; and 
nothing that is not true can possibly be good. 

His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love of 
learning. I should have given him greater credit even 
for that, if it had been strong enough to induce him to 
spare the eyes of a certain poet he once took prisoner, 
who was a knight besides. But he ordered the poet's 
eyes to be torn from his head, because he had laughed 
at him in hi-? verses ; and the poet, to the pain of that 
torture, dashed out" his own brains against his prison 
wall. King Henry I. was avaricious, revengeful, and 
so false that I suppose a man never lived whose word 
was less to be relied upon. 



CHAPTER XL 

ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN. 

The King was no sooner dead than all the plans and 
schemes he had labored at so long, and lied so much for, 
crumbled away, like a hollow heap of sand. Stephen, 
whom he had never mistrusted or suspected, started up 
to claim the throne. 

Stephen was the son of Adela, the Conqueror's daugh- 
ter, married to the Count of Blois. To Stephen, and to 
his brother Henry, the late King had been liberal; mak- 
ing Henry Bishop of Winchester, and finding a good 
marriage for Stephen, and much enriching him. This 
did not prevent Stephen from hastily producing a false 
witness, a servant of the late King, to swear that the 
King had named him for his heir upon his deathbed. 
On this evidence the Archbishop of Canterbury crowned 
him. The new King, so suddenly made, lost not a 
moment in seizing the royal treasure, and hiring foreign 
soldiers with some of it to protect his throne. 

If the dead King had even done as the false witness 

said, he would have had small right to will away the 

English people, like so many sheep and oxen, without 

their consent. But he had, in fact, bequeathed all his 

itory to Matilda; who, supported by Robert, Earl of 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 77 

Gloucester, soon began to dispute the crown. Some of 
the powerful barons and priests took her side; some 
took Stephen's; all fortified their castles; and again the 
miserable English people were involved in war, from 
which they could never derive advantage whosoever 
was victorious, and in which all parties plundered, tor- 
tured, starved, and ruined them. 

Five years had passed since the death of Henry I. — 
and during those five years there had been two terrible 
invasions by the people of Scotland, under their King 
David, who was at last defeated with all his army — 
when Matilda, attended by her brother Robert and a 
large force, appeared in England to maintain her claim. 
A battle was fought between her troops and King 
Stephen's at Lincoln; in which the King himself was 
taken prisoner, after bravely fighting until his battle-ax 
and sword were broken, and was carried into strict con- 
finement at Gloucester. Matilda then submitted herself 
to the priests, and the priests crowned her Queen of 
England. 

She did not long enjoy this dignity. The people of 
London had a great affection tor Stephen; many of 
the Barons considered it degrading to be ruled by a 
woman ; and the Queen's temper was so haughty that 
she made innumerable enemies. The people of London 
revolted ; and in alliance with the [troops of Stephen 
besieged her at Winchester, where they took her brother 
Robert prisoner, whom, as her best soldier and chief 
general, she was glad to exchange for Stephen himself, 
who thus regained his liberty. Then the long war went 
on afresh. Once, she was pressed so hard in the castle 
of Oxford, in the winter weather when the snow lay 
thick upon the ground, that her only chance of escape 
was to dress herself all in white, and accompanied by no 
more than three faithful knights, dressed in like man- 
ner, that their figures might not be seen from Stephen's 
camp as they passed over the snow, to steal away on 
foot, cross the frozen Thames, walk a long distance, 
and at last gallop away on horseback. All this she did, 
but to no great purpose then ; for her brother dying 
while the struggle was yet going on, she at last with- 
drew to Normandy. 



78 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

In two or three years after her withdrawal her cause 
appeared in England afresh, in the person of her son, 
Henry, young Plantagenet, who, at only eighteen years 
of age, was very powerful: not only on account of his 
mother having resigned all Normandy to him, but also 
from his having married Eleanor, the divorced wife of 
the French King, a bad woman, who had great posses- 
sions in France. Louis, the French King, not relishing 
this arrangement, helped Eustace, Kmg Stephen's son, 
to invade Normandy: but Henry drove their united 
forces out of that country, and theln returned here to 
assist his patrons, whom the King was then besieging 
at Wallingford upon the Thames. Here for two days, 
divided only by the river, the two armies lay encamped 
opposite to one another — on the eve, as it seemed to all 
men, of another desperate fight, when the Earl of 
Arundel took heart and said that "it was not reasonable 
to prolong the unspeakable miseries of two kingdoms 
to minister to the ambition of two princes." 

Many other noblemen repeating and supporting this 
when it was once uttered, Stephen and young Planta- 
genet went down, each to his own bank of the river, 
and held a conversation across it, in which they 
arranged a truce ; very much to the dissatisfaction of 
Eustace, who swaggered away with some followers, 
and laid violent hands on the Abbey of St. Edmund's- 
Bury, where he presently died mad. The truce led to 
a solemn council at Winchester, in which it was agreed 
that Stephen should retain the crown, on condition of 
his declaring Henry his successor; that William, 
another son of the King's, should inherit his father's 
rightful possessions; and that all the crown lands which 
Stephen had given away should be recalled, and the 
castles he had permitted to be built demolished. Thus 
terminated the bitter war. which had now lasted fifteen 
years, and had again laid England waste. In the next 
year Stephen died, after a ^troubled reign of nineteen 
years. 

Although King Stephen was, for the time in which 
he lived, a humane and moderate man, with many 
excellent qualities ; and although nothing worse is known 
of him than his usurpation of the crown, which he prob- 






A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 79 

ably excused to himself by the consideration that King 
Henry I. was an usurper too — which was no excuse at 
all; the people of England suffered more in these 
dreaded nineteen years than at any former period even 
of their suffering history. In the division of the no- 
bility between the two rival claimants of the crown, and 
in the growth of what is called the Feudal System 
which made the peasants the born vassals and mere 
slaves of the barons, every noble had his strong castle, 
where he reigned the cruel king of all the neighboring 
people. Accordingly, he perpetrated whatever cruel- 
ties he chose. And never were worse cruelties com- 
mitted upon the earth than in wretched England in 
those nineteen years. 

The 'writers who were living then described them 
fearfully. They say that the castles were filled with 
devils rather than with men; that the peasants, men 
and women, were put into dungeons for their gold and 
silver, were tortured with fire and smoke, were hung up 
by the thumbs, were hung up by the heels with great 
weights to their heads, were torn with jagged irons, 
killed with hunger, broken to death in narrow chests 
filled with sharp-pointed stones, murdered in countless 
fiendish ways. In England there was no corn, no meat, 
no cheese, no butter, there were no tilled lands, no har- 
vests. Ashes of burned towns and dreary wastes were 
all that the traveler, fearful of the robbers who prowled 
abroad at all hours, would see in a long day's journey; 
and from sunrise until night, he would not come upon 
a home. 

The clergy sometimes suffered, and heavily too, from 
pillage, but many of them had castles of their own, and 
fought in helmet and armor like the barons, and drew 
lots with other fighting men for their share of booty. 
The Pope (or Bishop of Rome), on King Stephen's resist- 
ing his ambition, laid England under an interdict at one 
period of this reign; which means that he allowed no 
service to be performed in the churches, no couples to 
be married, no bells to be rung, no dead bodies to be 
buried. Any man having the power to refuse these 
things, no master whether he were called a pope or a 
poulterer, would, of course, have the power of afflicting 



80 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

numbers of innocent people. That nothing might be 
wanting to the miseries of King Stephen's time, the 
Pope threw in this contribution to the public store — not 
very like the widow's contribution, as I think, when 
our Savior sat in Jerusalem over against the treasury, 
"and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing." 

CHAPTER XII. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY II. — PART THE FIRST. 

Henry Plantagenet, when he was but twenty-one 
years old, quietly succeeded to the throne of England, 
according to his agreement made with the late King at 
"Winchester. Six weeks after Stephen's death he and 
his Queen, Eleanor, were crowned in that city ; into 
which they rode on horseback in great state, side by 
side, amid much shouting and rejoicing, and clashing 
of music, and strewing of flowers. 

The reign of King Henry II. began well. The King 
had great possessions, and (what with his own rights, 
and what with those of his wife) was lord of one-third 
part of France. He was a young man of vigor, [ability, 
and resolution, and immediately applied himself to 
remove some of the evils which had arisen in the last 
unhappy reign. He revoked all the grants of land that 
had been hastily made, on either side, during the late 
struggles ; he obliged numbers of ^disorderly soldiers to 
depart from England ; he reclaimed all the castles be- 
longing to the Crown : and he forced the wicked nobles 
to pull down their own castles, to the number of eleven 
hundred, in which such dismal cruelties had been in- 
flicted on the people. The King's brother, Geoffrey, 
rose against him in France, while he was so well em- 
ployed, and rendered it necessary for him to repair to 
that country ; where, after he had subdued and made a 
friendly arrangement with his brother (who did not live 
long), his ambition to increase his possessions involved 
him in a war with the French King, with whom he had 
been on such friendly terms just before that to the 
French King's infant daughter, then a baby in the 
cradle, he had promised one of his little sons in mar- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 81 

riage, who was a child of five years old. However, the 
war came to nothing at last, and the Pope made the 
two Kings friends again. 

Now, the clergy, in the troubles of the last reign, had 
gone on very ill indeed. There were all kinds of crim- 
inals among them— murderers, thieves, and vagabonds ; 
and the worst of the matter was, that the good priests 
would not 'give up the bad priests to justice when they 
committed crimes, but persisted in sheltering ancl 
defending them. The King, well knowing that there 
could be no peace or rest in England while such things 
lasted, resolved to reduce the power of the clergy ; and, 
when he had reigned seven years found (as he consid- 
ered) a good opportunity for doing so, in the death of 
the Archbishop of Canterbury. "I will have for the 
new Archbishop," thought the King, "a friend in whom 
I can trust, who will help me to humble these rebel- 
lious priests, and to have them dealt with, when they 
do wrong, as other men who do wrong are dealt with." 
So|he resolved to make his favorite the new Archbishop; 
and his favorite was so extraordinary a man, and his 
story is so curious, that I must tell you all about him. 

Once upon a time, a worthy merchant of London, 
named Gilbert a Becket, made a pilgrimage to the Holy 
Land, and was taken prisoner by a Saracen lord. This 
lord, who treated him kindly and not like a slave, had 
one fair daughter, who fell in love with the merchant ; 
and who told him that she wanted to become a Chris- 
tian, and was willing to marry him if they could fly to 
a Christian country. The merchant returned her love, 
until he found an opportunity to escape, when he did 
not trouble himself about the Saracen lady, but escaped 
with his servant Richard, who had been taken prisoner 
along with him, and arrived in England and forgot her. 

The Saracen lady, who was more loving than the 
merchant, left her father's house in disguise to follow 
him, and made her way, under many hardships, to the 
seashore. The merchant had taught her only two Eng- 
lish words (for I suppose he must have learned the Sara- 
cen tongue himself, and made love in that language), 
of which London was one, and his own name, Gilbert, 
the other. She went among the ships, saying, 4, Lon- 



82 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

don! London!" over and over again, until the sailors 
understood that she wanted to find an English vessel 
that would carry her there ; so they showed her such a 
ship, and she paid for her passage with some of her 
jewels, and sailed away. Well! The merchant was 
sitting in his counting-house in London one day, when 
he heard a great noise in the street ; and presently Richard 
came running in from the warehouse, with his eyes wide 
open and his breath almost gone, saying, "Master, mas- 
ter, here is the Saracen lady!" The merchant thought 
Richard was mad; but Richard said, "No, master! As 
I live, the Saracen lady is going up and down the city 
calling 'Gilbert! Gilbert!"' Then, he took the mer- 
chant by the sleeve, and pointed out of the window; and 
there they saw her among the gables and water-spouts 
of the dark, dirty street, in her foreign dress, so forlorn, 
surrounded by a wondering crowd, and passing slowly 
along calling "Gilbert, Gilbert!" When the merchant 
saw her, and thought of the tenderness she had shown 
him in his captivity, and ot her constancy, his heart was 
moved, and he ran down into the street: and she saw 
him coming, and with a'great .cry fainted in his arms. 
They were married without loss of time, and Richard 
(who was an excellent man) danced with joy the whole 
day of the wedding; and they all lived happily ever 
afterward. 

This merchant and this Saracen lady had one son, 
Thomas a Becket. He it was who became the favorite 
of King Henry II. 

He had become Chancellor, when the King thought 
of making him Archbishop. He was clever, gay, well- 
educated, brave ; had fought in several battles in France ; 
had defeated a French knight in single combat, and 
brought his horse away as a token of the victory. He 
lived in a noble palace ; he was the tutor of the young 
Prince Henry; he was served by 140 knights; his riches 
were immense. The King once sent him as his ambas- 
sador to France ; and the French people, beholding in 
what state he traveled, cried out in the streets, "How 
splendid must the King of England be, when this is 
only the Chancellor!" They had good reason to won- 
der at the magnificence of Thomas a Becket, for, when 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 83 

he entered a French town, his procession was headed 
by 250 singing boys; then came his hounds in couples; 
then 8 wagons, each drawn by 5 horses driven by 5 
drivers; 2 of the wagons filled with strong ale to be 
given away to the people ; 4 with his gold and silver 
plate and stately clothes; 2 with the dresses of his 
numerous servants. Then came 12 horses, each with a 
monkey on his back; then a train of people bearing 
shields and leading fine war-horses splendidly equipped; 
then falconers with hawks upon their wrists ; then a 
host of knights' and gentlemen and priests ; then the 
Chancellor with his brilliant garments flashing in the 
sua, and all the people capering and shouting with de- 
light. 

The King was well pleased with all this, thinking that 
it only made himself the more magnificent to have so 
magnificent a favorite ; but he sometimes jested with 
the Chancellor upon his splendor too. Once, when they 
were riding together through the streets of London in 
hard winter weather, they saw a shivering old man in 
rags. "Look at the poor object !" said the King. "Would 
it not be a charitable act to give that aged man a com- 
fortable warm cloak?" "Undoubtedly it would," said 
Thomas a Becket, "and you do well, sir, to think of such 
Christian duties." "Come!" cried the King, "then 
give him your cloak!" It was made of rich crimson 
trimmed with ermine. The King tried to pull it off, the 
Chancellor tried to keep it on; both were near rolling 
from their saddles to the mud, when the Chancellor 
submitted, and the King gave the cloak to the old beg- 
gar: much to the beggar's astonishment, and much to 
the merriment of all the courtiers in attendance. For 
courtiers are not only eager to laugh when the King 
laughs, but they really do enjoy a laugh against a favor- 
ite. 

"I will make," thought King Henry II., "this Chan- 
cellor of mine, Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury. He will then be the head of the Church, and, 
being devoted to me, will help me to correct the Church. 
He has always upheld my power against the power 
of the clergy, and once publicly told some bishops, I 
remember, that men of the Church were equally bound 



84 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

to me with men of the sword. Thomas a Becket is the 
man, of all other men in England, to help me in my 
great design." So the King, regardless of all objection, 
either that he was a fighting man, or a lavish man, or a 
courtly man, or a man of pleasure, or anything but a 
likely man for the office, made him Archbishop accord- 
ingly. 

Now, Thomas a Becket was proud and loved to be 
famous. He was already famous for the pomp of his 
life, for his riches, his gold and silver plate, his wagons, 
horses, and attendants. He could do no more in that 
way than he had done ; and being tired of that kind of 
fame (which is a very poor one), he longed to have his 
name celebrated for something else. Nothing, he knew, 
would render him so famous in the world as the setting 
of his utmost power and ability against the utmost power 
and ability of the King. He resolved with the whole 
strength of his mind to do it. 

He may have had some secret grudge against the 
King besides. The King may have offended his proud 
humor at some time or other, for anything I know. I 
think it likely, because it is a common thing for kings, 
princes, and other great people, to try the tempers of 
their favorites rather severly. Even the little affair of 
the crimson cloak must have been anything but a pleas- 
ant one to a haughty man. Thomas a Becket knew 
better than anyone in England what the King expected 
of him. In all his sumptuous life, he had never yet 
been in a position to disappoint the King. He could 
take up that proud stand now, as head of the Church ; 
and he determined that it should be written in history 
either that he subdued the King, or that the King sub- 
dued him. 

So, of a sudden, he completely altered the whole man- 
ner of his life. He turned off all his brilliant followers, 
ate coarse food, drank bitter water, wore next his skin 
sackcloth covered with dirt and vermin (for it was then 
thought religious to be very dirty), flogged his back to 
punish himself, lived chiefly in a little cell, washed the 
feet of thirteen poor people every day, and looked as 
miserable as he possibly could. If he had put twelve 
hundred monkeys on horseback instead of twelve, and 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 85 

had gone in procession with eight thousand wagons 
instead of eight, he could not have half astonished the 
people so much as by this great change. It soon caused 
him to be more talked about as an Archbishop than he 
had been as a Chancellor 

The King was very angry ; and was made still more 
so when the new Archbishop, claiming various estates 
from the nobles as being rightfully Church property, re- 
quired the King himself, for the same reason, to give 
up Rochester Castle, and Rochester City too. Not 
satisfied with this, he declared that no power but him- 
self should appoint a priest to any church in the part of 
England over which he was Archbishop ; and when a cer- 
tain gentleman of Kent made such an appointment, as 
he claimed to have the right to do, Thomas a Becket 
excommunicated him. 

Excommunication was, next to the Interdict I told 
you of at the close of the last chapter, the great weapon 
of the clergy. It consisted in declaring the person who 
was excommunicated an outcast from the Church and 
from all religious offices ; and in cursing him all over, 
from the top of his head to the sole of his foot, whether 
he was standing up, lying down, sitting, kneeling, walk- 
ing, running, hopping, jumping, gaping, coughing, 
sneezing, or whatever else he was doing. This unchris- 
tian nonsense would of course have made no sort of dif- 
ference to the person cursed — who could say his prayers 
home at if he were shut out of Church, and whom none 
but God could judge — but for the fears and superstitions 
of the people, who avoided excommunicated persons, and 
made their lives unhappy. So, the King said to the new 
Archbishop, "Take off this excommunication from this 
gentleman of Kent." To which the Archbishop re- 
plied, "I shall do no such thing." 

The quarrel went on. A priest in Worcestershire 
committed a most dreadful murder, that aroused the 
horror of the whole nation. The King demanded to 
have this wretch delivered up, to be tried in the 
same court and in the same way as any other 
murderer. The Archbishop refused, and kept him 
in the Bishop's prison. The King, holding a 
solemn assembly in Westminster Hall, demanded 



8G A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

that in future all priests found guilty before their 
bishops of crimes against the law of the land should be 
considered priests no longer, and should be delivered 
over to the law of the land for punishment. The Arch- 
bishop again refused. The King required to know 
whether the clergy would obey the ancient customs of 
the country. Every priest there but one said, after 
Thomas a Becket, "Saving my order." This really 
meant that they would only obey those customs when 
they did not interfere with their own claims; and the 
King went out of the Hall in great wrath. 

Some of the clergy began to be afraid, now, that they 
were going too far. Though Thomas a Becket was other- 
wise as unmoved as Westminster Hall, they prevailed 
upon him, for the sake of their fears, to go to the King 
at Woodstock, and [promise to observe the ancient cus- 
toms of the country, without saying anything about his 
order. The King received this submission favorably, 
and summoned a great council of the clergy to meet at 
the Castle of Clarendon, by Salisbury. But when the 
council met, the Archbishop again insisted on the words 
"saving my order;" and he still insisted, though lords 
entreated him, and priests wept before him and kneeled 
to him, and an adjoining room was thrown open, filled 
with armed soldiers of the King, to threaten him. At 
length he gave way, for that time, and the ancient cus- 
toms, which included what the King had demanded in 
vain, were stated in writing, and were signed and sealed 
by the chief of the clergy, and were cailed the Consti- 
tutions of Clarendon. 

The quarrel went on for all that. The Archbishop 
tried to see the King. The King would not see him. 
The Archbishop tried to escape from England. The 
saliors on the coast would launch no boat to take him 
away. Then he again resolved to do his worst in oppo- 
sition to the King, and began openly to set the ancient 
customs at defiance. 

The King summoned him before a great council at 
Northampton, where he accused him of high treason, 
and made a claim against him, which was not a just one, 
for an enormous sum of money. Thomas a Becket was 
alone against the whole assembly, and the very bishops 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 87 

advised him to resign his office and abandon his contest 
with the King. His great anxiety and agitation 
stretched him on a sick bed for two days, but he was 
still undaunted. He went to the adjourned council, car- 
rying a great cross in his right hand, and sat down, 
holding it erect before him. The King angrily retired 
into an inner room. The whole assembly angrily 
retired and left him there. But there he sat. The 
bishops came out again in a body, and renounced him 
as a traitor. He only said, "I hear," and sat there still. 
They retired again into the inner room, and his trial 
proceeded without him. By and by, the Earl of Leices- 
ter, heading the barons, came out to read his sentence. 
He refused to hear it, denied the power of the court, and 
said he would refer his cause to the Pope. As he 
walked out of the hall, with the cross in his hand, some 
of those present picked up rushes — rushes were strewn 
upon the floors in those days by ;way of carpet — and 
threw them at him. He proudly turned his head, and 
said that, were he not Archbishop, he would chastise 
those cowards with the sword he had known how to use 
in bygone days. He then mounted his horse and rode 
away, cheered and surrounded by the common people, 
to whom he threw open his house that night and gave a 
supper, supping with them himself. That same night 
he secretly departed from the town; and so, traveling 
by night and hiding by day, and calling himself 
"Brother Dearman," got awa}>-, not without difficulty, 
to Flanders. 

The struggle still went on. The angry King took 
possession ot the revenues of the archbishopric, and 
banished all the relations and servants of Thomas a 
Becket, to the number of four hundred. The Pope and 
the French King both protected him, and an abbey was 
assigned for his residence. Stimulated by this support, 
Thomas a Becket, on a great festival day, formally pro- 
ceeded to a great church crowded with people, and going 
up into the "pulpit, publicly cursed and excommunicated 
ail who had supported the Constitution of Clarendon ; 
mentioning many English noblemen by name, and not 
distantly hinting at the King of England himself. 



83 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

When intelligence of this new affront was carried to 
the Xing in his chamber, his passion was so furious that 
he tore his clothes, and rolled like a madman on his bed 
of straw and rushes. But he was soon up and doing. 
He ordered all the ports and coasts of England to be 
narrowly watched that no letters of Interdict might be 
brought into the kingdom, and sent messengers and 
bribes to the Pope's palace at Rome. Meanwhile, 
Thomas a Becket, for his part, was not idle at Rome, 
but constantly employed his utmost arts in his own 
behalf. Thus the contest stood, until there was peace 
between France and England (which had been for some 
time at war), and until the two children of the two kings 
were married in celebration of it. Then, the French 
King brought about a meeting between Henry and his 
old favorite, so long his enemy. 

Even then, though Thomas a Becket kneeled before 
the King, he was obstinate and immovable as to those 
words about his order. King Louis of France was 
weak enough in his veneration for Thomas a Becket 
and such men, but this was a little too much for him. 
He said that a Becket "wanted to be greater than all 
the saints and better than St. Peter," and rode away 
from him with the King of England. His poor French 
Majesty asked a Becket's pardon for so doing, how- 
ever, soon afterward, and cut a very pitiful figure. 

At last, and after a world of trouble, it came to this. 
There was another meeting on French ground between 
King Henry and Thomas a Becket, and it was agreed 
that Thomas a Becket should be Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, according to the customs of former archbishops, 
and that the King should put him in possession of the 
revenues of that post. And now, indeed, you might 
suppose the struggle at an end, and Thomas a Becket at 
rest. No, not even yet. For Thomas a Becket hear- 
ing, by some means, that King Henry, when he was in 
dread of his kingdom being placed under an interdict, 
had had his eldest son Prince Henry secretly crowned, 
not only persuaded the Pope to suspend the Archbishop 
of York who had performed that ceremony, and to ex- s 
communicate the Bishops who had assisted at it, but 
sent a messenger of his own into England, in spite of 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 89 

all the King's precautions along the coast, who deliv- 
ered the letters of excommunication into the bishops' 
own hands. Thomas a Becket then came over to Eng- 
land himself, after an absence of seven years. He was 
privately warned that it was dangerous to come, and 
that an ireful knight, named Ranulf de Broc, had 
threatened that he should not live to eat a loaf of bread 
in England, but he came. 

The common people received him well, and marched 
about with him in a soldierly way, armed with such 
rustic weapons as they could get. He tried to see the 
young prince who had once been his pupil, but was pre- 
vented. He hoped for some little support among the 
nobles and priests, but found none. He made the most 
of the peasants who attended him, and feasted them, 
and went from Canterbury to Harrow-on-the-Hill, and 
from Harrow-on-the-Hill back to Canterbury, and on 
Christmas Day preached in the Cathedral there, and 
told the people in his sermon that he had come to die 
among them, and that it was likely he would be mur- 
dered. He had no fear, however — or, if he had any, he 
had much more obstinacy — for he then and there excom- 
municated three of his enemies, of whom Ranulf de 
Broc, the ireful knight, was one. 

As men in general had no fancy for being cursed, in 
their sitting and walking, and gaping and sneezing, and 
all the rest of it, it was very natural in the persons so 
freely excommunicated to complain to the King. It 
was equally natural in the King, who had hoped that 
this troublesome opponent was at least quieted, to fall 
into a mighty rage when he heard of these new affronts; 
and, on the Archbishop of York telling him that he 
never could hope for rest while Thomas a Becket lived, 
to cry out hastily before his court, "Have I no one here 
who will deliver me from this man?" There were four 
knights present who, hearing.the King's words, looked 
at one another, and went out. 

The names of these knights were Reginald Fitzurse, 
William Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard Brito; 
three of whom had been in the train of Thomas a 
Becket in the old days of his splendor. They rode away 
on horseback in a very secret manner, and on the third 



90 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

day after Christmas Day arrived at Saltwood House, not 
far from Canterbury, which belonged to the family of 
Ranulf de Broc. They quietly collected some followers 
here, in case they should need any; and proceeding to \ 
Canterbury, suddenly appeared, the four knights and 
twelve men, before the Archbishop, in his own house, I 
at two o'clock in the afternoon. They neither bowed 
nor spoke, but sat down on the floor in silence, staring 
at the Archbishop. 

Thomas a Becket said at length, " What do you want?" i 

"We want," said Reginald Fitzurse, "the excommu- ' 
nication taken from the bishops, and you to answer for 
your offenses to the King." 

Thomas a Becket defiantly replied that the power of 
the clergy was above the power of the King. That it 
was not for such men as they were to threaten him. 
That if he were threatened, by all the swords in Eng* 
land, he would never yield. 

"Then we will do more than threaten!" said the 
knights. And they went out with the twelve men, and 
put on their armor, and drew their shining swords, and 
came back. 

His servants, in the meantime, had shut up and barred 
the great gate of the palace. At first, the knights tried 
to shatter it with their battle-axes ; but, being shown a 
window by which they could enter, they let the gate 
alone, and climbed in that way. While they were bat- 
tering at the door, the attendants of Thomas a Becket 
had implored him to take refuge in the Cathedral ; in 
which, as a sanctuary or sacred place, they thought the 
knights would dare to do no violent deed. He told them, 
again and again, that he would not stir. Hearing the 
distant voices of the monks singing the evening service, 
however, he said it was now his duty to attend, and, 
therefore, and for no other reason, he would go. 

There was a near way between his palace and the 
Cathedral, by some beautiful old cloisters which you 
may yet see. He went into the Cathedral, without any 
hurry, and having the cross carried before him as usual. 
When he was safely there, his servants would have fast- 
ened the door, but he said No! it was the house of God 
and not a fortress. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 91 

As he spoke, the shadow of Reginald Fitzurse ap- 
peared in the Cathedral doorway, darkening the little 
light there was outside, on the dark winter evening. 
This knight said, in a strong voice, "Follow me, loyal 
servants of the King!" The rattle of the armor of the 
other knights echoed through the Cathedral, as they 
came clashing in. 

It was so dark, in the lofty aisles and among the 
stately pillars of the church, and there were so many 
hiding-places in the crypt below and in the narrow pas- 
sages above, that Thomas a Becket might even at that 
pass have saved himself if he would. But he would 
not. He told the monks resolutely that he would not. 
And though they all dispersed and left him there with 
no other follower than Edward Gryme, his faithful 
cross-bearer, he was as firm then as ever he had been in 
life. 

The knights came on, through the darkness, making 
a terrible noise with their armed tread upon the stone 
pavement of the church. "Where is the traitor?" they 
cried out. He made no answer. But when they cried, 
"Where is the Archbishop?" he said proudly, "I am 
here !" and came out of the shade and stood before them. 

The knights had no desire to kill him, if they could 
rid the King and themselves of him by any other means. 
They told him he must either fly or go with them. He 
said he would do neither; and he threw William Tracy 
off with such force when he took hold of his sleeve, that 
Tracy reeled again. By his reproaches and his steadi- 
ness, he so incensed them, and exasperated their fierce 
humor, that Reginald Fitzurse, whom he called by an 
ill name, said, "Then die!" and struck at his head. But 
the faithful Edward Gryme put out his arm, and there 
received the main force of the blow, so that it only made 
his master bleed. Another voice from among the 
knights again called to Thomas a Becket to fly ; but, 
with his blood running down his face, and his hands 
clasped, and his head bent, he commended himself to 
God, and stood firm. Then they cruelly killed him close 
to the altar of St. Bennet ; and his body fell upon the 
pavement, which was dirtied with his blood and brains. 

It is an awful thing to think of the murdered mortal, 



92 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 

who had so showered his curses about, lying, all disfig- 
ured, in the church, where a few lamps here and there 
were but red specks on a pall of darkness ; and to think 
of the guilty knights riding away on horseback, looking 
over their shoulders at the dim Cathedral, and remem- 
bering what they had left inside. 

PART THE SECOND. 

"When the King heard how Thomas a Becket had lost 
his life in Canterbury Cathedral, through the ferocity 
of the four knights, he was filled with dismay. Some 
have supposed that when the King spoke those hasty 
words, "Have I no one here who will deliver me from 
this man?" he wished, and meant a Becket to be slain. 
But few things are more unlikely ; for, besides that the 
King was not naturally cruel, though very passionate, 
he was wise and must have known full well what any 
stupid man in his dominions must have known, namely, 
that such a murder would rouse the Pope and the whole 
Church against him. 

He sent respectful messages to the Pope, to represent 
his innocence, except in'having uttered the hasty words ; 
and he swore solemnly and publicly to his innocence, 
and contrived in time to make his peace. As to the four 
guilty knights, who fled into Yorkshire, and never again 
dared to show themselves at Court, the Pope excommu- 
nicated them; and they lived miserably for some time, 
shunned by all their country men. At last they went 
humbly to Jerusalem as a penance, and there died and 
were buried. 

It happened, fortunately for the pacifying of the 
Pope, that an opportunity arose very soon after the 
murder of a Becket, for the king to declare his power in 
Ireland — which was an acceptable undertaking to the 
Pope, as the Irish, who had been converted to Christian- 
ity by one Patricius, otherwise St. Pafrick, long ago, 
before any Pope existed, considered that the Pope had 
nothing at all to do with them, or they with the Pope, 
and accordingly refused to pay him Peter's Pence, or 
the tax of a penny a house which I have elsewhere men- 
tioned. The King's opportunity arose in this way. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 93 

The Irish were, at that time, as barbarous a people as 
you can well imagine. They were continually quarrel- 
ing and fighting, cutting one another's throats, slicing 
one another's noses, burning one another's houses, car- 
rying away one another's wives, and committing all 
sorts of violence. The country was divided into five 
kingdoms — Desmond, Thomond, Connaught, Ulster, and 
Leinster — each governed by a separate King, of whom 
one claimed to be the chief of the rest. Now, one ot 
these Kings, named Dermond MacMurrough, a wild 
kind of name, spelled in more than one wild kind of 
way, had carried off the wife of a friend of his, and con- 
cealed her on an island in a bog. The friend resenting 
this, though it was quite the custom of the country, com- 
plained to the chief King, and, with the chief King's 
help, drove Dermond MacMurrough out of his domin- 
ions. Dermond came over to England for revenge ; and 
offered to hold his realm as a vassal of King Henry, if 
King Henry would help him to regain it. The King 
consented to these terms; but only assisted him, then, 
with what were called Letters Patent, authorizing any 
English subjects who were so disposed, to enter into his 
service, and aid his cause. 

There was, at Bristol, a certain Earl Richard de Clare, 
called Strongbow; of no very good character; needy 
and desperate, and ready for anything that offered him 
a chance of improving his fortunes. There were, in 
South Wales, two other broken knights of the same 
good-for-nothing sort, called Robert Fitz-Stephen and 
Maurice Fitz- Gerald. These three, each with a small 
band of followers, took up Dermond's cause; and it 
was agreed that, if it proved successful, Strongbow 
should marry Dermond's daughter Eva, and be declared 
his heir. 

The trained English followers of these knights were 
so superior in all the discipline of battle to the Irish, 
that they beat them against immense superiority [oi 
numbers. In one fight, early in the war, they cut off 
three hundred heads, and laid them before MacMur- 
rough ; who turned them every one up with his hands, 
rejoicing, and, coming to one which was the head of a 
man whom he had much disliked, he grasped it by the 



94 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

hair and ears, and tore off the nose and lips with his 
teeth. You may judge from this what kind of a gentle- 
man an Irish King in those times was. The captives all 
through this war were horribly treated ; the victorious 
party making nothing of breaking their limbs, and cast- 
ing them into the sea from the tops of high rocks. It 
was in the midst of the miseries and. cruelties attendant 
on the taking of Waterford, where the dead lay piled in 
the streets and the filthy gutters ran with blood, that 
Strongbow married Eva. An odious marriage company 
those mounds of corpses must have made, I think, and 
one quite worthy of the young lady's father. 

He died, after Waterford and Dublin had been taken, 
and various successes achieved ; and Strongbow became 
King of Leinster. Now came King Henry's opportu- 
nity. To restrain the growing power of Strongbow, he 
himself repaired to Dublin, as Strongbow's Royal Mas- 
ter, and deprived him of his kingdom, but confirmed 
him in the enjoyment of great possessions. The King, 
then, holding state in Dublin, received the homage of 
nearly all the Irish Kings and Chiefs, and so he came 
home again with a great addition to his reputation as 
Lord of Ireland, and with a new claim on the favor of 
the Pope. And now their reconciliation was completed 
— more easily and mildly by the Pope than the King 
might have expected, I think. 

At this period of his reign, when his troubles seemed 
so few and. his prospects so bright, those domestic mis- 
eries began which gradually made the King the most 
unhappy of men, reduced his great spirit, wore away 
his health, and broke his heart. 

He had four sons. Henry, now aged eighteen — his 
secret crowning of whom had given such offense to 
Thomas a Becket; Richard, aged sixteen; Geoffrey, 
fifteen ; and John, his favorite, a young boy whom the 
courtiers named Lackland, because he had no inherit- 
ance, but to whom the King meant to give the Lordship 
of Ireland. All these misguided boys, in their turn, 
were unnatural sons to him. and unnatural brothers to 
each other. Prince Henry, stimulated by the French 
King, and by his bad mother, Queen Eleanor, began the 
undutitul history. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 95 

First, he demanded that his young wife, Margaret, the 
French King's daughter, should be crowned as well as 
he. His father, the King, consented, and it was done. 
It was no sooner done than he demanded to have a part 
of his father's dominions during his father's life. This 
being refused, he made off from his father in the night, 
with his bad heart full of bitterness, and took refuge at 
the French King's Court. Within a day or two his 
brothers Richard and Geoffrey followed. Their mother 
tried to join them — escaping in man's clothes — but she 
was seized by King Henry's men, and immured in 
prison, where she lay, deservedly, for sixteen years. 
Every day, however, some grasping English nobleman, 
to whom the King's protection of his people from their 
avarice and oppression had given offense, deserted him 
and joined the Princes. Every day he heard some fresh 
intelligence of the Princes levying armies against him ; 
of Prince Henry's wearing a crown before his own am- 
bassadors at the French Court, and being called the 
Junior King of England ; of all the Princes swearing 
never to make'peace with him, their father, without the 
consent and approval of the barons of France. But, 
with his fortitude and energy unshaken, King Henry 
met the shock of these disasters with a resolved and 
cheerful face. He called upon all royal fathers who had 
sons, to help him, for his cause was theirs; he] hired, 
out of his riches, twenty thousand men to fight the false 
French King, who stirred his own blood against him ; 
and he carried on the war with such vigor that Louis 
soon proposed a conference to treat for peace. 

The conference was held beneath an old wide-spread- 
ing green elm tree, upon a plain in France. It led to 
nothing. The war recommenced. Prince Richard 
began his fighting career by leading an army against 
his father; but his father beat him and his army back; 
and thousands of his men would have rued the day in 
which they fought in such a wicked cause, had not the 
King received news of an invasion of England by the 
Scots, and promptly come home through a great storm 
to repress it. And whether he really began to fear that 
he suffered these troubles because a Becket had been 
murdered, or whether he wished to rise in the favor of 



96 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the Pope, who had now declared a Becket to be a saint, 
or in the favor of his own people, of whom many 
believed that even a Becket's senseless tomb could work 
miracles, I don't know; but the King no sooner landed 
in England than he went straight to Canterbury; 
and when he came within sight of the distant 
Cathedral, he dismounted from his horse, took off his 
shoes, and walked with bare and bleeding feet to 
a Becket's grave. There, he lay on the ground, lament- 
ing, in the presence of many people ; and by-and-by he 
went into the Chapter House, and, removing his clothes 
from his back and shoulders, submitted himself to be 
beaten with knotted cords, not beaten very hard, I dare 
say, though, by eighty priests, one after another. It 
chanced that on the very day when the King made this 
curious exhibition of himself, a complete victory was 
obtained over the Scots ; which very much delighted the 
priests, who said that it was won because of his great 
example of repentance. For the priests in general had 
found out, since a Becket's death, that they admired 
him of all things — though they had hated him very cor- 
dially when he was alive. 

The Earl of Flanders, who was at the head of the base 
conspiracy of the King's undutiful sons and their foreign 
friend, took the opportunity of the King being thus 
employed at home, to lay siege to Rouen, the capital of 
Normandy. But the King, who was extraordinarily 
quick and active in all his movements, was at Rouen, 
too, before it was supposed possible that he could have 
left England ; and there he so defeated the said Earl of 
Flanders, that the conspirators proposed peace, and his 
bad sons Henry and Geoffrey submitted. Richard 
resisted for six weeks ; but, being beaten out of castle 
after castle, he at last submitted too, and his father 
forgave him. 

To forgive these unworthy princes was only to afford 
them breathing time for new faithlessness. They were 
so false, disloyal, and dishonorable, that they were no 
more to be trusted than common thieves. In the very 
next year, Prince Henry rebelled again, and was again 
forgiven. In eight years more, Prince Richard rebelled 
against his elder brother; and Prince Geoffrey infa- 




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A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 97 

mously said that the brothers could never agree well 
together, unless they were united against their father. 
In the very next year after their reconciliation by the 
King, Prince Henry again rebelled against his father, 
and again submitted, swearing to be true ; and was again 
forgiven ; and again rebelled with Geoffrey. 

But the end of this perfidious Prince was come. He 
fell sick at a French town ; and, his conscience terribly 
reproaching him with his baseness, he sent messengers 
to the King his father, imploring him to come and see 
him, and to forgive him for the last time on his bed of 
death. The generous King, who had a royal and for- 
giving mind toward his children always, would have 
gone ; but this Prince had been so unnatural that the 
noblemen about the King suspected treachery, and rep- 
resented to him that he could not safely trust his life 
with such a traitor, though his own eldest son. There- 
fore, the King sent him a ring from off his finger as a 
token of forgiveness ; and when the Prince had kissed 
it, with much grief and many tears, and had confessed 
to those around him how bad, and wicked, and unduti- 
ful a son he had been, he said to the attendant priests 
"Oh, tie a rope about my body, and draw me out of bed, 
and lay me down upon a bed of ashes, that I may die 
with prayers to God in a repentant manner!" And so 
he died, at twenty-seven years old. 

Three years afterward Prince Geoffrey, being un- 
horsed at a tournament, had his brains trampled out by 
a crowd of horses passing over him. So, there only 
remained Prince Richard and Prince John — who had 
grown to be a young man now, and had solemnly 
sworn to be faithful to his father. Richard soon rebel- 
\ led again, encouraged by his friend the French King, 
i Philip II., son of Louis, who was dead; and soon sub- 
j mitted and was again forgiven, swearing on the New 
Testament never to rebel again ; and in another year or 
so, rebelled again ; and in the presence of his father, 
i knelt down on his knee before the King of France ; and 
| did the French King homage ; and declared that with 
his aid he would possess himself, by force, of all his 
father's French dominions. 
And yet this Richard called himself a soldier of Our 
7 History 



98 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Savior ! And yet this Richard wore the Cross, which 
the Kings of France and England had both taken, in the 
previous year, at a brotherly meeting underneath the 
old wide-spreading elm tree on the plain, when they had 
sworn, like him, to devote themselves to a new Crusade, 
for the love and honor of the Truth ! 

Sick at heart, wearied out by the falsehood of his sons, 
and almost ready to lie down and die, the unhappy King 
who had so long stood firm, began to fail. But the 
Pope, to his honor, supported him ; and obliged the 
French King and Richard, though successful in fight, 
to treat for peace. Richard wanted to be crowned King 
of England, and 'pretended that he wanted to be mar- : 
ried, which he really did not, to the French King's sis- \ 
ter, his promised wife, whom King Henry detained in 
England. King Henry wanted, on the other hand, that i 
the French King's sister should be married to his favor- 
ite son, John, the only one of his sons, he said, who had 
never rebelled against him. At last King Henry, | 
deserted by his nobles one by one, distressed, exhaust- 
ed, broken-hearted, consented to establish peace. 

One final heavy sorrow was reserved for him even yet. ' 
When they brought him the proposed treaty of peace, in ! 
writing, as he lay very ill in bed, they brought hira also 
the list of the deserters from their allegiance, whom he 
was required to pardon. The first name upon this list 
was John, his favorite son, in whom he had trusted to 
the last. 

"Oh, John! child of my heart!" exclaimed the King, 
in a great agony of mind. "Oh, John, whom I have 
loved the "best! Oh, John, for whom I have contended 
through these many troubles ! Have you betrayed me 
too!" And then he lay down with a heavy groan, and 
said, "Now let the world go as it will. I care for noth- 
ing more!" 

After a time he told his attendants to take him to the 
French town of Shinon — a town he had been tond of 
during many years. But he was fond of no place now; 
it was too true that he could care for nothing more upon 
this earth. He wildly cursed the hour when he was 
born, and cursed the children whom he left behind him; 
and expired. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 99 

As one hundred years betore the servile followers ot 
the Court had abandoned the Conqueror in the hour ot 
his death, so they now abandoned his descendant. The 
very body was stripped, in the plunder ot 'the royal 
chamber ; and it was not easy to find the means of car- 
rying it for burial to the abbey church of Fontevraud. 

Richard was said in after years, by way of flattery, to 
have the heart of a Lion. It would have been far bet- 
ter, I think, to have had the heart of a Man. His heart, 
whatever it was, had cause to beat remorsefully within 
his breast, when he came — as he did — into the solemn 
abbey, and looked on his dead father's uncovered face. 
His heart, whatever it was, had been a black and per- 
jured heart, in all its dealings with the deceased King, 
and more deficient in a single touch of tenderness than 
any wild beast's in the forest. 

There is a pretty story told of this reign, called the 
story of Fair Rosamond. It relates how the King doted 
on Fair Rosamond, who was the loveliest girl in all the 
world ; and how he had a beautiful bower built for her 
in a park at Woodstock ; and how it was erected in a 
labyrinth, and could only be found by a clew ot silk. 
How the bad Queen Eleanor, becoming jealous of Fair 
Rosamond, found out the secret ot the clew, and one 
day appeared before her, with a dagger and a cup of 
poison, and lett her to the choice between those deaths. 
How fair Rosamond, after shedding many piteous 
tears and offering many useless prayers to the cruel 
Queen, took the poison, and fell dead in the midst of the 
beautiful bower, while the unconscious birds sang gayly 
all around her. 

Now, there was a fair Rosamond, and she was (I dare 

say) the loveliest girl in all the world, and the King was 

certainly very fond of her and the bad Queen Eleanor 

was certainly made jealous. But I am afraid — I say 

afraid because I like the story so much — that there was 

no bower, no labyrinth, no silken clew, no dagger, no 

poison. I am afraid Fair Rosamond retired to a nun- 

fcnery near Oxford, and died there, peacably; her sister- 

i nuns hanging a silken drapery over her tomb, and often 

I dressing it with flowers, in remembrance of the youth 



100 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and beauty that had enchanted the King when he too 
was young, and when his life lay fair before him. 

It was dark and ended now ; faded and gone. Henry 
Plantagenet lay quiet in the abbey church of Fontev- 
raud, in the fifty-seventh year of his age — never to be 
completed — after governing England well, for nearly 
thirty-five years. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

*.nGLAND UNDER RICHARD I., CALLED THE LION-HEART. 

In the year of our Lord 1189, Richard of the Lion 
Heart succeeded to the throne of King Henry II., whose 
paternal heart he had done so much to break. He had 
been, as we have seen, a rebel from his boyhood; but 
the moment he became a king against whom others 
might rebel, he found out that rebellion was a great 
wickedness. In 'the heat of this pious discovery he 
punished all the leading people who had befriended 
him against his father. He could scarcely have done 
anything that would have been a better instance of his 
real nature, or a better warning to fawners and para- 
sites not to trust in lion-hearted princes. 

He likewise put his late father's treasurer in chains, 
and locked him up in a dungeon, from which he was 
not set free until he had relinquished, not only all the 
Crown treasure, but all his own money too. So, Richard 
certainly got the Lion's share of the wealth of this 
wretched treasurer, whether he had a Lion's heart or 
not. 

He was crowned King of England with great pomp, j 
at Westminster; walking to the cathedral under m 
silken canopy stretched on the tops of four lances, each 
carried by a great lord. On the day ot his coronation 
a dreadful murdering of the Jews took place, which 
seems to have given great delight to numbers of savage 
persons calling themselves Christians. The King had 
issued a proclamation forbidding the Jews (who were j 
generally hated, though they were the most useful mer- 
chants in England) to appear at the ceremony ; but as 
they had assembled in London from all parts, bringing 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 101 

presents to show their respect for the new Sovereign, 
some ot them ventured down to Westminster Hall with 
their gifts ; which were very readily accepted. It is 
supposed, now, that some noisy fellow in the crowd, 
pretending to be a very delicate Christian, set up a howl 
at this, and struck a Jew who was trying to get in at the 
Hall door with his present. A riot arose. The Jews 
who had got into the Hall were driven forth ; and some 
of the rabble cried out that the new King had com- 
manded the unbelieving race to be put to death. 
Thereupon the crowd rushed through the narrow streets 
of the city, slaughtering all the Jews they met; and 
when they could find no more out of doors (on account 
of their having fled to their houses, and fastened them- 
selves in), they ran madly about, breaking open all the 
houses where the Jews lived, rushing in and stabbing 
or spearing them, sometimes even flinging old people 
and children out of windows into blazing fires they had 
lighted up below. This great cruelty lasted four-and- 
twenty hours, and only three men were punished for it. 
Even they forfeited their lives not for murdering and 
robbing the Jews, but for burning the houses of some 
Christians. 

King Richard, who was a strong, restless, burly man, 
with one idea always in his head, and that the very 
troublesome idea of breaking the heads of other men, 
was mighty impatient to go on a Crusade to the Holy 
Land, with a great army. As great armies could not be 
raised to go even to the Holy Land, without a great 
deal of money, he sold the Crown domains, and even 
the high offices of State ; recklessly appointing noble- 
men to rule over his English subjects, not because they 
were fit to govern, but because they could pay high for 
the privilege. In this way, and by selling pardons at a 
dear rate, and by varieties of avarice and oppression, 
he scraped together a large treasure. He then 
appointed two bishops to take care of his kingdom in 
his absence, and gave great powers and possessions to 
his brother John, to secure his friendship. John would 
rather have been made Regent of England ; but he was 
a sly man, and friendly to the expedition ; saying to 
himself, no doubt, "the more fighting, the more chance 



102 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of my brother being killed ; and when he is killed, then 
I become King John!" 

Before the newly levied army departed from England, 
the recruits and the general populace distinguished them- 
selves by astonishing cruelties on the unfortunate Jews: 
whom in many large towns they murdered by hundreds 
in the most horrible manner. 

At York, a large body of Jews took refuge in the 
Castle in the absence of its governor, after the wives 
and children of many of them had been slain before 
their eyes. Presently came the governor, and de- 
manded admission. "How can we give it thee, O gov- 
ernor!" said the Jews upon the walls, "when, if we open 
the gate by so much as the width of a foot, the roaring 
crowd behind thee will press in and kill us?" 

Upon this, the unjust governor became angry, and 
told the people that he approved of their killing those 
Jews; and a mischievous maniac of a friar, dressed all 
in white, put himself at the head of the assault, and 
they assaulted the Castle for three days. 

Then said Jocen, the head-Jew (who was a rabbi or 
priest), to the rest, "Brethren, there is no hope for us 
with the Christians who are hammering at the gates and 
walls, and who must soon break in. As we and our 
wives and children must die, either by Christian hands, 
or by our own, let it be by our own. Let us destroy by 
fire what jewels and other treasure we have here, then 
lire the castle, and then perish!" 

A few could not resolve to do this, but the greater 
part complied. They made a blazing heap of all their 
valuables, and, when those were consumed, set the 
castle in flames. While the flames roared and crackled 
around them, and shooting up into the sky turned it 
blood-red, Jocen cut the throat of his beloved wife, and 
stabbed himself, All the others who had wives or chil- 
dren did the like dreadful deed. When the populace 
broke in, they found (except the trembling few, cower- 
ing in corners, whom they soon killed) only heaps of 
greasy cinders, with here and there something like part 
of the blackened trunk of a burned tree, but which had 
lately been a human creature, formed by the benefi- 
cent hand of the Creator as they were. - 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 103 

After this oad beginning, Richard and his troops 
went on, in no very good manner, with the Holy Cru- 
sade. It was undertaken jointly by the King of Eng- 
land and his old friend Philip of France. They com- 
menced the business by reviewing their forces, to the 
number of one hundred thousand men. Afterward, they 
severally embarked their troops for Messina, in Sicily, 
which was appointed as the next place of meeting. 

King Richard's sister had married the King of this 
place, but he was dead: and his uncle Tancred had 
usurped the crown, cast the royal widow into prison, 
and possessed himself of her estates. Richard fiercely 
demanded his sister's release, the restoration of her 
lands, and (according to the royal custom of the Island) 
that she should have a golden chain, a golden table, 
four-and-twenty [silver cups, and four-and-twenty sil- 
ver dishes. As he was too powerful to be suc- 
cessfully resisted, Tancred yielded to his demands; 
and then the French King grew jealous, and com- 
plained that the English King wanted to be abso- 
lute in the Island of Messina and everywhere else. 
Richard, however, cared little or nothing for this com- 
plaint ; and in consideration of a present of twenty thou- 
sand pieces of silver, promised his pretty little nephew 
Arthur, then a child of two years old, in marriage to 
Tancred's daughter, We shall hear again of pretty lit- 
tle Arthur, by and by: 

This Sicilian affair arranged without anybody's brains 
being knocked out (which must have rather disappointed 
him), King Richard took his sister away, and also a fair 
lady named Berengaria, with whom he had fallen in 
love in France, and whom his mother, Queen Eleanor 
(so long in prison, you remember, but released by Rich- 
ard on his coming to the throne), had brought out there 
to be his wife ; and sailed with them for Cyprus. 

He soon had the pleasure of fighting the King of the 
Island of Cyprus, for [allowing his subjects to pillage 
some of the English troops who were shipwrecked on 
the shore ; and easily conquering this poor monarch, he 
seized his only daughter, to be a companion to the lady 
Berengaria, and put the King himself into silver fetters. 
He then sailed away again with his mother, sister, wife, 



104 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and the captive princess ; ana soon arrived before the 
town of Acre, which the French King with his fleet 
was besieging from the sea. But the French King was 
in no triumphant condition, for his army had been 
thinned by the swords of the Saracens, and wasted by 
the plague ; and Saladin, the brave Sultan of the Turks, 
at the head of a numerous army, was at that time gal- 
lantly defending the place from the hills that rise 
above it. 

Wherever the united army of Crusaders went, they 
agreed in few points except in gaming, drinking, and 
quarreling, in a most unholy manner; in debauching 
the people among whom they tarried, whether they 
were friends or foes ; and in carrying disturbance and 
ruin into quiet places. The French King was jealous of 
the English King, and the "English King was jealous 
of the French King, and the disorderly and violent sol- 
diers of the two nations were jealous of one another; 
consequently, the two kings could not at first agree, 
even upon a joint assault on Acre; but when they did 
make up their quarrel for that purpose, the Saracens 
promised to yield the town, to give up to the Christians 
the wood of the Holy Cross, to set at liberty all their 
Christian captives, and to pay two hundred thousand 
pieces of gold. All this was to be done within forty 
days; but, not being done, King Richard ordered some 
three thousand Saracen prisoners to be brought out in 
the front of his camp, and there, in full view of their 
own countrymen, to be butchered. 

The French King had no part in this crime, for he 
was by that time traveling homeward with the greater 
part of his men; being offended by the overbearing 
conduct of the English King; being anxious to look 
after his own dominions ; and being ill, besides, from 
the unwholesome air of that hot and sandy country. 
King Richard carried on the war without him; and 
remained in the East, meeting with a variety of adven- 
tures, nearly a year and a half. Every night when his 
army was on the march, and came to a halt, the heralds 
cried out three times, to remind all the soldiers of the 
cause in which they were engaged, "Save the Holy 
Sepulcher!" and then all the sofdiers kneeled and said 



A CHILD'S HISTCfRY OF ENGLAND. 105 

"Amen!" Marching or encampting, the army had con- 
tinually to strive with the hot air of the glaring desert, 
or with the Saracen soldiers animated and directed by 
the brave Saladin, or with both together. Sickness and 
death, battle and wounds, were always among them ; but 
through every difficulty King Richard fought like a 
giant, and worked like a common laborer. Long and 
long after he was quiet in his grave, his terrible battle- 
ax, with twenty English pounds of English steel in its 
mighty head, was a legend among the Saracens ; and 
when all the Saracen and Christian hosts had been dust 
for many a year, if a Saracen horse started at any object 
by the wayside, his rider would exclaim, "What dost 
thou fear, fool? Dost thou think King Richard is be- 
hind it?" 

No one admired this king s renown for bravery more 
than Saladin himself, who was a generous and gallant 
enemy. When Richard lay ill of a fever, Saladin sent 
him fresh fruits from Damascus, and snow from the 
mountain tops. Courtly messages and compliments 
were frequently exchanged between them — and then 
King Richard would mount his horse and kill as many 
Saracens as he could; and Saladin would mount his, 
and kill as many Christians as he could. In this way 
King Richard fought to his heart's content at Arsoof and 
at Jaffa; and finding himself with nothing exciting to do 
at Ascalon, except to rebuild, for his own defense, some 
fortifications there which the Saracens had destroyed, 
he kicked his ally the Duke of Austria, for being too 
proud to work at them. 

The army at last came within sight of the Holy City 
of Jerusalem ; but, being then a mere nest of jealousy, 
and quarreling and fighting, soon retired, and agreed 
with the Saracens upon a truce for three years, three 
months, three days, and three hours. Then the English 
Christians, protected by the noble Saladin from Sara- 
cen revenge, visited our Savior's tomb; and then King 
Richard embarked with a small force at Acre to return 
home. 

But he was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea, and was 
fain to pass through Germany, under an assumed name. 
Now, there were many people in Germany who had 

8 History 



106 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 






served in the Holy Land under that proud Duke o 
Austria who had been kicked; and some of them, easib 
recognizing a man so remarkable as King Richard, car 
ried their intelligence to the kicked Duke, who straight 
way took him prisoner at a little inn near Vienna. 

The Duke's master, the Emperor of Germany, anc 
the King of France, were equally delighted to have s< 
troublesome a monarch in safe keeping. Friendship 
which are founded on a partnership in doing wrong 
are never true ; and the King of France was now quit< 
as heartily King Richard's foe as he had ever been hi 
friend in his unnatural conduct to his father. He mon 
strously pretended that King Richard had designed t( 
poison him in the East; he charged him with having 
murdered there a man whom he had in truth befriended 
he bribed the Emperor of Germany to keep him close 
prisoner ; and, finally, through the plotting of these twc 
princes, Richard was brought before the German legis 
lature, charged with the foregoing crimes, and many 
others. But he defended himself so well that many ol 
the assembly were moved to tears by his eloquence and 
earnestness. It was decided that he should be treated. 
during the rest of his captivity, in a manner more be 
coming his dignity than he had been, and that he should 
be set free on the payment of a heavy ransom. This ! 
ransom the English people willingly raised. Wher! 
Queen Eleanor took it over to Germany it was at first 
evaded and refused. But she appealed to the honor ol 
all the princes of the German Empire in behalf ot hei 
son, and appealed so well that it was accepted, and the 
King released. Thereupon, the King of France wrote 
to Prince John: "Take care of thyself. The Devil isi 
unchained!" 

Prince John had reason to fear his brother, for he had 
been a traitor to him in his captivity. He had secretly 
joined the French King; had vowed to the Englisfc 
nobles and people that his brother was dead ; and had 
vainly tried to seize the crown. He was now ir 
France, at a place called Evreux. Being the meanest 
and basest of men, he contrived a mean and base expedi- 
ent for making himself acceptable to his brother. Ht 
invited the French officers of ttie garrison in that towr 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 107 

to dinner, murdered them all, and then took the fortress. 
With this recommendation to the good will of a lion- 
hearted monarch, he hastened to King Richard, fell on 
his knees before him, and obtained the intercession of 
Queen Eleanor. "I forgive him," said the King, "and 
I hope I may forget the injury he has done me, as easily 
as I know he will forget my pardon." 

While King Richard was in Sicily, there had been 
trouble in his dominions at home: one of the bishops 
whom he had left in charge thereof arrested the other ; 
and making, in his pride and ambition, as great a show 
as if he were King himself. But the King hearing of 
it at Messina, and appointing a new Regency, this 
Longchamp (for that was his name) had fled to France 
in a woman's dress, and had there been encouraged and 
supported by the French King. With all these causes 
of offense against Philip in his mind, King Richard had 
no sooner been welcomed home by his enthusiastic sub- 
jects with great display and splendor, and had no sooner 
been crowned afresh at Winchester, than he resolved to 
show the French King that the Devil was unchained in- 
deed, and made war against him with great fury. 

There was fresh trouble at home about this time, aris- 
ing out ot the discontents of the poor people, who com- 
plained that they were far more heavily taxed than the 
rich, and who found a spirited champion in William 
Fitz-Osbert, called Longbeard, He became the leader 
of a secret society comprising fifty thousand men ; he 
was seized by surprise ; he stabbed the citizen who first 
laid hands upon him ; and retreated, bravely fighting, to 
a church, which he maintained four days, until he was 
dislodged by fire and run through the body as he came 
out. He was not killed, though ; for he was dragged, 
half dead, at the tail of a horse to Smithfield, and there 
hanged. Death was long a favorite remedy for silenc- 
ing the people's advocates; but as we go on with this 
history, I fancy we shall find them difficult to make an 
end of, for all that. 

The French war, delayed occasionally by a truce, was 
still in progress when a certain lord named Vidomar, 
Viscount of Limoges, chanced to find in his ground a 
treasure of ancient coins. As the King's vassal, he sent 



108 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the King half of it; but the King claimed the whole. 
The lord refused to yield the whole. The King besieged 
the lord in his castle, swore that he would take the 
castle by storm, and hang every man of its defenders on 
the battlements. 

There was a strange old song in that part of the 
country, to the effect that in Limoges an arrow would 
be made by which King Richard would die. It may be 
that Bertrand de Gourdon, a young man who was one 
of the defenders of the castle, had often sung it or heard 
it sung of a winter night, and remembered it when he 
saw, from his post upon the ramparts, the King, j 
attended only by his chief officer, riding below the walls j 
surveying the place. He drew an arrow to the head, 
took steady aim, said between his teeth, "Now I pray 
God speed thee well, arrow!" discharged it, and struck! 
the King in the left shoulder. 

Although the wound was not at first considered dan- 
gerous, it was severe enough to cause the King to retire' 
to his tent, and direct the assault to be made without 
him. The castle was taken, and every man of its de- 
fenders was hanged, as the King had sworn all should j 
be, except Bertrand de Gourdon, who was reserved until j 
the royal pleasure respecting him should be known, 

By that time unskillful treatment had made the wound 
mortal, and the King knew that he was dying. He^ 
directed Bertrand to be brought into his tent. The 
young man was brought there heavily chained. King 
Richard look at him steadily. He looked, as steadily, 
at the King. 

"Knave!" said King Richard, "what have I done tc! 
thee that thou shouldst take my life?" 

"What hast thou done to me!" replied the young 
man. "With thine own hands thou hast killed nil 
father and my two brothers. Myself thou wouldst have 
hanged. Let me die now, by any torture that thou 
wilt. My comfort is, that no torture can save thee. 
Thou too must die, and, through me, the world is quit 
of thee!" 

Again the King looked at the young man steadily. 
Again the young man looked steadily at him. Per j 
haps some remembrance of his generous enemy, I 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 109 

Saladin, who was not a Christian, came into the mind 
of the dying King. 

"Youth!" he said, "I forgive thee. Go unhurt!" 

Then, turning to the chief officer who had been riding 
in his company when he received the wound, King 
Richard said: 

"Take off his chains, give him a hundred shillings, 
and let him depart." 

He sunk down on his couch, and a dark mist seemed 
in his weakened eyes to fill the tent wherein he had so 
often rested, and he died. His age was forty- two; he 
had reigned '"'ten years. His last command was not 
obeyed ; for the chief officer flayed Bertrand de Gourdon 
alive, and hanged him. 

There is an old* tune yet known— a sorrowful air will 
sometimes outlive many generations of strong men, and 
even last longer than battle-axes, with twentv pounds 
of steel in the head — by which this king is said to have 
been discovered in his captivity. Blondel, a favorite 
minstrel of King Richard, as the story relates, faith- 
fully seeking his royal master, went singing it outside 
the gloomy wall of many foreign fortresses and pris- 
ons; until at last he heard it echoed from within a 
dungeon, and knew the voice, and cried out in ecstasy, 
"Oh, Richard! oh, my King!" You may believe it, 
if you like ; it would be easy to believe worse things. 
Richard was himself a minstrel and a poet. If he had 
not been a Prince, too, he might have been a better man 
! perhaps, and might have gone out of the world with less 
bloodshed and waste of life to answer for. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

ENGLAND UNDER KINg JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND. 

At two-and-thirty years of age, John became King of 
England. His pretty little nephew Arthur had the best 
claim to the throne; but John seized the treasure, and 
made fine promises to the nobility, and got himself 
crowned at Westminster within a few weeks after his 
brother Richard's death. I doubt whether the crown 



110 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

could possibly have been put upon the head of a meaner 
coward, or a more detestable villain, if England had 
been searched from end to end to find him out. 

The French King, Philip, refused to acknowledge the 
right of John to his new dignity, and declared in favor of 
Arthur. You must not suppose that he had any gener- 
osity of feeling for the fatherless boy ; it merely suited 
his ambitious schemes to oppose the King of England. 
So John and the French King went to war about 
Arthur. 

He was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve 
years old. He was not born when his father, Godfrey, 
had his brains trampled out at the tournament; and, 
besides the misfortune of never having known a father's 
guidance and protection, he had the additional misfor- 
tune to have a foolish mother, Constance byname, lately 
married to her third husband. She took Arthur, upon 
John's accession, to the French King, who pretended 
to be very much his friend, and who made him a knight, 
and promised him his daughter in marriage ; but, who 
cared so little about him in reality that, finding it his 
interest to make peace with King John for a time, he did 
so without the least consideration for the poor little 
Prince, and heartlessly sacrificed all his interests. 

Young Arthur, for two years afterward, lived quietly ; 
and in the course of that time his mother died. But, 
the French King then finding it his interest to quarrel 
with King John again, again made Arthur his pretense, 
and invited the orphan boy to court. "You know your 
rights, Prince," said the French King, "and you would 
like to be King. Is it not so?" "Truly," said Prince 
Arthur, "I should greatly like to be a King." "Then," 
said Philip, "you shall have two hundred gentlemen 
who are knights of mine, and with them you shall go 
to win back the provinces belonging to you, of which 
your uncle, the usurping King of England, has taken 
possession. I, myself, meanwhile, will head a force 
against him in Normandy. ' ' Poor Arthur was so flat- 
tered and grateful that he signed a treaty with the 
crafty French King, agreeing to consider him his su- 
perior lord, and that the French King should keep for 
himself whatever he could take from King John. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Ill 

Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and King 
Philip was so perfidious, that Arthur, between the two, 
might as well have been a lamb between a fox and a 
wolf. But, being so young, he was ardent and flushed 
with hope; and, when the people of Brittany, which 
was his inheritance, sent him five hundred more 
knights and five thousand foot soldiers, he believed his 
fortune was made. The people of Brittany had been 
fond of him from his birth, and had requested that he 
might be called Arthur, in remembrance of that dimly- 
famous English Arthur, of whom I told you early in this 
book, whom they believed to have been the brave friend 
and companion of an old King of their own. They had 
tales among them about a prophet called Merlin, of the 
same old time, who had foretold that their own King 
should be restored to them after hundreds of years ; and 
they believed that the prophecy would be fulfilled in 
Arthur ; that the time would come when he should rule 
them with a crown of Brittany upon his head ; and when 
neither the King of France nor King of England would 
have any power over them. When Arthur found him- 
self riding in a glittering suit of armor on a richly 
caparisoned horse, at the head of his train of knights 
and soldiers, he began to believe this, too, and to con- 
sider old Merlin a very superior prophet. 

He did not know — how could he, being so innocent 
and inexperienced? — that his little army was a mere 
nothing against the power of the King of England. The 
French King knew it; but the poor boy's fate was little 
to him, so that the King of England was worried and 
distressed. Therefore, King Philip went his way into 
Normandy, and Prince Arthur went his way toward 
Mirabeau, a French town near Poictiers, both very well 
pleased. 

Prince Arthur went to attack the town of Mirabeau, 
because his grandmother Eleanor, who has so often 
made her appearance in this history, and who had 
always been his mother's enemy, was living there, and 
because his knights said, "Prince, if you can take her 
prisoner, you will be able to bring the King, your uncle, 
to terms!" But she was not to be easily taken. She 
was old enough by this time — eighty — but she was as 



112 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

full of stratagem as she was full of years and wicked- 
ness. Receiving intelligence of young Arthur's ap- 
proach, she shut herself up in a high tower, and encour- 
aged her soldiers to defend it like men. Prince Arthur 
with his little army besieged the high tower. King 
John, hearing how matters stood, came up to the rescue, 
with his army. So here was a strange family party ! 
The boy-Prince besieging his grandmother, and his 
uncle besieging him. 

This position of affairs did not last long. One sum- 
mer night King John, by treachery, got his men into the 
town, surprised Prince Arthur's force, took two hun- 
dred of his knights, and seized the Prince himself in his 
bed. The knights were put in heavy irons, and driven 
away in open carts drawn by bullocks, to various dun- 
geons, where they were most inhumanly treated, and 
where some of them were starved to death. Prince 
Arthur was sent to the castle of Falaise. 

One day, while he was in prison at that castle, mourn- 
fully thinking it strange that one so young should be in 
so much trouble, and looking out of the small window 
in the deep dark wall, at the summer sky and the birds, 
the door was softly opened, and he saw his uncle the 
King standing in the shadow of the archway, looking 
very grim. 

"Arthur," said the King, with his wicked eyes more 
on the stone floor than on his nephew, "will you not 
trust to the gentleness, the friendship, and truthfulness 
of your loving uncle?" 

"I will tell my loving uncle that," replied the boy, 
"when he does me right. Let him restore to me my 
kingdom of England, and then come to me and ask the 
question." 

The King looked at him and went out. "Keep that 
boy close prisoner," said he to the warden of the castle. 

Then the King took secret counsel with the worst of 
his nobles how the Prince was to be got rid of. Some 
said, "Put out his eyes and keep him in prison, as 
Robert of Normandy was kept." Others said, "Have 
him stabbed." Others, "Have him hanged." Others, 
"Have him poisoned." 

King John, feeling that in any case, whatever was 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 113 

done afterward, it would be a satisfaction to his mind 
to have those handsome eyes burned out that had 
looked at him so proudly while his own royal eyes were 
blinking at the stone floor, sent certain ruffians to 
Falaise to blind the boy with red-hot irons. But Arthur 
so pathetically entreated them, and shed such piteous 
tears, and so appealed to Hubert de Bourg, or Burgh, the 
warden of the castle, who had a love for him, and was 
an honorable, tender man, that Hubert could not bear 
it. To his eternal honor he prevented the torture from 
being performed, and, at his own risk, sent the savages 
away. 

The chafed and disappointed King bethought himself 
of the stabbing suggestion next, and with his shuffling 
manner and his cruel face, proposed it to one William de 
Bray. "I am a gentleman, and not an executioner," 
said William de Bray, and left the presence with dis- 
dain. 

But it was not difficult for a King to hire a murderer 
in those days. King John found one for his money, and 
sent him down to the castle of Falaise. "On what 
errand dost thou come?" said Hubert to this fellow. 
"To dispatch young Arthur," he returned. "Go back 
to him who sent thee," answered Hubert, "and say that 
I will do it!" 

King John, very well knowing that Hubert would 
never do it, but that he courageously sent this reply to 
save the Prince or gain time, dispatched messengers to 
convey the young prisoner to the castle of Rouen. 

Arthur was soon forced from the good Hubert, of 
whom he had never stood in greater need than then, — 
carried away by night, and lodged in his new prison ; 
where, through his grated window, he could hear the 
deep waters of the river Seine rippling against the stone 
wall below. 

One dark night, as he lay sleeping, dreaming perhaps 
of rescue by thuse unfortunate gentlemen who were ob- 
scurely suffering and dying in his cause, he was roused, 
and bidden by his jailer to come down the staircase to the 
foot of the tower. He hurriedly dressed himself and 
obeyed. When they came to the bottom of the wind- 
ing stair, and the night air from the river blew upon 



114 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

their faces, the jailer trod upon his torch and put it out. 
Then Arthur, in the darkness, was hurriedly drawn into 
a solitary boat. And in that boat he found his uncle and 
one other man. 

He knelt to them, and prayed them not to murder 
him. Deaf to his entreaties, they stabbed him and sunk 
his body in the river with heavy stones. When the 
spring morning broke, the tower-door was closed, the 
boat was gone, the river sparkled on its way, and never 
more was any trace of the poor boy beheld by mortal 
eyes. 

The news of this atrocious murder being spread m 
England, awakened a hatred of the King, already 
odious for his many vices, and for his having stolen 
away and married a noble lady while his own wife was 
living, that never slept again through his whole reign. 
In Brittany the indignation was intense. Arthur's own 
sister, Eleanor, was in the power of John and shut up in 
a convent at Bristol, but his half-sister, Alice, was in 
Brittany. The people chose her, and the murdered 
prince's father-in-law, the last husband of Constance, 
to represent them ; and carried their fiery complaints to 
King Philip. King Philip summoned King John, as 
the holder of territory in France, to come before him 
and defend himself. King John refusing to appear, 
King Philip declared him false, perjured, and guilty; 
and again made war. In a little time, by conquering 
the greater part of his French territory, King Philip 
deprived him of one-third of his dominions. And 
through all the fighting that took place, King John 
was always found either to be eating and drinking, like 
a gluttonous fool x when the danger was at a distance, 
or to be running away, like a beaten cur, when it was 
near. 

You might suppose that when he was losing his domin- 
ions at this rate, and when his own nobles cared so little 
for him or his cause that they plainly refused to follow 
his banner out of England, he had enemies enough. 
But he made another enemy of the Pope, which he did 
in this way: 

The Archbishop of Canterbury dying, and the junior 
monks of that place wishing to get the start of the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 115 

senior monks in the appointment of his successor, met 
together at midnight, secretly elected a certain Regi- 
nald, and sent him off to Rome to get the Pope's ap- 
proval. The senior monks and the King soon finding 
this out, and being very angry about it, the junior 
monks gave way, and all the monks together elected the 
Bishop of Norwich, who was the King's favorite. The 
Pope, hearing the whole story, declared that neither 
election would do for him, and that he elected Stephen 
Langton. The monks submitting to the Pope, the King 
turned them all out bodily, and banished them as 
traitors. The Pope sent three bishops to the King to 
threaten him with an Interdict. The King told the 
bishops that if any Interdict were laid upon his king- 
dom, he would tear out the eyes and cut off the noses of 
all the monks he could lay hold of, and send them over 
to Rome in that undecorated state as a present for their 
master. The bishops, nevertheless, soon published the 
Interdict, and fled. 

After it had lasted a year, the Pope proceeded to his 
next step; which was Excommunication. King John 
was declared excommunicated, with all the usual cere- 
monies. The King was so incensed at this, and was 
made so desperate by the disaffection of his barons and 
the hatred of his people, that it is said he even privately 
sent ambassadors to the Turks in Spain, offering to 
renounce his religion, and hold his kingdom of them if 
they would help him. It is related that the ambassadors 
were admitted to the presence of the Turkish Emir 
through long lines of Moorish guards, and that they 
found the Emir with his eyes seriously fixed on the 
pages of a large book, from which he never once looked 
up. That they gave him a letter from the King con- 
taining his proposals, and were gravely dismissed. 
That presently the Emir sent for one of them, and con- 
jured him, by his faith in his religion, to say what kind 
of man the King of England truly was. That the am- 
bassador, thus pressed, replied that the King of England 
was a false tyrant, against whom his own subjects 
would soon rise. And that this was quite enough for 
the Emir. 

Money being, in his position, the next best thing to 



116 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

men, King John spared no means of getting it. He set 
on foot another oppressing and torturing of the unhappy 
Jews, which was quite in his way, and invented a new 
punishment for one wealthy Jew of Bristol. Until such 
time as that Jew should produce a certain large sum of 
money, the King sentenced him to be imprisoned, and, 
every day, to have one tooth violently wrenched out of 
his head — beginning with the double teeth. For seven 
days, the oppressed man bore the daily pain and lost the 
daily tooth; but, on the eighth, he paid the money. 
*With the treasure raised in such ways, the King made 
an expedition into Ireland, where some English nobles 
had revolted. It was one of the very few places from 
which he did not run away ; because no resistance was 
shown. He made another expedition into Wales — 
whence he did run away in the end ; but not before he 
had got from the Welsh people, as hostages, twenty- 
seven young men of the best families; every one of 
whom he caused to be slain in the following year. 

To Interdict and Excommunication, the Pope now 
added his last sentence: Deposition. He proclaimed 
John no longer King, absolved all his subjects from 
their allegiance, and sent Stephen Langton and others 
to the King of France to tell him that, if he would in- 
vade England, he should be forgiven all his sins at 

least, should be forgiven them by the Pope, if that 
would do. 

As there* was nothing that King Philip desired more 
than to invade England, he collected a great army at 
Rouen, and a fleet of seventeen hundred ships to bring 
them over. But the English people, however bitterly 
they hated the King, were not a people to suffer invasion 
quietly. They flocked to Dover, where the English 
standard was, in such great numbers to enroll them- 
selves as defenders of their native land, that there were 
not provisions for them, and the King could only select 
and retain sixty thousand. But, at this crisis, the Pope, 
who had his own reasons for objecting to either King 
John or King Philip being too powerful, interfered. 
He intrusted a legate, whose name was Pandolf, with the 
easy task of frightening King John. He sent him to 
the English camp, from France, to terrify him with ex- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 117 

aggerations of King Philip's power, and his own weak- 
ness in the discontent of the English barons and people. 
Pandolf discharged his commission so well that King 
John, in a wretched panic, consented to acknowledge 
Stephen Langton; to resign his kingdom "to God, St. 
Peter, and St. Paul," — which meant the Pope; and to 
hold it, ever afterward, by the Pope's leave, on payment 
of an annual sum of money. To this shameful contract 
he publicly bound himself in the church of the Knights 
Templar at Dover: where he laid at the legate's feet a 
part ot the tribute, which the legate haughtily trampled 
upon. But they do say that this was merely a genteel 
flourish, and that he was afterward seen to pick it up 
and pocket it. 

There was an unfortunate prophet of the name of 
Peter, who had greatly increased King John's terrors by 
predicting that he would be unknighted (which the 
King supposed to signify that he would die) before the 
Feast of the Ascension should be past. That was the 
day after this humiliation. When the next morning 
came, and the King, who had been trembling all night, 
found himself alive and safe, he ordered the prophet — 
and his son too — to be dragged through the streets at 
the tails of horses, and then hanged, for having fright- 
ened him. 

As King John had now submitted, the Pope, to King 
John's great astonishment, took him under his protec- 
tion, and informed King Philip that he found he could 
not give him leave to invade England. The angry 
Philip resolved to do it without his leave; but he gained 
nothing and lost much ; for the English, commanded by 
the Earl of Salisbury, went over, in five hundred ships, 
to the French coast, before the French fleet had sailed 
away from it, and utterly defeated the whole. 

The Pope then took off his three sentences, one after 
another, and empowered Stephen Langton publicly to 
receive King John into the favor of the Church again, 
and to ask him to dinner. The King, who hated Lang- 
ton with all his might and main, — and with reason too, 
for he was a great and good man, with whom such a 
King could have no sympathy, — pretended to cry and 
to be very grateful. There was a little difficulty about 



118 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

settling how much the King should pay as a recom- 
pense to the clergy for the losses he had caused them ; 
but the end of it was, that the superior clergy got a good 
deal, and the inferior clergy got little or nothing — which 
has also happened since King John's time, I believe. 

When all these matters were arranged the King in his 
triumph became more fierce, and false, and insolent to 
all around him than he had ever been. An alliance of 
sovereigns against King Philip gave him an opportunity 
of landing an army in France ; with which he even took 
a town! But, on the French King's gaining a great 
victory, he ran away, of course, and made a truce for 
five years. And now the time approached when he was 
to be still further humbled, and made to feel, if he 
could feel anything, what a wretched creature he was. 
Of all men in the world, Stephen Langton seemed 
raised up by Heaven to oppose and subdue him. When* il 
he ruthlessly burned and destroyed the property of his 
own subjects, because their lords, the barons, would 
not serve him abroad, Stephen Langton fearlessly re- 
proved and threatened him. When he swore to restore 
the laws of King Edward, or the laws of King Henry 
I., Stephen Langton knew his falsehood, and pursued 
him through all his evasions. When the barons met at 
the abbey of St. Edmund's-Bury, to consider their 
wrongs and the King's oppressions, Stephen Langton 
roused them by his fervid words to demand a solemn 
charter of rights and liberties from their perjured mas- 
ter, and to swear, one by one on the High Altar, that 
they would have it, or would wage war against him to 
the death. When the King hid himself in London 
from the barons, and was at last obliged to receive them, 
they told him roundly they would not believe him un- 
less Stephen Langton became a surety that he would 
keep his word. When he took the Cross to invest him- 
self with some interest, and belong to something that 
was received with favor, Stephen Langton was still im- 
movable. When he appealed to the Pope, and the Pope 
wrote to Stephen Langton in behalf of his new favorite, 
Stephen Langton was deaf, even to the Pope himself, 
and saw before him nothing but the welfare of England 
and the crimes of the English King. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 119 

At Easter-time, the barons assembled at Stamford, in 
Lincolnshire, in proud array, and, marching near to 
Oxford, where the King was, delivered into the hands of 
Stephen Langton and two others a list of grievances. 
"And these," they said, "he must redress, or we will 
do it for ourselves!" When Stephen Langton told the 
King as much, and read the list to him, he went half 
mad with rage. But that did him no more good than 
his afterward trying to pacify the barons with lies. 
They called themselves and their followers, "The army 
of God and the Holy Church. ' ' Marching through the 
country, with the people thronging to them every- 
where (except at Northampton, where they had failed in 
an attack upon the castle), they at last triumphantly set 
up their banner in London itself, whither the whole land, 
tired of the tyrant, seemed to flock to join them. Seven 
knights alone, of all the knights in England, remained 
with the King; who, reduced to this strait, at last sent 
the Earl of Pembroke to the barons to say that he 
approved of everything, and would meet them to sign 
their charter when they would. "Then," said the 
barons, "let the day be the 15th of June, and the place 
Runny-Mead." 

On Monday, the 15th of June, 1214, the King came 
from Windsor Castle, and the barons came from the 
town of Staines, and they met on Runny-Mead, which is 
still a pleasant meadow by the Thames, where rushes 
grow in the clear water of the winding river, and its 
banks are green with grass and trees. On the side of 
the barons came the general of their army, Robert Fitz- 
Walter, and a great concourse of the nobility of Eng- 
land. With the King came, in all, some four-and-twenty 
persons of any note, most of whom despised him, and 
were merely his advisers in form. On that great day, 
and in that great company, the King signed Magna 
Charta — the great charter of England — by which he 
pledged himself to maintain the Church in its rights; 
to relieve the barons of oppressive obligations as vassals 
of the Crown — of which the barons, in their turn, 
pledged themselves to relieve their vassals, the people ; 
to respect the liberties of London and all other cities and 
boroughs ; to protect foreign merchants who came to 



120 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

England; to imprison no man without a fair trial; and 
to sell, delay, or deny justice to none. As the barons 
knew his falsehood well, they further required, as their 
securities, that he should send out of his kingdom all 
his foreign troops; that for two months they should 
hold possession of the city of London, and Stephen 
Langton of the Tower; and that five-and-twenty of their 
body, chosen by themselves, should be a lawful com- 
mittee to watch the keeping of the charter, and to make 
war upon him if he broke it. 

All this he was obliged to yield. He signed the char- 
ter with a smile, and, if he could have looked agreeable, 
would have done so, as he departed from the splendid 
assembly. When he got home to Windsor Castle, he 
was quite a madman in his helpless fury. And he broke 
the charter immediately afterward. 

He sent abroad for foreign soldiers, and sent to the 
Pope for help, and plotted to take London by surprise, 
while the jbarons should be holding a great tournament 
at Stamford, which they had agreed to hold there as a 
celebration of the charter. The barons, however, found 
him out and put it off. Then, when the barons desired 
to see him and tax him with his treachery, he made 
numbers of appointments with them, and kept none, 
and shifted from place to place, and was constantly 
sneaking and skulking about. At last lie appeared at 
Dover, to join his foreign soldiers, of whom numbers 
came into his pay; and with them he besieged and took 
Rochester Castle, which was occupied by knights and 
soldiers of the barons. He would have hanged them 
every one, but the leader of the foreign soldiers, fear- 
ful of what the English people might afterward do to 
him, interfered to save the knights; therefore the King 
was fain to satisfy his vengeance with the death of all 
the common men. Then, he sent the Earl of Salisbury, 
with one portion of his army, to ravage the eastern part 
of his own dominions, while he carried fire and slaugh- 
ter into the northern part; torturing, plundering, kill- 
ing, and inflicting every possible cruelty upon the 
people; and, every morning, setting a worthy example 
to his men by setting fire, with his own monster-hands, 
to the house where he had slept last night. Nor was 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 121 

this all ; for the Pope, coming to the aid of his precious 
friend, laid the kingdom under an Interdict again, be- 
cause the people took part with the barons. It did not 
much matter, for the people had grown so used to it 
now that they had begun to think nothing about it. It 
occurred to them — perhaps to Stephen Langton too — 
that they could keep their churches open, and ring their 
bells without the Pope's permission, as well as with it. 
So, they tried the experiment — and found that it suc- 
ceeded perfectly. 

It being now impossible to bear the country as a wild- 
erness of cruelty, or longer to ' hold any terms with 
such a forsworn outlaw ot a King, the barons sent to 
Louis, son of the French monarch, to offer him the Eng- 
lish crown. Caring as^little for the Pope's excommu- 
nication of him if he accepted the offer, as it is possible 
his father may have cared for the Pope's forgiveness of 
his sins, he landed at Sandwich (King John immediately 
running JJaway from ; Dover, where |he happened to be), 
and went on to London. The Scottish King, with 
whom many of the Northern English lords had taken 
refuge ; numbers of the foreign soldiers, numbers of the 
barons, and numbers of the people went over to him 
every day; King John, the while, continually running 
away in all directions. The career of Louis was 
checked, however, by the suspicions of the barons, 
founded on the dying declaration of a French lord, that 
when the kingdom was conquered he was sworn to ban- 
ish them as traitors, and to give their estates to some of 
his own nobles. Rather than suffer this, some of the 
barons hesitated : others even went over to King John. 

It seemed to be the turning-point of King John's for- 
tunes, for, in his savage and murderous course, he had 
now taken some towns and met with some successes. 
But, happily for England and humanity, his death was 
near. Crossing a dangerous quicksand, called the 
Wash, not very far from Wisbeach, the tide came up 
and nearly drowned his army. He and his soldiers 
escaped; but, looking back from the shore when he was 
safe, he saw the roaring water sweep down in a torrent, 
overturn the wagons, horses, and men that carried his 



122 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

treasure, and ingulf them in a raging whirlpool from 
which nothing could be delivered. 

Cursing, and swearing, and gnawing his fingers, he 
went on to Swinestead Abbey, where the monks set 
before him quantities of pears and peaches and new 
cider, — some say poison too, but there is very little reason 
to suppose so — of which he ate and drank in an im- 
moderate and beastly way. All nigh the lay ill of a 
burning fever, and haunted with horrible fears. Next 
day they put him in a horse-litter, and carried him to 
Sleaford Castle, where he passed another night of pain 
and horror. Next day they carried him, with greater 
difficulty than on the day before, to the Castle of 
Newark upon Trent; and there, on the 18th of October, 
in the forty-ninth year of his vile reign, was an end of 
this miserable brute. 

CHAPTER XV. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY III., CALLED OF WINCHESTER. 

If any of the English barons remembered the mur- 
dered Arthur's sister, Eleanor, the fair maid of Brit- 
tany, shut up in her convent at Bristol, none among 
them spoke of her now, or maintained her right to the 
crown. The dead Usurper's eldest boy, Henry by name, 
was taken by the Earl of Pembroke, the Marshal of Eng- 
land, to the city of Gloucester, and there crowned in 
great haste when he was only ten years old. As the 
crown itself had been lost with the King's treasure in 
the raging water, and as there was no time to make an- 
other, they put a circle of plain gold upon his head in- 
stead. "We have been the enemies of this child's 
father," said Lord Pembroke, a good and true gentle- 
man, to the few lords who were present, "and he mer- 
ited our ill-will ; but the child himself is innocent, and 
his youth demands our friendship and protection." 
Those lords felt tenderly toward the little boy, remem- 
bering their own young children ; and they bowed their 
heads, and said, "Long live King Henry III. !" 

Next, a great council met at Bristol, revised Magna 
Charta, and made Lord Pembroke Regent or Protector 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 123 

of England, as the King was too young to reign alone. 
The next thing to be done was to get rid of Prince 
Louis of France, and to win over those English barons 
who were still ranged under his banner. He was strong 
in many parts of England, and in London itself ; and 
he held, among other places, a certain castle called the 
Castle of Mount Sorel, in Leicestershire. To this for- 
tress, after some skirmishing and truce-making, Lord 
Pembroke laid siege. Louis dispatched an army of six 
hundred knights and twenty thousand soldiers to relieve 
it. Lord Pembroke, 'who was 'not strong enough for 
such a force, retired with all his men. The army of the 
French prince, which had marched there with fire and 
plunder, marched away with fire and plunder, and 
came, in a boasttul, swaggering manner, to Lincoln. 
The town submitted; but the castle in the town, held by 
a brave widow lady, named Nicola de Camville (whose 
property it was), made such a sturdy resistance that 
the French count in command of the army of the French 
prince found it necessary to besiege this castle. While 
he was thus engaged word was brought to him that 
Lord Pembroke, with four hundred knights, two hun- 
dred and fifty men with cross-bows, and a stout force 
both of horse and foot, was marching toward him. 
"What care I?" said the French count. "The English- 
man is not so mad as to attack me and my great army 
in a walled town!" But the Englishman did it for all 
that, and did it — not so madly but so wisely, that he 
decoyed the great army into the narrow, ill-paved lanes 
and byways of Lincoln, where its horse-soldiers could 
not ride in any strong body ; and there he made such 
havoc with them that the whole force surrendered them- 
selves prisoners, except the count; who said that he 
would never yield to any English traitor alive, and 
accordingly got killed. The end of this victory, which 
the English called, for a joke, the Fair of Lincoln, was 
the usual one in those times — the common men were 
slain without any mercy, and the knights and gentlemen 
paid ransom and went home. 

The wife of Louis, the fair Blanche of Castile, duti 
fully equipped a fleet of eighty good ships, and sent it 
over from France to her husband's aid. An English 



124 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

fleet of forty ships, some good and some bad,' gallantly 
met them near the mouth of the Thames, and took or 
suck sixty- five in one fight. This great loss put an end 
to the French Prince's hopes. A treaty was made at 
Lambeth, in virtue of which the English barons who 
had remained attached to his cause returned to their alle- 
giance, and it was engaged on both sides that the Prince 
and all his troops should retire peacefully to France. 
It was time to go ; for war had made him so poor that 
he was obliged to borrow money from the citizens of 
London to pay his expenses home. 

Lord Pembroke afterward applied himself to govern- 
ing the country justly, and to healing the quarrels and 
disturbances that had risen among men in the days of 
the^'bad King John. He caused Magna Charta to be 
still more improved, and so amended the Forest Laws 
that a peasant was no longer put to death for killing a 
stag in a Royal Forest, but was only imprisoned. It 
would have been well for England if it could have had 
so good a Protector many years longer, but that was 
not to be. Within three years after the young King's 
coronation, Lord Pembroke died; and you may see his 
tomb, at this day, in the old Temple Church in London. 

The Protectorship was now divided. Peter de Roches, 
whom King John had made Bishop of Winchester, was 
intrusted with the care of the person of the young sov- 
ereign ; and the exercise of the Royal authority was 
confided to Earl Hubert de Burgh. These two person- 
ages had from the first no liking for each other, and 
soon became enemies. When the young King was 
declared of age, Peter de Roches, finding that Huber 
increased in power and favor, retired discontentedly, 
and went abroad. For nearly ten years afterward 
Hubert had full sway alone. 

But ten years is a long time to hold the favor of a 
king. This King, too, as he grew up, showed a strong 
resemblance to his father in feebleness, inconsistency, 
and irresolution. The best that can be said of him is 
that he was not cruel. De Roches coming home again, 
after ten years, and being a novelty, the King began to 
favor him, and to look coldly on Hubert. Wanting 
money besides, and having made Hubert rich, he began 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 125 

to dislike Hubert. At last he was made to believe, or 
pretended to believe, that Hubert had misappropriated 
some of the Royal treasure ; and ordered him to furnish 
an account of all he had done in his administration. 
Besides which, the foolish charge was brought against 
Hubert that he had made himself the King's favorite by- 
magic. Hubert very well knowing that he could never 
defend himself against such nonsense, and that his old 
enemy must be determined on his ruin, instead of an- 
swering the charges fled to Merton Abbey. Then the 
King, in a violent passion, sent for the Mayor of Lon- 
don, and said to the Mayor, "Take twenty thousand 
citizens, and drag me Hubert de Burgh out of that 
abbey, and bring him here." The Mayor posted off to 
do it, but the Archbishop of Dublin (who was a friend 
of Hubert's) warning the King that an abbey was a 
sacred place, and that if he committed any violence 
there, he must answer for it to the Church, the King 
changed his mind and called the Mayor back, and de- 
clared that Hubert should have four months to prepare 
his defense, and should be safe and free during that 
time. 

Hubert, who relied upon the King's word, though I 
think he was old enough to have known better, came 
out of Merton Abbey upon these conditions, and jour- 
neyed away to see his wife: a Scottish Princess who 
was then at St. Edmunds-Bury. 

Almost as soon as he had departed from the sanctu- 
ary, his enemies persuaded the weak King to send out 
one Sir Godfrey de Crancumb, who commanded three 
hundred vagabonds called the Black Band, with orders 
to seize him. They came up with him at a little town 
in Essex, called Brentwood, when he was in bed. He 
leaped out of bed, got out of the house, fled to the 
church, ran up to the altar, and l^id his hand upon the 
cross. Sir Godfrey and the Black Band, caring neither 
for church, altar, nor cross, dragged him forth to the 
church door, with their drawn swords flashing round 
his head, and sent for a smith to rivet a set of chains 
upon him. When the smith (I wish I knew his name !) 
was brought, all dark and swarthy with the smoke of 
his forge, and panting with the speed he had made ; and 



126 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the Black Band, falling aside to show him the prisoner, 
cried with a loud uproar, ' ' Make the fetters heavy ! make 
them strong'" the smith dropped upon his knee — but 
not to the Black Band — and said: "This is the brave 
Earl Hubert de Burgh, who fought at Dover Castle, and 
destroyed the French fleet, and has done his country 
much good service. You may kill me, if you like, but 
I will never make a chain for Earl Hubert de Burgh!" 
The Black Band never blushed, or they might have 
blushed at this. They knocked the smith about from 
one to another, and swore at him, and tied the Earl on 
horseback, undressed as he was, and carried him off to 
the Tower of London. The bishops, however, were so 
indignant at the violation of the sanctuary of the Church, 
that the frightened King soon ordered the Black Band - 
to take him back again ; at [the same time commanding , 
the Sheriff of Essex to prevent his escaping out of^ 
Brentwood Church. Well! the Sheriff dug a deep 
trench all around the church, and erected a high fence, 
and watched the church night and day ; the Black Band 
and their captain watched it too, like three hundred and 
one black wolves. For thirty-nine days Hubert de 
Burgh remained within. At length, upon the fortieth 
day, cold and hunger were too much for him and he 
gave himself up to the Black Band, who carried him off, 
for the second time, to the Tower. When his trial came 
on, he refused to plead ; but at last it was arranged that 
he should give up all the royal lands which had been 
bestowed upon him, and should be kept at the Castle of 
Devizes, in what was called "free prison," in charge of 
four knights appointed by four lords. There he re- 
mained almost a year, until, learning that a follower of 
his old enemy the Bishop was made keeper of the 
Castle, and fearing that he might be killed by treachery, 
he climbed the ramparts one dark night, dropped from 
the top of the high castle wall into the moat, and coming 
safely to the ground took refuge in another church. 
From this place he was delivered by a party of horse 
dispatched to his help by some nobles, who were by this 
time in revolt against the King, and assembled in Wales. 
He was finally pardoned and restored to his estates, but 
he lived privately, and never more aspired to a high 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 127 

post in the realm, or to a high place in the King's favor. 
And thus end — more happily than the stories of many 
favorites of Kings — the adventures of Earl Hubert de 
Burgh. 

The nobles, who had risen in revolt, were stirred up 
to rebellion by the overbearing conduct of the Bishop of 
Winchester, who, finding that the King secretly hated 
the Great Charter which had been forced from his 
father, did his utmost to confirm him in that dislike, and 
in the preference he showed to foreigners over the Eng- 
lish. Of this, and of his even publicly declaring that 
the barons of England were inferior to those of France, 
the English lords complained with such bitterness that 
the King, finding them well supported by the clergy, 
became frightened for his throne, and sent away the 
Bishop and all his foreign associates. On his mar- 
riage, however, with Eleanor, a French lady, the 
daughter of the Count of Provence, he openly fav- 
ored the foreigners again ; and so many of his wife's 
relations came over, and made such an immense family 
party at court, and got so many good things, and pock- 
eted so much money, and were so high with the English 
whose money they pocketed, that the bolder English 
barons murmured openly about a clause there was in 
the Great Charter, which provided for the banishment 
of unreasonable favorites. But 'the ' foreigners only 
laughed disdainfully, and said, "What are your English 
laws to us?" 

King Philip of France had died, and had been suc- 
ceeded by Prince Louis, who had also died after a short 
reign of three years, and had been succeeded by his son 
of the same name— so moderate and just a man that he 
was not the least in the world like a king, as kings 
went. Isabella, King Henry's mother, wished very 
much (for a certain spite she had) that England should 
make war against this King ; and, as King Henry was a 
mere puppet in anybody's hands who knew how to man- 
age his feebleness, she easily carried her point with 
him. But the Parliament were determined to give him 
no money for such a war. So, to defy the Parliament, 
he packed up thirty large casks of silver — I don't know 
how he got so much ; I dare say he screwed it out of the 



128 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

miserable Jews — and put them aboard ship, and went 
away himself to carry war into France ; accompanied 
by his mother and his brother Richard, Earl of Corn- 
wall, who was rich and clever. But he only got well 
beaten, and came home. 

The good-humor of the Parliament was not restored 
by this. They reproached the King with wasting the 
public money to make greedy foreigners rich, and were 
so stern with him, and so determined not to let him 
have more of it to waste if they could help it, that 
he was 'at his wit's end for some, and tried so 
shamelessly to get all he could from his subjects by 
excuses or by force, that the people used to say the 
King was the sturdiest beggar in England. He took the 
Cross, thinking to get some money by that means: but, 
as it was very well known that he never meant to go on 
a crusade, he got none. In all this contention, the Lon- 
doners were particularly keen against the King, and the 
King hated them warmly in return. Hating or loving, 
however, made no difference; he continued in the same 
condition for nine or ten years, when at last the barons 
said that if he would solemnly confirm their liberties 
afresh, the Parliament would vote him a large sum. 

As he readily consented, there was a great meeting 
held in Westminster Hall, one pleasant day in May, 
when all the clergy, dressed in their robes and holding 
every one ot them a burning candle in his hand, stood 
up (the barons being also there), while the Archbishop 
of Canterbury read the sentence of excommunication 
against any man, and all men, who should henceforth, 
in any way, infringe the Great Charter of the Kingdom. 
When he had done, they all put out their burning can- 
dles with a curse upon the soul of anyone, and everyone, 
who should merit that sentence. The King concluded 
with an oath to keep the Charter "As 1 am a man, as I 
am a Christian, as I am a knight, as I am a king !" 

It was easy to make oaths, and easy to break them ; 
and the King did both, as his father had done before 
him. He took to his old courses again when he was sup- 
plied with money, and soon cured of their weakness the 
few who had ever really trusted him. When his money 
was gone and hew as once more borrowing and beg 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 129 

ging everywhere with a meanness worthy of his nature, 
he got into a difficulty with the Pope respecting the 
crown of Sicily, which the Pope said he had a right to 
give away, and which he offered to King Henry for his 
second son, Prince Edmund. But, if you or I give 
away what we have not got, and what belongs to some- 
body else, it is likely that the person to whom we give 
it will have some trouble in taking it. It was exactly 
so in this case. It was necessary to conquer the Sicilian 
crown before it could be put upon young Edmund's 
head. It could not be conquered without money. The 
Pope ordered the clergy to raise money. The clergy, 
however, were not so obedient to him as usual ; they had 
been disputing with him for some time about his unjust 
preference of Italian priests in England ; and they had 
begun to doubt whether the King's chaplain, whom he 
allowed to be paid for preaching in seven hundred 
churches, could possibly be, even by the Pope's favor, 
in seven hundred places at once. "The Pope and the 
King together," said the Bishop of London, "may take 
the miter off my head; but, if they do, they will find 
that I shall put on a soldier's helmet. I pay nothing." 
The Bishop ot Worcester was as bold as the Bishop of 
London, and would pay nothing either. Such sums as 
the more timid or more helpless of the clergy did raise 
were squandered away, without doing any good to the 
King, or bringing the Sicilian crown an inch nearer to 
Prince Edmund's head. The end of the business was, 
that the Pope gave the crown to the brother of the King 
of France (who conquered it for himself), and sent the 
King of England in a bill of one hundred thousand 
pounds for the expenses of not having won it. 

The King was now so much distressed that we might 
almost pity him, if it were possible to pity a King so 
shabby and ridiculous. His clever brother, Richard, 
had bought the title of King of the Romans from the 
German people, and was no longer near him, to help 
him with advice. The clergy, resisting the very Pope, 
were in alliance with the barons. The barons were 
headed by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, married 
to King Henry's sister, and, though a foreigner himself, 
the most popular man in England against the foreign 

9 



130 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

favorites. When the King next met his Parliament, the 
barons, led by this Earl, came before him, armed from 
head to foot, and cased in armor. When the Parliament 
again assembled, in a month's time, at Oxford, this 
Earl was at their head, and the King was obliged to 
consent, on oath, to what was called a Committee of 
Government, consisting of twenty-four members ; twelve 
chosen by the barons and twelve chosen by himself. 

But, at a good time for him, his brother Richard came 
back. Richard's first act (the barons would not admit 
him into England on other terms) was to swear to be 
faithful to the Committee of Government — which he 
immediately began to oppose with all his might. Then, 
the barons began to quarrel among themselves ; espe- 
cially the proud Earl of Gloucester with the Earl of 
Leicester, who went abroad in disgust. Then, the peo- 
ple began to be dissatisfied with the barons, because 
they did not do enough for them. The King's chances 
seemed so good again at length, that he took heart 
enough — or caught it from his brother — to tell the Com- 
mittee of Government that he abolished them —as to his 
oath, never mind that, the Pope said! — and to seize all 
the money in the Mint, and to shut himself up in the 
Tower of London. Here he was joined by his only 
son, Prince Edward; and from the Tower he made 
public a letter of the Pope's to the world in general, 
informing all men that he had been an excellent and 
just King for five-and-forty years. 

As everybody knew he had been nothing of the sort, 
nobody cared much for this document. It so chanced 
that the proud Earl of Gloucester dying, was succeeded 
by bis son ; and that his son, instead of being the enemy 
of the Earl of Leicester, was (for the time) his friend. 
It fell out, therefore, that these two Earls joined their 
forces, took several of the Royal castles in the country, 
and advanced as hard as they could on London. The 
London people, always opposed to the King, declared 
for them with great joy. The King himself remained 
shut up, not at all gloriously, in the Tower. Prince 
Edward made the best of his way to Windsor Castle. 
His mother, the Queen, attempted to follow him by 
water, but the people seeing her barge rowing up the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 131 

river, and hating her with all their hearts, ran to Lon- 
don Bridge, got together a quantity of stones and mud, 
and pelted the barge as it came through, crying fur- 
iously. "Drown the witch! Drown her!" They were 
so near doing it that the Mayor took the old lady under 
his protection, and shut her up in St. Paul's until the 
danger was past. 

It would require a great deal of writing on my part, 
and a great deal of reading on yours, to follow the King 
through his disputes with the barons, and to follow the 
barons through their disputes with one another — so I will 
make short work of it for both of us, and only relate the 
chief events that arose out of these quarrels. The good 
King of France was asked to decide between them. He 
gave it as his opinion that the King must maintain the 
Great Charter, and that the barons must give up the 
Committee of Government, and all the rest that had 
been done by the Parliament at Oxford ; which the 
Royalists, or King's party, scornfully called the Mad 
Parliament. The barons declared that these were not 
fair terms, and they would not accept them. Then they 
caused the great bell of St. Paul's to be tolled, for the 
purpose *of rousing up the London people, who armed 
themselves at the dismal sound, and formed quite an 
army in the streets. I am sorry to say, however, that 
instead of falling upon the King's party, with whom 
their quarrel was, they fell upon the miserable Jews, and 
killed at least five hundred of them. They pretended 
that some of these Jews were on the King's side, and 
that they kept hidden in their houses, for the destruction 
of the people, a certain terrible composition called Greek 
Fire, which could not be put out with water, but only 
burned the fiercer for it. What they really did keep in 
their houses was money ; and this their cruel enemies 
wanted, and this their cruel enemies took like robbers 
and murderers. 

The Earl of Leicester put himself at the head of these 
Londoners and other forces, and followed the King to 
Lewes in Sussex, where he lay encamped with his army. 
Before giving the King's forces battle here, the Earl 
addressed his soldiers, and said that King Henry III. 
had broken so many oaths that he had become the 



132 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

enemy of God, and therefore they would wear white 
crosses on their breasts, as if they were arrayed, not 
against a fellow-Christian, but against a Turk. White 
crossed, accordingly, they rushed into the fight. They 
would have lost the day — the King having on his side 
all the foreigners in England ; and, from Scotland, John 
Comyn, John Baliol, and Robert Bruce, with all their 
men — but for the impatience of Prince Edward, who, 
in his hot desire to have vengeance on the people of 
London, threw the whole of his father's army into con- 
fusion. He was taken prisoner; so was the King; so 
was the King's brother the King of the Romans ; and 
five thousand Englishmen were left dead upon the 
bloody grass. 

For this success the Pope excommunicated the Earl 
of Leicester: which neither the Earl nor the people 
cared at all about. The people loved him and supported 
him, and he became the real King ; having all the power 
of the government in his own hands, though he was 
outwardly respectful to King Henry III., whom he 
took with him wherever he went, like a poor old limp 
court-card. He summoned a Parliament (in the year 
1265) which was the first Parliament in England that the 
people had any real share in electing ; he grew more and 
more in favor with the people every day, and they stood 
by him in whatever he did. 

Many of the other barons, and particularly the Earl of 
Gloucester, who had become by this time as proud as 
his father, grew jealous of this powerful and popular 
Earl, who was proud too, and began to conspire against 
him. Since the battle of Lewes, Prince Edward had 
been kept as a hostage, and, though he was otherwise 
treated like a Prince, had never been allowed to go out 
without attendants appointed by the Earl of Leicester, 
who watched him. The conspiring lords found means 
to propose to him, in secret, that they should assist him 
to escape, and should make him their leader; to which 
he very heartily assented. 

So, on a day that was agreed upon, he said to his 
attendants after dinner (being then at Hereford), "I 
should like to ride on horseback, this fine afternoon, a 
little way into the country." As they, too, thought it 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 133 

would be very pleasant to have a canter in the sunshine, 
they all rode out of the town together in a gay little 
troop. When they came to a fine level piece of turf the 
Prince fell to comparing their horses one with another, 
and offering bets that one was faster than another, and 
the attendants, suspecting no harm, rode galloping 
matches until their horses were quite tired. The Prince 
rode no matches himself, but looked on from his saddle, 
and staked his money. Thus they passed the whole 
merry afternoon. Now, the sun as setting, and they were 
all going slowly up a hill, the Prince's horse very fresh 
and all the other horses very weary, when a strange rid- 
er mounted on a gray steed appeared at top of the hill, 
and waved his hat. "What does the fellow mean?" said 
the attendants one to another. The Prince answered on 
the instant, by setting spurs to his horse, dashing away 
at his utmost speed, joining the man, riding into the 
midst of a little crowd of horsemen who were then seen 
waiting under some trees, and who closed around him ; 
and so he departed in a cloud of dust, leaving the road 
empty of all but the baffled attendants, who sat look- 
ing at one another, while their horses drooped their ears 
and panted. 

The Prince joined the Earl of Gloucester at Ludlow. 
The Earl of Leicester, with a part of the army and the 
stupid old King, was at Hereford. One of the Earl of 
Leicester's sons, Simon de Montfort, with another part 
of the army, was in Sussex. To prevent these two parts 
from uniting was the Prince's first object. He attacked 
Simon de Montfort by night, defeated him, seized his 
banners and treasure, and forced him into Kenilworth 
Castle in Warwickshire, which belonged to his family. 

His father, the Earl of Leicester, in the meanwhile, 
not knowing what had happened, marched out of Here- 
ford, with his part of the army and the King, to meet 
him. He came, on a bright morning in August, to 
Evesham, which is watered by the pleasant river Avon. 
Looking rather anxiously across the prospect toward 
Kenilworth, he saw his own banners advancing: and his 
face brightened with joy. But it clouded darkly when 
he presently perceived that the banners were captured, 
and in the enemy's hands; and he said, "It is over. The 



134 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Lord have mercy on our souls, for our bodies are Prince 
Edward's!" 

He fought like a true knight, nevertheless. When 
his horse was killed under him, he fought on foot. It 
was a fierce battle and the dead lay in heaps every- 
where. The old King, stuck up' in a suit of armor on a 
big war horse, which didn't mind him at all, and which 
carried him into all sorts of places where he didn't want 
to go, got into everybody's way, and very nearly got 
knocked on the head by one of his son's men. But he 
managed to pipe out, "I am Harry of Winchester!" and 
the Prince, who heard him, seized his bridle, and took 
him out of peril. The Earl of Leicester still fought 
bravely, until his best son Henry was killed, and the 
bodies of his best friends choked his path ; and then he 
fell, still fighting, sword in hand. They mangled his 
body, and sent it as a present to a noble lady — but a 
very unpleasant lady, I should think — who was the wife 
of his worst enemy. They could not mangle his mem- 
ory in the minds of the faithful people, though. Many 
years afterward, they loved him more than ever, and 
regarded him as a saint, and always spoke of him as 
"Sir Simon the Righteous." 

And even though he was dead, the cause for which he 
had fought still lived, and was strong, and forced itself 
upon the King in the very hour of victor}^. Henry 
found himself obliged to respect the Great Charter, how- 
ever much he hated it, and to make laws similar to the 
laws of the Great Earl of Leicester, and to be moderate 
and forgiving toward the people at last — even toward 
the people of London, who had so long opposed him. 
There were more risings before all this was done, but 
they were set at rest by these means, and Prince Edward 
did his best in all things to restore peace. One Sir 
Adam de Gourdon was the last dissatisfied knight in 
arms, but the Prince vanquished him in a single combat, 
in a wood, and nobly gave him his life, and became his 
friend, instead of slaying him. Sir Adam was not un- 
grateful. He ever afterward remained devoted to his 
generous conqueror. 

When the troubles of the kingdom were thus calmed, 
Prince Edward and his cousin Henry took the Cross, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 135 

and went away to the Holy Land, with many English 
lords and knights. Four years afterward the King of 
the Romans died, and, next year (1272), his brother, the 
weak King of England, died. He was sixty-eight years 
old then, and had reigned fifty-six years. He was as 
much of a king in death as he had ever been in life. 
He was the mere pale shadow of a king at all times. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD I., CALLED LONGSHANKS. 

It was now the year of our Lord 1272; and Prince 
Edward, the heir to the throne, being away in the Holy 
Land, knew nothing of his father's death. The barons, 
however, proclaimed him King, immediately after the 
Royal funeral ; and the people very willingly consented, 
since most men knew too well by this time what the 
horrors of a contest for the crown were. [So King 
Edward I., called, in a not very complimentary manner, 
Longshanks, because of the slenderness of his legs, was 
peacefully accepted by the English nation. 

His legs had need to be strong, however long and thin 
they were; for they had to support him through many 
difficulties on the fiery sands of Asia, where his small 
force of soldiers fainted, died, deserted, and seemed to 
melt away. But his prowess made light of it, and he 
said, "I will go on, if I go on with no other follower than 
my groom!" 

A Prince of this spirit gave the Turks a deal of trouble. 
He stormed Nazareth, at which place, of all places on 
earth, I am sorry to relate, he made a frightful slaughter 
of innocent people ; and then he went to Acre, where 
he got a truce of ten years from the Sultan. He had 
very nearly lost his life in Acre, through the treachery 
of a Saracen noble, called the Emir of Jaffa, who, mak- 
ing the pretense that he had some idea of turning Chris- 
tian and wanted to know all about that religion, sent a 
trusty messenger to Edward very often — with a dagger 
in his sleeve. At last, one Friday in "Whitsun week, 
when it was very hot, and all the sandy prospect lay 



136 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

beneath the blazing sun, burned up like a great overdone 
biscuit, and Edward was lying on a couch, dressed for 
coolness in only a loose robe, the messenger, with his 
chocolate-colored face and his bright dark eyes and white 
teeth, came creeping in with a letter, and kneeled 
down like a tame tiger. But the moment Edward 
stretched out his hand to take the letter, the tiger made 
a spring at his heart. He was quick, but Edward was 
quick too. He seized the traitor by his chocolate throat, 
threw him to the ground, and slew him with the very 
dagger he had drawn. The weapon had struck Edward 
in the arm, and although the wound itself was slight, 
it threatened to be mortal, for the blade of the dagger 
had been smeared with poison. Thanks, however, to a 
better surgeon than was often to be found in those 
times, and to some wholesome herbs, and above all, to 
his faithful wife Eleanor, who devotedly"^ nursed him 
and is said by some to have sucked the poison from the 
wound with her own red lips (which I am very willing 
to believe), Edward soon recovered and was sound 
again. 

As the King his father had sent entreaties to him to 
return home, he now began the journey. He had got as 
far as Italy, when he met messengers who brought him 
intelligence of the King's death. Hearing that all was 
quiet at home, he made no haste to return to his own 
dominions, but paid a visit to the Pope, and went in 
state through various Italian towns, where he was wel- 
comed with acclamation as a mighty champion of the 
Cross from the Holy Land, and where he received pres- 
ents of purple mantles and prancing horses, and went 
along in great triumph. The* shouting people little 
knew that he was the last English monarch who would 
ever embark in a crusade, or that within twenty years 
every conquest which the Christians had made in the 
Holy Laud at the cost of so much blood, would be won 
back by the Turks. But all this came to pass. 

There was, and there is, an old town standing in a 
plain in France, called Chalons. When the King was 
coming toward this place on his way to England, a wily 
French lord, called the Count of Chalons, sent him a 
polite challenge to come with his knights and hold a 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 137 

fair tournament with the Count and his knights, and 
make a day of it with sword and lance. It was repre- 
sented to the King that the Count of Chalons was not 
to be trusted, and that instead of a holiday fight for 
mere show and in good humor, he secretly meant a real 
battle, in which the English should be defeated by su- 
perior force. 

The King, however, nothing afraid, went to the ap- 
pointed place on the appointed day with a thousand fol- 
lowers. When the Count came with two thousand and 
attacked the English in earnest, the English rushed at 
them with such valor that the Count's men and the 
Count's horses soon began to be tumbled down all over 
the field. The Count himself seized the King around 
the neck, but the King tumbled him out of his saddle 
in return for the compliment, and, jumping from his 
own horse and standing over him beat away at his iron 
armor like a blacksmith hammering on his anvil. 
Even when the Count owned himself defeated and 
offered his sword, the King would not do him the honor 
to take it, but made him yield it up to a common sol- 
dier. There had been such fury shown in this fight 
that it was afterward called the little Battle of Chalons. 

The English were very well disposed to be proud 
of their King after these adventures ; so. when he landed 
at Dover in the year 1274 (being then thirty-six years old), 
and went on to Westminster, where he and his good 
Queen were crowned with great magnificence, splendid 
rejoicings took place. For the coronation feast there were 
provided, among other eatables, 400 oxen, 400 sheep, 
450 pigs, 18 wild boars, 300 flitches of bacon, and 20,000 
fowls. The fountains and conduits in the street flowed 
with red and white wine instead of water ; the rich citi- 
zens hung silks and cloths of the brightest colors out of 
their windows, to increase the beauty of the show, and 
threw out gold and silver by whole handfuls to make 
scrambles for the crowd. In short, there was such eating 
and drinking, such music and capering, such a ring- 
ing of bells and tossing of caps, such a shouting, and 
singing, and reveling, as the narrow overhanging 
streets of old London City had not witnessed for many a 
long day. 

10 History 



138 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

All the people were merry—except the poor Jews — 
who, trembling within their houses, and scarcely daring 
to peep out, began to fore see that they would have to 
find the money for this joviality sooner or later. 

To dismiss this sad subiect of the Jews for the present, 
I am sorry to add that in this reign they were most un- 
mercifully pillaged. They were hanged in great num- 
bers, on accusations of having clipped the King's coin — 
which all kinds of people had done. They were heavily 
taxed ; they were disgracefully badged ; they were, on 
one day, thirteen years after the coronation, taken up 
with their wives and children and thrown into beastly 
prisons, until they purchased their release by paying to 
the King twelve thousand pounds. Finally.every kind 
of property belonging to them was seized by the King, 
except so little as would defray the charge of their tak- 
ing themselves away into foreign countries. Many years 
elapsed before the hope of gain induced any of their race 
to return to England, where they had been treated so 
heartlessly and had suffered so much. 

If King Edward I. had been as bad a king to Chris- 
tians as he was to Jews, he would have been bad indeed. 
But he was, in general, a wise and great monarch, un- 
der whom the country much improved. He had no love 
for the Great Charter— few Kings had, through many, 
many years— but he had high qualities. The first bold 
object which he conceived when he came home was to 
unite under one Sovereign England, Scotland, and 
wales; the last two of which countries had each a little 
king of its own, about whom the people were always 
quarreling and fighting, and making a prodigious dis- 
turbance-* great deal more than he was worth. In 
the course of King Edward's reign he was engaged be- 

cWr m a Wa u Wlth FranCG - ^° make the *e luarrels 

thus' 6 'waTA? P T tG thdr hiSt ° rieS and take them 
thus Wales, first. France, second. Scotland third 

the M? tZ S h he PriDCe .S f WaleS " He had been on 
cio. The King, being crowned and in his 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



139 



own dominions, three times more required Llewellvn to 
come and do homage; and three times more Llewellvn 
said he would rather not. He was going to be married 
to Eleanor deMontfort, a young lady of the family men- 
tioned m the last reign ; and it chanced that this vounsr 
lady, coming from France with her youngest brother 
Emeric, was taken by an English ship and was ordered 
by the English King to be detained. Upon this the 
quarrel came to a head. The King went, with his fleet, 
to the coast of Wales, where, so encompassing Llewel- 
lyn that he could only take refuge in the bleak moun- 
tain region of Snowdon, in which no provisions could 
reach him, he was soon starved into an apology, and 
into a treaty of peace and into paying the expenses of 
the war. The King, however, forgave him some of the 
hardest conditions of the treaty and consented to his 
marriage. And he now thought he had reduced Wales 
to obedience. 

But the Welsh, although they were naturally a gentle, 
quiet, pleasant people, who liked to receive stranger in 
their cottages among the mountains, and to set before 
them with free hospitality whatever they had to eat and 
drink, and lo play to them on their harps, and sing their 
native ballads to them, were a people of great spirit 
when their blood was up. Englishmen, after this aifair, 
began to be insolent in Wales, and to assume the air of 
masters ; and the Welsh pride could not bear it. More- 
over, they believed in that unlucky old Merlin, some of 
whose unlucky old prophecies somebody always seemed 
doomed to remember when there was a chance of its 
doing harm; and just at this time some blind old gen- 
tleman with a harp, and a long white beard, who was 
an excellent person, but had become of an unknown 
age and tedious, burst out with a declaration that Merlin 
had predicted that when English money had become 
round, a Prince of Wales would be crowned in London. 
Now, King Edward had recently forbidden the English 
penny to be cut into halves and quarters for halfpence 
and farthings, and had actually introduced a round 
coin. Therefore, the Welsh people said this was the 
time Merlm meant, and rose accordingly. 

King Edward had bought over Prince David, 



140 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Llewellyn's brother, by heaping favors upon him ; but he 
was the first to revolt, being perhaps troubled in his con- 
science. One stormy night he surprised the Castle of 
Hawarden, in possession of which an English nobleman 
had been left ; killed the whole garrison, and carried off 
the nobleman a prisoner to Snowdon. Upon this the 
Welsh people rose like one man. King Edward, with 
his army, marching from Worcester to the Menai Strait, 
crossed it near to where the wonderful tubular iron 
bridge now, in days so different, makes a passage tor 
railway trains — by a bridge of boats that enabled forty 
men to march abreast. He subdued the Island of 
Anglesea, and sent his men forward to observe the 
enemy. The sudden appearance of the Welsh created 
a panic among them, and they fell back to the bridge. 

The tide had in the meantime risen and separated the 
boats; the Welsh pursuing ihem, they were driven into 
the sea, and there they sank, in their heavy iron armor, 
by thousands. After this victory Llewellyn, "helped by 
the severe winter weather of Wales, gained another bat- 
tle ; but the King ordering a portion of his English army 
to advance through South Wales, and catch him be- 
tween two foes, and Llewellyn bravely turning to meet 
this new enemy, he was surprised and killed —very 
meanly, for he was unarmed and defenseless. His head 
was struck off and sent to London, where it was fixed 
upon the Tower, encircled with a wreath, some say of 
ivy, some say of willow, some say of silver, to make it 
look like a ghastly coin in ridicule of the prediction. 

David, however, still held out for six months, though 
eagerly sought after by the King, and hunted by his 
own countrymen. One of them finally betrayed him 
with his wife and children. He was sentenced to be 
hanged, drawn, and quartered ; and from that time this 
became the established punishment of traitors in Eng- 
land — a punishment wholly without excuse, as being 
revolting, vile, and cruel, after its object is dead: and 
which had no sense in it, as its only real degradation 
(and that nothing can blot out) is to the country that 
permits on any consideration such abominable barbarity. 

Wales "was now subdued. The Queen giving birth 
to a young prince in the castle of Carnarvon, the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 141 

King showed him to the Welsh people as their country- 
man, and called him Prince of Wales; a title that has 
ever since been borne by the heir-apparent to the Eng- 
lish Throne — which that little Prince soon became by 
the death of his elder brother. The King did bet- 
ter things for the Welsh than that, by improving 
their laws and encouraging their trade. Disturbances 
still took place, chiefly occasioned by the avarice and 
pride of the English lords, on whom Welsh lands and 
castles had been bestowed : but they were subdued and 
the country never rose again. There is a legend that 
to prevent the people from being incited to rebellion by 
the songs of their bards and harpers, Edward had them 
all put to death. Some of them may have fallen among 
other men who held out against the King ; but this gen- 
eral slaughter is, I think, a fancy of the harpers them- 
selves, who, I dare say, made a song about it many 
years afterward, and sang it by the Welsh firesides un- 
til it came to be believed. 

The foreign war of the reign of Edward I. arose in 
this way: The crews of two vessels, one a Norman ship, 
and the other an English ship, happened to go to the 
same place in their boats to fill their casks with fresh 
water. Being rough, angry fellows, they began to quar- 
rel, and then to fight — the English with their fists; tie 
Normans with their knives — and in the fight a Norman 
was killed. The Norman crew, instead of revenging 
themselves upon those English sailors with whom they 
had quarreled (who were too strong for them, I sus- 
pect), took to their ship again in a great rage, attacked 
the first English ship they met, laid hold of an unoffend- 
ing merchant who happened to be on board, and bru- 
tally hanged him in the rigging of their own vessel with 
a dog at his feet. This so enraged the English sailors 
that there was no restraining them ; and whenever, and 
wherever, English sailors met Norman sailors, they fell 
upon each other tooth and nail. The Irish and Dutch 
sailors took part with the English; the French and 
Genoese sailors helped the Normans ; and thus the greater 
part of the mariners sailing over the sea became, in 
their way, as violent and raging as the sea itself when 
it is disturbed. 



142 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

King Edward's fame had been so high abroad that 
he had been chosen to decide a difference between 
France and another foreign power, and had lived upon 
the Continent three years. At first, neither he nor the 
French King Philip (the good Louis had been dead some 
time), interfered in these quarrels; but when a fleet of 
eighty English ships engaged and utterly defeated a 
Norman fleet of two hundred, in a pitched battle fought 
round a ship at anchor, in which no quarter was given, 
the matter became too serious to be passed over. King 
Edward, as Duke of Guienne, was summoned to present 
himself before the King of France, at Paris, and answer 
for the damage done by his sailor subjects. At first he 
sent the Bishop of London as his representative, and 
then his brother Edmund, who was married to the 
French Queen's mother. I am afraid Edmund was an 
easy man, and allowed himself to be talked over by his 
charming relations, the French court ladies; at all 
events he was induced to give up his brother's dukedum 
for forty days — as a mere form, the French King said, 
to satisfy his honor — and he was so very much aston- 
ished, when the time was out, to find that the French 
King had no idea of giving it up again that I should not 
wonder if it hastened his death; which soon took place. 

King Edward was a King to win his foreign dukedom 
back again if it could be won by energy and valor. He 
raised a large army, renounced his allegiance as Duke 
of Guienne, and crossed the sea to carry war into France. 
Before any important battle was fought, however, a 
truce was agreed upon for two years; and in the course 
of that time the Pope effected a reconciliation. King 
Edward, who was now a widower, having lost his affec- 
tionate and good wife, Eleanor, married the French 
King's sister, Margaret, and the Prince of Wales was 
contracted to the French King's daughter Isabella. 

Out of bad things good things sometimes arise. Out 
of this hanging of the innocent merchant, and the blood- 
shed and strife it caused, there came to be established 
one of the greatest powers that the English people now 
possess. The preparations for the war being very expen- 
sive, and King Edward greatly wanting money, and 
being very arbitrary in his ways of raising it, some of the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 143 

barons began firmly to oppose him. Two of them, in 
particular, Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and 
Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, were so stout against him 
that they maintained he had no right to command them 
to head his forces in Guienne, and flatly refused to go 
there. "By Heaven, Sir Earl," said the King to the 
Earl of Hereford, in a great passion, "you shall either 
go or be hanged!" "By Heaven, Sir King," replied the 
Earl, "I will neither go nor yet will 1 be hanged !" and 
both he and the other Earl sturdily left the court, at- 
tended by many lords. The King tried every means of 
raising money. He taxed the clergy, in spite of all the 
Pope said to the contrary ;and when they refused to pay, 
reduced them to submission, by saying, Very well, then 
they had no claim upon the government for protection, 
and any man might plunder them who would — which a 
good many men were very ready to do, and very readily 
did, and which the clergy found too losing a game to be 
played at long. He seized all the wool and leather in 
the hands of the merchants, promising to pay for it 
some fine day ; and he set a tax upon the exportation of 
wool, which was so unpopular among the traders that it 
was called "The evil toll." But all would not do. The 
barons, led by those two great Earls, declared any taxes 
imposed without the consent of Parliament, unlawful; 
and. the Parliament refused to impose taxes, until the 
King should confirm afresh the two Great Charters, and 
should solemnly declare in writing that there was no 
power in the country to raise money from the people, 
evermore, but the power of Parliament representing all 
ranks of the people. The King was very unwilling to 
diminish his own power by allowing this great privilege 
in the Parliament; but there was no help for it, and he 
at last complied. We shall come to another king by and 
by, who might have saved his head from rolling off, if 
he had profited by this example. 

The people gained other benefits in Parliament from 
the good sense and wisdom of this King. Many of the 
laws were much improved ; provision was made for the 
greater safety of travelers, and the apprehension of 
thieves and murderers ; the priests were prevented from 
holding too much land, and so becoming too powerful; 



144 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and justices of the peace were first appointed (though 
not at first under that name) in various parts of the 
country. 

And now we come to Scotland, which was the great 
and lasting trouble of the reign of King Edward I. 

About thirteen years after King Edward's coronation, 
Alexander III., the King of Scotland, died of a fall 
from his horse. He had been married to Margaret, 
King Edward's sister. All their children being dead, 
the Scottish crown became the right of a young Princess 
only eight years old, the daughter of Eric, King of 
Norway, who had married a daughter of the deceased 
sovereign. King Edward proposed that the Maiden of 
Norway, as this Princess was called, should be engaged 
to be married to his eldest son ; but, unfortunately, as 
she was coming over to England she fell sick, and land- 
ing on one of the Orkney Islands, died there. A great 
commotion immediately began in Scotland, where as 
many as thirteen noisy claimants to the vacant throne 
started up and made a general confusion. 

King Edward being much renowned for his sagacity 
and justice, it seems to have been agreed to refer the 
dispute to him. He accepted the trust, and went with 
an army to the , Borderland where England and Scot- 
land joined. There, he called upon the Scottish gen- 
tlemen to meet him at the Castle of Norham, on the 
English side of the river Tweed ; and to that castle they 
came. But, before he would take any step in the busi- 
ness, he required those Scottish gentlemen, one and all, 
to do homage to him as their superior lord; and when 
they hesitated, he said, "By holy Edward, whose crown 
I wear, I will have my rights, or I will die in main- 
taining them !" The Scottish gentlemen, who had not 
expected this, were disconcerted, and asked for three 
weeks to think about it. 

At the end of the three weeks, another meeting took 
place, on the green plain on the Scottish side of the 
river. Of all the competitors for the Scottish throne, 
there were only two who had any real claim, in right of 
their near kindred to the Royal family. These were 
John Baliol and Robert Bruce; and the right was, I 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 145 

have no doubt, on the side of John Baliol. At this 
particular meeting John Baliol was not present, but 
Robert Bruce was ; and on Robert Bruce being formally 
asked whether he acknowledged the Knight of England 
for his superior lord, he answered, plainly and dis- 
tinctly, Yes, he did. Next day, John Baliol appeared, 
and said the same. This point settled, some arrange- 
ments were made for inquiring into their titles. 

The inquiry occupied a pretty long time — more than a 
year. While 'it was going on, King ^Edward took the 
opportunity of making a journey through Scotland, and 
calling upon the Scottish people of all degrees to 
acknowledge themselves his vassals, or be imprisoned 
until they did. In the meanwhile, commissioners were 
appointed to conduct the inquiry, a Parliament was held 
at Berwick about it, the two claimants were heard at 
full length, and there was a vast amount of talking. 
At last, in the great hall of the Castle of Berwick, the 
King gave judgment in favor of John Baliol : who, con- 
senting to receive his crown by the King of England's 
favor and permission, was crowned at Scone, in an old 
stone chair, which had been used for ages in the abbey 
there, at the coronations of Scottish Kings. Then, King 
Edward caused the great seal of Scotland, used since 
the late King's death, to be broken in four pieces, and 
placed in the English Treasury ; and considered that he 
now had Scotland (according to the common saying) 
under his thumb. 

Scotland had a strong will of its own yet, however. 
King Edward, determined that the Scottish King should 
not forget he was his vassal, summoned him repeatedly 
to come and defend himself and his judges before the 
English Parliament when appeals Irom the decisions of 
Scottish courts of justice were being heard. At length, 
John Baliol, who had no great heart of his own, had so 
much heart put into him by the brave spirit of the Scot- 
tish people, who ;took this as a national insult, that he 
refused to come any more. Thereupon, the King 
further required him to help him in his war abroad 
(which was then in progress), and to give up, as security 
for his good behavior in future, the three strong Scottish 
Castles of Jedburgh, Roxburgh, and Berwick. Nothing 



146 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of this being done, — on the contrary, the Scottish peo- 
ple concealing their King among their mountains in the 
Highlands and showing a determination to resist, — 
Edward marched to Berwick with an army of thirty 
thousand foot, and four thousand horse ; took the castle, 
and slew its whole garrison, and the inhabitants of the 
town as well — men, women, and children. Lord War- 
renne,| Earl of Surrey, then went on to the Castle of 
Dunbar, before which a battle was fought, and the 
whole Scottish army defeated with great slaughter. 
The victory being complete, the Earl of Surrey was left 
as Guardian of Scotland ; the principal offices in that 
kingdom were given to Englishmen ; the more powerful 
Scottish nobles were obliged to come and live in Eng- 
land ; the Scottish crown and scepter were brought away ; 
and even the old stone chair was carried off and placed 
in Westminster Abbey, where you may see it now. 
Baliol had the Tower of London lent him for a resi- 
dence, with permission to range about within a circle of 
twenty miles. Three years afterward he was allowed 
to go to Normandy, where he had estates, and where he 
passed the remaining six years of his life: far more 
happily, I dare say, than he had lived for a long while 
in angry Scotland. 

Now, there was, in the West of Scotland, a gentleman 
of small fortune, named William Wallace, the second 
son of a Scottish knight. He was a man of great size 
and great strength; he was very brave and dar- 
ing: when he spoke to a body of his countrymen, he 
could rouse them in a wonderful manner by the power 
of his burning words; he loved Scotland dearly, and he 
hated England with his utmost might. The domineer- 
ing conduct of the English who now held the places of 
trust in Scotland made them as intolerable to the proud 
Scottish people as they had been, under similar circum- 
stances, to the Welsh; and no man in all Scotland 
regarded them with so much smothered rage as William 
Wallace. One day, an Englishman in office, little know- 
ing what he was, affronted him. Wallace instantly 
struck him dead, and taking refuge among the rocks 
and hills, and there joining with his countryman, Sir 
William Douglas, who was also in arms against King 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 147 

Edward, became the most resolute and undaunted cham- 
pion of a people struggling tor their independence that 
ever lived upon the earth. 

The English Guardian of the Kingdom fled before 
him, and, thus encouraged, the Scottish people revolted 
everywhere and fell upon the English without mercy. 
The Earl of Surrey, by the King's commands, raised all 
the power of the Border counties, and two English 
armies poured into Scotland. Only one chief, in the 
face of those armies, stood by Wallace, who, ' with a 
force of forty thousand men, awaited the invaders at a 
place on the river Forth, within two miles ot Stirling. 
Across the river there was only one poor wooden 
bridge, called the bridge of Kildean— so narrow that but 
two men could cross it abreast. With his eyes upon this 
bridge,^ Wallace posted the greater part of his men 
among some rising grounds, and waited calmly. When 
the English army came up on the opposite bank of the 
river, messengers were sent forward to offer terms. 
Wallace sent them back with a defiance, in the name of 
the freedom of Scotland. Some of the officers of the 
Earl of Surrey in command of the English, with their 
eyes also on the bridge, advised him to be discreet and 
not hasty. He, however, urged to immediate battle by 
some other officers, and particularly by Cressingham, 
King Edward's treasurer, and a rash man, gave the 
word ot command to advance. One thousand English 
crossed the bridge, two abreast; the Scottish troops 
were as motionless as stone images. Two thousand 
English crossed; three thousand; four thousand; five. 
Not a feather, all this time, had been seen to stir among 
the Scottish bonnets. Now, they all fluttered. "For- 
ward, one party, to the foot of the bridge!" cried Wal- 
lace, "and let no more English cross! The rest, down 
with me on the five thousand who have come over, and 
cut them all to pieces!" It was done, in the sight of 
the whole remainder of the English army, who could 
give no help. Cressingham himself was killed, and the 
Scotch made whips for their horses of his skin. 

King Edward was abroad at this time, and during the 
successes on the Scottish side which followed, and 
which enabled bold Wallace to win the whole country 



148 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

back again, and even to ravage the English borders. 
But, after a few winter months, the King returned, and 
took the field with more than his usual energy. One 
night, when a kick from his horse, as they both lay on 
the ground together, broke two of his ribs, and a cry 
arose that he was killed, he leaped into his saddle, re- 
gardless of the pain he suffered, and rode through the 
camp. Day then appearing, he gave the word (still, ot 
course, in that bruised and aching state) Forward ! and 
led his army on to near Falkirk, where the Scottish 
forces were seen drawn up on some stony ground, 
behind a morass. Here he defeated Wallace, and killed 
fifteen thousand of his men. With the shattered re- 
mainder, Wallace drew back to Stirling; but, being 
pursued, set fire to the town that it might give no help 
to the English, and escaped. The inhabitants of 
Pearth afterward set fire to their houses for the same 
reason, and the King, unable to find provisions, was 
forced to withdraw his army. 

Another Robert Bruce, the grandson ot him who 
had disputed the Scottish crown with Baliol, was now in 
arms against the King (that elder Bruce being dead), 
and also John Comyn, Baliol's nephew. These two 
young men might agree in opposing Edward, but 
could agree in nothing else, as they were rivals 
for the throne of Scotland. Probably it was be- 
cause they know this, and knew what troubles must arise 
even if they could hope to get the better of the great 
English King, that the principal Scottish people applied 
to the Pope for his interference. The Pope, on the 
principle of losing nothing for want of trying to get it, 
very coolly claimed that Scotland belonged to him ; but 
this was a little too much, and the Parliament in a 
friendly manner told him so. 

In the springtime of the year 1303, the King sent Sir 
John Segrave, whom he made Governor of Scotland, 
with twenty thousand men, to reduce the rebels. Sir 
John was not as careful as he should have been, but 
encamped at Rosslyn, near Edinburgh, with his army 
divided into three parts. The Scottish forces saw their 
advantage ; fell on each part separately ; defeated each ; 
and killed all the prisoners. Then came the King him- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 149 

self once more, as soon as a great army could be raised ; 
he passed through the whole north of Scotland, laying 
waste whatsoever came in his way ; and he took up his 
winter quarters at Dunfermline. The Scottish cause 
now looked so hopeless that Comyn and the other 
nobles made submission and received their pardons. 
Wallace alone stood out. He was invited to surrender, 
though on no distinct pledge that his life should be 
spared ; but he still defied the ireful King, and lived 
among the steep crags of the Highland glens, where the 
eagles made their nests, and where the mountain tor- 
rents roared, and the white snow was deep, and the bit- 
ter winds blew round his unsheltered head, as he lay 
through many a pitch-dark night wrapped up in his 
plaid. Nothing could break his spirit; nothing could 
lower his courage ; nothing could induce him to forget 
or forgive his country's wrongs. Even when the Castle 
of Stirling, which had long held out, was besieged by 
the King with every kind of military engine then in use; 
even when the lead upon cathedral roofs was taken 
down to help to make them; even when the King, 
though an old man, commanded in the siege as if he 
were a youth, being so resolved to conquer even when 
the brave garrison, then found with amazement to be 
not two hundred people, including several ladies, were 
starved and beaten out and were made to submit on 
their knees, and with every form of disgrace that could 
aggravate their sufferings ; even then, when there was 
not a ray of hope in Scotland, William Wallace was as 
proud and firm as if he had beheld the powerful and 
relentless Edward lying dead at his feet. 

Who betrayed William Wallace in the end is not quite 
certain — That he was betrayed — probably by an attend- 
ant—is too true. He was taken to the Castle of Dum- 
barton, under Sir John Menteith and thence to London, 
where the great fame of his bravery and resolution at- 
tracted immense concourses of people to behold him. 
He was tried in Westminster Hall, with a crown of 
laurel on his head— it is supposed because he was re- 
ported to have said that he ought to wear, or that he 
would wear, a crown there — and was found guilty as a 
robber, a murderer, and a traitor. What they called a 



150 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

robber, he said to those who tried him, he was, because 
he had taken spoil from the King's men. What they 
called a murderer, he was, because he had slain an in- 
solent Englishman. What they called a traitor, he was 
not, for he had never sworn allegiance to the King, and 
had ever scorned to do it. He was dragged at the tails 
of horses to West Smithfield, and there hanged on a high 
gallows, torn open before he was dead, beheaded, and 
quartered. His head was set upon a pole on 'London 
Bridge, his right arm was sent to Newcastle,' his left 
arm to Berwick, his legs to Perth and Aberdeen. But, 
if King Edward had had his body cut into inches, and 
had sent every separate inch into a separate town, he 
could not have dispersed it half so far and wide as his 
fame. Wallace will be remembered in songs and sto- 
ries while there are songs and stories in the English 
tongue, and Scotland will hold him dear while her lakes 
and mountains last. 

Released from this dreaded enemy, the King made 
a fairer plan of Government for Scotland, divided the 
offices of honor among Scottish gentlemen and English 
gentlemen, forgave past offenses, and thought, in his 
old age, that his work was done. 

But he deceived himself. Comyn and Bruce conspir- 
ed, and made an appointment to meet at Dumfries, in 
the church of the Minorites. There is a story that 
Comyn was false to Bruce, and had informed against 
him to the King ; that Bruce was warned of his danger 
and the necessity of flight, by receiving, one night as 
he sat at supper, from his friend the Earl of Gloucester, 
twelve pennies and a pair of Jspurs ; that as he was rid- 
ing angrily to keep his appointment, through r a snow- 
storm, with his horse's shoes reversed that he might 
not be tracked, he met an evil-looking serving man, a 
messenger of Comyn, whom he killed, and concealed in 
whose dress he found letters that proved Comyn's 
treachery. However this may be, they were likely 
enough to quarrel in any case, being hot-headed rivals ; 
and, whatever they quarreled about, they certainly did 
quarrel in the church where they met, and Bruce drew 
his dagger and stabbed Comyn, who fell upon the pave- 
ment. When Bruce came out, pale, and disturbed, the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 151 

friends who were waiting 'for him asked what was the 
matter? "I think I have killed Comyn," said he. 
"You only think so?" returned one of them; "I will 
make sure!" and going into the church, and finding 
him alive, stabbed him again and again. Knowing that 
the King would never forgive this new deed of violence, 
the party then declared |Bruce King of Scotland ; got 
him crowned at Scone — without the chair ; and set up 
the rebellious standard once again. 

When the King heard of it he kindled with fiercer 
anger than he had ever shown yet. He caused the 
Prince of Wales and ^270 of the young nobility to be 
knighted — the trees in the Temple Gardens were cut 
down to make room for their tents, and they watched 
their armor all night, according to the old usage ; some 
in the Temple Church ; some in Westminster Abbey — 
and at the public feast which then took place, he swore 
by Heaven, and by two swans covered with gold net- 
work, which his minstrels placed upon the table, that 
he would avenge the death of Comyn, and would punish 
the false Bruce. And before all the company he charg- 
ed the Prince his son, in case that he should die before 
accomplishing his vow, not to bury him until it was 
fulfilled. Next morning the Prince and the rest of the 
young knights rode away to the Border country to join 
the English army ; and the King, now weak and sick, 
followed in a horse-litter. 

Bruce, after losing the battle and undergoing many 
dangers and much misery, fled to Ireland, where he lay 
concealed through the winter. That winter Edward 
passed in hunting down and executing Bruce's relations 
and adherents, sparing neither youth nor age, and 
showing no touch of pity or sign of mercy. In the fol- 
lowing spring, Bruce reappeared and gained some vic- 
tories. In these frays both sides were grievously cruel. 
For instance — Bruce's two brothers, being taken cap- 
ives desperately wounded, were ordered by the 'King to 
instant execution. Bruce's friend Sir John Douglas, 
taking his own Castle of Douglas out of the hands of an 
English lord, roasted the dead bodies of the slaughtered 
garrison in a great fire made of every movable within 
it ; which dreadful cookery his men called the Douglas 



152 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Larder. Bruce, still successful, however, drove the 
Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Gloucester into the 
Castle of Ayr and laid siege to it. 

The King, who had been laid up all the winter, but 
had directed the army from his sick-bed, now advanced 
to Carlisle, and there causing the litter in which he had 
traveled to be placed in the Cathedral as an offering to 
Heaven, mounted his horse once more, and for the last 
time. He was now sixty-nine years old, and had 
reigned thirty-five years. He was so ill that in four 
days he could go no more than six miles; still, even at 
that pace he went on, and resolutely kept his face 
toward the Border. At length, he lay down at the vil- 
lage of Burgh-upon-Sands; and there telling those 
around him to impress upon the Prince that he was to 
remember his father's vow, and was never to rest until 
he had thoroughly subdued Scotland, he yielded up his 
last breath. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD II. 

King Edward II., the first Prince of Wales, was 
twenty-three years old when his father died. There 
was a certain favorite of his, a young 'man from Gasco- 
ny, named Piers Gaveston, of whom his father had so 
much disapproved that he had ordered him out of Eng- 
land, and had made his son swear by the side of his 
sick-bed never to bring him back. But the Prince no 
sooner found himself King than he broke his oath, as 
so many other Princes and Kings did, they were far too 
ready to take oaths, and sent for his dear friend imme- 
diately. 

Now, this same Gaveston was handsome enough, but 
was a reckless, insolent, audacious fellow. He was de- 
tested by the proud English lords; not only because he 
had such power over the King, and made the Court such 
a dissipated place, but, also, because he could ride bet- 
ter than they at tournaments, and was used, in his im- . 
pudence, to cut very bad jokes on them; calling \ 
one the old hog : another the stage-player; another the 



A CHILD S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 153 

Jew ; another the ;'black dog of Ardenne. This was as 
poor wit as need be, but it made those lords very wroth ; 
and the surly Earl of Warwick, who was the black dog, 
swore that the time should come when Piers Gaveston 
should feel the black dog's teeth. 

It was not come yet, however, nor did it seem to be 
coming. The King made him Earl of Cornwall, and 
gave him vast riches ; and, when the King went over to 
France to marry the French Princess, Isabella, daughter 
of Philip le Bel, who was said to be the most beautiful 
woman in the world, he made Gaveston Regent of the 
Kingdom. His splendid marriage ceremony in the 
Church of Our Lady at Boulogne, where there were four 
Kings and three Queens present, quite a pack of Court 
Cards, for I dare say the Knaves were not wanting, 
being over, he seemed to care little or nothing for his 
beautiful wife ; but was wild with impatience to meet 
Gaveston again. 

When he landed at home, he paid no attention to any- 
body else, but ran into the favorite's arms before a 
great concourse of people, and hugged him, and kissed 
him, and called him his brother. At the coronation 
which soon followed, Gaveston was the richest and 
brightest of all the glittering company there, and had 
the honor of carrying the crown. This made the proud 
lords fiercer than ever; the people, too, despised the 
favorite, and would never call him Earl of Cornwall, 
however much he complained to the King and asked 
him to punish them for not doing so, but persisted in 
styling him plain Piers Gaveston. 

The barons were so unceremonious with the King in 
giving him to understand that they would not bear his 
favorite, that the King was obliged to send him out of 
the country. The favorite himself was made to take an 
oath (more oaths !) that he would never come back, and 
the barons supposed him to be banished in disgrace 
until they heard that he was appointed Governor of 
Ireland. Even this was not enough for the besotted 
King, who brought him home again in a year's time, 
and not only disgusted the Court and the people by his 
doting folly, but offended his beautiful wife too, who 
never liked him afterward. 



154 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

He had now the old Royal want, of money,— and the 
barons had the new power of positively refusing to let 
him raise any. He summoned a Parliament at York ; 
the barons refused to make one, while the favorite was 
near him. He summoned another Parliament at West- 
minster, and sent Gaveston away. Then the barons 
came, completely armed, and appointed a committee of 
themselves to correct abuses in the state and in the 
King's household. He got some money on these condi- 
tions, and directly set off with Gaveston to the Border 
country, where they spent it in idling away the time, 
and feasting, while Bruce made ready to drive the Eng- 
lish out of Scotland. For, though the old King had 
even made this poor weak son of his swear (as some say) 
that he would not bury his bones, but would have them 
boiled clean in a caldron, and carried before the Eng- 
lish army until Scotland was entirely subdued, the 
second Edward was so unlike the first that Bruce gained 
strength and power every day. 

The committee of nobles, after some months of delib- 
eration, ordained that the King should henceforth call 
a Parliament together once every year, and even twice 
if necessary, instead of summoning it only when he 
chose. Further, that Gaveston should once more be 
banished, and, this time, on pain of death if he ever 
came back. The King's tears were of no avail; he was 
obliged to send his favorite to Flanders. As soon as he 
had done so, however, he dissolved the Parliament, 
with the low cunning of a mere fool, and set off to the 
North of England, thinking to get an army about him 
to oppose the nobles. And once again he brought Gav- 
eston home, and heaped upon him all the riches and 
titles of which the barons had deprived him. 

The lords saw, now, that there was nothing for it but 
to put the favorite to death. They could have done so, 
legally, according to the terms of his banishment; but 
they did so, I am sorry to say, in a shabby manner. 
Led by the Earl of Lancaster, the King's cousin, they 
first of all attacked the King and Gaveston at Newcastle. 
They had time to escape by sea, and the mean King, 
having his precious Gaveston with him, was quite con- 
tent to leave his lovely wife behind. When they were 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 155 

comparatively safe, they separated ; the King went to 
York to collect a force of soldiers; and the favorite shut 
himself up, in the meantime, in Scarborough Castle, 
overlooking the sea. This was what the barons wanted. 
They knew that the castle could not hold out; they 
attacked it, and made Gaveston surrender. He deliv- 
ered himself up to the Earl of Pembroke — that lord 
whom he had called the Jew — on the Earl's pledging his 
faith and knightly word that no harm should happen to 
him and no violence be done him. 

Now, it was agreed with Gaveston that he should be 
taken to the Castle of Wallingford, and there kept in 
honorable custody. They traveled as far as Dedington, 
near Banbury, where, in the castle of that place, they 
stopped for a night to rest. Whether the Earl of Pem- 
broke left his prisoner there knowing what would hap- 
pen, or really left him thinking no harm, and only 
going (as he pretended) to visit his wife, the countess, 
who was in the neighborhood, is no great matter now ; 
in any case, he was bound as an honorable gentleman 
to protect his prisoner, and he did not do it. In the 
morning, while the favorite was yet in bed, he was re- 
quired to dress himself and come down into the court- 
yard. He did so without any mistrust, but started and 
turned pale when he found it full of strange armed men. 
"I think you know me?" said their leader, also armed 
from head to foot. "I am the black dog of Ardenne!" 

The time was come when Piers Gaveston was to feel 
the black dog's teeth indeed. They sat him on a mule, 
and carried him, in mock state and with military music, 
to the black dog's kennel, — Warwick Castle, — where a 
hasty council, composed of some great noblemen, con- 
sidered what should be done with him. Some were for 
sparing him, but one loud voice — it was the black dog's 
bark, I dare say — sounded through the castle hall, utter- 
ing these words: "You have the fox in your power. Let 
him go now, and you must hunt him again." 

They sentenced him to death. He threw himself at 
the feet of the Earl of Lancaster, — the old hog, — but the 
old hog was as savage as the dog. He was taken out 
upon the pleasant road leading from Warwick to Cov- 
entry, where the beautiful river Avon, by which, long 



156 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

afterward, William Shakespeare was born and now lies 
buried, sparkled in the bright landscape of the beautiful 
May day ; and there they struck off his wretched head, 
and stained the dust with his blood. 

When the King heard of this black deed, in his grief 
and rage he denounced relentless war against his 
barons, and both sides were in arms for half a year. 
But it then became necessary for them to join their 
forces against Bruce, who had used the time well while 
they were divided, and had now a great power in Scot- 
land. 

Intelligence was brought that Bruce was then besieg- 
ing Stirling Castle, and that the governor had been 
obliged to pledge himself to surrender it, unless he 
should be relieved before a certain day. Thereupon, 
the King ordered the nobles and their fighting men to 
meet him at Berwick; but the nobles cared so little for 
the King, and so neglected the summons, and lost time, 
that only on the day before that appointed for the sur- 
render, did the King find himself at Stirling, and even 
then with a smaller force than he had expected. How- 
ever, he had, altogether, a hundred thousand men, and 
Bruce had not more than forty thousand; but Bruce's 
army was strongly posted in three square columns, on 
the ground lying between the Burn or Brook of Bannock 
and the walls of Stirling Castle. 

On the very evening when the King came up, Bruce 
did a brave act that encouraged his men. He was seen 
by a certain Henry de Bohun, an English knight, riding 
about before his army on a little horse, with a light bat- 
tle-ax in his hand, and a crown of gold on his head. 
This English knight, who was mounted on a strong 
war-horse, cased in steel, strongly armed, and able (as 
he thought) to overthrow Bruce by crushing him with 
his mere weight, set spurs to his great charger, rode on 
him, and made a thrust at him with his heavy spear. 
Bruce parried the thrust, and with one blow of his 
battle-ax split his skull. 

The Scottish men did not forget this, next day, when 
the battle raged. Randolph, Bruce's valiant nephew, 
rode, with the small body of men he commanded, into 
such a host of the English, all shining in polished armor 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 157 

in the sunlight, that they seemed to be swallowed up 
and lost, as if they had plunged into the sea. But they 
fought so well and did such dreadful execution that the 
English staggered. Then came Bruce himself upon 
them, with all the rest of his army. While they were 
thus hard pressed and amazed, there appeared upon the 
hills what they supposed to be a new Scottish army, but 
what were really only the camp followers, in number 
fifteen thousand ; whom Bruce had taught to show them- 
selves at that place and time. The Earl of Gloucester, 
commanding the English horse, made a last rush to 
change the fortune of the day, but Bruce (like Jack the 
Giant-killer in the story) had had pits dug in the ground, 
and covered over with turfs and stakes. Into these, as 
they gave way beneath the weight of the horses, riders 
and horses rolled by hundreds. The English were 
completely routed ; all their treasure, stores, and 
engines were taken by the Scottish men ; so many 
wagons and other wheeled vehicles were seized, that it 
is related that they would have reached, if they had 
been drawn out in a line, 1 80 miles. The fortunes of 
Scotland were for the time completely changed; and 
never was a battle won, more famous upon Scottish 
ground, than this great battle of Bannockburn. 

Plague and famine succeeded in England; and still 
the powerless King and his disdainful lords were always 
in contention. Some of the turbulent chiefs of Ireland 
made proposals to Bruce to accept the rule of that 
country. He sent his brother Edward to them, who was 
crowned King of Ireland. He afterward went himself 
to help his brother in his Irish wars, but his brother 
was defeated in the end and killed. Robert Bruce, re- 
turning to Scotland, still increased his strength there. 

As the King's ruin had begun in a favorite, so it 
seemed likely to end in one. He was too poor a creat- 
ure to rely at all upon himself, and his new favorite was 
one Hugh le Despenser, the son of a gentleman of 
ancient family. Hugh was handsome and brave, but 
he was the favorite of a weak King, whom no man cared 
a rush for, and that was a dangerous place to hold. 
The nobles leagued against him, because the King liked 
him; and they lay in wait, both for his ruin and his 



158 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

father's. Now, the King had married him to the 
daughter of the late Earl of Gloucester, and had given 
both him and his father great possessions in Wales. In 
their endeavors to entend these, they gave violent 
offense to an angry Welsh gentleman named John de 
Mowbray, and to divers other angry Welsh gentlemen, 
who resorted to arms, took their castles, and seized their 
estates. The Earl of Lancaster had first placed the fav- 
orite (who was a poor relation of his own) at Court, and 
he considered his own dignity offended by the prefer- 
ence he received, and the honors he acquired ; so he, 
and the barons who were his friends, joined the Welsh- 
men, marched on to London, and sent a message to the 
King demanding to have the favorite and his father 
banished. At first the King unaccountably took it into 
his head to be spirited, and to send them a bold reply; 
but when they quartered themselves around Holburn 
and Clerkenwell, and went down, armed, to the Parlia- 
ment at Westminster, he gave way, and complied with 
their demands. 

His turn of triumph came sooner than he expected. 
It arose out of an accidental circumstance. The beautiful 
Queen, happening to be traveling, came one night to one 
of the royal castles, and demanded to be lodged and 
entertained there until morning. The governor of this 
castle, who was one of the enraged lords, was away, 
and in his absence his wife refused admission to the 
Queen ; a scuffle took place among the common men on 
either side, and some of the royal attendants were killed. 
The people, who cared nothing for the King, were very 
angry that their beautiful Queen should be thus rudely 
treated in her own dominions; and the King, taking 
advantage of this feeling, besieged the castle, took it, 
and then called the two Dispensers home. Upon this, 
the confederate lords and the Welshmen went over to 
Bruce. The King encountered them at Boroughbridge, 
gained the victory, and took a number of distinguished 
prisoners ; among them the Earl of Lancaster, now an old 
man, upon whose destruction he was resolved. This earl 
was taken to his own castle of Pontefract, and there tried 
and found guilty by an unfair court appointed for the 
purpose ; he was not even allowed to speak in his own de- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 159 

fense. He was insulted, pelted, mounted on a starved 
pony without saddle or bridle, carried out, and be- 
headed. Eight-and-twenty knights were hanged, 
drawn, and quartered. When the King had dispatched 
this bloody work, and had made a fresh and a long truce 
with Bruce, he took the Despensers into greater favor 
than ever, and made the father Earl of Winchester. 

One prisoner, and an important one, who was taken 
at Boroughbridge, made his escape, however, and turned 
the tide against the King. This was Roger Mortimer, 
always resolutely opposed to him, who was sentenced to 
death, and placed for safe custody in the Tower of 
London. He treated his guards to a quantity of wine 
into which he had put a sleeping potion, and when they 
were insensible, broke out of his dungeon, got into a kit- 
chen, climbed up the chimney, let himself down from 
the roof of the building with a rope-ladder, passed the 
sentries, got down to the river, and made away in a 
boat to where servants and horses were waiting for him. 
He finally escaped to France, where Charles le Bel, the 
brother of the beautiful Queen, was King. Charles 
sought to quarrel with the King of England, on pre- 
tense of his not having come to do him homage at his 
coronation. It was proposed that the beautiful Queen 
should go over to arrange the dispute ; she went, and 
wrote home to the King, that as he was sick, and could 
not come to France himself perhaps it would be better 
to send over the young Prince, their son, who was only 
twelve years old, who could do homage to her brother 
in his stead, and in whose company she would immedi- 
ately return. The King sent him ; but both he and the 
Queen remained at the French Court, and Roger Mor- 
timer became the Queen's lover. 

When the King wrote, again and again, to the Queen 
to come home, she did not reply that she despised him 
too much to live with him any more (which was the 
truth), but said she was afraid of the two Despensers. 
In short, her design was to overthrow the favorite's 
power, and the King's power, such as it was, and in- 
vade England. Having obtained'a French force of two 
thousand men, and being joined "by all the English ex- 
iles then in France, she landed, within a year, at Ore- 



160 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

well, in Suffolk, where she was immediately joined by 
the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, the King's two brothers ; 
by other powerful noblemen ; and lastly, by the first 
English general who was dispatched to check her: who 
went over to her with all his men. The people of Lon- 
don, receiving these tidings, would do nothing for the 
King, but broke open the Tower, let out all his pris- 
oners, and threw up their caps and hurrahed for the 
beautiful Queen. 

The King with his two favorites fled to Bristol, where 
he left old Despenser in charge of the town and castle, 
while he went on with the son to Wales. The Bristol 
men being opposed to the King, and it being impossible 
to hold the town with enemies everywhere within the 
walls, Despenser yielded it up on the third day, and 
was instantly brought to trial for having traitorously 
influenced what was called "the King's mind" — though 
I doubt if the King ever had any. He was a venerable 
old man, upward of ninety years of age, but this age 
gained no respect or mercy. He was hanged, torn open 
while he was yet alive, cut up into pieces, and thrown 
to the dogs. His son was soon taken, tried at Hereford 
before the same judge on a long series of foolish 
charges, found guilty, and hanged upon a gallows fifty 
feet high, with a chaplet of nettles around his head. 
His poor old father and he were innocent enough of 
any worse crimes "than the crime of having been friends 
of a King on whom, as a mere man, they would never 
have deigned to cast a favorable look. It is a bad 
crime, I know, and leads to worse ; but many lords and 
gentlemen — I even think some ladies, too, if I recollect 
right — have committed it in England, who have neither 
been given to the dogs, nor hanged up fifty feet high. 

The wretched King was running here and there, all 
this time, and never getting anywhere in particular, un- 
til he gave himself up and was taken off to Kenilworth 
Castle. When he was safely lodged there, the Queen 
went to London and met the Parliament. And the 
Bishop of Hereford, who was the most skillful of her 
friends, said, What was to be done now? Here was an 
imbecile, indolent, miserable King upon the throne; 
wouldn't it be better to take him off, a"nd put his son 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 161 

there instead? I don't know whether the Queen really 
pitied him at this pass, but she began to cry; so, the 
Bishop said, Well, my lords and gentlemen, what do 
you think, upon the whole, of sending down to Kenil- 
worth, and seeing if His Majesty (God bless him, and 
forbid we should depose him !) won't resign? 

My lords and gentlemen thought it a good notion, so 
a deputation of them went down to Kenilworth ; and 
there the King came into the great hall of the castle, 
commonly dressed, in a poor black gown ; and when he 
saw a certain bishop among them fell down, poor, feeble- 
headed man, and made a wretched spectacle of himself. 
Somebody lifted him up, and then Sir William Trus- 
sel, the Speaker of the House of Commons, almost 
frightened him to death by making him a tremendous 
speech to the effect that he was no longer a King, and 
that everybody renounced allegiance to him. After 
which, Sir Thomas Blount, the Steward of the House- 
hold, nearly finished him, by coming forward and break- 
ing his white wand — which was a ceremony only per- 
formed at' a King's death. Being asked in this press- 
ing manner what he thought of resigning, the King said 
he thought it was the best thing he could do. So he did 
it, and they proclaimed his son next day. 

I wish I could close his history by saying that he lived 
a harmless life in the castle and the castle gardens at 
Kenilworth many years — that he had a favorite, and 
plenty to eat and drink — and, having that, wanted noth- 
ing. But he was shamefully humiliated. He was out- 
raged and slighted, and had dirty water from ditches 
given him to shave with, and wept and said he would 
have clean, warm water, and was altogether very miser- 
able. He was moved from this castle to that castle, and 
from that castle to the other castle, because this lord or 
that lord, or the other lord, was too kind to him : until 
at last he came to Berkeley Castle, near the River 
Severn, where (the Lord Berkeley being then ill and 
absent) he fell into the hands of two black ruffians, called 
Thomas Gourney and William Ogle. 

One night — it was the night of September 21, 1327 — 
dreadful screams were heard by the startled people in 
the neighboring town, ringing through the thick walls 

II History 



162 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of the castle, and the dark, deep night ; and they said, 
as they were thus horribly awakened from their sleep r 
"JVfoy Heaven be merciful to the King; for those cries : 
forbode that no good is being done to him in his dismal 
prison !■' Next morning he was dead — not bruised or ; 
stabbed, or marked upon the body, but much distorted 
in the face ; and it was whispered afterward that those ! 
two villains, Gournay and Ogle, had burned up his in- 
side with a red-hot iron. 

If you ever come near Gloucester, and see the center 
tower of its beautiful cathedral, with its four rich pin- 
nacles, rising lightly in the air, you may remember that 
the wretched Edward II. was buried in the old abbey of 
that ancient city, at forty-three years old, after being 
for nineteen years and a half a perfectly incapable King. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD III. 

Roger Mortimer, the Queen's lover, who escaped to 
France in the last chapter, was far trom profiting by the 
examples he had had of the fate of favorites. Having, 
through the Queen's influence, come into possession of 
the estates of the two Despensers, he became extremely 
proud and ambitious, and sought to be the real ruler of 
England. The young King, who was crowned at four- 
teen years of age, with all the usual solemnities, resolv- 
ed not to bear this, and soon pursued Mortimer to his 
ruin. 

The people themselves were not fond of Mortimer — 
first, because he was a royal favorite ; secondly, because 
he was supposed to have helped to make a peace with 
Scotland which now took place, and in virtue of which 
the young King's sister Joan, only seven years old, was 
promised in marriage to David, the son and heir of Rob- 
ert Bruce, who was only five years old. The nobles 
hated Mortimer because of his pride, riches, and power. 
They went so far as to take up arms against him ; but 
were obliged to submit. The Earl of Kent, one of those 
who did so, but who afterward went over to Mortimer 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 163 

and the Queen, was made an example of in the follow- 
ing cruel manner. 

He seems to have been anything but a wise old earl ; 
and he was persuaded by the agents of the favorite and 
the Queen that poor King Edward II. was not really 
dead; and thus was betrayed into writing letters favor- 
ing his rightful claim to the throne. This was made out 
to be high treason, and he was tried, found guilty, and 
sentenced to be executed. They took the poor old lord 
outside the town of Winchester, and there kept him 
waiting some three or four hours until they could find 
somebody to cut off his head. At last, a convict said he 
would do it, if the government would pardon him in re- 
turn ; and they gave him the pardon ; and at one blow 
he put the Earl of Kent out of his last suspense. 

While the t Queen was in France she had found a 
lovely and good young lady, named Philippa, who she 
thought would make an excellent wife for her son. 
The young King married this lady, soon after he came 
to the throne, and her first child Edward, Prince of 
Wales, afterward became celebrated, as we shall pres- 
ently see, under the famous title of Edward the Black 
Prince. 

The young King, thinking the time ripe for the down- 
fall of Mortimer, took counsel with Lord Montacute how 
he should proceed. A Parliament was going to be held 
at Nottingham, and that lord recommended that the 
favorite should be seized by night in Nottingham Castle, 
where he was sure to be. Now this, like many other 
things, was more -easily said than done; because to 
guard against treachery, the great gates of the castle 
were locked every night, and the great keys were car- 
ried upstairs to the Queen, who laid them under her 
own pillow. But 'the 'castle had a governor, and the 
governor being Lord 'Montacute's friend, confided to 
him how he knew of a secret passage underground, hid- 
den from observation by the weeds and brambles with 
which it was overgrown ; and how, through that pass- 
age, the conspirators might enter in the dead of the 
night, and go straight to Mortimer's room. Accord- 
ingly, upon a certain dark night, at midnight, they made 
their way through this dismal place ; startling the rats, 



164 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and frightening the owls and bats ; and came safely to 
the bottom of the main tower of the castle, where the 
King met them, and took them up a profoundly dark 
staircase in a deep silence. They soon heard the voice 
of Mortimer in council with some friends; and bursting 
into the room with a sudden noise, took him prisoner. 
The Queen cried out from her bedchamber, "Oh, my 
sweet son, my dear son, spare my gentle Mortimer!" 
They carried him off, however, and, before the next 
Parliament accused him of having made differences 
between the young King and his mother, and of having 
brought about the death of the Earl of Kent, and even 
of the late King ; for, as you know by this time, when 
they wanted to get rid of a man in those old days, they 
were not very particular of what they accused him. 
Mortimer was found guilty of all this and was sen- 
tenced to be hanged at Tyburn. The King shut his 
mother up in genteel confinement, where she passed 
the rest of her life ; and now he became King in earnest. 

The first effort he made was to conquer Scotland. 
The English lords who had lands in Scotland, finding 
that their rights were not respected under the late 
peace, made war on their own account ; choosing for 
their general, Edward, the son of John Baliol, who made 
such a vigorous fight that in less than two months he 
won the whole Scottish Kingdom. He was joined, 
when thus triumphant, by the King and Parliament, 
and he and the King in person besieged the Scottish 
forces in Berwick, The whole Scottish army coming to 
the assistance of their countrymen, such a furious battle 
ensued that thirty thousand men are said to have been 
killed in it. Baliol was then crowned King of Scotland, 
doing homage to the King of England ; but little came 
of his successes after all, for the Scottish men rose 
against him, within no very long time, and David Bruce 
came back within ten years and took his kingdom. 

France was a fair richer country than Scotland, and 
the King had a much greater mind to conquer it. So, 
he left Scotland alone, and pretended that he had a 
claim to the French throne in right of his mother. He 
had, in reality, no claim at all ; but that mattered little 
in those times. He brought over to his cause many lit- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 165 

tie princes and sovereigns, and even courted the alliance 
of the people of Flanders — a busy, working community, 
who had very small respect for kings, and whose head 
man ^was a brewer. With such forces as he raised by 
these^ means, Edward invaded France; but he did little 
by that, except run into debt in carrying on the war to 
the extent of three hundred thousand pounds. The 
next year he did better ; gaining a great sea-fight in the 
harbor of Sluys. This success, however, was very short- 
lived, for the Flemings took fright at the siege of St. 
Omer and ran away, leaving their weapons and baggage 
behind them. Philip, the French King, coming up with 
his army, and Edward being very anxious to decide the 
war, proposed to settle the difference by single combat 
with him, or by a fight of one hundred knights on each 
side. The French King said he thanked him, but being 
very well as he was, he would rather not. So, after 
some skirmishing and talking, a short peace was made. 
It was soon broken by King Edward's favoring the 
cause of John, Earl of Montford; a French nobleman, 
who asserted a claim of his own against the French 
King, and offered to do homage to England for the 
Crown of France, if he could obtain it through Eng- 
land's help. This French lord himself was soon defeated 
by the French King's son, and shut up in a tower in 
Paris, but his wife, a courageous and beautiful woman, 
who is said to have had the courage of a man, and the 
heart of a lion, assembled the people of Brittany, where 
she then was; and, showing them her infant son, made 
many pathetic entreaties to them not to desert her and 
their young 'lord. They took ^fire at this appeal, and 
rallied round her in the strong castle of Hennebon. 
Here she was not only besieged without by the French 
under Charles de Blois, but was endangered within by 
a dreary old Bishop, who was always representing to 
the people what horrors they must undergo if they were 
faithful — first from famine, and afterward from fire and 
sword. But this noble 'lady, whose heart never failed 
her, encouraged her soldiers by her own example ; went 
from post to post like a great general ; even mounted on 
horseback fully armed, and, issuing from the castle by a 
by-path, fell upon the French camp, set fire to the tents, 



166 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and threw the whole [force into disorder. This done, 
she got safely back to Hennebon again, and was re- 
ceived with >loud shouts of joy by the defenders of the 
castle, who had given her up |for lost. As they were 
now very short of provisions, however, and as they 
could not dine off enthusiasm, and as the old bishop 
was always saying, "I told you what it would come to!" 
they began to lose heart, and to talk of yielding the cas- 
tle up. The brave Countess retiring to an upper room 
and looking Jwith great grief out to sea, where she ex- 
pected relief from England, saw, at this very time, the 
English ships in the distance, and was relieved and res- 
cued! Sir Walter Manning, the English commander, so 
admired her courage that, being come into the castle 
with the ^English knights, and having made a feast 
there, he assaulted the French, by way of dessert, and 
beat them off triumphantly. Then he and the knights 
came back to the castle with great joy ; and the Count- 
ess, who had watched them from a high tower, thanked 
them with all her heart, and kissed them every one. 

This noble lady distinguished herself afterward in a 
sea-fight with the French off Guernsey, when she was 
on her way to England to ask for more troops. Her 
great spirit roused 'another lady, the wife of another 
French lord, whom the French King very barbarously 
murdered, to distinguish herself scarcely less. The 
time was [fast [coming, however, when Edward, Prince 
of Wales, was to be the great star of this French and 
English war. 

It was in 'the month of JJuly, in the year 1346, when 
the King embarked at Southampton for France, with 
an army of about thirty thousand men in all, attended 
by the Prince of Wales and by several of the chief 
nobles. He landed at La Hogue in Normandy; and, 
burning and destroying as he went, according to cus- 
tom, advanced nip ^the left [bank of the River Seine and 
fired the small towns even close to Paris; but, being 
watched from the right bank of the river by the French 
King and all his army, it came to this at last, that Ed- 
ward found himself, on Saturday, the 26th of August, 
1346, on a rising ground behind the little French village 
of Crecy, face to face with the French King's force. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 167 

And, although the French King had an enormous army 
— in number more than eight times his — he there re- 
solved to beat him or be beaten. 

The young Prince, assisted by the Earl of Oxford and 
the Earl of Warwick, led the first division of the English 
army; two other great earls led the second; and the 
King, the third. When the morning dawned the King 
received the sacrament, and heard prayers, and then, 
mounted on horseback with a white wand in his hand, 
rode from company to company, and rank to rank, 
cheering and encouraging both officers and men. Then 
the whole army breakfasted, each man sitting on the 
ground where he had stood ; and then they remained 
quietly on the ground with their weapons ready. 

Up came the French King with all his great force. 
It was dark and angry weather ; there was an eclipse of 
the sun; [there was a thunderstorm, accompanied with 
tremendous rain ; the frightened birds flew screaming 
above the soldiers' heads. A certain captain in the 
French army advised the French King, who was by no 
means cheerful, not to begin the battle until the mor- 
row. ;The King, taking this advice, gave the word to 
halt. But, those behind not understanding it, or desir- 
ing to be foremost with the rest, came pressing on. 
The roads for a great distance were covered with this 
immense army, and with the common people from the 
villages, who were flourishing their rude weapons, and 
making a great noise. Owing to these circumstances, 
the French army advanced in the greatest confusion ; 
every French lord doing what he liked with his own 
men, and putting out the men of every other French 
lord. 

Now their King relied strongly upon a great body of 
cross-bowmen from Genoa; and these he ordered to the 
front to begin the battle, on finding that he could not 
stop it. They shouted once, they shouted twice, they 
shouted three times, to alarm the English archers ; but 
the 'English would have heard them shout three thou- 
sand times and would have never moved. At last the 
cross-bowmen went forward a little, and began to dis- 
charge their bolts; upon which, the English let fly such 
a hail of arrows that the Genoese speedily made off — 



168 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

for their cross-bows, besides being heavy to carry, re- 
quired to be wound up with a handle, and consequently 
took time to reload; the English on the other hand, 
could discharge their arrows almost as jfast as the ar- 
rows could fly. 

When e the French King saw the Genoese turning, he 
cried out to his men to kill those scoundrels, who were 
doing harm instead of service. This increased the con- 
fusion. Meanwhile the English archers, continuing to 
shoot as fast as ever, shot down great numbers of the S 
French soldiers and knights; whom certain sly Cor- 
nishmen and Welshmen from the English army, creep- 
ing along the ground, dispatched with great knives. 

The Prince and his division were at this 'time so hard 
pressed that the Earl ot Warwick sent a message to the 
King, who was overlooking the battle from a windmill, 
beseeching him to send more aid. 

"Is my son killed?" said the King. 

"No, sire, please God," returned the messenger. 

"Is he wounded?" said the King. 

"No, sire." 

"Is he thrown to the ground?" said the King. 

"No, sire, not so; but he is very hard pressed." 

"Then," said the King, "go back to those who sent 
you, and tell them I shall send no aid: because I set 
my heart upon my son proving himself this day a brave 
knight, and because I am resolved, please God, that the j 
honor of a great victory shall be his!" 

These bold words, being reported to the Prince and 
his division, so raised their spirits that they fought bet- 
ter than |ever. The King of France charged gallantly 
with his men many times; but it was of no use. Night 
closing in, his horse was killed under him by an Eng- 
lish arrow, and the knights and nobles who had clus- 
tered thick about him early in the day were now com- 
pletely scattered. At last some of his few remaining 
followers led him off the field by force, since he would 
not retire of himself, and they journeyed away to > 
Amiens. The victorious English, lighting their watch 
fires, made merry on the field, and the King riding to 
meet his gallant son, took him in his arms, kissed him, 
and told him that he had_acted nobly, and proved himself 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 169 

worthy of the day and of the crown. While it was yet 
night, King Edward was hardly aware of the great vic- 
tory he had gained, but, next day, it was discovered 
that eleven princes, twelve hundred knights, and thirty 
thousand common men lay dead upon the French side. 
Among these was the King of Bohemia, an old blind 
•man ; who, having been told that his son was wounded 
in the battle, and that no force could stand against the 
Black Prince, calld to him two knights, put himself on 
horseback between them, fastened the three bridles 
together, and dashed in among the English, where he 
was presently slain. He bore on his crest three white 
ostrich feathers, with the motto Ich dien, signifying 
in English, "I serve." This crest and motto were taken 
by the Prince of Wales in remembrance of that famous 
day, and have been borne by the Prince of Wales ever 
since. 

Five days after this great battle, the King laid siege 
to Calais. This siege — ever afterward memorable — 
lasted nearly a year. In order to starve the inhabitants 
out, King Edward built so many wooden houses for the 
lodging of his troops that it is said their quarters looked 
like a second Calais suddenly sprung up around the 
first. 

Early in the siege the governor of the town drove out 
what he called the useless mouths, to the number of 
seventeen hundred persons, men and women, young and 
old. King Edward allowed them to pass through his 
lines, and even fed them, and dismissed them with 
money, but, later in the siege, he was not so merciful — 
five hundred more who were afterward driven out dying 
of starvation and misery. The garrison were so hard 
pressed at last that they sent a letter to King Philip, 
telling him that they had eaten all the horses, all the 
dogs, and all the rats and mice that could be found in 
the place, and that, if he did not relieve them, they must 
either surrender to the English or eat one another. 
Philip made one effort to give them relief; but they 
were so hemmed in by the English power that he could, 
not succeed, and was tain to leave the place. Upon this 
they hoisted the English flag, and surrendered to King 
Edward. " Tell your generals, " said he to the humble 

12 History 



170 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

messenger who came out of the town, "that I require to 
have sent here six of the most distinguished citizens, 
bare-legged, and in their shirts, with ropes about their 
necks ; and let those six men bring with them the keys 
of the castle and the town. ' ' When the governor of 
Calais related this to the [people in the Market-place, 
there was great weeping and distress ; in the midst of 
which, one worthy citizen, named Eustace de St. Pierre, 
rose up and said, that if the six men required were not 
sacrificed, the whole population would be ; therefore, he 
offered himself as the first. Encouraged by this bright 
example, five other worthy citizens rose up one after 
another, and offered themselves to save the rest. The 
governor, who was too badly wounded to be able to 
walk, mounted a poor old horse that had not been eaten, 
and conducted these good men to the gate, while all the 
people cried and mourned. 

Edward received them wrathlully, and ordered 
the heads of the whole six to be struck off. 
However, the good Queen fell upon her knees, and 
besought the King to give them up to her. The 
King replied, "I wish you had been somewhere 
else ; but I cannot refuse you. ' ' So she had them prop- 
erly dressed, '^made a feast_for them, and sent them back 
with a handsome present, to the great rejoicing of the 
whole 'camp. I hope the people of Calais loved the 
daughter, to whom she gave birth soon afterward, for 
her gentle mother's sake. 

Now came that terrible disease, the Plague, into Eu- 
rope, hurrying from the heart of China ; and killed the 
wretched people — especially the poor — in such enormous 
numbers that one-half of the inhabitants of England are 
related to have died of it. It killed the cattle in great 
numbers, too; and so few workingmen remained alive 
that there were not enough left to till the ground. 

After eight years of differing and quarreling, the 
Prince of Wales again invaded France with an army of 
sixty thousand men. He went through the south of the 
country, burning and plundering wheresoever he went; 
while his father, who had still the Scottish war upon his 
hands, did the like in Scotland, but was harassed and 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 171 

worried in his retreat from that country by the Scottish 
men, who repaid his cruelties with interest. 

The French King, Philip, was now dead, and was 
succeeded by his' son, John. The Black Prince, called 
by the name from the color of the armor he wore, to set 
off his fair complexion, continuing to burn and destroy in 
France, roused John into determined opposition; and 
so cruel had the Black Prince been in his campaign, and 
so severely had the French peasants suffered, that he 
could not find one who, for love, or money, or the fear 
of death, would tell him what the French King was do- 
ing, or where he was. Thus it happened that he came 
upon the French King's forces, all of a sudden, near the 
town of Poitiers, and found that the whole neighboring 
country was occupied "by a vast French army. "God 
help 'us!" said the Black Prince, "we must make the 
best of it." 

So, on a Sunday morning, the 18th of September, the 
Prince — whose army was now reduced to ten thousand 
men in all — prepared to give battle to the French King, 
who had sixty thousand horse alone. While he was so 
engaged, there came riding from the French camp a 
cardinal, who had persuaded John to let him offer terms 
and try to save the shedding of Christian blood. "Save 
my honor," said the Prince to this good priest, "and 
save the honor ot my army, and I will make any reason- 
able terms." He offered to give up all the towns, cas 
ties, and prisoners he had taken, and to swear to make 
no war in France for seven years ; but as John would 
hear of nothing but his surrender, with a hundred of his 
chief knights, the treaty was broken off, and the Prince 
said quietly— "God defend the right; we shall fight to- 
morrow. ' ' 

Therefore on the Monday morning at break of day, the 
two armies prepared for battle. The English wers 
posted in a strong place, which could only be approached 
by one narrow lane, skirted by hedges on both sides. 
The French attacked them by this lane ; but were so 
galled and slain by English arrows from behind the 
hedges, that they were forced to retreat. Then went 
six hundred English bowmen round about, and, coming 
upon the rear of the French army, rained arrows on 



172 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

them thick and fast. The French knights, thrown into 
confusion, quitted their banners and dispersed in all 
directions. Said Sir John Chandos to the Prince, "Ride 
forward, noble Prince, and the day is yours. The King 
of France is so valiant a gentleman that I know he will 
never fly, and may be taken prisoner. " Said the Prince 
to this, "Advance, English banners, in the name of God 
and St. George!" and on they pressed until they came 
up with the French King, fighting fiercely with his bat- 
tle-ax, and, when all his nobles had forsaken him, 
attended faithfully to the last by his youngest son, 
PhiHp, only sixteen years of age. Father and son fought 
well, and the King had already two wounds in his face, 
and had been beaten down, when he at last delivered 
himsel* to a banished French knight, and gave him his 
right-hand glove in token that he had done so. 

The Black Prince was generous as well as brave, and 
he invited his royal prisoner to supper in his tent and 
waited upon him at table, and, when they afterward 
rode into London in a gorgeous procession, mounted the 
French King on a fine cream-colored horse, and rode 
at his side on a little pony. This was all very kind, but 
I think it was, perhaps, a little theatrical too, and has 
been made more meritorious than it deserved to be; 
especially as I am inclined to think that the greatest 
kindness to the King of France would have been not to 
have shown him to the people at all. However, it must 
be said, for these acts of politeness, that, in a course of 
time, they did much to soften the horrors of war and the 
passions of conquerors. It was a long, long time before 
the common soldiers began to have the benefit of such 
courtly deeds; but they did at last; and thus it is pos- 
sible that a poor soldier, who asked for quarter at the 
battle of Waterloo, or any other such great fight, may 
have owed his life indirectly to Edward the Black Prince. 

At this time there stood, in the Strand, in London, a 
palace called the Savoy, which was given up to the cap- 
tive King of France and his son for their residence. As 
the King of Scotland had now been King Edward's cap- 
tive for eleven years too, his success was, at this time, 
tolerably complete. The Scottish business was settled 
by the prisoner being released under the title of Sir 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 173 

David, King of Scotland, and by his engaging to pay a 
large ransom. The state of France encouraged Eng- 
land to propose harder terms to that country, where the 
people rose against, the unspeakable cruelty and barbar- 
ity of its nobles ; where the nobles rose in turn against 
the people; where the most frightful outrages were 
committed on all sides ; and where the insurrection of 
the peasants, called the insurrection of tbe Jacquerie, 
from Jacques, a common Christian namw among the 
country people of France, awakened terrp.-. s and hatreds 
that have scarcely yet passed away. A treaty called 
the Great Peace was at last signed, UAider which King 
Edward agreed to give up the greater part of his con- 
quests, and King John to pay, witnin six years, a ran- 
som of three million ac^ns jf^uld. He was so beset 
by his own 'nobles and courtiers for having yielded to 
these conditions- though they could help him to no bet- 
ter — that he came back of his own will to his old palace- 
prison of the Savoy, and there died. 

There was a sovereign of Castile at that time called 
Pedro the Cruel, who deserved the name remarkably 
well: having committed, among other cruelties, a vari- 
ety of murders. This amiable monarch, being driven 
from his throne for his crimes, went to the province of 
Bordeaux, where the Black Prince — now married to his 
cousin Joan, a pretty widow — was residing, and be- 
sought his help. The Prince, who took to him much 
more kindly than a prince of such fame ought to have 
taken to such a ruffian, readily listened to his fair 
promises, and agreeing to help him, sent secret orders 
to some troublesome disbanded soldiers of his and his 
fathers, who called themselves the Free Companions, 
and who had been a pest to the French people for some 
time, to aid this Pedro. The Prince, himself, going into 
Spain to head the army of relief, soon set Pedro on his 
throne again — where he no sooner found himself, than, 
of course, he behaved like the villain he was, broke his 
word without the least shame, and abandoned all the 
promises he had made the Black Prince. 

Now, it had cost the Prince a good deal of money to 
pay soldiers Jto support this murderous King; and find- 
ing himself, when he came back disgusted to Bordeaux, 



174 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

not only in bad health, but deeply in debt, he began to 
tax his French subjects to pay his creditors. They 
appealed to the French King Charles ; war again broke 
out; and the French town of Limoges, which the Prince 
had greatly benefited, went over to the French King. 
Upon this he ravaged the province of which it was the 
capital; burned, and plundered, and killed in the old 
sickening \\ ay ; and refused mercy to the prisoners, men, 
women, and children, taken in the offending town, 
though he wa\* so ill and so much in need of pity himself 
from Heaven that he was carried in a litter. He lived 
to come home and make himself popular with the 
people and Parliament, and he died on Trinity Sunday, 
the 8th of June, 137ft;. at forty-six years old. 

The whole nation rcu,arned i or '.aim as one of the most 
renowned and beloved princes it frad ever had; and he 
was buried with great lamentations in Canterbury 
Cathedral. Near to the tomb of Edward the Confessor, 
his monument, with his figure, carved in stone, and 
represented in the old black armor, lying on its back, 
may be seen at this day, with an ancient coat of mail, a 
helmet, and a pair of gauntlets hanging from a beam 
above it, which most people like to believe were once 
worn by the Black Prince. 

King Edward did not outlive his renowned son long. 
He was old, and one Alice Perrers, a beautiful lady, 
had contrived to make him so fond of her in his old age 
that he could refuse her nothing, and made himself 
ridiculous. She little deserved his love, or — what I dare 
say she valued a great deal more — the jewels of the late 
Queen, which he gave her among other rich presents. 
She took the very ring from his finger on the morning 
of the day when he died, and [left him to be pillaged by 
his faithless servants. Only one good priest was true 
to him, and attended him to the last. 

Besides being famous for the great victories I have 
related, the reign of King Edward III. was rendered 
memorable in better ways, by the growth of architec- 
ture and the erection of Windsor Castle. In better ways 
still, by the rising up of Wickliffe, originally a poor par- 
ish priest; who devoted himself to exposing, with won- 
derful power and success, the ambition and corruption 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 175 

of the Pope, and"of the whole Church of which he was 
the head. 

Some of those Flemings were induced to come to Eng- 
land in this reign too, and to settle in Norfolk, where 
they made better woolen cloths than the English had 
ever had before. The Order of the Garter (a very fine 
thing in its way, but hardly so important as good clothes 
for the nation) also dates from this period. The King 
is said to have picked up a lady's garter at a ball, and 
to have said Honi soil qui mal y ftense — in English, 
"Evil be to him who evil thinks of it." The courtiers 
were usually glad to imitate what the King said or did, 
and hence from a slight incident the Order of the Garter 
was instituted, and became a great dignity. So the 
story goes. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD II. 

Richard, son of the Black Prince, a boy eleven years 
of age, succeeded ^to the Crown under the title of King 
Richard II. The whole English 'nation were ready to 
admire him for the sake of his brave father. As to the 
lords and ladies about the Court, they declared him to 
be the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best — even of 
princes — whom the lords and ladies about the Court, 
generally declare to be the most beautiful, the wisest, 
and the best of mankind. To flatter a poor boy in this 
base manner was not a very likely way to develop what- 
ever good was in him ; and it brought him to anything 
but a good or happy end. 

The Duke of Lancaster, the young King's uncle — 
commonly called John of Gaunt, from having been born 
at Ghent, which the common people so pronounced — 
was supposed to have some thoughts of the throne him- 
self; but, as he was not popular, and the memory of the 
Black Prince was, he submitted to his nephew. 

The war with France being still unsettled, the Gov- 
ernment of England wanted money to provide for the 
expenses that might arise out of it; accordingly a cer- 
tain tax, called the poll tax, which had originated in the 



176 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

last reign, was ordered to be levied on the people. This 
was a tax on every person in the kingdom, male and 
female, above the age of fourteen, of three groats (or 
three four-penny pieces) a year ; clergymen were charged 
more, and only beggars were exempt. 

I have no need to repeat that the common people of 
England had long been suffering under great oppres- 
sion. They were still the mere slaves of the lords of the 
land on which they lived, and were on most occasions 
harshly and unjustly treated. But they had begun by 
this time to think very seriously of not bearing quite so 
much ; and, probably, were emboldened by that French 
insurrection I mentioned in the last chapter. 

The people of Essex rose against the poll tax, and 
being severely handled by the government officers, 
killed some of them. At : this very time one of the tax 
collectors, going his rounds from house to house, at 
Dartford, in Kent, came to the cottage of one Wat, a 
tiler by trade, and claimed the tax upon his daughter. 
Her mother, who was at home, declared that she was 
under the age of fourteen ; upon that, the collector (as 
other collectors had already done in different parts of 
England) behaved in a savage way, and brutally insulted 
Wat Tyler's daughter. The daughter screamed, the 
mother screamed. Wat the Tyler, who was at work not 
far off, ran to the spot, and did what any honest father 
under such provocation might have done — struck the 
collector dead at a blow. 

Instantly the people of that town uprose as one man. 
They made Wat Tyler their leader; they joined with 
the people of Essex, who were in arms under a priest 
called Jack Straw ; they took out of prison another priest 
named John Ball ; and gathering in numbers as they went 
along, advanced, in a great confused army ot poor men, 
to Blackheath. It is said that they wanted to abolish 
all property, and to declare all men equal. I do not think 
this very likely ; because they stopped the travelers on 
the roads and made them swear to be true to King 
Richard and the people. Nor were they at all disposed 
to injure those who had done them no harm, merely 
because they were of high station; for, the King's 
mother, who had to pass through their camp at Black- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 17? 

heath, on her way to her young son, lying for safety in 
the Tower of London, had merely to kiss a few dirty- 
faced, rough-bearded men who were noisily fond of roy- 
alty, and so got away in perfect safety. "Next da}r the 
whole mass marched on to London Bridge. 

There was a drawbridge in the middle, which William 
Walworth, the Mayor, caused to be raised to prevent 
their coming into the city ; but they soon terrified the 
citizens into lowering it again, and spread themselves, 
with great uproar, over the streets. They broke open 
the prisons ; they burned the papers in Lambeth Palace ; 
they [destroyed the Duke of Lancaster's Palace, the 
Savoy, in the Strand, said to be the most beautiful and 
splendid in England; they set fire to the books and 
documents in the Temple; and made a great riot. 
Many of these outrages were committed in drunkenness j 
since those citizens who had well-filled cellars were only 
too glad to throw them open to save the rest of their 
property ; but even the drunken rioters were very care- 
ful to steal nothing. They were so angry with one man, 
who was seen to take a silver cup at the Savoy Palace, 
and put it in his breast, that they drowned him in the 
river, cup and all. 

The young King had been taken out to treat with 
them before they committed these excesses ; but, he and 
the people about him were so frightened by the riotous 
shouts, that they got back to the Tower in the best way 
they could. This made the insurgents bolder ; so they 
went on rioting away, striking off the heads of those 
who did not, at a moment's notice, declare for King 
Richard and the people ; and killing as many of the un- 
popular persons whom the}?- supposed to be their ene- 
mies as they could by any means lay hold of. In this 
manner they passed one very violent day, and then proc- 
lamation was made that the King would meet them at 
Mile-end and grant their requests. 

The rioters went to Mile-end to the number of sixty 
thousand, and the King met them there, and to the 
King the rioters peaceably proposed four conditions. 
First, that neither they, nor their children, nor any 
coming after them, should be made slaves any more. 
Secondly, that the rent of land should be fixed at a cer- 



178 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

tain price in money, instead of being paid in service. 
Thirdly, that they should have liberty to buy and sell 
in all markets and public places, like other free men. 
Fourthly, that they should be pardoned for past offenses. 
Heaven knows there was nothing very unreasonable in 
these proposals ! The young King deceitfully pretended 
to think so, and kept thirty clerks up all night, writing 
out a charter accordingly. 

Now, Wat Tyler himself wanted more than this. He 
wanted the entire abolition of the forest laws. He was 
not at Mile-end with the rest, but, while that meeting 
was being held, broke into the Tower of London and 
slew the archbishops and the treasurer, for whose heads 
the people had cried out loudly the day before. He and 
his men even thrust their swords into the bed of the 
Princess of Wales while the Princess was in it, to make 
certain that none of their enemies were concealed there. 

So Wat and his men still continued armed, and rode 
about the city. Next morning, the King with a small 
train of some sixty gentlemen — among whom was Wal- 
worth, the Mayor — rode into Smithfield, and saw Wat 
and his people at a little distance. Says Wat to his 
men, "There is the King. I will go speak with him, 
and tell him what we want. ' ' 

Straightway Wat rode up to him and began to talk. 

"King," says Wat, "dost thou see all my men there?" 

"Ay," says the King. "Why?" 

"Because," says Wat, "they are all at my command, 
and have sworn to do whatever I bid them. ' ' 

Some declared afterward that, as Wat said this, he 
laid his hand on the King's bridle. Others declared 
that he was seen to play with his own dagger. I think, 
myself, that he just spoke to the King like a rough, 
angry man as he was, and did nothing more. At any 
rate he was expecting no attack, and preparing for no 
resistance, when Walworth, the Mayor, did the not very 
valiant deed of drawing a short sword and stabbing him 
in the throat. He dropped from his horse, and one of the 
King's people speedily finished him. So fell Wat 
Tyler. Fawners and flatterers made a mighty triumph 
over it, and set up a cry which will occasionally find an 
echo to this day. But Wat was a hard-working man, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 179 

who had suffered much, and had been foully outraged ; 
and it is probable that he was a man of a much higher 
nature and a much braver spirit than any of the para- 
sites who exulted then, or have exulted since, over his 
defeat. 

Seeing Wat down, his men immediately bent their 
bows to avenge his fall. If the young King had not had 
presence of mind at that dangerous moment, both he 
and the Mayor to boot might have followed Tyler pretty 
fast. But the King, riding up to the crowd, cried out 
that Tyler was a traitor, and that he would be their 
leader. They were so taken by surprise that they set 
up a great shouting and followed the boy until he was 
met at Islington by a large body of soldiers. 

The end of this rising was the then usual end. As 
soon as the King found himself safe, he unsaid all he 
had r said, and undid all he had done ; some fifteen hun- 
dred of the rioters were tried (mostly in Essex) with 
great rigor, and executed with great cruelty. Many of 
them were hanged on gibbets, and left there as a terror 
to the country people; and, because their miserable 
friends took some of the bodies down to bury, the 
King ordered the rest to be chained up — which was the 
beginning of the barbarous custom of hanging in chains. 
The King's falsehood in this business makes such a piti- 
ful figure that I think Wat Tyler appears in history as 
beyond comparison the truer and more respectable man 
of the two. 

Richard was now sixteen years of age, and married 
Anne of Bohemia, an excellent princess, who was called 
* 'the good Queen Anne." She deserved a better hus- 
band ; tor the King had been fawned and flattered into 
a treacherous, wasteful, dissolute, bad young man. 

There were two Popes at this time (as if one were not 
enough !) and their quarrels involved Europe in a great 
deal of trouble. Scotland was still troublesome too; 
and at home there was much jealousy and distrust, and 
plotting and counter-plotting, because the King feared 
the ambition of his relations, and particularly of his 
uncle, the Duke of Lancaster, and the duke had his 
party against the King, and the King had his party 
against the duke. Nor were these home troubles les- 



180 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

sened when the duke went to Castile to urge his claim 
to the crown ot that kingdom ; for then the Duke of 
Gloucester, another of Richard's uncles, opposed him, 
and influenced the Parliament to demand the dismissal 
of the King's favorite minister. The King said in reply 
that he would not for such men dismiss the meanest 
servant in his kitchen. But it had begun to signify 
little what a King said when a Parliament was deter- 
mined ; so Richard was at last obliged to give way, and 
to agree to another Government of the kingdom, under 
a commission of fourteen nobles, for a year. His 
uncle of Gloucester was at the head of this commission, 
and, in fact, appointed everybody composing it. 

Having done all this, the King declared, as soon as he 
saw an, opportunity, that he had never meantUo do it, 
and that it was all illegal ; and he got the judges secretly 
to sign a declaration to that effect. The secret oozed out 
directly, and was carried to the Duke [of Gloucester. 
The Duke of Gloucester, at the head of forty thousand 
men, met the King on his entering into London to en- 
force his authority ; the King was helpless against him ; 
his favorites and ministers were ^impeached and were 
mercilessly executed. Among them were two men 
whom the people regarded with very different feelings ; 
one, Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice, who was hated tor 
having made what was called "the bloody circuit" to try 
the rioters; the other, Sir Simon Burley, an honorable 
knight, who had been the dear friend of the Black 
Prince, and the governor and guardian of the King. 
For this gentleman's life the good Queen even begged 
of Gloucester on her knees; but Gloucester, with or 
without reason, feared and hated him, and replied, that 
if she valued her husband's crown, she had better beg 
no more. All this was done under what was called by 
some the wonderful — and by others, with better reason, 
the merciless — Parliament. 

But Gloucester's power was not to last forever. He 
held it for only a year longer, in which year the famous 
battle of Otterbourne, sung in the old ballad of Chevy 
Chase, was fought. When the year was out, the King, 
turning suddenly to Gloucester, in the midst of a great 
council said, "Uncle, how old am I?" "Your high- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 181 

ness," returned the Duke, "is in your twenty-second 
year." "Am I [so much?" said the King, "then I will 
manage my own affairs ! 1 am 'much obliged to you, 
my good lords, for your past services, but I need them 
no more. ' He followed ^this up by appointing a new 
Chancellor and a new Treasurer, and announced to the 
people that he had resumed the Government. He held 
it for eight years without opposition. Through all that 
time he kept his determination to revenge himself some 
day upon his uncle Gloucester in his own breast. 

At last [the good Queen died, and then the King, de- 
siring to take a second wife, proposed to his council that 
he should marry Isabella of France, the daughter of 
Charles VI.; who, the French courtiers said, as the 
English courtiers had said of Richard, was a marvel of 
beauty and wit, and quite a phenomenon — of seven 
years old. The council were divided about this mar- 
riage, but it took place. It secured peace between Eng- 
land and France for a quarter of a century ; but it was 
strongly opposed to the prejudices of the English peo- 
ple. The Duke of Gloucester, who was anxious to take 
the occasion of making himself popular, declaimed 
against it loudly, and this at length decided the King to 
execute the vengeance he had been nursing so long. 

He went with a gay company to the Duke of Glouces- 
ter's house, Pleshey Castle, in Essex, where the Duke, 
suspecting nothing, came out into the courtyard to re- 
ceive his royal visitor. While the King conversed in a 
friendly manner with the Duchess, the Duke was quiet- 
ly seized, hurried away, shipped for Calais, and 
lodged in the castle there. His friends, the Earls of 
Arundel and Warwick, were taken in the same treach- 
erous manner, and confined to their castles. A few days 
after, at Nottingham, they were impeached of high 
treason. The Earl of Arundel was condemned and be- 
headed, and the Earl of Warwick was banished. Then, 
a writ was sent by a messenger to the Governor of 
Calais, requiring him to send the Duke of Gloucester 
over to be tried. In three days he returned an answer 
that he could not do that, because the Duke of Glouces- 
ter had died in prison. The Duke was declared a trai- 
tor, his property was confiscated to the King, a real or 



1S2 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

pretended confession he had made in the prison to one 
of the Justices of the Common Pleas was produced 
against him, and there was an end of the matter. How 
the unfortunate duke died very few cared to know. 
Whether he really died naturally; whether he killed 
himself; whether, by the King's order, he was strangl- 
ed, or smothered between two beds, as a serving-man of 
the Governor's named Hall did afterward declare, 
cannot be discovered. There is not much doubt that he 
was killed, somehow or other, by his nephews' orders. 
Among the most active nobles in these proceedings 
were the King's cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, whom the 
King had made Duke ot Hereford to smooth down the 
old family quarrels, and some others; who had in the 
family-plotting times done just such acts themselves as 
they now condemned in the duke. They seem to have 
been a corrupt set of men ; but such men were easily 
found about the court in such days. 

The people murmured at all this, and were still very 
sore about the French marriage. The nobles saw how 
little the King cared for law, and how crafty he was, 
and began to be somewhat afraid of themselves. The 
King's life was a life of continued feasting and excess ; 
his retinue, down to the meanest servants, were dressed 
in the most costly manner, and caroused at his tables, 
it is 'related, to the number of ten thousand persons 
every day. He himself, surrounded by a body of ten 
thousand archers, and enriched by a duty on wool which 
the Commons had granted him for life, saw no danger of 
ever being otherwise than powerful and absolute, and 
was as fierce and haughty as a King could be. 

He had two of his old enemies left, in the persons of 
the Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk. Sparing these no 
more than the others, he tampered with the Duke of 
Hereford until he got him to declare before the Council 
that the Duke of Norfolk had lately held some treason- 
able talk with him, as he was riding near Brentford; and 
that he had told him, among other things, that he could 
not believe the King's oath — which nobody could, I 
should think. For this treachery he obtained a pardon, 
and the Duke of Norfolk was summoned to appear and 
defend himself. As he denied the charge and said his 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 183 

accuser was a liar and a traitor, both noblemen, accord- 
ing to the manner of those times, were held in cus- 
tody, and the truth was ordered to be decided by wager 
of battle at Coventry. JThis wager of battle meant that, 
whomsoever won the combat was to be considered in the 
right; which nonsense meant in effect, that no strong 
man could ever be wrong. A great holiday was made ; 
a great crowd assembled, with much parade and show ; 
and the two combatants were about to rush at each 
other with their lances, when the King, sitting in a pa- 
vilion to see fair, threw down the truncheon which he 
carried in his hand, and forbade the battle. The Duke 
of Hereford was to be banished for ten years, and the 
Duke of Norfolk was to be banished for life. So said 
the King. The Duke of Hereford went to France and 
went no further. The Duke of Norfolk made a pilgrim- 
age to the Holy Land, and afterward died at Venice of 
a broken heart. 

Faster and fiercer, after this, the King went on in his 
career. The Duke of Lancaster, who was the father of 
the Duke of Hereford, died soon after the departure of 
his son; and the King, although he had solemnly 
granted to that son leave to inherit his father's prop- 
erty, if it should come to him during his banishment, 
immediately seized it all, like a robber. The judges 
were so afraid of him that they disgraced themselves by 
declaring this theft to be just and lawful. His avarice 
knew no bounds. He outlawed seveoteen counties at 
once, on a frivolous pretense, merely to raise money 
by way of fines for misconduct. In short, he did as 
many dishonest things as he could ; and cared so little 
for the discontent of his subjects — though even the 
spaniel favorites began to whisper to him that there 
was such a thing as discontent afloat — that he took that 
time, of all others, for leaving England and making an 
expedition against the Irish. 

He was scarcely gone, leaving the Duke of York 
Regent in his absence, when his cousin, Henry of Here- 
ford, came over from France to claim the rights of which 
he had been so monstrously deprived. He was immedi- 
ately joined by the two great Earls of Northumberland 
and Westmoreland; and his uncle, the Regent, finding 



184 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the King's cause unpopular, and the disinclination of the 
army to act against Henry very strong, withdrew the 
royal forces toward Bristol. Henry, at the head of an 
army, came from Yorkshire, where he had landed, to 
London, and followed him. They joined their forces — 
how they brought that about is not distinctly understood 
— and proceeded to Bristol Castle, whither three noble- 
men had taken the young Queen. The castle surrender- 
ing, they presently put those three noblemen to death. 
The Regent then remained there, and Henry went on 
to Chester. 

All this time, the boisterous weather had prevented 
the King from receiving intelligence of what had oc- 
curred. At length it was conveyed Jto him in Ireland, 
and he sent over the Earl of Salisbury, who, landing at 
Conway, rallied the Welshmen, and waited for the King 
a'whole fortnight ;|at the end of that time the Welshmen, 
who were perhaps not very warm for him in the begin- 
ning, quite ^cooled down and went home. When the 
King did land on the coast at last, he came with a pretty 
good power, but his men cared nothing for him, and 
quickly deserted. Supposing the Welshmen to be still 
at Conway, he disguised himself as a priest, and made 
for that place in company with his wto brothers and 
some few of their adherents. But there were no Welsh- 
man left — only Salisbury and a hundred soldiers. In 
this distress, the King's two brothers, Exeter and Sur- 
rey, offered to go to Henry to learn what his intentions 
were. Surrey, who was true to Richard, was put into 
prison. Exeter, who was false, took the royal badge, 
which was a hart, off his shield, and assumed the rose, 
the badge of Henry. After this, it was pretty plain to 
the King what Henry's intentions were, without sending 
any more messengers to ask. 

!» The fallen King, thus deserted — hemmed in on all 
sides, and pressed with hunger — rode here and rode 
there, and went to this castle and went to that castle, 
endeavoring to obtain some provisions, but could find 
none. He rode wretchedly back to Conway, and there 
surrendered himself to the Earl of Northumberland,, 
who came from Henry, in reality to take him prisoner, \ 
but in appearance to offer terms : and whose men were N 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 185 

hidden not far off. By this earl he was conducted to 
the castle of Flint, where his cousin Henry met him, 
and dropped on his knee as if he were still respectful to 
his sovereign. 

"Fair cousin of Lancaster," said the King, "you are 
very welcome." [(Very welcome, no doubt; but he 
would have been more so in chains or without a head.) 

"My lord," replied Henry, "I am come a little before 
my time ; but, with your good pleasure, I will show you 
the reason. Your people complain, with some bitter- 
ness, that you have ruled them rigorously for two-and- 
twenty years. Now, if it please God, I will help you to 
govern them better in future. ' ' 

"Fair cousin," replied the abject King, "since it 
pleaseth you, it pleaseth me mightily." 

After this, the trumpets sounded, and the King was 
stuck on a wretched horse, 'and carried prisoner to 
Chester, where he was made |to issue ;a proclamation 
calling a Parliament. From Chester he was taken on 
toward London. At Lichfield he tried to escape by get- 
ting out of a window and letting himself down into a 
garden; it was all in vain, however, and he was carried 
on and shut up in the Tower, where no one pitied him, 
and where the whole people, whose patience he had 
quite tired out, reproached him without mercy. Before 
he got there, it is related that his very dog left him and 
departed from his side to lick the hand of Henry. 

The day before the Parliament met, a deputation 
went to this wretched King, and told him that he nad 
promised the Earl of Northumberland at Conway Castle 
to resign the crown. He said he was quite ready to do 
it, and signed a paper in which he renounced his author- 
ity and absolved his people from their allegiance to him. 
He had so little spirit left that he gave his royal ring to 
his triumphant cousin Henry with his own hand, and 
said that if he could have had leave to appoint a suc- 
cessor, that same Henry was the man of all others whom 
he would have named. Next day, the Parliament as- 
sembled in Westminster Hall, where Henry sat at the 
side of the throne, which was empty and covered with 
a cloth of gold. The paper just signed by the King was 
read to '.the multitude amid shouts of joy, which were 



186 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

echoed through all the streets ; when some of the noise 
had died away, the King was formally deposed. Then 
Henry arose, and, making the sign of the cross on his 
forehead and breast, challenged the realm of England 
as his right ; the archbishops of Canterbury and York 
seated him on the throne. ! 

The multitude shouted again, and the shouts re-ech- 
oed throughout all the streets. No one remembered 
now that Richard II. had ever been the most beautiful, 
the wisest and the best of princes ; and he now made 
living, to my thinking, a far more sorry spectacle in the 
Tower of 'London, than Wat Tyler had made, lying 
dead, among the hoofs of the royal horses in Smithfield. 

The poll tax died with Wat. The smiths to the King 
and royal family could make no [claims in jwhich the 
King could hang the people's recollection of him ; so the 
poll tax was never collected. 

CHAPTE XX. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY IV., CALLED BOLINGBROKE. 

During the last reign, the preaching of Wickliffe 
against the pride and cunning of the Pope and all his 
men, had made a great noise in England. Whether the 
new King wished to be in favor with the priests, or 
whether he hoped by pretending to be very religious to 
cheat Heaven itself into the belief that he was not an 
usurper, I don't know. Both suppositions are likely 
enough. It is certain that he began his rein by making a 
strong show against the followers of Wickliffe, who 
were called lollards or heretics — although his father, John 
of Gaunt, had been of that way of thinking, as he him- 
self had been more than suspected of being. It is no 
less certain that he first established in England the de- 
testable and atrocious' custom, brought from abroad, of 
burning those people as a punishment for their opinions. 
It was the importation into England of one of the prac- 
tices of what was called the Holy Inquisition ; which 
was the most unholy and most infamous tribunal that 
ever disgraced mankind, and made men more like de- 
mons than followers of our Saviour. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 187 

No real right to the crown, as you know, was in this 
King. Edward Mortimer, the young Earl of March — 
who was only eight or nine years old and who was de- 
scended from the Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of 
Henry's father — was, by succession, the real heir to the 
throne. However, the King got his son declared Prince 
of Wales ; and, obtaining possession of the young Earl 
of March and his little brother, kept them in confine- 
ment, but not severely, in Windsor Castle. He then re- 
quired the Parliament to decide what was to be done 
with the deposed king, who was quiet enough, and who 
•only said that he hoped his cousin Henry would be "a 
good lord" to him. The Parliament replied that they 
would recommend his '.being kept in some secret place 
where the people could 'not resort, and where his friends 
could not be admitted^to see him. Henry accordingly 
passed this sentence upon him, and it now began to be 
pretty clear to the nation that Richard II would not 
live very long. 

It was a noisy Parliament, as it was an unprincipled 
one, and the lords quarreled so violently among them- 
selves as to which of them had been loyal and which 
disloyal, and which consistent and which inconsistent, 
that forty gauntlets are said to have been thrown upon 
the floor at one time as challenges to as many battles ; 
the truth being that they were all false and base togeth- 
er, and had been, at one time with the old .King, and 
at another time with the new one, and seldom true for 
any length of time to any one. They soon began to plot 
again. A conspiracy was formed to invite the King to a 
tournament at Oxford, and then to take him by surprise 
and kill him. This murderous enterprise, which was 
agreed upon at secret meetings in the house of the Ab- 
bot of Westminster, was betrayed by the Earl of Rut- 
land — one of the conspirators. The King, instead of 
going to the tournament [or staying at Windsor, where 
the conspirators [suddenly went, on finding themselves 
discovered, with the hopejof seizing him, retired to Lon- 
don, proclaimed Jthem ,all traitors, and advanced upon 
them with a great force. They retired into the west of 
England, proclaiming Richard king ; but the people rose 
against them and they were all slain. Their treason 



188 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

hastened the death of the deposed monarch. Whether 
he was killed by hired assassins, or whether he was 
starved to death, or whether he refused food on hearing 
of his brothers being killed, who were in that plot, is 
very doubtful. He met his death somehow, and his 
body was publicly shown at St. Paul's Cathedral with 
only the lower part of the face uncovered. I can scarcely 
doubt that he was killed *by the King's orders. The 
French wife of the miserable Richard was now only ten 
years old; and when her father, [Charles of France, 
heard of her misfortunes and of her lonely condition in 
England, he went mad ; as he had several times done 
before, during the last five or six years. The French 
Dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon took up the poor girl's 
cause without caring much about it, but on the chance 
of getting something out of England. The people of 
Bordeaux, who had a sort of superstitious attachment to 
the memory of Richard, because he was born there, 
swore by the Lord that he had been the best man in all 
his kingdom — which was going rather far — and promised 
to do great things against |the English. Nevertheless, 
when they came to consider that they, and the whole 
people of France, were ruined^by their own nobles, and. 
that the English rule was much the better of the two, 
they cooled down again ; and the two dukes, although 
they were very *great men, could do nothing without 
them. Then began negotiations between France and 
England for the sending home to Paris of the poor little 
Queen with all her jewels and her fortune of two hun- 
dred thousand francs in gold. The King was quite will- 
ing to restore the young lady and even the jewels; but 
he said he really could not part with the money. So at 
last she was safely deposited at Paris without her for- 
tune, and then the Duke of Burgundy, who was cousin 
to the French King, began to quarrel with the Duke of 
Orleans, who was brother to the French King, about 
the whole matter, and those Jtwo dukes made France 
even more wretched than ever. 

As the idea of conquering ^Scotland was 'still popular 
at home, the King marched to the river Tyne and de- 
manded homage of the King of that country. This 
being refused, he advanced to Edinburgh, but did little 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 189 

there ; for his army being in want of provisions, and the 
Scotch being very careful to hold him in check without 
giving battle, he was obliged to retire. It is to his im- 
mortal honor that in this sally he burned no villages and 
slaughtered no people, but was particularly careful that 
his army should be merciful and harmless. It was a 
great example in those ruthless times. 

A war among the border people of England and Scot- 
land went on for twelve months, and then the Earl of 
Northumberland, the nobleman who had helped Henry 
to the crown, began to rebel against him — probably be- 
cause nothing that Henry could do for him would satisfy 
his extravagant expectations. There was a certain 
Welsh gentleman, named Owen Glendower, who had 
been a student in one of the Inns of Court, and had af- 
terward been in the service of the late King, whose 
elsh property was taken from him by a powerful lord 
related to the present King, who was his neighbor. 
Appealing for redress, and getting none, he took up 
arms, was made an outlaw, and declared himself sover- 
eign of Wales. He pretended to be a magician ; and not 
only were the Welsh people stupid enough to believe 
him, but even Henry believed him too; for, making 
three expeditions into Wales, and being three times 
driven back by the wildness of the country, the bad 
weather, and the skill of Glendower, he thought he was 
defeated by the Welshman's magic arts. However, he 
took Lord Grey and Sir Edmund Mortimer prisoners, 
and allowed the relatives of Lord Grey to ransom him, 
but would not extend such favor to Sir Edmund Mor- 
timer. Now, r Henry Percy, called Hotspur, son of the 
Earl of Northumberland, who was married to Morti- 
mer's sister, is supposed to have taken offense at this; 
and, therefore, in conjunction with his father and some 
others, to have joined Owen Glendower, and risen 
against Henry. It is by no means clear that this was 
the real cause of the conspiracy ; but perhaps it was 
made the pretext. It was formed, and was very power- 
ful ; including Scroop, Archbishop of York, and the Earl 
of Douglas, a powerful and brave Scottish nobleman. 
The King was 'prompt and active, and the two armies 



190 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

There were about fourteen thousand men in each. 
The old Earl ot Northumberland being sick, the rebel 
forces were led by his son. The King wore plain armor 
to deceive the enemy; and four noblemen, with the 
same object, wore the royal arms. The rebel charge 
was so furious that every one of those gentlemen was 
killed, the royal standard was beaten down, and the 
young Prince of ^Wales was severely wounded in the 
face. But he was one of the bravest and best soldiers 
that ever lived, and he fought so well, and the King's 
troops were so encouraged by his bold example, that 
they rallied immediately, and cut the enemy's forces all 
to pieces. Hotspur was killed by an arrow in the brain, 
and the rout was so complete that the whole rebellion 
was struck down by this one blow. The Earl of North- 
umberland surrendered himself soon after hearing of 
the death of his son, and received a pardon for air his 
offenses. 

There was some lingering of rebellion yet; Owen 
Glendower being retired to Wales, and a preposterous 
story being spread among the ignorant people that King 
Richard was still alive. How they could have believed 
such nonsense it is difficult to imagine ; but they cer- 
tainly did suppose that the Court fool of the late King, 
who was something like him, was he, himself; so that it 
seemed as if, after giving so much trouble to the coun- 
try in his life, he was still to trouble it after his death. 
This was not the worst. The young Earl of March and 
his brother were stolen out of Windsor Castle. Being 
retaken, and being found to have been spirited away by 
one Lady Spencer, she accused her own brother, that 
Earl of Rutland who was in the former conspiracy and 
was now Duke of York, of being in the plot. For this 
he was ruined in fortune, though not put to death ; and 
then another plot arose among the old Earl of Northum- 
berland, some other lords, and that same Scroop, Arch- 
bishop of York, who was with the rebels before. These 
conspirators caused a writing to be posted on the 
church doors, accusing the King ot a variety of crimes ; 
but, the King being eager and vigilant to oppose them, 
they were all taken, and the Archbishop was executed. 
This was the first time that a great churchman had 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 191 

been slain by the law in England ; but the King was 
resolved that it should be done, and done it was. 

The next most remarkable event of this time was the 
seizure by Henry of the heir to the Scottish throne — 
James, a boy of nine years old. He had been put aboard 
ship by his father, the Scottish King Robert, to save 
him from the designs of his uncle, when, on his way to 
France, he was accidentally taken by some English 
cruisers. He remained a prisoner in England for nine- 
teen years, and became in his prison a ^student and a 
famous poet. 

With the exception of occasional troubles with the 
Welsh and with the French, the rest of King Henry's 
reign was quiet enough. But the King was far from 
happy, and probably was troubled in his conscience by 
knowing that he had usurped the crown, and had occa- 
sioned the death of his miserable cousin. The Prince of 
Wales, though brave and generous, is said to have 
been wild and dissipated, and even to have drawn his 
sword on Gascoigne, the Chief Justice of the King's 
Bench, because he was firm in dealing impartially with 
one of his dissolute companions. Upon this the Chief 
Justice is said to have ordered him immediately to 
prison : the Prince of Wales is said to have submitted 
with a good grace, and the King is said to have ex- 
claimed, "Happy is the monarch 'who has so just a 
judge, and a son so willing to obey the laws." This is 
all very doubtful, and so is another story, of which 
Shakespeare has made beautiful use, that the Prince 
once took the crown out of his father's chamber as he 
was sleeping, and tried it on his own head. 

The 'King's health sank more and more, and he be- 
came subject to violent eruptions on the face and to bad 
epileptic fits, and his spirits sank every day. At last, 
as he was praying before the shrine of St. Edward at 
Westminster Abbey, he was seized with a terrible fit, 
and was carried into the Abbot's chamber, where he 
presently died. It had been foretold that he would die 
at Jerusalem, which certainly is not, and never was, 
Westminster. But, as the Abbot's room had long been 
called the Jerusalem chamber, people said it was all the 
same thing, and were quite satisfied with the prediction. 



192 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The King died on the 20th of March, 1413, in the 
forty-seventh year of his age, and the fourteenth of his 
reign. He was buried in Canterbury Cathedral. He 
had been twice married, and had, by his first wife, a 
family of four sons and two daughters. Considering his 
duplicity before he came to the throne, his unjust seiz- 
ure of it, and, above all, his making that monstrous law 
for the burning of what the priests called heretics, he 
was a reasonably good king, as kings went. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY V. — PART FIRST. 

The Prince of Wales began his reign like a generous 
and honest man. He set the young Earl of March free ; 
he restored their estates and their honors to the Percy 
family, who had lost them by their rebellion against 
his father; he ordered the imbecile and unfortunate 
Richard to be honorably buring among the Kings of 
England ; and he dismissed all his wild companions, 
with assurances that they should not want, if they would 
resolve to be steady, faithful, and true. 

It is much easier to burn men than to burn their opin- 
ions ; and those of the Lollards were spreading every 
day. The Lollards were represented by the priests — 
probably falsely, for the most part — to entertain treason- 
able designs against the new King ; and Henry, suffer- 
ing himself to be worked upon by these representations, 
sacrificed his friend Sir John Oldcastle, the Lord Cob- 
ham, to them, after trying in vain to convert him by 
arguments. He was declared guilty, as the head of the 
sect, and .sentenced to the flames; but he escaped from 
the Tower before the day of execution (postponed for 
fifty days by the King himself), and summoned the Lol- 
lards to meet him near London on a certain day. So 
the priests told the King, at least. I doubt whether 
there was any conspiracy beyond such as was got up by 
their agents. On the day appointed, instead of five- 
and-twenty thousand men, under the command of Sir 
John Oldcastle, in the meadows of St. Giles, the King 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 193 

found only eighty men, and no Sir John at all. There 
was in another place an addle-headed brewer, who had 
gold trappings to his horse, and a pair of gilt spurs in 
his breast — expecting to be made a knight next day by 
Sir John, and so to gain the right to wear them — but 
there was no Sir John, nor did anybody give information 
respecting him, though the King offered great Tewards 
for such intelligence. Thirty of these unfortunate Lol- 
lards were hanged and drawn immediately, and were 
then burned, gallows and all; and the various prisons 
in and around London were crammed full of othtrs. 
Some of these unfortunate men made various confes- 
sions of treasonable designs ; but such confessions were 
easily got under torture and the fear of fire.and are very 
little to be trusted. To finish the sad story of Sir John 
Oldcastle at once, I may mention that he escaped into 
Wales and remained there safely for four years. When 
discovered by Lord Powis, it is very doubtful if he 
would have been taken alive — so great was the old sol- 
dier's bravery — if a miserable old woman had not come 
behind him and broken his leg with a stool. He was 
carried to London in a horse litter, was fastened by an 
iron chain to a gibbet, and so roasted to death. 

To make the state of France as plain as I can in a few 
words, I should tell you that the Duke of Orleans, and 
the Duke of Burgundy, commonly called "John Without 
Fear," had had a grand reconciliation of their quarrel 
in the last reign and had appeared to be quite in a heav- 
enly state of mind. Immediately after which, on a 
Sunday, in the public streets of Paris, the Duke of 
Orleans was murdered by a party of twenty men, set 
on by the Duke of Burgundy — according to his own 
deliberate confession. The widow of King Richard had 
been married in France to the eldest son of the Duke of 
Orleans. The poor mad King was quite powerless to 
help her, and the Duke of Burgundy became the real 
master of France. Isabella dying, her husband (Duke 
of Orleans since the death of his father) married the 
daughter of the Count of Armagnac, who, being a much 
abler man than his young son-in-law, headed his party; 
thence called after him Armagnacs. Thus, France was 
now in this terrible condition, that it had in it the party 

13 History 



194 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of the King's son, the Dauphin Louis ; the party of the 
Duke of Burgundy, who was the father of the Dauphin's 
ill-used wife ; and the party of the Armagnacs ; all hat- 
ing each other ; all fighting together ; all composed of 
the most depraved nobles that the earth has ever known ; 
and all tearing unhappy France to pieces. 

The late King had watched these dissensions from 
England, sensible (like the French people) that no enemy 
of France could injure her more than her own nobility. 
The present King now advanced a claim to the French 
throne. His demand being, of course, refused, he re- 
duced his proposal to a certain large amount of French 
territory, and to demanding the French princess, Cather- 
ine, in marriage, with a fortune of two millions of 
golden crowns. He was offered less territory and fewer 
crowns, and no princess ; but he called his ambassadors 
home and prepared for war. Then he proposed to take 
the princess with one million of crowns. The French 
Court replied that he should have the princess with two 
hundred thousand crowns less ; he said this would not 
do (he had never seen the princess in his life), and assem- 
bled his army at Southampton. There was a short plot 
at home just at that time, for deposing him, and making 
the Earl of March king ; but the conspirators were all 
speedily condemned and executed, and the King 
embarked for France. 

It is dreadful to observe how long a bad example will 
be followed ; but it is encouraging to know that a good 
example is never thrown away. The King's first act on 
disembarking, at the mouth of the river Seine, three 
miles from Harfleur, was to imitate his father, and to 
proclaim his solemn orders that the lives and property 
of the peaceable inhabitants should be respected on pain 
of death. It is agreed by French writers, to his lasting 
renown, that even while his soldiers were suffering the 
greatest distress from want of food, these commands 
were rigidly obeyed. 

With an army in all of thirty thousand men, he be- 
sieged the town of Harfleur both by sea and land for 
five weeks ; at the end of which time the town surren- 
dered, and the inhabitants were allowed to depart with 
only fivepence each, and a part of their clothes. All 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 195 

the rest of their possessions was divided among the 
English army. But that army suffered so much, in spite 
of its successes, from disease and privation, that it was 
already reduced one-half. Still, the King was deter- 
mined not to retire until he had struck a greater blow. 
Therefore, against the advice of all his counsellors, he 
moved on with his little force toward Calais. When he 
came up to the river Somme he was unable to cross, in 
consequence of the ford being fortified; and, as the 
English moved up the left bank of the river looking for 
a crossing, the French, who had broken all the bridges, 
moved up the right bank, watching them, and waiting 
to attack them when they should try to pass it. At last 
the English found a crossing and got safely over. The 
French held a council of war at Rouen, resolved to give 
the English battle, and sent heralds to King Henry to 
know by which road he was going. "By the road that 
will take me straight to Calais!" said the King, and sent 
them away with a present of a hundred crowns. 

The English moved on until they beheld the French, 
and then the King gave orders to form in line of battle. 
The French not coming on, the army broke up after 
remaining in battle array till night, and got good rest 
and refreshment at a neighboring village. The French 
were now all lying in another village, through which 
they knew the English must pass. They were resolved 
that the English should begin the battle. The English 
had no means of retreat, if their King had any such in- 
tention ; and so the two armies passed the night close 
together. 

To understand these armies well, you must bear in 
mind that the immense French army had among its 
notable persons almost the whole of that wicked nobil- 
ity whose debauchery had made France a desert ; and 
so besotted where they by pride, and by contempt of the 
common people, that they had scarcely any bowmen 
(if indeed they had any at all) in their whole enormous 
number: which, compared to the English army, was at 
least as six to one. For these proud fools had said that 
the bow was not a fit weapon for knightly hands, and 
that France must be defended by gentlemen only. We 
shall see presently what hand the gentlemen made of it. 



196 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Now, on the English side, among the little force, 
there was a good proportion of men who were not gen- 
tlemen by any means, but who were good stout archers 
for all that. Among them in the morning — having slept 
little at night, while the French were carousing and 
making sure of victory — the King rode, on a gray horse; 
wearing on his head a helmet of shining steel, sur- 
mounted by a crown of gold, sparkling with precious 
stones; and bearing over his armor, embroidered to- 
gether, the arms of England and the arms of France. 
The archers looked at the shining helmet and the crown ij 
of gold and the sparkling jewels, and admired them i 
all; but what they admired most was the King's cheer- ■ 
f ul face, and his bright blue eye, as he told them that, 
£6x himself, he had made up his mind to conquer there 
or to die there, and that England should never have a ; 
ransom to pay for him. There was one brave knight ' 
who chanced to say that he wished some of the many 
gallant gentlemen and good soldiers who were then idle > 
at home in England were there to increase their num- 
bers. But the King told him that, for his part, he did 
not wish for one more man. "The fewer we have,"- I 
said he, "the greater will be the honor we shall win!" 
His men, being now all in good heart, were refreshed 
with bread and wine and heard prayers, and waited 
quietly for the French. The King waited for the French ' 
because they were drawn up thirty deep (the little Eng- 
lish force was only three deep), on a very difficult and 
heavy ground; and he knew that, when they moved, 
there must be confusion among them. 

As they did not move, he sent off two parties — one to , 
lie concealed in a wood on the left of the French ; the • 
other, to set fire to some houses behind the French after 
the battle should be begun. This was scarcely done 
when three of the proud French gentlemen, who were 
to defend their country without any help from the base 
peasants, came riding out, calling upon the English to 
surrender. The King warned those gentlemen himself 
to retire with all speed if they cared for their lives, and 
ordered the English banners to advance. Upon that, 
Sir Thomas Erpmgham, a great English general, who 
commanded the archers, threw his truncheon into the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 197 

air joyfully; and all the Englishmen, kneeling down 
upon the ground and biting it as if they took possession 
of the country, rose up with a great shout and fell upon 
the French. 

Every archer was furnished with a great stake tipped 
with iron ; and his orders were to thrust this stake into 
the ground, to discharge his arrow, and then to fall 
back, when the French horsemen came on. As the 
haughty French gentlemen, who were to break the Eng- 
lish archers and utterly destroy them with their knightly 
lances, came riding up, they were received with such a 
blinding storm of arrows that they broke and turned. 
Horses and men rolled over one another, and the con- 
fusion was terrific. Those who rallied and charged the 
archers got among the stakes on slippery and boggy 
ground, and were so bewildered that the English archers 
— who wore no armor, and even took off their leathern 
coats to be more active — cut them to pieces, root and 
branch. Only three French horsemen got within the 
stakes, and those were instantly dispatched. All this 
time the dense French army, being in armor, were sink- 
ing knee-deep into the mire; while the light English 
archers, half-naked, were as fresh and active as if they 
were fighting on a marble floor. 

But now the second division of the French, coming to 
the relief of the first, closed up in a firm mass; the Eng- 
lish, headed by the King, attacked them ; and the dead- 
liest part of the battle began. The King's brother, the 
Duke of Clarence, was struck down, and numbers of the 
French surrounded him ; but King Henry, standing over 
the body, fought like a lion until they were beaten off. 

Presently came up a band of eighteen French knights, 
bearing the banner of a certain French lord, who had 
sworn to kill or take the English King. One of them 
struck him such a blow with a battle-ax that he reeled 
and fell upon his knees; but his faithful men, immedi- 
ately closing around him, killed every one of those 
eighteen knights, and so that French lord never kept 
his oath. 

The French Duke of Alencon, seeing this, made a 
desperate charge, and cut his way close up to the Royal 
Standard of England. He beat down the Duke of York, 



198 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

who was standing near it ; and when the King came to 
his rescue, struck off a piece of the crown he wore. 

But he never struck another blow in this world; for 
even as he was in the act of saying who he was, and 
that he surrendered to the King; and even as the King 
stretched out his hand to give him a safe and honorable 
acceptance of the offer, he fell dead, pierced by innum- 
erable wounds. 

The death of this nobleman decided the battle. The 
third division of the French army, which had never 
struck a blow yet, and which was, in itself, more than 
double the whole English power, broke and fled. At 
this time of the fight the English, who as yet had made 
no prisoners, began to take them in immense numbers, 
and were still occupied in doing so, or in killing those 
who would not surrender, when a great noise arose in the 
rear of the French — their flying banners were seen to 
stop — and King Henry, supposing a great re-enforce- 
ment to have arrived, gave orders that all the prisoners 
should be put to death. As soon, however, as it was 
found that the noise was only occasioned by a body of 
plundering peasants, the terrible massacre was stopped. 

Then King Henry called to him the French herald, 
and asked him to whom the victory belonged. 

The herald replied, "To the King of England." 

"We have not made this havoc and slaughter," said 
the King. "It is the wrath of Heaven on the sins of 
France. What is the name of that castle yonder?" 

The herald answered him, "My lord, it is the castle 
of Azincourt." 

Said the King, "From henceforth this battle shall be 
known to posterity by the name of the battle of Azin- 
court." 

Our English historians have made it Agincourt ; but 
under that name it will ever be famous in English 
annals. 

The loss upon the French side was enormous. Three 
dukes were killed, two more were taken prisoners, 
seven counts Jwere killed, three more were taken pris- 
oners, and ten thousand knights and gentlemen were 
slain upon the field. The English loss amounted to 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 199 

^sixteen hundred men, among whom were the Duke of 
York and the Earl of Suffolk. 

War is a dreadful thing ; and it is appalling to know 
how the English were obliged, next morning, to kill 
those prisoners mortally wounded, who yet writhed in 
agony upon the ground ; how the dead upon the French 
side were stripped by their own countrymen and 
countrywomen, and afterward buried in great pits ; how 
the dead upon the English side were piled up in a great 
barn, and how their bodies and the barn were all burned 
together. It is in such things, and in many more, much 
too horrible to relate, that the real desolation and wicked- 
ness of war consists. Nothing can make war otherwise 
than horrible. But the dark side of it was little thought 
of and soon forgotten ; and it cast no shade of trouble 
on the English people, except on those who had lost 
friends or relations in the fight. They welcomed their 
King home with shouts of rejoicing, and plunged into 
the water to bear him ashore on their shoulders, and 
flocked out in crowds to welcome him in every town 
through which he passed, and hung rich carpets and 
tapestries out of the windows, and strewed the streets 
with flowers, and made the fountains run with wine, as 
the great field of Agincourt had run with blood. 

PART SECOND. 

That proud and wicked French nobility who dragged 
their country to destruction, and who were every day 
and ever)'- year regarded with deeper hatred and detes- 
tation in the hearts of the French people, learned noth- 
ing, even from the defeat of Agincourt. So far from 
uniting against the common enemy, they became, among 
themselves, more violent, more bloody, and more false 
— if that were possible — than they had been before. 
The Count of Armagnac persuaded the French King to 
plunder of her treasures Queen Isabella of Bavaria, and 
to make her a prisoner. She, who had hitherto been the 
bitter enemy of the Duke of Burgundy, proposed to join 
him, in revenge. He carried her off to Troyes, where 
she proclaimed herself Regent of France, and made him 
her lieutenant. The Armagnac party were at that time 



200 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

possessed of Paris ; but, one of the gates of the city 
being secretly opened on a certain night to a party of 
the Duke's men, they got into Paris, threw into the 
prisons all the Armagnacs upon whom they could lay 
their hands, and, a few nights afterward, with the aid 
of a furious mob of sixty thousand people, broke the 
prisons open, and killed them all. The former Dauphin 
was now dead, and the King's third son bore the title. 
Him, in the height of this murderous scene, a French 
knight hurried out of bed, wrapped in a sheet, and bore 
away to Poitiers. So, when the revengeful Isabella and 
the Duke of Burgundy entered Paris in triumph after 
the slaughter of their enemies, the Dauphin was pro- 
claimed at Poitiers as the real Regent. 

King Henry had not been idle since his victory of 
Agincourt, but had repulsed a brave attempt of the 
French to recover Harfleur; had gradually conquered a 
great part of Normandy; and, at this crisis of affairs, 
took the important town of Rouen, after a siege of half 
a year. This great loss so alarmed the French that 
the Duke of Burgundy proposed that a meeting to treat 
of peace should be held between the French and the 
English kings in a plain by the river Seine. On the 
appointed day, King Henry appeared there, with his 
two brothers, Clarence and Gloucester, and a thousand 
men. The unfortunate French King, being more mad 
than usual that day, could not come ; but the Queen 
came, and with her the Princess Catherine, who was a 
very lovely creature, and who made a real impression 
on King Henry, now that he saw her for the first time. 
This was the most important circumstance that arose 
out of the meeting. 

As if it were impossible for a French nobleman of that 
time to be true to his word of honor in anything, Henry 
discovered that the Duke of Burgundy was, at that very 
moment, in secret treaty with the Dauphin ; and he. 
therefore, abandoned the negotiation. 

The Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin, each of 
whom with the best reason distrusted the other as a 
noble ruffian surrounded by a party of noble ruffians, 
were rather at a loss how to proceed after this ; but at 
length they agreed to meet, on a bridge over the river 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 201 

Yonne, where it was arranged that there should be 
two strong gates put up, with an empty space between 
them ; and that the Duke of Burgundy should come into 
that space by one gate, with ten men only ; and that the 
Dauphin should come into that space by the other gate, 
also with ten men, and no more. 

So far the Dauphin kept his word, but no further. 
When the Duke of Burgundy was on his knee before 
him in the act of speaking, one of the Dauphin's noble 
ruffians cut the said duke down with. a small ax, and 
others speedily finished him. 

It was in vain for the Dauphin to pretend that this 
base murder was not done with his consent, it was too 
bad, even for France, and caused a general horror. The 
Duke's heir hastened to make a treaty with King Henry, 
and the French Queen engaged that her husband should 
consent to it, whatever it was. Henry made peace, on 
condition of receiving the Princess Catherine in mar- 
riage, and being made Regent of France, during the rest 
of the King's lifetime, and succeeding to the French 
i crown at his death. He was soon married to the beauti- 
ful Princess, and took her proudly home to England, 
where she was crowned with great honor and glory. 

This peace was called the Perpetual Peace ; we shall 
soon see how long it lasted. It gave great satisfaction 
to the French people, although they were so 'poor and 
miserable that, at the time of the celebration of the 
Royal marriage, numbers ot them were dying of starva- 
tion on the dunghills in the streets of Paris. There was 
some resistance on the part of the Dauphin in some few 
parts of France, but King Henry beat it all down. 

And now, with his great possessions in France secured, 
and with his beautiful wife to cheer him, and a son 
born to give him greater happiness, all appeared bright 
before him. But in the fullness of his triumph and the 
height of his power Death came upon him, and his day 
was done. When he fell ill at Vineennes, and found 
that he could not recover, he was very calm and quiet, 
and spoke serenely to those who wept around his bed. 
His wife and child, he said, he left to the loving care of 
his brother, the Duke of Bedford, and his other taithful 
nobles. He gave them his advice that England should 

14 History 



202 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

establish a friendship with the new Duke of Burgundy, 
and offer him the regency of France; that it should not 
set free the royal princes who had been taken at Agin- 
court; and that, whatever quarrel might arise with 
France, England should never make peace without 
holding Normandy. Then, he laid down his head, and 
asked the attendant priests to chant the penitential 
psalms. Amid which solemn sounds, on the 31st of 
August, 1422, in only the thirty-fourth year of his age 
and the tenth of his reign, King Henry V. passed away. 
Slowly and mournfully they carried his embalmed 
body in a procession of great state to Paris, and thence 
to Rouen, where his Queen was, from whom the sad 
intelligence of his death was concealed until he had 
been dead some days. Thence, lying on a bed of crim- 
son and gold, and with a golden crown upon the head, 
and a golden ball and scepter lying in the nerveless 
hands, they carried it to Calais, with such a great retinue 
as seemed to dye the road black. The King of Scotland 
acted as chief mourner, all the Royal Household fol- 
lowed, the knights wore black armor and black plumes 
of feathers, crowds of men bore torches, making the 
night as light as day ; and the widowed Princess fol- 
lowed last of all. At Calais there was a fleet of ships to 
bring the funeral host to Dover. And so, by way of 
London Bridge, where the" service for the dead was 
chanted as it passed along," they brought the body to 
Westminster Abbey, and there buried it with great 
respect. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY VI. — PART FIRST. 

It had been the wish of the late King, that while his 
infant son King Henry VI., at this time only nine 
months old, was under age, the Duke of Gloucester 
should be appointed Regent. The English Parliament, 
however, preferred to appoint a Council of Regency, 
with the Duke of Bedford at its head: to be represented, 
in his absence only, by the Duke of Gloucester. The 
Parliament would seem to have been wise in this, for 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 203 

Gloucester soon showed himself to be ambitious and 
troublesome, and, in the gratification of his own personal 
schemes, gave dangerous offense to the Duke of Bur- 
gundy, which was with difficulty adjusted. 

As that duke declined the Regency of France, it was 
bestowed by the poor French King upon the Duke of 
Bedford. But, the French King dying within two 
months, the Dauphin instantly asserted his claim to the 
French throne, and was actually crowned under the title 
of Charles VII. The Duke of Bedford, to be a match 
for him, entered into a friendly league with the Dukes 
of Burgundy and Brittany, and gave them his two sis- 
ters in marriage. War with France was immediately 
renewed, and the Perpetual Peace came to an untimely 
end. 

In the first campaign the English, aided by this alli- 
ance, were speedily successful. As Scotland, however, 
had sent theFrench five thousand men, and might send 
more, or attack the North of England while England 
was busy with France, it was considered that it would 
be a good thing to offer the Scottish King, James, who 
had been so long imprisoned, his liberty, on his paying 
forty thousand pounds for his board and lodging during 
nineteen years, and engaging to forbid his subjects from 
serving under the flag of France. It is pleasant to 
know, not only that the amiable captive at last regained 
his freedom upon these terms, but that he married a 
noble English lady, with whom he had been long in 
love, and became an excellent King. I am afraid we 
have met with some Kings in this history, and shall 
meet with some more, who would have been very much 
the better, and would have left the world much hap- 
pier, if they had been imprisoned nineteen years too. 

In the second campaign the English gained a consid- 
erable victory at Verneuil, in a battle which was chiefly 
remarkable, otherwise, for their resorting to the odd 
expedient of tying their baggage-horses together by the 
heads and tails, and jumbling them up with the bag- 
gage, so as to convert them into a sort of life fortifica- 
tion — which was found useful to the troops, but which, 
I should think, was not agreeable to the horses. For 
three years afterward very little was done, owing to 



204 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

both sides being too poor for war, which is a very ex- 
pensive entertainment; but a council was then held in 
Paris, in which it was decided to lay siege to the town 
of Orleans, which was a place of great importance to the 
Dauphin's cause. An English army of ten thousand 
men was dispatched on this service, under the command 
of the Earl of Salisbury, a general of fame. He being 
unfortunately killed early in the siege, the Earl of 
Suffolk took his place ; under whom (re-enforced by Sir 
John Falstaff, who brought up four hundred wagons 
laden with salt herrings and other provisions for the 
troops, and, beating off the French who tried to inter- 
cept him, came victorious out of a hot skirmish, which 
was afterward called in jest the battle of the Herrings) 
the town of Orleans was so completely hemmed in that 
the besieged proposed to yield it up to their countryman, 
the Duke of Burgundy. The English general, how- 
ever, replied that his English men had won it, so far, 
by their blood and valor, and that his English men must 
have it. There seemed to be no hope for the town or 
for the Dauphin, who was so dismayed that he even 
thought of flying to Scotland or to Spain — when a peasant 
girl rose up and changed the whole state of affairs. 
The story of this peasant girl I have now to tell. 

PART SECOND. — THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC. 

In a remote village among some wild hills in the 
province of Lorraine, there lived a countryman whose 
name was Jacques d'Arc. He had a daughter, Joan of 
Arc, who was at this time in her twentieth year. She 
had been a solitary girl from her childhood; she had 
often tended sheep and cattle for whole days where- no 
human figure was seen or human voice heard ; and she 
had often kneeled, for hours together, in the gloomy, 
empty little village chapel, looking up at the altar and 
at the dim lamp burning before it, until she fancied that 
she saw shadowy figures standing there, and even that 
she heard them speak to her. The people in that part 
of France were very ignorant and superstitious, and 
they had many ghostly tales to tell about what they had 
dreamed, and what they saw among the lonely hills 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 205 

when the clouds and the mists were resting on them. 
So they easily believed that Joan saw strange sights, 
and they whispered among themselves that angels and 
spirits talked to her. 

At last, Joan told her father that she had one day 
been surprised by a great unearthly light, and had after- 
ward heard a solemn voice, which said it was St. 
Michael's voice, telling her that she was to go and help 
the Dauphin. Soon after this (she said) St. Catherine 
and St. Margaret had appeared to her with sparkling 
crowns upon their heads, and had encouraged her to be 
virtuous and resolute. These visions had returned 
sometimes; but the Voices very often; and the voices 
always said, "Joan, thou art appointed by Heaven to 
go and help the Dauphin!" She almost always heard 
them while the chapel bells were ringing. 

There is no doubt now that Joan believed she saw and 
heard these things. It is very well known that such 
delusions are a disease which is not by any means un- 
common. It is probable enough that there were figures 
of St. Michael, and St. Catherine, and St. Margaret, in 
the little chapel (where they would be very likely to 
have shining crowns upon their heads), and that they 
first gave Joan the idea of those three personages. She 
had long been a moping fanciful girl, and, though she 
was a very good girl, I dare say she was a little vain, 
and wishful for notoriety. 

Her father, something wiser than his neighbors, said, 
"I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy. Thou hadst better 
have a kind husband to take care of thee, girl, and work 
to employ thy mind!" But Joan told him in reply 
that she had taken a vow never to have a husband, and 
that she must go, as Heaven directed her, to help the 
Dauphin. 

It happened, unfortunately for her father's persua- 
sions, and most unfortunately for the poor girl, too, that 
a party of the Dauphin's enemies found their way into 
the village while Joan's disorder was at this point, and 
burned the chapel, and drove out the inhabitants. The 
cruelties she saw committed touched Joan's heart and 
made her worse. She said that the voices and the fig- 
ures were now continually with her; that they told her 



206 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

she was the girl who, according to an old prophecy, 
was to deliver France ; and she must go and help the 
Dauphin, and must remain with him until he should be 
crowned at Rheims ; and that she must travel a long 
way to a certain lord named Baudricourt, who could and 
would bring her into the Dauphin's presence. 

As her father still said, "I tell thee, Joan, it is thy 
fancy," she set off to find out this lord, accompanied by 
an uncle, a poor village wheelwright and cart-maker, 
who believed in the reality of her visions. They trav- 
eled a long way and went on and on, over a rough 
country, full of the Duke of Burgundy's men, and of all 
kinds of robbbers and marauders, until they came to 
where this lord was. 

• When his servants told him that there was a poor 
peasant girl named Joan of Arc, accompanied by nobody 
but an old village wheelwright and cart-maker, who 
wished to see him because she was commanded to help 
the Dauphin and save France, Baudricourt burst out 
a-laughing, and bade them send the girl away. But he 
soon heard so much about her lingering in the town, and 
praying in the churches, and seeing visions, and doing 
harm to no one, that he sent for her, and questioned 
her. As she said the same thing after she had been 
well sprinkled with holy water as she had said before 
the sprinkling, Baudricourt began to think there might 
be something in it. At all events, he thought it worth 
while to send her on to the town of Chinon, where the 
Dauphin was. So he bought her a horse, and a sword, 
and gave her two squires to conduct her. As the 
Voices had told Joan that she was to wear a man's dress 
now, she put one en, and girded her sword to her side, 
and bound spurs to her heels, and mounted her horse 
and rode away with her two squires. As to her uncle 
the wheelwright, he stood staring at his niece in wonder 
until she was out of sight — as well he might — and then 
went home again. The best place, too. 

Joan and her two squires rode on and on, until they 
came to Chinon, where she was, after some doubt, ad- 
mitted into the Dauphin's presence. Picking him out 
immediately from all his court, she told him that she 
came commanded by Heaven to subdue his enemies and 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 207 

conduct him to his coronation at Rheims. She also told 
him (or he pretended so afterward, to make the greater 
impression upon his soldiers) a number of his secrets, 
known only to himself, and, furthermore, she said there 
was an old, old sword in the Cathedral of St. Catherine 
at Fierbois, marked with five old crosses on the blade, 
which St. Catherine had ordered her to wear. 

Now, nobody knew anything about this old, old 
sword, but when the cathedral came to be examined — 
which was immediately done, there sure enough the 
sword was found ! The Dauphin then required a num- 
ber of grave priests and bishops to give him their 
opinion whether the girl derived her power from good 
spirits or from evil spirits, which they held prodigiously 
long debates about, in the course of which several 
learned men fell fast asleep and snored loudly. At last, 
when one gruff old gentleman had said to Joan, "What 
language do your Voices speak?" and when Joan had 
replied to the gruff old gentleman, "A pleasanter lan- 
guage than yours," they agreed that it was all correct, 
and that Joan of Arc was inspired from Heaven. This 
wonderful circumstance put new heart into the Dau- 
phin's soldiers when they heard of it, and dispirited the 
English army, who took Joan for a witch. 

So Joan mounted horse again, and again rode on and 
on, until she came to Orleans. But she rode now as 
never peasant girl had ridden yet. She rode upon a 
white war-horse, in a suit of glittering armor; with the 
old, old sword from the cathedral, newly burnished, in 
her belt; with a white flag carried before her, upon 
which were a picture of God, and the words Jesus 
Maria. In this splendid state, at the head of a great 
body of troops escorting provisions of all kinds for the 
starving inhabitants of Orleans, she appeared before 
that beleaguered city. 

When the people on the walls beheld her, they cried 
out, "The Maid is come! The Maid of the prophecy is 
come to deliver us." And this, and the sight of tho 
Maid fighting at the head of their men, made the French 
so bold and made the English so fearful, that the Eng- 
lish line of forts was soon broken, the troops and provi- 
sions were got into the town, and Orleans was saved. 



208 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Joan, henceforth called The Maid of Orleans, re- 
mained within the walls for a few days, and caused let- 
ters to be thrown over, ordering Lord Suffolk and his 
Englishmen to depart from before the town according to 
the will of Heaven. As the English general very posi- 
tively declined to believe that Joan knew anything about 
the will of Heaven (which did not mend the matter with 
his soldiers, for they stupidly said if she were not in- 
spired she was a witch, and it was of no .use to fight 
against a witch), she mounted her white war-horse 
again, and ordered her white banner to advance. 

The besiegers held.the bridge, and some strong towers 
upon the bridge ; and here the Maid of Orleans attacked 
them. The fight was fourteen hours long. She planted 
a scaling ladder with her own hands, and mounted 
tower wall, but was struck by an English arrow in the 
neck, and fell into the trench. She was carried away 
and the arrow was taken out, during which operation 
she screamed and cried with the pain, as any other girl 
might have done; but presently she said that the Voices 
were speaking to her and soothing her to rest. After a 
while she got up, and was again foremost in the fight. 
When the English, who had seen her fall and supposed 
her dead, saw this, they were troubled with the strang- 
est fears, and some of them cried out that they beheld 
St. Michael on a white horse (probably Joan herself) 
fighting for the French. They lost the bridge, lost the 
towers, and next day set their chain of forts on fire, and 
left the place. 

Bat as Lord Suffolk himself retired no further than the 
town of Jargeau, which was only a few miles off, the Maid 
of Orleans besieged him there, and he was taken pris- 
oner. As the white banner scaled the wall, she was 
struck upon the head with a stone, and was again tum- 
bled down into the ditch ; but she only cried all the 
more, as she lay there, "On, on, ray countrymen! And 
fear nothing, for the Lord hath delivered them into our 
hands!" After this new success of the Maid's, several 
other fortresses and places, which had previously held 
out against the Dauphin, were delivered up without a 
battle; and at Patay she defeated the remainder of the 
English army, and set up her victorious white banner 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 209 

on a field where twelve hundred Englishmen lay dead. 
She now urged the Dauphin (who always kept out of 
the way when there was any fighting) to proceed to 
Rheims, as the first part of her mission was accom- 
plished ; and to complete the whole by being crowned 
there. The Dauphin was in no particular hurry to do 
this, as Rheims was a long way off, and the English and 
the Duke of Burgundy were still strong in the country 
through which the road lay. However, they set forth, 
with ten thousand men, and again the Maid of Orleans 
rode on and on, upon her white war-horse, and in her 
shining armor. Whenever they came to a town which 
yielded readily, the soldiers believed in her; but when- 
ever they came to a town which gave them any trouble, 
they began to murmur that she was an impostor. The 
latter was particularly the case at Troyes, which finally 
yielded, through the persuasion of one Richard, a friar 
of the place. Friar Richard was in the old doubt about 
the Maid of Orleans, until he had sprinkled her well with 
holy water, and had also well sprinkled the threshold ot 
the gate by which she came into the city. Finding that 
it made no change in her or the gate, he said, as the 
other grave old gentleman had said, that it was all right, 
and became her great ally. 

So, at last, and by dint ot riding on and on, the Maid 
of Orleans, and the Dauphin, and the ten thousand 
sometimes believing and sometimes unbelieving men, 
came to Rheims. And in the great cathedral of Rheims 
the Dauphin actually was crowned Charles VII. in a 
great assembly of the people. Then the Maid, who 
with her white banner stood beside the King in that 
hour of his triumph, kneeled down upon the pavement 
at his feet, and said, with tears, that what she had been 
inspired to do was done, and that the only recompense 
she asked for was that she should now have leave to go 
back to her distant home, and her [sturdy incredulous 
father, and her first simple escort the village wheel- 
wright and cart-maker. But the King said "No!" and 
made her and her family as noble as a King could, and 
settled upon her the income of a count. 

Ah! happy had it been for the Maid of Orleans.if she 
had resumed her rustic dress that day, and had gone 



210 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

home to her little chapel and the wild hills, and had for- 
gotten all these things, and had been a good man's wife, 
and had heard no stranger voices than the voices of lit- 
tle children ! 

It was not to be, and she continued helping the King 
(she did a world for him, in alliance with Friar Rich- 
ard), and trying to improve the lives of the coarse sol- 
diers, and leading a religious, an unselfish, and a mod- 
est life herself, beyond any doubt. Still, many times 
she prayed the King to let her go home ; and once she 
even took off her bright armor and hung it up in a 
church, meaning never to wear it more. But the King 
always won her back again, — while she was of any use 
to him, — so she went on and on and on to her doom. 

When the Duke of Bedford, who was a very able 
man, began to be active for England, and, by bringing 
the war back into France and by holding the Duke of 
Burgundy to his faith, to distress and disturb Charles 
very much, Charles sometimes asked the 'Maid of Or- 
leans what the Voices said about it. But the Voices 
had become, very like ordinary voices in perplexed 
times, contradictory and confused, so that now they 
said one thing, and now said another, and the Maid lost 
credit every day. Charles marched on Paris, which was 
opposed to him, and attacked the suburb ot St. Honore. 
In this fight, being again struck down into the ditch, 
she was abandoned by the whole army. She lay un- 
aided among a heap of dead, and crawled out how she 
could. Then some of her believers went over to an op- 
position Maid, Catherine of La Rochelle, who said she 
was inspired to tell where there were treasures of buried 
money — though she never did — and then Joan accident- 
ally broke the old, old sword, and others said that her 
power was broken with it. Finally, [at the siege of Com- 
piegne, held by the Duke of Burgundy, where she did 
valiant service, she was basely left alone in a retreat, 
though facing about and fighting to the last ; and an 
archer pulled her off her horse. 

Oh, the uproar that was made, and the thanksgivings 
that were sung, about the capture of this one poor coun- 
try girl ! Oh, the way in which she was demanded to 
be tried for sorcery and heresy, and anything else you 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 211 

like, by the Inquisitor-General of France, and by this 
great man, and by that'great man, until it is wearisome 
to think of! She was'bought at last by the Bishop of 
Beauvais for ten thousand francs, and was shut up in 
her narrow prison ; plain Joan of Arc again, and Maid 
of Orleans no more. 

I should never have done if I were to tell you how 
they had Joan out to examine her, and cross-examine 
her, and re-examine her, and worry her into saying any- 
thing and everything ; and how all sorts of scholars and 
doctors bestowed their utmost tediousness upon her. 
Sixteen times she was brought out and shut up again 
and worried, and entrapped and argued with, until she 
was heartsick of the dreary business. On the last occa- 
sion of this kind she was brought into a burial-place at 
Rouen, dismally decorated with a scaffold, and a stake 
and fagots, and the executioner, and a pulpit with a 
triar therein, and an awful sermon ready. It is very 
affecting to know that even at that pass the poor girl 
honored the mean vermin ot a King, who had so used 
her for his purposes and so abandoned her ; and, that 
while she had been regardless of reproaches heaped 
upon herself, she spoke out courageously for him. 

It was natural in one so young to hold to lite. To 
save her life, she signed a declaration prepared for her 
— signed it with a cross, for she couldn't write — that all 
her visions and voices had come from the Devil. Upon 
her recanting the past, and protesting that she would 
never wear a man's dress in future, she was condemned 
to imprisonment for life, "on the bread of sorrow and 
the water of affliction." 

But, on the bread of sorrow and the water of afflic- 
tion, the visions and the Voices soon returned. It was 
quite natural that they should do so, for that kind of 
disease is much aggravated by fasting, loneliness, and 
anxiety of mind. It was not only got out of Joan that 
she considered herself inspired again, but she was taken 
in a man's dress, which had been left — to entrap her — 
in her prison, and which she put on, in her solitude; 
perhaps in remembrance of her past glories, perhaps 
because the imaginary Voices told her. For this relapse 
into the sorcery and heresy and anything else you like, 



212 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

she was sentenced to be burned to death. And, in the 
market-place ot Rouen, in the hideous dress which 
monks had invented tor such spectacles; with priests 
and bishops sitting in a gallery looking on — though 
some had the Christian grace to go away, unable to en- 
dure the infamous scene — this shrieking girl — last seen 
amidst the smoke and fire, holding a crucifix between 
her hands ; last heard, calling upon Christ — was burned 
to ashes. They threw her ashes into the river Seine ; 
but they will rise against her murderers on the last 
day. 

From the moment of her capture neither the French 
King nor one single man in all his court raised a finger 
to save her. It is no defense of them that they may 
have never really believed in her, or that they may have 
won her victories by their skill and bravery. The more 
they pretended to believe in her, the more they had 
caused her to believe in herself ; and she had ever been 
true to them, ever brave, ever nobly devoted. But it is 
no wonder that they, who were in all things false to 
themselves, false to one another, false to their country, 
false to Heaven, false to Earth, should be monsters of 
ingratitude and treachery to a helpless peasant girl. 

In the picturesque old town of Rouen, where weeds 
and grass grow high on the cathedral towers, and the 
venerable Norman streets are still warm in the blessed 
sunlight, though the monkish fires that once gleamed 
horribly upon them have long grown cold, there is a 
statue of Joan of Arc, in the scene ot her last agony, 
the square to which she has given its present name. I 
know some statues ! of '"modern times — even in the 
World's metropolis, I think — which commemorate less 
constancy, less earnestness, smaller claims upon the 
world's attention, and much greater impostors. 

PART THIRD. 

Bad deeds seldom prosper, happily for mankind ; and 
the English cause gained no advantage from the cruel 
death ot Joan of Arc. For a long time the war went 
heavily on. The Duke of Bedford died; the alliance 
with the Duke of Burgundy was broken ; and Lord Tal- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 213 

bot became a great general on the English side in 
France. But two of the consequences of war are, Fam- 
ine — because the people cannot peacefully cultivate the 
ground — and Pestilence, which comes of want, misery 
and suffering. Both these horrors broke out in both 
countries, and lasted for two wretched years. Then 
the war went on again, and came by slow degrees to be so 
badly conducted by the English government that, with- 
in twenty years from the execution of the Maid of Or- 
leans, of all the great French conquests, the town ot 
Calais alone remained in English hands. 

While these victories and defeats were taking place 
in the course of time, many strange things happened at 
home. The young King, as he grew up, proved to be 
very unlike his great father, and showed himself a mis- 
erable, puny creature. There was no harm in him — he 
had a great aversion to shedding blood; which was 
something — but, he was a weak, silly, helpless young 
man, and a mere shuttlecock to the great lordly battle- 
dores about the Court. 

Of these battledores, Cardinal Beaufort, a relation of 
the King, and the Duke of Gloucester were at first the 
most powerful. The Duke ot Gloucester had a wite, 
who was nonsensically accused of practising witchcraft 
to cause the King's death and lead to her husband's 
coming to the throne, he being the next heir. She was 
charged with having, by the help ot a ridiculous old 
woman named Margery, who was called a witch, made 
a little waxen doli in the King's likeness, and put it 
before a slow fire that it might gradually melt away. 
It was supposed in such cases that the death of the 
person whom the doll was made to represent was sure 
to happen. Whether the duchess was as ignorant as 
the rest of them, and really did make such a doll with 
such an intention, I don't know; but you and I know 
very well that she might have made a thousand dolls, 
if she had been stupid enough, and might have melted 
them all, without hurting the King or anybody else. 
However, she was tried for it, and so was old Margery, 
and so was one of the duke's chaplains, who was 
charged with having assisted them. Both he and Mar- 
gery were put to death, and the duchess, after being 



214 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

taken on foot and bearing a lighted candle three times 
round the city, as a penance, was imprisoned for life. 
The duke himself took all this pretty quietly, and made 
as little stir about the matter as if he were rather glad 
to be rid of the duchess. 

But he was not destined to keep himself out of 
trouble long. The royal shuttlecock being three-and- 
twenty, the battledores were very anxious to get him 
married. The Duke of Gloucester wanted him to marry 
a daughter of the Count of Armagnac; but the Car- 
dinal and the Earl ot Suffolk were all for Margaret, the 
daughter of the King ot Sicily, who they knew was a 
resolute, ambitious woman and would govern the King 
as she chose. To make friends with this lady, the Earl 
of Suffolk, who went over to arrange the match, con- 
sented to "accept her for the King's wife without any 
fortune and even to give up the two most valuable pos- ' 
sessions England then had in France. So the marriage 
was arranged, on terms very advantageous to the lady; 
and Lord Suffolk brought her to England and she was 
married at Westminster. On what pretense this queen 
and her party charged the Duke of Gloucester with 
high treason within a couple of years it is impossible 
to make out, the matter is so confused ; but they pre- 
tended that the King's life was in danger, and they took 
the duke prisoner. A fortnight afterward he was 
found dead in bed, they said, and his body was shown 
to the people, and Lord Suffolk came in for the best 
part of his estates. You know by this time how strange- 
ly liable state prisoners were to sudden death. 

END OF VOLUME I. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



VOLUME II. 



215 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER.^ 

England under henry vi — Continued. 

It Cardinal Beaufort had any hand in this matter, it 
did him no good, for he died within six weeks ; thinking 
it very hard and curious — at eighty years old ! — that he 
could not live to be Pope. 

This was the time when England had completed her 
loss of all her great French conquests. The people 
charged the loss principally upon the Earl of Suffolk, 
now a duke, who had made those easy terms about the 
Royal Marriage, and who, they believed, had even 
been bought by France. So he was impeached as a 
traitor, on a great number of charges, but chiefly on 
accusations of having aided the French King, and of 
designing to make his own son King of England. The 
Commons and the people being violent against him, 
the King was made, by his triends, to interpose to save 
him, by banishing him for five years, and proroguing 
the Parliament. The duke had much ado to escape 
from a London mob, two thousand strong, who lay in 
wait for him in St. Giles' fields; but he got down to his 
own estates in Suffolk, and sailed away from Ipswich. 
Sailing across the Channel, he sent into Calais to know 
if he might land there ; but they kept his boat and men 
in the harbor, until an English ship, carrying a hundred 
and fifty men and called the "Nicholas of the Tower," 
came alongside his little vessel, and ordered him on 
board. "Welcome, traitor, as men say," was the cap- 
tain's grim and not very respectful salutation. He was 
kept on board, a prisoner, for eight-and-forty hours, 
and then a small boat appeared rowing toward the ship. 

217 



218 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

As this boat came nearer, it was seen to have in it a 
block, a rusty sword, and an executioner in a black 
mask. The duke was handed down into it, and there 
his head was cut off with six strokes of the rusty sword. 
Then the little boat rowed away to Dover beach, where 
the body was cast out, and left unil the duchess claimed 
it. By whom, high in authority, this murder was com- 
mitted, has never appeared. No one was ever punished 
tor it. 

There now arose in Kent an Irishman who gave him- 
self the name of Mortimer, but whose real name was 
Jack Cade. Jack, in imitation of Wat Tyler, though he 
was a very different and interior sort of man, addressed 
the Kentish men upon their wrongs, occasioned by the 
bad government of England, among so many battle- 
dores and such a poor shuttlecock; and the Kentish 
men rose up to the number of twenty thousand. Their 
place of assembly was Blackheath, where, headed by 
Jack, they put forth two papers, which they called 
"The Complaint ot the Commons ot Kent," and "The 
Fequests of the Captain ot the Great Assembly in 
Kent." They then retired to Sevenoaks. The royal 
army coming up with them there, they beat it and killed 
their general. Then Jack dressed himself in the dead 
general's armor, and led his men to London. 
* Jack passed into the city from Southwark, over the 
bridge, and entered it in triumph, giving the strictest 
orders to his men not to plunder. Having made a 
show ot his forces there, while the citizens looked on 
quietly, he went back into Southwark in good order, 
and passed the night. Next day he came back again, 
having got hold in the meantime ot Lord Say, an un- 
popular nobleman. Says Jack to the Lord Mayor and 
judges: "Will you be so good as to make a tribunal m 
Guildhall, and try me this nobleman?" The court being 
hastily made, he was found guilty, and Jack and his 
men cut his head off on Cornhill. They also cut off the 
head ot his son-in-law, and then went back in good 
order to Southwark again. 

But, although the citizens could bear the beheading 
of an unpopular lord, they could not bear to have their 
houses pillaged. And it did so happen that Jack, after 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 219 

•dinner, — perhaps he had drunk a little too much — began 
to plunder the house where he lodged ; upon which, of 
course, his men began to imitate him. "Wherefore, the 
Londoners took counsel with Lord Scales, who had a 
thousand soldiers in the Tower; and defended London 
Bridge, and kept Jack and his people out. This ad- 
vantage gained, it was resolved by divers great men to 
divide Jack's army in the old way, by making a great 
many promises on behalf of the state, that were never 
intended to be performed. This did divide them ; some 
of Jack's men saying that they ought to take the condi- 
tions which were offered, and others saying that they 
ought not, for they were only a snare ; some going home 
at once ; others staying where they were ; and all doubt- 
ing and quarreling among themselves. 
[^Jack, who was in two minds about fighting or accept- 
ing a pardon, and who indeed did both, saw at last that 
there was nothing to expect from his men, and that it 
was very likely some of them would deliver him up and 
get a reward of a thousand marks, which was offered 
for his apprehension. So, after they had traveled and 
quarreled all the way from Southwark to Blackheath, 
and from Blackheath to Rochester, he mounted a good 
horse and galloped away into Sussex. But there gal- 
loped after him, on a better horse, one Alexander Iden, 
who came up with him, had a hard fight with him, and 
killed him. Jack's head was set aloft on London 
Bridge, with the face looking toward Blackheath, where 
he had raised his flag; and Alexander Iden got the 
thousand marks. 

It is supposed by some that the Duke of York who 
had been removed from a high post abroad through the 
Queen's influence, and sent out of this way to govern 
Ireland, was at the bottom of this rising of Jack and 
his men, because he wanted to trouble the government. 
He claimed, though not yet publicly, to have a better 
right to the throne than Henry of Lancaster, as one of 
the family of the Earl of March, whom Henry IV. had 
set aside. Touching this claim, which, being through 
female relationship, was not according to the usual de- 
scent, it is enough to say that Henry IV. was the free 
Choice of the people and the Parliament, and that his 



220 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

family had now reigned undisputed for sixty years. 
The memory ot Henry V. was so famous, and the Eng- 
lish people loved it so much, that the Duke of York's 
claim would, perhaps, never have been thought of, it 
would have been so hopeless, but for the unfortunate 
circumstance of the present King's being by this time 
quite an idiot, and the country very ill governed. 
These two circumstances gave the Duke of York a 
power he could not otherwise have had. 

Whether the Duke knew anything of Jack Cade or 
not, he came over from Ireland while Jack's head was 
on London Bridge; being secretly advised that the 
Queen was setting up his enemy, the Duke of Somerset, 
against him. He went to Westminster, at the head of 
four thousand men and, on his knees before the King, 
represented to him the bad state of the country, and 
petitioned him to summon a Parliament to consider it. 
This the King promised. When the Parliament was 
summoned the Duke ot York accused the Duke ot Som- 
erset, and the Duke of Somerset accused the Duke of 
York; and, both in and out ot Parliament, the followers 
of each party were full of violence and hatred toward 
the other. At length the Duke of York put himself at 
the head of a large force of his tenants, and, in arms, 
demanded the reformation of the Government. Being 
shut out of London, he encamped at Darttord, and the 
royal army encamped at Blackheath. According as 
either side triumphed, the Duke of York was arrested, 
or the Duke of Somerset was arrested. The trouble 
ended, for the moment, in the Duke of York renewing 
his oath of allegiance, and going in peace to one ot his 
own castles. 

Halt a year afterward the Queen gave birth to a son, 
who was very ill received by the people, and not be- 
lieved to be the son ot the King. It shows the Duke of 
York to have been a moderate man, unwilling to involve 
England in new troubles, that he did not take advan- 
tage of the general discontent at this time, but really 
acted for the public good. He was made a member of 
the cabinet, and the King being now so much worse 
that he could not be carried about and shown to the 
people with any decency, the Duke was made Lord Pro- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 221 

tector of the kingdom, until the King should recover, or 
the Prince should come of age. At the same time the 
Duke of Somerset was committed to the Tower. So, 
now the Duke of Somerset was down, and the Duke of 
York was up. By the end of the year, however, the 
King recovered his memory and some spark of sense ; 
upon which the Queen used her power — which recov- 
ered with him — to get the Protector disgraced, and her 
favorite released. So now the Duke of York was down, 
and the Duke of Somerset was up. 

These ducal ups and downs gradually separated the 
whole nation into the two parties of York and Lancas- 
ter, and led to those terrible civil wars long known as 
the Wars of the Red and White Roses, because the red 
rose was the badge of the House of Lancaster, and the 
white rose was the badge of the House of York. 

The Duke of York, joined by some other powerful 
noblemen of the White Rose party, and leading a small 
army, met the King with another small army at St. Al- 
bans, and demanded that the Duke of Somerset should 
be given up. The poor King being made to say in 
answer that he would sooner die, was instantly at- 
tacked. The Duke of Somerset was killed, and the 
King himself was wounded in the neck and took refuge 
in the house of a poor tanner. Whereupon the Duke 
of York went to him, led him with great submission to 
the Abbey, and said he was very sorry for what had 
happened. Having now the King in his possession, he 
got a Parliament summoned and himselt once more 
made Protector, but only for a few months: for, on the 
King getting a little better again, the Queen and her 
party got him into their possession, and disgraced the 
Duke once more. So now the Duke of York was down 
again. 

Some of the best men in power, seeing the danger of 
these constant changes, tried even then to prevent the 
Red and the White Rose Wars. They brought about a 
great council in London between the two parties. The 
White Roses assembled in Blackfriars, the Red Roses 
in Whitetriars; and some good priests communicated 
between them, and made the proceedings known at even- 
ing to the King and the judges. They ended in a 



222 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

peaceful agreement that there should be no more quar- 
reling; and there was a great royal procession to St. 
Paul's, injwhich the Queen walked arm in arm with her 
old enemy, the Duke of York, to show the people how 
comfortable they all were. This state of peace lasted half 
a year, when a dispute between the Earl of Warwick 
(one of the Duke's power full friends) and some of the 
King's servants at Court led to an attack upon that earJ, 
— who was a White Rose, — and to a sudden breaking out 
of all old animosities. So here were greater ups and 
downs than ever. 

There were even greater ups and downs than these, 
soon after. After various battles, the Duke of York fled 
to Ireland, and his son the Earl of March to Calais, with 
their friends the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick; and" 
a Parliament was held declaring them all traitors. Lit- & 
tie the worse for this, the Earl of Warwick presently"-' 
came back, landed in Kent, was joined by the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury and other powerful noblemen and 
gentlemen, engaged the King's forces at Northampton, 
signally defeated them, and took the King himself pris- 
oner, who was found in his tent. Warwick would have 
been glad, I dare say, to have taken the Queen and 
Prince too, but they escaped into Wales and thence into 
Scotland. 

The King was carried by the victorious force straight 
to London, and made to call a new Parliament, which 
immediately declared that the Duke of York and those 
other noblemen were not traitors, but excellent subjects. 
Then, back comes the Duke from Ireland at the head of 
five hundred horsemen, rides from London to Westmin- 
ster, and enters the House of Lords. There he laid his 
hand upon the cloth of gold which covered the empty 
throne, as if he had half a mind to sit-down in it — but he 
did not. On the Archbishop of Canterbury asking him 
if he would visit the King, who was in his palace close 
by, he replied, "I know no one in this country, my lord, 
who ought not to visit me." None of the lords present 
spoke a single word ; so the Duke went out as he had 
come in, established himself royally in the King's palace, 
and, six days afterward, sent in to the lords a formal 
statement of his claim to the throne. The lords went to 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 223 

the King on this momentous subject, and after a great 
deal of discussion, in which the judges and the other 
law officers were afraid to give an opinion on either side, 
the question was compromised. It was agreed that the 
present King should retain the crown for his life, and 
that it should then pass to the Duke of York and his 
heirs. 

But the resolute Queen, determined on asserting her 
son's right, would hear of no such thing. She came 
from Scotland to the North of England, where several 
powerful lords armed in her cause. The Duke of York, 
for his part, set off with some five thousand men, a lit- 
tle time before Christmas Day, 1460, to give her battle. 
He lodged at Sandal Castle, near Wakefield, and the 
Red Roses defied him to come out on Wakefield Green, 
and fight them then and there. His generals said he had 
best wait until his gallant son, the Earl of March, came 
up with his power ; but he was determined to accept the 
challenge. He 'did so, in an evil hour. He was hotly 
pressed on all sides, ^two thousand of his men lay dead 
on Wakefield Green, and he himself was taken pris- 
oner. They set him down in mock state on an ant-hill, 
and twisted grass about his head, and pretended to pay 
court to him on their knees, saying, "O King without a 
kingdom, and Prince without a people, we hope your 
gracious Majesty is very well and happy!" They did 
worse than this; they cut his head off, and handed it on 
a pole to the Queen, who laughed with delight when 
she saw it (you recollect their walking so religiously and 
comfortably to St. Paul's!), and had it fixed, with a 
paper crown upon its head, on the walls of York. The 
Earl of Salisbury lost his head, too; and the Duke of 
York's second son, a handsome boy who was flying with 
his tutor over Wakefield Bridge, was stabbed in the 
heart by a murderous lord — Lord Clifford by name — 
whose father had been killed by the White Roses in the 
fight at St. Albans. There was awful sacrifice of 
life in this battle, for no quarter was given, and the 
Queen was wild for revenge. When men unnaturally 
fight against their own countrymen, they are always 
observed to be more unnaturally cruel and filled with 
rage than they are against any other enemy. 



224 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

But, Lord Clifford had stabbed the second son of the r 
Duke of York — not the first. The eldest son, Edward, 
Earl of March, was at Gloucester; and, vowing ven- 
geance for the death of his father, his brother, and their 
faithful friends, he began to march against the Queen. 
He had to turn and fight a great body of Welsh and Irish 
first, who worried his advance. These he defeated in a 
great fight at Mortimer's Cross, near Hereford, where 
he beheaded a number of the Red Roses taken in battle, 
in retaliation for the beheading of the White Roses at 
Wakefield. The Queen had the next turn of beheading. 
Having moved toward London, and falling in between 
St. Albans and Barnet, with the Earl of Warwick and 
the Duke of Norfolk, — White Roses both, who were 
there with an army to oppose her, and had got the King 
with ;them, — she defeated them with great loss, and 
struck off the heads of two prisoners of note who were 
in the King's tent with him, and to whom the King 
had promised his protection. Her triumph, however, 
was very short. She had no treasure, and her army 
subsisted by plunder. This caused them to be hated 
and dreaded by the people, and particularly by the Lon- 
don people, who were wealthy. As soon as the Lon- 
doners heard that Edward, Earl of March, united with 
the Earl of Warwick, was advancing toward the city, 
they refused to send the Queen supplies, and made a 
great rejoicing. 

The Queen and her men retreated with all speed, and 
Edward and Warwick came on, greeted with loud accla- 
mations on every side. The courage, beauty, and vir- 
tues of young Edward could not be sufficiently praised 
by the whole people. He rode into London like a con- 
queror, and met with an enthusiastic welcome. A few 
days afterward, Lord Falconbridge and the Bishop of 
Exeter assembled the citizens in St. John's Field, 
Clerkenwell," and asked them if they would have Henry 
of Lancaster for their King. To this they all roared, 
"No, no, no!" and "King Edward! King Edward!" 
Then, said those noblemen, would they love and serve 
young Edward? To this they all cried, "Yes, yes!" and 
threw up their caps, and clapped their hands, and 
cheered tremendously. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 225 

Therefore, it was declared that by joining the Queen 
and not protecting those two prisoners of note, Henry 
of Lancaster had forfeited the crown ; and Edward of 
York was proclaimed King. He made a great speech to 
the applauding people at Westminster and sat down as 
sovereign of England on that throne, on the golden cov- 
ering of which his father — worthy of a better fate than 
the bloody ax which cut the thread of so many lives in 
England, through so many years — had laid his hand. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD IV. 

King Edward IV. was not quite twenty-one years of 
age when he took that unquiet seat upon the throne of 
England. The Lancaster party, the Red Roses, were 
then assembling in great numbers near York, and it was 
necessary to give them battle instantly. But, the stout 
Earl of Warwick leading for the young King, and the 
young King himself closely following him, and the Eng- 
lish people crowding round the Royal standard, the 
White and the Red Roses met on a wild March day 
when the snow was falling heavily, at Towton; and 
there such a furious battle raged between them that the 
total loss amounted to forty thousand men — all English- 
men, fighting, upon English ground, against one another. 
The young King gained the day, took down the heads 
of his father and brother from the walls of York, and 
put up the heads of some of the most famous noblemen 
engaged in the battle on the other side. Then he went 
to London and was crowned with great splendor. 

A new Parliament met. No fewer than 150 of the 
principal noblemen and gentlemen of the Lancaster 
side were declared traitors, and the King — who had very 
little humanity, though he was handsome in person and 
agreeable in manners — resolved to do all he could to 
pluck up the Red Rose, root and branch. 

Queen Margaret, however, was still active for her 
voung son. She obtained help from Scotland and from 
Normandy, and took several important English castles. 

15 History 



226 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

But Warwick soon retook them : the Queen lost all her 
treasure on board ship in a great "storm ; and both she 
and her son suffered great misfortunes. Once, in the 
winter weather, as they were riding through a forest, 
they were attacked and plundered by a party of robbers; 
and when they had escaped from these men and were 
passing alone and on foot through a thick, dark part of 
the wood, they came, all at once, upon another robber. 
So the Queen, with a stout heart, took the little Prince 
by the hand, and going straight up to that robber, said 
to him, "My friend, this is the young son ot your lawful 
King! I confide him to your care." The robber was 
surprised, but took the boy in his arms, and faithfully 
restored him and his mother to their friends. In the 
end, the Queen's soldiers being beaten and dispersed, 
she went abroad again, and kept quiet for the present. 
Now, all this time the deposed King Henry was con- 
cealed by a Welsh knight, who kept him close in his 
castle. But next year the Lancaster party, recovering 
their spirits, raised a large body of men, and called him 
out of his retirement to put him at their head. They 
were joined by some powerful noblemen who had sworn 
fidelity to the new King, but who were ready, as usual, 
to break^their oaths, whenever they thought there was 
anything to be got by it. One of the worst things in 
the history of the War of the Red and White Roses, is 
the ease with which these noblemen, who should have 
set an example of honor to the people, left either side 
as they took slight offense, or were disappointed in their 
greedy expectations, and joined the other. Well ! 
Warwick's brother soon beat the Lancastrians, and the 
false noblemen, being taken, were beheaded without a 
moment's loss of time. The deposed King had a nar- 
row escape ; three of his servants were taken, and one 
of them bore his cap of state, which was set with 
pearls, and embroidered with two golden crowns. 
However, the head to which the cap belonged got safely 
into Lancashire, and lay pretty quietly there (the people 
in the secret being very true) for more than a year. At 
length, an old monk gave such intelligence as led to 
Henry's being taken while he was sitting at dinner in a 
place called Waddington Hall. He was immediately 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 227 

sent to London, and met at Islington by the Earl of 
Warwick, by whose directions hew as put upon a horse, 
with his legs tied under it, and paraded three times 
round the pillory. Then he was carried off to the 
Tower, where he was treated well enough. 

The White Rose being so triumphant, the young King 
abandoned himself entirely to pleasure, and led a jovial 
life. But thorns were springing up under his bed of 
roses, as he soon found out. For, having been privately 
married to Elizabeth Woodville, a young widow lady, 
very beautiful, and very captivating, and at last resolv- 
ing to make his secret known, and to declare her his 
queen, he gave some offense to the Earl of Warwick, 
who was usually called [the King-maker, because of his 
power and influence, [[and because of his having lent such 
great help in placing Edward on the throne. This 
offense was not lessened by the jealousy with which the 
Nevil family (the Earl of Warwick's) regarded the 
promotion of the Woodville family. For the young 
Queen was so bent on providing for her relations, that 
she made her father an earl and a great officer of state ; 
married her five sisters to young noblemen ot the high- 
est rank ; and provided for her younger brother, a young 
man of twenty, by marrying him to an immensely 
rich old duchess of eighty. The Earl ot Warwick took 
all this pretty graciously'for a man of his proud tem- 
per, until the question arose to whom the King's sister, 
Margaret, should be married. The Earl of Warwick 
said, "To one of the French King's sons," and was 
allowed to go over to the French King to make friendly 
proposals for that purpose, and to hold all manner of 
friendly interviews with him. But, while he was so 
engaged, the Woodville party married the young lady to 
the Duke of Burgundy. Upon this he came back in 
great rage and scorn, and shut himself up discontented 
in his castle of Middieham. 

A reconciliation, though not a very sincere one, was 
patched up between the Earl of Warwick and the King, 
and lasted until the Earl married his daughter, against 
the King's wishes, to the Duke of Clarence. While the 
marriage was being celebrated at Calais, the people in 
the North of England, where the influence of the Nevil 



228 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

family was strongest, broke out into rebellion ; their 
complaint was, that England was oppressed and plun- 
dered by the Woodville family, whom they demanded to 
have removed from power. As they were joined by 
great numbers of people, and as they openly declared 
that they were supported by the Earl of Warwick, the 
King did not know what to do. At last, as he wrote to 
the Earl beseeching his aid, he and his new son-in-law 
came over to England, and began to arrange the bus- 
iness by shutting the King up in Middleham Castle in 
the safekeeping of the Archbishop of York ; so England 
was not only in the strange position of having two kings 
at once, but they were both prisoners at the same time. 

Even as yet, however, the King-maker was so far true 
to the King that he dispersed a new rising of the Lan- 
castrians, took their leader prisoner, and brought him to 
the King, who ordered him to be immediately executed. 
He presently allowed the King to return to London, and 
there innumerable pledges of forgiveness and friend- 
ship were exchanged between them, and between the 
Nevils and the Woodvilles; the King's eldest daughter 
was promised in marriage to the heir of the Nevil fam- 
ily; and more friendly^ oaths were sworn, and more 
friendly promises made,*than this book would hold. 

They lasted about three months. At the end of that 
time, the Archbishop of York made a feast for the 
King, the Earl of Warwick, and the Duke of Clarence, 
at his house, the Moor, in Hertfordshire. The King 
was washing his hands before supper, when someone 
whispered him that a body of a hundred men were lying 
in ambush outside the house. Whether this were true 
or untrue, the King took fright, mounted his horse, and 
rode through the dark night to Windsor Castle. An- 
other reconciliation was patched up between him and 
the King-maker, but it was a short one, and it was the 
last. A new rising took place in Lincolnshire, and the 
King marched to repress it. Having done so, he pro- 
claimed that both the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of 
Clarence were traitors, who had secretly assisted it, and 
who had been prepared publicly to join it on the fol- 
lowing day. In these dangerous circumstances they 
both took ship and sailed away to the French court. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 229 

And here a meeting took place between the Earl of 
Warwick and his old enemy, the Dowager Queen Mar- 
garet, through whom his father hadjhad his head struck 
off, and to whom he had been a bitter foe. But now, 
when he said that he had done with the ungrateful and 
perfidious Edward of York, and that henceforth he de- 
voted himself to the restoration of the House of Lancas- 
ter, either in the person of her husband or of her little 
son, she embraced him as if he had ever been her dear- 
est friend. She did more than that, she married her son 
to his second daughter, the Lady Anne. However 
agreeable this marriage was to the new friends, it was 
very disagreeable to the Duke of Clarence, who per- 
ceived that his father-in-law, the King-maker, would 
never make him King, now. So, being but a weak- 
minded young traitor, possessed of very little worth or 
sense, he readily listened to an artful court lady sent 
over for the purpose, and promised to turn traitor once 
more, and go over to his brother, King Edward, when 
a fitting opportunity should come. 

The Earl of Warwick, knowing nothing of this, soon 
redeemed his promise to the Dowager Queen Margaret 
by invading England, and landing at Plymouth, where 
he instantly proclaimed King Henry, and summoned all 
Englishmen between the ages of sixteen and sixty to 
join his banner. Then, with his army increasing as he 
marched along, he went northward, and came so near 
King Edward, who was in that part of the country, that 
Edward had to ride hard for it to the coast of Norfolk, 
and thence to get away in such ships as he could find, 
to Holland. Thereupon, the triumphant King-maker, 
and his false son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, went to 
London, took the old King out of the Tower, and 
walked him in a great procession to St. Paul's Cathedral 
with the crown upon his head. This did not improve 
the temper of the Duke of Clarence, who saw himself 
further off from being King than ever ; but he kept his 
secret, and said nothing. The Nevil family were re- 
stored to all their honors and glories, and the Woodvilles 
and the rest were [disgraced. The King-maker, less 
sanguinary than the" King, shed no blood except that of 
the Earl of Worcester, who had been so cruel to the 



230 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

people as to have gained the title of the Butcher. Him 
they caught hidden in a tree, and him they tried and 
executed. No other death stained the King-maker's 
triumph. 

To dispute this triumph, back came King Edward 
again, next year, landing at Ravenspur, coming on to 
York, causing all his men to cry, "Long live King 
Henry!" and swearing on the altar, without ablush, 
that he came to lay no claim to the Crown. Now was 
the time for the Duke of Clarence, who ordered his men 
to assume the White Rose, and declare for his brother. 
The Marquis of Montague, though the Earl of Warwick's 
brother, also declining to fight against King Edward, 
he went on successfully to London, where the Arch- 
bishop of York let him into the city, and where the 
people made great demonstration in his favor. For 
this they had four reasons. Firstly, there were great 
numbers of the King's adherents hiding in the city and 
ready to break out ; secondly, the King owed them a 
great deal of money, which they could never hope to get 
if he were unsuccessful ; thirdly, there was a young 
prince to inherit the crown; and fourthly, the King was 
gay and handsome, and more popular than a better man 
might have been with the city ladies. After a stay of 
only two days with these worthy supporters, the King 
marched out to Barnet Common to give the Earl of 
Warwick battle. And now it was to be seen, for the 
last time, whether the King or the King-maker was to 
carry the day. 

While the battle was yet pending, the faint-hearted 
Duke of Clarence began to repent, and sent over secret 
messages to his father-in-law, offering his services in 
mediation with the King. But the Earl of Warwick 
disdainfully rejected them, and replied that Clarence 
was false and perjured, and that he would settle the 
quarrel by the sword. The battle began at four o'clock 
in the morning and lasted until ten, and during the 
greater part of the time it was fought in a thick mist — 
absurdly supposed to be raised by a magician. The loss 
of life was very great, for the hatred was strong on 
both sides. The King-maker was defeated, and the 
King triumphed. Both the Earl of Warwick and his 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 231 

brother were slain, and their bodies lay in St. Paul's for 
some days as a spectacle to the people. 

Margaret's spirit was not yet broken even by this 
great blow. Within five days she was in arms again, 
and raised her standard in Bath, whence she set off with 
her army, to try and join Lord Pembroke, who had a 
force in Wales. But the King, coming up with her out- 
side the town of Tewkesbury, and ordering his brother, 
the Duke of Gloucester, who was a brave soldier, to 
attack her men, she sustained an entire defeat, and was 
taken prisoner, together with her son, now only eigh- 
teen years of age. The conduct of the King to this poor 
youth was worthy of his cruel character. He ordered 
him to be led into his tent. "And what," said he, 
"brought you to England?" "I came to England," re- 
plied the prisoner, with a spirit which a man of spirit 
might have admired in a captive, "to recover my fath- 
er's kingdom, which descended to him as his right, and 
from him descends to me as mine." The King, draw- 
ing off his iron gauntlet, struck him with it in the face ; 
and the Duke of Clarence and some other lords, who 
were there, drew their noble swords, and killed him. 

His mother survived him, a prisoner, for five years ; 
after her ransom by the King of France, she survived 
for six years more. Within three weeks of this murder, 
Henry died one of those convenient sudden deaths, 
which were so common in the Tower; in plainer words, 
he was murdered by the King's order. 

Having no particular excitement on his hands after 
this great defeat ot the Lancaster party, and being per- 
haps desirous to get rid of some of his fat, for he was 
now getting too corpulent to be handsome, the King 
thought of making war on France. As he wanted more 
money for this purpose than the Parliament could give 
him, though they were usually ready enough for war, 
he invented a new way for raising it, by sending for the 
principal citizens of London, and telling them with a 
grave face that he was very much in want of cash, and 
would take it very kind of them if they would lend him 
some. It being impossible for them safely to refuse, 
they complied, and the moneys thus forced from them 
were called — no doubt to the ereat amusement of the 



232 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

King and the Court — as if they were free gifts, "Be- 
nevolences." What with grants from Parliament, and 
what with Benevolences, the King raised an army and 
passed over to Calais. As nobody wanted war, how- 
ever, the French King made proposals of peace, which 
were accepted, and a truce was concluded for seven 
long years. The proceedings between the Kings of 
France and England on this occasion were very friend- 
ly, very splendid, and very distrustful. They finished 
with a meeting between the two Kings, on a temporary 
bridge over the river Somme, where they embraced 
through two holes in a strong wooden grating like a 
lion's cae, and made several bows and fine speeches to 
one another. 

It was time, now, that the Duke of Clarence should 
be punished for his treacheries ; and Fate had his pun- 
ishment in store. He was, probably, not trusted by the 
King — for who could trust him who knew him ! — and he 
had certainly a powerful opponent in his brother Rich- 
ard, Duke of Gloucester, who, being avaricious and 
ambitious, wanted to marry that widowed daughter of 
the Earl ot Warwick's who had been espoused to the 
deceased young Prince ot Calais. Clarence, who wanted 
all the "family wealth for 'himself, secreted this lady, 
whom Richard found disguised as a servant in the City 
of London, and whom he married ; arbitrators appointed 
by the King then divided the property between the 
brothers. This led to ill-will and mistrust between 
them. Clarence's wife dying, and he wishing to make 
another marriage, which was obnoxious to the King, his 
ruin was hurried by that means, too. At first, the Court 
struck at his retainers and dependents, and accused 
some of them of magic and witchcraft, and similar con- 
sense. Successful against this small game, it then 
mounted to the Duke himself, who was impeached by 
his brother the King, in person, on a variety ot such 
charges. He was found guilty and sentenced to be pub- 
licly executed. He never was publicly executed, but he 
met his ^death somehow in the Tower, and, no doubt, 
through some agency of the King or his brother Glou- 
cester, or both. It was supposed at the time that he was 
told to choose the manner of his death, and that he 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 233 

chose to be drowned in a butt ot Malmsey wine. I hope 
the story may be true, for it would have been a becom- 
ing death for such a miserable creature. 

The King survived him some five years. He died in 
the forty-second year of his life, and twenty-third ot his 
reign. He had a very good capacity and some good 
points, but he was selfish, careless, sensual and cruel. 
He was a favorite with the people for |his showy man- 
ners ; and the people were a good example to him in the 
constancy of their attachment. He was penitent on his 
deathbed tor his "benevolences," and other extortions, 
and ordered restitution to be made to the peole who had 
suffered from them He also called about his bed the 
enriched members of the Woodville family, and the 
proud lords whose honors were of older date, and en- 
deavored to reconcile them, for the sake ot the peaceful 
succession of his son and the tranquillity of England. 

CHAPTER XXV. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD V. 

The late King's eldest son, the Prince of Wales, call- 
ed Edward, after him, was only thirteen years ot age at 
his father's death. He was at Ludlow Castle with his 
uncle, the Earl of Rivers. The Prince's brother, the 
Duke of York, only eleven years of age, was in London 
with his mother. The boldest, most crafty, and most 
dreaded nobleman in England at that time was their 
uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and everybody won- 
dered how the two poor boys would tare with such an 
uncle for a friend or a foe. 

The Queen, their mother, being exceedingly uneasy 
about this, was anxious that instructions should be sent 
to Lord Rivers to raise an army to escort the young 
King safely to London. But Lord Hastings, who was 
of the court party opposed to the Woodvilles, and who 
disliked the thought of giving them that power, argued 
against the proposal, and obliged the Queen to be satis- 
fied with an escort of two thousand horse. The Duke 
of Gloucester did nothing, at first, to justify suspicion. 
He came from Scotland, where he was commanding 

16 History 



234 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

an army, to York, and was there the first to swear alle- 
giance to his nephew. He then wrote a condoling let- 
ter to the Queen-mother, and set off to be present at the 
coronation in London. 

Now, the young King, journeying toward London, 
too, with Lord Rivers and Lord Gray, came to Stony 
Stratford, as his uncle came to Northampton, about ten 
miles distant ; and when those two lords heard that the 
Duke of Gloucester was so near they proposed to the 
young King that they should go back and greet him in 
his name. The boy being very willing that they should 
do so, they rode off and were received with great 
friendliness, and asked by the Duke of Gloucester to 
stay and dine with him. In the evening, while they 
were merry together, up came the Duke of Buckingham 
with three hundred horsemen ; and next morning the 
two lords and the two dukes, and the three hundred 
horsemen, rode away together to rejoin the King. Just 
as they were entering Stony Sttratford, the Duke of 
Gloucester, checking his horse, turned suddenly on the 
two lords, charged them with alienating trom him the 
affections of his sweet nephew, and caused them to be 
arrested by the three hundred horsemen and taken 
back. Then, he and the Duke of Buckingham went 
straight to the King, whom they had now in their 
power, to whom they made a show of kneeling down, 
and offering great love and submission ; and then they 
ordered his attendants to disperse, and took him, alone 
with them, to Northampton. 

A few days afterward they conducted him to London, 
and lodged him in the Bishop's Palace. But he did not 
remain there long; for, the Duke of Buckingham with 
a tender face made a speech expressing how anxious he 
was for the Royal boy's safety, and how much safer he 
would be in the Tower until his coronation, than he 
could be anywhere else. So, to the Tower he was 
taken, very carefully, and the Duke of Gloucester was 
named Protector ot the State. 

Although Gloucester had proceeded thus far with a 
very smooth countenance — and although he was a 
clever man, fair of speech, and not ill-looking, in spite 
of one of his shoulders being something higher than 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 235 

the other, — and although he had come' into the city rid- 
ing bare-headed at the King's side, and looking very 
fond of him — he had made the King's mother more un- 
easy yet; and when the Royal boy was taken to the 
Tower, she became so alarmed that she took sanctuary 
in Westminster with her five daughters. 

Nor did she do this without reason, for the Duke ot 
Gloucester, finding that the lords who were opposed to 
the Woodville family were faithful to the young King 
nevertheless, quickly resolved to strike a blow for him- 
self. Accordingly, while those lords met in council at 
the Tower, he and those who were in his interest met in 
separate council at his own residence, Crosby Palace, in 
Bishopsgate Street. Being at last quite prepared, he 
one day appeared unexpectedly at the council in the 
Tower and appeared to be very jocular and merry. 
He was particularly gay with the Bishop ot Ely , prais- 
ing the strawberries that grew in his garden on Holborn 
Hill, and asking him to have some gathered that he 
might eat them at dinner. The Bishop, quite proud of 
the honor, sent one of his men to fetch some; and the 
Duke still very jocular and gay, went out; and the 
council all said what a very agreeable duke he was ! In 
a little time, however, he came back quite altered — not 
at all jocular — frowning and fierce — and suddenly said: 

"What do those persons deserve who had compassed 
my destruction ; I being the King's [lawful, as well as 
natural, protector?" 

To this strange question Lord Hastings replied, that 
they deserved death, whosoever they were. 

"Then," said the Duke, "I tell you that they are that 
sorceress, my brother's wife;" meaning the Queen; 
"and that other sorceress, Jane Shore. Who, by witch- 
craft, have withered my body, and caused my arm to 
shrink as I now show you." 

He then pulled up his sleeve and showed them his 
arm, which was shrunken, it is true, but which had 
been so, as they all very well knew, from the hour of his 
birth. 

Jane Shore, being then the lover of Lord Hasting? 
. r ;s she had formerly been ot the late King, that lord 
knew that he himself was attacked. So he said, in some 



235 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

confusion, "Certainly, my Lord, if they have done this, 
they be worthy of punishment." 

"It?" said the Duke of Gloucester; "do you talk to 
me of ifs? I tell you that they have so done, and I will 
make it good upon thy body, thou traitor!" 

With that he struck the table a great blow with his 
fist. This was a signal to some of his people outside to 
cry "Treason!" They immediately did so, and there 
was a rush into the chamber of so many armed men that 
it was filled in a moment. 

"First," said the Duke of Gloucester to Lord Hast- 
ings, "I arrest thee, traitor! And let him," he added to 
the armed men who took him, "have a priest at once, 
for by St. Paul, I will not dine until I have seen his 
head off!" 

Lord Hastings was hurried to the green by the Tower 
chapel, and there beheaded on a log of wood that hap- 
pened to be lying on the ground. Then the Duke dined 
with a good appetite, and after dinner, summoning the 
principal citizens to attend him, told them that Lord 
Hastings and the rest had designed to murder both 
himself and the Duke of Buckingham, who stood by 
his side, if he had not providentially discovered their 
design. He requested them to be so obliging as to in- 
form their fellow-citizens ot the truth of what he said, 
and issued a proclamation, prepared and neatly copied 
out beforehand, to the same effect. 

On the same day that the Duke did these things in the 
Tower, Sir Richard Ratcliffe, the boldest and most un- 
daunted of his men, went down to Pontefract; arrested 
Lord Rivers, Lord Gray and two other gentlemen, and 
publicly executed them on the scaffold, without any 
trial, for having intended the Duke's death. Three 
days afterward the Duke, not to lose time, went down 
the river to Westminster in his barge, attended by 
divers bishops, lords, and soldiers, and demanded that 
the Queen should deliver her second son, the Duke of 
York, into his safe-keeping. The Queen, being obliged 
to comply, resigned the child after she had wept over 
him; and Richard of Gloucester placed him with his 
brother in the Tower. Then he seized Jane Shore, and, 
because she had been the lover of the late King, con- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 237 

fiscated her property, and got her sentenced to do public 
penance in the streets by walking in a scanty dress, 
with bare feet, and carrying a lighted candle, to St. 
Paul's Cathedral, through the most crowded part ot 
the city. 

Having now all things ready for his own advance- 
ment, he caused a friar to preach a sermon at the cross 
which stood in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, in which 
he dwelt upon the profligate manners of the late King, 
and upon the late shame of Jane Shore, and hinted thai 
the princes were not his children. "Whereas, good 
people,'' said the friar, whose name was Shaw, "my 
Lord the Protector, the noble Duke of Gloucester, that 
sweet prince, the pattern of all the noblest virtues, is 
the perfect image and express likeness ot his father." 
There had been a little plot between the Duke and the 
friar, that the Duke should appear in the crowd at this 
moment, when it was expected that the people would 
cry "Long live King Richard!" But, either through 
the friar saying the words to soon, or through the 
Duke's coming too late, the Duke and the words did 
not come together, and the people only laughed, and the 
friar sneaked off ashamed. 

The Duke of Buckingham was a better hand at such 
business than the friar, so he went to the Guildhall the 
next day and addressed the citizens in the Lord Protec- 
tor's behalf. A few dirty men, who had been hired and 
stationed there for the purpose, crying when he had 
done, "God save King Richard!" he made them a 
great bow, and thanked them with all his heart. Next 
day, to make an end of it, he went with the mayor and 
some lords and citizens to Bayard Castle, by the river. 
where Richard then was, and read an address, humbly 
entreating him to accept the crown ot England. Rich- 
ard, who looked down upon them out ot a window and 
pretended to be in great uneasiness and alarm, assured 
them there was nothing he desired less, and that his 
deep affection for his nephews forbade him to think of 
it. To this the Duke of Buckingham replied, with pre- 
tended warmth, that the free people of England would 
never submit to his nephew's rule, and that if Richard, 
who was the lawful heir, refused the crown, why then 



238 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

they must find some one else to wear it. The Duke of 
Gloucester returned, that since he used that strong lan- 
guage, it became his painful duty to think no more of 
himself, and to accept the crown. 

Upon that, the people cheered and dispersed; and 
the Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of Buckingham 
passed a pleasant evening, talking over the play they 
had just acted with so much success, and every word of 
which they had prepared together. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD III. 

King Richard III. was up betimes in the morning, 
and went to Westminster Hall. In the Hall was a mar- 
ble seat, upon which he sat himself down between two 
great noblemen, and told the people that he began the 
new reign in that place, because the first duty of a sov- 
ereign was to administer the laws equally to all, and to 
maintain justice. He then mounted his horse and rode 
back to the city, where he was received .by the clergy 
and the crowd as if he really had a right to the throne, 
and really were a just man. The clergy and the crowd 
must have been rather ashamed of themselves in secret, 
I think, for being such poor-spirited knaves. 

The new King and his Queen were soon crowned with 
a great deal of show and noise, which the people liked 
very much; and then the King set forth on a royal 
progress through his dominions. He was crowned a 
second time at York, in order that the people might 
have show and noise enough ; and wherever he went 
was received with shouts of rejoicing — from a good 
many people of strong lungs, who were paid to strain 
their throats in crying, "God save King Richard!" 
The plan was so successful that I am told it has been 
imitated since, by other usurpers, in other progresses 
through other dominions. 

While he was on this journey, King Richard stayed a 
week at Warwick. And from Warwick he sent instruc- 
tions home for one ot the wickedest murders that ever 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 239 

was done— the murder of the two young princes, his 
nephews, who were shut up in the Tower of London. 

Sir Robert Brackenbury was at that time Governor of 
the Tower. To him, by the hands of a messenger 
named John Green, did King Richard send a letter, 
ordering him by some means to put the two young 
princes to death. But Sir Robert — I hope because he 
had children of his own, and loved them — sent John 
Green back again, riding and spurring along the dusty 
roads, with the answer that he could not do so horrible 
a piece of work. The King, having f rowningly consid- 
ered a little, called to him Sir James Tyrrel, his master 
of the horse, and to him gave authority to take com- 
mand of the Tower, whenever he would, for twenty- 
four hours, and to keep all the keys of the Tower during 
that space of time. Tyrrel, well knowing what was 
wanted, looked about him tor two hardened ruffians, 
and chose John Dighton, one of his own grooms, and 
Miles Forest, who was a murderer by trade. Having 
secured these two assistants, he went, upon a day in 
August, to the Tower, showed his authority from the 
King, took the command for 'four-and-twenty hours, 
and obtained possession of the keys. And when the 
black night came, he went creeping, creeping, like a 
guilty villain as he was, up the dark stone winding 
stairs, and along the dark stone passages, until he came 
to the door of the room where the two young princes, 
having said their prayers, lay fast asleep, clasped in 
each other's arms. And while he watched and listened 
at the door, he sent in those evil demons, John Dighton 
and Miles Forest, who smothered the two princes with 
the bed and Jpillows, and carried their bodies down the 
stairs, and buried them under a great heap of stones at 
the staircase foot. And when the day came, he gave up 
the command of the Tower, and restored the keys, and 
hurried away without once looking behind him; and 
Sir Robert Brackenbury went with fear and sadness to 
the princes' room, and found the princes gone forever. 

You know through all this history, how true it is that 
traitors are never true, and you will not be surprised to 
learn that the Duke of Buckingham soon turned against 
King Richard, and joined a great Jconspiracy that was 



240 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

formed to "dethrone him, and to place the crown upon 
its rightful owner's head. Richard had meant to keep 
the murder secret ; but when he heard through his spies 
that this conspiracy existed, and that many lords and 
gentlemen drank in secret to the healths of the two 
young princes in the Tower, he made it known that 
they were dead. The conspirators, though thwarted for 
a moment, soon resolved to set up for the crown against 
the murderous Richard, Henry, Earl of Richmond, 
grandson of Catherine: that widow ot Henry V. who 
married Owen Tudor. And as Henry was of the house 
of Lancaster, they proposed that he should marry the 
Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the late 
King, now the heiress of the house ot York, and thus, 
by uniting the rival families, put an end to the fatal 
wars of the Red and White Roses. All being settled, 
a time was appointed for Henry to come over from 
Brittany, and for a great rising against Richard to take 
place in several parts ot England at the same hour. 
On a certain day, therefore, in October, the revolt took 
place; but unsuccessfully. Richard was prepared, 
Henry was driven back at sea by a storm, his followers 
in England were dispersed, and the Duke of Bucking- 
ham was taken, and at once beheaded in the market 
place at Salisbury. 

The time of his success was a good time, Richard 
thought, for summoning a Parliament and getting some 
money. So, a Parliament was called, and it flattered 
and fawned upon him as much as he could possibly 
desire, and declared him to be the rightful King of Eng- 
land, and his own son, Edward, then eleven years of 
age, the next heir to the throne. 

Richard knew full well that, let Parliament say what 
it would, the Princess Elizabeth was remembered by 
people as the heiress of the house of York ; and having 
accurate information besides of its being designed by 
the conspirators to marry her to Henry of Richmond, 
he felt that it would much strengthen him and weaken 
them to be beforehand with them, and marry her to his 
son. With this view he went to the Sanctuary at 
Westminster, where the late King's widow and her 
daughter still were, and besought them to come to 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 241 

Court: where (he swore by anything and everything) 
they should be safely and honorably entertained. They 
came, accordingly, but had scarcely been at Courta 
month when his son died suddenly — or was poisoned — 
and his plan was crushed to pieces. 

In this extreme, King Richard, always active, thought, 
"I must make another plan." And he made the plan 
of marrying the Princess Elizabeth himself, although 
she was his niece. There was one difficulty in the way : 
his wife, the Queen Anne, was alive. But, he knew 
(remembering his nephews) how to remove that ob- 
stacle, and he made love to the Princess Elizabeth, 
telling her he felt perfecty confident that the Queen 
would die in February. The Princess was not a very 
scrupulous young lady, for, instead of rejecting the 
murderer of her brothers with scorn and hatred, she 
openly declared she loved him dearly ; and, when Feb- 
ruary came and the Queen did not die, she expressed 
her impatient opinion that she was too long about it. 

However, King Richard was not so far out in his pre- 
diction but that she died in March, — he took good care 
of that, — and then this precious pair hoped to be mar- 
ried. But they were disappointed, for the idea of such 
a marriage was so unpopular in the country, that the 
King's chief counsellors, Ratcliffe and Catesby, would 
by no means undertake to propose it, and the King was 
even obliged to declare in public that he had never 
thought of such a thing. 

He was, by this time, dreaded and hated by all classes 
of his subjects. His nobles deserted every day to 
Henry's side ; he dared not call another parliament, lest 
his crimes should be denounced there ; and for want of 
money, he was obliged to get Benevolences from the 
citizens, which exasperated them all against him. It 
was said too, that, being stricken by his conscience, he 
dreamed frightful dreams, and started up in the night- 
time, wild with terror and remorse. Active to the last, 
through all this, he issued vigorous proclamations 
against Henry of Richmond and all his followers, when 
he heard that they were coming against him with a fleet 
from France ; and took the field as fierce and savage as 
a wild boar — the animal represented on his shield. 



242 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Henry of Richmond landed with six thousand men at 
Milford Haven, and came on against King Richard, 
then encamped at Leicester with an army twice as 
great, through North Wales. On Bosworth Field the 
two armies met; Richard, looking along Henry's ranks, 
and seeing them crowded with the English nobles who 
had abandoned him, turned pale when he beheld the 
powerful Lord Stanley and his son (whom he had tried 
hard to retain) among them. But he was as brave as 
he was wicked, and plunged into the thickest of the fight. 
He was riding hither and thither, laying about him in 
all directions, when he observed the Earl of Northum- 
berland — one of his few great allies — to stand inactive, 
and the main body of his troops to hesitate. At the 
same moment, his desperate glance caught Henry of 
Richmond among a little group of his knights. Riding 
hard at him, and crying "Treason!" he killed his 
standard-bearer, fiercely unhorsed another gentleman, 
and aimed a powerful stroke at Henry himself, to cut 
him down. But Sir William Stanley parried it as it 
fell, and before Richard could raise his arm again, he 
was borne down in a press of numbers, unhorsed, and 
killed. Lord Stanley picked up the crown, all bruised 
and trampled, and stained with blood, and put it upon 
Henry's head, amid loud and rejoicing cries of "Long live 
Kmg'Henry !" 

That night, a horse was led up to the church of the 
Grey Friars at Leicester, across whose back was tied, 
like some worthless sack, a naked body brought there 
for burial. It was the body of the last of the Planta- 
genet line, King Richard III., usurper and murderer, 
slain at the battle of Bosworth Field, in the thirty-sec- 
ond year of his age, after a reign of two years. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY VII. 

King Henry VII. did not turn out to be as fine a fel- 
low as the nobility and people hoped, in the first joy of 
their deliverance from Richard III. He was very cold, 
crafty, and calculating, and would do almost anything 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 243 

for money. He possessed considerable ability, but his 
chief merit appears to have been that he was not cruel 
when there was nothing to be got by it. 

The new King had promised the nobles who had 
espoused his cause that he would marry the Princess 
Elizabeth. The first thing he did was to direct her to 
be removed from the castle of Sheriff Hutton in York- 
shire, where Richard had placed her, and restored to 
the care of her mother in London. The young Earl of 
Warwick, Edward Plantagenet, son and heir of the late 
Duke of Clarence, had been kept a prisoner in the same 
old Yorkshire Castle with her. This boy, who was now 
fifteen, the new King placed in the Tower for safety. 
Then he came to London in great state, and gratified the 
people with a fine procession ; of which kind of show 
he often very much relied for keeping them in good 
humor. The sports and feasts which took place were fol- 
lowed by a terrible fever, called the Sweating Sickeness, 
of |which great numbers of people died. Lord mayors 
and aldermen are thought to have suffered morst from 
it ; whether, because they were m the habit of overeat- 
ing themselves, or because they were very jealous of 
preserving filth and nuisances in the city (as they have 
been since), I don't know. 

The King's coronation was postponed on account of 
the general ill-health, and he afterward deferred his 
marriage, as if he were not very anxious that it should 
take place: and, even after that, deferred the Queen's 
coronation so long that he gave offense to the York 
party. However, he set these things right m the end, 
by hanging some men and seizing on the rich posses- 
sions of others ; by granting more popular pardons to the 
followers of the late King than could, at first, be got 
from him; and by employing about his Court some not 
very scrupulous persons who had been employed in the 
previous reign. 

As this reign was principally remarkable for two very 
curious impostures, which have become famous in his- 
tory, we will make those two stories its principal feat- 
ure. 

There was a priest at Oxford of the name of Simons, 
who had for a pupil a handsome boy named Lambert 



244 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Simnel, the son of a baker. Partly to gratify his own 
ambitious ends, and partly to carry out the designs of 
a secret party formed against the King, this priest de- 
clared that his pupil, the boy, was no other than the 
young Earl of Warwick; who (as everybody might have 
known) was safely locked up in the Tower of London. 
The priest and the boy went over to Ireland ; and at 
Dublin enlisted in their cause all ranks of the people : 
who seem to have been generous enough, but exceed- 
ingly irrational. The Earl of Kildare, the governor of 
Ireland, declared that he believed the boy to be what 
the priest represented ; and the boy, who had been well 
tutored by the piest,' told them such things of his child- 
hood, and gave them so many descriptions of the Royal 
family, that they were perpetually shouting and hur- 
rahing, and drinking his health, and making all kinds 
of noisy and thirsty demonstrations, to express their 
belief in him. Nor was this feeling confined to Ireland 
alone, for the Earl of Lincoln — whom the late usurper 
had named as his successor — went over to the young 
Pretender ; and after holding a secret correspondence 
with the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, — the sister of 
Edward IV., who detested the present King and all his 
race, — sailed to Dublin with two thousand German sol- 
diers, of her providing. In this promising state of the 
boy's fortunes, he was crowned there, with a crown 
taken off the head of a statue of the Virgin Mary ; and 
was then, according to the Irish custome in those days, 
carried home on the shoulders of a big chieftain possess- 
ing a great deal more strength than sense. Father 
Simons, you may be sure, was mighty busy at the coro- 
nation. 

Ten days afterward, the Germans, and the Irish, and 
the priest and the boy, and the Earl of Lincoln, all 
landed in Lancashire to invade England. The King, 
who had good intelligence of their movements, set up 
his standard at Nottingham, where vast numbers 
resorted to him every day ; while the Earl of Lincoln 
could gain but very few. With this small force he tried 
to make for the town of Newark; but the King's army 
getting between him and that place, he had no choice 
but to risk battle at Stoke. It soon ended in the com- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 245 

plete destruction of the Pretender's forces ; one-half of 
whom were killed ; among them the Earl himself. The 
priest and the baker's boy were taken prisoners. The 
priest, after confessing the trick, was shut up in prison, 
where he afterward died — suddenly perhaps. The boy 
was taken into the King's kitchen and made a turnspit. 

He was afterward raised to the station of one of the 
King's falconers; and so ended this strange imposition. 

There seems reason to suspect that the Dowager 
Queen —always a restless and busy woman had had some 
share in tutoring the baker's son. The King was very 
angry with her, whether or no. He seized upon her 
property, and shut her up in a convent at Bermondsey. 

One might suppose that the end of this story would 
have put the Irish people on their guard ; but they were 
quite ready to receive a second impostor, as they had re- 
ceived the first, and that same troublesome Duchess of 
Burgundy soon gave them the opportunity. All of a 
sudden there appeared at Cork, in a vessel arriving 
from Portugal, a young man of excellent abilities, ot 
very handsome appearance and most winning manners, 
who declared himself to be Richard Duke of York, the 
second son of King Edward IV. "Oh," said some, even 
of those ready Irish believers, "but surely that young 
Prince was murdered by his uncle in the Tower!" — "It 
is supposed so, ' ' said the engaging young man ; ' 'and my 
brother was killed in that gloomy prison: but I escaped 
— it doesn't matter how, at present — and I have been 
wandering about the world for seven long years." This 
explanation being quite satisfactory to numbers of the 
Irish people, they began again to shout and to hurrah, 
and to drink his health, and to make the noisy and 
thirsty demonstrations all over again. And the big chief- 
tain in Dublin began to look for another coronation, 
and another young King to be carried home in his back. 

Now, King Henry being then on bad terms with 
France, the French King, Charles VII., saw that, by 
pretending to believe in the handsome young man, he 
could trouble his enemy sorely. So he invited him over 
to the French Court and appointed him a body guard, 
and treated him in all respects as if he really were the 
Duke of York. Peace, however, being soon concluded 



24G A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

between the two Kings, the pretended Duke was turned 
adrift, and wandered for protection to the Duchess of 
Burgundy. She, after feigning to inquire into the reality 
of his claims, declared him to be the very picture of her 
dear departed brother; gave him a bodyguard at her 
Court, of thirty halberdiers; and called him by the 
sounding name" of the White Rose of England. 

The leading members of the White Rose party in 
England sent over an agent, named Sir Robert Clifford, 
to ascertain whether the White Rose' claims were good; 
the King also sent over his agents to inquire into Rose's 
history. The White Rose declared the young man to 
be really the Duke of York ; the King declared him to 
be Perkin Warbeck, the son of a merchant of the city of 
Tournay, who had acquired his knowledge of England, 
its language and manners from the English merchants 
who traded in Flanders; it was also stated by the 
Royal agents, that he had been in the service of Lady 
Bromptcn, the wife of an exiled English nobleman, and 
that the Duchess ot Burgundy had caused him to be 
trained and taught expressly for this deception. The 
King then required the Archduke Philip — who was the 
sovereign of Burgundy — to banish this new Pretender, 
or to deliver him up ; but as the Archduke replied that 
he could not control the Duchess in her own land, [the 
King, in revenge, took the market of English cloth away 
from Antwerp, and prevented all commercial inter- 
course between the two countries. 

He also, by arts and bribes, prevailed on Sir Robert 
Clifford to betray his employers ; and he, denouncing 
several famous English noblemen as being secretly the 
friends of Perkin Warbeck, the King had three of the 
foremost executed at once. Whether he pardoned the 
remainder because they were poor, I do not know; but 
it is only too probable that he refused to pardon one 
famous nobleman against whom the same Clifford soon 
afterward informed separately, because he was rich. 
This was no other than Sir William Stanley, who had 
saved the King's life at the battle of Bosworth Field. It is 
very doubtful whether his treason amounted to much 
more than his having said, that if he were sure the young 
man was the Duke of York, he would not take arms 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 247 

against him. Whatever he had done he admitted, like 
an honorable spirit ; and he lost his "head for it, and the 
covetous King gained all his wealth. 

Perkin Warbeck kept quiet for three years, but, .as 
the Flemings began to complain heavily of the loss of 
their trade by the stoppage of the Antwerp market on 
this account, and that it was not unlikely that they 
might even go so far as to take his life, or give him up, 
he found it necessary to do something. Accordingly, 
he made a desperate sally, and landed, with only a few 
hundred men, on the coast of Deal. But he was soon 
glad to get back to the place from whence he came ; for 
the country people rose against his followers, killed a 
great many, and took a hundred and fifty prisoners ; 
who were all driven to London, tied together with ropes, 
like a team of cattle. Every one of them was hanged 
in some part or other of the seashore ; in order, that if 
any more men should come over with Perkin Warbeck, 
they might see the bodies as a warning before they 
landed. 

Then the wary King, by making a treaty of commerce 
with the Flemings, drove Perkin Warbeck out of that 
country; arid, by completely gaining over the Irish to 
his side, deprived him of that asylum too. He wan- 
dered away to Scotland, and told his story at that Court. 
King James IV. of Scotland, who was no friend to King 
Henry, and had had no reason to be (for King Henry 
had bribed his Scotch lords to betray him more than 
once, but had never succeeded in his plots), gave him a 
great reception, called him his cousin, and gave him in 
marriage the Lady Catherine Gordon, a beautiful and 
charming creature related to the royal house of Stuart. 

Alarmed by this successful reappearance of the Pre- 
tender, the King, still undermined, and bought, and 
bribed, and kept his doings and Perkin Warbeck's story 
in the dark, when he might, one would imagine, have 
rendered the matter clear to all England. But, for all 
this bribing of the Scotch lords at the Scotch King's 
Court, he could not procure the Pretender to be deliv- 
ered up to him. James, though not very particular in 
many respects, would not betray him ; and the ever- 
busy Duchess of Burgundy so provided him with arms, 



248 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and good soldiers, and with money besides, that he had 
soon a little army of fifteen hundred men of various 
nations. With these, and aided by the Scottish King in 
person, he crossed the border into England, and made 
a proclamation to the people, in which he called the 
King "Henry Tudor" ; offered large rewards for anyone 
who "should take or distress him ; and announced him- 
self as King Richard IV. come to receive the homage 
of his faithful subjects. His faithful subjects, however, 
cared nothing for him, and hated his faithful troops; 
who, being of different nations, quarreled among them- 
selves. Worse than this, if worse were possible, they 
began to plunder the country ; upon which the White 
Rose said, that he would rather lose his rights than 
gain them through the miseries of the English people. 
The Scottish King made a jest of his scruples; but they 
and their whole force went back again without fighting 
a battle. 

The worst consequence of this attempt was that a 
rising took 'place among the people of Cornwall, who 
considered themselves too heavily taxed to meet the 
charges ot the expected war. Stimulated by Flammock, 
a lawyer, and Joseph, a blacksmith, and joined by Lord 
Audley and some other country gentlemen, they 
marched on all the way to Deptford Bridge, where they 
fought a battle with the King's army. They were de- 
feated — though the Cornish men fought with great brav- 
ery — and the lord was beheaded, and the lawyer and the 
blacksmith were hanged, drawn and quartered. The 
rest were pardoned. The King, who believed every 
man to be as avaricious as himself, and thought that 
money could settle anything, allowed them to make 
bargains for their liberty with the soldiers who had 
taken them. 

Perk in Warbeck, doomed 'to -wander up and down, 
and never to find rest anywhere — a sad fate; almost a 
sufficient punishment for an impostor, which he seems 
in time to have half believed himself — lost jhis ^Scottish 
refuge through a truce being made between the two 
Kings; and found himself, once more, without a country 
before him in which he could lay his head. But James 
was always honorable and true to him, alike [when he 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 249 

melted down his plate, and even the great gold chain 
he had been used to wear, to pay soldiers in his cause ; 
and now, when that cause was lost and hopeless, did 
not conclude the treaty until he had safely departed out 
of the Scotch dominions. He and his beautiful wife, 
who was faithful to him under all reverses, and left 
her state and home to follow his poor fortunes, were 
put aboard ship with everything necessary for their 
comfort and protection, and sailed for Ireland. 

But the Irish people had had enough of counterfeit 
Earls of Warwick and Dukes of York, for one while; 
and would give the White Rose no aid. So, the White 
Rose — encircled by thorns indeed — resolved to go with 
his beautiful wife to Cornwall as a forlorn resource, and 
see what might be made of the Cornish men who had 
risen so valiantly a little while before, and had fought 
so bravely at Depttord Bridge. 

To Whitsand Bay, in Cornwall, accordingly, came 
Perkin Warbeck and his wife ; and the lovely lady he 
shut up for safety in the Castle of St. Michael's Mount, 
and then marched into Devonshire at the head of three 
thousand Cornish men. These were increased to six 
thousand by the time of his arrival in Exeter ; but there 
the people made a stout resistance and he went on to 
Taunton, where he came in sight of the King's army. 
The stout Cornish men, although they were few in 
number and badly armed, were so bold that they never 
thought of retreating, but bravely looked forward to a 
battle on the morrow. Unhappily for them, the man 
who was possessed of so many engaging qualities, and 
who attracted so many people to his side when he had 
nothing else with which to tempt them, was not as 
brave as they. In the night, when the two armies lay 
opposite to each other, he mounted a swift horse and 
fled. When morning dawned, the poor confiding Corn- 
ish men, discovering that they had no leader, surren- 
dered to the King's power. Some of them were hanged, 
and the rest were pardoned and went miserably home. 

Before the King pursued Perkin Warbeck to the sanc- 
tuary of Beaulieu in the New Forest, where it was soon 
known that be had jtaken 'refuge, he sent a body of 
horsemen to St. Michael's Mount to seize his wife. She 



250 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

was soon taken and brought as a captive before the 
King. But she was so beautiful, and so good, and so 
devoted to the man in whom she believed, that the King 
regarded her with compassion, treated her with great 
respect, and placed her at Court, near the Queen's per- 
son. And many years after Perkin Warbeck was no 
more, and when his strange story had become like a 
nursery tale, she was called the White Rose, by the 
people, in remembrance ot her beauty. 

The sanctuary at Beaulieu was soon surrounded by 
the King's men ; and the King, pursuing his usual dark 
artful ways, sent pretended friends to Perkin Warbeck 
to persuade him to come out and surrender himself. 
This he soon did; the King having taken a good look 
at the man of whom he had heard so much — from 
behind a screen — directed him to be well mounted, 
and to ride behind him at a little distance, guarded, 
but not bound in 'any way. So they entered London 
with the King's favorite show — a procession ; and some 
of the people hooted as the Pretender rode slowly 
through the streets to the Tower ; but the greater part 
were quiet, and very curious to see him. From the 
Tower, he was taken to the Palace at Westminster, and 
there lodged like a gentleman, though closely watched. 
He was examined every now and then as to his impost- 
ure ; but the King was so secret in all that he did, that 
even then he gave it a consequence which it cannot be 
supposed to have in itself deserved. 

At last Perkin Warbeck ran away, and took refuge in 
another sanctuary near Richmond in Surrey. From 
this he was again persuaded to deliver himself up; and, 
being conveyed to London, he stood in the stocks for a 
whole day, outside Westminster Hall, and there read a 
paper purporting to be his full confession, and relating 
his history at the King's agents had originally de- 
scribed it. He was then shut up in the Tower again, in 
the company ot the Earl of Warwick, who had now 
besn there tor fourteen years, ever since his removal 
out of Yorkshire, except when the King had had him at 
Court and had shown him to the people, to prove the 
imposture of the baker's boy. It is but too probable, 
when we consider the crafty character ot Henry VII., 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 251 

that these two were brought together for a cruel pur- 
pose. A plot was soon discovered between them and 
the keepers to murder the Governor, get possession of 
the keys, and proclaim Perkin Warbeck as King Rich- 
ard IV. That there was some such plot is likely ; that 
they were tempted into it, is at least as likely ; that the 
unfortunate Earl of Warwick — last male of the Plan- 
tagenet line — was too unused to the world, and too 
ingorant and simple to know much about it, whatever it 
was, is perfectly certain ; and that it was the King's in- 
terest to get rid of him, is no less so. He was beheaded 
on Tower Hill, and Perkin Warbeck was hanged at 
Tyburn. 

Such was the end of the pretended Duke of York, 
whose shadowy history was made more shadowy — and 
ever will be — by the mystery and craft of the King. If 
he had turned his great natural advantages to a more 
honest account, he might have lived a happy and re- 
spected life even in those days. But he died upon a 
gallows at Tyburn, leaving the Scottish lady who had 
loved him so well, kindly protected at the Queen's 
Court. After some time she forgot her old loves and 
troubles, as many people do with time's merciful assist- 
ance, and married a Welsh gentleman. 

Her second husband, Sir Matthew Cradoc, more honest 
and more happy than her first, lies beside her in a tomb 
in the old church of Swansea. 

The ill-blood between France and England in this 
reign arose out of the continued plotting of the Duchess 
ot Burgundy, andMisputes respecting the affairs of Brit- 
tany. The King feigned to be very patriotic, indignant, 
and warlike, but he always contrived so as never to 
"make war in reality, and always to make money. His 
taxation of the people, on pretense of war with France, 
involved at one time a very dangerous insurrection, 
headed by Sir John Egremont, and a common man 
called John a Chambre. But it was subdued by the 
royal forces, under the command of the Earl of Surrey. 
The knighted John escaped to the Duchess ot Burgun- 
dy, who was ever ready to receive any one who gave 
the King trouble ; and the plain John was hanged at 
York in the midst ot a number ot his men, but on a much 



252 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

higher gibbet, as being a greater traitor. Hung high 
or low, however, hanging is much the same to the per- 
song hung. 

Within a year after her marriage, the Queen had 
given birth to a son, who was called Prince Arthur, in 
remembrance ot the old British Prince of romance and 
story ; and who, when all these events had happened, 
being then in his fifteenth year, was married to Cather- 
ine, the daughter of the Spanish monarch, with great 
rejoicings and bright prospects; but in a very few 
months he sickened and died. As soon as the King 
had recovered from his grief, he thought it a pity that 
the fortune of the Spanish Princess, amounting to two 
hundred thousand crowns, should go out of the family ; 
and, therefore, arranged that the young widow should 
marry his second son, Henry, then twelve years ot age, 
when he too should be fifteen. There were objections 
to this marriage on the part of the clergy ; but, as the 
infallible Pope was gained over, and as he must be 
right, that settled the business for the time. The 
King's eldest daughter was provided for, and a long 
course of disturbance was considered to be set at rest by 
her being married to the Scottish King. 

And now the Queen died. When the King had got 
over that grief, too, his mind once more reverted to his 
darling money for consolation, and he thought of marry- 
ing the Dowager Queen of Naples, who was immensely 
rich, but, as it ^turned out not to be practicable to gain 
the money, however practicable it might have been to 
gain the lady, he gave up the idea. He was not so fond 
of her but that he soon proposed to marry the Dowager 
Duchess of Savoy ; and, soon afterward, the widow of 
the King of Castile, who was raving mad. But he made 
a money bargain instead, and married neither. 

The Duchess of Burgundy, among the other discon- 
tented people to whom she had given refuge, had shel- 
tered Edmund de la Pole, younger brother of that Earl 
ot Lincoln who was killed at Stoke, now Earl of Suffolk. 
The King had prevailed upon him to return to the mar- 
riage of Prince Arthur; but he soon afterward went 
away again ; and then the King, suspecting a conspir- 
acy, resorted to his favorite plan of sending him some 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 253 

treacherous friends, and buying of those scoundrels the 
secrets they disclosed or invented. Some arrests and 
executions took place in consequence. In the end, the 
King, on a promise of not taking his life, obtained 
possession of the person of Edmund de la Pole and shut 
him up in the Tower. 

This was his last enemy. If he had lived much longer 
he would have made many more among the people, by 
the grinding exaction to which he constantly exposed 
them, and by the tyrannical acts of his two prime favor- 
ites in all money-raising matters, Edmund Dudley and 
Richard Empson. But Death — the enemy who is not to 
be bought off or deceived, and on whom no money, and 
no treachery, has any effect — presented himself at this 
juncture, and ended the King's reign. He died of the 
gout on the 226. of April, 1509, and in the fifty-third 
year of his age ; after reigning twenty-four years ; he 
was buried in the beautiful Chapel of Westminster Ab- 
bey which he had himself founded, and which still bears 
his name. 

It was in this reign that the great Christopher Colum- 
bus, on behalf of Spain, discovered what was then called 
the New World. Great wonder, interest, and hope of 
wealth being awakened in England thereby, the King 
and the merchants of London and Bristol fitted out an 
English expedition for further discoveries in the New 
World, and entrusted it to Sebastian Cabot, of Bristol, 
the son of a Venetian pilot there. He was very suc- 
cessful in his voyage, and gained high reputation, both 
for himself and England. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY VIII., CALLED BLUFF KING HAL 
AND BURLY KING HARRY — PART FIRST. 

We now come to King Henry VIII., whom it has 
been too much the fashion to call "Bluff King Hal," and 
"Burly King Harry," and other fine names; but whom 
I shall take the liberty to call, plainly, one of the most 
detestable villains that ever drew breath. You will be 



254 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

able to judge, long before we come to the end of his 
life, whether he deserves the character. 

He was just eighteen years of age when he came to 
the throne. People said he was handsome then ; but I 
don't believe it. He was a big, burly, noisy, small- 
eyed, large-faced, double-chinned, swinish-looking fel- 
low in later life, as we know from the likeness of him 
painted by the famous Hans Holbein, and it is not easy 
to believe that so bad a character can ever have been 
veiled under a prepossessing appearance. 

He was anxious to make himself popular; and the 
people, who had long disliked the late king, were very 
willing to believe that he deserved to be so. He was 
extremely fond of show and display, and so were they. 
Therefore, there was great rejoicing when he married 
the Princess Catherine, and when they were both 
crowned. And the King fought at tournaments and 
always came off victorious — for the courtiers took care 
of that — and there was a general outcry that he was a 
wonderful man. Empson, Dudley, and their supporters 
were accused of a variety of crimes they had never 
committed instead of the offenses of which they really 
had been guilty, and they were pilloried, and set upon 
horses with their faces to the tails, and knocked about 
and beheaded, to the satisfaction of the people and the 
enrichment of the King. 

The Pope, so indefatigable in getting the world into 
trouble, had mixed himself up in a war on the continent 
of Europe, occasioned by the reigning Princes of little 
quarreling states in Italy having at various times mar- 
ried into other Royal families, and so led to their claim- 
ing a share in those petty Governments. The King, 
who discovered that he was very fond of the Pope, sent 
a herald to the King of France, to say that he must not 
make war upon that holy personage because he was the 
father of all Christians. As the French King did not 
mind this relationship in the least, and also refused to 
admit a claim King Henry made to certain lands m 
France, war was declared between the two countries. 
Not to perplex this 'story with an account of the tricks 
and designs of all the sovereigns who were engaged in 
it, it is enough to say that England made a blundering 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 255 

alliance with Spain, and got stupidly taken in by that 
country ; which "made its own terms with France when 
it could, and left England in the lurch. Sir Edward 
Howard, a bold Admiral, son of the Earl of Surrey, dis- 
tinguished himself by his bravery against the French in 
this business; but, unfortunately, he was more brave 
than wise, for, skimming into the French harbor of 
Brest with only a few rowboats, he attempted, in re- 
venge for the defeat and death of Sir Thomas Knyvett, 
another bold English admiral, to take some strong 
French ships, well defended with batteries of cannon. 
The upshot was that he was left on board of one of 
them, in consequence of its shooting away from his own 
boat, with not more than about a dozen men, and was 
thrown into the sea and drowned ; though not until he 
had taken from his breast his gold chain and gold whis- 
tle, which were the signs of his office, and had cast 
them into the sea to prevent their being made a boast 
of by the enemy. After this defeat — which was a great 
one, for Sir Edward Howard was a man of valor and 
fame — the King took it into his head to invade France 
in person; first executing that dangerous Earl of 
Suffolk, whom his father had left in the Tower, and 
appointing Queen Catherine to the charge of his king- 
dom in his absence. He sailed to Calais, where he was 
joined by Maximilian, Emperor of Germany, who pre- 
tended to be his soldier, and who took pay in his service 
with a good deal of nonsense of that sort, flattering 
enough to the vanity of a vain blusterer. The King 
might be successful enough in sham fights; but his idea 
of real battles, chiefly consisted in pitching silken tents 
of bright colors that were ignominously blown down by 
the wind, and in making a vast display of gaudy flags 
and golden curtains. Fortune, however, favored him 
better than he deserved ; for, after much waste of time 
in tent pitching, flag flying, gold curtaining, and other 
such masquerading, he gave the French battle at a place 
called Guinegate, where they took such an unaccount- 
able panic, and fled with such swiftness, that it was ever 
afterward called by the English the Battle of Spurs. 
Instead of following up his advantage, the King, finding 



256 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

that he had had enough of real fighting, came home 
again. 

The Scottish King, though nearly related to Henry 
by marriage, had taken part against him in this war. 
The Earl of Surrey, as the English general, advanced 
to meet him when he came out of his own dominions, 
and crossed the river Tweed. The two armies came up 
with one another when the Scottish King had also 
crossed the river Till, and was encamped upon the last 
of the Cheviot Hills, called the Hill of Flodden. Along 
the plain below it, the English, when the hour of battle 
came, advanced. The Scottish army, which had been 
drawn up in five great bodies, then came steadily down 
in perfect silence. So they, in their turn advanced to 
meet the English army, which came on in one long line ; 
and they attacked it with a body of spearmen, under 
Lord Home. At first they had the best of it ; but the 
English recovered themselves so bravely, and fought 
with such valor, that, when the Scottish King had 
almost made his way up to the Royal standard, he was 
slain, and the whole Scottish power routed. Ten thou- 
sand Scottish men lay dead that day on Flodden Field ; 
and among them numbers of the nobility and gentry. 
For a long time afterward, the Scottish peasantry used 
to believe that their King had not been really killed in 
this battle, because no Englishman had found an iron 
belt he wore about his body as a penance for having 
been an unnatural and undutiful son. But, whatever 
became of his belt, the English had his sword and dag- 
ger, and the ring from his finger, and his body, too, cov- 
ered with wounds. There is no doubt of it; for it was 
seen and recognized by English gentlemen who had 
known the Scottish King well. 

When King Henry was making ready to renew the 
war in France, the French King was contemplating 
peace. His queen dying at this time, he proposed, al- 
though he was upward of fifty years old, to marry King 
Henry's sister, the Princess Mary, who, besides being 
only sixteen, was betrothed to the Duke of Suffolk. As 
the inclinations of young Princesses were not much con- 
sidered in such matters, the marriage was concluded, 
and the poor girl was escorted to France, where she was 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 257 

immediately left as the French King's bride, with only- 
one of all her English attendants. That one was a 
pretty young girl named Anne Boleyn, niece of the Earl 
of Surrey, who had been made Duke of Norfolk, after 
the victory of Flodden Field. Anne Boleyn's is a name 
to be remembered, as you will presently find. 

And now the French King, who was very proud of his 
young wife, was preparing for many years of happiness, 
and she was looking forward, I dare say, to many years 
of misery, when he died within three months, and left 
her a young widow. The new French monarch, Francis 
I., seeing how important it was to his interest that she 
should take for her second husband no one but an En- 
glishman, advised her first lover, the Duke of Suffolk, 
when King Henry sent him over to France to fetch her 
home, to marry her. The Princess being herself so fond 
of that Duke as to tell him that he must either do so 
then, or forever lose her, they were wedded ; and Henry 
afterward forgave them. In making interest with the 
King, the Duke of Suffolk had addressed his most pow- 
erful favorite and adviser, Thomas Wolsey — a name 
very famous in history for its rise and downfall. 

Wolsey was the son of a respectable butcher at Ips- 
wich, in Suffolk, and received so excellent an education 
that he became a tutor to the family of the Marquis of 
Dorset, who afterward got him appointed one of the late 
King's chaplains. On the accession of Henry VIII., he 
was promoted and taken into great favor. He was now 
Archbishop'of York ; the Pope had made him a Cardinal 
besides ; and who ever wanted influence in England or 
favor with the King — whether he were a foreign mon- 
arch or an English nobleman — was obliged to make a 
friend of the great Cardinal Wolsey. 

He was a gay man, who could dance and jest, and 
sing and drink ; and those were the roads to so much, or 
rather so little, of a heart as King Henry had. He was 
wonderfully fond of pomp and glitter, and so was the 
King. He knew a good deal of the Church learning of 
that time ; much of which consisted in finding artful ex- 
cuses and pretenses for almost any wrong thing, and in 
arguing that black was white, or any other color. This 
kind of learning pleased the King too. For many such 

IT History 



258 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

reasons, the Cardinal was high in estimation with the 
King; and, being a man of far greater ability, knew as 
well how to manage him as a clever keeper may know 
how to manage a wolf or a tiger, or any other cruel and 
uncertain beast, that may turn upon him and tear him 
any day. Never had there been seen in England such 
state as my Lord Cardinal kept. His wealth was enor- 
mous; equal, it was reckoned, to the riches of the Crown. 
His palaces were as splendid as the King's, and his reti- 
nue was eight hundred strong. He held his Court 
dressed out from top to toe in flaming scarlet; and his 
very shoes were golden, set with precious stones. His 
followers rode on blood horses ; while he, with a won- 
derful affectation of humility in the midst of his great 
splendor, ambled on a mule with a red velvet saddle 
and bridle and golden stirrups. 

Through the influence of this stately priest, a grand 
meeting was arranged to take place between the French 
and English Kings, in France ; but on ground belong- 
ing to England. A prodigious show of friendship am! 
rejoicing was to be made on the occasion; and heralds 
were sent to proclaim with brazen trumpets through all 
the principal cities of Europe, that, on a certain day, 
the Kings of France and England as companions and 
brothers in arms, each attended by eighteen followers, 
would hold a tournament against all the knights who 
might choose to come. 

Charles, the new Emperor of Germany (the old one 
being dead), wanted to prevent too cordial an alliance 
between these sovereigns, and came over to England 
before the King could repair to the place of meeting ; 
and, besides making an agreeable impression upon him, 
secured Wolsey's interest by promising that his influ- 
ence should make him Pope when the next vacany 
occurred. On the day when the Emperor left England, 
the King and all the Court went over to Calais, and 
thence to the place of meeting, between Ardres ana 
Guisnes, commonly called the Field of the Cloth of Gold. 
Here, all manner of expense and prodigality was lav- 
ished on the decorations of the show; many of the 
knights and gentlemen being so superbly dressed that 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 259 

it was said they carried their whole estates upon their 
shoulders. 

There were sham castles, temporary chapels, foun- 
tains running wine, great cellars full of wine free as 
water to all comers, silk tents, gold lace and foil, gilt 
lions, and such things without end ; and, in the midst 
of all, the rich Cardinal outshone and outglittered all the 
noblemen and gentlemen assembled. After a treaty 
made between the two Kings with as much solemnity 
as if they had intended to keep it, the lists — goo teet long, 
and 320 broad — were opened for the tournament ; the 
Queens of France and England looking on with great 
array of lords and ladies. Then, for ten days, the two 
sovereigns fought five combats every day, and always 
beat their polite adversaries; though they do write that 
the King of England, being thrown in a wrestle one day 
with the King of France, lost his kingly temper with 
his brother in arms, and wanted to make a quarrel of it. 
Then, there is a great story belonging to this Field of 
the Cloth of Gold, showing how the English were dis- 
trustful of the French, and the French of the Eng- 
lish, until Francis rode alone one morning to Henry's 
tent; and, going in before he was out of bed, told him 
in joke that he was his prisoner: and how Henry 
jumped out of bed and embraced Francis; and how 
Francis helped Henry to dress, and warmed his linen for 
him ; and how Henry gave Francis a splendid jeweled 
collar, and how Francis gave Henry, in return, a costly 
bracelet. All this and a great deal more was so written 
about, and sung about, and talked about, at that time 
(and, indeed, since that time too), that the world has 
had good cause to be sick of it, forever. 

Of course, nothing came of all these fine doings but a 
speedy renewal of the war between England and 
France, in which the two Royal companions and brothers 
in arms longed very earnestly to damage one another. 
But, before it broke out again, the Duke of Buckingham 
was shamefully executed on Tower Hill, on the evi- 
dence of a discharged servant, really for nothing, ex- 
cept the folly of having believed in a friar of the name 
of Hopkins, who had pretended to be a prophet, and 
who had mumbled and jumbled out some nonsense 



260 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

about the Duke's son being destined to be very great in 
the land. It was believed that the unfortunate Duke 
had given offense to the great Cardinal by expressing 
his mind freely about the expense and absurdity of the 
whole business of the Field of the Cloth of God. At 
any rate, he was beheaded, as I have said, for nothing. 
And the people who saw it done were very angry, and 
cried out that it was the work of "the butcher's son !" 

The new war was a short one, though the Earl of 
Surrey invaded France again, and did some injury to 
that country. It ended in another treaty of peace be- 
tween the two kingdoms, and in the discovery that the 
Emperor of Germany was not such a good friend to 
England in reality as he pretended to be. Neither did 
he keep his promise to Wolsey to make him Pope, 
though the King urged it. Two Popes died in pretty 
quick succession; but the foreign priests were too much 
for the Cardinal, and kept him out of the post. So the 
Cardinal and King together found out that the Emperor 
of Germany was not a man to keep faith with ; broke 
off a projected marriage between the King's daughter 
Mary, Princess of Wales, and that sovereign ; and be- 
gan to consider whether it might not be well to marry 
the young lady, either to Francis himself, or to his eld- 
est son. 

There now arose at Wittenberg, in Germany, the great 
leader of the mighty change in England which is called 
the Reformation, and which set the people free from 
their slavery to the priests. This was a learned Doctor, 
named Martin Luther, who knew all about them, for he 
had been a priest, and even a monk, himself. The 
preaching and writing of Wickliffe had set a number of 
men thinking on this subject; and Luther, finding one 
day to his great surprise that there really was a book 
called the New Testament, which the priests did not 
allow to be read, and which contained truths that they 
suppressed, began to be very vigorous against the whole 
body, from the Pope downward. It happened, while 
he was yet only beginning his vast work of awakening 
the nation, that an impudent fellow named Tetzel, a 
friar of very bad character, came into his neighborhood 
selling what were called Indulgences, by wholesale, to 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 261 

raise money for beautifying the great Cathedral of St. 
Peter's, at Rome. Whoever bought an Indulgence of 
the Pope was supposed too buy himself off from the 
punishment of Heaven for his offenses. Luther told 
the people that these Indulgences were worthless bits 
of paper, before God, and that Tetzel and his masters 
were a crew of impostors in selling them. 

The King and the Cardinal were mighty indignant at 
this presumption ; and the King (with the help of Sir 
Thomas More, a wise man, whom he afterward repaid 
by striking off his head) even wrote a book about it, 
with which the Pope was so well pleased that he gave 
the King the title of Defender of the Faith, and the 
Cardinal also issued flaming warnings to the people not 
to read Luther's books, on pain of excommunication. 
But they did read them for all that ; and the rumor of 
what was in them spread far and wide. 

When this great change was thus going on, the King 
began to show himself in his truest and worst colors. 
Anne Boleyn, the pretty little girl who had gone abroad 
to France with his sister, was by this time grown up to 
be very beautiful, and was one of the ladies in attend- 
ance on Queen Catherine. Now, Queen Catherine was 
no longer young or handsome, and it is likely that she 
was not particularly good-tempered; having been 
always rather melancholy, and having been made more 
so by the deaths of four of her children when they were 
very young. So, the King fell in love with the fair 
Anne Boleyn, and said to himself, "How can I be best 
rid ot my own troublesome wife whom I am tired of, 
and marry Anne?" 

You recollect that Queen Catherine had been the wife 
of Henry's brother. What does the King do, after 
thinking it over, but calls his favorite priests about him, 
and say, oh! his mind is in such a dreadful state, and 
he is so frightfully uneasy, because he is afraid it was 
not lawful for him to marry the Queen ! Not one ot 
those priest had the courage to hint that it was rather 
curious he had never thought of that before, and that 
his mind seemed to have been in a tolerably jolly con- 
dition during a great many years, in which he certainly 
had not fretted himself thin; but they all said, Ah! 



262 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

that was very true, and it was a serious business: and 
perhaps the best way to make it right, would be for his 
Majesty to be divorced! The King replied, Yes, he 
thought that would be the best way, certainly ; so they 
all went to work. 

If I were to relate to you the intrigues and plots that 
took place in the endeavor to get this divorce, you 
would think the "History of England" the most tire- 
some book in the world. So I shall say no more than 
that, after a vast deal ot negotiation and evasion, the 
Pope issued a commission to Cardinal Wolsey and Car- 
dinal Campeggio (whom he sent over from Italy for the 
purpose) to try the whole case in England. It is sup- 
posed — and I think with reason — that Wolsey was the 
Queen's enemy, because she had reproved him for his 
proud and gorgeous manner of lite. But he did not at 
first know that the King wanted to marry Anne Boleyn ; 
and when he did know it, he even went down on his 
knees in the endeavor to dissuade him. 

The Cardinals opened their court in the Convent of 
the Black Friars, near to where the bridge of that name 
in London now stands; and the King and Queen, that 
they might be near it, took up their lodgings at the ad- 
joining palace of Bridewell, of which nothing now re- 
mains but a bad prison. On the opening of the court, 
when the King and Queen were called on to appear, that 
poor, ill-used lady, with a dignity and firmness and yet 
with a womanly affection worthy to be always admired, 
went and kneeled at the King's feet, and said that she 
had come, a stranger, to his dominions ; that she had 
been a good and true wife to him for twenty years; 
and that she could acknowledge no power in tho^e Car- 
dinals to try whether she should be considered his wife 
after all that time, or should be put away. With that, 
she got up and left the court, and would never after- 
ward come back to it. 

The King pretended to be very much overcome, and 
said, Oh ! my lords and gentlemen, what a good woman 
she was to be sure, and how delighted he would be to 
live with her unto death, but for that terrible uneasiness 
in his mmd which was quite wearing him away ! So, 
the case went on, and there was nothing but talk for 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 263 

two months. Then Cardinal Campeggio, who, on be- 
half of the Pope, wanted nothing so much as delay, ad- 
journed it for two more months ; and before that time 
was elapsed, the Pope himself adjourned it indefinitely, 
by requiring the King and Queen to come to Rome and 
have it tried there. But by good luck tor the King, 
word was brought to him by some of his people, that 
they had happened to meet at supper Thomas Cranmer, 
a learned Doctor of Cambridge, who had proposed to 
urge the Pope on by referring the case to all learned 
doctors and bishops, here and there and everywhere 
and getting their opinions that the King's marriage was 
unlawful. The King, who was now in a hurry to marry 
Anne Bole}m, thought this such a good idea that he 
sent for Cranmer post haste, and said to Lord Roche- 
fort, Anne Boleyn's father, "Take this learned Doctor 
down to your country house, and there let him have a 
good room for a study, and no end of books out of which 
to prove that I may marry your daughter." Lord 
Rochefort, not at all reluctant, made the learned Doctor 
as comfortable as he could: and the learned Doctor 
went to work to prove his case. All this time, the King 
and Anne Boleyn were writing letters to one another 
almost daily, full of impatience to have the case settled; 
and Anne Boleyn was showing herself (as I think) very 
worthy of the fate which afterward befell her. 

It was bad for Cardinal Wolsey that he had left 
Cranmer to render this help. It was worse for him 
that he had tried to dissuade the King from marrying 
Anne Boleyn. Such a servant as he, to such a master 
as Henry, would probably have fallen in any case; 
but, between the hatred of the party of the Queen that 
was, and the hatred of Jthe party of the Queen that was 
to be, he fell suddenly and heavily. Going down one day 
to the Court of Chancery, where he now presided, he as 
waited upon by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who 
told him that they brought an order to him to resign 
that office, and to withdraw quietly to a house he had at 
Esher, in Surrey. The Cardinal refusing, they rode off 
to the King ; and next day came back with a letter from 
him, on reading which the Cardinal submitted. An 
inventory was made out of all the riches in his palace at 



264 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

York Place (now Whitehall), and he went sorrowfully 
up the river, in his barge, to Putney. An abject man 
he was, in spite of his pride; for being overtaken, riding 
out of that place toward Esher, by one of the King's 
chamberlains, who brought him a kind message and a 
ring, he alighted from his mule, took off his cap, and 
kneeled down in the dirt. His poor Fool, whom in his 
prosperous days he had always kept in his palace to en- 
tertain him, cut a far better figure than he ; for, when 
the Cardinal said to the chamberlain that he had noth- 
ing to send to his lord the King as a present, but that 
jester, who was a most excellent one, it took six strong 
yeomen to remove the faithful fool from his master. 

The once proud Cardinal was soon further disgraced, 
and wrote the most abject letters to his vile sovereign ; 
who humbled him one day and encouraged him the 
next, according to his humor, until he was at last 
ordered to go and reside in his diocese of York. He said 
he was too poor; but I don't know how he made that 
out, for he took 160 servants with him, and seventy-two 
cartloads ot furniture, food, and wine. He remained in 
that part of the country for the best part of a year, and 
showed himself so improved by his misfortune, and was 
so mild and so conciliating, that he won all hearts. And 
indeed, even in his proud da}-s, he had done some mag- 
nificent things for learning and education. At last, he 
was arrested for high treason; and, coming slowly on 
his journey toward London, got as far as Leicester. 

Arriving at Leicester Abbey after dark, and very ill, 
he said — when the monks came out at the gate with 
lighted torches to receive him — that he had come to lay 
his bones among them. He had indeed ; for he was 
taken to a bed from which he never rose again. His 
last words were, "Had I but served God as dili- 
gently as I have served the King, He would not have 
given me over, in my gray hairs. Howbeit, this is my 
just reward for my pains and diligence, not regarding 
my service to God, but only my duty to my prince." 
The news ot his death was quickly carried to the King, 
who was amusing himself with archery in the garden ot 
the magnificent palace at Hampton Court, which that 
very Wolsey had presented to him. The greatest emo- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 265 

tion his royal mind displayed at the loss of a servant so 
faithful and so ruined, was a particular desire to lay hold 
ot fifteen hundred pounds which the Cardinal was re- 
ported to have hidden somewhere. 

The opinions concerning the divorce, of the learned 
doctors and bishops and others, being at last collected, 
and being generally in the King's favor, were forwarded 
to the Pope, with an entreaty that he would now grant 
it. The unfortunate Pope, who was a timid man, was 
half distracted between his fear of his authority being 
set aside in England if he did not do as he was asked, 
and his dread of offending the Emperor of Germany, 
who was Queen Catherine's nephew. In this state of 
mind he still evaded and did nothing. Then, Thomas 
Cromwell, who had been one of Wolsey's faithful atten- 
dants and had remained so even in his decline, advised 
the King to take the matter into his own hands, and 
make himself the head of the whole Church. This the 
King, by various artful means, began to do ; but he 
recompensed the clergy by allowing them to burn as 
many people as they pleased, for holding Luther's 
opinions. You must understand that Sir Thomas More, 
the wise man who had helped the King with his book, 
had been made Chancellor in Wolsey's place. But, as 
he was truly attached to the Church as it was, even in 
its abuses, he in this state of things resigned. 

Being now quite resolved to get rid of Queen Cather- 
ine, and to marry Anne Boleyn without more ado, the 
King made Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, and 
directed Queen Catherine to leave the Court. She 
obeyed; but replied that wherever she went, she was 
Queen of England still, and would remain so to the last. 
The King then married Anne Boleyn privately ; and the 
new Archbishop of Canterbury, within half a year, de- 
clared his marriage with Queen Catherine void, and 
crowned Anne Boleyn Queen. 

She might have known that no good could ever come 
from such wrong, and that the corpulent brute, who had 
been so faithless and so cruel to his first wife, could be 
more faithless and more cruel to his second. She might 
have known that, even when he was in love with her, 
he had been a mean and selfish coward, running away, 



266 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

like a frightened cur, from her society and her house, 
when a dangerous sickness broke out in it and when she 
might easily have taken it and died, as several of the 
household did. But Anne Boleyn arrived at all this 
knowledge too late, and bought it at a dear price. Her 
bad marriage with a worse man came to its natural 
end. Its natural end was not, as we shall too soon see, 
a natural death for her. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY VIII. — PART SECOND. 

The Pope was thrown into a very angry state of mind 
when he heard of the King's marriage, and fumed ex- 
ceedingly. Many of the English monks and friars, 
seeing that their order was in danger, did the same ; 
some even declaimed against the King in church before 
his face, and were not to be stopped until he himself 
roared out "Silence!" The King, not much the worse 
for this, took it pretty quietly ; and was very glad when 
his Queen gave birth to a daughter, whom was chris- 
tened Elizabeth, and declared Princess of Wales, as her 
sister Mary had already been. 

One of the most atrocious features of this reign was 
that Henry VIII. was always trimming between the 
reformed religion and the unreformed one, so that the 
more he quarreled with the Pope, the more of his own 
subjects he roasted alive for not holding the Pope's 
opinions. Thus, an unfortunate student named John 
Frith, and a poor, simple tailor named Andrew Hewet, 
who loved him very much, and said that whatever John 
Frith believed he believed, were burned in Smithfield — 
to show what a capital Christian the King was. 

But these were speedily followed by two much greater 
victims, Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, the Bishop 
of Rochester. The latter, who was a good and amiable 
old man, had committed no greater offense than believ- 
ing in Elizabeth Barton, called *the Maid of Kent — an- 
other of those ridiculous women who pretended to be 
inspired, and to make all sorts of heavenly revelations, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 267 

though they indeed uttered nothing but evil nonsense. 
For this offense — as it 'was pretended, but really for 
denying the King to be the supreme Head of the Church 
— he got into trouble, and was put in prison ; but, even 
then, he might have been suffered to die naturally, 
short work having been made of executing the Kentish 
Maid and her principal followers, but that the Pope, to 
spite the King, resolved to make him a cardinal. Upon 
that the (King made a ferocious joke to the effect that 
the Pope might send Fisher a red hat — which is the way 
they make a cardinal — but he should have no head on 
which to wear it ; and he was tried with all unfairness 
and injustice, and sentenced to death. He died like a 
noble and virtuous old man, and left a worthy name 
behind him. The King supposed, I dare say, that Sir 
Thomas More would be frightened by this example ; but 
as he was not to be easily terrified, and thoroughly be- 
lieving in the Pope had made up his mind that the King 
was not the rightful Head of the Church, he positively 
refused to say that he was. For this crime he too was 
tried and sentenced after having been in prison a whole 
year. When he was doomed to death, and came away 
from his trial with the edge of the executioner's ax 
turned toward him — as was always done in those times 
when a state prisoner came to that hopeless pass — he 
bore it quite serenely, and gave his blessing to his son, 
who pressed through the crowd in Westminster Hall 
and kneeled down to receive it. But, when he got to 
the Tower Wharf on his way back to his prison, and his 
favorite daughter, Margaret Roper, a very good woman, 
rushed through the guards again and again, to kiss him 
and to weep upon his neck, he was overcome at last, 
He soon recovered, and never more showed any feeling 
but cheerfulness and courage. When he was going up 
the steps of the scaffold to his death, he said jokingly to 
the Lieutenant of the Tower, observing that they were 
weak and shook beneath his tread, "I pray you, master 
Lieutenant, see me safe up; and, for my coming down, 
I can shift for myself." Also he said to the executioner 
after he had laid his head upon the block, "Let me put 
my beard out of the way ; for that, at least, has never 
committed any treason." Then his head was struck off 



2C8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

at a blow. These two executions were worthy of King 
Henry VIII. Sir Thomas More was one of the most 
virtuous men in his dominions, and the Bishop was one 
of his oldest and truest friends. But to be a friend of 
that fellow was almost as dangerous as to be his wife. 

When the news of these two murders got to Rome, 
the Pope raged against the murderer more than ever 
Pope raged since the world began, and prepared a Bull, 
ordering his subjects to take arms against him and de- 
throne him. The King took all possible precautions to 
keep that document out of his dominions, and set to 
work in return to suppress a great number of the Eng- 
lish monasteries and abbeys. 

This destruction was begun by a body of commission- 
ers, of whom Cromwell, whom the King had taken into 
great favor, was the head ; and was carried on through 
some few years to its entire completion. There is no 
doubt that many of these religious establishments were 
religious in nothing but in name, and were crammed 
with lazy, indolent, and sensual monks. There is no 
doubt that they imposed upon the people in every possi- 
ble way ; that they had images moved by wires, which 
they pretended were miraculously moved by Heaven ; 
that they had among them a whole tun measure full of 
teeth, all purporting to have come out of the head of one 
saint, who must indeed have been a very extraordinary 
person with that enormous allowance of grinders; that 
they had bits of coal which they said had fried St. Law- 
rence, and bits of toe-nails which they said belonged to 
other famous saints; penknives, and boots, and girdles, 
which they said belonged to others ; and that all these 
bits of rubbish were called relics, and adored by the 
ignorant people. But, on the other hand, there is no 
doubt either, that the King's officers and men punished 
the good monks with the bad; did great injustice; de- 
molished many beautiful things and many valuable 
libraries, destroyed numbers of paintings, stained glass 
windows, fine pavements, and carvings; and that the 
whole court were ravenously greedy and rapacious for 
the division of this great spoil among them. The King 
seems to have grown almost mad in the ardor of this 
pursuit; for he declared Thomas a Becket a traitor, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 269 

though he had been dead so many years, and had his 
body dug up out of his grave. He must have been as 
miraculous as the monks pretended, if they had told the 
truth, for he was found with one head on his shoulders, 
and they had shown another as his undoubted and gen- 
uine head ever since his death ; it had brought them vast 
sums of money, too. The gold and jewels on his shrine 
filled two great chests, and eight men tottered as they 
carried them away. How rich the monasteries were 
you may infer from the fact that, when they were all 
suppressed, ,£130,000 a year — in those days an immense 
sum — came to the Crown. 

These [things* were not done without causing great 
discontent among the people. The monks had been 
good landlords and hospitable entertainers of all travel- 
ers, and had been accustomed to give away a great deal 
of corn, and fruit, and meat, and other things. In those 
days it was difficult to change goods into money, in con- 
sequence ot the roads being very few and very bad, and 
the carts and wagons of the worst description ; and they 
must either have given away some of the good things 
they possessed in enormous quantities, or have suffered 
them to spoil and molder. So, many of the people 
missed what it was more agreeable to get idly than to 
work for; and the monks who were driven out of their 
homes and wandered about encouraged their discon- 
tent; and there were, consequently, great risings in 
Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. These were put down by 
terrific executions, from which the monks themselves 
did not escape, and the King went on grunting and 
growling in his own fat way, like a Royal pig. 

I have told all this story of the religious houses at one 
time, to make it plainer, and to get back to the King's 
domestic affairs. 

The unfortunate Queen Catherine was by this time 
dead ; and the King was by this time as tired of his sec- 
ond Queen as he had been of his first. As he had fallen 
in love with Anne when she was in the servie of Cather- 
ine, so he now fell in love with another lady in the ser- 
vice of Anne. See how wicked deeds are punished, and 
how bitterly and self-reproachfully the Queen must now 
have thought of her own rise to the throne ! The new 



270 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

fancy was a Lady Jane Seymour; and the King no 
sooner set his mind on her, than he resolved to have 
Anne Boleyn's head. So, he brought a number of 
charges against Anne, accusing her of dreadful crimes 
which she had never committed, and implicating in them 
her own brother and certain gentlemen in her service ; 
among whom one Norris, and Mark Smeaton, a musi- 
cian, are best remembered. As the lords and councilors 
were as afraid of the King and as subservient to him as 
the meanest peasant in England was, they brought in 
Anne Boleyn guilty, and the other unfortunate persons 
accused with her, guilty too. Those gentlemen died 
like men, with the exception of Smeaton, who had been 
tempted by the King into telling lies, which he called 
confessions, and who had expected to be pardoned ; but 
who, I am very glad to say, was not. There was then 
only the Queen to dispose of. She had been surrounded 
in the Tower with women spies; had been monstrously 
persecuted and foully slandered; and had received no 
justice. But her spirit rose with her afflictions ; and, 
after having in vain tried to soften the King by writing 
an affecting letter to him which still exists, "from her 
doleful prison in the Tower," she resigned herself to 
death. She said to those about her, very cheerfully, 
that she had heard say the executioner was a good one, 
and that she had a little neck (she laughed and clasped 
it with her hands as she said that), and would soon be 
out of her pain. And she was soon out of her pain, poor 
creature, on the Green inside the Tower, and her body 
was flung into an old box and put away in the ground 
under the chapel. 

There is a story that the King sat in his palace listen- 
ing very anxiously for the sound of the cannon which 
was to announce this new murder ; and that, when he 
heard it come booming on the air, he rose up in great 
spirits and ordered out his dogs to go a-hunting. He 
was bad enough to do it ; but whether he did it or not, 
it is certain that he married Jane Seymour the very next 
day. 

I have not much pleasure in recording that she lived 
just long enough to give birth to a son who was christ- 
ened Edward, and then to die of a fever ; for, I cannot but 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 271 

think that any woman who married such a ruffian, and 
knew what innocent blood was on his hands, deserved 
the ax that would assuredly have fallen on the neck of 
Jane Seymour, if she had lived much longer. 

Cranmer had done what he could to save some of the 
Church property for purposes of religion and education ; 
but the great families had been so hungry to get hold 
of it, that very little could be rescued for such objects. 
Even Miles Coverdale, who did the people the inestim- 
able service of translating the Bible into English, which 
the unreformed religion never permitted to be done, 
was left in poverty while the great families clutched the 
Church lands and money. The people had been told 
that when the Crown came into possession of these 
funds, it would not be necessary to tax them ; but they 
were taxed afresh directly afterward. It was fortunate 
for them, indeed, that so many nobles were so greedy 
for this wealth; since, if it had remained with the 
Crown, there might have been no end to tyranny for 
hundreds of years. One of the most active writers on 
the Church's "side against the King was a member of his 
own family — a sort of distant cousin, Reginal Pole by 
name — who attacked him in the most violent manner, 
though he received a pension from him all the time, 
and fought for the Church with his pen, day and night. 
As he was beyond the King's reach — being in Italy — 
the JKing politely invited him over to discuss the sub- 
ject; but he, knowing better than to come, and wisely 
staying where he was, the King's rage fell upon his 
brother Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter, and 
some other gentlemen ; who were tried for high treason 
in corresponding with him and aiding him — which they 
probably did — and were all executed. The Pope made 
Reginald Pole a cardinal ; but so much against his will, 
that it is thought he even aspired in his own mind to 
the vacant throne of England, and had hopes of marry- 
ing the Princess Mary. His being made a high priest, 
however, put an end to all that. His mother, the ven- 
erable Countess of Salisbury — who was, unfortunately 
for herself, within the tyrant's reach — was the last of his 
relatives on whom his wrath fell. When she was told 
to lay her gray head upon the block, she answered the 



272 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

executioner, "No! My head never committed treason, 
and it you want it, you 'shall seize it. ' ' So she ran 
round and round the scaffold with the executioner strik- 
ing at her, and her gray hair bedabbled with blood ; and 
even when they held her down upon the block she 
moved her head about to the last, resolved to be no 
party to her own barbarous murder. All this the people 
bore, as they had borne everything else. 

Indeed, they bore much more; for the slow fires of 
Smithfield were continually burning, and people were 
constantly being roasted to death — still to show what a 
good Christian the King was. He defied the Pope and 
his Bull, which was now issued, and had come into Eng- 
land; but he burned innumerable people whose only 
offense was that they differed from the Pope's religious 
opinions. There was a wretched man named Lambert, 
among others, who was tried for this before the King, 
and with whom six bishops argued one after another. 
When he was quite exhausted, as well he might be, 
after six bishops, he threw himself on the King's mercy; 
but the King blustered out that he had no mercy for 
heretics. So he too fed the fire. 

All this the people bore, and more than all this yet. 
The national spirit seems to have been banished from 
the kingdom at this time. The very people who were 
executed tor treason, the very wives and friends of the 
"bluff" King, spoke of him on the scaffold as a good 
prince, and a gentle prince — just as serfs in similar cir- 
cumstances have been known to do under the sultans 
and bashaws of the East, or under the fierce old tyrants 
ot Russia who poured boiling and freezing water on 
them alternately, until they died. The Parliament were 
as bad as the rest, and gave the King whatever he 
wanted ; among other vile accommodations, they gave 
him new powers of murdering, at his will and pleasure, 
anyone whom he might choose to call a traitor. But the 
worst measure they passed was an Act of Six Articles, 
commonly called at the time "the whip with six 
strings"; which punished offenses against the Pope's 
opinions without mercy, and enforced the very worst 
parts of the monkish religion. Cranmer would have 
modified it, if he could; but, being overborne by the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 273 

Romish party, had not the power. As one of the arti- 
cles declared that priests should ;not marry, and as he 
was married himself, he sent his wife and children into 
Germany, and began to tremble at his danger ; none the 
less because he was, and had long been, the King's 
friend. This whip of six [strings was made under the 
King's own eye. It should never be forgotten of him 
how cruelly he supported the worst of the Popish doc- 
trines when there was nothing to be got by opposing 
them. 

This amiable monarch now thought of taking another 
wife. He proposed to the French King to have some of 
the ladies of the French Court exhibited before him, 
that he might make his Royal choice ; but the French 
King answered that he would rather not have his ladies 
trotted out to be shown like horses at a fair. He pro- 
posed to the Duchess Dowager of Milan, who replied 
that she might have thought ot such a match if she had 
had two heads ; but that, owning only one she must beg 
to keep it safe. At last Cromwell represented that there 
was a Protestant Princess in Germany — those who held 
the reformed religion were called Protestants, because 
their leaders had protested against the abuses and im- 
positions 'of the unreformed church — named Anne of 
Cleves, who was beautiful, and would answer the pur- 
pose admirably. The King said, was she a large woman, 
because he must have a fat wife? "Oh, yes," said 
Cromwell, "she was very large, just the thing." On 
hearing this, the King sent over his famous painter, 
Hans Holbein, to take her portrait. Hans made her out 
to be so good-looking, that the King was satisfied, and 
the marriage was arranged. But, whether anybody had 
paid Hans to touch up the picture ; or whether Hans, 
like one or two other painters, flattered a princess in the 
ordinary way of business, I cannot say; all I know is, 
that when Anne came over and the King went to Ro- 
chester to meet her, and first saw her without her seeing 
him, he swore she was "a great Flanders mare," and 
said he would never marry her. Being obliged to do it, 
now matters had gone so far, he would not give her the 
presents he had prepared, and would never notice her. 



274 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

He never forgave Cromwell his part in the affair. His 
downfall dates from that time. 

It was quickened by his enemies in the interests of the 
tmreformed religion, putting in the King's way, at a 
state dinner, a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, Catherine 
Howard, a young lady of fascinating manners, though 
small in stature and not particularly beautiful. Falling 
in love with her on the spot, the King soon divorced 
Anne of Cleves, after making her the subject of much 
brutal talk, on pretense that she had been previously 
betrothed to some one else — which would never do for 
one of his dignity — and married Catherine. It is prob- 
able that on his wedding day, of all days in the year, he 
sent his faithful Cromwell to the scaffold and had his 
head struck off. He further celebrated the occasion by 
burning at one time, and causing to be drawn to the fire 
on the same hurdles, some Protestant prisoners for 
denying the Pope's doctines, and some Roman Catholic 
prisoners tor denying his own supremacy. Still the peo- 
ple bore it, and not a gentleman in England raised his 
hand. 

But, by a just retribution, it soon came out that Cath- 
erine Howard, before her marriage, had really been 
guilty of such crimes as the King had falsely attributed 
to his second wife, Anne Boleyn ; so, again the dreadful 
ax made the King a widower, and this Queen passed 
away as so many in that reign had passed away before 
her. As an appropriate pursuit under the circum- 
stances, Henry then applied himself to superintending 
the composition of a religious book called "A Necessary i 
Doctrine for any Christian Man." Fie must have been 
a little confused in his mind, I think, at about this pe- 
riod; for he was so false to himself as to be true to 
some one; that some one being Cranmer, whom the 
Duke of Norfolk and others of his enemies tried to ruin ; 
but to whom the King was steadfast, and to whom he 
one night gave his ring, charging him when he should 
find himself, next day, accused of treason, to show it to 
the council board. This Cranmer did, to the confusion 
of his enemies. I suppose the King thought he might 
want him a little longer. 

He married yet once more. Yes, strange to say, he 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 275 

found in England another woman who would become 
his wife, and she was Catherine Parr, widow of Lord 
Latimer. She leaned toward the reformed religion; 
and it is some comfort to know that she tormented the 
King considerably by arguing a variety of doctrinal 
points with him on all possible occasions. She had very 
nearly done this to her own destruction. After one of 
these conversations, the King, in a very black mood, 
actually instructed Gardiner, one of his bishops, who 
favored the Popish opinions, to draw a bill of accusation 
against her, which would have inevitably brought her 
to the scaffold where her predecessors had died, but 
that one of her friends picked up the paper of instruc- 
tions, which had been dropped in the palace, and gave 
her timely notice. She fell ill with terror but managed 
the King so well when he came to entrap her into fur- 
ther statements — by saying that she had only spoken on 
such subjects to divert his mind and to get some infor- 
mation from his extraordinary wisdom — that he gave 
her a kiss and called her his "sweetheart. And, when 
the Chancellor came next day actually to take her to 
the Tower, the King sent him about his business, and 
honored him with the epithets of a beast, a knave, and 
a fool. So near was Catherine Parr to the block, and 
so narrow was her escape. 

There was war with Scotland in his reign, and a 
short, clumsy war with France for favoring Scotland ; but 
the events at home were so dreadful, and leave such an 
enduring stain on the country, that I need say no more 
of what happened abroad. 

A few more horrors, and this reign is over. There 
was a lady, Anne Askew, in Lincolnshire, who inclined 
to the Protestant opinions, and whose husband, being 
a fierce Catholic, turned her out of his house. She came 
to London, and was considered as offending against the 
six articles, and was taken to the Tower and put upon 
the rack — probably because it was hoped that she might 
in her agony criminate some obnoxious persons; if 
falsely, so much the better. She was tortured without 
uttering a cry until the Lieutenant of the Tower would 
suffer his men to torture her no more ; and then two 
priests who were present actually pulled off their robes, 



276 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and turning the wheels of the rack with their own hands, 
so rending and twisting and breaking her that she was 
afterward carried to the fire in a chair. She was 
burned with three others, a gentleman, a clergyman, 
and a tailor ; and so the world went on. 

Either the King became afraid of the power of the 
Duke of Norfolk, and his son the Earl of Surrey, or they 
gave him some offense, but he resolved to pull them 
down, to follow all the rest who were gone. The son 
was tried first — of course for nothing — and defended 
himself bravely ; but of course he was found guilty, and 
of course he was executed. Then his father was laid 
hold of and held for death too. 

But the King himself was left for death by a Greater 
King, and the earth was to be rid of him at last. He 
was now a swollen, hideous spectacle, with a great hole 
in his leg, and so odious to every sense that it was 
dreadful to approach him. When he was found to be 
dying, Cranmer was sent for from his palace at Croy- 
don, and came with all speed, but found him speechless. 
Happily, in that hour he perished. He was in the fifty- 
sixth year of his age, and the thirty-eighth of his reign. 

Henry VIII. has been favored by some Protestant 
writers, because the Reformation was achieved in '.his 
time. But the mighty merit of it lies with other men 
and not with him ; and it can be rendered none the worse 
by this monster's crimes, and none the better by any 
defense of them. The plain truth is that he was a most 
intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a 
blot of blood and grease upon the history of England. 

CHAPTER XXX. 

"ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD VI. 

Henry VIII. had made a will, appointing a council of 
sixteen to govern the kingdom for his son while he was 
under age (he was now only ten years old), and another 
council of twelve to help them. The most powerful of 
the first council was the Earl of Hertford, the young 
King's uncle, who lost no time in bringing his nephew 
with great state up to Enfield, and thence to the Tower. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 277 

It was considered at the time a striking proof of virtue 
in the young King that he was sorry for his father's 
death; but, as common subjects have that virtue too 
sometimes, we will say no more about it. 

There was a curious part of the late King's will, re- 
quiring his executors to fulfill whatever promises he had 
made. Some of the court wondering what these might 
be, the Earl of Hertford and the other noblemen inter- 
ested, said that they were promises to advance and en- 
rich them. So, the Earl of Hertford made himself 
Duke of Somerset, and made his brother, Edward Sey- 
mour, a baron ; and there were various similar promo- 
tions, all very agreeable to the parties concerned, and 
very dutiful, no doubt, to the late King's memory. To 
be more dutiful still, they made themselves rich out of 
the Church lands, and were very comfortable. The new 
Duke of Somerset caused himself to be declared Pro- 
tector of the kingdom, and was, indeed, the King. 

As young Edward VI. had been 'brought up in the 
principles of the Protestant religion, everybody knew 
that they would be maintained. But Cranmer, to 
whom they were chiefly intrusted, advanced them 
steadily and temperately. Many superstitions and ridi- 
culous practices were stopped ; but practices which were 
harmless were not interfered with. 

The Duke of Somerset, the Protector, was anxious t© 
have the young King engaged in marriage to the young 
Queen of Scotland, in order to prevent that princess 
from making an alliance with any foreign power; but, 
as a large party of Scotland was unfavorable to this 
plan, he invaded that country. His excuse for doing so 
was, that the Border men — that is, the Scotch who lived 
in that part of the country where England and Scotland 
joined — troubled the English very much. But there were 
two sides to this question ; for the English Border men 
troubled the Scotch too; and, through many long years, 
there were perpetual Border quarrels which gave rise to 
numbers of old tales and songs. However, the Protec- 
tor invaded Scotland; and Arran, the Scottish Regent, 
with an army twice as large as his, advanced to meet 
him. They encountered on the banks of the river Ask, 
within a fevv miles of Edinburgh; and there, after a lit- 



278 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

tie skirmish, the Protector made such moderate pro- 
posals, in offering to retire if the Scotch would only en- 
gage not to marry their princess to any foreign prince, 
that the Regent thought the English were afraid. But 
in this he made a horrible mistake : for the English sol- 
diers on land, and the English sailors on the water, so 
set upon the Scotch, that they^broke and fled, and more 
than ten thousand of them were killed. It was a dread- 
ful battle, for the fugitives were slain without mercy. 
The ground for four miles, all the way to Edinburgh, 
was strewn with dead men, and with arms, and legs, 
and heads. Some hid themselves in streams, and were 
drowned ; some threw away their armor and were killed 
running, almost naked ; but in this battle of Pinkie the 
English lost only two or three hundred men. They 
were much better clothed than the Scotch ; at the pov- 
erty of whose appearance and country they were ex- 
ceedingly astonished. 

A Parliament was called, when Somerset came back, 
and it repealed the whip with six strings, and did one 
or two other good thing ; though it unhappily retained 
the punishment of burning for those people who did not 
make believe to believe, in all religious matters, what 
the Government had declared that they must and should 
believe. It also made a foolish law (meant to put down 
beggars) that any man who lived idly and loitered about 
for three days together, should be burned with a hot 
iron, made a slave, and wear an iron fetter. But this 
savage absurdity soon came to an end, and went the 
way of a great many other foolish laws. 

The Protector was now so proud that he sat in Parlia- 
ment before all the nobles, on the right hand of the 
throne. Many other noblemen, who only wanted to be 
as proud if they could get a chance, became his enemies 
of course ; and it is supposed that he came back sud- 
denly from Scotland because he had received news that 
his brother, Lord Seymour, was becoming dangerous to 
him. This lord was now High Admiral of England ; a 
very handsome man, and a great favorite with the 
Court ladies — even with the young Princess Elizabeth, 
who romped with him a little more than young prin- 
cesses in these times do with anyone. He had married 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 279 

Catherine Parr, the late King's widow, who was now 
dead ; and, to strengthen his power, he secretly supplied 
the young King with money. He may even have en- 
gaged with some of his brother's enemies in a plot to 
carry the boy off. On these and other accusations, at 
any rate, he was confined in the Tower, impeached, 
and found guilty; his own brother's name being — un- 
natural and sad to tell — the first signed to the warrant 
for his execution. He was executed on Tower Hill, 
and died denying his treason. One of his last proceed- 
ings in this world was to write two letters, one to the 
Princess Elizabeth, and one to the Princess Mary, 
which a servant of his took charge of, and concealed in 
his shoe. These letters are supposed to have urged 
them against his brother, and to revenge his death. 
What they truly contaied is not known: but there is no 
doubt that he had, at one time, obtained great influence 
over the Princess Elizabeth. 

All this while, the Protestant religion was making 
progress. The images, which the people had gradually 
come to worship, were removed from the churches ; the 
people were informed that they need not confess them- 
selves to priests unless they chose ; a common prayer- 
book was drawn up in the English language, which all 
could understand ; and many other improvements were 
made; still moderately. For Cranmer was a very mod- 
erate man, and even restrained the Protestant clergy 
from violently abusing the unreformed religion — as they 
very often did, and which was not a good example. 
But the people were at this time in great distress. The 
rapacious nobility, who had come into possession of the 
Church lands, were very bad landlords. The inclosed 
great quantities of ground for the feeding of sheep, 
which was then more profitable than the growing of 
crops; and this increased the general distress. 

So the people, who still understood little of what was 
going on about them, and still readily believed what 
the homeless monks told them, — many of whom had 
been their good friends in their better days, — took it 
into their heads that all this was owing to the reformed 
religion, and therefore rose in many parts of the 
country. 



280 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The most powerful risings were in Devonshire and 
Norfolk. In Devonshire, the rebellion was so strong 
that ten thousand men united within a few days, and 
even laid siege to Exeter. But Lord Russell, coming to 
the assistance of the citizens who defended that town, 
defeated the rebels ; and not only hanged the mayor of 
one place, but hanged the vicar of another from his own 
church steeple. What with hanging and killing by the 
sword, four thousand of the rebels are supposed to have 
fallen in that one county. In Norfolk (where the rising 
was more against the inclosure of open lands than 
against the reformed religion) the popular leader was a 
man named Robert Ket, a tanner ot Wymondham. 
The mob were, in the first instance, excited against the 
tanner by one John Flowerdew, a gentleman who owed 
him a grudge ; but the tanner was more than a match 
for the gentleman, since he soon got the people on his 
side, and established himself near Norwich with quite 
an army. There was a large oak tree in that place, on 
a spot called Mousehold Hill, which Ket named the 
Tree of Reformation ; and under its green boughs he 
and his men sat, in the midsummer weather, holding 
courts of justice, and debating affairs of state. They 
were even impartial enough to allow some rather tire- 
some public speakers to get up into this Tree of Reforma- 
tion, and point out their errors to them, in long dis- 
courses, while they lay listening (not always without 
some grumbling and growling), in the shade below. 
At last, one sunny July day, a herald appeared below 
the tree, and proclaimed Ket and all his men traitors, 
unless from that moment they dispersed and went home ; 
in which case they were to receive a pardon. But Ket 
and his men made light of the herald and became 
stronger than ever, until the Earl of Warwick went after 
them with a sufficient force, and cut them all to pieces. 
A few were hanged, drawn, and quartered, as traitors, 
and their limbs were sent into various country places 
to be a terror to the people. Nine of them were hanged 
upon nine green branches of the Oak of Reformation ; 
and so, for the time, that tree may be said to have 
withered away. 

The Protector, though a haughty man, had com pas- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 2S1 

sion for the real distresses of the common people, and a 
sincere desire to help them. But he was too proud and 
too high in degree to hold even their favor steadily , 
and many of the nobles always envied and hated him, 
because they were as proud and not as high as he. He 
was at this time building a great palace in the Strand: 
to get the stone for which he blew up church steeples 
with gunpowder and pulled down bishops' houses 
thus making himself still more disliked. At length 
his principal enemy, the Earl of Warwick, — 
Dudley by name, and the son of that Dudley who had 
made himself so odious with Empson, in the reign of 
Henry VII., — joined with seven other members of the 
Council against him, formed a separate Council; and, 
becoming stronger in a few days, sent him to the Tower 
under twenty-nine articles of accusation. After being 
sentenced by the Council to the forfeiture of all his 
offices and lands, he was liberated and pardoned, on 
making a very humble submission. He was even taken 
back into the Council again, after having suffered his 
fall, and married his daughter, Lady Anne Seymour, to 
Warwick's eldest son. But such a reconciliation was 
little likely to last, and did not outlive a year. War- 
wick, having 'got himself made Duke of Northumber- 
land, and having advanced the more important of his 
friends, then finished the history by causing the Duke 
of Somerset and his friend Lord Grey, and others, to be 
arrested for treason, in having conspired to seize and 
dethrone the King. They were also accused of having 
intended to seize the new Duke of Northumberland, 
with his friends Lord Northampton and Lord Pembroke; 
to murder them]if they found need ; and to raise the city 
to revolt. All this the fallen Protector positively de- 
nied ; except that he confessed to having spoken of the 
murder of those three noblemen, but having never de- 
signed it. He was acquitted of the charge of treason, 
and found guilty of the other charges; so when the 
people — who remembered his having been their friend, 
now that he was disgraced and in danger, saw him come 
out from his trial with the ax turned from him — they 
thought he was altogether acquitted, and set up a loud 
shout of joy. 



282 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

But the Duke of Somerset was ordered to be beheaded 
on Tower Hill, at eight o'clock in the morning, and 
proclamations were issued bidding the citizens keep at 
home until after ten. They filled the streets, however, 
and crowded the place of execution as soon as it was 
light; and, with sad faces and sad hearts, saw the once 
powerful Protector ascend the scaffold to lay his head 
upon the dreadful block. While he was yet saying his 
last words to them with manly courage, and telling 
them, in particular, how it comforted him, at that pass, 
to have assisted in reforming the national religion, a 
member of the Council was seen riding up on horseback. 
They again thought that the Duke was saved by his 
bringing a reprieve, and again shouted for joy. But 
the Duke himself told them they were mistaken, and 
laid down his head and had it struck, off at a blow. 

Many of the bystanders rushed forward and steeped 
their handkerchiefs in his blood, as a mark of their affec- 
tion. He had, indeed, been capable of many good acts, 
and one of them was discovered after he was no more. 

The Bishop of Durham, a very good man, had been 
informed against to the Council, when the Duke was in 
power, as having answered a treacherous letter propos- 
ing a rebellion against the reformed religion. As the 
answer could not be found, he could not be declared 
guilty; but it was now discovered, hidden by the Duke 
himself among some private papers, in his regard for 
that good man. The Bishop lost his office, and was de- 
prived of his possessions. 

It is not very pleasant to know that while his uncle 
lay in prison under sentence of death, the young King 
was being vastly entertained by plays, and dances, and 
sham fights; but there is no doubt of it, for he kept a 
journal himself. It is pleasanter to know that not a 
single Roman Catholic was burned in this reign for hold- 
ing that religion ; though two wretched victims suffered 
for heresy. One, a woman named Joan Bocher, for pro- 
fessing some opinions that even she could only explain in 
unintelligible jargon. The other, a Dutchman, named 
Von Paris, who practised as" a surgeon in London. 
Edward was, to his credit, exceedingly unwilling to sign 
the warrant for the woman's execution: shedding tears 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 283 

before he did so, and telling Cranmer, who urged him 
to do it (though Cranmer really would have spared the 
woman at first, but for her own determined obstinacy), 
that the guilt was not his, but that of the man who so 
strongly urged the dreadful act. We shall see, too soon, 
whether the time ever came when Cranmer is likely to 
have remembered this with sorrow, and remorse. 

Cranmer and Ridley (at first Bishop of Rochester and 
afterward Bishop of London) were the most powerful 
of the clergy of this reign. Others were imprisoned and 
deprived of their property for still adhering to the un- 
reformed religion; the most important among whom 
were Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, Heath, Bishop of 
Worcester, Day, Bishop of Chichester, and Bonner, that 
Bishop of London who was superseded by Ridley. 
The Princess Mary, who inherited her mother's gloomy 
temper, and hated the reformed religion as connected 
with her mother's wrongs and sorrows, — she knew 
nothing else about it, always refusing to read a single 
book in which it was truly described, — held by the un- 
reformed] religion too, and was the only person in the 
kingdom for whom the old Mass was allowed to be per- 
formed ; nor would the young King have made that ex- 
ception even in her favor, but for the strong persuasions 
of Cranmer and Ridley. He always viewed it with 
horror, and when he fell into a sickly condition, after 
having been very ill, first of the measles and then of the 
smallpox, he was greatly troubled in mind to think that 
if he died, and she, the next heir to the throne, suc- 
ceeded, the Roman Catholic religion would be set up 
again. 

This uneasiness the Duke of Northumberland was not 
slow to encourage : for, if the Princess Mary came to the 
throne, he, who had taken part with the Protestants, 
was sure to be disgraced. Now, the Duchess of Suffolk 
was descended from King Henry VII. ; and, if she re- 
signed what little or no right^she'had in favor of her 
daughter Lady Jane Grey, that would be the succession 
to promote the Duke's greatness; because Lord Guil- 
ford Dudley, one of his sons, was at this very time 
newly married to her. So he worked upon the King's 
fears, and persuaded him to set aside both the Princess 



284 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Mary and the Princess Elizabeth, and assert his rights 
to appoint his successor. Accordingly the young King 
handed to the Crown lawyers a writing, signed half a 
dozen times over by himself, appointing Lady Jane 
Grey to succeed to the Crown, and requiring them to 
have his will made out according to law. They were 
much against it at first, and told the King so ; but the 
Duke of Northumberland — being so violent about it that 
the lawyers even expected him to beat them, and hotly 
declaring that, stripped to his shirt, he would fight any 
man in such a quarrel — they yielded. Cranmer, also, 
at first hesitated ; pleading that he had sworn to main- 
tain the succession of the Crown to the Princess Mary ; 
but he was a weak man in his resolutions, and after- 
ward signed the document with the rest of the council. 

It was completed none too soon ; for Edward was now 
sinking in a rapid decline ; and by way of making him 
better, they handed him over to a woman-doctor who 
pretended to be able to cure it. He speedily got worse. 
On the 6th of July, in the year 1553, he died, very peace- 
ably and piously, praying God, with his last breath, to 
protect the reformed religion. 

This King died in the sixteenth year of his age, and 
in the seventh of his reign. It is difficult to judge what 
the character of one so young might afterward have 
become among so many bad, ambitious, quarreling no- 
bles. But he was an amiable boy, of very good abili- 
ties, and had nothing coarse or cruel or brutal in his 
disposition — which, in the son of such a father, is 
rather surprising. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

ENGLAND UNDER MARY. 

The Duke of Northumberland was very anxious to 
keep the young King's death a secret, in order that he 
might get the two Princesses into his power. But the 
Princess Mary, being informed of that event as she was 
on her way to London to see her sick brother, turned 
her horse's head, and rode away into Norfolk. The 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 235 

Earl of Arundel was her friend, and it was he who sent 
her warning of what had happened. 

As the secret could not be kept, the Duke of North- 
umberland and the council sent for the Lord Mayor of 
London and some of the aldermen, and made a merit of 
telling it to them. Then they made it known to the 
people, and set off to inform Lady Jane Gray that she 
was to be Queen. 

She was a pretty girl of only sixteen, and was amia- 
ble, learned and clever. When the lords who came to 
her, fell on their knees before her, and told her what 
tidings they brought, she was so astonished that she 
fainted. On recovering, she expressed her sorrow for 
the young King's death, and said that she knew she was 
unfit to govern the kingdom ; but that if she must be 
Queen, she prayed God to direct her. She was then at 
Sion House near Brentford; and the lords took her 
down the river in state to the Tower, that she might 
remain there, as the custom was, until she was crowned. 
But the people were not at all favorable to Lady Jane, 
considering that the right to be Queen was Mary's, and 
greatly disliking the Duke of Northumberland. They 
were not put into a better humor by the Duke's causing 
a wintner's servant, one Gabriel Pot, to be taken up 
for expressing his dissatisfaction among the crowd, and 
to have his ears nailed to the pillory, and cut off. Some 
powerful men among the nobility declared on Mary's 
side. They raised troops to support her cause, had her 
proclaimed Queen at Norwich, and gathered round her 
at the castle of Framlingham, which belonged to the 
Duke of Norfolk. For she was not considered so safe 
as yet, but that it was best to keep her in a castle on 
the seacoast, from whence she might be sent abroad, if 
necessary. 

The Council would have dispatched Lady Jane's 
father, the Duke of Suffolk, as the general of the army 
against this force ; but, as Lady Jane implored that her 
father might remain with her, and as he was known to 
be but a weak man, they told the Duke of Northumber- 
land that he must take the command himself. He was 
not very ready to do so, as he mistrusted the Council 
much ; but there was no Jtielp for it, and he set forth 



286 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

with a heavy heart, observing to a lord who rode beside 
him through Shoreditch at the head of the troops, that 
although the people pressed in great numbers to look at 
them, they were terribly silent. 

And his fears for himself turned out to be well found- 
ed. While he was waiting at Cambridge for further 
help from the Council, the Council took it into their 
heads to turn their backs on Lady Jane's cause, and to 
take up the Princess Mary's. This was chiefly owing to 
the before-mentioned Earl of Arundel, who represented 
to the Lord Mayor and aldermen, in a second interview 
with those sagacious persons, that, as for himself, he did 
not perceive the Reformed religion to be in much 
danger — which Lord Pembroke backed by flourishing 
his sword as another kind of persuasion. The Lord 
Mayor and aldermen, thus enlightened, said there could 
be no doubt that the Princess Mary ought to be Queen." 
So, she was proclaimed at the Cross by St. Paul's, and 
barrels of wine were given to the people, and they got 
very drunk, and danced round blazing bonfires — little 
thinking, poor wretches, what other bonfires would soon 
be blazing in Queen Mary's name. 

After a ten days' dream of royalty, Lady Jane Grey 
resigned the Crown with great willingness, saying that 
she had only accepted in obedience to her father and 
mother ; and went gladly back to her pleasant house by 
the river, and her books. Mary then came on toward 
London; and at Wanstead in Essex was joined by her 
half-sister, the Princess Elizabeth. They passed through 
the streets of London to the Tower, and there the new 
Queen met some eminent prisoners then confined in it, 
kissed them, and gave them their liberty. Among these 
was that Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who had been 
imprisoned in the last reign for holding to the uni- 
formed religion. Him she soon made chancellor. 

The Duke of Northumberland had been taken pris- 
oner, and, together with his son and five others, was 
quickly brought before the Council. He, not unnatur- 
ally, asked that Council, in his defense, whether it was 
treason to obey orders that had been issued under the 
great seal; and, if it were, whether they, who had 
obeyed them too, ought to be his judges? But they 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 287 

made light of these points, and, being resolved to have 
him out of the way, soon sentenced him to death. He 
had risen into power upon the death of another man, 
and made but a poor show, as might be expected, when 
he himself lay low. He entreated Gardiner to let him 
live, if it were only in a mouse's hole, and, when he 
ascended the scaffold to be beheaded on Tower Hill, ad- 
dressed the people in a miserable way, saying that hs 
had been incited by others, and exhorting them to re- 
turn to the unreformed religion, which he told them 
was his faith. There seems reason to suppose that he 
expected a pardon even then, in return for this confess- 
ion ; but it matters little whether he did or not. His 
head was struck off. 

Mary was now crowned Queen. She was thirty-seven 
years ot age, short and thin, wrinkled in the face, and 
very unhealthy. But she had a great liking for show 
and for bright colors, and all the ladies ot her Court 
were magnificently dressed. She had a great liking too 
for old customs, without much sense in them ; and she 
was oiled in the oldest way, and blessed in the oldest 
way, and done all manner of things in the oldest way, 
at her coronation. I hope they did her good. 

She soon began to show her desire to put down the 
Reformed religion, and put up the unreformed one; 
though it was dangerous work as yet, the people being 
something wiser than they used to be. They even cast 
a shower of stones — and among them a dagger — at one 
of the royal chaplains who attacked the Reformed reli- 
gion in a public sermon. But the Queen and her priests 
went steadily on. Ridley, the powerful bishop of the 
last reign, was seized and sent to the Tower. Latimer, 
also celebrated among the clergy of the last reign, was 
likewise sent to the Tower, and Cranmer speedily fol- 
lowed. Latimer was an aged man ; and, as his guards 
took him through Smithfield, he looked round it, and 
said, "This is a place that hath long groaned for me. " 
For he knew well what kind of bonfires would soon be 
burning. Nor was the knowledge confined to him. 
The prisons were fast filled with the chief Protestants, 
who were there left rotting in darkness, hunger, dirt, 
and separation from their friends ; many, who had time 



288 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

lett them for escape, fled from the kingdom ; and the 
dullest of the people began, now, to see what was com- 
ing. 

It came on fast. A Parliament was got together ; not 
without strong suspicion of unfairness; and they an- 
nulled the divorce formally pronounced by Cranmer be- 
tween the Queen's mother and King Henry VIII., and 
unmade all the laws on the subject of religion that had 
been made in the last King Edward's reign. They 
began their proceedings, in violation of the law, by hav- 
ing the old mass said before them in Latin, and by turn- 
ing out a bishop who would not kneel down. They also 
declared guilty of treason Lady Jane Grey, for aspiring 
to the Crown ; her husband, for being her husband ; and 
Cranmer, for not believing in the mass aforesaid. They 
then prayed the Queen graciously to choose a husband 
for herself, as soon as might be. 

Now, the question who should be the Queen's husband 
had given rise to a great deal of discussion, and to sev- 
eral contending parties. Some said Cardinal Pole was 
the man — but the Queen was of opinion that he was not 
the man, he being too old and too much of a student. 
Others said that the gallant young Courtenay, whom 
the Queen had made Earl of Devonshire, was the man 
— and the Queen thought so, too, for awhile ; but she 
changed her mind. And at last it appeared that Philip, 
Prince of Spain, was certainly the man — though cer- 
tainly not the people's man ; for they detested the idea 
of such a marriage from the beginning to the end, and 
murmured that the Spaniard would establish in Eng- 
land, by the aid of foreign soldiers, the worst abuses 
of the Popish religion, and even the terrible Inquisition 
itself. 

These discontents gave rise to a conspiracy for mar- 
rying young Courtenay to the Princess Elizabeth, and 
setting them up, with popular tumults all over the king- 
dom, against the Queen. This was discovered in time 
by Gardiner ; but in Kent, the bold old county, the peo- 
ple rose in their old bold way. Sir Thomas Wyat, a 
man of great daring, was their leader. He raised his 
standard at Maidstone, marched on to Rochester, estab- 
lished himself in the old castle there, and prepared to 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 289 

hold out against the Duke of Norfolk, who came against 
him with a party of the Queen's Guards, and a body of 
five hundred London men. The London men, how- 
ever, were all for Elizzabeth, and not at all for Mary. 
They declared, under the castle walls, for Wyat; the 
Duke retreated; and Wyat came on to Depttord, at the 
head of fifteen thousand men. 

But these, in their turn, fell away. When he came to 
Southwark, there were only two thousand left. Not 
dismayed by finding the London citizens in arms, and 
the guns at the Tower ready to oppose his crossing the 
river there, Wyat led them off to Kingston- upon- 
Thames, intending to cross the bridge that he knew to 
be in that place, and so to work his way round to Lud- 
gate, one of the old gates of the city. He found the 
bridge broken down, but mended it, came across, and 
bravely fought his way up Fleet Street to Ludgate Hill. 
Finding the gate closed against him, he fought his way 
back again, sword in hand, to Temple Bar. Here, being 
overpowered, he surrendered himself, and three or four 
hundred of his men were taken, besides a hundred 
killed. Wyat, in a moment of weakness, and perhaps 
of torture, was afterward made to accuse the Princess 
Elizabeth as his accomplice to some very small extent. 
But his manhood soon returned to him, and he refused 
to save his life by making any more false confessions. 
He was quartered and distributed in the usual brutal 
way, and from fifty to a hundred of his followers were 
hanged. The rest were led out, with halters round their 
necks, to be pardoned and to make a parade of, crying 
out, "God save Queen Mary!" 

In the danger of this rebellion, the Queen showed 
herself to be a woman of courage and spirit. She dis- 
dained to retreat to any place of safety, and went down 
to the Guildhall, scepter in hand, and made a gallant 
speech to the Lord Mayor and citizens. But on the day 
after Wyat's defeat, she did the most cruel act even of 
her cruel reign, in signing the warrant for the execution 
of Lady Jane Grey. 

They tried to persuade Lady Jane to accept the unre- 
f ormed religion ; but she steadily refused. On the morn- 
ing when she was to die, she saw from her window the 

19 History 



290 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

bleeding and headless body of her husband brought 
back in a cart from the scaffold on Tower Hill, where he 
had laid down his life. But, as she had declined to see 
him before his execution, lest she should be overpow- 
ered and not make a good end, so she even now showed 
a constancy and calmness that will never be forgotten. 
She came up to the scaffold with a firm step and a quiet 
face, and addressed the bystanders in a steady voice. 
They were not numerous, for she was too young, too 
innocent and fair, to be murdered before the people on 
Tower Hill, as her husband had just been; so the place 
of her execution was within the Tower itself. She said 
that she had done an unlawful act in taking what was 
Queen Mary's right; but she had done so with no bad 
intent, and that she died a humble Christian. She 
begged the executioner to dispatch her quickly, and she 
asked him, "Will you take my head off before I lay 
me down?" He answered, "No, Madam," and then she 
was very quiet while they bandaged her eyes. Being 
blinded, and unable to see the block on which she was 
to lay her young head, she was seen to feel about for it 
with her hands, and was heard to say, contused, "Oh, 
what shall I do ! Where is it?" Then they guided her 
to the right place, and the executioner struck off her 
head. You know too well, now, what dreadful deeds 
the executioner did in England, through many, many 
years, and how his ax descended on the hateful block 
through the necks of some of the bravest, wisest, and 
best in the land. But it never struck so cruel and so 
vile a blow as this. 

The father of Lady Jane soon followed, but was little 
pitied. Queen Mary's next object was to lay hold of 
Elizabeth, and this was pursued with great eagerness. 
Five hundred men were sent to her retired house at 
Ashridge, by Berkhampstead, with orders to bring her 
up, alive or dead. They got there at ten at night, when 
she was sick in bed. But their leaders followed her c 
lady into her bedchamber, whence she was brought out 
betimes next morning, and put into a litter to be con- 
veyed to London. She was so weak and ill that she was 
five days on the road ; still, she was so resolved to be 
seen by the people that she had the curtains of the litter 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 291 

opened ; and so, very pale and sickly, passed through 
the streets. She wrote to her sister, saying she was in- 
nocent of any crime, and asking why she was made a 
prisoner, but she got no answer, and was ordered to the 
Tower. They took her in by the Traitor's Gate, to 
which she objected, but in vain. One of the lords who 
conveyed her offered to cover her with his cloak, as it 
was raining, but she put it away from her, proudly and 
scornfully, and passed into the Tower, and sat down in 
a courtyard on a stone. They besought her to come in 
out of the wet ; but she answered that it was better sit- 
ting there, than in a worse place. At length she went to 
her apartment, where she was kept prisoner, though not 
so close a prisoner as at Woodstock, whither she was 
afterward removed, and where she is said to have one 
day envied a milkmaid whom she heard singing in the 
sunshine as she went through the green fields. Gar- 
diner, than whom there were not many worse men 
among the fierce and sullen priests, cared little to keep 
secret his stern desire for her death ; being used to say 
that it w r as of little service to shake off the leaves, and 
lop the branches of the tree of .heresy, if its root, the 
hope of heretics, were left. He failed, however, in his 
benevolent design. Elizabeth was at length released ; 
and Hatfield House was assigned to her as a residence, 
under the care of one Sir Thomas Pope. 

It would seem that Philip, the Prince of Spain, was a 
main cause of this change in Elizabeth's fortunes. He 
was not an amiable man, being, on the contrary, proud, 
overbearing, and gloomy ; but he and the Spanish lords 
who came over with him assuredly did discountenance 
the idea ot doing any violence to the Princess. It may 
have been mere prudence, but we will hope it was man- 
hood and honor. The Queen had been expecting her 
husband with great impatience, and at length he came, 
I to her great joy, though he never cared much for her. 
They were married by Gardiner, at Winchester, and 
there was more holiday-making among the people ; but 
they had their old distrust of this Spanish marriage, in 
which even the Parliament shared. Though the mem- 
bers of that Parliament were far from honest, and were 
strongly suspected to have been bought with Spanish 



292 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

money, they would pass no bill to enable the Queen to 
set aside the Princess Elizabeth and appoint her own 
successor. 

Although Gardiner failed in this object, as well as in 
the darker one of bringing the Princess to the scaffold, 
he went on at a great pace in the revival of the unre- 
formed religion. ^A new Parliament was packed, in 
which there were no Protestants. Preparations were 
made to receive Cardinal Pole in England as the Pope's 
messenger, bringing his holy declaration that all the no- 
bility who had acquired Church property should keep it 
— which was done to enlist their selfish interest on the 
Pope's side. Then a great scene was enacted, which 
was the triumph of the Queen's plans. Cardinal Pole 
arrived in great splendor and dignity, and was received 
with great pomp. The Parliament joined in a petition 
expressive ol their sorrow at the change in the national 
religion, and praying him to receive the country again 
into the Popish Church. With the Queen sitting on her 
throne, and the King on one side of her, and the Car- 
dinal on the other, and the Parliament present, Gardi- 
ner read the petition aloud. The Cardinal then made a 
great speech, and was so obliging as to say that all was 
forgotten and forgiven, and that the kingdom was sol- 
emnly made Roman Catholic again. 

Everything was now ready for the lighting of the ter- 
rible bonfires. The Queen having declared to the Coun- 
cil, in writing, that she would wish none of her subjects 
to be burned without some ot the Council being present, 
and that she would particularly wish there to be good 
sermons at all burnings, the Council knew pretty well 
what was to be done next. So, after the Cardinal had 
blessed all the bishops as a preface to the burnings, the 
Chancellor Gardiner opened a High Court at St. Mary 
Overy, on the Southwark side of London Bridge, for the 
trial of heretics. Here, two of the late Protestant cler- 
gymen, Hooper, Bishop ot Gloucester, and Rogers, a 
Prebendary ot St. Paul's, were brought to be tried. 
Hooper was tried first for being married, though a 
priest, and tor not believing in the mass. He admitted 
both of these accusations, and said that the mass was a 
wicked imposition. Then they tried Rogers, who said. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 293 

the same. Next morning the two were brought up to 
be sentenced ; and then Rogers said that his poor wife, 
being a German woman and a stranger in the land, he 
hoped might be allowed to come to speak to him betore 
he died. To this the inhuman Gardiner replied, that 
she was not his wife. "Yea, but she is, my lord," said 
Rogers, "and she hath been my wife these eighteen 
years." His request was still refused, and they were 
both sent to Newgate, all those who stood in the streets 
to sell things being ordered to put out their lights that 
the people might not see them. But the people stood at 
their doors with candles in their hands, and prayed for 
them as they went by. Soon afterward, Rogers was 
taken out of jail to be burned in* Smithfield ; and in the 
crowd, as he went along, he saw his poor wife and his 
ten children, of whom the youngest was a little baby. 
And so he was burned to death. 

The next day, Hooper, who was to be burned at 
Gloucester, was brought out to take his last journey, and 
was made to wear a hood over his face that he might 
not be known by the people. But they did know him, 
for all that, down in his own part of the country ; and, 
when he came near Gloucester, they lined the road, 
making prayers and lamentations. His guards took him 
to a lodging, where he slept soundly all night. At nine 
o'clock next morning he was brought forth leaning on a 
staff; for he had taken cold in prison, ai:d was infirm. 
The iron stake, and the iron chain which was to bind 
him to it, were fixed up near a great elm tree in a pleas- 
ant open place before the cathedral, where, on peaceful 
Sundays, he had been accustomed to preach and to 
pray when he was bishop of Gloucester. This tree, 
which had no leaves then, it being February, was filled 
with people ; and the priests of Gloucester College were 
looking complacently on from a window and there was 
a great concourse of spectators in every spot from which 
a glimpse of the dreadful sight could be beheld. 
When the old man kneeled down on the small platform 
at the foot of the stake, and prayed aloud, the nearest 
people were observed to be so attentive to his prayers 
that they were ordered to stand further back; for it did 
not suit the Romish Church to have those Protestant 



294 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

words heard. His prayers concluded, he went up to 
the stake and was stripped to his shirt, and chained 
ready for the fire. One of his guards had such compas- 
sion on him that, to shorten his agonies, he tied some 
packets of gunpowder about him. Then they heaped 
up wood and straw and reeds, and set them all alight. 
But, unhappily, the wood was green and damp, and 
there was a wind blowing that blew what flame there 
was away. Thus, through three-quarters of an hour, 
the good old man was scorched and roasted and smoked, 
as the fire rose and sank, and all that time they saw 
him, as he burned, moving his lips in prayer and beat- 
ing his breast with one hand, even after the other was 
burned away and had fallen off. 

Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were taken to Oxford 
to dispute with a commission of priests and doctors 
about the mass. They were shamefully treated; and 
it is reported that the Oxford scholars hissed and howled 
and groaned, and misconducted themselves in anything 
but a scholarly way. The prisoners were taken back to 
jail, and afterward tried in St. Mary's Church. They 
were all found guilty. On the 16th of the month of 
October, Ridley and Latimer were brought out to make 
another of the dreadful bonfires. 

The scene of the suffering of these two good Protes- 
tant men was in the City Ditch, near Baliol College. 
On coming to the dreadful spot, they kissed the states, 
and then embraced each other. And then a learned 
doctor got up into a pulpit which was placed there, and 
preached a sermon from the text, "Though I give my 
body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth 
me nothing." When you think of the charity of burn- 
ing men alive, you may imagine that this learned doctor 
had a rather brazen face. Ridley would have answered 
his sermon when it came to an end, but was not allowed. 

When Latimer was stripped, it appeared that he had 
dressed himself under his other clothes in a new shroud; 
and, as he stood in it before all the people, it was noted 
of him, and long remembered, that whereas he had been 
stooping and feeble but a few minutes before, he now 
stood upright and handsome, in the knowledge that he 
was dying for a just and great cause. Ridley's brother- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 295 

in-law was there with bags of gunpowder ; and when 
they were both chained up, he tied them around their 
bodies. Then, a light was thrown upon the pile to fire 
itj "Be of good comfort Master Ridley," said Latimer, 
at that awful moment, "and play the man! We shall 
this daylight such a candle, by God's grace, in England, 
as I trust shall never be put out. ' ' And then he was 
seen to make motions with his hands as if he were wash- 
ing them in the flames, and to stroke his aged face with 
them, and was heard to cry, "Father of Heaven, re- 
ceive my soul!" He died quickly, but the fire, after 
having burned the legs of Ridley, sunk. Then he 
lingered, chained to the iron post, and crying, "Oh! I 
cannot burn ! Oh ! for Christ's sake, let the fire come 
unto me!" And still, when his brother-in-law had 
heaped on more wood, he was heard through the blind- 
ing smoke, still dismally crying, " Oh ! I cannot burn, I 
cannot burn !" At last, the gunpowder caught fire and 
ended his miseries. 

Five days after this fearful scene, Gardiner went to 
his tremendous account before God for the cruelties he 
had so much assisted in committing. 

Cranmer remained still alive and in prison. He was 
brought out again in February, for more examining 
and trying, by Bonner, Bishop of London; another man 
of blood, who had succeeded to Gardiner's work, even in 
his lifetime, when Gardiner was tired of it. Cranmer 
was now degraded as a priest, and left for death ; but 
if the Queen hated anyone on earth, she hated him, and 
it was resolved that he should be ruined and disgraced to 
the utmost. There is no doubt that the Queen and her 
husband personally urged on these deeds, because they 
wrote to the Council, urging them to be active in the 
kindling of the fearful fires. As Cranmer was known 
not to be a firm man, a plan was laid for surrounding 
him with artful people, and inducing him to recant to 
the unreformed religion. Deans and friars visited him, 
played at bowls with him, showed him various atten- 
tions, talked persuasively with him, gave him money for 
his prison comforts, and induced him to sign, I fear as 
many as six recantations. But when, after all, he was 



296 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

taken out to be burned, he was nobly true to his better 
self, and made a glorious end. 

After prayers and a sermon, Dr. Cole, the preacher 
of the day (who had been one of the artful priests about 
Cranmer in prison), required him to make a public con- 
fession of his faith before the people. This Cole did, 
expecting that he would declare himself a Roman Catho- 
lic. "I will make a profession of my faith," said Cran- 
mer, "and with a good will too." 

Then, he arose before them all, and took from the 
sleeve of his robe a written prayer and read it aloud. 
That done, he kneeled, and said the Lord's Prayer, all 
the people joining; and then he rose again and told 
them that he believed in the Bible, and that in what he 
had lately written, he had written what was not the 
truth, and that, because his right hand had signed those 
papers, he would burn his right hand first when he 
came to the fire. As for the Pope, he did refuse him 
and denounce him as the enemy of Heaven. Hereupon 
the pious Dr. Cole cried out to the guards to stop that 
heretic's mouth and take him away. 

So they took him away, and chained him to the stake, 
where he hastily took off his own clothes to make ready 
for the flames. And he stood before the people with a 
bald head and a white and flowing beard. He was so 
firm now, when the worst was come, that he again de- 
clared against his recantation, and was so impressive 
and so undismayed, that a certain lord, who was one of 
the directors of the execution, called out to the men to 
make haste ! When the fire was lighted, Cranmer, true 
to his latest word, stretched out his right hand, and 
crying out, "This hand hath offended!" held it among; 
the flames until it blazed and burned away. His heart 
was found entire among his ashes, and he left at last a 
memorable name in English history. Cardinal Pole 
celebrated the day by saying his first mass, and next 
day he was made Archbishop of Canterbury in Cranmer's 
place. 

The Queen's husband, who was now mostly abroad in 
his own dominions, and generally made a coarse jest of 
her to his more familiar courtiers, was at war with 
France, and came over to seek the assistance of Eng- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 297 

land. England was very unwilling to engage in a 
French war for his sake ; but it happened that the King 
of France, at this very time, aided a descent upon the 
English coast. Hence, war was declared, greatly to 
Philip's satisfaction ; and the Queen raised a sum of 
money with which to carry it on, by every unjustifiable 
means in her power. It met with no profitable return, 
for the French Duke of Guise surprised Calais, and the 
English sustained a complete defeat. The losses they 
met in France greatly mortified the national pride, and 
the Queen never recovered the blow. 

There was a bad fever raging in England at this time, 
and I am glad to write that the Queen took it, and the 
hour of her death came." When I am dead and my body 
is opened," she said ^to those around her, "ye shall find. 
Calais written on my heart." I should have thought, 
if anything were written on it, they would have found 
the words — Jane Grey, Hooper, Rogers, Ridley, Lati- 
mer, Cranmer, and three hundred people burned alive 
within four years of my wicked reign, including sixty 
women and forty little children. But it is enough that 
their deaths were written in heaven. 

The Queen died on the 17th of November, 1558, after 
Teigning not quite five years and a half, and in the 
forty-fourth year of her age. Cardinal Pole died of the 
same fever next day. 

As Bloody Queen Mary, this woman has become 
famous, and as "Bloody Queen Mary, she will ever be 
justly remembered with horror and detestation in Great 
Britain. Her memory has been held in such abhor- 
rence that some writers have arisen in later years to take 
her part, and to show that she was, upon the whole, 
quite an amiable and cheerful sovereign! "By their 
fruits ye shall know them," said Our Savior. The 
stake and the fire were the fruits of this reign, and you 
will judge this Queen by nothing else. 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH. 

There was great rejoicing all over the land when the 
Lords of the Council went down to Hatfield, to hail the 



298 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Princess Elizabeth as the new Queen of England. 
Weary of the barbarities of Mary's reign, the people 
looked with hope and gladness to the new Sovereign. 
The nation seemed to wake from a horrible dream ; and 
heaven, so long hidden by the smoke of the fires that 
roasted men and women to death, appeared to brighten 
once more. 

Queen Elizabeth was five-and- twenty years of age 
when she rode through the streets of London, from the 
Tower to Westminster Abbey, to be crowned. Her 
countenance was strongly marked, but on the whole, 
commanding and dignified ; her hair was red, and her 
nose something too long and sharp for a woman's. She 
was not the beautiful creature her courtiers made out; 
but she was well enough, and no doubt looked all the 
better for coming after the dark and gloomy Mary. 
She was well educated, but a roundabout writer, and, 
rather a hard swearer and coarse talker. She was 
clever, but cunning and deceitful, and inherited much 
of her father's violent temper. I mention this now, be- 
cause she has been so overpraised by one party, and so 
over-abused by another, that it is hardly possible to un- ! 
derstand the greater part of her reign without first un- 
derstanding what kind of a woman she really was. 

She began her reign with the great advantage of hav- 
ing a very wise and careful Minister, Sir William Cecil, 
whom she afterward made Lord"Burleigh. Altogether, 
the people had greater reason for rejoicing than they 
usually had, when there were processions in the streets; 
and they were happy with some reason. All kinds of 
shows and images were set up ; Gog and Magog were 
hoisted to the top of Temple Bar ; and (which was more 
to the purpose) the Corporation dutifully presented the 
young Queen with the sum of a thousand marks in gold 
— so heavy a present that she was obliged to take it into 
her carriage with both hands. The coronation was a ( 
great success ; and, on the next day, one of the courtiers j 
presented a petition to the new Queen, praying that as 
it was the custom to release some prisoners on such 
occasions, she would have the goodness to release the 
four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and 
also the Apostle St. Paul, who had been for some time 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 299 

shut up in a strange language so that the people could 
not get at them. 

To this the Queen replied that it would be better 
first to inquire of themselves whether they desired to be 
released or not; and, as a means of finding out, a great 
public discussion — a sort of religious tournament — was 
appointed to take place between certain champions of 
the two religions, in Westminster Abbey. You may 
suppose that it was soon made pretty clear to common 
sense, that for people to benefit by what they repeat or 
read, it is rather necessary they should understand 
something about it. Accordingly, a Church Service in 
plain English was settled and other laws and regula- 
tions were made, completely establishing the great work 
of the Reformation. The Romish bishops and cham- 
pions were not harshly dealt with, all things considered; 
and the Queen's Ministers were both prudent and merci- 
ful. 

The one great trouble of this reign, and the unfortu- 
nate cause of the greater part of such turmoil and blood- 
shed as occurred in it, was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. 

We will try to understand, in as few words as pos- 
sible, who Mary was, what she was, and how she came 
to be a thorn in the royal pillow of Elizabeth. 

She was the daughter of the Queen Regent of Scot- 
land, Mary of Guise. She had been married, when a 
mere child, to the Dauphin, the son and heir of the King 
of France. The Pope, who pretended that no one could 
rightfully wear the crown of England without his gra- 
cious permission, was strongly opposed to Elizabeth, 
who had not asked for the said gracious permission. 
And as Mary Queen of Scots would have inherited the 
English crown in right of her birth, supposing the Eng- 
lish Parliament not to have altered the succession, 
the Pope himself, and most of the discontented who 
were followers of his, maintained that Mary was the 
rightful Queen of England, and Elizabeth the wrongful 
Queen. Mary being so closely connected with France, 
and France being jealous of England, there was far 
greater danger in this than there would have been if she 
had had no alliance with that great power. And when 
her young husband, on the death of his father, became 



300 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Francis II. King of France, the matter grew more serious. 
For the young couple styled themselves King and Queen 
of England, and the Pope was disposed to help them by 
doing all the mischief he could. 

Now, the reformed religion, under the guidance of a 
stern and powerful preacher named John Knox, and 
other such men, had been making fierce progress in 
Scotland. It was still a half savage country, where 
there was a great deal of murdering and rioting continu- 
ally going on ;]and the Reformers, instead of reforming 
those evils as they should have done, went to work in 
the ferocious old Scottish spirit, laying churches and 
chapels waste, pulling down pictures and altars, and 
knocking about the Gray Friars, and the Black Friars, 
and the White Friars, and the friars of all sorts of 
colors, in all directions. This obdurate and harsh spirit 
of the Scottish Reformers (the Scotch have always been 
rather a sullen and frowning people in religious matters) 
put up the blood of the Romish French court, and 
caused France to send troops over to Scotland, with the 
hope of setting the friars of all sorts and colors on their 
legs again ; of conquering that country first, and Eng- 
land afterward ; and so crushing the Reformation all to 
pieces. The Scottish Reformers, who had formed a 
great league which they called The Congregation of the 
Lord, secretly represented to Elizabeth that, if the re- 
formed religion got the worst of it with them, it would 
be likely to get the worst of it in England too. And 
thus Elizabeth, though she had a high notion of the 
rights of Kings and Queens to do anything they liked, 
sent an army to Scotland to support the Reformers, 
who were in arms against their sovereign. All these 
proceedings 'led to a treaty of peace at Edinburgh, un- 
der which the French consented to depart from the 
kingdom. By a separate treaty, Mary and her young 
husband engaged to renounce their assumed title of 
King and Queen of England. But this treaty they never 
fulfilled. 

It happened, soon after matters had got to this state, 
that the young French King died, leaving Mary a young 
widow. She was then invited by her Scottish subjects 
to return home and rejgn over them ; and as she was 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 301 

not now happy where she was, she, after a little time, 
complied. 

Elizabeth had been Queen three years, when Mary 
Queen of Scots embarked at Calais for her own rough 
quarreling country. As she came out of the harbor, a 
vessel was lost before her eyes, and she said, "Oh! 
good God ! what an omen this is for such a voyage !" She 
was very fond of France, and sat on the deck, looking 
back at it and weeping, until it was quite dark. When 
she went to bed, she directed to be called at daybreak, 
if the French coast were still visible, that she might be- 
hold it for the last time. As it proved to be a clear 
morning, this was done, and she again wept for the 
country she was leaving, and said many times, "Fare- 
well, France! Farewell, France! I shall never see 
thee again!" All this was long remembered afterward 
as sorrowful and interesting in a fair young princess of 
nineteen. Indeed, I am afraid it gradually came, to- 
gether with her other distresses, to surround her with 
greater sympathy than she deserved. 

When she came to Scotland and took up her abode at 
the palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh, she found her- 
self among uncouth strangers and wild uncomfortable 
customs very different from her experience in the Court 
of France. The very people who were disposed to love 
her, made her head ache when she was tired out by her 
voyage, with a serenade of discordant music, — a fearful 
concert of bagpipes, I suppose, — and brought her and 
her train home to her palace on miserable little Scotch 
horses that appeared to be half starved. Among the 
people who were not disposed to love her, she found the 
powerful leaders of the Reformed Church, who were 
bitter upon her amusements, however, innocent, and 
denounced music and dancing as works of the devil. 
John Knox himself often lectured her, violently and 
angrily, and [did much to make her life unhappy. All 
these reasons confirmed her old attachment to the Rom- 
ish religion, and caused here, there is no doubt, most 
imprudently and dangerously, both for herself and for 
England too, to give a solemn pledge to the heads of the 
Romish Church that if she ever succeeded to the Eng- 
lish crown she would set up that religion again. In 



302 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

reading her unhappy history you must always remem- 
ber this, and also that during her whole life she was 
constantly put forward against the Queen, in some form 
or other, by the Romish party. 

That Elizabeth, on the other hand, was not inclined 
to like her, is pretty certain. Elizabeth was very vain 
and jealous, and had an extraordinary dislike to people 
being married. She treated Lady Catherine Grey, 
sister of the beheaded Lady Jane, with such shameful 
severity, for no other reason than her being secretly 
married, that she died and her husband was ruined ; so, 
when a second marriage for Mary began to be talked 
about, probably Elizabeth disliked her more. Not that 
Elizabeth wanted suitors of her own, for they started 
up from Spain, Austria, Sweden, and England. Her 
English lover at this time, and one whom she much 
favored too, was Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester 
— himself secretly married to Amy Robsart, the 
daughter of an English gentleman, and whom he was 
strongly suspected of causing to be murdered, down at 
his country seat, Cumnor Hall in Berkshire, that he 
might be free to marry the Queen. Upon this story, the 
great writer, Sir Walter Scott, has founded one of his 
best romances. But if Elizabeth knew how to lead her 
handsome favorite on, for her own vanity and pleasure, 
she knew how to stop him for her own pride ; and his 
love, and all the other proposals, came to nothing. The 
Queen always declared in good set speeches, that she 
would never be married at all, but live and die a Maiden 
Queen. It was a very pleasant and meritorious declara- 
tion I suppose ; but it has been puffed and trumpeted so 
much, that I am rather tired of it myself. 

Divers princes proposed to marry Mary, but the Eng- 
lish court had good reasons of being jealous of them all, 
and even proposed, as a matter of policy, that she should 
marry that very Earl of Leicester who had aspired to be 
the husband of Elizabeth. At last Lord Darnley, son 
of the Earl of Lennox, and himself descended from the 
Royal family of Scotland, went over, with Elizabeth's 
consent, to try his fortune at Holyrood. He was a tall ' 
simpleton ; and could dance, and play the guitar ; but I ! 
know of nothing else he could do, unless it were to get J 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 303 

drunk, and eat gluttonously, and make a contemptible 
spectacle of himself in many mean and vain ways. How- 
ever, he gained Mary's heart, not disdaining in the pur- 
suit of his object to ally himself with one of her secre- 
taries, David Rizzio, who had great influence with her. 
He soon married the Queen. This marriage does not say 
much for her, but what followed will presently say less. 

Mary's brother, the Earl of Murray, and head ot the 
Protestant party in Scotland, had opposed this mar- 
riage, partly on religious grounds, and partly perhaps 
from personal dislike of the very contemptible bride- 
groom. When it had taken place, through Mary's gain- 
ing over to it the more powerful of the lords about her, 
she banished Murray for his pains ; and when he and 
some other nobles rose in arms to support the reformed 
religion, she herself, within a month of her wedding 
day, rode against them in armor with loaded pistols in 
her saddle. Driven out of Scotland, they presented 
themselves before Elizabeth — who called them traitors 
in public, and assisted them in private, according to her 
crafty nature. 

Mary had been married but a little while when she 
began to hate her husband, who, in his turn, began to 
hate that David Rizzio with whom he had leagued to 
gain her favor, and whom he now believed to be her 
lover. He hated Rizzio to that extent, that he made a 
compact with Lord Ruthven and three other lords to 
get rid of him by murder. This wicked agreement they 
made in solemn secrecy upon the'ist of March, 1566, and 
on the night of Saturday the 9th, the conspirators were 
brought by Darnley up a private staircase, dark and 
steep, into a range of rooms where they knew that Mary 
was sitting at supper with her sister, Lady Argyle, and 
this doomed man. When they went into the room, 
Darnley took the Queen round the waist, and Lord 
Ruthven, who had risen from a bed of sickness to do 
this murder, came in, gaunt and ghastly, leading on 
two men. Rizzio ran behind the Queen for shelter and 
protection. "Let him come out of the room," said Ruth- 
ven. "He shall not leave the room," replied the 
Queen: "I read his danger in your face, and it is my 
will that he remain here." They then set upon him, 



304 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

struggled with him, overturned the table, dragged him 
out, and killed him with fifty-six stabs. When the 
Queen heard that he was dead, she said, "No more 
tears. I will think now of revenge!" 

Within a day or two she gained her husband over, 
and prevailed on the tall idiot to abandon the conspira- 
tors and fly with her to Dunbar. There he issued a 
proclamation, audaciously and falsely denying that he 
had any knowledge of the late bloody business ; and 
there they were joined by the Earl Bothwell and some 
other nobles. With their help, they raised eight thou- 
sand men, returned to Edinburgh, and drove the assas- 
sins into England. Mary soon afterward gave birth to 
a son — still thinking of revenge. 

That she should have had a greater scorn for her hus- 
band after his late cowardice and treachery than she 
had had before, was natural enough. There is little 
doubt that she now began to love Bothwell instead, and 
to plan 'with him means of getting rid of Darnley. 
Bothwell had such power over her that he induced her 
even to pardon the assassins of Rizzio. The arrange- 
ments for the christening of the young Prince were in- 
trusted to him, and he was one of the most important 
people at the ceremony, where the child was named 
James; Elizabeth being his godmother, though not 
present on the occasion. A week afterward, Darnley, 
who had left Mary and gone to his father's house at 
Glasgow, being taken ill with the small-pox, she sent 
her own physician to attend him. But there is rea- 
son to apprehend that this was merely a show and a pre- 
tense, and that she knew what was doing, when Both- 
well within another month proposed to one of the late 
conspirators against Rizzio to murder Darnley, "for 
that it was the Queen's mind that he should "be taken 
away." It is certain that on that very day she wrote to 
her ambassador in France, complaining of him, and yet 
went immediately to Glasgow, feigning to be very anx- 
ious about him, and to love him very much. If she 
wanted to get him in her power she succeeded to her 
heart's content; for she induced him to go back with 
her to Edinburgh, and to occupy, instead of the palace, 
a lone house outside the city called the Kirk of Field. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 305 

Here he lived for about a week. One Sunday night she 
remained with him until ten o'clock, and then left him, 
to go to Holyrood to be present at an entertainment 
given in celebration of the marriage of one of her favor- 
ite servants. At two o'clock in the morning the city 
was shaken by a great explosion, and the Kirk of Field 
was blown to atoms. 

Darnley's body was found next day lying under a tree 
at some distance. How it came there, undisfigured and 
unscorched by gunpowder, and how this crime came to 
be so clumsily and strangely committed, it is impossible 
to discover. The deceitful character of Mary, and the 
deceitful character of Elizabeth, have rendered almost 
every part of their joint history uncertain and obscure. 
But, I fear that Mary was unquestionably a party to her 
husband's murder, and that this was the revenge she 
had threatened. The Scotch people universally believed 
it. Voices cried out in the streets of Edinburgh in the 
dead of the night, for justice on the murderess. Pla- 
cards were posted by unknown hands in the public 
places denouncing Bothwell as the murderer, and the 
Queen as his accomplice, and, when he afterward mar- 
ried her, though himself already married, previously 
making a show of taking her prisoner by force, the in- 
dignation of the people knew no bounds. The women 
particularly are described as having been quite frantic 
against the Queen, and to have hooted and cried after 
her in the streets with terrific vehemence. 

Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This husband 
and wife had lived together but a month, when they 
were separated forever by the successes of a band ot 
Scotch nobles who associated against them for the pro- 
tection of the young Prince, whom Bothwell had vainly 
endeavored to lay hold of, and whom he would certainly 
have murdered, if the Earl of Mar, in whose hands the 
boy was, had not been firmly and honorably faithful to 
his trust. Before this angry power, Bothwell fled abroad, 
where he died, a prisoner and mad, nine miserable 
years afterward. Mary being found by the associated 
lords to deceive them at every turn, was sent a prisoner 
to Lochleven Castle; which, as it stood in the midst of 
a lake, could only be approached by boat. Here, one 



306 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Lord Lindsay, who was so much of a brute that the no- 
bles would have done better if they had chosen a mere 
gentleman for their messenger, made her sign her abdi- 
cation, and appoint Murray Regent of Scotland. Here, 
too Murray saw her in a sorrowing and humbled state. 
She had better have remained in the castle of Loch- 
leven, dull prison as it was, with the rippling of the lake 
against it, and the moving shadows of the water on the 
room walls ; but she could not rest there, and more than 
once tried to escape. The first time she had nearly suc- 
ceeded, dressed in the clothes of her own washerwoman, 
but, putting up her hand to prevent one of the boatmen 
from lifting her veil, the man suspected her, seeing 
how white it was, and rowed her back again. A short 
time afterward, her fascinating manners enlisted in her 
cause a boy in the Castle, called the little Douglas, 
who, while the family were at supper, stole the keys of 
the great gate, went softly out with the Queen, locked 
the gate on the outside, and rowed her away across the 
lake, sinking the keys as they went along. On the op- 
posite shore she was met by another Douglas, and some 
few lords ; and, so accompanied, rode away on horseback 
to Hamilton, where they raised three thousand men. 
Here she issued a proclamation declaring that the abdi- 
cation she had signed in her prison was illegal, and 
requiring the Regent to yield to his lawful Queen. Be- 
ing a steady soldier, and in no way discomposed, al- 
though he was without an army, Murray pretended to 
treat with her, until he had collected a force about half 
equal to her own, and then he gave her battle. In one 
quarter of an hour he cut down all her hopes. She had 
another weary ride on horseback of sixty long Scotch 
miles, and took shelter at Dundrennan Abbey, whence 
she fled for safety to Elizabeth's dominions. 

Mary Queen of Scots came to England — to her own 
ruin, the trouble of the kingdom, and the misery and 
death of many — in the year 1568. How she left it and 
the world, nineteen years afterward, we have now to 
see. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 307 



PART SECOND. 

When Mary Queen of Scots arrived in England, with- 
out money and even without any other clothes than 
those she wore, she wrote to Elizabeth, representing 
herself as an innocent and injured piece of Royalty, and 
entreating her assistance to oblige her Scottish subjects 
to take her back again and obey her. But, as her char- 
acter was already known in England to be a very differ- 
ent one from what she made it out to be, she was told in 
answer that she must first clear herself. Made uneasy 
by this condition, Mary, rather than stay in England, 
would have gone to Spain, or to France, or would even 
have gone back to Scotland. But, as her doing either 
would have been likely to trouble England afresh, it 
was decided that she should be detained here. She first 
came to Carlisle, and, after that, was moved about from 
castle to castle, as was considered necessary ; but Eng- 
land she never left again. 

After trying very hard to get rid of the necessity of 
clearing herself, Mary, advised by Lord Hemes, her 
best friend in England, agreed to answer the charges 
against her, if the Scottish noblemen who made them 
would attend to maintain them before such English no- 
blemen as Elizabeth might appoint for that purpose. 
Accordingly, such an assembly, under the name of a 
conference, met, first at York, and afterward at Hamp- 
ton Court. In its presence Lord Lennox, Darnley's 
father, openly charged Mary with the murder of his 
son; and whatever Mary's friends may now say or 
write in her behalf, there is no doubt that, when her 
brother Murray produced against her a casket contain- 
ing certain guilty letters and verses which he stated to 
have passed between her and Bothwell, she withdrew 
from the inquiry. Consequently, it is to be supposed 
that she was then considered guilty by those who had 
the best opportunities of judging of the truth, and that 
the feeling which afterward arose in her behalf was a 
very generous, but not a very reasonable, one. 

However, the Duke of Norfolk, an honorable but 
rather weak nobleman, partly because Mary was cap- 
tivating, partly because he was ambitious, partly be- 



308 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

cause he was over-persuaded by artful plotters against 
Elizabeth, conceived a strong idea that he would like to 
marry the Queen of Scots — though he was a little fright- 
ened, too, by the letters in the casket. This idea being 
secretly encouraged by some of the noblemen of Eliza- 
beth's court, and even by the favorite Earl of Leicester, 
because it was objected to by other tavorites who were 
his rivals, Mary expressed her approval of it, and the 
King of France and the King of Spain are supposed to 
have done the same. It was not so quietly planned, 
though, but that it came to Elizabeth's ears, who 
warned the Duke "to be careful what sort of pillow he 
was going to lay his head upon." He made an humble 
reply at the time; but turned sulky soon afterward, 
and, being considered dangerous, was sent to the Tower. 

Thus, from the moment of Mary's coming to England 
she began to be the center of plots and miseries. 

A rise of the Catholics in the north was the next of 
these, and it was only checked by many executions and 
much bloodshed. It was followed by a great conspiracy 
of the Pope and some of the Catholic sovereigns of 
Europe to depose Elizabeth, place Mary on the throne, 
and restore the unreformed religion. It is almost im- 
possible to doubt that Mary knew and approved of this; 
and the Pope himself was so hot in the matter that he 
issued a bull, in which he openly called Elizabeth the 
"pretended Queen" of England, excommunicated her, 
and excommunicated all her subjects who should con- 
tinue to obey her. A copy of this miserable paper got 
intoJLondon, and was found one morning publicly posted 
on the Bishop of London's gate. A great hue and cry 
being raised, another copy was found in the chamber of 
a student of Lincoln's Inn. who confessed, being put 
upon the rack, that he had received it from one John 
Felton, a rich gentleman who lived across the Thames, 
near Southwark. This John Felton, being put upon 
the rack, too, confessed that he had posted the placard 
on the Bishop's gate. For this offense he was, within 
four days, taken to St. Paul's Churchyard, and there 
hanged and quartered. As to the Pope's bull, the peo- 
ple by the Reformation having thrown off the Pope, did 
not care much, you may suppose, for the Pope's throw- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 309 

ing off them. It was a mere dirty piece of paper, and 
not half so powerful as a street ballad. 

On the very day when Felton was brought to his 
trial, the poor Duke of Norfolk was released. It would 
have been well for him had he kept away from the 
Tower evermore, and from the snares that had taken 
him there. But, even while he was in that dismal place 
he corresponded with Mary, and as soon as he was out 
of it, he began to plot again. Being discovered in cor- 
respondence with the Pope, with a view to a rising in 
England which should force Elizabeth to consent to his 
marriage with Mary and to repeal the laws against the 
Catholics, he was recommitted to the Tower and 
brought to trial. He was found guilty by the unani- 
mous verdict of the lords who tried him, and was sen- 
tenced to the block. 

It is very difficult to make out, at this distance of 
time, and between opposite accounts, whether Elizabeth 
really was a humane woman, or desired to appear so, or 
was fearful of shedding the blood of people ot great 
name who were popular ^n the country. Twice she 
commanded and countermanded the execution of this 
Duke, and it did not take place until five months after 
his trial. The scaffold was erected on Tower Hill, and 
there he died like a brave man. He refused to have his 
eyes bandaged, saying that he was not at all afraid of 
death; and he admitted the justice of his sentence, and 
was much regretted by the people. 

Although Mary had shrunk at the most important 
time trom disproving her guilt, she was very careful 
never to do anything that would admit it. All such 
proposals as were made to her by Elizabeth for her re- 
lease, required that admission in some form or other, 
and, therefore, came to nothing. Moreover, both 
women being artful and treacherous, and neither ever 
trusting the other, it was not likely tftat they could 
ever make an agreement. So, the Parliament, aggravated 
by what the Pope had done, made new and strong laws 
against the spreading of the Catholic religion in England, 
and declared it treason in any one to say that the Queen 
and her successors were not the lawful sovereigns of Eng- 



310 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

land. It would have done more than this, but for Eli- 
zabeth's moderation. 

Since the Reformation, there had come to be three 
great sects of religious people — or people who called 
themselves so— in England ; that is to say, those who 
belonged to the Reformed Church, those who belonged 
to the Unreformed Church, and those who were called 
the Puritans, because they said that they wanted to 
have everything very pure and plain in all the Church 
service. These last were for the most part an uncom- 
fortable people, who thought it highly meritorious to 
dress in a hideous manner, talk through their noses, and 
oppose all harmless enjoyments. But they were power- 
ful, too, and very much in earnest, and they were one 
and all the determined enemies of the Queen of Scots. 
The Protestant feeling in England was further 
strengthened by the tremendous cruelties to which 
Protestants were exposed in France and in the Nether- 
lands. Scores of thousands of them were put to death 
in those countries with every cruelty that can be im- 
agined, and at last, in the autumn ot the year 1572, one 
of the greatest barbarities ever committed in the world 
took place at Paris. 

It is called in history. The Massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew, because it took place on St. Bartholomew's Eve. 
The day fell on Saturday, the 23d of August. On that 
day all the great leaders of the Protestants, who were 
there called Huguenots, were assembled together, for 
the purpose, as was represented to them, of doing honor 
to the marriage of their chief, the young King of Na- 
varre, with the sister of Charles IX., a miserable young 
King who then occupied the French throne. This dull 
creature was made to believe by his mother and other 
tierce Catholics about him that the Huguenots meant to 
take his life ; and he was persuaded to give secret or- 
ders that, on the tolling of a great bell, they should be 
fallen upon by an overpowering force of armed men, 
and slaughtered wherever they could be found. When 
the appointed hour was close at hand, the stupid wretch, 
trembling from head to foot, was taken into a balcony 
by his mother to see the atrocious work begun. The 
moment the bell tolled, the murderers broke forth. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 311 

During all that night and the two next days, they broke 
into the houses, fired the houses, shot and stabbed the 
Protestants, men, women and children, and flung their 
bodies into the streets. They were shot at in the streets 
as they passed along, and their blood ran down the gut- 
ters. Upward of ten thousand Protestants were killed 
in Paris alone ; in all France four or five times that num- 
ber. To return thanks to Heaven for these diabolical 
murders, the Pope and his train actually went in public 
procession at Rome, and as if this were not shame 
enough for them, they had a medal struck to commem- 
orate'thejevent. But, however comfortable the wholesale 
murders were to these high authorities, they had not 
that soothing effect upon the doll- King. I am happy to 
state that he never knew a moment's peace afterward; 
that he was continually crying out that he saw the 
Huguenots covered with blood and wounds falling dead 
before him ; and that he died within a year, shrieking 
and yelling and raving to that degree, that if all the 
Popes who had ever lived had been rolled into one, they 
would not have afforded His guilty Majesty the slight- 
est consolation. 

When the terrible news of the massacre arrived in 
England, it made a powerful impression indeed upon 
the people. If they began to run a little wild against 
the Catholics at about this time, this fearful reason for 
it, coming so soon after the days of bloody Queen 
Mary, must be remembered in their excuse. The Court 
was not quite so honest as the people — but perhaps it 
sometimes is not. It received the French ambassadors, 
with all the lords and ladies dressed in deep mourning, 
and keeping a profound silence. Nevertheless, a pro- 
posal of marriage which he had made to Elizabeth only 
two days before the eve of St. Bartholomew, on behalf 
of the Duke of Alencon, the French King's brother, a 
boy of seventeen, still went on ; while on the other hand, « 
in her usual crafty way, the Queen secretly supplied the^ 
Huguenots with money and weapons. 

I must say that for a Queen who made all those fine 
speeches, of which I have confessed myself to be rather 
tired, about living and dying a Maiden Queen, Eliza- 
beth was "going" to be married pretty often. Besides 



312 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

always having some English favorite or other whom 
she by turns encouraged and swore at and knocked 
about — for the Maiden Queen was very free with her 
fists — she held this French Duke off and on through 
several years. When he at last came over to England, 
the marriage articles were actually drawn up, and it was 
settled that the wedding should take place in six 
weeks. The Queen was then so bent upon it, that she 
prosecuted a Puritan named Stubbs, and a poor book- 
seller named Page, for writing and publishing a pam- 
phlet against it. Their right hands were chopped off 
for this crime; and poor Stubbs — more loyal than I 
should have been myself under the ^circumstances— 
immediately pulled off his hat with his left hand, and 
cried, "God save the Queen!" Stubbs was cruelly treat- 
ed ; for the marriage never took place after all, though 
the Queen pledged herself to the Duke with a ring from 
her own finger. He went away no better than he came, 
when the courtship had lasted some ten years alto- 
gether; and he died a couple of years afterward, 
mourned by Elizabeth, who appears to have been really 
fond of him. It is not much to her credit, for he was a 
bad enough member of a bad family. 

To return to the Catholics. There arose two orders 
of priests who were very busy in England, and who 
were much dreaded. These were the Jesuits, who were 
everywhere in all sorts of disguises, and the Seminary 
Priests. The people had a great horror of the first, 
because they were known to have taught that murder 
was lawful if it were done with an object of which they 
approved ; and they had a great horror of the second, 
because they came to teach the old religion, and to be 
the successors of "Queen Mary's priests," as those yet 
lingering in England were called, when they should die 
out. The severest laws were made against them, and 
were most unmercifully executed. Those who sheltered 
them in their houses often suffered heavily for what was 
an act of humanity ; and the rack, that cruel torture 
which tore men's limbs asunder, was constantly kept 
going. What these unhappy men confessed, or what 
was ever confessed by any one, under that agony, must 
always be received with great doubt, as it is certain that 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 313 

people have frequently owned to the most absurd and 
impossible crimes to escape such dreadful suffering. 
But I cannot doubt it to have been proved by papers, 
that there were many plots, both among the Jesuits, and 
with France, and with Scotland, and with Spain, for the 
destruction of Queen Elizabeth, for the placing of Mary 
on the throne, and for the revival of the old religion. 

If the English people were too ready to believe in 
plots, there were, as I have said, good reasons for it. 
When the massacre of St. Bartholomew was yet fresh in 
their recollection, a great Protestant Dutch hero, the 
Prince of Orange, was shot by an assassin, who con- 
fessed that he had been kept and trained for the purpose 
in a collegeof Jesuits. The Dutch, in their surprise and 
distress, offered to make Elizabeth their sovereign, but 
she declined the honor, and sent them a small army in- 
stead, under the command of the Earl of Leicester, 
who, although a capital court favorite, was not much of 
a general. He did so little in Holland that his campaign 
there would probably have been forgotten, but for its 
occasioning the death of one of the best writers, the 
best knights, and the best gentlemen of that or any age. 
This was Sir Philip Sidney, who was wounded by a 
musket ball in the thigh as he counted a fresh horse, 
after having had his own killed under him. He had to 
ride back wounded, a long distance, and was very faint 
with fatigue and loss of blood, when some water, for 
which he had eagerly asked, was handed to him. But 
he was so good and gentle even then, that seeing a poor 
badly wounded common soldier lying on the ground, 
looking at the water with longing eyes, he said, "Thy 
necessity is greater than mine," and gave it up to him, 
This touching action of a noble heart is perhaps as well 
known as any incident in history — is as famous far and 
wide as the blood-stained Tower of London, with its 
ax, and block, and murders out of number. So delight- 
ful is an act of true humanity, and so glad are mankind 
to remember it. 

At home, intelligence of plots began to thicken every 
day. I suppose the people never did Jlive under such 
continual terrors as those by which they were possessed 
now, of Catholic risings, and burnings, and poisonings, 



314 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and I don't know what. Still, we must always remem- 
ber that they lived near and close to awful realities of 
that kind, and that with their experience it was not diffi- 
cult to believe in any enormity. The government had 
the same fear, and ^did not take the best means of dis- 
covering the truth — for, besides torturing the suspected, 
it employed paid spies, who will always lie for their own 
profit. It even made some of the conspiracies it 
brought to light, by sending false letters to disaffected 
people, inviting them to join in pretended plots, which 
they too readily did. 

But one great real plot was at length discovered, and 
it ended the career of Mary, Queen ot Scots. A semi- 
nary priest named Ballard, and a Spanish soldier named 
Savage, set on and encouraged by certain French 
priests, imparted a design to one Anthony Babington — 
a gentleman of fortune in Derbyshire, who had been for 
some time a secret agent of Mary's — for murdering the 
Queen. Babington then confided the scheme to some 
other Catholic gentlemen who were his friends, and they 
joined in it heartily. They were vain, weak-headed 
young men, ridiculously confident, and preposterously 
proud of their plan ; for they got a gimcrack painting 
made of the six choice spirits who were to murder Eliza- 
beth, with Babington in an attitude for the center figure. 
Two of their numbers, however, one of whom 'was a 
priest, kept Elizabeth's wisest minister, Sir Francis 
Walsingham, acquainted with the whole project from 
the first. The conspirators were completely deceived to 
the final point, when Babington gave Savage, because 
he was shabby, a ring from his finger, and some money 
from his purse, wherewith to buy himself new clothes 
in which to kill the Queen. Walsingham, having the 
full evidence against the whole band, and two letters of 
Mary's besides, resolved to seize them. Suspecting 
something wrong, they stole out of the city one by one, 
and hid themselves in St. John's Wood, and other 
places, which really were hiding places then; but they 
were all taken and all executed. When they were 
seized, a gentleman was sent from Court to inform 
Mary of the fact, and of her being involved in the dis- 
covery. Her friends have complained that she was 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 315 

kept in very hard and severe custody. It does not 
appear very likely, for she was going out hunting that 
very morning. 

Queen Elizabeth had been warned long ago, by one 
in France who had good information of what was 
secretly doing, that in holding Mary alive, she held "the 
wolf that would devour her." The Bishop of London 
had, more lately, given the Queen's favorite minister 
the advice in writing, "forthwith to cut off the Scottish 
Queen's head." The question now was, what to do 
with her. The Earl of Leicester wrote a little note 
home from Holland, recommending that she should be 
quietly poisoned ; that noble favorite having accustomed 
his mind, it is possible, to remedies of that nature. His 
black advice, however, was disregarded, and she was 
brought to trial at Fotheringay Castle in Northampton- 
shire, before a tribunal of forty, composed of both reli- 
gions. There, and in the Star Chamber at Westmin- 
ster, the trial lasted a fortnight. She defended herself 
with great ability, but could only deny the confessions 
that had been made by Babington and others ; could 
only call her own letters, produced against her by her 
own secretaries, forgeries; and, in short, could 
only deny everything. She was found guilty, and de- 
clared to have incurred the penalty of death. The Par- 
liament met, approved the sentence, and prayed the 
Queen to have it executed. The Queen replied that she 
requested them to consider whether no means could be 
found of saving Mary's life without endangering her 
own. The Parliament rejoined, No ; and the citizens illu- 
minated their houses and lighted bonfires, in token of 
their joy that all these plots and troubles were to be 
ended by the death of the Queen of Scots. 

She, feeling sure that her time was now come, wrote a 
letter to the Queen of England, making three entreaties 
first, that she might be buried in France: secondly, 
that she might not be executed in secret, but before her 
servants and some others ; thirdly, that after her death, 
her servants should not be molested, but should be 
suffered to go home with the legacies she left them. It 
was an affecting letter, and Elizabeth shed tears over it, 
but sent no answer. Then came a special ambassador 



316 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

from France, and another from Scotland, to intercede for 
Mary's life ; and then the nation began to clamor more 
and more for her death. 

What the real feelings or intentions of Elizabeth were, 
can never be known now : but I strongly suspect her of 
only wishing one thing more than Mary's death, and 
that was to keep free of the blame of it. On the ist of 
February, 1587, Lord Burleigh having drawn out the 
warrant for the execution, the Queen sent to the secre- 
tary Davison to bring it to her, that she might sign it: 
which she did. Next day, when Davison told her it 
was sealed, she angrily asked him why such haste was 
necessary! Next day but one, she joked about it, and 
swore a little. Again, next day but one, she seemed to 
complain that it was not yet done, but still she would not 
be plain with those about her. So, on the 7th, the 
Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury, with the Sheriff of 
Northamptonshire, came with the warrant to Fotherin- 
gay, to tell the Queen of Scots to prepare for death. 

When those messengers of ill omen were gone, Mary 
made a frugal supper, drank to her servants, read over 
her will, went to bed, slept for some hours, and then 
arose and passed the remainder of the night saying 
prayers. In the morning she dressed herself in her best 
clothes; and, at eight o'clock, when the sheriff came for 
her to go to her chapel, took leave of her servants, who 
were there assembled praying with her, and went down- 
stairs, carrying a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the 
other. 

Two of her women and four of her men were allowed 
to be present in the hall ; where a low scaffold, only two 
feet from the ground, was erected and covered with 
black ; and where the executioner from the Tower and 
his assistant stood, dressed in black velvet. The hall 
was full of people. While the sentence was being read 
she sat upon a stool ; and, when it was finished, she again 
denied her guilt, as she had done before. The Earl of 
Kent and the Dean of Peterborough, in their Protestant 
zeal, made some very unnecessary speeches to her ; to 
which she replied that she died in the Catholic religion, 
and they need not trouble themselves about that matter. 
When her head and neck were uncovered by the execu- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 317 

tioners, she said that she had not been used to be un- 
dressed by such hands, or before so much company. 

Finally, one of her women fastened a cloth over her 
face, and she laid her neck upon the block, and repeated 
more than once in Latin, "Into thy hands, O Lord, I 
commend my spirit!' Some say her head was struck off 
in two blows, some say in three. However that may be, 
when it was held up, streaming with blood, the real hair 
beneath the false hair she had long worn was seen to be 
as gray as that of a woman of seventy, though she was 
at that time only in her forty-sixth year. All her 
beauty was gone. 

But she was beautiful enough to her little dog, who 
cowered under her dress, frightened, when she went 
upon the scaffold, and who lay down beside her head- 
less body when all earthly sorrows were over. 

PART THIRD. 

On its being formally made known to Elizabeth that 
the sentence had been executed upon the Queen of 
Scots, she showed the utmost grief and rage, drove her 
favorites from her with violent indignation, and sent 
Davison to the Tower ; from which place he was only 
released in the end by paying an immense fine, which 
completely ruined him. Elizabeth not only overacted 
her part in making these pretences, but most basely re- 
duced to poverty one of her faithful servants for no 
other fault than obeying her commands. 

James, King of Scotland, Mary's son, made a show 
likewise of being very angry on the occasion ; but he 
was a pensioner of England to the amount of five thou- 
sand pounds a year, and he had known very little of his 
mother, and he possibly regarded her as the murderer 
of his father, and he soon took it quietly. 

Philip, King of Spain, however, threatened to do 
greater things than ever had been done yet, to set up 
the Catholic religion and punish Protestant England. 

Elizabeth, hearing that he and the Prince of Parma 
were making great preparations for this purpose, in 
order to be beforehand with them, sent out Admiral 
Drake (a famous navigator, who had sailed about the 



318 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

world, and bad already brought great plunder from 
Spain) to the port of Cadiz, where he burned a hundred 
vessels full of stores. This great loss obliged the Span- 
iards to put off the invasion for a year; but it was none 
the less formidable for that, amounting to 130 ships, 
19,000 soldiers, 8,000 sailors, 2,000 slaves, and between 
2,000 and 3,000 Jgreat guns. England was not idle in 
making ready to resist this great force. All the men 
between sixteen years old and sixty were trained and 
drilled; the national fleet of ships|(in number only thirty- 
four at first) was enlarged by public contributions and 
by private ships fitted out by noblemen ; the city of 
London, of its own accord, furnishing double the num- 
ber of ships and men that it was required to provide ; 
and, if ever the national spirit was up in England, it 
was up all through the country to resist the Spaniards. 
Some of the Queen's advisers were for seizing the prin- 
cipal English Catholics, and putting them to death ; but 
the Queen — who to her honor used to say that sne would 
never .believe any ill of her subjects, which a parent 
would not believe of her own children — rejected the ad- 
vice, and only confined a few of those who were the 
most suspected, in the fens of Lincolnshire. The great 
body of Catholics ' deserved this confidence ; for they 
behaved most loyally, nobly, and bravely. 

So, with all England firing up like one strong angry 
man, and with both sides of the Thames fortified, and 
with the soldiers under arms, and with the sailors in 
their ships, the country waited for the coming of the 
proud Spanish fleet, which was called The Invicible 
Armada. The Queen herself, riding in armor on a 
white horse, and the Earl of Essex and the Earl of 
Leicester holding her bridle rein, made a brave speech 
to the troops at Tilbury Fort, opposite Gravesend. 
which was received with such enthusiasm as is seldom 
known. Then came the Spanish Armada into the Eng- 
lish Channel, sailing along in the form of a half moon, 
of such great size that it was seven miles broad. But 
the English were quickly upon it, and woe then to all 
the Spanish ships that dropped a little out of the halt 
moon, for the English took them instantly! And it 
soon appeared that the great Armada was anything but 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 319 

invincible, for on a summer night bold Drake sent eight 
blazing fire-ships right into the midst of it. In terrible 
consternation the Spaniards tried to get out to sea, and 
so became dispersed ; the English pursued them at a 
great advantage; a storm came on. and drove the 
Spaniards among rocks and shoals ; and the swift end 
of the invincible fleet was that it lost thirty great ships 
and ten thousand men, and, defeated and disgraced, 
sailed home again. Being afraid to go by the English 
Channel, it sailed all around Scotland and Ireland, 
some ot the ships getting cast away on the latter coast 
in bad weather, the Irish, who were a kind of savages, 
plundered those vessels and killed their crews. So 
ended this great attempt to invade and conquer Eng- 
land. And I think it will be a long time before any 
other invincible fleet, coming to England with the same 
object, will fare much better than the Spanish Armada. 

Though the Spanish king had had this bitter taste of 
English bravery, he was so little the wiser for it as still 
to entertain his old designs, and even to conceive the 
absurd idea of placing his daughter on the English 
throne. But the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh Sir 
Thomas Howard, and some other distinguished leaders, 
put to sea from Plymouth, entered the port of Cadiz 
once more, obtained a complete victory over the ship- 
ping assembled there, and got possession of the town. 
In obedience to the Queen's express instructions, they 
behaved with great humanity ; and the principal loss of 
the Spaniards was a vast sum of money which they had 
to pay for ransom. This was one of many gallant 
achievements on the sea effected in this reign. Sir 
Walter Raleigh himself, after marrying a maid of honor 
and giving offense to the Maiden Queen thereby, had 
already sailed to South America in search of gold. 

The Earl of Leicester was now dead, and so was Sir 
Thomas Walsingham, whom Lord Burleigh was soon to 
follow. The principal favorite was the Earl of Essex, 
a spirited and handsome man, a favorite with the people 
too as well as with the Queen, and possessed of many 
admirable qualities. It was much debated at Court 
whether there should be peace with Spain or no, and he 
was very urgent for war. He also tried hard to have 



320 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

his own way in the appointment of a deputy to govern 
in Ireland. One day, while this question was in dis- 
pute, he hastily took offense, and turned his back upon 
the Queen ; as a gentle reminder of which impropriety 
the Queen gave him a tremendous box on the ear, and 
told him to go to the devil. He went home instead, 
and did not reappear at the Court for half a year or so, 
when he and the Queen were reconciled, though never 
(as some suppose) thoroughly. 

From this time the fate of the Earl of Essex and that 
of the Queen seemed to be blended together. The 
Irish were still perpetually quarreling and fighting 
among themselves, and he went over to Ireland as 
Lord Lieutenant, "to the great joy of his enemies (Sir 
Walter Raleigh among the rest), who were glad to have 
so dangerous a rival far off. Not being by any means 
successful there, and knowing that his enemies would 
take advantage of that circumstance to injure him with 
the Queen, he came home again, though against her 
orders. The Queen, being taken by surprise when he 
appeared before her, gave him her hand to kiss, and he 
was overjoyed — though it was not a very lovely hand 
by this time ; but in the course of the same day she 
ordered him to confine himself to his room, and two or 
three days afterward had him taken into custody. 
With the same sort of caprice — and a capricious an old 
woman she now was as ever wore a crown, or a head 
either — she sent him broth from her own table on his 
falling ill from anxiety, and cried about him. 

He was a man who could find comfort and occupation 
in his books, and he did so for a time: not the least 
happy, I dare say, of his life. But it happened, unfor- 
tunately for him, that he held a monopoly in sweet 
wines: which means that nobody could sell them with- 
out purchasing his permission. This right, which was 
only for a term, expiring, he applied to have it re- 
newed. The Queen refused with the rather strong ob- 
servation — but she did make strong observations— that 
an unruly beast must be stinted in his food. Upon 
this, the angry Earl , who had been already deprived of 
many offices, thought himself in danger of complete 
ruin, and turned against the Queen, whom he called a 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 321 

vain old woman, who had grown as crooked in her mind 
as she had in her figure. These uncomplimentary ex- 
pressions the ladies of the Court immediately snapped 
up and carried to the Queen, whom they did not put in 
a better temper, you may believe. The same Court 
ladies, when they had beautiful dark hair of their own, 
used to wear false red hair, to be like the Queen. So 
they were not very high-spirited ladies, however high 
in rank. 

The worst object of the Earl of Essex, and some 
friends of his who used to meet at Lord Southampton's 
house, was to obtain possession of the Queen, and oblige 
her by force to dismiss her ministers and change her 
favorites. One Saturday, the 7th of February, 1601, the 
council suspecting this, summoned the Earl to come 
before them. He, pretending to be ill, declined it; it 
was then settled among his friends, that as the next day 
would be Sunday, when many of the citizens usually 
assembled at the Cross by St. Paul's Cathedral, he 
should make one bold effort to induce them to rise and 
follow him to the Palace. 

So on the Sunday morning, he and a small body of 
adherents started out of his house — Essex House by the 
Strand, with steps to the river — having first shut up in 
it, as prisoners, some members of the council who came 
to examine him — and hurried into the City with the 
Earl at their head, crying out, "For the Queen! For 
the Queen ! A plot is laid for my life !" No one heeded 
them, however, and when they came to St. Paul's there 
were no citizens there. In the meantime the prisoners 
at Essex House had been released by one of the Earl's 
own friends; he had been promptly proclaimed a 
traitor in the City itself ; and the streets were barricaded 
with carts and guarded by soldiers. The Earl got back 
to his house, by water, with difficulty, and, after an 
attempt to defend his house against the troops and can- 
non by which it was soon surrounded, gave himself up 
that night. He was brought to trial on the 19th, and 
found guilty; on the 25th, he was executed on Tower 
Hill, where he died, at thirty-four years old, both cour- 
ageously and penitently. His stepfather suffered with 
him. His enemy, Sir Walter Raleigh, stood near the 

21 History 



322 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

scaffold at "the time — but not so near it as we shall see 
him stand before we finish his history. 

In this case, as in the cases of the Duke of Norfolk 
and Mary, Queen of Scots, the Queen had commanded, 
and countermanded, and agam commanded, the execu- 
tion. It is probable that the death of her young and 
gallant favorite, in the prime of his good qualities, was 
never off her mind afterward, but she held out, the same 
vain, obstinate, and capricious woman, for another 
year. Then she danced before her Court on a state 
occasion — and cut, I should think, a mighty ridiculous 
figure, doing so in an immense ruff, stomacher, and 
wig, at seventy years old. For another year still, she 
held out, but without any more dancing, and as a 
moody, sorrowful, broken creature. At last, on the 
ioth of March, 1603, having been ill of a very bad cold^. 
and made worse by the death of the Countess of Not- 
tingham, who was her intimate friend, she fell into a 
stupor and was supposed to be dead. She recovered 
her consciousness, however, and then nothing would 
induce her to go to bed ; for she said she knew that if 
she did she should never get up again. There she lay 
for ten days on cushions on the floor, without any food, 
until the Lord Admiral got her into bed at last, partly 
by persuasions and partly by main force. When they 
asked her who should succeed her, she replied that her 
seat had been the seat of Kings, and that she would 
have for her successor "No rascal's son, but a King's!" 
Upon this, the lords present stared at one another, and 
took the liberty of asking whom she meant ; to which 
she replied, "Whom should I mean, but our cousin of 
Scotland!" This was on the 23d of March. They 
asked her once again that day, after she was speechless, 
whether she was still in the same mind? She struggled 
up in bed, and joined her hands over her head in the' 
form of a crown, as the only reply she could make. At; 
three o'clock next morning she very quietly died, in the 
forty-fifth year of her reign. 

That reign had been a glorious one, and is made for- 
ever memorable by the distinguished men who flourished 
in it. Apart from the great voyagers, statesmen, and 
scholars whom it produced, the names of Bacon, Spen- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 323 

ser, and Shakspeare will always be remembered with 
pride and veneration by the civilized world, and will 
always impart (though with no great reason, perhaps) 
some portion of their luster to the name of Elizabeth 
herself. It was a great reign for discovery and com- 
merce, and for English enterprise and spirit in general. 
It was a great reign for the Protestant religion and for 
the Reformation which made England free. The Queen 
was very popular, and in her progresses or journeys 
about her dominions was everywhere received with the 
liveliest joy. I think the truth is, that she was not half 
so good as has been made out, and not half so bad as 
she has been made out. She had her fine qualities, but 
she was coarse, capricious, and treacherous, and had 
all the faults of an excessively vain young woman long 
after she was an old one. On the whole, she had a great 
deal too much of her father in her to please me. 

Many improvements and luxuries were introduced in 
the course of these five- and- forty years in the general 
manner of living; but cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and 
bear-baiting were still the national amusements, and a 
coach was so rarely seen, and was such an ugly and 
cumbersome affair when it was seen, that even the 
Queen herself, on many high occasions, rode on horse- 
back on a pillion behind the Lord Chancellor. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER JAMES I. — PART FIRST. 

"Our cousin of Scotland" was ugly, awkwaril, and 
shuffling both in mind and person. His tongue was 
much too large for his mouth, his legs were much too 
weak for his body, and his dull goggle-eyes stared and 
rolled like an idiot's. He was cunning, covetous, waste- 
ful, idle, drunken, greedy, dirty, cowardly, a great 
swearer, and the most conceited man on earth. His 
figure — what is commonly called rickety, from his birth 
— presented a most ridiculous appearance, dressed in 
thick padded clothes, as a safeguard against being 
stabbed, of which he lived in continual fear, of a grass- 



324 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

green color from head to foot, with a hunting-horn 
dangling at his side instead of a sword, and his hat and 
feather sticking over one eye or hanging on the back of 
his head, as he happened to toss it on. He used to loll 
on the necks of his favorite courtiers, and slobber their 
faces, and kiss and pinch their cheeks ; and the greatest 
favorite he ever had used to sign himself in his letters 
to his royal master, His Majesty's "dog and slave," and 
used to address his majesty as "his Sowship " His 
majesty was the worst rider ever seen, and thought him- 
self the best. He was one of the most impertinent talk- 
ers, in the broadest Scotch ever heard, and boasted of 
being unanswerable in all manner of argument. He 
wrote some of the most wearisome treaties ever read — 
among others a book upon witchcraft, in which he was a 
devout believer — and thought himself a prodigy of au- 
thorship. He thought, and wrote, and said, that a king 
had a right to make and unmake what laws he pleased, 
and ought to be accountable to nobody on earth. This 
is the plain true character of the personage whom the 
greatest men about the court praised and flattered to 
that degree that I doubt if there be anything much more 
shameful in the annals of human nature. 

He came to the English throne with great ease. The 
miseries of a disputed succession had been felt so long, 
and so dreadfully that he was proclaimed within a few 
hours of Elizabeth's death, and was accepted by the 
nation, even without being asked to give any pledge 
that he would govern well, or that he would redress 
crying grievances. He took a month to come from 
Edinburgh to London ; and, by way of exercising his 
new power, hanged a pickpocket on the journey without 
any trial, and knighted everybody he could lay hold of. 
He made hwo hundred knights before he got to his 
palace in London, and seven hundred before he had 
been in it three months. He also shoveled sixty-two 
new peers into the House of Lords — and there was a 
pretty large sprinkling of Scotchmen among them, you 
may believe. 

His Sowship's prime Minister, Cecil, for I cannot do 
better than call his majesty what his favorite called him, 
was the enemy of Sir Walter Raleigh, and also of Sir 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 325 

Walter's political friend. Lord Cohham ; and his Sow- 
ship's first trouble was a plot originated by these two, 
and entered into by some others, with the old object of 
seizing the King and keeping him in imprisonment until 
he should change his ministers. There were Catholic 
priests in the plot, and there were Puritan noblemen 
too; for, although the Catholics and Puritans were 
strongly opposed to each other, they united at this time 
against his Sowship, because they knew that he had a 
design against both, after pretending to be friendly to 
each ; this design being to have only one high and con- 
venient form of the Protestant religion, which every- 
body should be bound 8 to belong to, whether they liked it 
or not. This plot was mixed up with another, which 
may or may not have had some reference to placing on 
the throne, at some time, the Lady Arabella Stuart, 
whose misfortune it was to be the daughter of the 
younger brother of his Sowship's father, but who was 
quite innocent of any part in the scheme. Sir Walter 
Raleigh was accused on the confession of Lord Cobham 
— a miserable creature, who said one thing at one time 
and another thing at another time, and could be relied 
upon in nothing. The trial of Sir Walter Raleigh lasted 
from eight in the morning until nearly midnight; he 
defended himself with such eloquence, genius, and 
spirit against all accusations, and against the insults of 
Coke, the Attorney-General, — who according to the cus- 
tom of the time, foully abused him, — that those who 
went there detesting the prisoner, came away admiring 
him, and declaring that anything so wonderful and so 
captivating was never heard. He was found guilty, 
nevertheless, and sentenced to death. Execution was 
deferred and he was taken to the Tower. The two 
Catholic priests, less fortunate, were executed with the 
usual atrocity ; and Lord Cobham and two others were 
pardoned on the scaffold. His Sowship thought it 
wonderfully knowing in him to surprise the people by 
pardoning these three at the very block ; but, blundering 
and bungling as usual, he had very nearly overreached 
himself. For the messenger on horseback who brought 
the pardon came so late that he was pushed to the out- 
side of the crowd, and was obliged to shout and roar out 



326 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

what he came for. The miserable Cobham did not gain 
much by being spared that day. He lived,, both as a 
prisoner and as a beggar, utterly despied and miserably 
poor, for thirteen years, and then died in an old out- 
house belonging to one of his former servants. 

This plot got rid of, and Sir Walter Raleigh safely 
shut up in the Tower, his Sowship held a great dispute 
with the Puritans on their presenting a petition to him, 
and had it all his 'own way — not so very wonderful, as 
he would talk continually, and would not hear anybody 
else, — and filled the bishops with admiration. It was 
comfortably settled that there was to be only one form 
of religion, and that all men were to think exactly alike. 
But, although this was arranged two centuries and a 
half ago, and although Jthe arrangement was supported 
by much fining and imprisonment, I do not find that it 
is quite successful, even yet. 

His Sowship, having that uncommonly high opinion 
of himself as a king, had a very low opinion of Parlia- 
ment as a power that audaciously wanted to control him. 
When he called his first Parliament after he had been 
king a year, he accordingly thought he would take 
pretty high ground with them, and told them that he 
commanded them as an "abosolute king." The Parlia- 
ment thought those strong words, and saw the necessity 
ot upholding their authority. His Sowship had three 
children — Prince Henry, Prince Charles and the Princess 
Elizabeth. It would have been^well for one of these, 
and we shall too soon see which, if he had learned a 
little wisdom concerning Parliaments from his father's 
obstinacy. 

Now, the "people still laboring'under their old dread 
of the Catholic religion, this Parliament revived and 
strengthened the severe laws against it. And this so 
angered Robert'Catesby,a restless Catholic gentleman of 
an old family, that he formed one of the most desperate 
and terrible designs ever conceived in the mind of man ; 
no less a scheme than the Gunpowder Plot. 

His object was, when the King, lords, and Commons 
should be assembled at the next opening of Parliament, 
to blow them up, one and all, with a great mine of gun- 
powder. The first person to whom he confided this nor- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 327 

rible idea was Thomas Winter, a Worcestershire gentle- 
man who had served in the army abroad, and had been 
secretly employed in Catholic projects. While Winter 
was yet undecided, and when he had gone over to the 
Netherlands to learn from the Spanish Ambassador 
there whether there was any hope of Catholics being 
relieved through the intercession of the King ot Spain 
with his Sowship, he found at Ostend a tall, dark, dar- 
ing man, whom he had known when they were both sol- 
diers abroad, and whose name was Guido — or Guy — 
Fawkes. Resolved to join the plot, he proposed it to 
this man, knowing him to be the man for any desperate 
deed, and. they two came back to England together. 
Here they admitted two other conspirators— Thomas 
Percy.Jrelated to the Earl of Northumberland, and John 
Wright, his brother-in-law. All these met together in a 
solitary house in the open fields which were then near 
Clement's Inn, now a closely blocked-up part of Lon- 
don ; and, when they had all taken a great oath of se- 
cresy, Catesby told the rest what his plan was. They 
then went upstairs into a garret, and received the sac- 
rament from Father Gerard, a Jesuit, who is said not to 
have known actually of the Gunpowder Plot, but who, I 
think, must have had his suspicions that there was 
something desperate afoot. 

Percy was a Gentleman Pensioner, and as he had oc- 
casional duties to perform about the Court, then kept at 
Whitehall, there would be nothing suspicious in his liv- 
ing at Westminster. So, having looked well about him, 
and having found a house to let, the back of which 
joined the Parliament House, he hired it of a person 
named Ferris, for the purpose of undermining the wall. 
Having got possession of this house, the conspirators 
hired another on the Lambeth side of the Thames, 
which they used as a storehouse for wood, gunpowder, 
and other combustible matters. These were to be re- 
moved at night, and' afterward were removed, bit by 
bit, to the house at Westminster ; and, that there might 
he some trusty person to keep watch over the Lambeth 
stores, they admitted another conspirator, by name 
Robert Kay, a very poor Catholic gentleman. 

All these arrangements had been made some months, 



328 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and it was a dark wintry December night, when the 
conspirators, who had ^been in the meantime dispersed 
to avoid observation, met in the house at Westminster, 
and began to dig. They had laid in a good stock of 
eatables to avoid going in and out, and they dug and 
dug with great ardor. But, the wall being tremend- 
ously thick, and the work very severe, they took into 
their plot Christopher Wright, a younger brother of 
John Wright, that they might have a new pair of hands 
to help. And Christopher Wright fell to like a fresh 
man, and they dug and dug by night and by day, and 
Fawkes stood sentinel all the time. And if any man's 
heart seemed to fail him at all, Fawkes said, "Gentle- 
men, we have abundance of powder and shot here, and 
there is no fear of our being taken alive, even if discov- 
ered" The same Fawkes, who, in the capacity'of senti- 
nel, was always prowling about, soon picked up the 
intelligence that the King had prorogued the Parlia- 
ment again, from the 7th of February, the day first 
fixed upon, until the 3d of October. When the conspir- 
ators knew this they agreed to separate until after the 
Christmas holidays, and to take no notice of each other 
in the meanwhile, and never to write letters to one an- 
other on any account. So the house in Westminster was 
shut up again, and I suppose the neighbors thought 
that those strange-looking men who lived there so 
gloomily, and went out so seldom, were gone away to 
have a merry Christmas somewhere. 

It was the beginning of February, 1605, when Catesby 
met his fellow-conspirators again at this Westminster 
House. He had now admitted three more — John Grant, 
a Warwickshire gentleman of a melancholy temper, 
who lived in a double house near Stratford-upon-Avon, 
with a frowning wall all around it, and a deep moat; 
Robert Winter, eldest brother of Thomas, and Cates- 
by's own servant, Thomas Bates, who, Catesby thought, 
had had some suspicion of what his master was about. 
These three had all suffered more or less for their reli- 
gion in'Elizabeth's time. And now they all began to dig 
again, and they dug and dug by night and by day. 

They found it dismal work alone there, underground, 
with such a fearful secret on their minds, and so many 




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A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 329 

murders before them. They were filled with wild fal- 
lacies. Sometimes they thought they heard a great bell 
tolling, deep down in the earth under the Parliament 
House ; sometimes they thought they heard low voices 
muttering about the Gunpowder Plot ; once in the morn- 
ing they really did hear a great rumbling noise over 
their heads, as they dug and sweated in their mine. 
Every man stopped and looked aghast at his neighbor, 
wondering what had happened, when that bold prowler, 
Fawkes, who had been out to look, came in and told 
them that it was only a dealer in coals, who had occu- 
pied a cellar under the Parliament House, removing his 
stock in trade to some other place. Upon this, the con- 
spirators, who with all their digging and digging had 
:not yet dug through the tremendously thick wall, 
! changed their plan; hired that cellar, which was directly 
under the House of Lords ; put six-and-thirty barrels of 
gunpowder in it, and covered them over with fagots and 
coals. Then they all dispersed again till September, 
! when the following new conspirators were admitted: 
Sir Edward Bayham, of Gloucestershire; Sir Everard 
Digby, of Rutlandshire ; Ambrose Rookwood, of Suffolk ; 
Francis Tresham, of Northamptonshire. Most of these 
were rich, and were to assist the plot, some with money 
and some with horses on which the conspiators were to 
ride through the country and rouse the Catholics after 
the Parliament should be blown into air. 

Parliament being again prorogued from the 3d ot 
October to the 5th of November, and the conspirators 
being uneasy lest their design should have been found 
out, Thomas Winter said he would go up into the 
House of Lords on the day of the prorogation, and see 
how matters looked. Nothing could be better. The 
unconscious Commissioners were walking Jabout and 
talking to one another, just over the six-and-thirty bar- 
rels of gunpowder. He came back and told the rest so, 
and they went on witlTtheir preparations. They hired 
a ship, and kept it ready in the Thames, in which 
Fawkes was to sail for Flanders after firing with a slow 
match the train that was to "explode the 'powder. A 
number of Catholic gentlemen, not in the secret, were 
invited, on pretense of a 'hunting party, to meet Sir 
22 History 



330 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Everard Digby at Dunchurch on the fatal day, that 
they might be ready to act together. And now all was 
ready. 

But now the great wickedness and danger which had 
been all along at the bottom of this wicked plot began 
to show itself. As the 5th of November drew near, most 
of the conspirators remembering that they had friends 
and relations who would be in the House of Lords that I 
day, felt some natural relenting, and a wish to warn 
them to keep away. They were not much comforted 
by Catesby's declaring that in such a cause he would ; 
blow up his own son. Lord Mounteagle, Tresham's 1 
brother-in-law, was certain to be in the house; and; 
when Tresham found that he could not prevail upon the ; 
rest to devise any means of sparing their friends, he ! 
wrote a mysterious letter to this lord and left it at his ! 
lodging, in the desk, urging him to keep away from the j 
opening of Parliament, "since God and man had con- i 
curred to punish the wickedness of the times." It con- 1 
tained the words "that Parliament should receive a ter- 
rible blow, and yet should not see who hurt them. * j 
And it added, "the danger is past as soon as you have 
burned the letter." 

The ministers and courtiers made out that his Sow- 
ship, by a direct 'miracle ^frorn Heaven, found out what 
this letter meant. The truth is, that they were not 
long, as few men would be, in finding out 'for them- 
selves ; and it was decided to let the conspirators alone, 
until the very day before the opening of Parliament. 
That the conspirators had their fears, is certain; fori 
Tresham himself said before them all that they were 
every one dead men ; and, although even he did not take 
flight, there is reason to suppose that he had warned 
other persons besides Lord Mounteagle. However, they 
were all firm; and Fawkes, who was a man of iron, 
went down every day and night to keep watch in the 
cellar as usual. He was there about two in the after- 
noon of the 4th, when the Lord Chamberlain and Lord 
Mounteagle threw open the door and looked in. ' 'Who 
are you, friend?" said they. "Why," said Fawkes, "I 
am Mr. Percy's servant, and am looking after his store 
of fuel here." "Your master has laid in a pretty good 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 331 

store," they returned, and shut the door, and went 
away. Fawkes, upon this, posted off to the other con- 
spirators to tell them all was quiet, and went back and 
shut himself up in the dark black cellar again, where 
he heard the bell go twelve o'clock and usher in the 5th 
of November. About two hours afterward, he slowly 
opened the door, and came out to look about him, in his 
old prowling way. He was instantly seized and bound 
by a party of [soldiers under Sir Thomas Knevett. He 
had a watch upon him, some touchwood, some tinder, 
some slow matches ; and there was a dark lantern with 
a candle in it, lighted, behind the door. He had his 
boots and spurs on — to ride to the ship, I suppose — and 
it was well for the soldiers 'that they took him so sud-. 
denly. If they had left him but a moment's time to 
light a match, he certainly would have tossed it in 
among the powder, and blown up himself and them. 

They took him to the King's bedchamber first of all, 
and there the King, causing him to be held very tight, 
and keeping a good way off, asked him how he could 
have the heart to intend to destroy so many innocent 
people. "Because," said Guy Fawkes, "desperate dis- 
eases need desperate Remedies. " To a little Scotch 
favorite, with a face like a terrier, who asked him, witb 
no particular wisdom, why he had collected so much 
gunpowder, he replied, because he had meant to blow 
Scotchmen back to Scotland, and it would take a deal 
of powder to do that. Next day he was carried to the 
Tower, but would make no confession. Even after be- 
ing horribly tortured, he confessed nothing that the 
Government did not already know; though he must 
have been in a fearful state — as his signature, still pre- 
served, in contrast with his natural handwriting before 
he was put upon [the dreadful rack, most frightfully 
shows. Bates, a very different man, soon said the Jes- 
uits had had to do with the plot, and probably, under 
the torture, would as readily have said anything. 
Tresham, taken and put in the Tower, too, made con* 
fessions and unmade them, and died of an illness that 
was heavy upon him. Rookwood, who had stationer] 
relays of his own horses all the way to Dunchurch, die] 
not mount to escape until the middle of the day, when 



332 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the news of the plot was all over London. On the road 
he came up with the two Wrights, Catesby, and Percy ; 
and they all galloped together into Northamptonshire. 
Thence to Dunchurch, where they found the proposed 
party assembled. Finding, however, that there had 
been a plot, and that it had been discovered, the party 
disappeared in the course of the night, and left them 
alone with Sir Everard Digby. Away they all rode 
again through Warwickshire and Worcestershire, to a 
house called Holbeach, on the borders ot Staffordshire. 
They tried to raise the Catholics on their way, but were 
indignantly driven off by them. All this time they were 
hotly pursued by the sherriff of Worcester, and a fast 
increasing concourse of riders. At last, resolving to de- 
fend themselves at Holbeach, they shut themselves up 
in the house, and put some wet powder before the fire 
to dry. But it blew up, and Catesby was singed and 
blackened, and almost killed, and some of the others 
were sadly hurt. Still, knowing that they must die, 
they resolved to die there, and with only their swords 
in their hands)appeared at the windows to be shot at by 
the sheriff and his assistants. Catesby said to Thomas 
Winter, after Thomas had been hit in the right arm, 
which dropped powerless by his side, "Stand by me, 
Tom, and we will die together!" which they did, being 
shot through the body by two bullets from one gun. 
John Wright and Christopher Wright and Percy were 
also shot. Rookwood and Digby were taken; the 
former with a broken arm and a wound in his body too. 
It was the 15th of January before the trial of Guy 
Fawkes, and such of the other conspirators as were left 
alive, came on. They were all found guilty, all hanged, 
drawn, and quartered; some, in St. Paul's Churchyard, 
on the top of Ludgate Hill ; some, before the Parlia- 
ment House. A Jesuit priest, named Henry Garnet, to 
whom the dreadful design was said to have been com- 
municated, was taken and tried ; and two of his serv- 
ants, as well as a poor priest who was taken with him, 
were tortured without mercy. He himself was not tor- 
tured, but was surrounded in the Tower by tamperers 
and traitors, and so was made unfairly to convict him- 
self out of his own mouth. He said, upon his trial, that 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 333 

he had done all he could to prevent the deed, and that 
he could not make public what had been told him in 
confession — though I am afraid he knew of the plot in 
other ways. He was found guilty and executed, after a 
manful defense, and the Catholic Church made a saint 
of him ; some rich and powerful persons, who had noth- 
ing to do with the project, were finded and imprisoned 
for it by the Star Chamber; the Catholics, in general, 
who had recoiled with horror from the idea of the infer- 
nal contrivance, were unjustly put under more severe 
laws than before, ; and this was the end of the Gunpow- 
der Plot. 

PART SECOND. 

His Sowship would pretty willingly, I think, have 
blown the House of Commons into the air himself; for 
his dread and jealousy of it knew no bounds all through 
his reign. When he was hard pressed for money he 
was obliged to order it to meet, as he could get no 
money without it ; and when it asked him first to abolish 
some of the monopolies in necessaries of life, which 
were [a great grievance to the people, and to redress 
other public wrongs, he flew into a rage and got rid of 
it again. At one time he wanted it to consent to the 
Union of England with Scotland, and quarreled about 
that. At ^another time it wanted him to put down a 
most infamous Church abuse, called the High Commis- 
sion Court, and he quarreled with it about that. At an- 
other time it entreated him not to be quite so fond of 
his archbishops and bishops who made speeches in his 
praise too awful to be related, but to have some little 
consideration for the poor Puritan clergy who were per- 
secuted for preaching in their own way, and not accord- 
ing to the archbishops and bishops, and they quarreled 
about that. In short, what with hating the House of 
Commons, and pretending not to hate it; and what 
with now sending some of its members who opposed him 
to Newgate or to the Tower, and now telling the rest that 
they must not presume to make speeches about the pub- 
lic affairs which could not possibly concern them ; and 
what with cajoling, and bullying, and frightening, and 
being frightened — the House of Commons was the 



334 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

plague of his Sowship's existence. It was pretty firm, 
however, in maintaining its rights, and insisting that 
the Parliament should make the laws, and not the King 
by his own single proclamations, which he tried hard to 
do ; and his Sowship was so often distressed for money, 
in consequence, that he sold every sort of title and pub- 
lic office as if they were merchandise, and even invented 
a new dignity called a Baronetcy, which anybody could 
buy for a thousand pounds. 

These disputes with his Parliaments, and his hunting, 
and his drinking, and his lying in bed, for he was a 
great sluggard — occupied his Sowship pretty well. The 
rest of his time he chiefly passed in hugging and slob- 
bering his favorites. The first of these was Sir Philip 
Herbert, who had no knowledge whatever, except of 
dogs, and horses, and hunting, but whom he soon made 
Earl of Montgomery. The next, and a much more 
famous one, was Robert Carr, or Ker, for it is not certain 
which was his right name, who came from the Border 
country, and whom he soon made Viscount Rochester, 
and afterward Earl of Somerset. The way in which his 
Sowship doted on this handsome young man is even 
more odious to think of than the way in which the really 
great men of England condescended to bow down before 
him. The favorite's great friend was a certain Sir 
Thomas Overbury, who wrote his love letters for him, 
and assisted him in the duties of his many high places, 
which his own ignorance prevented him from discharg- 
ing. But this same Sir Thomas just having manhood 
enough to dissuade the favorite from a wicked marriage 
with the beautiful Countess of Essex, who was to get a 
divorce from her husband for the purpose, the said 
countess in her rage got Sir Thomas put into the Tower, 
and there poisoned him. Then the favorite and this bad 
woman were publicly married by the King's pet bishop, 
with as much to-do and rejoicing as if he had been the 
best man, and she the best woman, upon the face of the 
earth. 

But, after a longer sunshine than might have been ex- 
pected — of seven years or so, that is to say — another 
handsome young man started up and eclipsed the Earl 
of Somerset. This was George Villiers, the youngest 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 335 

son of a Leicestershire gentleman ; who came to court 
with all the Paris fashions on him, and could dance as 
well as the best mountebank that ever was seen. He 
soon danced himself into the good graces of his Sowship, 
and danced the other favorite out of favor. Then, it 
was all at once discovered that the Earl and Countess of 
Somerset had not deserved all those great promotions 
and mighty rejoicings, and they were separately tried 
for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and for other 
crimes. But the King was so afraid of his late favorite's 
publicly telling some disgraceful things he knew of him 
— which he darkly threatened to do — that he was even ex- 
amined with two men standing, one on either side of 
him, each with a cloak in his hand, ready to throw it 
over his head and stop his mouth if he should break out 
with what he had it in his power to tell. So a very lame 
affair was purposely made of the trial, and his punish- 
ment was an allowance of four thousand pounds a year in 
retirement, while the Countess was pardoned, and 
allowed to pass into retirement too. They hated one 
another by this time and lived to revile and torment 
each other some years. 

While these events were in progress, and while his 
Sowship was making such an exhibition of himself, from 
day to day and from year to year, as is not often seen in 
any sty, three remarkable deaths took place in England. 
The first was that of the minister, Robert Cecil, Earl of 
Salisbury, who was past sixty, and had never been 
strong, being deformed from his birth. He said at last 
that he had no wish to live; and no Minister need have 
had, with his experience of the meanness and wicked- 
ness of those disgraceful times. The second was that 
of the Lady Arabella Stuart, who alarmed his Sowship 
mightily by privately marrying William Seymour, son 
of Lord Beauchamp, who was a descendant of King 
Henry VII., and who, his Sowship thought, might con- 
sequently increase and strengthen any claim she might 
one day set up to the throne. She was separated from 
her husband (who was put in the Tower) and thrust 
into a boat to be confined at Durham. She escaped in 
a man's dress to get away in a French ship from Grave- 
send to France, but unhappily missed her husband, who 



336 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

had escaped too, and was soon taken. She went raving 
mad in the miserable Tower, and died there after four 
years. The last, and the most important of these three 
deaths, was that of Prince Henry, the heir to the throne, 
in the nineteenth year of his age. He was a promising 
young prince, and greatly liked; a quiet, well-con- 
ducted youth, of whom two very good things are know: 
first, that his father was jealous of him ; secondly, that 
he was the friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, languishing 
through all those years in the Tower, and often said that 
no man but his father would keep such a bird in such a 
cage. On the occasion of the preparation for the mar- 
riage of his sister, the Princess Elizabeth, with a for- 
eign prince (and an unhappy marriage it turned out), he 
came from Richmond, where he had been very ill, to 
greet his new brother-in-law at the palace of Whitehall. 
There he played a great game at tennis, in his shirt, 
though it was very cold weather, and was seized with an 
alarming illness, and died within a fortnight of a putrid 
fever. For this young prince Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, 
in his prison in the Tower, the beginning of a History 
of the World: a wonderful instance how little his Sow- 
ship could do to confine a great man's mind, however 
long he might imprison his body. 

And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had 
many faults, but who never showed so many merits as 
in trouble and adversity, may bring me at once to the 
end of this sad story. After an imprisonment in the 
Tower of twelve long years, he proposed to resume 
those old sea voyages of his, and to go to South Amer- 
ica in search of gold. His Sowship, divided between 
his wish to be on good terms with the Spaniards, 
through whose territory Sir Walter must pass (he had 
long had an idea of marrying Prince Henry to a Span- 
ish Princess), and his avaricious eagerness to get hold 
of the gold, did not know what to do. But in the end 
he set Sir Walter free, taking securities for his return; 
and Sir Walter fitted out an expedition at his own cost, 
and, on the 28th of March, 161 7, sailed away in com- 
mand of one of its ships, [which he ominously called The 
Destiny. The expedition failed ; the common men, not 
finding the gold they had expected, mutinied; a quarrel 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 337 

broke out between Sir Walter and the Spaniards, who 
hated him for old successes of his against them ; and he 
took and burned a little town called St. Thomas. For 
this he was denounced to his Sowship by the Spanish 
Ambassador as a pirate ; and returning almost broken- 
hearted, with his hopes and fortunes shattered, his com- 
pany of friends dispersed, and his brave son (who had 
been one of them) killed, he was taken — through the 
treachery of Sir Lewis Stukely, his near relation, a 
scoundrel and a Vice- Admiral and was once'again im- 
mured in his prison-home of so many years. 

His Sowship being mightily disappointed in not get- 
ting any gold, Sir Walter Raleigh was tried as unfairly, 
and with as many lies and evasions as the judges and 
law officers and every other authority in Church and 
State habitually practiced under such a King. Atter a 
great deal of prevarication on all parts but his own, it 
was declared that he must die under his former sen- 
tence, now fifteen years old. So, on the 28th of October, 
1618, he was shut up in the Gate House at Westminster 
to pass his last night on earth, and there he took leave 
of his good and faithful lady, who was worthy to have 
lived in better days. At eight o'clock next morning, 
after a cheerful breakfast, and a pipe, and a cup of 
good wine, he was taken to Old Palace Yard in West- 
minster, where the scaffold was set up, and where so 
many people of high degree were assembled to see him 
die that it was a matter of some difficulty to get him 
through the crowd. He behaved most nobly, but if 
anything lay heavy on his mind it was that Earl of 
Essex, whose head he had seen roll off; and he sol- 
emnly said that he had had no hand in bringing him to 
the block, and that he had shed tears for him when he 
died. As the morning was very cold, the sheriff said, 
would he come down to a fire for a little space, and 
warm himself? But Sir Walter thanked him, and said 
no, he would rather it were done at once, for he was ill 
of fever and ague, and in another quarter of an hour his 
shaking fit would come upon him if he were still alive, 
and his enemies might then suppose that he trembled 
for fear. With that, he kneeled and made a very 
beautiful and Christian prayer. Before he laid his head 



338 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

upon the block he felt the "edge of the axe, and said, 
with a smile upon his face, that it was a sharp medicine, 
but would cure the worst disease. When he was bent 
down, ready for death, he said to the executioner, find- 
ing that he hesitated, "What dost thou fear? Strike, 
man!" So the ax came down and struck his head off, 
in the sixty-sixth year of his age. 

The new favorite got on fast. He was made a vis- 
count, he was made Duke of Buckingham, he was made 
a marquis, he was made Master of the Horse, he was 
made Lord High Admiral — and the Chief Commander 
of the gallant English forces that had dispersed the 
Spanish Armada was displaced to make room for him. 
He had the whole kingdom at his disposal, and his 
mother sold all the profits and honors of the State as if 
she had kept a shop. He blazed alljover with diamonds 
and other precious stones, from his hat-band and his 
earrings to his shoes. Yet he was an ignorant, pre- 
sumptuous, swaggering compound of knave and fool, 
with nothing but his beauty and his dancing to recom- 
mend him. This is the gentleman who called himself 
his Majesty's dog and slave, and called his Majesty 
Your Sowship. His Sowship called him Steenie ; it is 
supposed, because that was a nickname for Stephen, 
and because St. Stephen was generally represented in 
pictures as a handsome saint. 

His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wit's end 
by his trimming between the general dislike of the 
Catholic religion at home, and his desire to wheedle and 
flatter it abroad, as his only means of getting a rich 
princess for his son's wife: a part of whose fortune he 
might cram into his greasy pockets. Prince Charles — 
or, as his Sowship called him, Baby Charles — being 
now Prince of Wales, the old project of a marriage with 
the Spanish King's daughter had been revived for 
him ; and as she could not marry a Protestant without 
leave from the Pope, his Sowship" 'himself secretly and 
meanly wrote to his Infallibility, asking for it. The 
negotiation for this Spanish marriage take up a larger 
space in great books than you can imagine, but the up- 
shot of it all is, that when it had been held off by the 
Spanish Court for a long time, Baby Charles and Steenie 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 339 

set off [in disguise as Mr. Thomas Smith and Mr. John 
Smith, to see the Spanish Princess ; that Baby Charles 
pretended to be desperately in love with her, and jumped 
off walls to look at her, and made a considerable fool of 
himself in a good many ways; that she was called Prin- 
cess of Wales, and that the whole Spanish Court be- 
lieved Baby Charles to be all but dying for her sake, as 
he expressly told them he was ; that Baby Charles and 
Steenie came back to England, and were received with 
as much rapture as it they had been a blessing to it ; 
that Baby Charles had actually fallen in love with Hen- 
rietta Maria, the French King's sister, whom he had 
seen in Paris; that he thought it a wonderfully fine and 
princely thing to have deceived the Spaniards all 
through ; and that he openly said, with a chuckle, as 
soon as he was safe and sound at home again, that the 
Spaniards were great fools to have believed him. 

Like most dishonest men, the Prince and the favorite 
complained that the people whom they had deluded 
were dishonest. They made such misrepresentations of 
the treachery of the Spaniards in this business of the 
Spanish match, that the English nation became eager 
for a war with them. Although the gravest Spaniards 
laughed at the idea of his Sowship in a warlike attitude, 
the Parliament granted money "for the beginning of 
hostilities, and the treaties with Spain were publicly 
declared to be at an end. The Spanish ambassador in 
London — probably with the help of the fallen favorite, 
the Earl of Somerset — being unable to obtain speech 
with his Sowship, slipped a paper into his hand, declar- 
ing that he was a prisoner in his own house, and was 
entirely governed by Buckingham and his creatures. 
The first effect of this letter was that his Sowship be- 
gan to cry and whine, and took Baby Charles away from 
Steenie, and went down to Windsor, gabbling all sorts 
of nonsense. The end of it was that his Sowship hugged 
his dog and slave, and said he was quite satisfied. 

He had given the Prince and the favorite almost un- 
limited power to settle anything with the Pope, as to 
the Spanish marriage; and he now, with a view to a 
French one, signed a treaty that all Roman Catholics 
in England should exercise their religion freely, and 



340 A CHILD S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

should never be required to take any oath contrary 
thereto. In ^return for this, and for other concessions 
much less to be defended, Henrietta Maria was to be- 
come the Prince's wife, and was to bring him a fortune 
of eight hundred thousand crowns. 

His Sowship's eyes were getting red with eagerly 
looking for the money, when the end of a gluttonous 
life came upon him ; and, after a fortnight's illness, on 
Sunday the 27th of March, 1625, he died. He had 
reigned twenty-two years, and was fifty-nine years old. 
I know of nothing more abominable in history than the 
adulation that was lavished on this King, and the vice 
and corruption that such a barefaced habit of lying pro- 
duced in his court. It is much to be doubted whether 
one man of honor, and not utterly self-disgraced, kept 
his place near James I. Lord Bacon, that able and 
wise philosopher, as the First Judge in the Kingdom in 
his reign, became a public spectacle of dishonesty and 
corruption; and in his base flattery of his Sowship, 
and in his crawling servility to his dog and slave, dis- 
graced himself even more. But a creature like his Sow- 
ship setupon a throne is like the plague, and everybody 
receives infection from him. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES I. — PART FIRST. 

Baby Charles became King Charles I. in the twenty- 
fifth year of his age. Unlike his father, he was usually 
amiable in his private character, and grave and digni- 
fied in his bearing; but, like his father, he had mon- 
strously exaggerated notions of the rights of a king, 
and was evasive, and not to be trusted. If his word 
could have been relied upon, his history might have had 
a different end. 

His first care was to send over that insolent upstart, 
Buckingham, to bring Henrietta Maria from Paris to 
be his Queen ; upon which occasion Buckingham — with 
his usual audacity — made love to the young Queen of 
Austria, and was very indignant indeed with Cardinal 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGL AN li. 341 

Richelieu, the French Minister, for thwarting his inten- 
tions. The English people were very well disposed to 
like their new Queen, and to receive her with great 
favor when she came among them as a stranger. But 
she held the Protestant religion in great dislike, and 
brought over a crowd of unpleasant priests, who made 
her do some very ridiculous things, and forced them- 
selves upon the public notice in many disagreeable ways. 
Hence, the people soon came to dislike her, and she 
soon came to dislike them and she did so much all 
through this reign in setting the King (who was dot- 
ingly fond of her) against his subjects, that it would 
have been better for him if she had never been born. 

Now, you are to understand that King Charles I. — of 
his own determination to be a high'and mighty King not 
to be called to account by anybody, and urged on by his 
Queen besides — deliberately set himself to put his Par- 
liament down and to put himself up. You are also to 
understand, that even in pursuit of this wrong idea 
(enough in'itself to have ruined any king) he never took 
a straight course, but always took a crooked one. 

He was bent upon war with Spain, though neither 
the House of Commons nor the people were quite clear 
as to the justice of that war, now that they began to 
think a little more about the story of the Spanish match. 

But the King rushed into it hotly, raised money by 
illegal means to meet its expenses, and encountered a 
miserable failure at Cadiz, in the very first year of his 
reign. An expedition to Cadiz had been made in hope 
of plunder, but as it was not successful, it was neces- 
sary to get a grant of money from the Parliament ; and 
when they met, in no very complying humor, the King 
told them "to make haste to let him have it, or it would 
be the worse for themselves." Not put in a more com- 
plying humor by this, they impeached the King's fav- 
orite, the Duke of Buckingham, as the cause (which he 
undoubtedly was) of many great public grievances and 
wrongs. The King, to save him, dissolved the Parlia- 
ment without getting the monev he wanted ; and when 
the Lords implored ^him to consider and grant a little 
delay, he replied, "No, not one minute." He then be- 



342 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

gan to raise money for himself by the following means 
among others: 

He levied certain duties, called tonnage and pound- 
age, which had not been granted by the Parliament, 
and could lawfully be levied by no other power; he 
called upon the seaport towns to furnish, and to pay all 
the cost for three months of a fleet of armed ships ; 
and he required the people to unite in lending him large 
sums of money, the repayment of which was very 
doubtful. If the poor people refused this, they were 
pressed as soldiers or sailors; if the gentry refused, 
they were sent to prison. Five gentlemen, named Sir 
Thomas Darnel, John Corbet, Walter Earl, John 
Heveningham, and Everard Hampden, for refusing 
were taken up by a warrant ot the King's privy council, 
and were sent to prison without any cause but the King's 
pleasure being stated tor their imprisonment. Then 
the question came to be solemnly tried whether this 
was not a violation of Magna Charta, and an encroach- 
ment by the King on the highest rights of the English 
people. His lawyers contended No, because to encroach 
upon the rights of the English people would be to do 
wrong, and the King could do no wrong. The accom- 
modating judges decided in favor of this wicked non- 
sense ; and here was a fatal division between the King 
and the people. 

For all this, it became necessary to call another Parlia- 
ment. The people, sensible of the danger in which their 
liberties were, chose for it those who were best known 
for their determined opposition to the King; but still 
the King, quite blinded by his determination to carry 
everything before him, addressed them when they met 
in a contemptuous manner, and just told them in so 
many words that he had only called them together be- 
cause he wanted money. The Parliament, strong 
enough and resolute enough to know that they would 
lover his tone, cared little for what he said, and laid be- 
fore him one of the great documents of history, which 
is called the Petition of Right, requiring that the free 
men of England should no longer be called upon to 
lend the King money, and should no longer be pressed 
or imprisoned for refusing to do so; further, that the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 343 

free men of England should no longer be seized by the 
King's special mandate or warrant, it being contrary to 
their rights and liberties and the laws of their country. 
At first the King returned an answer to this petition, 
in which he tried to shirk it altogether ; but the House 
of Commons then showing their determination to go 
on with the impeachment of Buckingham, the King in 
alarm returned an answer, giving his consent to all that 
was required of him. He not only afterward departed 
from his word and honor on these points, over and over 
again, but, at this very time, he did the mean and dis- 
sembling act of publishing his first answer and not his 
second — merely that the people might suppose that the 
Parliament had not got the better of him. 

That pestilent Buckingham, to gratify his own 
wounded vanity, had by this time involved the country 
in war with France, as well as with Spain. For such 
miserable causes and such miserable creatures are wars 
sometimes made! But he was destined to do little 
more mischief in this world. One morning, as he was 
going out of his house to his carriage, he turned to 
speak to a certain Colonel Cryer, who was with him ; 
and he was violently stabbed with a knife, which the 
murderer left sticking in his heart. This happened in 
his hall. He had had angry words upstairs, just be- 
fore, with some French gentlemen, who were immedi- 
ately suspected by his servants, and had a close escape 
from being set upon and killed. In the midst of the 
noise, the real murderer, who had gone to the kitchen 
and might easily have got away, drew his sword and 
cried ^out, "I am the man!" His name was John Fel- 
ton, a Protestant and a retired officer in the army. He 
said he had had no personal ill-will to the Duke, but 
had killed him as a curse to the country. He had aimed 
his blow well, for Buckingham had only had time to cry 
out, "Villain!" and then he drew out the knife, fell 
against a table, and died. 

The council made a mighty business of examining 
John Felton about this murder, though it was a plain 
case enough, one would think. He had come seventy 
miles to do it, he told them, and he did it for the reason 
he had declared ; if they put him upon the rack, as that 



344 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

noble Marquis of Dorset whom he saw before him, had 
the goodness to threaten, he gave that marquis warn- 
ing, that he would accuse him as his accomplice ! The 
King was unpleasantly anxious to have him racked, 
nevertheless; but as the judges now found out that tor- 
ture was contrary to the law of England, — it is a pity 
they did not make the discovery a little sooner, — John 
Felton was simply executed for the murder he had 
done. A murder it undoubtedly was, and not in the 
least to be defended; though he had freed England 
from one of the most profligate, contemptible, and base 
court favorites to whom it has ever yielded. 

A very different man now arose. This was Sir 
Thomas Wentworth, a Yorkshire gentleman, who had 
sat in Parliament for a long time, and who had 
favored arbitrary and haughty principles, but who had 
gone over to the people's side on receiving offense from 
Buckingham. The King, much wanting such a man — 
for, besides being naturally favorable to the King's 
cause, he had great abilities — made him first a Baron, 
and then a Viscount, and gave him high employment, 
and won him most completely. 

A Parliament, however, was still in existence, and 
was not to be won. On the 20th of January, 1629, Sir 
John Eliot, a great man who had been active in the 
Petition of Right, brought forward other strong resolu- 
tions against the King's chief instruments, and called 
upon the Speaker to put them to the vote. To this the 
Speaker answered, "he was commanded otherwise by 
the King," and got up to leave the chair — which, accord- 
ing to the rules of the House of Commons, would have 
obliged it to adjourn without doing anything more — 
when two members, named Mr. Hollis and Mr. Valen- 
tine, held him down. A scene of great confusion arose 
among the members; and while many swords were 
drawn and flashing about, the King, who was kept in- 
formed of all that was going on, told the captain of his 
guard to go down to the House and force the doors. 
The resolutions were by that time, however, voted, and 
the House adjourned. Sir John Eliot and those two 
members who had held the Speaker down, were quickly 
summoned before the council. As they claimed it to be 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 345 

their privilege not to answer out of Parliament for any- 
thing they had said in it, they were committed to the 
Tower. The King then went down and dissolved the 
Parliament, in a speech wherein he made mention of 
these gentlemen as "vipers," which did not do him 
much good that ever I have heard of. 

As they refused to gain their liberty by saying they 
were sorry for what they had done, the King, always 
remarkably unforgiving, never overlooked their offense. 
When they demanded to be brought up before the Court 
of King's Bench, he even resorted to the meanness of 
having them moved about from prison to prison, so that 
the writs issued for that purpose should not legally find 
them. At last they came before the 'court and were 
sentenced to heavy fines, and to be imprisoned during 
the King's pleasure. When Sir John Eliot's health had 
quite given way, and he so longed for change of air and 
scene as to petition for his release, the King sent back 
the answer, worthy of his Sowship himself, that the 
petition was not humble enough. When he sent an- 
other petition by his young son, in which he pathetically 
offered to go back to prison when his health was re- 
stored, if he might be released for its recovery, the 
King still disregarded it. When he died in the Tower, 
and his children petitioned to be allowed to take his 
body down to Cornwall, there to lay it among the ashes 
of his forefathers, the King "returned for answer, "Let 
Sir John Eliot's body be buried in the church of that 
parish where he died." All this was like a very little 
King, I think. 

And now, for twelve long years, steadily pursuing his 
design of setting himself up and putting the people 
down, the King called no Parliament ; but ruled withoxit 
one. If twelve thousand volumes were written in his 
praise, as a good many have been, it would still remain 
a fact, impossible to be denied, that for twelve years 
King Charles 1. reigned in England unlawfully and des- 
potically, seized upon his subjects' goods and money at 
his pleasure, and punished according to his unbridled 
will all who ventured to oppose him. It is a fashion 
with some people to think that this King's career was 



346 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

cut short ; but I must say myself that I think he ran a 
pretty long one. 

William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the 
King's right-hand man in the religious part of the put- 
ting down of the people's liberties. Laud, who was a 
sincere man, of large learning but small sense — for the 
two things sometimes go together in very different 
quantities — though a Protestant, held opinions so near 
those of the Catholics that the Pope wanted to make a 
Cardinal of him, if he would have accepted that favor. 
He looked upon vows, robes, lighted candles, images, 
and so forth, as amazingly important in religious cere- 
monies, and he brought in an immensity of bowing 
and candle snuffing. He also regarded archbishops and 
bishops as a sort of miraculous persons, and was in- 
veterate in the last degree against any who thought oth- 
erwise. Accordingly, he offered up thanks to Heaven, 
and was in a state of much pious pleasure, when a 
Scotch clergyman named Leighton was pilloried, 
whipped, branded in the cheek, and had one of his ears 
cut off and one of his nostrils slit, for calling bishops 
trumpery, and the inventions of men. He originated 
on a Sunday morning the prosecution of William 
Prynne, a barrister who was of similar opinions, and who 
was fined a thousand pounds ; who was pilloried ; who 
had his ears cut off on two occasions — one ear at a time 
— and who was imprisoned for life. He highly ap- 
proved of the punishment of Dr. Bastwick, a physician, 
who was also fined a thousand pounds; and who after- 
ward had his ears cut off, and was imprisoned for life. 
These were gentle methods of persuasion, some will tell 
you ; I think they were rather calculated to be alarming 
to the people. 

In the money part of the putting down of the people's 
liberties, the King was equally gentle, as some will tell 
you; as I think, equally alarming. He levied those 
duties of tonnage and poundage, and increased them 
as he thought fit. He granted monopolies to companies 
of merchants on their paying him for them, notwith- 
standing the great complaints that had, for years and 
years, been made on the subject of monopolies. He 
fined the people for disobeying proclamations issued by 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 847 

his Sowship in direct violation of law. He revived the 
detested Forest laws, and took private property to 
himself as his forest right. Above all, he determined 
to have what was called Ship Money ; that is to say, 
money for the support of the fleet — not only from the 
seaports, but from all the counties of England: having 
found out that, in some ancient time or other, all the 
counties paid it. The grievance of this ship money 
being somewhat too strong, John Chambers, a citizen 
of London, refused to pay his part of it. For this the 
Lord Mayor ordered John Chambers to prison, and for 
that John Chambers brought a suit against the Lord 
Mayor. Lord Say, also, behaved like a real nobleman, 
and declared he would not pay. But the sturdiest and 
best opponent of the ship money was John Hampden, 
a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, who had sat among 
the "vipers" in the House of Commons when there was 
such a thing, and who had been the bosom friend of Sir 
John Eliot. This case was tried before the twelve 
judges in the Court of Exchequer, and again the King's 
lawyers said it was impossible that ship money could 
be wrong, because the King could do no wrong, how- 
ever hard he tried — and he really did try very hard dur- 
ing these twelve years. Seven of the judges said that 
was quite true, and Mr. Hampden was bound to pay: 
five of the judges said that was quite false, and Mr. 
Hampden was not bound to pay. So, the King tri- 
umphed (as he thought), by making Hampden the most 
popular man in England; where matters were getting 
to that height now that many honest Englishmen could 
not endure their country, and sailed away across the 
seas to found a colony in Massachusetts Bay in America. 
It is said that Hampden himself and his relation, Oliver 
Cromwell, were going with a company of such voya- 
gers, and were actually on board ship, when they were 
stopped by a proclamation prohibiting sea captains to 
carry out such passengers without the royal license. 
But oh ! it would have been well for the King if he had 
let them go ! 

This was the state of England. If Laud had been a 
madman just broke loose, he could not have done more 
mischief than he did in Scotland. In his endeavors (in 



348 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

which he was seconded by the King, then in person in 
that part of his dominions to force his own ideas of 
bishops, and his own religious forms and ceremonies, 
upon the Scotch, he roused that nation to a perfect 
frenzy. They formed a solemn league, which they 
called The Covenant, for the preservation of their own 
religious forms; they rose in arms throughout the 
whole country ; they summoned all their men to prayers 
and sermons twice a day by beat of drum ; they sang 
psalms, in which they compared their enemies to all the 
evil spirits that ever were heard of ; and they solemnly 
vowed to smite them with the sword. At first the King 
tried force, then treaty, then a Scotch Parliament, 
which did not answer at all. Then he tried the Earl of 
Strafford, formerly Sir Thomas Wentworth; who, as 
Lord Wentworth, had 'been governing Ireland. He, 
too, had carried it with a very high hand there, though 
to the benefit and prosperity of that country. 

Strafford and Laud were for conquering the Scottish 
people by force of arms. Other lords who were taken 
into council, recommended that a Parliament should at 
last be called; to which the King unwillingly con- 
sented. So, on the 13th of April, 1640, that then strange 
sight, a Parliament, was seen at Westminster. It is 
called the Short Parliament, for it lasted a very little 
while. While the members were all looking at one 
another, doubtful who would dare to speak, Mr. Pym 
arose and set forth all that the King had done unlawfully 
during the past twelve years, and what was the position 
to which England was reduced. This great example 
set, other members took courage and spoke the truth 
freely, though with great patience and moderation. 
The King, a little frightened, sent to say that if they 
would grant him a certain sum on certain terms, no 
more ship money should be raised. They debated the 
matter for two days ; and then, as they would not give 
him all he asked without promise or inquiry, he dis- 
solved them. 

But they knew very well that he must have a Parlia- 
ment now; and he began to make that discovery too, 
though rather late in the day. Wherefore, on the 24th 
of September, being then at York with an army col- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 349 

lected against the Scottish people, but his own men 
sullen and discontented like the rest of the nation, the 
King told the great council of the Lords, whom he had 
called to meet him there, that he would summon another 
Parliament to assemble on the 3rd of November. The 
soldiers of the Covenant had now forced their way into 
England and had taken possession of the northern 
counties, where the coals are got. As it would never 
do to be without coals, and as the King's troops could 
make no head against the Covenanters so full of gloomy 
zeal, a truce was made, and a treaty with Scotland was 
taken into consideration, Meanwhile the northern 
counties paid the Covenanters to leave the coals alone, 
and keep quiet. 

We have now disposed of the Short Parliament. 
We have next to see what memorable things were done 
by the Long one. 

PART SECOND. 

The Long Parliament assembled on the 3d of Novem- 
ber, 1640. On that day week the Earl of Strafford 
arrived from York, very sensible that the spirited and 
determined men who formed that Parliament were no 
friends toward him, who had not only deserted the cause 
of the people, but who had on all occasions opposed him- 
self to their liberties. The King told him, for his com- 
fort, that the Parliament "should not hurt one hair of his 
head." But, on the very next day Mr. Pym, in the 
House of Commons, and with great solemnity, im- 
peached the Earl of Strafford as a traitor. He was 
immediately taken into custody and fell from his proud 
height. 

It was the 226. of March before he was brought to 
trial in Westminster Hall ; where, although he was very 
ill and suffered great pain, he defended himself with 
such ability and majesty, that it was doubtful whether 
he would not get the best of it. But on the thirteenth 
day of the trial, Pym produced in the House of Com- 
mons a copy of some notes of a council, found by young 
Sir Harry Vane in a red velvet cabinet belonging to his 
father (Secretary Vane, who sat at the council-table 
with the Earl), in which Strafford had distinctly told 



350 A CHILD'S HISTORY QF ENGLAND. 

the King that he was free from all rules and obligations 
of government, and might do with his people whatever 
he liked; and in which he had added "You have an 
army in Ireland that you may employ to reduce this 
kingdom to obedience." It was not clear whether by 
the words "this kingdom" he had really meant England 
or Scotland; but the Parliament contended that he 
meant England, and this was treason. At the same 
sitting of the House of Commons it was resolved to 
bring in a bill of attainder declaring the treason to have 
been committed in preference to proceeding with the 
trial by impeachment, which would have required the 
treason to be proved. 

So, a bill was brought in at once, was carried through 
the House of Commons by a large majority, and was 
sent up to the House of Lords. While it was still 
uncertain whether the House of Lords would pass it and 
the King consent to it, Pym disclosed to the House of 
Commons that the King and Queen had both been plot- 
ting with the officers of the army to bring up the 
soldiers and control the Parliament, and also to intro- 
duce two hundred soldiers into the Tower ot London to 
effect the Earl's ascape. The plotting with the army 
was revealed by one George Goring, the son of a lord of 
that name: a bad fellow who was one of the original 
plotters, and turned traitor. The King had actually 
given his warrant for the admission of the two hundred 
men into the Tower, and they would have got in too, 
but for the refusal of the governor — a sturdy Scotchman 
of the name ot Balfour — to admit them. These matters 
being made public, great numbers of people began to 
riot outside the Houses of Parliament, and to cry out 
for the execution of the Earl of Strafford, as one of the 
King's chief instruments against them. The bill passed 
the House of Lords while the people were in this state 
of agitation, and was laid before the King for his assent, 
together with another bill declaring that the Parlia- 
ment then assembled should not be dissolved or ad- 
journed without their own consent. The King — not 
unwilling to save a faithful servant, though he had no 
great attachment for him — was in some doubt what to 
do; but he gave his consent to both bills, although he in 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 351 

his heart believed that the bill against the Earl of 
Strafford was unlawful and unjust. The Earl had writ- 
ten to him, telling him that he was willing to die for his 
sake. But he had not expected that his royal master 
would take him at his word quite so readily; for, when 
he heard his doom, he laid his hand upon his heart, and 
said, "Put not your trust in Princes!" 

The King, who never could be straightforward and 
plain through one single day or through one single sheet 
of paper, wrote a letter to the Lords, and sent it by the 
young Prince of Wales, entreating them to prevail with 
the Commons that "that unfortunate man should fultill 
the natural course of his life in a close imprisonment." 
In a postscript to the very same letter, he added, "If he 
must die, it were charity tojreprieve him till Saturday." 
If there had been any doubt of his fate, this weakness 
and meanness would have settled it. The very next 
day, which was the 12th of May, he was brought out to 
be beheaded on Tower Hill. 

Archbishop Laud, who had been so fond of having 
people's ears cropped off and their noses slit, was now 
confined in the Tower too ; and when the Earl went by 
his window to his death, he was there, at his request, 
to give him his blessing. They had been great friends 
in the King's cause, and the Earl had written to him in 
the days of their power that he thought it would be an 
admirable thing to have Mr. Hampden publicly whipped 
for refusing to 'pay the ship money. However, those 
high and mighty doings were over now, and the Earl 
went his way to death with dignity and heroism. The 
Governor wished him to get into a coach at the Tower 
gate, for fear the people should tear him to pieces ; but 
he said it was all one to him whether he died by the 
ax or by the people's hands. So he walked, with a firm 
tread and a stately look, and sometimes pulled off his 
hat to^them as he passed along. They were profoundly 
quiet. He made a speech on the scaffold from some 
notes he had prepared (the paper was found lying there 
after his head was struck off), and one blow of the ax 
killed him, in the forty-ninth year of his age. 

This bold and daring act the Parliament accompanied 
by other famous measures, all originating (as even this 



352 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

did) in the King's having so grossty and so long abused 
his power. The name of Delinquents was applied to 
all sheriffs and other officers who had been concerned 
in raising the ship money or any other money, from 
the people, in an unlawful manner; the Hampden judg- 
ment was reversed ; the judges who had decided against 
Hampden were called upon to give large securities that 
they would take such consequences as Parliament might 
impose upon them ; and one was arrested as he sat in 
High Court, and carried off to prison. Laud was 
impeached; the unfortunate victims whose ears had 
been cropped and whose noses had been slit were 
brought out of prison in triumph; and a bill was passed 
declaring that a Parliament should be called every 
third year, and that if the King and the King's officers 
did not call it, the people should assemble of themselves 
and summon it, as of their own right and power. Great 
illuminations and rejoicings took place over all these 
things, and the country was wildly excited. That the 
Parliament took advantage ot this excitement and 
stirred them up by every means, there is no doubt; but 
you are always to remember those twelve long years, 
during which the King had tried so hard whether he 
really could do any wrong or not. 

All this time there was a great religious outcry against 
the right of the bishops to sit in Parliament; to which 
the Scottish people particularly objected. The English 
were divided on this subject, and, partly on this account 
and partly because they had had foolish expectations 
that the Parliament would be able to take off nearly all 
the taxes, numbers ot them sometimes wavered and 
inclined toward the King. 

I believe myself, that it, at this or almost any other 
period of his life, the King could have been trusted by 
any man not out of his senses, he might have saved 
himself and kept his throne. But, on the English army 
being disbanded, he plotted with the officers again, as 
he had done before, and established the fact beyond all 
doubt by putting his signature of approval to a petition 
against the Parliamentary leaders, which was drawn 
up by certain officers. When the Scottish army was 
disbanded, he went to Edinburgh in four days — which 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 353 

was going very fast at that time—to plot again, and so 
darkly too, that it is difficult to decide what his whole 
object was. Some suppose that he wanted to gain 
over the Scottish Parliament, as he did in fact gain over, 
by presents and favors, many Scottish lords and men 
ot power. Some think that he went to get proofs 
against the Parliamentary leaders in England of their 
having treasonably invited the Scottish people to come 
and help them. With whatever object he went to Scot- 
land, he did little good by going. At the instigation ot 
the Earl of Montrose, a desperate man, who was then 
in prison for plotting, he tried to kidnap three Scottish 
lords who escaped. A committee of the Parliament at 
home, who had followed to watch him, writing an 
account ot this Incident, as it was called, to the Parlia- 
ment, the Parliament made a fresh stir about it: were, 
or feigned to be, much alarmed for themselves; and 
wrote to the Earl of Essex, the commander-in-chief, for 
a guard to protect them. 

It is not absolutely proved that the King plotted in 
Ireland beside?, but it is very probable that he did, and 
that the Queen did, and that he had some wild hope of 
gaining the Irish people over to his side bv favoring a 
rise among them. Whether or no, they d'id rise in a 
most brutal and savage rebellion; in which, encour- 
aged by their priests, they committed such atrocities 
upon numbers of the English, of both sexes and of all 
ages, as nobody could believe, but for their being related 
on oath by eye witnesses. Whether one hundred 
thousand or two hundred thousand Protestants were 
murdered in this outbreak, is uncertain; but, that it was 
as ruthless and barbarous an outbreak as ever was 
known among any savage people is certain. 

The King came |home from Scotland, determined to 
make a great struggle for his lost power. He believed 
that, through his presents and favors, Scotland would 
take no part against him ; and the Lord Mayor of Lon- 
don received him with such a magnificent dinner that 
he thought he must have become popular again in 
England. It would take a good many Lord Mayors, 
however, to make a people, and the King soon found 
himself mistaken. 

23 History 



354 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Not so soon, though, but that there was a great oppo- 
sition in the Parliament to a celebrated paper put forth 
by Pymand Hampden and the rest, called "The Remon- 
strance," which set forth all the illegal acts that the 
King had ever done, but politely laid the blame of them 
on his bad advisers. Even when it was passed and 
presented to him, the King still thought himself strong 
enough to discharge Balfour from his command in the 
Tower, and to put in his place a man of bad character; 
to whom the Commons instantly objected, and whom 
he was obliged to abandon. At this time, the old 
outcry about the bishops became louder than ever, and 
the old Archbishop of York was so near being murdered 
as he went down to the House of Lords, — being laid 
hold of by the mob and violently knocked about, in 
return for very foolishly scolding a shrill boy who was 
yelping out "No Bishops!" — that he sent for all the 
bishops whe were in town, and proposed to them to sign 
a declaration that, as they could no longer without 
danger to their lives attend their duty in Parliament, 
they protested against the lawfulness of everything done 
in their absence. This they asked the King to send tc 
the House of Lords, which he did. Then the House of 
Commons impeached the whole party of bishops anc 
sent them off to the Tower. 

Taking no warning by this, but encouraged by then 
being a moderate party in the Parliament who objectec 
to these strong measures, the King on the 3d of Janu 
ary, 1642, took the rashest step that ever was taken fr 
mortal man. 

Of his own accord, and without advice, he sent tin 
Attorney- General to the House of Lords, to accuse 
treason certain members of Parliament who as popula 
leaders were the most obnoxious to him : Lord Kimbol 
ton. Sir Arthur Haselrig, Denzil Hollis, John Pym (the 
used to call him King Pym, he possessed such powe 
and looked so big), John Hampden, and William Strode 
The houses of those members he caused to be enterec 
and their paper to be sealed up. At the same time b 
sent a messenger to the House of Commons deman^ 
ing to have the five gentlemen who were members < 
that House immediately produced. To this the Hou: 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 355 

replied that they should appear as soon as there was 
any legal charge against them, and immediately ad- 
journed. 

Next day, the House of Commons send into the city 
to let the Lord Mayor know that their privileges are 
invaded by the King, and that there is no safety for 
anybody or anything. Then, when the five members 
are gone out of the way, down comes the King himself, 
with all his guard and from two to three hundred gen- 
tlemen and soldiers, of whom the greater part were 
armed. These he leaves in the hall; and then, with his 
nephew at his side, goes into the House, takes off his 
hat, and walks up to the Speaker's chair. The Speaker 
leaves it, the King stands in front of it, looks about him 
steadily for a little while, and says he has come for 
those five members. No one speaks, and then he calls 
John Pym by name. No one speaks, and then he calls 
Denzil Hollis by name. No one speaks, and then he 
asks the Speaker of the House where those five mem- 
bers are? The Speaker, answering on his knee, nobly 
replies that he is the servant of that House, and that he 
has neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, anything 
but what the House commands him. Upon this, the 
King, beaten from that time evermore, replies that he 
will seek them himself, for they have committed treason ; 
and goes out, with his hat in his hand, amid some aud- 
ible'murmurs from the members. 

No words can describe the hurry that arose out of 
doors when all this was known. The five members had 
gone for safety to a house in Coleman Street, in the city, 
where they were guarded all night; and, indeed, the 
whole city watched in arms like an army. At ten 
o'clock in the morning the King, already frightened at 
what he had done, came to the Guildhall, with only half 
a dozen lords, and made a speech to the people, hoping 
they would not shelter those whom he accused of 
treason. Next day, he issued a proclamation for the 
apprehension of the five members ; but the Parliament 
minded it so little that they made great arrangements 
for having them brought down to Westminster, in great 
state, five days afterward. The King was so alarmed 
now at his own imprudence, if not for his own safety, 



356 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

that he left his palace at Whitehall, and went away with 
his Queen and children to Hampton Court. 

It was the nth of May when the five members were 
carried in state and triumph to Westminster. They 
were taken by water. The river could not be seen for 
the boats on it ; and the five members were hemmed in 
by barges full of men and great guns, ready to protect 
them, at any cost. Along the Strand a large body of 
the 'train-bands of " London, under their commander 
Skippon, marched to be ready to assist the little fleet 
Beyond them came a crowd who choked the streets, 
roaring incessantly about the bishops and the Papists, 
and crying out contemptuously as they passed Whitehall, 
"What has become of the King?" With this great noise 
outside the House of Commons, and great silence 
within, Mr. Pym rose and informed the House of the 
great kindness with which they had been ^received in 
the city. Upon that, the House called the sheriffs in 
and thanked them, and requested the train-bands ; under 
their commander, Skippon, to guard the House of Com- 
mons every day. Then came four thousand men on 
horseback out of Buckinghamshire, offering^ their ser- 
vices as a guard too, and bearing a petition to the King, 
complaining of the injury that had been) done to Mr. 
Hampden, |who was their countryman and much beloved 
and honored. 

When the King [set off for Hampton Court, the gen- 
tlemen "and soldiers who had been with him followed 
him out of town as far as Kingston-upon-Thames ; next 
day Lord Digby came to them from the King at Hamp- 
ton Court, in his coach and six, to inform them that the 
King accepted their protection. This, the Parliament 
said, was making war against the kingdom, and Lord 
Digby fled abroad. The Parliament then immediately 
applied themselves to getting hold of the military power 
of the country, well knowing that the King was already 
trying hard to use it against them, and that he had 
secretly sent the Earl of Newcastle^to Hull, to secure a 
valuable magazine of arms and gunpowder that was 
there. In those times, every county had its own maga- 
zines of arms and powder, for its own train-bands or 
militia ; so the Parliament brought in a bill claiming 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 357 

the right (which up to this time had belonged to the 
King) of appointing the lord lieutenants of counties, 
who commanded these train-bands ; also of having all 
the forts, castles, and garrisons in the kingdom put into 
the hands of such governors as they, the Parliament, 
could confide in. It also passed a law depriving the 
bishops of their votes. The King gave his assent to that 
bill, but would not abandon the right of appointing the 
lord lieutenants, though he said he was willing to 
appoint such as might be.suggested to him by the Parlia- 
ment. When the Earl of Pembroke asked him whether 
he would not give way on that question for a time, he 
said, "By God! not for one hour!" and upon this he and 
the Parliament went to war. 

His young daughter was betrothed to the Prince of 
Orange. On pretense of taking her to the country of 
her future husband, the Queen was already got safely 
away to Holland, there to pawn the Crown jewels for 
money to raise an army on the King's side. The Lord 
Admiral being sick, the House of Commons now named 
the Earl of Warwick to hold his place for a year. The 
King named another gentleman. The House of Com- 
mons took its own way, and the Earl of Warwick became 
Lord Admiral without the King's consent. The Parlia- 
ment sent orders down to Hull to have that magazine 
removed to London; the King went down to Hull to 
take it himself. The citizens would not admit him into 
the town, and the governor would not admit him into 
the castle. The Parliament resolved that whatever the 
two Houses passed, and the King would not consent to, 
should be called an Ordinance, and should be as much 
a law as if he did consent to it. The King protested 
against this, and gave notice that these ordinances were 
not to be obeyed. The King, attended by the majority 
of the House of Peers and by many members of the 
House of Commons, established himself at York. 

The Chancellor went to him with the Great Seal, and 
the Parliament made a new Great Seal. The Queen 
sent over a ship full of arms and ammunition, and the 
King issued letters to borrow money at high interest. 
The Parliament raised twenty regiments of foot and 
seventy-five troops of horse; and the people willingly 



358 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

aided them with their money, plate, jewelry, and trink- 
ets — the married women even with their wedding rings. 
Every member of Parliament who could raise a troop or 
a regiment in his own part of the country, dressed it 
according to his taste and in his own colors, and com- 
manded it. Foremost among them all, Oliver Cromwell 
raised a troop of horse, thoroughly in earnest and thor- 
oughly well armed — who were, perhaps, the best soldiers 
that ever were seen. 

In some of their proceedings, this famous Parliament 
passed the bounds of previous law and custom, yielded 
to and favored riotous assemblages of the people, and 
acted tyranically in imprisoning some who differed from 
the popular leaders. But again, you are always to re- 
member that the twelve years during which the King 
had had his own willful way had gone before ; and that 
nothing could make the times what they might, could, 
would, or should have been, if those ^twelve years had 
never rolled away. 

PART THIRD. 

I shall not try to relate the particulars of the great 
civil war between King Charles I. and the Long Parlia- 
ment, which lasted nearly four years, and a full account 
of which would fill many large books. It was a sad 
thing that Englishmen should once more be fighting 
against Englishmen on English ground; but it is some 
consolation to know that on both sides there was great 
humanity, forbearance, and honor. The soldiers of the 
Parliament were far more remarkable for these good 
qualities than the soldiers of the King (many of whom 
fought for mere pay without much caring for the 
cause) ; but those of the nobility and gentry who were 
on the King's side were so brave, and so faithful to 
him, that their conduct cannot but command our highest 
admiration. Among them were great numbers of 
Catholics, who took the royal side because the Queen 
was so strongly of their persuasion. 

The King might have distinguished some of these gal- 
lant spirits, if he had been as generous a spirit himself, 
by giving them the command of his army. Instead of 
that, however, true to his old, high notions of royalty. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 359 

lie intrusted it to his two nephews. Prince Rupert and 
Prince Maurice, who were of royal blood and came over 
from abroad to help him. It might have been better 
for him it they had stayed away ; since Prince Rupert 
was an impetuous, hot-headed fellow, whose only idea 
was to dash into battle at all times and seasons, and lay 
about him. 

The general-in-chief of the Parliamentary army was 
the Earl of Essex, a gentleman of honor and an excel- 
lent soldier. A little while before the war broke out, 
there had been some rioting at Westminster between 
certain officious law students and noisy soldiers, and 
the shopkeepers and their apprentices, and the general 
people in the streets. At that time the King's friends 
called the crowd Roundheads, because the apprentices 
wore short hair; the crowd, in return, called their 
opponents Cavaliers, meaning that they were a bluster- 
ing set, who pretended to be very military. These two 
words now began to be used to distinguish the two 
sides in the civil war. The Royalists also called the 
Parliamentary men Rebels and Rogues, while the Par- 
liamentary men called them Malignants, and spoke of 
themselves as the Godly, the Honest, and so forth. 

The war broke out at Portsmouth, where that double 
traitor Goring had again gone over to the King and 
was besieged by the Parliamentary troops. Upon this, 
the King proclaimed the Earl of Essex and the officers 
serving under him traitors, and called upon his loyal 
subjects to meet him in arms at Nottingham on the 25th 
of August. But his loyal subjects came about him in 
scanty numbers, and it was a windy, gloomy day, and 
the Royal Standard got blown down, and the whole 
affair was very melancholy. The chief engagements 
after this took place in the vale of the Red Horse near 
Banbury, at Brentford, at Devizes, at Chalgrave Field 
(where Mr. Hampton was so sorely wounded while 
fighting at the head of his men that he died within a 
week), at Newbury (in which battle Lord Falkland, one 
of the best noblemen on the King's side, was killed), 
at Leicester, at Na^oby, at Winchester, at Marston Moor, 
near York, at Newcastle, and in many other parts of 
England and Scotland. These battles were attended 



360 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

with various successes. At one time the King was vic- 
torious ; at another time the Parliament. But almost 
all the great and busy towns were against the King; 
and when it was considered necessary to fortify London, 
all ranks of people, from laboring men and women up 
to lords and ladies, worked hard together with heartiness 
and good will. The most distinguished leaders on the 
Parliamentary side were Hampden, Sir Thomas Fairfax, 
and, above all, Oliver Cromwell, and his son-in-law 
Ireton. 

During the whole of this war, the people, to whom it 
was very expensive and irksome, and to whom it was 
made the more distressing by almost every family being 
divided, — some of its members attaching themselves to 
one side and some to the other, — were over and over 
again most anxious for peace. So were some ot the 
best men in each cause. Accordingly, treaties of peace 
were discussed between commissioners from the Parlia- 
ment and the King; at York, at Oxford (where the King- 
held a little Parliament of his own), and at Uxbridge. 
But they came to nothing. In all these negotiations, 
and in all his difficulties, the King showed himself at his 
best. He was courageous, cool, self-possessed, and 
clever; but the old taint of his character was always in 
him, and he was never for one single moment to be 
trusted. Lord Clarendon, the historian, one of his high- 
est admirers, supposes that he had unhappily promised 
the Queen never to make peace without her consent, 
and that this must often be taken as his excuse. He never 
kept his word from night to morning. He signed a 
cessation of hostilities with the blood-stained Irish rebels 
for a sum of money, and invited the Irish regiments 
over to help him against the Parliament. In the battle 
of Naseby, his cabinet was seized and was found to 
contain a correspondence with the Queen, in which he 
expressly told her that he had deceived the Parliament 
— a mongrel Parliament, he called it now, as an improve- 
ment on his old term of vipers — in pretending to recog- 
nize it and to treat with it; and from which it further 
appeared that he had long been in secret treaty with the 
Duke of Lorraine for a foreign army of ten thousand 
men. Disappointed in this, he sent a most devoted 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 361 

friend of his, the Earl ot Glamorgan, to Ireland, to con- 
clude a secret treaty with the Catholic powers, and to 
send him an Irish army of ten thousand men ; in return 
for which he was to bestow great favors on the Catholic 
religion. And, when this treaty was discovered in the 
carriage of a fighting Archbishop, who was killed in 
one of the many skirmishes of those days, he basely 
denied and deserted his attached friend, the Earl, on 
being charged with high treason ; and — even worse than 
this— had left blanks in the secret instructions he gave 
him with his own kingly hand, expresssly that he might 
thus save himself. 

At last, on the 27th day of April, 1646, the King found 
himself in the city of Oxford, so surrounded by the Par- 
liamentary army, who were closing in upon him on all 
sides, that he felt that if he would escape he must delay 
no longer. So, that night, having altered the cut of his 
hair and beard, he was dressed up as a servant and put 
upon a horse with a cloak strapped behind him, and 
rode out of the town behind one of his own faithful fol- 
lowers, with a clergyman of that country who knew the 
road well, for a guide. He rode toward London as far 
as Harrow, and then altered his plans and resolved, it 
would seem, to go to the Scottish camp. The Scottish 
men had been invited over to help the Parliamentary 
army, and had a large force then in England. The 
King was so desperately intriguing in everything he 
did, that it is doubtful what he exactly meant by this 
step. He took it, anyhow, and delivered himself up 
to the Earl of Leven, the Scottish general in-chief, who 
treated him as an honorable prisoner. Negotiations 
between the Parliament on the one hand and the Scot- 
tish authorities on the other, as to what should be done 
with him, lasted until the following February. Then, 
when the King had refused to the Parliament the con- 
cession of the old militia point for twenty years, and 
had refused to Scotland the recognition of its Solemn 
League and Covenant, Scotland got a handsome sum 
for its army and its help, and the King into the bargain. 
He was taken, by certain Parliamentary commissioners 
appointed to receive him, to one of his own houses, 

24 History 



362 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

called Holmby House, near Althorpe, in Northampton- 
shire. 

While the Civil War was still in progress, John Pym 
died, and was buried in great honors in Westminster 
Abbey — not with greater honors than he deserved, for 
the liberties of Englishmen owe a mighty debt to Pym 
and Hampden. The war was but newly over when the 
Earl of Essex died, of an illness brought on by his hav- 
ing overheated himself in a stag hunt in Windsor Forest. 
He, too, was buried in Westminster Abbey, with great 
state. I wish it were not necesary to add that Arch- 
bishop Laud died upon the scaffold when the war was 
not yet done. His trial lasted in all nearly a year, 
and, it being doubtful even then whether the charges 
brought against him amounted to treason, the odious 
old contrivance of the worst kings was resorted to, and 
a bill of attainder was brought in against him. He was 
a violently prejudiced and mischievous person ; had had 
strong ear-croppings and nose-splitting propensities, as 
you know ; and had done a world of harm. But he 
died peacably, and like a brave old man. 

PART FOURTH. 

When the Parliament had got the King into their 
hands, they became very anxious to get rid of their 
army, in which Oliver Cromwell had begun to acquire 
great power ; not only because of his courage and high 
abilities, but because he professed to be very sincere 
in the Scottish sort of Puritan religion that was then ex- 
ceedingly popular among the soldiers. They were as 
much opposed to the bishops as to the Pope 
himself, and the privates, drummers, and trumpeters, 
had such an inconvenient habit of starting up and 
preaching long-winded discourses, that 1 would not 
have belonged to that army on any account. 

So, the Parliament being far from sure but that the 
army might begin to preach and fight against them, 
now it had nothing else to do, proposed to disband the 
greater part of it, to send another part to serve in Ire 
land against the rebels, and to keep only a small force 
in England. But the army would not consent to be 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 363 

broken up, except upon its own conditions ; and, when 
the Parliament showed an intention of compelling it, it 
acted for itself in an unexpected manner. A certain 
cornet, of the name of Joice, arrived at Holmby House 
one night, attended by four hundred horsemen, went 
into the King's room with his hat in one hand and a 
pistol in the other, and told the King that he had come 
to take him away. The King was willing enough to go, 
and only stipulated that he should be publicly required 
to do so next morning. Next morning, accordingly, he 
appeared on the top of the steps of the house, and 
asked Cornet Joice before his men and the guard set 
there by the Parliament, what authority he had for 
taking him away. To this Cornet Joice replied, ' 'The 
authority of the army. " " Have you a written commis- 
sion?" said the King. Joice, pointing to his four hun- 
dred men on horseback, replied, "That is my commis- 
sion." "Well," said the King, smiling, as if he were 
pleased, ' ' I never before read such a commission ; but it 
is written in fair and legible characters. This is a 
company of as handsome, proper gentlemen as I have 
seen in a long while. ' ' He was asked where he would 
like to live, and he said at Newmarket. So, to New- 
market he and Cornet Joice and the four hundred horse- 
men rode, the King remarking, in the same smiling 
way, that he could ride as tar at a spell as Cornet Joice, 
or any man there. 

The King quite believed, I think, that the army were 
his friends. He said as much to Fairfax when that 
General, Oliver Cromwell, and Ireton, went to persuade 
him to return to the custody of the Parliament. He 
preferred to remain as he was, and resolved to remain 
as he was. And when the army moved nearer and 
nearer London to frighten the Parliament into yielding 
to their demands, they took the King with them. It 
was a deplorable thing that England should be at the 
mercy of a great body of soldiers with arms in their 
hands ; but the King certainly favored them at this im- 
portant time of his lite, as compared with the more law- 
ful power that tried to control him. It must be added, 
however, that they treated him, as yet, more respect- 
fully and kindly than the Parliament had done. They 



364 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

allowed him to be attended by his own servants, to be 
splendidly entertained at various houses, and to see his 
children — at Caversham House, near Reading — tor two 
days. "Whereas, the Parliament had been rather hard 
with him, and had only allowed him to ride out and 
play at bowls. 

It is much to be believed that if the King could have 
been trusted, even at this time, he might have been 
saved. Even Oliver Cromwell expressly said that he 
did believe that no man could enjoy his possessions in 
peace unless the King had his rights. He was not un- 
friendly toward the King ; he had been present when 
he received his children, and had been much affected 
by the pitiable nature of the scene ; he saw the King 
often; he frequently walked and talked with him in the 
long galleries and pleasant gardens of the Palace at 
Hampton Court, whither he was now removed ; and in 
all this risked something of his influence with the army. 
But the King was in secret hopes of help from the Scot- 
tish people; and the moment he was encouraged to join 
them he began to be cool to his new friends, the army, 
and to tell the officers that they could not possibly do 
without him. At the very time, too, when he was 
promising to make Cromwell and Ireton noblemen, if 
they would help him up to his old height, he was writing 
to the Queen that he meant to hang them. They both 
afterward declared that they had been privately in- 
formed that such a letter would be found, on a certain 
evening, sewed up in a saddle which would be taken to 
the Blue Boar in Holborn to be sent to Dover; and that 
they went there, disguised as common soldiers, and sat 
drinking in the inn-yard until a man came with the 
saddle, which they ripped up with their knives, and 
therein found the letter. I see little reason to doubt the 
story. It is certain that Oliver Cromwell told one of 
the King's most faithful followers that the King could 
not be trusted, and that he would not be answerable if 
anything amiss were to happen to him. Still, even 
after that, he kept a promise he had made to the King, 
by letting him know that there was a plot with a certain 
portion of the army to seize him. I believe that, in 
fact, he sincerely wanted the King to escape abroad, and 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 365 

so to be got rid of without more trouble or danger. 
That Oliver himself had work enough with the army is 
pretty plain ; for some of the troops were so mutinous 
against him, and against those who acted with him at 
this time, that he found it necessary to have one man 
shot at the head of his regiment to overawe the rest. 

The King, when he received Oliver's warning, made 
his escape from Hampton Court; after some indecision 
and uncertainty, he went to Carisbrooke Castle in the 
Isle of Wight. At first he was pretty free there ; but, 
even there, he carried on a pretended treaty with the 
Parliament, while he was really treating with commis- 
sioners from Scotland to send an army into England to 
take his part. When he broke off this treaty with the 
Parliament (having settled with Scotland) and was 
treated as a prisoner, his treatment was not changed too 
soon, for he had plotted to escape that very night to a 
ship sent by the Queen, which was lying off the island. 

He was doomed 10 be disappointed in his hopes from 
Scotland. The agreement he had made with the Scot- 
tish Commissioners was not favorable enough to the 
religion of that country to please the Scottish clergy ; 
and they preached against it. The consequence was, 
that the army raised in Scotland and sent over was too 
small to do much ; and that, although it was helped by 
a rising of the Royalists in England and by good sol- 
diers from Ireland, it could make no head against the 
Parliamentary army under such men as Cromwell and 
Fairfax. The King's eldest son, the Prince of Wales, 
came over from Holland with nineteen ships (a part of 
the English fleet having gone over to him) to help his 
father ; but nothing came of this voyage, and he was 
fain to return. The most remarkable event of this 
second civil war was the cruel execution, by the Parlia- 
mentary General, of Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George 
Lisle, two grand Royalist generals, who had bravely 
defended Colchester under every disadvantage of famine 
and distress for nearly three months. When Sir 
Charles Lucas was shot, Sir George Lisle kissed his 
body, and said to the soldiers who were to shoot him, 
"Come nearer, and make sure of me." "I warrant you, 
Sir George," said one of the soldiers, "we shall hit you." 



366 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

"Ay!" he returned with a smile, "but I have been 
nearer to you, my friends, many a time, and you have 
missed me." 

The Parliament, after being fearfully bullied by the 
army, — who demanded to have seven members whom 
they disliked given up to them, — had voted that they 
would have nothing more to do with the King. On 
the conclusion, however, of this second civil war (which 
did not last more than six months), they appointed 
commissioners to treat with him. The King, then so 
far released again as to be allowed to live in a private 
house at Newport in the Isle of Wight, managed his 
own part of the negotiation with a sense that was ad- 
mired by all who saw him. and gave up, in the end, all 
that was asked of him — even yielding (which he had 
steadily refused, so far) to the temporary abolition ot the 
bishops, and the transfer of their church land to the 
Crown. Still, with his old fatal vice upon him, when 
his best friends joined the commissioners in beseeching 
him to yield all those points as the only means of sav- 
ing himself from the army, he was plotting to escape 
from the island : he was holding correspondence with 
his friends and the Catholics in Ireland, though declar- 
ing that he was not ; and he was writing, with his own 
hand, that in what he yielded he meant nothing but to 
get time to escape. 

Matters were at this pass when the army, resolved to 
defy the Parliament, marched up to London. The 
Parliament, not afraid of them now, and boldly led by 
Hollis, voted that the King's concessions were sufficient 
ground for settling the peace ot the kingdom. Upon 
that, Colonel Rich and Colonel Pride went down to the 
"* House of Commons with a regiment of horse soldiers 
and a regiment of foot ; and Colonel Pride, standing in 
the lobby with a list of the members who were obnox- 
ious to the army in his hand, had them pointed out to 
him as they came through, and took them all into cus- 
tody. This proceeding was afterward called by the 
people, for a joke, Pride's Purge. Cromwell was in the 
North, at the head of his men, at the time, but when 
he came home, approved of what had been done. 

What with imprisoning some members and causing 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 367 

others to stay away, the army had now reduced the 
House of Commons to some fifty or so. These soon 
voted that it was treason in a king to make war against 
his Parliament and his people, and sent an ordinance 
up to the House of Lords for the King's being tried as 
a traitor. The House of Lords, then sixteen in number, 
to a man rejected it. Thereupon the Commons made 
an ordinance of their own, that they were the supreme 
government of the country, and would bring the King 
to trial. 

The King had been taken for security to a place 
called Hurst Castle : a lonely house on a rock in the sea, 
connected with the coast of Hampshire by a rough 
road two miles long at low water. Thence he was 
ordered to be removed to Windsor ; thence, after being 
but rudely used there, and having none but soldiers to 
wait upon him at table, he was brought up to St. 
James's Palace in London, and told that his trial was 
appointed for next day. 

On Saturday, the 20th of January, 1649, this memor- 
able trial began. The House of Commons had settled 
that 135 persons should form the Court, and these were 
taken from the House itself, from among the officers of 
the army, and from among the lawyers and citizens. 
John Bradshaw, sergeant-at-law, was appointed presi- 
dent. The place was Westminster Hall. At the upper 
end, in a red velvet chair, sat the president, with his hat 
(lined with plates of iron for his protection) on his head. 

The rest of the Court sat on side benches, also wear- 
ing their hats. The King's seat was covered with vel- 
vet, like that of the president, and was opposite to it. 

He was brought from St. James's to Whitehall, and 
from Whitehall he came by water to his trial. 

When he came in, he looked round very steadily on 
the Court, and on the great number of spectators, and 
then sat down : presently he got up and looked round 
again. On the indictment "against Charles Stuart, for 
high treason," being read, he smiled several times, and 
he denied the authority of the Court, saying that there 
could be no Parliament without a House ot Lords, and 
that he saw no House of Lords there. Also, that the 
King ought to be there, and that he saw no King in the 



368 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

King's right place. Bradshaw replied that the Court 
was satisfied with its authority, and that its authority 
was God's authority and the kingdom's. He then ad- 
journed the Court to the following Monday. On that 
day the trial was resumed, and went on all the week. 
When the Saturday came, as the King passed forward 
to his place in the Hall, some soldiers and others cried 
for "justice!" and execution on him. That day, too, 
Bradshaw, like an angry Sultan, wore a red robe, in- 
stead of the black robe he had worn betore. The King 
was sentenced to death that day. As he went out, one 
solitary soldier said, "God bless you, Sir." For this, 
his officer struck him. The King said he thought the 
punishment exceeded the offense. The silver head of 
his walking stick had fallen off while he leaned upon it, 
at one time of the trial. The accident seemed to dis- 
turb him, as if he thought it ominous of the falling of 
his own head ; and he admitted as much, now it was 
all over. 

Being taken back to Whitehall, he sent to the House 
of Commons, saying that as the time of his execution 
might be nigh he wished he might be allowed to see his 
darling children. It was granted. On the Monday he 
was taken back to St. James's ; and his two children 
then in England, the Princess Elizabeth, thirteen years 
old, and the Duke of Gloucester, nine years old, were 
brought to take leave of him, from Sion House, near 
Brentford. It was a sad and touching scene, when he 
kissed and fondled those poor children, and made a lit- 
tle present ot two diamond seals to the Princess, and 
gave them tender messages to their mother (who little 
deserved them, for she had a lover of her own whom 
she married soon afterward), and told them that he died 
"for the laws and liberties of the land. " I am bound 
to say that I don't think he did, but 1 dare say he be- 
lieved so. 

There were ambassadors from Holland that day, to 
intercede for the unhappy King, whom you and I both 
wish the Parliament had spared ; but they got no an- 
swer. The Scottish Commissioners interceded too; so 
did the Prince of Wales, by a letter in which he offered, 
as the next heir to the throne, to accept any conditions 






A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 369 

from the Parliament; so did the Queen, by letter like- 
wise. Notwithstanding all, the warrant for the execu- 
tion was this day signed. There is a story that as 
Oliver Cromwell went to the table with the pen in his 
hand to put his signature to it, he drew his pen across 
the face of one of the commissioners who was standing 
near, and marked it with ink. That commissioner had 
not signed his own name yet, and the story adds that 
when he came to do it he marked Cromwell's face with 
ink in the same way. 

The King slept well, untroubled by the knowledge 
that it was his last night on earth, and rose on the 30th 
of January, two hours before day, and dressed himself 
carefully. He put on two shirts lest he should tremble 
with the cold, and had his hair very carefully combed. 
The warrant had been directed to three officers of the 
army, Colonel Hacker, Colonel Hunks, and Colonel 
Phayer. At ten o'clock the first of these came to the 
door and said it was time to go to Whitehall. The 
King, who had always been a quick walker, walked at 
his usual speed through the Park, and called out to the 
guard, with his accustomed voice of command, "March 
on apace!" When he came to Whitehall, he was taken 
to his own bedroom, where a breakfast was set forth. 
As he had taken the Sacrament, he would eat nothing 
more; but, at about the time when the church bells 
struck twelve at noon (for he 'had to wait through the 
scaffold not being ready) he took the advice of the good 
Bishop Juxon who was with him, and ate a little bread 
and drank a glass of claret. Soon after he had taken 
this refreshment, Colonel Hacker came to the chamber 
with the warrant in his hand, and ^called for Charles 
Stuart. 

And then, through the long gallery of Whitehall Pal- 
ace, which he had often seen light and gay and merry 
and crowded, in very different times, the fallen King 
passed along, until he came to the center window of 
the Banqueting House, through which he emerged 
upon the scaffold, which was hung with black. 
He looked at the two executioners, who were 
dressed in black and masked; he looked at the 
troops of soldiers on horseback and on foot, and 



370 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

all looked up at him in silence ; he looked at the vast 
array of spectators,* rilling up the view beyond, and 
turning ail their faces upon him ; he looked at his old 
Palace of St. James's; and he looked at the block. He 
seemed a ^little troubled to find that it was so low, and 
asked, "it there were no place higher." Then, to those 
upon the scaffold he said, "that it was the Parliament 
who had begun the war, and not he ; but he hoped they 
might be guiltless too, as ill instruments had gone be- 
tween them. In one respect," he said, "he suffered 
justly ; and that was because he had permitted an un- 
just sentence to be executed on another." In this he 
referred to the Earl of Strafford. 

He was not at all afraid to die ; but he was anxious to 
die easily. When someone touched the ax while he was 
speaking, he broke off and called out, "Take heed of 
the ax! take heed of the ax!" He also said to Colonel 
Hacker, "Take care that they do not put me to pain." 
He told the executioner, "I shall say but very short 
prayers, and then thrust out my hands" — as the sign to 
strike. 

He put his hair up under a white satin cap which the 
bishop had carried, and said, "I have a good cause and 
a gracious God on my side." The bishop told him that 
he had but one stage more to travel in this weary world, 
and that, though it was a turbulent and troublesome 
stage, it was a short one, and would carry him a great 
way — all the way from earth to Heaven. The King's 
last word, as he gave his cloak and the George — the 
decoration from his breast — to the bishop, was, "Re- 
member!" He then kneeled down, laid his head on the 
block, spread out his hands, and was instantly killed. 
One universal groan broke from the crowd; and the 
soldiers, who had sat on their horses and stood in their 
ranks immovable as statues, were of a sudden all in 
motion, clearing the streets. 

Thus, in the forty-ninth year of his age, tailing at the 
same time of his career as Strafford had fallen in his, 
perished Charles I. With all my sorrow for him, I can- 
not agree with him that he died "the martyr of the 
people" ; tor the people had been martyrs to him, and to 
his ideas of a King's right, long before. Indeed, I am 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 371 

atraid that he was but a bad judge of martyrs ; for he 
had called that infamous Duke of Buckingham "the 
Martyr of his Sovereign." 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL. 

Before sunset on the memorable day on which King 
Charles I. was executed, the House of Commons passed 
an act declaring it treason in anyone to proclaim the 
Prince of Wales — or anybody else — King of England. 
Soon afterward, it declared that the House of Lords 
was useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished ; 
and directed that the late King's statue should be 
taken down from the Royal Exchange in the City and 
other public places. Having laid hold of some famous 
Royalist who had escaped from prison, and having be- 
headed the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Holland, and Lord 
Capel, in the Palace Yard (all of whom died very cour- 
ageously), they then appointed a Council of State to 
govern the country. It consisted of forty-one mem- 
bers, of whom five were peers. Bradshaw was made 
president. The House of Commons also re-admitted 
members who had opposed the King's death, and made 
up its numbers to about 150. 

But it still had an army of more than forty thousand 
men to deal with, and a very hard task it was to man- 
age them. Before the King's execution, the army had 
appointed some of its officers to remonstrate between 
them and the Parliament; and now the common soldiers 
began to take that office upon themselves. The regi- 
ments under orders for Ireland mutinied ; one troop of 
horse in the city of London seized their own flag, and 
refused to obey orders. For this, the ring-leader was 
shot; which did not mend the matter, for both his com- 
rades and the people made a public funeral for him, and 
accompanied the body to the grave with sound of trum- 
pets and with a gloomy procession of persons carrying 
bundles of rosemary steeped in blood. Oliver was the 
only man to deal with such difficulties as these, and he 
soon cut them short by bursting at midnight into the 



372 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

town of Burford, near Salisbury, where the mutineers 
were sheltered, taking four hundred of them prisoners, 
and shooting a number ot them by sentence ot court- 
martial. The soldiers soon found, as all men did, that 
Oliver was not a man to be trifled with. And there was 
an end of the mutiny. 

The Scottish Parliament did not know Oliver yet; so, 
on hearing of the King's execution, it proclaimed the 
Prince of Wales King Charles II., on condition ot his 
respecting the Solemn League and Covenant. Charles 
was abroad at that time, and so was Montrose, from 
whose 'help he had hopes enough to keep him holding 
on and off with commissioners from Scotland, just as 
his father might have done. These hopes were soon at 
an end ; for Montrose, having raised a few hundred ex- 
iles in Germany, and landed with them in Scotland, 
found that the people there, instead of joining him, 
deserted the country at his approach. He was soon 
taken prisoner and carried to Edinburgh. There he was 
received with every possible insult, and carried to 
prison in a cart, his officers going two and two before 
him. He was sentenced by the Parliament to be hanged 
on a gallows thirty feet high, to have his head set on a 
spike in Edinburgh, and his limbs distributed in other 
places, according to the old barbarous manner. He 
said he always acted under the Royal orders, and only 
wished he had limbs enough to be distributed through 
Christendom, that it might be the more widely known 
how loyal he had been. He went to the scaffold in a 
bright and brilliant dress, and made a bold end at thirty- 
eight years of age. The breath was scarcely out ot his. 
body when Charles abandoned his memory, and denied 
that he had ever given him orders to rise in his behalf. 
Oh, the family failing was strong in Charles then ! 

Oliver had been appointed by the Parliament to com- 
mand the army in Ireland, where he took a terrible ven- 
geance for the sanguinary rebellion, and made tremen- 
dous havoc, particularly in the siege of Drogheda, where 
no quarter was given, and where he found at least a 
thousand of the inhabitants shut up together in the great 
church, every one of whom was killed by his soldiers, 
usually known as Oliver's Ironsides. There were num- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 373 

bers of friars and priests among them, and Oliver gruffly 
wrote home in his dispatch that these were "knocked 
on the head" like the rest. 

But Charles having got over to Scotland, where the 
men of the Solemn League and Covenant led him a 
prodigiously dull life and made him very weary with 
long sermons and grim Sundays, the Parliament called 
the redoubtable Oliver home to knock the Scottish men 
on the head for setting up that Prince. Oliver left his 
son-in-law, Ireton, as general in Ireland in his stead (he 
died there afterward), and he imitated the example of 
his father-in-law with such good will that he brought 
the country in subjection, and laid it at the feet of the 
Parliament. In the end, they passed an act for the set- 
tlement of Ireland, generally pardoning all the common 
people, but exempting from this grace such of the 
wealthier sort as had been concerned in the rebellion, 
or in any killing of Protestants, or who refused to lay 
down their arms. Great numbers of Irish were got out 
of the country to serve under Catholic powers abroad, 
and a quantity of land was declared to have been for- 
feited by past offenses, and was given to people who 
had lent money to the Parliament early in the war. 
These were sweeping measures; but it Oliver Cromwell 
had had his own way fully, and had stayed in Ireland, 
he would have done more yet. 

However, as I have said, the Parliament wanted 
Oliver for Scotland; so, home Oliver came, and was 
made commander of all the Forces of the Common- 
wealth of England, and in three days away he went 
with sixteen thousand soldiers to fight the Scottish men. 
Now, the Scottish men, being then — as you will gener- 
ally find them now — mighty cautious, reflected that the 
troops they had were not used to war like the Ironsides, 
and would be beaten in an open fight. Therefore they 
said, "If we lie quiet in our trenches in Edinburgh here, 
and if all the farmers come into the towns and desert 
the country, the Ironsides will be driven out by iron 
hunger and be forced to go away. " This was, no doubt, 
the wisest plan ; but as the Scottish clergy would inter- 
fere with what they knew nothing about, and would per- 
petually preach long sermons exhorting the soldiers to 



374 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

come out and tight, the soldiers got it into their heads 
that they absolutely must come out and fight. Accord- 
ingly, in an evil hour for themselves, they came out of 
their safe position. Oliver fell upon them instantly, and 
killed three thousand, and took ten thousand prisoners. 

To gratify the Scotch Parliament, and preserve their 
favor, Charles signed a declaration they laid before him 
reproaching the memory of his father and mother, and 
representing himself as a most religious Prince, to 
whom the Solemn League and Covenant was as dear as 
life. He meant no sort of truth in this, and soon after- 
ward galloped away on horseback to join some tiresome 
Highland friends, who were always flourishing dirks and 
broad swords. He was overtaken|aiid induced to return ; 
but this attempt, which was called "The Start," did 
him just so much service, that they did not preach quite 
such long sermons at him afterward as they had done 
before. 

On the ist of January, 1651, the Scottish people 
crowned him at Scone. He immediately took the chief 
command of an army of twenty thousand men, and 
marched to Stirling. His hopes were heightened, I dare 
say, by the redoubtable Oliver being ill of an ague; 
but Oliver scrambled out of bed in no time, and went to 
work with such energy that he got behind the Royalist 
army and cut it off from all communication with Scot- 
land. There was nothing for it then, but to go on to 
England ; so it went on as far as Worcester, where the 
mayor and some of the gentry proclaimed King Charles 
II. straightway. His proclamation, however, was of 
little use to him, for very few Royalists appeared; and, 
on the very same day, two people were publicly be- 
headed' on Tower Lill for espousing his cause. Up came 
Oliver to Worcester too, at double quick speed, and he 
and his Ironsides so laid about them in the great battle 
which was fought there, that they completely beat the 
Scottish men, and destroyed the Royalist army ; though 
the Scottish men fought so gallantly that it took five 
hours to do. 

The escape of Charles, after this battle of Worcester, 
did him good service long afterward, for it induced 
many of the generous English people to take a romantic 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 375 

interest in him, and to think much better of him than 
he ever deserved. He fled in the night, with not more 
than sixty followers, to the house of a Catholic lady in 
Staffordshire. There, for his greater safety, the 
whole sixty left him. He cropped his hair, stained his 
face and hands brown as if they were sunburned, put 
on the clothes of a laboring countryman, and went out 
in the morning with an ax in his hand, accompanied by 
four woodcutters who were brothers, and another man 
who was their brother-in-law. These good fellows 
made a bed for him under a tree, as the weather was 
very bad; and the wife of one of them brought him food 
to eat; and the old mother of the four brothers came 
and fell down on her knees before him in the wood, and 
thanked God that her sons were engaged in saving his 
life. At night he came out of the forest and went on 
to another house which was near the river Severn, with 
the intention of passing into Wales; but the place 
swarmed with soldiers, and the bridges were guarded, 
and all the boats were made fast. So, after lying in a 
hay-loft covered over with hay for some time, he came 
out of his place, attended by Colonel Careless, a Cath- 
olic gentleman who had met him there, and with whom 
he lay hid all next day up in the shady branches of a 
fine old oak. It was lucky for the King that it was 
September time, and that the leaves had not begun to 
fall, since he and the Colonel, perched up in this tree, 
could catch glimpses of the soldiers riding about below, 
and could hear the crash in the wood as they went about 
beating the boughs. 

After this, he walked and walked until his feet were 
all blistered; and, having been concealed all one day 
in a house which was searched by the troopers !while 
he was there, went with Lord Wilrnot, another ot his 
good friends, to a place called Bentley, where one Miss 
Lane, a Protestant lady, had obtained a pass to be 
allowed to ride through the guards to see a relation of 
hers near Bristol. Disguised as a servant, he rode in 
the saddle before this young lady to the house of Sir 
John Winter, while Lord Wilmot rode there boldly, 
like a plain country gentleman, with dogs at his heels. 
It happened that Sir John Winter's butler had been 



376 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

servant in Richmond Palace, and knew Charles the 
moment he set his eyes upon him ; but the butler was 
faithful and kept the secret. As no ship could be found 
to carry him abroad, it was planned that he should go — 
still traveling with Miss Lane as her servant — to another 
house, at Trent near Sherborne in Dorsetshire; and 
then Miss Lane and her cousin, Mr. Lascelles, who had 
gone on horseback beside her all the way, went home. 
I hope Miss Lane was going to marry that cousin, for 1 
am sure she must have been a brave, kind girl. If I 
had been that cousin, I should certainly have loved 
Miss Lane. 

When Charles, lonely for the loss of Miss Lane, was 
safe at Trent, a ship was hired at Lyme, the master of 
which engaged to take two gentlemen to France. In 
the evening of the same day, the King —now riding as 
servant before another young lady — set off for a public- 
house at a place called Charmouth, where the captain of 
the vessel was to take him on board. But the captain's 
wife, being afraid of her husband getting into trouble, 
locked him up and would not let him sail. Then they 
went away to Bridport; and, coming to the inn there, 
found the stable-yard full of soldiers who were on the 
lookout for Charles, and who talked about him while 
they drank. He had such presence of mind, that he led 
the horses of his party through the yard as any other 
servant might have done, and said, "Come out of the 
way, you soldiers; let us have room to pass here!" As 
he went along, he met a half-tipsy hostler, who rubbed 
his eyes and said to him, "'Why, I was formerly servant 
to [Mr. Potter at Exeter, and surely I have sometimes 
seen you there, young man?" He certainly had , for 
Charles had lodged there. His ready answer was, "Ah, 
I did live with him once ; but I have no time to talk 
now. We'll have a pot of beer together when I come 
back." 

From this dangerous place he returned to Trent, and 
lay there concealed several days. Then he escaped to 
Heale, near Salisbury ; here, in the house of a widow 
lady, he was hidden five days, until the master of a col- 
lier lying off Shoreham in Sussex undertook to convey 
a "gentleman" to France. On the night of the 15th of 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 37? 

October, accompanied by two colonels and a merchant, 
the King "rode to Brighton, then a little fishing village, 
to give the captain of the ship a supper before going on 
board ; but, so many people knew him, that this captain 
knew him too, and not only he, but the landlord and 
landlady also. Before he went away, the landlord came 
behind his chair, kissed his Jhand, and said he hoped to 
live to be a lord, and to see his wife a lady ; at which 
Charles laughed. They had had a good supper by this 
time, and plenty of smoking and drinking, at which the 
King was a first rate hand, so the captain assured him 
that he would stand by him, and he did. It was agreed 
that the captain should pretend to sail to Deal, and that 
Charles should address the sailors and say he was a gen- 
tleman in debt who was running away from his credit- 
ors, and that he hoped they would join him in persuad- 
ing the captain to put him ashore in France. As the 
King acted his part very well indeed, and gave the sail- 
ors twenty shillings to drink, they begged the captain 
to do what such a worthy ^gentleman asked. He pre- 
tended to yield to their entreaties, and the King got safe 
to Normandy. 

Ireland being now subdued, and Scotland kept quiet 
by plenty of forts and soldiers put there by Oliver, the 
Parliament would have gone on quietly enough, as far 
as fighting with any foreign enemy went, but for get- 
ting into trouble with the Dutch, who in the spring of 
the year 165 1 sent a fleet into the Downs under their 
Admiral Van Tromp, to call upon the bold English 
Admiral Blake, who was there with jhalf as many ships 
as the Dutch, to strike his flag. Blake fired a raging 
broadside instead, and beat off Van Tromp; who, in the 
autumn, came back again with seventy ships, and 
challenged the bold Blake — who still was only half as 
strong — to fight him. Blake fought him all day, but, 
finding that the Dutch were too many for him, got qui- 
etly off at night. What does Van Tromp upon this, but 
goes cruising and boasting about the Channel, between 
the North Foreland and the Isle of Wight, with a great 
Dutch broom tied to his masthead, as a sign that he 
could and would sweep the English off the sea ! Within 
three months Blake lowered his tone, though, and his 



378 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

broom, too; for he and two other bold commanders, 
Dean and Monk, fought him three whole days, took 
twenty-three of his ships, shivered his broom to pieces, 
and settled his business. 

Things were no sooner quiet again, than the army 
began to complain to the Parliament that they were not 
governing the nation properly, and to hint" that they 
thought they could do it better themselves. Oliver, who 
had now made up his mind to be the head of the state, 
or nothing at all, supported them in this, and called a 
meeting of officers, and his own Parliamentary friends, 
at his lodgings in Whitehall, to consider the best way of 
getting rid of the Parliament. It had now lasted just as 
many years as the King's unbridled power had lasted, 
before it came into existence. The end of the delibera- 
tion was, that Oliver went down to the House in his 
usual plain black dress, with his usual gray worsted 
stockings, but with an unusual party of soldiers behind 
him. These he left in the lobby, and then went in and 
sat down. Presently he got up, made the Parliament a 
speech, told them that the Lord had done with them, 
stamped his foot and said, "You are no Parliament. 
Bring them in! Bring them in!" At this signal the 
door flew open and the soldiers appeared. "This is not 
honest," said Sir Harry Vane, one of the members. 
"Sir Harry Vane!" cried Cromwell; "Oh, Sir Harry 
Vane! The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane !" 
Then he pointed out members one by one, and said 
this man was a drunkard, and that man a dissipated fel- 
low, and that man a liar, and so on. Then he caused 
the Speaker to be walked out of his chair, told the guard 
to clear the House, called the mace upon the table — 
which is a sign that the House is sitting — "a fool's 
bauble," and said, "Here, carry it away!" Being 
obeyed in all these orders, he quietly locked the door, 
put the key in his pocket, walked back to Whitehall 
again, and told his friends, who were still assembled 
there, what he had done. 

They formed a new Council of State after thir, extraor- 
dinary proceeding, and got a new Parliament together 
in their own way ; which Oliver himself opened in a sort 
of sermon, and which he said was the beginning of a 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 379 

perfect heaven upon earth. In this Parliament there sat 
a well-known leather seller, who had taken the singular 
name of Praise God Barebones, and from whom it was 
called, for a joke, Barebones' Parliament, though its 
general name was the Little Parliament. As it soon 
appeared that it was not going to put Oliver in the first 
place, it turned out to be not at all like the beginning of 
heaven upon earth, and Oliver said it really was not to 
be borne with. So he cleared off that Parliament in 
much the same way as he had disposed of the other ; 
and then the council of officers decided that he must be 
made the supreme authority of the kingdom, under the 
title of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. 

So, on the 16th of December, 1653, a great procession 
was formed at Oliver's door, and he came out in a black 
velvet suit and a big pair of boots, and got into his 
coach and went down to Westminster, attended by the 
judges, and the lord mayor, and the aldermen, and all 
the other great and wonderful personages of the coun- 
try. There, in the Court of Chancery, he publicly ac- 
cepted the office of Lord Protector. Then he was sworn, 
and the City Sword was handed to him, and the seal 
was handed to him, and all the other things were 
handed to him which are usually handed to Kings and 
Queens on state occasions. When Oliver had handed 
them all back, he was quite made and completely fin- 
ished off as Lord Protector ; and several ot the Ironsides 
preached about it at great length, all the evening. 

PART SECOND. 

Oliver Cromwell — whom the people long called Old 
Noll — in accepting the office of Protector, had bound 
himself by a certain paper, which was handed to him, 
called "the Instrument," to summon a Parliament, con- 
sisting of between four and five hundred members, in 
the election of which neither the Royalists nor the Cath- 
olics were to have any share. He had also pledged 
himself that this Parliament should not be dissolved 
without its own consent until it had sat five months. 

When this Parliament met, Oliver made a speech to 
them ot trree hours long very wisely advising them 



380 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

what to do for the credit and happiness of the country. 
To keep down the more violent members, he required 
them to sign a recognition of what they were forbidden 
by the "Instrument" to do; which was, chiefly, to take 
the power from one single person at the head ot the 
state or to command the army. Then he dismissed 
them to go to work. With his usual vigor and resolu- 
tion he went to work himself with some frantic preach- 
ers — who were rather overdoing their sermons in calling 
him a villain and a tyrant— by shutting up their chap- 
els, and sending a few of them off to prison. 

There was not at that time, in England or anywhere 
else, a man so able to govern the country as Oliver 
Cromwell. Although he ruled with a strong hand, and 
levied a very heavy tax on the Royalists, but not until 
they had plotted against his life, he ruled wisely and as 
the times required. He caused England to be so re- 
spected abroad, that I wish some lords and gentlemen 
who have governed it under kings and queens in later 
days would have taken a leaf out of Oliver Cromwell's 
book. He sent bold Admiral Blake to the Mediterra- 
nean Sea to make the 'Duke of Tuscany pay sixty thou- 
sand pounds for injuries he had done to British subjects, 
and spoliation he had committed on English merchants. 
He further dispatched him and his fleet to [Algiers, 
Tunis, and Tripoli, to have every English ship and 
every English man delivered up to him that had been 
taken by pirates in those parts. All this was gloriously 
done ; and it began to be thoroughly well known, all 
over the world, that England was governed by a man 
in earnest, who would not allow the English name to be 
insulted or slighted anywhere. 

These were not all his foreign triumphs. He sent a 
fleet to sea against the Dutch; and the two powers, 
each with one hundred ships upon its side, met in the 
English Channel off the North Foreland, where the 
fight lasted all day long. Dean was killed in this fight ; 
but Monk, who co'mmanded in the same ship with him, 
threw his cloak over his body, that the sailors might 
not know ot his death, and be disheartened. Nor were 
they. The English broadsides so exceedingly astonished 
the* Dutch that they sheered off at last, though the re- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 381 

doubtable Van Tromp fired upon them with his own 
guns for deserting their flag. Soon afterward, the two 
fleets engaged again, off the coast ot Holland. There, 
the valiant Van Tromp was shot through the heart and 
the Dutch gave in, and peace was made. 

Further than this, Oliver resolved not to bear ^the 
domineering and bigoted conduct ot Spain, which coun- 
try not only claimed a Tight to all the gold and silver 
that could be found in South America, and treated the 
ships of all other countries who visited those regions as 
pirates, but put English subjects into the horrible Span- 
ish prisons of the Inquisition. So, Oliver told the Span- 
ish ambassador that English ships must be free to go 
wherever they would, and that English merchants 
must not be thrown into those same dungeons, no, not 
for the pleasure of all the priests of Spain. To this, the 
Spanish ambassador replied that the "gold and silver 
country, and the Holy Inquisition, were his King's two 
eyes, neither of which he could submit to have put out. 
Very well, said Oliver, then he was afraid he, Oliver, 
must damage those two eyes directly. 

So, another fleet was dispatched under two command- 
ers, Penn and Venables, for Hispaniola; where, how- 
ever, the Spaniards got the better of the fight. Conse- 
quently, the fleet came home again, after taking Jamai- 
ca on the way. Oliver, indignant with the two com- 
manders who had not done what bold Admiral [Blake 
would have done, clapped them both into priso'n, de- 
clared war against Spain, and made a treaty with 
France, in virtue of which it was to shelter the King 
and his brother the Duke of York no longer. Then he 
sent a fleet abroad "under bold Admiral Blake, which 
brought the King of Portugal to his senses — just to 
keep its hand in, and then engaged a Spanish fleet, 
sunk four great ships, and took two more laden with 
silver to the value of two mllions of pounds; which 
dazzling prize was brought from Portsmouth to London 
in wagons, with the populace of all the towns and vil- 
lages through which the wagons passed shouting with all 
their might. After this victory, bold Admiral Blake 
sailed away to the port ot Santa Cruz to cut off the 
Spanish treasure ships coming from Mexico. There he 



382 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

found them, ten 'in "number, with seven others to take 
care of them, and a" big castle, and seven batteries, all 
roaring and blazing away at him with great guns. 
Blake caredho more tor great guns than for popguns — no 
more for their hot iron balls than for snowballs. He 
dashed into the harbor, captured and burned every one 
of the ships, and came sailing out again triumphantly, 
with the victorious English flag flying at his masthead. 
This was the last triumph of this great commander, 
who had sailed and fought until he was quite worn out. 
He died as his successful ship was coming into Ply- 
mouth Harbor, amidst the joyful acclamations of the 
people, and was buried in state in Westminster Abbey. 
Not to lie there long. 

Over and above all this, Oliver found that the Vau- 
dois, or Protestant people of the valleys of Lucerne.^ 
were insolently treated by the Catholic powers, and - 
were even put to death tor their religion, in an audacious 
and bloody manner. Instantly, he informed those pow- 
ers that this was a thing which Protestant England 
would not allow; and he speedily carried his point, 
through the might of his great name, and established 
their right to worship God in peace after their own 
harmless manner. 

Lastly, his English army won such admiration in 
fighting with the French against the Spaniards, that 
after they had assaulted the town of Dunkirk together, 
the French King in person gave it up to the English, 
that it might be a token to them of their might and valor. 

There were plots enough against Oliver among the 
frantic religionists '(who called themselves Fifth Mon- 
arch Men), and among the disappointed Republicans. 

He had a difficult game to play, for the Royalists 
were always ready to side with either party against 
him. The "King over the water," too, as Charles was 
called, had no scruples about plotting with anyone 
against his life ; although there is reason to suppose that 
he would willingly have married one of his daughters, 
it Oliver would have had such a son-in-law. There was 
a certain Colonel Saxby of the army, once a great sup- 
porter of Oliver's but now turned against him, who was 
a grievous trouble to him through all this part of his 



i 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 333 

career; and who came and went between the discon- 
tented in England and Spain and Charles, who put him- 
self in alliance with Spain on being thrown off by 
France. This man died in prison at last; but not until 
there had been very serious plots between the Royalists 
and Republicans, and an actual rising of them in Eng- 
land, when they 'burst into the city of Salisbury on a 
Sunday night, seized the judges who were going to hold 
the assizes there next day, and would have hanged them 
but for the merciful objections of the more temperate 
of their number. Oliver was so vigorous and shrewd 
that he soon put this revolt down, as he did most other 
conspiracies; and it was well for one of its chief man- 
agers — that same Lord Wilmot who had assisted in 
Charles' flight, and was now Earl of Rochester — that he 
made his escape. Oliver seemed to have eyes and ears 
everywhere, and secured such sources of information as 
his enemies little dreamed of. There was a chosen 
body of six persons, called the Sealed Knot, who were 
in the closest and most secret confidence of Charles. 
One of the foremost of these very men, a Sir Richard 
Willis, reported to Oliver everything that passed among 
them, and had two hundred a year for it. 

Myles Syndarcomb, also of the old army, was another 
conspirator against the Protector. He and a man 
named Cecil bribed one of his Life Guards to let them 
have good notice when he was going out — intending to 
shoot him from a window. But. owing either to his 
caution or his good fortune, they could never get an aim 
at him. Disappointed in this design, they go into the 
chapel in Whitehall with a basketful of combustibles, 
which were to explode by means of a slow match in six 
hours ; then, in the noise and confusion of the fire, they 
hoped to kill Oliver. But the Life Guardsman himself 
disclosed this plot; and they were seized, and Miles 
died (or killed himself in prison) a little while before he 
was ordered for execution. A few such plotters Oliver 
caused to be beheaded, a few more to be hanged, and 
many more, including those who rose in arms against 
him, to be sent as slaves to the West Indies. If he 
were rigid, he was impartial too in asserting the laws of 
England. When a Portuguese nobleman, the brother 



384 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of the Portuguese ambassador, killed a London citizen 
in mistake tor another man with whom he had had a 
quarrel, Oliver caused him to be tried before a jury of 
Englishmen and foreigners, and had him executed in 
spite of the entreaties of all the ambassadors in London. 

One of Oliver's own friends, the Duke of Olden- 
burgh, in sending him a present of six fine coach-horses, 
was very near doing more to please the Royalists than 
all the plotters put together. One day Oliver went 
with his coach drawn by these six horses to Hyde Park, 
to dine with his secretary and some of his other gentle- 
men under the trees there. After dinner, being merry, 
he took it into his head to put his friends inside and to 
drive them home: a postilion riding one of the foremost 
horses, as the custom was. On account of Oliver's being 
too free with the whip, the six fine horses went off at a 
gallop, the postilion got thrown, and Oliver fell upon 
the coach-pole and narrowly escaped being shot by his 
own pistol, which got entangled with his clothes in the 
harness, and went off. He was dragged some distance 
by the foot, until his foot came out of the shoe, and 
then he came safely to the ground under the broad body 
of the coach, and was very little the worse. The gen- 
tlemen inside were only bruised, and the discontented 
people of all parties were very much disappointed. 

The rest of the history of the Protectorate of Oliver 
Cromwell is a history of his Parliaments. His first one 
not pleasing him at all, he waited until the five months 
were out, and then dissolved it. The next was better 
suited to his views ; and from that he desired to get — it 
he could with safety to himself — the title of King. He 
had had this in his mind some time: whether because 
he thought that the English people, being more used to 
the title, were more likely to obey it; or whether be- 
cause he really wished to be a King himself, and to 
leave the succession to that title in his family, is far 
from clear. He was already as high, in England and in 
all the world, as he would ever be, and I doubt if he 
cared for the mere name. However, a paper, called the 
"Humble Petition and Advice," was presented to him 
by the House of Commons, praying him to take a high 
title and to appoint his successor. That he would have 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 385 

taken the title of King there' is no doubt, but for the 
strong opposition of the army. This induced him to for- 
bear, and to assent only to the other points of the pe- 
tition. Upon which occasion there was another grand 
show in Westminster Hall, when the Speaker of the 
House of Commons formally invested, him with a purple 
robe lined with ermine, and presented him with a splen- 
didly bound Bible, 'and put a golden scepter in his hand. 

The next time the Parliament met, he called a House 
of Lords of sixty members, as the petition gave him 
power to do ; but as that Parliament did not please him 
either, and would not proceed to the business ot the 
country, he jumped into a coach one morning, took six 
Guards with him, and sent them to the right-about. I 
wish this had been a warning to Parliaments to avoid 
long speches, and do more work. 

It was the month of August, 1658, when Oliver Crom- 
well's favorite daughter, Elizabeth Claypole (who had 
lately lost her youngest son), lay very ill, and his mind 
was greatly troubled, because he loved her dearly. 
Another of his daughters was married to Lord Falcon- 
berg, another to the grandson of the Earl of Warwick, 
and he had made his son Richard one of the members 
of the Upper House. He was very kind and loving to 
them all, being a good father and a good husband; but 
he loved this daughter the best of the family, and went 
down to Hampton Court to see her, and could hardly be 
induced to stir from her sickroom until she died. 
Although his religion had been of a gloomy kind, his 
disposition had been always cheerful. He had been 
fond of music in his home, and had kept open table once 
a week for all officers of the army not below the rank 
of captain, and had always preserved in his house a 
quiet, sensible dignity. He encouraged men of genius 
and learning, and loved to have them about him. Mil- 
ton was one of his great friends. He was good-humored, 
too, with the nobility, whose dresses and manners were 
very different from his; and to show them what good 
information he had, he would sometimes jokingly te]l 
them, when they were his guests, where they had last 
drunk the health of the "King over the water, " and 
would recommend them to be more private (if they 

25 History 



386 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

could) another time. But he had lived in busy times, 
and bore the weight of heavy state affairs, and had 
often gone in fear of his life. He was ill of the gout 
and ague : and when the death of his beloved child came 
upon him in addition, he sank, never to raise his head 
again. He told his physicians on the 24th of August 
that the Lord had assured him that he was not to die in 
that illness, and that he would certainly get better. 
This was only his sick fancy, for on the 3d of Septem- 
ber, which was the anniversary of the great battle of 
Worcester, and the day of the year which he called his 
fortunate day, he died, in the sixtieth year of his age. 
He had been delirious, and had lain insensible some 
hours, but he had been overheard to murmur a very 
good prayer the day before. The whole country 
lamented his death. If you want to know the real 
worth of Oliver Cromwell, and his real services to his 
country, you can hardh do better than compare Eng- 
land under him with England under Charles II. 

He had appointed his son Richard to succeed him, and 
after there had been, at Somerset House in the Strand, 
a lying in state more splendid than sensible, — as all such 
vanities after death are, I think, — Richard became Lord 
Protector. He was an amiable country gentleman, but 
had none of his father's great genius, and was quite 
unfit for such a post in such a storm of parties. Rich- 
ard's Protectorate, which only lasted a year and a half, 
is a history of quarrels between the officers of the army 
and the Parliament, and between the officers among 
themselves; and of a growing discontent among the 
people, who had far too many long sermons and far too 
few amusements, and wanted a change. At last, Gen- 
eral Monk got the army well into his own hands, and 
then, in pursuance of a secret plan he seems to have en- 
tertained from the time of Oliver's death, declared for 
the King's cause. He did not do this openly ; but, in 
his place in the House of Commons, as one of the mem- 
bers for Devonshire, strongly advocated the proposal 
of one Sir John Greenville, who came to the House with 
a letter from Charles, dated from Breda, and with 
whom he had previously been in secret communication. 

There had been plots and counterplots, and a recall of 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 387 

the last members of the Long Parliament, and an end 
of the Long Parliament, and risings of the Royal- 
ists that were made too soon ; and most men being 
tired out, and there being no one to head the 
country now great Oliver was dead, it was readily 
agreed to welcome Charles Stuart. Some of the wiser 
and better members said — what was most true — that in 
the letter from Breda he gave no real promise to govern 
well, and that it would be best to make him pledge him- 
self beforehand as to what he should be bound to do 
for the benefit of the kingdom. Monk said, however, it 
would be all right when he came, and he could not come 
too soon. 

So everybody found out, all in a moment, that the 
country must be prosperous and happy, having another 
Stuart to condescend to reign over it ; and there was a 
prodigious firing off of guns, lighting of bonfires, ring- 
ing of bells, and throwing up of caps. The people drank 
the King's health by thousands in the open streets, and 
everybody rejoiced. Down came the Arms of the Com- 
monwealth, up went the Royal Arms instead, and out 
came the public money. Fifty thousand pounds for the 
King, ten thousand pounds for his brother the Duke of 
York, five thousand pounds for his brother the Duke of 
Gloucester. Prayers for these gracious Stuarts were 
put up in all the churches ; commissioners were sent to 
Holland (which suddenly found out that Charles was a 
great man, and that it loved him) to invite the King 
home; Monk and the Kentish grandees went to Dover 
to kneel down before him as he landed. He kissed and 
embraced Monk, made him ride in the coach with himself 
and his brothers, came on to London amid wonderful 
shoutings, and passed through the army at Blackheath 
on the 29th of May (his birthday), in the year 1660. 
Greeted by splendid dinners under tents, by flags and 
tapestry streaming from all the houses, by delighted 
crowds in all the streets, by troops of noblemen and gen- 
tlemen in rich dresses, by City companies, train-bands, 
drummers, trumpeters, the great Lord Mayor, and the 
majestic aldermen, the King went on to Whitehall. On 
entering it, he commemorated his Restoration with the 
joke that it really would seem to have been his own 



m A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

fault that he had not come long ago, since everybody 
told him that he had always wished for him with all his 
heart. 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES II., CALLED THE MERRY MONARCH. 

There never were such profligate times in England 
as under Charles II. Whenever you see his portrait, 
with its swarthy, ill-looking face and great nose, you 
may fancy him in his Court at Whitehall, surrounded 
by some of the very worst vagabonds in the kingdom 
(though they were lords and ladies), drinking, gam- 
bling, indulging in vicious conversation, and committing 
every kind of profligate excess. It has been a fashion 
to call Charles II. "The Merry Monarch." Let me try 
to give you a general idea of some of the merry things 
that were done, in the merry days when this merry gen- 
tleman sat upon his merry throne, in merry England. 

The first merry proceeding was — of course — to declare 
that he was one of the greatest, the wisest, and the 
noblest kings that ever shone, like the blessed sun itself, 
on this benighted earth. The next merry and pleasant 
piece of business was, for the Parliament, in the hum- 
blest manner, to give him ,£1,200,000 a year, and to set- 
tle upon him for life that old disputed tonnage and 
poundage which had been so bravely fought for. 

Then, General Monk being made Earl of Albermarle, 
and a few other Royalists similarly rewarded, the law 
went to work to see what was to be done to those per- 
sons (they were called Regicides) who had been con- 
cerned in making a martyr of the late king. Ten of 
these were merrily executed; that is to say, six of the 
judges, one of the council, Colonel Hacker and another 
officer who had commanded the Guards, and Hugh 
Peters, a preacher who had preached against the martyr 
with all his heart. These executions were so extremely 
merry, that every horrible circumstance which Cromwell 
had abandoned was revived with appalling cruelty. 
The hearts of the sufferers were torn out of their living 
bodies; their bowels were burned before their faces; the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 389 

executioner cut jokes to the next victim, as he rubbed 
his filthy hands together, that were reeking with the 
blood of the last ; and the heads of the dead were drawn 
on sledges with the living to the place of suffering. 

Still, even so merry a monarch could not force one of 
these dying men to say that he was sorry for what he 
had done. Nay, the most memorable thing said among 
them was, that if the thing were to do again they would 
do it. 

Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished the evidence 
against Strafford, and who was one of the most staunch 
of the Republicans, was also tried, found guilty, and 
ordered for execution. When he came upon the scaffold 
on Tower Hill, after conducting his own defense with 
great power, his notes of what he meant to say to the 
people were torn away from him, and the drums and 
trumpets were ordered to sound lustily and drown his 
voice; for the people had been so much impressed b}^ 
what the Regicides had calmly said with their last 
breath, that it was the custom now to have the drums 
and trumpets always under the scaffold, ready to strike 
up. Vane said no more than this: "It is a bad cause 
which cannot bear the words of a dying man," and 
bravely died. 

These merry scenes were succeeded by another, per- 
haps even merrier. On the anniversary of the late 
King's death the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, 
and Bradshaw, were torn out of their graves in West- 
minster Abbey, dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on a 
gallows all day long, and then beheaded. Imagine the 
head of Oliver Cromwell set upon a pole to be stared at 
by a brutal crowd, not one of whom would have dared 
to look the living Oliver in the face for half a moment ! 
Think, after you have read this reign, what England 
was under Oliver Cromwell, who was torn out of his 
grave, and what it was under this merry monarch, who 
sold it, like a merry Judas, over and over again. 

Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife and daughter 
were not to be spared either, though they had been 
most excellent women. The base clergy of that time 
gave up their bodies, which had been buried in the 
Abbey, and — to the eternal disgrace of England — they 



390 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

were thrown into a pit together with the moldering 
bone s of Pym and of the brave and bold old Admiral 
Blake. 

The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they 
hoped to get the nonconormists, or dissenters, thor- 
oughly put down in this reign, and to have but one 
prayer-book and one service for all kinds of people, no 
matter what their private opinions were. This was 
pretty well, I think, for a Protestant Church which had 
displaced the Romish Church because people had a 
right to their own opinions in religious matters. How- 
ever, they carried it with a high hand, and a prayer- 
book was agreed upon, in which the extremest opinions 
of Archbishop Laud were not forgotten. An Act was 
passed, too, preventing any dissenters from holding 
any office under any corporation. So, the regular clergy 
in their triumph were soon as merry as the King. The 
army being by this time disbanded, and the King- 
crowned, everything was to go on easily forevermore. 

I must say a word here about the King's family. He 
had not been long upon the throne when his brother the 
Duke of Gloucester, and his sister, the Princess of 
Orange, died within a few months of each other, of 
smallpox. His remaining sister, the Princess Henri- 
etta, married the Duke of Orleans, the brother of Louis 
XIV., King of France. His brother James, Duke of 
York, was made High Admiral, and by and by became 
a Catholic. He was a gloomy, sullen, bilious sort of 
man, with a remarkable partiality for the ugliest women 
in the country. He married, under very discreditable 
circumstances, Anne Hyde, the daughter of Lord Clar- 
endon, then the King's principal Minister — not at all a 
<1elicate minister either, but doing much of the dirty 
work of a very dirty palace. It became important now 
that the King himself should be married; and divers 
foreign monarchs, not very particular about the charac- 
ter of their son-in-law, proposed their daughters to him. 
The King of Portugal offered his daughter Catherine 
of Braganza, and ^50,000: in addition to which, the 
French King, who was favorable to that match, offered 
a loan of another ^50,000. The King of Spain, on the 
other hand, offered any one out of a dozen Princesses, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 391 

and other hopes of gain. But the ready money carried 
the day, and Catherine came over in state to her merry 
marriage. 

The whole Court was a great flaunting crowd of de- 
bauched men and shameless women ; and Catherine's 
merry husband insulted and outraged her in every pos- 
sible way, until she consented to receive those worthless 
creatures as her very good friends, and to degrade her- 
self by their companionship. A Mrs. Palmer, whom the 
King made Lady Castlemaine, and afterward Duchess 
of Cleveland, was one of the most powerful of the bad 
women about the C<~urt, and had great influence with 
the King nearly all through his reign. Another merry 
latfy named Moll Davies, a dancer at the theater, was 
afterward her rival. So was Nell Gwyn, first an orange 
girl, and then an actress, who really had good in her, 
and of whom one of the worst things I know is, that 
actually she does seem to have been tond of the King. 
The first Duke of St. Albans was this orange girl's 
child. In like manner the son of a merry waiting lady, 
whom the King created Duchess of Portsmouth, became 
the Duke of Richmond. Upon the whole, it is not so 
bad a thing to be a commoner. 

The Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry among 
these merry ladies, and some equally merry (and 
equally infamous) lords and gentlemen, that he soon 
got through his hundred thousand pounds, and then, 
by way of raising a little pocket-money, made a merry 
bargain. He sold Dunkirk to the French King for five 
millions of livres. When I think of the dignity to 
which Oliver Cromwell raised England in the eyes of 
foreign powers, and when I ihink of the maner in which 
he gained for England this very Dunkirk, I am much 
inclined to consider that if the Merry Monarch had been 
made to follow his father for this action, he would have 
received his just deserts. 

Though he was like his father in one of that father's 
greater qualities, he was like him in being worthy of no 
trust. When he sent that letter to the Parliament from 
Breda, he did expressly promise that all sincere religious 
opinions should be respected. Yet he was no sooner 
firm in his power than he consented to one of the worst 



392 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Acts of Parliament ever passed. Under this law, every ' 
minister who should not give his solemn assent to the 
Prayer- Book by a certain day, was declared to be a min- 
ister no longer, and to be deprived of his church. The 
consequence of this was that some two thousand honest 
men were taken from their congregations, and reduced 
to dire poverty and distress. It was followed by another 
outrageous law, called the Conventicle Act, by which 
any person above the age ot sixteen who was present at 
any religious service not according to the Prayer-Book, 
was to be imprisoned three months for the first offense, 
six tor the second, and to be transported for the third. 
This Act alone filled the prisons, which were then most 
dreadful dungeons, to overflowing. 

The Covenanters in Scotland had already fared no 
better. A base Parliament, usually known as the 
Drunken Parliament, in consequence of its principal 
members being seldom sober, had been got together to 
make laws against the Covenanters ;md to force all men 
to be of one mind in religious matt( o. The Marquis ot 
Argyle, relying on the King's honoi, had given himself 
up to him ; but he was wealthy, and his enemies wanted 
his wealth. He was tried tor treason, on the evidence 
of some private letters in which he had expressed opin- 
ions — as well he might— more favorable to the govern- 
ment of the late Lord Protector than of the present 
merry and religious King. He was executed, as were 
two men of mark among the Covenanters, and Sharp, 
a traitor who had once been the friend of the Presbyte- 
rians and betra3^ed them, was made Archbishop of St. 
Andrews, to teach the Scotch how to like bishops. 

Things being in this merry state at home, the Merry 
Monarch undertook a war with the Dutch ; principally 
because they interfered with an African company, es- 
tablished with the two objects of buying gold-dust and 
slaves, of which the Duke of York was a leading mem- 
ber. After some preliminary hostilities, the said Duke 
sailed to the coast ot Holland with a fleet of ninety-eight 
vessels of war, and f tour fireships. This engaged v. ith 
the Dutch fleet, ot no fewer than 113 ships. In the great 
battle between the two forces, the Dutch lost eighteer 
ships, four admirals and seven thousand men. But the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 393 

English on shore were in no mood for exultation when 
they heard the news. 

For this was the year and the time of the Great 
Plague in London. During the winter of 1664, it had 
been whispered about that some tew people had died 
here and there of the disease called the Plague, in some 
ot the unwholesome suburbs around London. News 
was not published at that time as it is now, and some 
people believed these rumors, and some disbelieved 
them, and they were soon forgotten. But in the month 
of May, 1665, it beean to be said all over the town that 
the disease had burst out with great violence in St. 
Giles', and that the people were dying in great numbers. 
This soon turned out to be awfully true. The roads out 
of London were choked up by people endeavoring to 
escape trom the infected city, and large sums were paid 
for any kind ot conveyance. The disease soon spread 
so fast that it was necessary to shut up the houses in 
which sick people were, and to cut them off from com- 
munication with the living. Every one of these houses 
was marked on the outside of the door with a red cross, 
and the words, Lord, have mercy upon us ! The streets 
were all deserted, grass grew in the public ways, and 
there was a dreadful silence in the air. When night 
came on dismal rumlings used to be heard, and these 
were the wheels of the death-carts, attended by men 
with veiled faces and holding cloths to their mouths, 
who rang doleful bells and cried in a loud and solemn 
voice, "Bring out your dead!" The corpses put into 
these carts were buried by torchlight in great pits ; no 
service being performed over them ; all men being afraid 
to stay for a moment on the brink of the ghastly graves. 
In the general fear, children ran away from their parents, 
and parents trom their children. Some who were taken 
ill, died alone, and without any help. Some were stab- 
bed or strangled by hired nurses who robbed them ot 
all their money, and stole the very beds on which they 
lay. Some went mad, dropped from the windows, ran 
through the streets, and in their pain and trenzy flung 
themselves into the river. 

These were not all the horrors of the time. The 
wicked and dissolute, in wild desperation, sat in the 
26 History 



394 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

taverns singing roaring songs, and were stricken as they 
drank, and went out and died. The fearful and super- 
stitious persuaded themselves that they saw supernat- 
ural sights — burning swords in the sky, gigantic arms, 
and darts. Others pretended that at night vast crowds 
of ghosts walked round and round the dismal pits. One 
madman, naked, and carrying a brazier full of burning- 
coals upon his head, stalked through the streets, crying 
out that he was a Prophet, commissioned to denounce 
the vengeance ot the Lord on wicked London. Another 
always went to and fro, exclaiming, "Yet lorty days, 
and London shall be destroyed!" A third awoke the 
echoes in the dismal streets, by night and by day, and 
made the blood of the sick run cold, by calling out in- 
cessantly, in a deep hoarse voice, "Oh, the great and 
dreadful God!" 

Through the months of July and August and Septem- 
ber the Great Plague raged more and more. Great fires 
were lighted in the streets, in the hope of stopping the 
infection ; but there was a plague of rain, too, and it beat 
the fires out. At last, the winds which usually arise at 
that time of the year which is called the equinox, when 
day and night are of equal length all over the world, 
began to blow, and to purify the wretched town. The 
deaths began to decrease, the red crosses slowly to dis- 
appear, the fugitives to return, the shops to open, pale 
frightened faces to be seen in the streets. The Plague 
had been in every part of England, but in close and un- 
wholesome London it had killed one hundred thousand 
people. 

Ail this time, the Merry Monarch was as merry as 
ever, and as worthless as ever. All this time, the de- 
bauched lords and gentlemen and the shameless ladies 
danced and gamed and drank, and loved and hated one 
another, according to their merry ways. So little hu- 
manity did the government learn from the late afflic- 
tion, that one of the first things the Parliament did 
when it met at Oxford, being as yet afraid to come to 
London, was to make a law, called the Five Mile Act, 
expressly directed against those poor ministers who, in 
the lime of the Plague, had manfully come back to com- 
fort the unhappy people. This infamous law, b}' for- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 395 

bidding them to teach in any school, or to come within 
five miles of any city, town, or village, doomed them to 
starvation and death. 

The fleet had been at sea, and healthy. The King of 
France was now in alliance with the Dutch, though his 
navy was chiefly employed in looking on while the 
English and Dutch fought. The Dutch gained one vic- 
tory; and the English gained another and a greater; 
and Prince Rupert, one of the English admirals, was 
out in the Channel one windy night, looking for the 
French admiral, with the intention of giving him some- 
thing more to do than he had had yet, when the gale 
increased to a storm, and blew him into St. Helen's. 
That night was the 3d of September, 1666, and that 
wind fanned the Great Fire of London. 

It broke out at a baker's shop near London Bridge, 
on the spot on which the Monument now stands as a re- 
membrance of those raging flames. It spread and 
spread, and burned and burned, for three days. The 
nights were lighter than the day in the day- 
time there was an immense cloud of smoke, and m 
the night-time there was a great tower of fire mounting 
up into the sky, which iighted the whole country land- 
scape for ten miles round. Showers of hot ashes rose 
into the air and fell on distant places ; flying sparks car- 
ried the conflagration to great distances, and kindled it 
in twenty new spots at a time; church steeples fell 
down with tremendous crashes; houses crumbled into 
cinders by the hundred and the thousand. The summer 
had been intensely hot and dry, the streets were very 
narrow, and the houses mostly built of wood and plas- 
ter. Nothing could stop the tremendous fire but the 
want of more houses to burn ; nor did it stop until the 
whole way from the Tower to Temple Bar was a deserr 
composed of the ashes of thirteen thousand houses and 
eighty-nine churches. 

This was a terrible visitation at the time, and occa- 
sioned great loss and suffering to the two hundred thor • 
sand burned-out people.^who were obliged to lie in tiho 
fields under the open night sky, or in hastily-made huts 
of mud and straw, while the lanes and roads were rei - 
dered impassable by carts which had broken down a s 



396 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

• 

they tried to save their goods. But the fire was a great 
blessing to the city afterward, for it arose from its ruins 
very much improved — built more regularly, more 
widely, more cleanly and carefully, and, therefore, much 
more healthily. It might be far more healthy than it 
is, but there are some ^people in it still — even now, at 
this time, nearly two hundred years later — so selfish, so 
pigheaded, and so ignorant, that I doubt if even another 
Great Fire would warm them up to do their duty. 

The Catholics were accused of having willfully set 
London in flames ; one poor Frenchman, who had been 
mad for years, even accused himself of having with his 
own hand fired the first house. There is no reasonable 
doubt, however, that the fire was accidental. An in- 
scription on the Monument long attributed it to the 
Catholics; but it is removed now, and was always a ma- 
licious and stupid untruth. 

PART SECOND. 

That the Merry Monarch might be very merry indeed, 
in the merry times when his people were suffering un- 
der pestilence and fire, he drank and gambled and flung 
away among his favorites the money which the Parlia- 
ment had voted tor the war. The consequence of this 
was that the stout-hearted English sailors were merrily 
starving of want, and dying in the streets; while the 
Dutch, under their admirals De Witt and De Ruyter, 
came into "the River Thames, and up the River Med- 
way as far as Upnor, burned the guardships, silenced the 
weak batteries, and did what they would to the English 
coast for six whole weeks. Most of the English ships 
that could have prevented them had neither powder nor 
shot on board ; in this merry reign, public officers made 
themselves as merry as the King did with the public 
money ; and when it was intrusted to them to spend m 
national defenses or preparations, they put it into their 
own pockets with the merriest grace in the world. 

Lord Clarendon had, by this time, run as long a 
course as is usually allotted to the unscrupulous minis- 
ters of bad kings. He was impeached by his political 
opponents, but unsuccessfully. The Kino: then com- 
manded him to withdraw from England and retire to 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 397 

France, which he did, after defending himself in writ- 
ing. He was no great loss at home and died abroad 
some seven years afterward. 

There then came into power a ministry called the 
Cabal Ministry, because it was composed of Lord 
Clifford, the Earl of Arlington, the Duke of Bucking- 
ham, (a great rascal, and the King's most powerful fa- 
vorite), Lord Ashley, and the Duke ot Lauderdale, 
C. A. B. A. L. As the French were making conquests 
in Flanders, the first Cabal proceeding was to make a 
treaty with the Dutch, for uniting with Spain to oppose 
the French. It was no sooner made than the Merry 
Monarch, who always wanted to "get *money without 
being accountable to a Parliament for his expenditure, 
apologized to the King of France tor having had any- 
thing to do with it, and concluded a secret treaty with 
him making himself his infamous pensioner to the 
amount of two millions of livres down, and three mill- 
ions more a year; jjand 'engaging to desert that very 
Spain, to make war Jagainst those Very Dutch, and to 
declare himself a JCatholic when "a convenient time 
should arrive. This religious king had lately been cry- 
ing to his Catholic brother on the subject of his strong 
desire to be a Catholic; and now he merrily concluded 
this treasonable conspiracy against the country he gov- 
erned, by undertaking to "become one ,as soon as he 
safely could. For all ot which, though he had had ten 
merry heads instead of one, he richly deserved to lose 
them by the headsman's ax. 

As his one merry head might have been far from sate 
if these things had been known, they were kept very 
quiet, and war was declared by France and England 
against the Dutch. But, a very uncommon man, after- 
ward most important to English history and to the relig- 
ion and liberty ot this land, arose among them, and for 
many long years defeated the whole projects of France. 
This was William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, son of 
the last Prince of Orange of the same name, who mar- 
ried the daughter of Charles I. ot England. He was a 
young man at this time, only just ot age ; but he was 
brave, cool, intrepid, and wise. His father had been so 
detested that, upon his death, the Dutch had abolished 



398 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the authority to which this son would have otherwise 
succeeded (Stadtholder it was called) and placed the 
chief power in the hands of John de Witt, who educated 
this young prince. Now, the Prince became very pop- 
ular, and John de Witt's brother Cornelius was sen- 
tenced to banishment on a false accusation of conspiring 
to kill him. John went to the prison where he was, to 
take him away to exile, in his coach ; and a great mob 
who collected on the occasion then and there cruelly 
murdered both the brothers. This left the government 
in the hands ot the Prince, who was really the choice of 
the nation ; and from this time he exercised it with the 
greatest vigor, against the whole power of France, un- 
der its infamous generals, Conde and Turenne, and in 
support of the Protestant religion. It was full seven 
years before this war ended in a treaty ot peace made at 
Nimeguen, and its details would occupy a very consider- 
able space. It is enough to say that William ot Orange 
established a famous character with the whole world ; 
and that the Merry Monarch, adding to and improving 
on his former baseness, bound himself to do everything 
the King of France liked, and nothing the King of 
France did not like, for a pension of one hundred thou- 
sand pounds a year, which was afterward doubled. 
Besides this, the King of France, by means of his cor- 
rupt ambassadors — who wrote accounts of his proceed- 
ings in England which are not always to be believed, I 
think — bought our English members of Parliament, as 
he wanted them. So, in point of fact, during a consid- 
erable portion of this merry reign, the King of France 
was the real King ot this country. 

But there was a better time to come, and it was to 
come (though his royal uncle little thought so) through 
that very William, Prince of Orange. He came over to 
England, saw Mary, the elder daughter of the Duke of 
York, and married her. We shall see by and by what 
came of that marriage, and why it is never to be for- 
gotten. 

This daughter was a Protestant, but her mother died 
a Catholic. She and her sister Anne, also a Protestant, 
were the only survivors of eight children. Anne after- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 399 

ward married George, Prince of Denmark, brother to 
the King of that country. 

Lest you should do the Merry Monarch the injustice 
of supposing that he was ever good-humored (except 
when he had everything his own way), or that he was 
high-spirited and honorable, I will mention here what was 
done to a member of the House of Commons, Sir John 
Coventry. He made a remark in a debate about taxing 
the theaters which gave the King offense. The King 
agreed with his illegitimate son, who had been born 
abroad, and whom he had made Duke of Monmouth, to 
take the following merry vengeance: To waylay him 
at night, fifteen armed men to one, and to slit his nose 
with a penknife. Like master, like man. The King's 
favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, was strongly sus- 
pected of setting on an assassin to murder the Duke of 
Ormond as he was returning home from a dinner ; and 
that Duke's spirited son, Lord Ossory, was so persuaded 
of his guilt, that he said to him at Court, even as he 
stood beside the King, "My lord, I know very well that 
you are at the bottom of this late attempt upon my 
father. But I give you warning, if he ever come to a 
violent end, his blood shall ^be upon you, and wherever 
I meet you I will pistol you ! I will do so, though I find 
you standing behind the King's chair; and I tell you 
this in His Majesty's presence, that you may be quite 
sure of my doing what I threaten." Those were merry 
times indeed. 

There was a fellow named Blood, who was seized for 
making, with two companions, an audacious attempt to 
steal the crown, the globe, and scepter, from the place 
where the jewels were kept in the Tower. This robber, 
who was a swaggering ruffian, being taken, declared 
that he was the man who had endeavored to kill the 
Duke of Ormond, and that he had meant to kill the 
King, too, but was overawed by the majesty of his ap- 
pearance, when he might otherwise have done it, as he 
was bathing at Battersea. The King being but an ill- 
looking fellow, I don't believe a word of this. Whether 
he was flattered, or whether he knew that Buckingham 
had really set Blood on to murder the Duke, is uncer- 
tain. But it is quite certain that he pardoned this thief, 



400 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

gave him an estate of five hundred a year in Ireland, 
(which had had the honor ot giving him birth,) and pre- 
sented him at Court to the debauched lords and the 
shameless ladies, who made a great deal ot him — as I 
have no doubt they would have made of the Devil him- 
self, if the King had introduced him. 

Infamously pensioned as he was, the King still wanted 
money, and consequently was obliged to call Parlia- 
ments. In these, the great object of the Protestants 
was to thwart the Catholic Duke of York, who married 
a second time ; his new wife being a young lady only 
fifteen years old, the Catholic sister of the Duke of 
Modena. In this they were seconded by the Protestant 
Dissenters, though to their own disanvantage ; since, to 
exclude Catholics from power, they were even willing to 
exclude themselves. The King's object was to pretend 
to be a Protestant, while he was really a Catholic; to 
swear to the bishops that he was devoutly attached to 
the English Church, while he knew he had bargained it 
away to the King of France ; and by cheating and de- 
ceiving them, and all who were attached to royalty, to 
become despotic and be powerful enough to confess 
w T hat a rascal he was. Meantime, the King of France, 
knowing his merry pensioner well, intrigued with the 
King's opponents in Parliament, as well as with the 
King and his friends. 

The fears that the country had of the Catholic reli- 
gion being restored, if the Duke of York should come 
to the throne, and the low cunning of the King in pre- 
tending to share their alarms, led to some very terrible 
results. A certain Dr. Tonge, a dull clergyman in 
the city, fell into the hands of a certain Titus Oates, a 
most infamous character, who pretended to have ac- 
quired among the Jesuits abroad a knowledge of a great 
plot for the murder of the King, and the re-establishment 
ot the Catholic religion. Titus Oates being produced 
by this unlucky Dr. Tonge, and solemnly examined be- 
fore the council, contradicted himself in a thousand 
ways, told the most ridiculous and improbable stories, 
and implicated Coleman, the Secretary of the Duchess 
of York. Now, although what he charged against Cole- 
man was not true, and although you and I know very 



CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 401 

well that the real dangerous Catholic plot was that one 
with the King of France ot which the Merry Monarch 
was himself the head, there happened to be found 
among Coleman's papers some letters, in which he did 
praise the days of Bloody Queen Mary, and abuse the 
Protestant religion. This was great good fortune for 
Titus, as it seemed to confirm him ; but better still was 
in store. Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, the magistrate 
who had first examined him being unexpectedly found 
dead near Primrose Hill, was confidently believed to 
have been killed by the Catholics. I think there is no 
doubt that he had been melancholy mad, and that he 
killed himself; but he had a great Protestant funeral 
and Titus was called the Saver of the Nation, and re- 
ceived a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year. 

As soon as Oates' wickedness had met with this suc- 
cess up started another villain, named William Bedloe, 
who, attracted by a reward of five hundred pounds 
offered for the apprehension of the murderers of God- 
frey, came forward and charged two Jesuits and some 
other persons with having committed it at the Queen's 
desire. Oates, going into partnership with this new 
informer, had the audacity to accuse the poor Queen 
herself of high treason. Then appeared a third infor- 
mer, as bad as either of the two, and accused a Catholic 
banker named Stayley of having said that the King was 
the greatest rogue in the world (which would not have 
been far from the truth), and that he would kill him with 
his own hand. This banker being at once tried and ex- 
ecuted, Coleman and two others were tried and executed. 
Then, a miserable wretch named Prance, a Catholic sil- 
versmith, being accused by Bedloe, was tortured into 
confessing that he had taken part in Godfrey's murder, 
and into accusing three other men of having committed 
it. Then, five Jesuits were accused by Oates, Bedloe, 
and Prance together, and were all found guilty, and 
executed on the same kind of contradictory and absurd 
evidence. The Queen's physician and three monks 
were next put on their trial ; but Oates and Bedloe had 
for the time gone far enough, and these four were ac- 
quitted. The public mind, however, was so full of a 
Catholic plot, and so strong against the Duke of York, 



402 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

that James consented to obey a written order trom his 
brother, and to go^with his family to Brussels, provided 
that his rights should never be sacrificed in his absence 
to the Duke of Monmouth. The House of Commons, 
not satisfied with this, as the King hoped, passed a bill 
to exclude the Duke from ever succeeding to the 
throne. In return, the King dissolved the Parliament. 
He had deserted his old favorite, the Duke of Bucking- 
ham, who was now in the opposition. 

To give any sufficient idea of the miseries of Scotland 
in this merry reign would occupy a hundred pages. 
Because the people would not have bishops, and were 
resolved to stand by their solemn League and Covenant, 
such cruelties were inflicted upon them as make the 
blood run cold. Ferocious dragoons galloped through 
the country to punish peasants for deserting the 
churches; sons were hanged up at their fathers' door for 
refusing to disclose where their fathers were concealed; 
wives were tortured to death for not betraying their 
husbands , people were taken out of their fields and gar- 
dens, and shot on the public roads without trial ; lighted 
matches were tied to the fingers ot prisoners, and a most 
horrible torment called the Boot was invented, and con- 
stantly applied, which ground and mashed the victim's 
legs with iron wedges. Witnesses were tortured as well 
as prisoners. All the prisons were full ; all the gibbets 
were heavy with bodies; murder and plunder devastated 
the whole country. In spite ot all, the Covenanters 
were by no means to be dragged into the churches, and 
persisted in worshiping God as they thought right. A 
body of ferocious Highlanders, turned upon them from 
the mountains of their own country, had no greater effect 
than the English dragoons under Grahame of Claver- 
house, the most cruel and rapacious of all their enemies, 
whose name will be cursed through the length and 
breadth of Scotland. Archbishop Sharp had ever aided 
and abetted all these outrages. But he fell at last; for 
when the injuries of the Scottish people were at their 
height, he was seen in his coach-and-six coming across a 
moor by a body of men, headed by one John Balfour, 
who were in waiting for another of their oppressors. 
Upon this they cried out that Heaven had delivered him 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 403 

into their hands, and killed him with many wounds. If 
ever a man deserved such a death, I think Archbishop 
Sharp did. 

It made a great noise directly, and the Merry Mon- 
arch — strongly suspected of having goaded the Scottish 
people on that he might have an excuse for a greater 
army than the Parliament were willing to give him — 
sent down his son, the Duke of Monmouth, as com- 
mander-in-chief, with instructions to attack the Scottish 
rebels, or Whigs, as they were called, whenever he came 
up with them. Marching with ten thousand men from 
Edinburgh, he found them, in number tour or five 
thousand, drawn up at Bothwell Bridge, by the Clyde. 
They were soon dispersed; and Monmouth showed a 
more humane character toward them than he had shown 
toward that Member of Parliament whose nose he had 
caused to be slit with a penknife. But the Duke of 
Lauderdale was their bitter foe, and sent Claverhouse 
to finish them. 

As the Duke of York became more and more unpopu- 
lar, the Duke of Monmouth became more and more 
popular. It would have been decent in the latter not 
to have voted in favor of the renewed bill for the ex- 
clusion of James from the throne ; but he did so, much 
to the King's amusement, who used to sit in the House 
of Lords by the fire : hearing the debates, which, he said, 
were as good as a play. The House of Commons 
passed the bill by a large majority, and it was carried 
up to the House of Lords by Lord Russell, one of the 
best of the leaders of the Protestant side. It was re- 
jected there, chiefly because the bishops helped the 
Kmg to get nd of it; and the fear of the Catholic plots 
revived again. There had been another got up, by a 
fellow out of Newgate named Dangerfield, which is 
more famous than it deserves to be, under the name of 
the Meal-Tub Plot. This jailbird having been got out 
of Newgate by a Mrs. Cellier, a Catholic nurse, had 
turned Catholic himself, and pretended that he knew of 
a plot among the Presbyterians against the King's life. 
This was very pleasant to the Duke of York, who hated 
the Presbyterians, who returned the compliment. He 
gave Dangerfield twenty guineas, and sent him to the 



404 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

King his brother. But Dangerfield, breaking down 
altogether in his charge, and being sent back to New- 
gate, almost astonished the Duke out of his five senses 
by suddenly swearing that the Catholic nurse had put 
that false design into his head, and that what he really 
knew about was a Catholic plot against the King ; the 
evidence of which would be found in some papers, con- 
cealed in a meal-tub in Mrs. Cellier's house. There 
they were, of course — for he had put them there him- 
self ; and so the tub gave the name to the plot. But the 
nurse was acquitted on her trial, and it came to nothing. 

Lord Ashley, of the Cabal, was now Lord Shaftesbury ; 
and was strong against the succession of the Duke of 
York. The House of Commons, aggravated to the ut- 
most extent, as we may well suppose, by suspicions of 
the King's conspiracy with the King of France, made a 
desperate point of the exclusion still, and were bitter 
against the Catholics generally. So unjustly bitter were 
they, I grieve to say, that they impeached the venerable 
Lord Stafford, a Catholic nobleman seventy years old 
of a design to kill the King. The witnesses were that 
atrocious Oates and the two other birds of the same 
feather. He was found guilt} 7 , on evidence quite as 
foolish as it was false, and was beheaded on Tower Hill. 
The people were opposed to him when he first appeared 
upon the scaffold ; but when he had addressed them and 
shown them how innocent he was and how wickedly he 
was sent there, their better nature was aroused, and they 
said, "We believe you, my lord. God bless you, my 
lord!" 

The House of Commons refused to let the King have 
any money until he should consent to the Exclusion Bill ; 
but, as he could get it and did get it from his master 
the King of France, he could afford to hold them very 
cheap. He called a Parliament at Oxford, to which he 
went down with a great show of being armed and pro- 
tected as if he were in danger of his life, and to which 
the opposition members also went armed and protected, 
alleging that they were in tear of the Papists, who were 
numerous among the King's guards. However, they 
went on with the Exclusion Bill, and were so earnest 
upon it that they would have carried it again, if the 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 405 

King had not popped his crown and state robes into a 
sedan chair, bundled himself into it along with them, 
hurried down to the chamber where the House of Lords 
met, and dissolved the Parliament. After which he 
scampered home, and the members of Parliament scam- 
pered home too, as fast as their legs could carry them. 
The Duke of York, then residing in Scotland, had, 
under the law which excluded Catholics from public 
trust, no right whatever to public employment. Never- 
theless, he was openly employed as the King's represen- 
tative in Scotland, and there gratified his sullen and cruel 
nature to his heart's content by directing the dreadful 
cruelties against the Covenanters. There were two 
ministers named Cargill and Cameron who had escaped 
from the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and who returned 
to Scotland, and raised the miserable but still brave 
and unsubdued Covenanters afresh, under the name of 
Cameronians. As Cameron publicly posted a declara- 
tion that the King was a forsworn tyrant, no mercy was 
shown to his unhappy followers after he was slain in 
battle. The Duke of York, who was particularly fond 
of the Boot, and derived great pleasure from having it 
applied, offered their lives to some of these people, if 
they would cry on the scaffold, "God save the King!" 
But their relations, friends, and countrymen had been 
so barbarously tortured and murdered in this merry 
reign, that they preferred to die, and did die. The Duke 
then obtained his merry brother's permission to hold a 
Parliament in Scotland, which first, with most shame- 
less deceit.confirmed the laws for securing the Protestant 
religion against Popery, and then declared that nothing 
must or should prevent the succession of a Popish Duke. 
After this double-faced beginning, it established an oath 
which no human being could understand, but which 
everybody was to take, as a proof that his religion was 
the lawful religion. The Earl of Argyle, taking it with 
the explanation that he did not consider it to prevent 
him from favoring any alteration either in the Church 
or State which was not inconsistent with the Protestant 
religion or with his loyalty, was tried for high treason 
before a Scottish jury, of which the Marquis of Mon- 
trose was foreman, and was found guilty. He escaped 



406 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the scaffold, for that time, by getting away, in the 
disguise of a page, in the train of his daughter, Lady 
Sophia Lindsay. It was absolutely proposed, by certa.n 
members of the Scottish Council, that this lady should 
be whipped through the streets of Edinburgh. But 
this was too much even for the Duke, who had the man- 
liness then (he had very little at most times) to remark 
that Englishmen were not accustomed to treat ladies in 
that manner. In those merry times nothing could equal 
the brutal servility of the Scottish fawners but the con- 
duct of similar degraded beings in England. 

After the settlement of these little affairs, the Duke 
returned to England, and soon resumed his place at the 
Council, and his high office of High Admiral — all this 
by his brother's favor, and in open defiance of the law. 
It would have been no loss to the country if he had been 
drowned when his ship, in going to Scotland to fetch his 
family, struck on a sand bank, and was lost with two 
hundred souls on board. But he escaped in a boat with 
some friends ; and the sailors were so brave and unsel- 
fish that, when they saw him rowing away, they gave 
three cheers, while they themselves were going down 
forever. 

The Merry Monarch having got rid of his Parliament, 
went to work to make himself despotic with all speed. 
Having had the villainy to order the execution of Oliver 
Plunket, Bishop of Armagh, falsely accused of a plot to 
establish Popery in that country by means of a French 
army, — the very thing this royal traitor was himself 
trying to do at home, — and having tried to ruin Lord 
Shaftesbury, and failed, he turned his hand to controll- 
ing the corporations all over the country; because, if 
he could only do that, he could get what juries he chose, 
to bring in perjured verdicts, and could get what mem- 
bers he chose returned to Parliament. These merry 
times produced and made Chief Justice of the 
Court ot King's Bench, a drunken ruffian of the 
name of Jeffreys; a red- faced, swollen, bloated, hor- 
rible creature, with a bullying, roaring voice, and a 
more savage nature perhaps than was ever lodged in any- 
human breast. This monster was the Merry Monarch's 
especial favorite, and he testified his admiration of him 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 407 

by giving him a ring from his own finger, which the 
people used to call Judge Jeffrey's Blood-stone. Him 
the King employed to go about and bully the corpora- 
tions, beginning with London ; or, as Jeffreys himself 
elegantly called it, "to give them a lick with the rough 
side of his tongue." And he did it so thoroughly that 
they soon became the basest and most sycophantic 
bodies in the kingdom — except the University|of Oxford, 
which, in that respect, was quite pre-eminent and unap- 
proachable. 

Lord Shaftesbury (who died soon after the King's fail- 
ure against him), Lord William Russell, the Duke of 
Monmouth, Lord Howard, Lord Jersey, Algernon Sid- 
ney, John Hampden (grandson of the great Hampden), 
and some others, used to hold a council together after 
the dissolution of the Parliament, arranging what it 
might be necessary to do if the King carried his Popish 
plot to the utmost height. Lord Shaftesbury, having 
been much the most violent of this party, brought two 
violent men into their secrets — Rumsey, who had been 
a soldier in the Republican army ; and West, a lawyer. 
These two knew an old officer of Cromwell's, called 
Rumbold, who had married a maltster's widow, and so 
had come into possession of a solitary dwelling called 
the Rye House, near Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire. 
Rumbold said to them what a [capital [place this house 
of his would be from which to shoot at the King, who 
often passed there going to and fro from Newmarket. 
They liked the idea, and entertained it. But one of 
their body gave information ; and they, together with 
Shepherd, a wine merchant, Lord Russell. Algernon 
Sidney, Lord Essex, Lord Howard, and Hampden, were 
all arrested. 

Lord Russell might have easily escaped, but scorned 
to do so, being innocent of any wrong. Lord Essex 
might have easily escaped, but scorned to do so, lest 
his flight should prejudice Lord Russell. But it weighed 
upon his mind that he had brought into their council 
Lord Howard, — who now turned a miserable traitor, — 
against a great dislike Lord Russell had always had of 
him. He could not bear the reflection, and destroyed 



408 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

himself before Lord Russell was brought to trial at the 
Old Bailey. 

He knew very well that he had nothing to hope, hav- 
ing always been manful in the Protestant cause against 
the two false brothers, the one on the throne, and the 
other standing next to it. He had a wife, one of the 
noblest and best of women, who acted as his secretary on 
his trial, who comforted him in his prison, who supped 
with him on the night before he died, and whose love 
and virtue and devotion have made her name imperish- 
able. Of course, he was found guilty, and was sen- 
tenced to be beheaded in Lincoln's Inn-fields, not many 
yards from his own house. When he had parted from 
his children on the evening before his death, his wife 
still stayed with him until ten o'clock at night; and 
when their final separation in this world was over, and 
he had kissed her many times, he still sat for a long 
while in his prison, talking of her goodness. Hearing 
the rain fall fast at the time, he calmly said, "Such a 
rain to-morrow will spoil a great show, which is a dull 
thing on a rainy day." At midnight he went to bed, 
and slept till four; even when his servant called him he 
fell asleep again while his clothes were being made 
ready. He rode to the scaffold in his own carriage, 
attended by two famous clergymen, Tillotson and Bur- 
net, and sang a psalm to himself very softly, as he went 
along. He was as quiet and as steady as if he had been 
going out for an ordinary ride. After saying that he 
was surprised to see so great a crowd, he laid down his 
head upon the block, as if upon the pillow of his bed, 
and had it struck off at the second blow. His noble 
wife was busy for him even then ; for that true-hearted 
lady printed and widely circulated his last words, of 
which he had given her a copy. They made the blood 
of all honest men in England boil. 

The University of Oxford distinguished itself on the 
very same day by pretending to believe that the accusa- 
tion against Lord Russell was true, and by calling the 
King, in a written paper, the Breath of their Nostrils 
and the Anointed of the Lord. This paper the Parlia- 
ment afterward caused to be burned by the common 
hangman ; which I am sorry for, as I wish it had been 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 409 

framed and glased and hung up in some public place, 
as a monument of baseness for the scorn of mankind. 

Next, came the trial of Algernon Sidney, at which 
Jeffreys presided, like a great crimson toad, sweltering 
and swelling with rage. "I pray God, Mr. Sidney," 
said this Chief Justice of a merry reign, after passing 
sentence, "to work in you a temper fit to go to the 
orther world, for I see you are not fit tor this." "My 
lord," said the prisoner, composedly holding out his 
arm, "feel my pulse, and see if I be disordered. I 
thank Heaven I never was in better temper than I am 
now." Algernon Sidney was executed on Tower Hill, 
on the 7th of December, 1683. He died a hero, and 
died, in his own words, "for that good old cause in which 
he had been engaged from his youth, and for which 
God had so often and so wonderfully declared himself." 

The Duke of Monmouth had been making his uncle, 
the Duke of York, very jealous, by going about the 
country in a royal sort of way, playing at the people's 
games, becoming godfather to their children, and even 
touching for the king's evil, or stroking the faces of the 
sick to cure them — though, for the matter of that, I 
should say he did them about as much good as any 
crowned king could have done. His father had got him 
to write a letter, confessing his having had a part in 
the conspiracy for which Lord Russell had been be- 
headed; "but he was ever a weak man, and as soon as he 
had written it, he was ashamed of it and got it back 
again. For this he was banished to the Netherlands ; 
but he soon returned and had an interview with his 
father, unknown to his uncle. It would seem that he 
was coming into the Merry Monarch's favor again, and 
that the Duke of York was sliding out of it, when death 
appeared to the merry galleries of Whitehall, and aston- 
ished the debauched lords and gentlemen, and the 
shameless ladies, very considerably. 

On Monday, the 2d of February, 1685, the merry pen- 
sioner and servant of the King of France fell down in a 
fit of apoplexy. By the Wednesday his case was hope- 
less, and on the Thursday he was told so. As he made 
a difficulty about taking the sacrament from the Protes- 
tant Bishop of Bath, the Duke of York got all who were 



410 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

present away from the bed, and asked his brother, in a 
whisper, if he should send for a Catholic priest. The 
King replied, "For God's sake, brother, do!" The 
Duke smuggled in, up the back stairs, disguised in a 
wig and gown, a priest named Huddleston, who had 
saved the King's life after the battle of Worcester; tell- 
ing him that this worthy man in the wig had once saved 
his body, and was now come to save his soul. 

The Merry Monarch lived through that night, and 
died before noon on the next day, which was Friday, 
the 6th. Two of the last things he said were of a 
human sort, and your remembrance will give him the 
full benefit of them. When the Queen sent to say she 
was too unwell to attend him and to ask his pardon, he 
said, "Alas! poor woman, she beg my pardon! I beg 
hers with all my heart. Take back that answer to her. " 
And he also said, in reference to Nell Gwyn, "Do not 
let poor Nelly starve." 

He died in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty- 
fifth of his reign. 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II. 

King James II. was a man so very disagreeable that 
even the best of historians has favored his brother 
Charles, as becoming, by comparison, quite a pleasant 
character. The one object of his short reign was to re- 
establish the Catholic religion in England ; and this he 
doggedly pursued with such a stupid obstinacy that his 
career very soon came to a close. 

The first thing he did was to assure his council that 
he would make it his endeavor to preserve the Govern- 
ment, both in Church and State, as it was by law estab- 
lished ; and that he would always take care to defend 
and support the Church. Great public acclamations 
were raised over this fair speech, and a great deal was 
said, from the pulpit and elsewhere, about the word of 
a King which was never broken, by credulous people 
who little supposed that he had formed a secret council 
for Catholic affairs, of which a mischievous Jesuit, 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 411 

called Father Petre, was one of the chief members. 
With tears of joy in his eyes, he received, as the begin- 
ning of his pension from the King of France, five hun- 
dred thousand livres; yet, with a mixture of meanness 
and arrogance that belonged to his contemptible charac- 
ter, he was always jealous of making some show of 
being independent of the King of France, while he 
pocketed his money. As — notwithstanding his publish- 
ing two papers in favor of Popery (and not likely to do 
it much service, I should think) written by the King, 
his brother, and found in his strong-box ; and his open 
display of himself attending mass — the Parliament was 
very obsequious, and granted him a large sum of 
money, he began his reign with a belief that he could 
do what he pleased, and with a determination to do it. 

Before we proceed to its principal events, let us dispose 
of Titus Oates. He was tried for perjury, a fortnight 
after the coronation, and besides being very heavily 
fined, was sentenced to stand twice in the pillory, to be 
whipped from Aldgate to Newgate one day, and from 
Newgate to Tyburn two days afterward, and to stand 
in the pillory five times a year as long as he lived. This 
fearful sentence was actually inflicted on the rascal. 

Being unable to stand after his first flogging, he was 
dragged on a sledge from Newgate to Tyburn, and 
flogged as he was drawn along. He was so strong a vil- 
lain that he did not die under the torture, but lived to 
be afterward pardoned and rewarded, though not to be 
ever believed in any more. Dangerfield, the only other 
one of that crew left alive, was not so fortunate. He 
was almost killed by a whipping from Newgate to 
Tyburn, and, as if that were not punishment enough, a 
ferocious barrister of Gray's Inn gave him a poke in the 
eye with his cane, which caused his death ; for which 
the ferocious barrister was deservedly tried and exe- 
cuted. 

As soon as James was on the throne, Argyle and Mon- 
mouth went from Brussels to Rotterdam, and attended 
a meeting of Scottish exiles held there, to concert 
measures for a rising in England. It was agreed that 
Argyle should effect a landing in Scotland, and Mon- 
mouth in England ; and that two Englishmen should be 



412 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

sent with Argyle to be in his confidence, and two Scot- 
men with the Duke of Monmouth. 

Argyle was the first to act upon this contract. But 
two of his men being taken prisoners at the Orkney 
Islands, the Government became aware of his intentions, 
and was able to act against him with such vigor as to 
prevent his raising more than two or three thousand 
Highlanders, although he sent a fiery cross by trusty 
messengers, from clan to clan and from glen to glen 
as the custom then was when those wild people were to 
be excited by their chiefs. As he was moving toward 
Glasgow with his small force, he was betrayed by some 
of his followers, taken, and carried, with his hands tied 
behind his back, to his old prison in Edinburgh Castle. 

James ordered him to be executed, on his old shame- 
fully unjust sentence, within three days; and he appears 
to have been anxious that his legs should have been 
pounded with his old favorite, the boot. However, the 
boot was not applied ; he was simply beheaded, and his 
head was set upon the top of Edinburgh Jail. One of 
those Englishmen who had been assigned to him was 
that old soldier Rumbold, the master of the Rye House. 
He was sorely wounded, and within a week after Argyle 
had suffered with great courage, was brought up for 
trial, lest he should die and disappoint the King. He, 
too, was executed, after defending himself with great 
spirit, and saying that he did not believe that God had 
made the greater part of mankind to carry saddles on 
their backs and bridles in their mouths, and to be ridden 
by a few, booted and spurred for the purpose — in which 
I thoroughly agree with Rumbold. 

The Duke of Monmouth, partly through being detained 
and partly through idling his time away, was five or 
six weeks behind his friend when he landed at 
Lyme, in Dorset; having at his right hand an unlucky 
nobleman called Lord Grev of Werk, who of himself 
would have ruined a far more promising expedition. 
He immediately set up his standard in the market-place, 
and proclaimed the King a tyrant, and a Popish usur 
per, and I know not what else; charging him not only 
with what he had done, which was bad enough, but 
with what neither he nor anybody else had done, such 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 413 

as setting fire to London, and poisoning the late King. 
Raising some four thouand men by these means, he 
marched on to Taunton, where there were many Protes- 
tant dissenters who were strongly opposed to the Catho- 
lics. Here, both the rich and poor turned out to receive 
him, ladies waved a welcome to him from all the win- 
dows as he passed along the streets, flowers were strewn 
in his way, and every compliment and honor that could 
be devised what showered upon him. Among the rest, 
twenty young ladies came forward, in their best clothes, 
and in their brightest beauty, and gave him a Bible 
ornamented with their own fair hands, together with 
other presents. 

Encouraged by this homage, he proclaimed himself 
King, and went on to Bridgewater. But here the Gov- 
ernment troops, under the Earl of Feversham, were 
close at hand ; and he was so dispirited at finding that 
he made but few powerful friends after all, that it was 
a question whether he should disband his army and 
endeavor to escape. It was resolved, at the instance of 
that 'unlucky Lord Grey, to make a night attack on the 
King's army, as it lay encamped on the edge of a 
morass called Sedgemoor. The horsemen were com- 
manded by the same unlucky lord, who was not a brave 
man. He gave up the battle almost at the first obstacle 
— which was a deep drain; and although the poor 
countrymen who had turned out for Monmouth fought 
bravely with scythes, poles, pitchforks, and such poor 
weapons as they had, they were soon dispersed by the 
trained soldiers, and fled in all directions. When the 
Duke of Monmouth himself fled, was not known in the 
confusion ; but the unlucky Lord Grey was taken early 
next day, and then another of the party was taken, 
who confessed he had parted from the Duke only four 
hours before. Strict search being made, he was found 
disguised as a peasant, hidden in a ditch under fern and 
nettles, with a few peas in his pocket which he had 
gathered in the fields to eat. The only other ar- 
ticles he had upon him were a few papers and little 
books: one of the latter being a strange jumble, in his 
own writing, of charms, songs, recipes, and prayers. 
He was completely broken. He wrote a miserable letter 



414 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

to the King beseeching and entreating to be allowed to 
see him. When he was taken to London, and conveyed 
bound into the King's presence, he crawled to him on 
his knees, and made a most degrading exhibition. As 
James never forgave or relented toward anybody, he 
was not likely to soften toward the issuer of the Lyme 
proclamation, so he told the suppliant to prepare for 
death. 

On the 15th of July, 1685, this unfortunate favorite of 
the people was brought out to die on Tower Hill. The 
crowd was immense, and the tops of all the houses were 
covered with gazers. He had seen his wife, the daughter 
of the Duke of Buccleuch, in the Tower, and had talked 
much of a lady whom he loved far better — the Lady 
Harriet Wentworth — who was one of the last persons 
he remembered in this life. Before laying down his 
head upon the block he felt the edge of the ax and told 
the executioner that he feared it was not sharp enough, 
and that the ax was not heavy enough. On the execu- 
tioner replying that it was of the proper kind, the Duke 
said, "I pray you have a care, and do not use me so 
awkwardly as you used my Lord Russell." The execu- 
tioner, made nervous by this, and trembling, struck 
once, and merely gashed him in the neck. Upon this, 
the Duke of Monmouth raised his head and looked the 
man reproachfully in the face. Then he struck twice, 
and then thrice, and then threw down the ax, and cried 
out in a voice of horror that he could not finish that 
work. The sheriffs, however, threatening him with 
what should be done to himself if he did not, he took it 
up again, and struck a fourth time and a fifth time. 
Then the wretched head at last fell off, and James, 
Duke of Monmouth, was dead, in the thirty-sixth year 
of his age. He was a showy, graceful man, with many 
popular qualities, and had found much favor in the 
open hearts of the English. 

. The atrocities committed by the Government which 
followed this Monmouth rebellion, form the blackest 
and most lamentable page in English history. The 
poor peasants having been dispersed with great loss, 
and their leaders having been taken, one would think 
that the implacable King might have been satisfied. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 415 

But no; he let loose upon them, among other intolera- 
ble monsters, a Colonel Kirk, who had served against 
the Moors, and whose soldiers — called by the people 
Kirk's Lambs, because they bore a lamb upon their flag, 
as the emblem of Christianity— were worthy of their 
leader. The atrocities committed by these demons in 
human shape are far too horrible to be related here. It 
is enough to say, that besides most ruthlessly murdering 
and robbing them, and ruining them, by making him 
buy their pardons at the price of all they possessed, it 
was one of Kirk's favorite amusements, as he and his 
officers sat drinking after dinner, and toasting the King, 
to have batches of prisoners hanged outside the win- 
dows for the company's diversion ; and that when their 
feet quivered in the convulsions of death, he used to 
swear that they should have music to their dancing, and 
would order the drums to beat and the trumpets to play. 
The detestable King informed him, as an acknowledg- 
ment of these services, that he was 4 'very well satisfied 
with his proceedings." But the King's great delight 
was in the proceedings of Jeffreys, now a peer, who 
went down into the west, with four other judges, to try 
persons accused of having had any share in the rebell- 
ion. The King pleasantly called this "Jeffreys' cam- 
paign." The people down in that part of the country 
remember it to this day as the Bloody Assize. 

It began at Winchester, where a poor, deaf old lady, 
Mrs. Alicia Lisle, the widow of one of the judges of 
Charles I., who had been murdered by some Royalist 
assassins, was charged with having given shelter in her 
house to two fugitives from Sedgemoor. Three times 
the jury refused to find her guilty, until Jeffreys bullied 
and frightened them into that false verdict. When he 
had extorted it from them, he said, ."Gentlemen, if I 
had been one of you, and she had been my own mother, 
I would have found her guilty;" as I dare say he would. 
He sentenced her to be burned alive, that very after- 
noon. The clergy of the cathedral and some others 
interfered in her favor, and she was beheaded within a 
week. As a high mark of his approbation, the King 
made Jeffreys Lord Chancellor, and he then went on to 
Dorchester, to Exeter, to Taunton, and to Wells. It is 



416 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

astonishing, when we read of the enormous injustice 
and barbarity of this beast, to know that no one struck 
him dead on the judgment seat. It was enough for any 
man or woman to be accused by an enemy, before 
Jeffreys, to be found guilty of high treason. One man 
who pleaded not guilty, he ordered to be taken out of 
court upon the instant and hanged, and this so terrified 
the prisoners in general that they mostly pleaded guilty 
at once. At Dorchester alone, in the course of a few 
days, Jeffreys hanged eighty people ; besides whipping, 
transporting, imprisoning, and selling as slaves, great 
numbers. He executed, in all, 250 or 300. 

These executions took place among the neighbors and 
friends of the sentenced, in thirty-six towns and vil- 
lages. Their bodies were mangled, steeped in caldrons 
of boiling pitch and tar, and hang up by the roadsides, 
in the streets, over the very churches. The sight and 
smell of heads and limbs, the hissing and bubbling of 
the infernal caldrons, and the tears and terrors of the 
people, were dreadful beyond all description. One 
rustic, who was forced to steep the remains in the black 
pot, was ever afterward called "Tom Boilman." The 
hangman has ever since been called Jack Ketch, be- 
cause a man of that name went hanging and hanging, 
all day long, in the train of Jeffreys. You will hear 
much of the horrors of the great French Revolution. 
Many and terrible they were, there is no doubt ; but I 
know of nothing worse done by the maddened people of 
France in that awful time, than was done by the high- 
est judge in England, with the express approval of the 
King of England, in the Bloody Assize. 

Nor was even this all. Jeffreys was as fond of money 
for himself as of misery for others, and he sold pardons 
wholesale to fill his pockets. The King ordered, at one 
time, a thousand prisoners to be given to certain of his 
favorites, in order that they might bargain with them 
for their pardons. The young ladies of Taunton who 
had presented the Bible were bestowed upon the maids 
of honor at court; and those precious ladies made very 
hard bargains with them indeed. When The Bloody 
Assize was at its most dismal height, the King was 
diverting himself with horse-races in the very place 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 417 

'here Mrs. Lisle had been executed. When Jeffreys 
ad done his worst, and came home again, he was par- 
cularly complimented in the Royal Gazette, and when 
le King heard that through drunkenness and raging 
e was very ill, his odious majesty remarked that such 
aother man could not easily be found in England Be- 
des all this, a former sheriff of London, named Corn- 
jh, was hanged within sight of his own house, after an 
bommably conducted trial, for having had a share in 
if- u y l ^°Hf, e . Plot . on evidence given by Rumsey 
'hich that villain was obliged to confess was directly 
pposed to the evidence he had given on the trial of 
/ord Russell. And on the very same day, a worthv 
;idow, named Elizabeth Gaunt, was burned alive at 
yburn, for having sheltered a wretch who himself gave 
vidence against her. She settled the fuel about herself 
nth her own hands, so that the flames should reach her 
uicJdy: and nobly said, with her last breath, that she 
ad obeyed the sacred command of God, to give refuge 
3 the outcast, and not to betray the wanderer 
After all this hanging, beheading, burning, boiling 
autilatmg, exposing, robbing, transporting, and selling 

E? ^ e lZ' ° f , his unha PPy subjects, the King not un- 
naturally thought that he could do whatever he would 

K; ZZ Q »u t0 W °i? to Chan ^ e the reli gion of the counl 

'^<w all possible speed; and what he did was this : 

■1W 22 of ^11 tried to get rid of what was called the 

mWir f^7 Ch P rev ^ nted th * Catholics from holding 

■£$ ?h^El3i? entS ^; by hlS ° wn power of dispensing 
1 ttl> Pf nal ties. He tried it in one case, andfeleven 
I n VbT! lve J ud 2 e ! deciding in his favor, he exercised 
| in three others, being those of three dignitaries of 

nd 1V wh S ^\ CO i leg , e '- ° xf ^ rd ' who had become Papists 
nd whom he kept m their places and sanctioned. He 

Sf hated Ecclesiastical Commission, to get rid 
Compton, Bishop of London, who manfully opposed 
mh,^ s °l^ited the Pope to favor England wSh an 
^ as l or - which the Pope, who was a*sensible man 
>Si h*f ™ wllhn gly did. He flourished Father 

or^ wl T 6 %lt S ° f tbe P e °P le on a11 P ossibl * occa- 
S «S! f V ? red * the establisb ™ent of convents in sev- 
al parts of London. He was delighted to have the 
57 History 



418 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

streets, and even the court itself, filled with monks and 
friars in the habits ot their orders. He constantly en- 
deavored to make Catholics of the Protestants about 
♦him. He held private interviews, which he called 
"closetings," with those Members of Parliament who 
held offices', to persuade them to consent to the design 
he had in view. When they did not consent, they were 
removed, or [resigned of themselves, and their places 
were given to* Catholics. He displaced Protestant offi- 
cers front the army, by every means in his power, and 
got Catholics into their places too. He tried the same 
thing with the corporations, and also, though not so 
successfully, with the lord lieutenants of counties. To 
terrify the people into endurance of all these measures, 
he kept an army of fifteen thousand men encamped on 
Hounslow Heath, where mass was openly performed in 
the General's tent, and where priests went among the 
soldiers endeavoring to persuade them to become Cath- 
olics. For circulating a paper among those men advis- 
ing them to be true to their religion, a Protestant cler- 
gyman, named Johnson, the chaplain of the late Lord 
Russell, was actually sentenced to stand three times ir 
the pillory, and was actually whipped from Newgate tc 
Tyburn. He dismissed his own brother-in-law from his 
Council because he was a Protestant, and made a Privy 
Councilor of the before-mentioned Father Petre. Ht 
handed Ireland over to Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyr 
connell, a worthless, dissolute knave, who played the 
same game there for his master, and who played the 
deeper game for himself of one day putting it under the 
protection of the French King. In going to these ex 
tremities, every man of sense and judgment among th< 
Catholics, from the Pope to a porter, knew that th< 
King was a mere bigoted fool, who would undo himsel 
and the cause he sought to advance, but he was deaf t< 
all reason, and, happily for England ever afterward, 
went tumbling off his throne in his own blind way. 

A spirit began to arise in the country which the besot 
ted blunderer little expected. He first found it out i: 
the University of Cambridge. Having made a Catholi 
a dean at Oxford, without any opposition, he tried t 
make a monk a master of arts at Cambridge ; which a1 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 413 

tempt the University resisted, and defeated him. He 
then went back to his favorite Oxford. On the death of 
the President of Magdalen College, he commanded that 
there should be elected to succeed him one Mr. Anthony 
Farmer, whose only recommendation was that he was 
of the King's religion. The University plucked up cour- 
age at last, and refused. The King substituted another 
man, and it still refused, resolving to stand by its owe. 
election of a Mr. Hough. The dull tyrant, upon this, 
punished Mr. Hough, and five^and-twenty more, by 
causing them to be expelled and declared incapable of 
holding any church preferment; then he proceeded tc 
what he ^supposed to be his highest step, but to whai 
was, in fact, his last plunge head foremost in his tumble 
off his throne. 

He had issued a declaration that there should be no 
religious tests or penal laws, in order to let in the Cath- 
olics more easily; but the Protestant dissenters, un- 
mindful of themselves, had gallantly joined the regular 
church in opposing it tooth and nail. The King and 
FatherJPetre now resolved to have this read, on a certain 
Sunday, in all the churches, and to order it to be circu- 
lated tor that purpose by the bishops. The latter took 
counsel with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in 
disgrace ; and they resolved that the declaration should 
not be read, and that they would petition the Kmg 
against it. The Archbishop himself wrote out the peti- 
tion, and six bishops went into the King's bedchamber 
the same night to present it, to his infinite astonish- 
ment. Next day was the Sunday fixed for the reading, 
and it was only read by two hundred clergymen out of 
ten thousand. The King resolved, against all advice, 
to prosecute the bishops in the Court of King's Bench, 
and within three weeks they were summoned before the 
Privy Council, and committed to the Tower. As the six 
bishops were taken to that dismal place, by water, the 
people who were assembled in immense numbers fell 
upon their knees, and wept for them, and prayed for 
them. When they got to the Tower, the officers and 
soldiers on guard besought them tor their blessing. 
While they were confined there, the soldiers every day 
irank to their release with wild shouts. When they 



420 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

were brought up to the Court ot King's Bench for theij 
trial, which, the Attorney-General said, was for the* 
high offense of censuring the Government, and givind 
their opinion about affairs ot state, they were attended 
by similar multitudes, and surrounded by a throng ol 
noblemen and gentlemen. When the jury went out a« 
seven o'clock at night to consider of their verdict, every} 
body, except the King, knew that they would rathea 
starve than yield to the King's brewer, who was one ol 
them, and wanted a verdict for his customer. When 
they came into court next morning, after resisting th<f 
brewer all night, and gave a verdict of not guilty, suclj 
a shout rose up in Westminster Hall as it had nevea 
heard before ; and it was passed on among the people 
away to Temple Bar, and away again to the Tower It 
did not pass only to the east, but passed to the west tool 
until it reached the camp at Hounslow, where the fifteen 
thousand soldiers took it up and echoed it. And stillj 
when the dull King, who was then with Lord Feverij 
sham, heard the mighty roar, asked in alarm what id 
was, and was told that it was ' 'nothing but the acquitta| 
of 'the bishops," he said, in his dogged way, "Call yota 
that nothing? It is so much the worse for them." 

Between the petition and the trial the Queen hadj 
given birth to a son, which Father Petre rather though!} 
was owing to St. Winifred. But I doubt if St. Wind 
fred had much to do with it as the King's friend, inas4 
much as the entirely new prospect of a Catholic success-! 
or, for both the King's daughters were Protestants, del 
termined the Earls of Shrewsbury, Danby and Devon* 
shire, Lord Lumley, the Bishop of London, Admiral Rusi 
sell, and Colonel Sidney, to invite the Prince of Oranga 
over to England. The Royal Mole, seeing his danger al 
last, made, in his fright, many concessions, besides raisj 
ing an army of forty thousand men ; but the Prince of 
Orange was not a man for James II. to cope with. His 
preparations were extraordinarily vigorous, and hil 
mind was resolved. 

For a fortnight after the Prince was ready to sail fof 
England, a great wind from the west prevented the d©> 
parture of his fleet. Even when the wind lulled, and $ 
did sail, it was dispersed by a storm, and was obliged tf 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 421 

put back to refit. At last, on the istof November. 1688, 
the Protestant east wind, as it was long called, began 
to blow ; and on the 3d the people of Dover and the 
people of Calais saw a fleet twenty miles long sailing 
gallantly by, between the two places. On Monday, the 
5th, it anchored at Torbay in Devonshire, and the 
Prince, with splendid retinue of officers and men, 
marched into Exeter. But the people in that western 
part of the country had suffered so much in the Bloody 
Assize that they had lost heart. Few people joined 
him ; and he began to think of returning, and publish- 
ing the invitation he had received from those lords, as 
his justification for having come at all. At this crisis 
some of the gentry joined him { the Royal army began 
! to falter ; an engagement was signed, by which all who 
set their hand to it declared that they would support 
one another in defense of the laws and liberties of the 
three Kingdoms, of the Protestant religion, and of the 
Prince of Orange. From that time the cause received 
no check; the greatest ;towns in England began, one 
after another, to declare' for the Prince; and he knew 
that it was all safe with him when the ^University of 
Oxford offered to melt down its plate, if he wanted any 
money. 

By this time the King was running about in a pitiable 
way, touching people for the king's evil in one place, 
reviewing his troops in another, and bleeding from his 
nose in a third. The young Prince was sent to Ports- 
mouth, Father Petre went off like a shot to France, and 
there was a general and swift dispersal of all the priests 
and friars. One after another, the King's most import- 
ant officers and friends deserted him and went over to 
the Prince. In the night, his daughter Anne fled from 
Whitehall Palace ; and the Bishop of London, who had 
once been a soldier, rode before her with a drawn sword 
in his hand, and pistols at his saddle. "God help me!" 
cried the miserable King; "my very children have for- 
saken me!" In his wildness. after debating with such 
lords as were in London, whether he should or should 
not call a Parliament, and after naming three of them 
to negotiate with the Prince, he resolved to fly to 
France. He had the little Prince of Wales brought back 



422 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

from Portsmouth, and the child and the Queen crossed 
the river to Lambeth in an open boat, on a miserable 
wet night, and got safely away. This was on the night 
of the 9th of December. 

At one o'clock on the morning of the nth, the King, 
who had in the meantime received a letter from the 
Prince of Orange, stating his objects, got out of bed, told 
Lord Northumberland, who lay in his room, not 
to open the door until the usual hour in the morn- 
ing, and went down the back stairs, the same, I 
suppose, by which the priest in the wig and gown had 
come up to his brother, and crossed the river in a small 
boat ; sinking the great seal of England by the way. 
Horses having been provided, he rode, accompanied by 
Sir Edward Hales, to Feversham, where he embarked in 
a Custom House hoy. The master of this hoy, wanting 
more ballast, ran into the Isle of Sheppy to get it, where 
the fishermen and smugglers crowded about the boat, 
and informed the King of their suspicions that he was a 
"hatchet-faced Jesuit." As they took his money and 
would not let him go, he told them who he was, and 
that the Prince of Orange wanted to take his life; and 
he began to scream for a boat — and then to cry, because 
he had lost a piece of wood on his ride which he called a 
fragment of Our Saviour's cross. He put himself into 
the hands of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, and his 
detention was made known to the Prince of Orange at 
Windsor — who, only wanting to get rid of him, and not 
caring where he went, so that he went away, was very 
much disconcerted that they did not let him go. How- 
ever, there was nothing for it but to have him brought 
back, with some state in the way of Life Guards, to 
Whitehall. And as soon as he got there, in his infatua- 
tion, he heard mass, and set a Jesuit to say grace at his 
public dinner. 

The people had been thrown into the strangest state 
of confusion by his flight, and had taken it into their 
heads that the Irish part of the army were going to 
murder the Protestants. Therefore, they set the bells 
a-ringing and lighted watch-fires, and burned Catholic 
chapels, and looked about in all directions for Father 
Petre and the Jesuits, while the Pope's ambassador was 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 423 

running away in the dress of a footman. They found 
no Jesuits; but a man, who had once been a frightened 
witness before Jeffreys in court, saw a swollen, drunken 
face looking ^through a window down at Wapping, 
which he well remembered. The face was in a sailor's 
dress, but he knew it to be the face of that accursed 
Judge, and he seized him. The people, to their lasting 
honor, did not tear him to pieces. After knocking him 
about a little, they took him, in the basest agonies of 
terror, to the Lord Mayor, who sent him, at his own 
shrieking petition, to the Tower for safety. There he 
died. 

Their bewilderment continuing, the people now 
lighted bonfires and made rejoicings, as if they had 
any reason to ^be glad ,to have the King back again. 
But his stay was very short, for the English guards 
were removed from Whitehall, Dutch guards were 
marched up to it, and he was told by one of his late 
ministers that the Prince would enter London next day, 
and he had better go to Ham. He said Ham was a cold, 
damp place, and he would rather go to Rochester. He 
thought himself very cunning in this, as he meant to 
escape from Rochester to France. The Prince of 
Orange and his friends knew that perfectly well, and 
desired nothing more. So he went to Gravesend, in his 
royal barge, attended by certain lords, and watched by 
Dutch troops, and pitied by the generous people, who 
were far more forgiving than he had ever been, when 
they saw him in his humiliation. On the night of the 
23d of December, not even then understanding that 
everybody wanted to get rid of him, he went out, ab- 
surdly, through his Rochester garden, down to the Med- 
way, and got away to France, where he rejoined the 
Queen. 

There had been a council, in his absence, of the lords 
and the authorities ot London. When the Prince came, 
on the day after the King's departure, he summoned the 
lords to meet him, and soon afterward all those who had 
served |in any of the Parliaments of King Charles II. 
It was finally resolved by these authorities that the 
throne was vacant by the conduct ot King James II. ; 
that it was inconsistent with the safety and welfare of 



424 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a Popish 
prince ; that the Prince and Princess of Orange should 
be King and Queen during their lives and the life ot the 
survivor of them ; and that their children should suc- 
ceed them, if they had any. That if they had none, the 
Princess Anne and her children should succeed; that if 
she had none, the heirs of the Prince of Orange should 
succeed. 

On the 13th of January, 1689, the Prince and Princess, 
sitting on a throne in Whitehall, bound themselves to 
these conditions. The Protestant religion was estab- 
lished in England, and England's great and glorious 
Revolution was complete. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

CONCLUSION. 

I have now arrived at the close of my little history. 
The events which succeeded the famous Revolution of 
1688 would neither be easily related nor easily under- 
stood in such a book as this. 

William and Mary reigned together five years. After 
the death of his good wife, William occupied the throne 
alone for seven years longer. During his reign, on the 
16th of September, 1701, the poor weak creature who 
had once been James II. of England, died in France. 
In the meantime he had done his utmost, which was not 
much, to cause William to be assassinated, and to 
regain his lost dominions. James' son was declared, by 
the French King,, the rightful King of England; and 
was called in France the Chevalier St George, and in 
England The Pretender. Some infatuated .people in 
England, and particularly in Scotland, took up the Pre- 
tender's cause from time to time — as if the country had 
not had Stuarts enough ! — and many lives were sacri- 
ficed, and much misery was occasioned. King William 
died on Sunday, the 7th of March, 1702, of the conse- 
quences of an accident occasioned by his horse stum- 
bling with him. He was always a brave, patriotic 
prince, and a man of remarkable abilities. His manner 
was cold, and he made but few friends ; but he had truly 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 425 

loved his queen. When he was dead, a lock of her hair 
in a ring, was found tied with a black ribon round his 
left arm. 

He was succeeded by the Princess Anne, a popular 
Queen, who reigned twelve years. In her reign, in the 
month of May, 1707, the union between England and 
Scotland was effected, and the two countries were incor- 
porated under the name of Great Britain. Then, from 
the year 1714 to the year 1830, reigned the four Georges. 

It was in the reign of George II., 1745, that the Pre- 
tender did his last mischief, and made his last appear- 
ance. Being an old man by that time, he and the 
Jacobites— as his friends were called— put forward his 
son, Charles Edward, known as the Young Chevalier. 
The Highlanders of Scotland, an extremely troublesome 
and wrong-headed race on the subject of the Stuarts, 
espoused his cause, and he joined them, and there was 
a Scottish rebellion to make him king, in which many 
gallant and devoted gentlemen lost their lives. It was 
a hard matter for Charles Edward to escape abroad 
again, with a high price on his head ; but the Scottish 
people were extraordinarily faithful to him, and, after 
undergoing many romantic adventures, not unlike those 
of Charles II., he escaped to France. A number of 
charming stories an delightful songs arose out of the 
Jacobite feelings, and belong to the Jacobite times. 
Otherwise I think the ;Stuarts were a public nuisance 
altogether. 

It was in the reign of George III. that England lost 
North America, by persisting in taxing her without her 
own consent. That immense country, made independ- 
ent under Washington, and left to itself, became the 
United States — one of the greatest nations of the earth. 
In these times in which I write, it is honorably remark- 
able for protecting its subjects, wherever they may 
travel, with a dignity and a determination which is a 
model for England. Between you and me, England has 
rather lost ground in this respect since the days of Oliver 
Cromwell. 

The union of Great Britain with Ireland — which had 
been getting on very ill by itself — took place in the 
reign of George III., on the 2d of July, 1798. 
88 History 



426 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

William IV. succeeded George IV., in the year 1830, 
and reigned seven years. Queen Victoria, his niece, the 
only child ot the Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George 
III., came to the throne on the 20th of June, 1837. She 
was married to Prince Albert of Saxe Gotha, on the 10th 
of February, 1840. She is very good, and much beloved. 
So I end, like the crier, with God Save the Queen ! 



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Three original full page illustrations and portrait of the 
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-with the greatest care on fine laid paper, from clear, open-faced 
type. Bound in superb style with white vellum cloth and imported 
fancy paper sides, artistically stamped in gold, with gold top and 
.silk ribbon marker. Each book in neat covered box. 16mo size. 
An exquisite series of gift books. Price, 50c. 

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An unexcelled library of standard works. Bound in a beautiful 
and durable heavy ribbed cloth, handsomely stamped in gilt and 
two colors of ink. A perfect portrait of the author and three full 
page original illustrations in each volume. Title page in colors. 
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WORKS: Hammond, Ind. 



WORKS OF ELLA WHEELER WILCOX (Continued) 

HOW SALVATOR WON AND OTHER POEMS 12mo. 
cloth, $1.00. Presentation Edition— white vellum, gold 
top. $1.50. Presentation Edition— half calf, gold top, 
$2.50. 

A choice collection of recitations", specially compiled for read- 
ers and impersonators. 

"Her name is a household word. Her great power lies in depict- 
ing human emotions; and in handling that grandest of all passions 
— love— she wields the pen of a master."— The Saturday Record. 

CUSTER AND OTHER POEMS. Handsomely Illustrated. 
12mo. cloth. $1.00. Presentation Edition— white vellum, 
gold top. $1.50. Presentation Edition— half calf, gold 
top. $2.50. 

A grand epic of the exploits and massacre of the immortal 
Cns tor. 

"One cannot help gaining new impetus for the spiritual exist- 
ence from coming in contact, mentally, with such ideal sentiments 
and emotions as this rarely gifted poetess voices in magnificent 
▼orse." — Universal Truth. 

AN ERRING WOMAN'S LOVE. 12mo, cloth, $1.00. 
Presentation Edition — white vellum, gold top, $1.50. 
Presentation Edition — half calf, gold top. $2.50. 

"Power and pathos characterize this magnificent poem. A 
deep understanding of life and an iutenBo sympathy are beauti- 
fully expressed."— Tribune. 

MEN, WOMEN AND EMOTIONS. (Prose.) 12mo. heavy 
enameled paper cover. 50 cents ; English cloth, $1.00. 
A skillful analysis of social habits, customs and follies. 
"Her fame has reached all parts of tho world, and her popular- 
ity seems to grow wit h each succeeding year."— A merican Newsman. 

THE BEAUTIFUL LAND OF NOD. (Poems, songs and 

stories.) With over sixty original illustrations. Quarto. 

cloth, $1.00. 

Tho delight of the nursery. A charming mother's book. 

"Tho foremost baby's book of the world."— New Orleans 
Picayune. 

PRESENTATION SETS. Poems of Passion. Maurine. 
Poems of Pleasure, How Salvator Won, and Custer, are 
supplied in sets of 3. 4. or 5 titles, as may be desired, in 
neat boxes, without extra charge. 

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX 'S WORKS are for sale by leading book- 
sellers everywhere, or will be sent postpaid on receipt of price by 
the Publishers. 

W. B. CONKEY COMPANY, Chicago