A S..-rORT HISTORY OF 

THE B.t{JTISH COMMONWEALTH 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

PHILIPS' NEW STUDENTS' HISTORICAL ATLAS 
(The work to which reference is made throughout the 

following pages.) · 

PHILIPS' SCHOOL ATLAS OF MODERN HISTORY 

PHILIPS' WALL ATLAS OF MODERN HISTORY 

THE MAKING OF BRITISH INDIA 

THE CULMINATION OF MODERN HISTORY (in 
Three Vols.) :-

i. Nationalism and Internationalism 
ii. National Self-Government 
iii. The Expansion of Europe 

A HISTORY OF LIVERPOOL 

0 

PEERS AND BUREAUCRATS: Two Problems of 
English Government 

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BRITISH 

COMMONWEALTH 

By RAMSAY MUIR 

Now complete in two volumes, is also obtainable in siJ< 

parts, each containing a chronological index. Medium 8vo. 

Cloth Boards. 

Full prospectus on application to the publishers. 

~··,. 



A SHORT HISTORY 
OF THE BRITISH 
COMMONWEALTH 

BY 

RAMSAY MUIR 
Lately Professor of .!ffodern History in the 

University qf Jlfmuhester 

.. 

IN TWO VOLUMES: VOLUME I 

THE ISLANDS AND THE FIRST E11PIRE 

THIRD EDITIQN ... , , • 

:'\ ~ nasr11 .'\: ~,c: 
~.. ~ 
~ '11' 
.:: UBMRY· r 
:; I:} 

4- ~· 
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~ RAtn!O~~ 

GEORGE PHILIP & SON, LTD., LONDON 

PHILIP, SO?-J' & ?-J'EPHEW, LTD., LIVERPOOL 



,. 

First Edition 
Second Edition 

Thz'rd Edztion 

,I 

October,· I920. 

September, I922. 

October, I924. 

Printed in Great Britain by George Philip & Son, Ltd., London. 



PREFACE 
THE book of which this volume is the first half is an attempt 
to tell, within moderate compass, the story of the British 
Commonwealth, regarded as a single whole, but also as a 
part of the greater commonwealth of Western Civilisation. 
As I have conceived it, it is the story of a number of peoples 
gradually learning to live together in a free partnership, 
inspired by their common enjoyment of the institutions of 
political liberty. 

It is part of the plan of the book that the treatment 
should become fuller as the narrative draws nearer to our 
own time. The present volume extends to 1763, and covers 
all that part of the story which is common to all the English­
speaking peoples. It will be succeeded by a second volume 
of similar dimensions, which will bring the story down to 
the Great War. 

In this first volume the bulk of the space is necessarily 
devoted to the history of England, because it was in England 
that the institutions and ideas characteristic of the whole 
Commonwealth had their birth and early development. 
But I have tried in several respects to differentiate my 
narrative from the many admirable summaries of English 
history with which it may seem tq <:~~llep_&e, co.mp~rison. 

(r) I have endeavoured to give· a~ cl~cif'-a:rri:l djstinctive 
treatment to the history of Wales, Scotland and Ireland, 
so far as the limits of space permitted; while, in the second 
half of the volume, I have laid an increasing degree of 
emphasis upon the history of the Colonies, the development 
of oversea trade, and the part played by the Navy in deter­
mining the fortunes of the Commonwealth as a whole. 

(2) I have striven to keep the reader's mind awake to 
the most significant features of contemporary European 
history, especially during the modern age; and to show 
the influence of European events upon the development of 

v 



" 
vi SHORT HISTORY OF BRITISH COMMONWEALTH 

the Commonwealth. In particular I have tried to make 
clear, at each stage, the part played by other European 
countries in the extension of European civilisation to the 
non-European world, and the contrasts between the methods 
of the rivals in this field. 

(3) Even in the narrative of English history my aim has 
been to emphasise those aspects only which seemed to be of 
direct importance for the future development of the whole 
Commonwealth. I have therefore dealt comparatively 
lightly with the medireval period down to 1485; it occupies 
only one-fourth of the present volume. In the medireval 
section, and indeed throughout the volume, I have laid 
stress especially upon the growth of institutions, and upon 
the gradual change in the social organisation of the British 
peoples. This does not mean that I have thrust wars into 
the background. While I have deliberately dealt very 
summarily with minor wars, I have treated pretty fully 
the great struggles which have marked the principal epochs 
in the development of the British Commonwealth-the 
Elizabethan war against Spain, the Civil War, the wars 
against Louis XIV., and, above all, the culminating conflict 
with France in the middle of the eighteenth century. 
J. R. Green, that admirable writer, never wrote a more 
foolish sentence than one which occurs in the preface to 
his most famous book: 'War plays a small part in the real 
story of European nations, and in that of England its part 
is smaller than in any.' Green wrote in a time of long­
established peace. We, who have lived through the most 
terrible 9f all yrars, know that there are some wars which 
not only vitally fufluence the external fortunes of States, 
but profoundly affect their character, their institutions, 
and their social order ; and the four great wars which I 
have named assuredly fall into this category. 

The plan of the book, and the complexity of its subject 
matter, have compelled me to disregard entirely the con­
ventional division into dynasties and reigns, and to take 
a considerable latitude in departing from chronological 
order. As a means of remedying the defects of this method, 
of bringing out instructive synchronisms, and at the same 
time of making cross-reference easier, a ' Chronological 



' PREFACE vii 

Index ' is added to the volume. For the gift of this index 
(which deliberately abstains from any attempt to be ex­
haustive) I am deeply indebted to Miss Harriet Davies. 
An index of the ordinary type will be included in the second 
volume. 

No maps are inserted in the narrative: I have contented 
myself with frequent footnote references to my Students' 
Atlas of Modern History, to which this book is meant to be 
a companion. I have also used footnotes to direct the 
attention of the reader to a large number of good, short 
biographies, and to a few novels. Short lists of good 
modem books in English are appended to each chapter. 

I hope that the book may be useful to teachers, and that, 
in spite of its length, it may be suitable for the higher forms 
in schools, for training colleges, and for the junior classes in 
Universities. But while 1 have kept these needs in view, 
my primary aim has been to make the noble and stirring 
story of the development of the British Commonwealth at 
once intelligible and interesting to the general reader. 

In conclusion I have to give my cordial thanks to my 
friends Miss B. A. Lees, Professor Powicke, Dr. G. S. Veitch, 
and Mr. C. S. S. Higham, who have kindly read parts of 
the volume in proof, and given me the advantage of their 
criticism. 

RAMSAY MUIR. 

BUXTON, May 1920, 

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 

A FEW corrections of detail have been introduced in this 

edition, but they are all of minor importance. 
R.M. 

july 1922. 



SUMMARY OF CONTENTS 

BOOK I 

THE MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS (To A.D. 1215) 

CHAP. PAGE 

INTRODUCTION, . 3 

I. THE FIRST INHABITANTS AND THE FIRST CONTACT WITH 

CIVILISATION, . 5 
§ I. The Islands and their Earliest Peoples, p. 5 ; § 2. 

The Roman Occupation, p. 9· 

II. THE TEUTONIC INVADERS (A.D. 410-825), I 3 
§ 1. The Barbarian Conquerors and the Chaos they 
produced, p. IJ; § 2. The Revival of Civilisation, p. I9; 
§ 3· England in Soo A.D., p. 23. 

Ill. THE DTVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN (A.D. 825-1066), 26 

§ t. The Vikings and their Ravages, p. 26 ; § 2. Alfred 
the Great and. the Emperor Kings, p. 29; § 3· The 
Second Danish Conquest and the Coming of the 
Normans, p. 34; § 4· The Need for the Norman Con-
quest, p. 37· 

IV. THE WORK OF THE NORMAN KINGS (A.D. Io66-I I 54), 41 

§I. The Norman Conquest and the Establishment of 
the Feudal Order, p. 41; § 2. The Beginnings of a 
National System of Government, p. 43; § 3· Norman 
Influence in Wales and Scotland, p. 49· 

V. THE REIGN OF LAW ESTABLISHED (A.D. 1154-!216), 51 
§ I. The Angevin Empire and Europe in the Twelfth 
Century, p. 5 I ; § 2. Henry H.'s 'vV ork of Organisation, 
p. 57 ; § 3- Richard r. and John : the Winning of 
Magna Carta, p. 6 I. 

VI. THE STATE OF ENGLAND lN 1215, 67 

§ I. A Land of Communities, p. 67 ; § 2. The Church 
and its Services to Civilisation, p. 72 ; § 3· Contact with 
Europe, p. 75; § 4- The Backwardness of Wales, Scot-
land, and Ireland, p. 76. 

viii 



CO~TENTS ix 

BOOK II 
THE CO~FLICTS OF THE FOUR NATIONS: AND THE 

GROWTH OF SELF-GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND 
(A.D. 1215-1485) 

CI--JAP, PAGE 

INTRODUCTION, • 81 

I. THE MEDIJEVAL WORLD AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON THE 

ISLANDS, 83 
§ 1. Changes in the Political Systems and Ideas of 
Europe, p. 83; § 2. The Enrichment of Civilisation: 
the Friars and the Universities, p. 8g. 

II. THE ORGANISATION OF THE ENGLISH NATION (A.D. 1216-

1307~ 95 
§ 1. The Rise of National Feeling, p. 95; § 2. Montfort 
and the First Attempt at Parliamentary Government, 
p. 97; § 3- Edward I. and the Establishment of Parlia-
ment, p. IOI ; § 4. The Lawyer- King as National 
Leader, p. 103. 

Ill. THE CONQUEST OF" WALES, 107 

IV. THE INDEPENDENCE OF SCOTLAND, I I3 

§ 1. The Development of the Scottish Monarchy, p. I I 3 ; 
§ 2. Edward I.'s Attempt to subjugate Scotland, p. 115; 
§ 3· The Scottish Resistance under Vv allace and Bruce, 
p. I 16; § 4. Bannockburn and the Establishment of 
Independence, p. I I8. 

V. THE FIRST ATTEMPT TO CONQUER FRANCE, 122 

§ I. The Motives of the Attempt, p. 122; § 2. The War 
and its Consequences, p. 125. 

VI. CHANGING SOCIAL CONDITIONS, . 

§ 1. Changes in the Character of the Feudal Baronage, 
p. 130; § z. Peasants and their Landlords: the Black 
Death, p. 133; § 3· The Growth of Trade and Industry, 
and their Organisation, p. 136; § 4· Intellectual Fer­
ment: Wycliffe and the Church, p. I40 

VII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH SELF-GOVERNMENT 

(A.D. 1307-1422}, 144 
§I. Edward II. and Thomas of Lancaster, p. 145 ; § z. 
The Wars of Edward III. and the Growth of Parliamen-
tary Power, p. I47; § 3· The Invention of Impeachment: 
the Justices of the Peace, p. I so; ~ 4· Parliamentary 
Supremacy and the Revolt of the Peasants, p. I 53 ; § 5· 
Reaction and Revolution, p. I 56 ; § 6. The Lancastrian 
Expe:iment of Limited Monarchy, p. 161. 



x SHORT HISTORY OF BRITISH COMMONWEALTH 

CHAP. PAGE 

VIII. THE SECOND ATTEMPT TO CONQUER FRANCE (A.D. 14II-

I453), · 165 
§I. The French Factions, and the Victories of Henry 
v., p. 165; § 2. Joan of Arc, and the Ruin of English 
Ambitions in France, p. 169. 

IX. THE STRIFE OF FACTIONS IN ENGLAND (A.D. 1422-1485), 173 
§I. Faction and Disorder in England, p. I73; § 2. The 
\Vars of the Roses, p. I78; § 3· The House of York 
and the Re-establishment of Royal Power, p. r8o. 

X. WALES, SCOTLAND AND IRELAND IN THE LATER 1\!IDDLE 

AGES, . 184 . 

§I. Wales, p. r84; § 2. Scotland, p. r85; § 3· Ireland, 
p. 188. 

XI. EUROPE AND THE ISLANDS ON THE EVE OF THE MODERN 

AGE, 192 

· § I. The Cosmopolitan Ideal of the Middle Ages and 
its Breakdown, p. 192; § 2. The Political Condition of 
Europe: the Rise of Nation-States, p. I95; § 3· The 
Turkish Peril, p. 200; § 4· The Political Contrast 
between England and Europe, p. 201. 

BOOK III 

THE BEGINNING OF THE MODERN AGE: THE RE­
FORMATION, AND THE OPENING OF THE SEAS 
(A.D. 1485-r6o3) 

INTRODUCTION, . 207 

I. THE RRSTORATION OF GOOD GOVERNMENT (A.D. 1485-

1529), 210 

§ I. The Privy Council and the Re-establishment of 
Order, p. 2IO; § 2. The Splendour of Henry VIII. and 
Wolsey, p. 214; § 3· Growing National Strength, 
p. 2I6; § 4· England and her Sister Realms, p. 218. 

II. THE RENASCENCE, 

§ I. The Meaning of the Renascence, p. 222 ; § 2. The 
Renascence in England, p. 22 5 ; § 3· Moral and 
Political Aspects of the Renascence, p. 228. 

222 

UI. THE NEW ERA IN fOREIGN POLITICS (A.D. 1485-1529), 230 

§I. The Beginning of National Rivalries: the Wars of 
Italy, p. 230; § 2. Charles v., Francis I., and Solyman 
the Turk, p. 232; § 3· The Balance of Power, p. 235· 



CONTENTS 

CRAP. 

IV. THE UNVEILING OF THE OUTER WORLD, . 

§I. The First Great Discoveries, p. 237; § 2. The 
Portuguese Power m the East, p. 240 ; § 3· The 
Spanish Empire in America, p. 241; § 4· The Modest 
Enterprises of France and England, p. 244. 

V. THE REFORMATION IN EUROPE AND IN F;NGLAND 

xi 
P."-GB 

2 37 

(A.D. ISI7-I559), 246 
§ I. The Refonnatio!l i_11 :E:urope, p. 2;f6; § 2. The 
King's-Divorce and the Breach with Rome, p. 25I; 
§ 3· The Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the Or­
ganisation of Despotism, p. 256; § 4· The Culmination 
of Henry VIII.'s Power, p. z6o ; § 5· Edward VI. and 
Protestantism Triumphant, p. 262 ; § 6. Mary and the 
Catholic Reaction, p. 267 ; § 7· The Elizabethan Settle-
ment, p. 271. 

VI. THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND (~.D~5_:8-IS6r), 274 
§ I. Scotland in the Sixteenth Century, p. 274; § 2. 
Scotland, England and France, p. 277; § 3· John 
Knox and the Religious Revolution, p. 279 ; § 4· The 
Years of Crisis, and the Anglo-Scottish Alliance, p. 28I; 
§ 5· The Religious Settlement in Scotland, p. 284. 

VII. ELIZABETH, MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, AND PHILIP II. 
(A.D. 156I-I587), 287 

§ 1. The Counter-Reformation and the Political Situa-
tion in Europe m I 5 59, p. 287 ; § 2. Elizabeth and 
Mary, I56I-I57I, p. 29I; § 3· Years of Intensifying 
Strain, I571-1584, p. 295; §4. The Open Conflict with 
Spain, and the Execution of Mary, p. 300. 

VIII. THE ENGLISH SEAMr::i, .~ND THE DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH 
ARMADA, 303 

§ 1. The Search for New Trade Outlets, p. 303 ; § 2. 
The Pirates of the Narrow Seas, p. 305; § 3· Drake 
and the Adventures of the Spanish Main, p. 308 ; § 4· 
The Spanish Armada, p. 3!4· 

IX. THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND, 32 I 

§ 1. The Problem of Ireland, p. ,321; § 2. The First 
Attempts to solve the Irish Problem, p. 324; § 3. Re­
ligious Conflict and the Munster Risings, p. 327 ; § 4 
The Irish National Rising under Tyrone, p. 331. 

X. THE AGE OF ELIZABETH (A.D. I558-r6o3), 335 
§ I. Literary Activities, p. 335 ; § 2. Social Conditions, 
p. 338 ; § 3· Economic Changes, p. 342 ; § 4· The Re­
ligious Changes, p. 346 ; § 5· The Queen and her 
Parliament, p. 350. 



xn SHORT HISTORY OF BRITISH COMMONWEALTH 

BOOK IV 

THE STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL SELF-GOVERN­
MENT; AND THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH 
EXPANSION OVERSEA (A.D. r6o3-r66o) 

CHAP. PAGE 

INTRODUCTION, . 

I. EUROPE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CEN­

TURY,. 

§I. Problems of Peace and War, p. 359; s 2. The 
Thirty Years' War, p. 364. 

II. THE FIRST COLONIES, AND THE BEGINNINGS OF TRADE 

357 

359 

WITH INDIA, 370 

§ 1. International Rivalry in Oversea Trade, p. 370; 
§ 2. European Enterprises in the East : the East India 
Company, p. 372; § 3· Colon ising Activities in the 
West: Canada, Virginia, and New England, p. 376. 

Ill. THE CONFI.ICT OF CROWN AND PARLIAMENT (A.D. I60J· 

J629),. 385 

§ 1. The General Grounds of Conflict, p. o 38 5 ; § 2. 

James 1. and his Parliaments, p. 39I; § 3· Charles 1. 

and the Petition of Right, p. 394· 

IV. IRELAND AND SCOTLAND UNDER THE EARLY STEWARTS 

(A.D. J603-I640), 401 

§ 1. Ireland : the Plantation of Ulster, p. 401 ; § 2. 

The Irish Policy of Wentworth, p. 404; § 3· Scotland: 
the Absolutism of James r., p. 406; § 4· The Revolt of 
the Scots against the Policy of Charles I., p. 409. 

V. PERSONAL GOVERNMENT AND ITS DOWNFALL (A.D. 1629-

I642~. 4I4 

§I. The Years of Personal Government, p. 414; § 2. 

The Aims and Methods of Laud, p. 419; § 3· The 
Puritan Emigration, 421 ; § 4· Ship Money and its 
Significance, p. 428 ; § 5· The Collapse of Personal 
Government and the Definition of Limited Monarchy, 
p. 430 ; fi 6. The Cleavage of Parties and the Drift 
towards Civil War, p. 434· 



CONTENTS xiii 

!RA'F'. PAGE 

VI, CIVIL WAR IN THE ISLANDS (A.D. 1642-1649), 440 
§ 1. The Situation at the Outbreak of War, p. 440; 
§ 2. The First Three Campaigns, p. 443 ; § 3· The 
Professional Army, and the Downfall of the Royalist 
Cause, p. 447 ; § 4· Attempts to find a Settlement, 
p. 451 ; § 5· Solution by the Sword, p. 454· 

VII. THE PURITAN REPUBLIC AND THE PROTECTORATE 

(A.D. 1649-1658), 458 
§ r. The Situation in 1649, p. 458; § 2. The Security 
of the Republic Established, p. 461 ; § 3· The Attempt 
to find a New System of Government, p. 465; § 4· The 
Achievements of the Republic and the Protectorate, 
p. 471. 

VIII. THE PURITAN REPUBLIC AND THE OUTER WORLD, 4 7 5 
§ 1. Naval and Colonial Policy; the Dutch War, 475; 
§ 2. Cromwell's Foreign Policy and the War with 
Spain, p. 480. 

IX. THE COLLAPSE OF THE PURITAN REPUBLIC (A.D. I6S8-
I66o), 484 

BOOK V 

CONSTITUTIONAL SETTLEMENT AND IMPERIAL 
DEVELOPMENT (A.D. x66o-q r 4) 

INTRODUCTION, • 491 

I. THE RESTORATION, -1-94 
§ r. The Ideas of the Restoration and the Character of 
Charles II., p. 494; § 2. England : Limited Monarchy 
and Religious Intolerance, p. 496; § 3· Scotland : 
Absolutism and Religious Persecution, p. 501 ; § 4· 
Ireland: Absolutism and partial Reconciliation, p. 504. 

II. EUROPE IN THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. (A.D. r66x-r688), 508 

§ r. The Age of Enlightenment, p. 508 ; § 2. The 
Ascendency of France, p. 511 ; § 3· The Wars of Louis 
XIV. (to r688), p. 514; § 4. Northern Europe: the 
Rise of the Hohenzollerns, p. 519; § 5· The Problem 
of the Turkish Empire, p. 521; s 6. The Prevalence of 
Absolute Monarchy in Europe, p. 523· 

III. RIVAL COLONIAL EMPJRES, 525 
~ 1. International Rivalry Overseas, p. 525 ; § 2. The 
French Colonial Empire and the Development of 
Canada, p. 526; § 3· A New Era in British Colonial 
Policy, p. 530; § 4· The Establishment of New Colonies, 
p. 534; § 5· A Period of Friction, p. 539· 



xiv SHORT HISTORY OF BRITISH COMMONWEALTH 

CHAP. PAGE 

IV. THE RISE OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN ENGLAND (A.D. 

166o-r688), 542 

§ 1. The First Rudiments of a Cabinet and of Political 
Parties : Clarendon, 166o-7, p. 542 ; § 2. The Cabal : 
Religious Toleration, Secret Dealings with France and 
Parliamentary Opposition, 1667-73, p. 544; § 3· Danby 
and the Organisation of Political Parties, 1673-78, p. 547; 
§ 4· Violent Party Conflict, 1679-81, p. 550; ~ 5· Tri­
umphant Reaction and the Disregard of Laws, r68r-88, 
p. 554· 

V. THE REVOLUTION (A.D. 1688-1692), 

§ r. The European Situation and the Downfall of 
James II., p. 56o; § 2. The War of the Revolution, in 
Scotland, in Ireland, and on the Seas, p. 564. 

s6o 

VI, THE REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT (A.D. 1689-1707), 570 

§ 1. The General Character of the Settlement, p. 570; 
§ 2. Tories and Whigs : rival Conceptions of Govern-
ment, p. 571; § 3· The Constitutional Settlement in 
England, p. 575; § 4· The Relations between Govern-
ment and Parliament, p. 578 ; § 5· The Revolution 
Settlement in Scotland and its Effects upon Anglo­
Scottish Relations, p. 580; § 6. The Union of England 
and Scotland, p. 583 ; § 7. The Revolution Settlement 
in Ireland, and the Penal Code, p. 586 ; § 8. The 
Revolution in the Colonies, p. 591. 

VII. THE DOWNFALL OF LOUIS XIV. (A.D. I689-1713), 

§ I. The War of the League of Augsburg, and the 
British share in it, p. 597 ; § 2. The Problem of the 
Spanish Inheritance, p. 6oo; § 3· The Military 
Problem, and the Greatness of Marlborough, p. 6o6 ; 
§ 4- The War of the Spanish Succession, p. 609; § 5· 
The Peace of Utrecht, p. 614. 

Vlll. ECONOMIC DEVELOP:>IENTS (A.D. I66o-I714), 

§ 1. The Causes of the Growing Wealth of Britain: 
Foreign Trade and Banking, p. 6r8; § 2. The Influence 
of the' Moneyed Interest' and its Effects upon National 
Policy, p. 624. 

IX. PARTY CONFLICTS IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE 

597 

618 

(A.D. 1702-I7I4), 630 

§ I. The Whigs and the Tories, p. 630; § 2. The War 
Government of Marlborough and the Ascendency ot 
the Whigs, p. 633; § 3· Bolingbroke and the New 
Toryism, p. 636. 



CONTENTS XV 

BOOK VI 

THE WHIG OLIGARCHY; AND THE ESTABLISHMENT 
OF MARITIME AND COLONIAL SUPREMACY 
(17I4-I763) 

CHAP. 

INTRODUCTION, • 

I. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE WHIG OLIGARCHY: THE 

JACOBITE RISINGS, 648 

§ r. The Insecurity of the New Regime and the Jacobite 
Rising of I 7 I 5, p. 648 ; § 2. The Organisation of the 
Whig Oligarchy, p. 653; § 3· The House of Commons 
under the Whigs, p. 656; § 4- The Young Chevalier, 
and the Last Great Effort of the Jacobites, p. 659. 

II. BALANCE OF POWER (A.D. I7J4-1739), 664 

§ I. Characteristics of the Period, p. 664 ; § 2. The 
Decay of Turkey, Poland and Sweden, and the Rise of 
Russia, p. 665 ; § 3· The Franco-British Alliance for 
the Maintenance of Peace, p. 669 ; § 4· The Gradual 
Rupture of the Franco-British Alliance, and the Ques-
tion of Poland, p. 673. 

III. TRADE AND COLONIAL RIVALRY (A.D. I7I4-1739), 677 

§ r. Exaggerated Expectations from Tropical Trade, 
p. 677 ; § 2. The Chief Spheres of Tropical Trade : 
the Slave-Trade and the Great Triangle, p. 679; § 3· 
North American Trade, and Franco-British Rivalry, 
p. 683. 

IV. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE WHIGS (A.D. I7J4·I739), 687 
§ r. The Whig Ministries, p. 687; § 2. Walpole, the 
Great Whig ; the Principles of his Policy, p. 689 ; 
§ 3· Walpole's Constructive Work, p. 693; § 4· The 
Opposition to the Whigs: the Ideas of Bolingbroke, 
p. 697· 

V, THE WESLEYS AND THE REVIVAL OF ENTHUSIASM, 701 

§ r. The Age of Reason, p. 701 ; § 2. The Beginnings 
of Organised Philanthropy : the Colony of Georgia, p. 
704; § 3· The Religious Revival in Wales, and the 
Methodist Movement, p. 706. 



xvi SHORT HISTORY OF BRITISH COMMONWEALTH 

CHAP. PAGR 

VI. THE FIRST PHASES OF THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR 

MARITIME AND COLONIAL SUPREMACY (A.D. 1739-17 55), 7 10 
§ 1. The Opening of the Conflict, p. 710; § 2. The 
Maritime War with Spain, p. 71 r ; § 3· The War of the 
Austrian Succession, and the Potency of Sea-Power, p. 
712; § 4· The Beginning of Franco-British Conflict 
Overseas, p. 717; § 5· The Years of Nominal Peace, 
I748-55, p. 7I9; § 6. The Diplomatic Revolution of 
I756, p. 724; § 7· British Poiitics and the Great Con-
flict : the Emergence of Pitt, p. 728. 

VII. WILLIAM PITT AND THE ESTABLISHM~NT OF BRITISH 

MARITIME AND COLONIAL SUPREMACY (A.D. I7 55-

1763~· 733 
§ 1. The Dark Days, p. 733; § 2. Pitt's Opportunity, 
and his Preparations, p. 736; § 3· The Turn of the 
Tide, I 7 s8, p. 7 42 ; § 4· The A nnus Mirabilis of I 7 59 : 
Quebec and Quiberon, p. 746; § 5· Negotiations for 
Peace: the Fall of Pitt, p. 752; § 6. The Aftermath: 
the Downfall of Spain, p. 755; § 7· The Peace of Paris, 
p. 756. . 

VIII. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH POWER IN INDIA, 7 59 
§ r. The Main Factors of Indian Politics, p. 759; § 2. 
The Chaos of Eighteenth-Century India : the Mahrattas 
and the Afghans, p. 763 ; § 3· French and British in 
the Carnatic : the Projects of Dupleix, p. 767 ; § 4· 
Renewed Conflict ; and the Establishment of British 
Influence in Bengal, p. 773; § 5· The Nature of the 
British Power in India in 176o, p. 778. 

IX. THE SOCIAL ORGANISATION OF THE BRITISH COMMON-

WEALTH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 782 
§ r. The Prosperity and Freedom of England, p. 782 ; 
§ 2. English Rural Society and its Organisation, p. 
784 ; § 3· The Ruling Classes : the Squirearchy and 
the Magnates : an Aristocratic Society, p. 787 ; § 4· 
The Commercial and Industrial Interests : the Growth 
of Capitalist Control, p. 793 ; § S· The Growth of Pro­
sperity in Scotland, p. 798; § 6. The Stagnancy of 
Ireland, p. Soz ; § 7. The British Lands oversea : 
their Social Character, p. 8o4 ; § 8. Problems of the 
Commonwealth, p. 812. 

CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX, 8 I 5 



BOOK I 

THE MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS 

(TO A.D. 1215) 



INTRODUCTION 

WE are citizens not merely of a great country, but of a 
wonderful partnership or fellowship of peoples, which is 
generally known as the British Empire, but is better 
described as the British Commonwealth of Nations. It 
includes one-quarter of the area and one-quarter of "the 
population of the world, and its territories are to be found 
in every continent and are washed by every ocean. There 
has never been, in all the history of mankind, a political 
structure which at all resembled the British Commonwealth. 
For its most striking feature is that it is not a mere Empire, 
held together solely by the military power of a conquering 
people, like the many Empires that have arisen and decayed 
in the course of history ; but that each of its members 
retains its own distinct character, and is either entirely 
free in the management of its own affairs, or (if it is not 
ready for that) is governed with a view to the interests of 
its own people, and not with a view solely to the interests 
of the ruling race. All the innumerable nations and tribes 
included within the British Commonwealth are able to live 
together in peace, and to help anti strengthen one another, 
while each of them retains its own customs and modes of 
life. That is something far more wonderful than the build­
ing of even the greatest empire by mere force. As we all 
are, or shall be, citizens of this world-wide Commonwealth 
of Nations, and must share the responsibility for maintain­
ing and improving the traditions by which it has grown 
great, it is our duty to understand its character, and for 
that purpose to study its history. The purpose of this 
book is to explain how these traditions came into exist­
ence, and how the Commonwealth of Nations grew to its 
present marvellous dimensions. 

It has all grown from the two small islands, Great Britain 
and Ireland, which lie off the north-west coast of Europe. 
They have shared in the common civilisation of Europe, 
but because they were islands they have been able to 
develop in security their mvn characteristic institutions. 

3 



0 

4 MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS [BK. 1. 

And it has been these institutions, the institutions of 
political freedom, which have mainly determined the 
character and course of the history of the whole Common­
wealth. Moreover in these two islands there are, and 
there have been for many centuries, no less than four dis­
tinct nations. They have learned slowly and, in the case 
of Ireland, very imperfectly, the difficult lesson of living 
together in peace as members of a single great State, 
without sacrificing their individual character. It has 
come to be one of the distinctive notes of the British 
Commonwealth that its ideal (not always realised) is to 
cultivate unity without sacrificing freedom or forcibly 
wiping out differences. And it was because the peoples 
of the islands had in some degree learnt to tolerate differ­
ences and to live together in mutual respect, that those 
who went forth from them into the new world and the old 
were able gradually to develop the world-wide partnership 
of free nations which is the British Commonwealth. 

Hence our story must begin with the peoples of the 
islands; and its first stage must deal (though only in the 
broadest outline) with the development of the four nations 
out of the very mixed races who have made their homes 
in the islands. 



CHAPTER I 

THE FIRST INHABITANTS AND THE FIRST CONTACT 
WITH CIVILISATION 

§ I. The I stands and their Earliest Peoples. 

LONG before the dawn of history the British Islands were 
attached to the mainland of Europe; and the Thames 
and the Trent were tributaries of the Rhine. The first 
great event in the history of the British Commonwealth 
was the gradual physical change-due, the geologists tell 
us, to the melting of the huge polar ice-cap that once 
extended over all Northern Europe-which caused the seas 
to rise and to submerge the low plains where the English 
Channel and the North Sea now lie. For this change 
determined that the British lands, while forming a part of 
Europe, should stand a little aloof from it ; and that their 
peoples, which were to be the mother-races of the Common­
wealth, should be bred apart, not cut off from the influence 
of European civilisation, but yet free from constant contact 
and strife with their neighbours, and able, therefore, to 
develop their own institutions and modes of life in their 
own way. 

Cut off thus from the Continent, and lying on its north­
western margin with nothing beyond but the stormy expanse 
of ocean, the islands appeared to the ancients to be on the 
very edge of the round flat world. Ancient maps 1 show 
them thus, bordered by the great river Oceanus, which 
was supposed to encircle the earth, and beyond which, 
men thought, lay only emptiness. And so long as the 
Mediterranean Sea continued to be the centre of Western 
civilisation, as it did until four hundred years ago, the 
British Islands did indeed lie on the outskirts of the world, 
far from the heart of things, and counted for very little in 
the life of Europe. It was not until the great explorations 
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that the islands 

1 See the maps reproduced in Atlas, Plate 46. 



6 MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS [BIC I. 

ceased to be among the most remote outlying regions of 
the civilised world, and found that they lay in the main 
track of the world's concerns. Then the great age of their 
history began, for which all the earlier ages were but a long 
preparation. 

The fact that the islands lay on the outermost verge of 
the Eurasian continent had another vitally important 
influence upon their history. The shallow sundering seas 
were narrow and easily crossed; and so it came about 
that, in the incessant movement of peoples from the east 
westwards, branches of all the races which came into 
Western Europe also passed over the Narrow Seas, and 
made their contribution to the population of the islands. 
And because there were no further lands into which the. 
earlier migrants could be driven by their successors, all these 
peoples were forced to blend with one another ; with the 
result that the peoples of the islands derive their origin 
from a greater variety of racial stocks than perhaps any 
other people in Europe. As each of the migrant peoples 
pressed into the islands it conquered its predecessors, drove 
some of them into the less fertile regions of the north and 
west, enslaved the rest, and then gradually blended with 
them by intermarriage. 

The earlier of these hordes of primitive conquerors have 
left behind them no written records ; so that we cannot 
even distinguish accurately between them, or tell with any 
precision when they entered the islands, or describe their 
life and character in any but the most general way. But 
they have left their traces in the soil :-entrenched camps 
on the hillsides; tombs of various shapes; fragments of 
implements and weapons left in caves or in the alluvial 
deposits by river-sides; above all, skulls or skeletons; and 
from these relics scholars piece together some ideas about 
our remote ancestors. 

The earliest of these relics belong to what is called the 
Old Stone Age; but it is probable that the men of this age 
died out altogether, and did not contribute at all to the 
making of the mixed British peoples. 

The first race that we can confidently regard as our part­
ancestors were the men of the New Stone Age. There 
may have been more than one race in this age; but one 
of them was a short, dark people with long-shaped skulls, 
whom scholars call the Mediterranean race, because peoples 
of their type form the basis of the population in all the 
Mediterranean lands. They were followed by a taller race, 



CH. I.] THE FIRST INHABIT ANTS 7 

with round-shaped skulls, who had learnt to use bronze im­
plements, and probably owed their superiority to this cause. 
They were evidently a fairly civilised people, for they grew 
corn, knew how to weave cloth, and could make pottery. It 
was probably these people who erected the numerous circles 
of standing stones, of which Stonehenge is the most remark­
able ; and as the monoliths of which these great circles are 
composed were in some cases brought from a distance, 
the builders must have had a considerable degree of engineer­
ing skill. They conquered and blended with their prede­
cessors, and the mixed race spread all over the islands. 
We are all in some degree descended from them; but as 
many of them were driven westwards and northwards by 
later conquerors, they became most numerous in these 
parts of the islands, and the short, dark types of Irishmen, 
Welshmen and Scottish Highlanders are their most typical 
represen ta ti ves. 

The next race won their victory because they had learnt 
to use iron. These were the Celts, a big-boned, fair-haired 
people, who formed the first wave of the great Aryan stock, 
from which all the principal peoples of Europe, as well as 
the ruling elements in India and Persia, are mainly descended, 
and to which all the later conquerors of Britain belonged. 
Five or six hundred years before Christ the Celtic peoples 
occupied the greater part of Europe north of the Alps; 
they pressed down into Italy and threatened the rising city 
of Rome ; and one branch of them established themselves 
in Asia Minor, and became the ancestors of St. Paul's 
Galatians. But in course of time the next Aryan wave, 
that of the Teutons, pressed them westward beyond the 
Rhine, so that among the continental countries it is only in 
France, Belgium, Northern Italy and Spain that their 
blood forms a very important element. Their languages 
survive only in the islands and in Brittany ; and the tender 
vein of poetry and of love for natural beauty which they 
jeveloped is a heritage of great value which the peoples 
of the islands owe to them. 

The Celts came to Britain in two, or perhaps three, dis­
tinct waves, separated by a considerable interval of time. 
First came the Gaels, whose form of the Celtic language is 
still spoken in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland ; 
perhaps a couple of centuries later they we~e f~llowed by_ a 
second wave, the Britons, whose language 1s still spoken~ 
Wales and Brittany, and was, not long ago, spoken m 
Cornwall. The Gaels conquered and enslaved the earlier 



8 MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS [BK. I. 

inhabitants, or drove them to the north and west ; the 
Britons, in their tum, treated the Gaels in the same way. 
Both alike so completely overcame their subjects that the 
languages of the earlier inhabitants disappeared altogether, 
and the mixed race learnt to regard itself as Celtic; but 
this, of course, does not in the least imply that the earlier 
peoples were destroyed. Primitive peoples often change 
their languages easily. In the fourth century before Christ, 
when Alexander the Great was conquering Western Asia, 
all Britain south of the Forth was British; the rest of 
Britain and the whole of Ireland were Gaelic; but in both 
regions the race was already a very mixed one. 

We know nothing at all about the actual events of these 
conquests : indeed, we know practically nothing about the 
history of the inhabitants of Britain down to the eve of the 
Christian era. During all these centuries the real centre 
of Western civilisation was in the lands bordering on the 
Mediterranean, where the Jewish prophets were preaching 
the doctrines of an exalted religion ; where the Phrenician 
navigators were extending the range of commerce, and 
pushing their daring explorations through the Pillars of 
Hercules to the Atlantic shores of Europe and round the 
circumference of Africa ; where the little Greek city-states 
were laying the foundation of political liberty, and creating 
western art, philosophy and literature; and where the, 
Romans were proving the power of Law and Discipline, 
and were gradually bringing under their firm and organised 
rule all the Mediterranean peoples. 

Britain was scarcely at all influenced by all this wonderful 
activity, which was creating what we call Western civilisa­
tion. At first, and for long, the contact of the island tribes 
with this nascent civilisation was very slight and purely 
external. Phrenician sailors at an early date came to the 
Scilly Islands to buy tin. Greek merchants from Marseilles 
carried on a certain amount of overland traffic through the 
tribes of Gaul, who had relations with their British cousins. 
The more settled tribes in Southern Britain carried on some 
rude trade, were introduced to Greek coins, and tried to 
make a coinage of their own after the same pattern. A bold 
Greek eKplorer, Pytheas, about the time of Alexander the 
Great, made his way through the straits of Gibraltar and 
as far north as the Shetlands; and he wrote an account 
of his travels, much as our Elizabethan explorers described 
their adventures among the strange seas and the wild 
savages of the new world. But on the whole the islands 



CH. I.] THE FIRST INHABIT ANTS 9 

were almost as much out of touch with the main stream of 
history as the tribes of America were before the great 
discoveries. 

In the earlier part of the Celtic period, we shall probably 
not be far wrong if we think of the Gaels and Britons as 
being in much the same stage of civilisation as the Red 
Indians of the seventeenth century. They were organised 
in clans, under the lead of hereditary chieftains. They 
were great fighting men, and constantly at war with one 
another. Their warriors, like the Red Indians, loved to 
paint or tattoo their bodies; 'Briton' probably means 
'painted,' and the wilder northern clans, among whom 
this custom lasted longest, were knovvn, centuries after 
Christ, as the ' Picts,' or painted men. They worshipped 
many gods, representing the forces of Nature, to whom they 
offered human sacrifices; and their priests, the remark­
able order of Druids, exercised so great an ascendency 
among them that they may perhaps be compared to the 
Red Indians' Medicine Men. No doubt the civilisation of 
the southern part of the island had developed a good deal 
by the time that Ca:sar landed in it, fifty-five years before 
Christ. But he found all these customs still in existence. 

§ 2. The Roman Occupation. 
It was a great thing for the Britons when the advancing 

tide of Roman conquest brought them into contact with 
a highly developed civilisation. The greatest of Roman 
statesmen and generals, Julius Ca:sar, ·having conquered 
the whole of Gaul, was led to pay two visits to the south-east 
corner of Great Britain, in 55 and 54 B.c. Unfortunately he 
was unable to undertake the conquest of the island, being 
called away by more important affairs in Italy, where a 
few years later he set up his personal authority over the 
whole Roman Empire. It was not until a century later 
that the Roman Government undertook the conquest of 
Great Britain. Betwee1;1 A.D. 43 and 6I the island was con­
qgered and organised as far north as the Humber. A few 
years later the great general, Agricola, set forth to com­
plete the conquest of the island, and fought, far north 
among the Scottish mountains, the battle of Mons Graupius 
(A.D. 84). But the vigour of Rome was already declining; 
these barren deserts did not seem worth conquering, and 
the task was never completed. For a brief period, indeed, 
the Lowlands of Scotland were occupied; roads and camps 
were made between the Tyne and the Forth, and a rampart 



0 

IO MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS [BK. I. 

was erected from the Forth to the Clyde, to keep off the 
fierce hillmen. But even this part of Scotland was never 
seriously organised as a Roman province, and the Romans 
never directly touched Ireland at all, though they had 
trade relations with it. Except for a short period they 
practically limited themselves to the region south of the 
Tyne and Solway, which was fenced off by a wonderful 
massive wall of stone, with great towers at intervals, which 
is still to be seen, a series of splendid ruins, standing gauntly 
among the moorlands. 

The area south of this wall-practically the whole of 
England and Wales-was pretty thoroughly organised as 
a Roman province,1 and had its share in the common 
life of the civilised world for more than three centuries 
and a half. The Romans garrisoned the country with 
three legions of their famous soldiery. They built towns, 
the relics of which-long buried beneath the debris which 
was due to the neglect and hatred of the savages who 
followed-are still to be seen at Bath, Chester, Silchester, 
Wroxeter, and elsewhere. Jhey introduced their own 
laws and languages, and the upper classes among the 
Britons most probably became Latin speakers, in much 
the same way as the upper classes in modem India have 
become English speakers. But they never effectually 
Romanised the mass of the people, who laboured as serfs 
on their estates, as they Romanised the people of Gaul and 
Spain. Most of the Britons still spoke their Celtic dialects, 
and the Romans had not long left the island before their 
language ceased to be used by any but the learned. 

<;:hristianity followed the Romans into Britain, at first 
as a persecuted, then as a recognised religion, and there 
were British bishops and British martyrs. But there were 
seemingly very few churches; and it appears probable 
that the mass of the country-folk remained pagan. Yet 
the new religion had got itself established, and it was 
capable of growing by its own strength. It had even begun, 
before the Romans left the island, to spread to the wilder 
Celtic peoples of Scotland and Ireland whom the Romans 
never conquered. 

Apart from Christianity, then, the Roman occupation 
left comparatively little permanent mark upon the people: 
only the upper class of the Celts seem in any full degree 
to have adopted the culture of their masters. But there 
was one aspect of the Romans' work which proved a per-

1 See the map of Roman Britain, Atlas, Plate 30. 



CH. I.) THE FIRST INHABITANTS .!I 

manent contribution to the progress of Great Britain. They 
built a wonderful sys~em of roads, straight and solidly 
paved, sweeping across the hills and valleys, and through 
the wide forests and marshes; and these roads, for the first 
time, made communication easy between one part of Great 
Britain and another. They turned it from a series of little 
isolated districts into a relatively unified country. For 
many centuries to come these great roads were to be one 
of the chief unifying forces in Great Britain. Down to the 
eighteenth century they continued to be the main means 
of commtmication in the divided land.1 

During the first four centuries of the Christian era the 
Roman Empire 2 had given to the whole world of Western 
civilisation a period of peace and orderly rule, such as it 
had never known before, and has never known since. 
Under its protection the art and the wisdom of Greece had 
become the common heritage of the West; and along its 
guarded roads the missionaries of Christianity had come 
and gone, gradually increasing the number of their adherents, 
at first in obscurity, then in the face of persecution, and 
finally under the official sanction of the Emperors, until 
almost the whole Western world, except some of the pagani 
or country-folk, had become Christian. It was this period 
of peace and law, with the ideas it implanted as to men's 
duties to the State and to one another, which laid the solid 
foundations of European or Western civilisation; and no 
people has played any great part in the history of that 
civilisation until it has been enabled, directly or indirectly, 
to become a partner in the heritage of Rome. All this had 
been possible because the armies of the Empire guarded its 
long frontiers as the British armies to-day guard the 
frontiers of India, and were able to prevent the inrush of the 
barbarians who lay without. 

The most formidable of these barbarians were the fierce 
Teutonic clans, who wandered and fought among the forests 
and marshes of Germany. Some of these tribes, dwelling 
on the borders of the Empire, had learned to venerate its 
splendid order and civilisation, and many of them had been 
converted to Christianity before the end of the fourth 
century; but their admiration was mingled with greed, 
and they longed to take these rich and cultivated lands for 
themselves. And, as time passed, the chance of their 

1 See the road map in the Introduction to the Atlas, p. 34, which shows 
how the Roman roads continued to be used. 

~ See the map of the Roman Empire, Atlas, Plate x. 



12 MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS [BK. I. 

doing so seemed to become greater. The Roman Empire 
was slowly ·but surely decaying. It could no longer man 
its armies from among its own citizens, and began to take 
a dangerously large proportion of recruits from among the 
German tribes themselves. In the middle of the third 
century the barbarians were able to burst the guarded 
frontiers, and work vast damage in the peaceful provinces; 
and though they were thrust out again, and the Empire was 
reorganised, a whole rich province-modem Hungary and 
Rumania-had to be abandoned to the Goths. 

At length, towards the end of the fourth century, the 
great catastrophe arrived. A new wave of invaders from 
the East, the ferocious and brutal Huns, were forcing their 
way into Europe. Their advance threw all the German 
tribes into confusion; and, escaping from the Huns, they 
burst their way across the Rhine and the Danube. In the 
course of the next generation these barbarian invaders 
made themselves masters of the richest provinces in the 
western half of the Empire.1 The Visigoths were in Spain, 
the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Vandals in Northern Africa, 
the Burgundians in South-Eastern France, and the Franks 
in Northern France. Britain, too, had long been threatened. 
Sea-rovers from North-Western Germany, the pagan Saxons, 
who had never come in contact with Rome, and were among 
the fiercest and most backward of the Teutons, had long 
been harrying the east coast of Britain, so that the Roman 
administrators of that province had been compelled to 
appoint a special officer to deal with this peril, the Count of 
the Saxon Shore. At the same time the untamed Picts to the 
north of the great wall became more and more threatening. 

But the outlying and backward province of Britain was 
of little importance when the very heart of the Empire was 
threatened. In A.D. 410 the Roman legions had to be 
withdrawn from Britain, and with that event a new chapter 
opens in the history of the British peoples. The Teutonic 
or German invaders were about to make their contribu­
tion to the population of the islands. 

[For the general history of the period, Oman, England before the 
Norman Conquest; for prehistoric Britain, Boyd Dawkins, Early 
Man in Britain; for Celtic Britain, Rhys, Celtic Britain; for Roman 
Britain, Haverfield, The Romanisation of Roman Britain, Codrington, 
Roman Roads. English students will find it interesting to read the 
chapter on Roman Britain in the Victoria County History of their 
own county.] · 

1 See the maps showing stages in the settlement of the Barbarians within 
the Empire, Atlas, Plates 2 (a) (b) and 3 (a) (b). 



CHAPTER II 

THE TEUTONIC INVADERS 

(A.D. 410-825) 

§I. The Barbarian Conqtterors and the Chaos they produced. 

THE Teutonic tribes who settled in Great Britain during 
the century following the Roman withdrawal came mainly 
from the low and marshy lands which lie between the 
Rhine and the Baltic Sea.l We know very little about their 
history before they sought their new homes, or about their 
customs and civilisation, except in so far as these were the 
same as those of other Teutonic tribes, of which a general 
description has been given to us by the Roman historians, 
Ca:sar and Tacitus. 

These tribes, as Ca:sar and Tacitus describe them, had a 
very loose political organisation. Each tribe was divided 
into districts under the rule of chieftains, but the tribes 
as a whole seem to have had scarcely any common govern­
ment, except that the chieftains took counsel together, 
and that the whole body of free men were consulted about 
a few greater issues, such as war against some neigh­
bouring clan. Justice was administered in district courts, 
probably presided over by the chieftains; but freemen 
seem to have had a right to be present, and it was they 
who declared the ' custom of the folk,' by which any ques­
tion ought to be determined. But there was no developed 
system of law, no hearing of witnesses, no examination of 
evidence-the real decision was arrived at either by hard 
swearing, or by an appeal to the gods by ordeal, or by a 
fight. The idea of crime, as an offence against the com­
munity, scarcely existed among them, except in the case 
of cowardice or treason in battle; even murder was not 
punishable by death, but could be compensat~d by a pay­
ment of the value of the dead man to his relatives, accord-· 
ing to a fixed tariff of lives. There were rigid divisions 

1 See the map, Atlas, Plate 31. 
18 



.. 
MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS (BK. I. 

of caste among these tribesmen, between the noble-born, 
the ordinary freemen, and the slaves or theows, who were 
employed as serfs in the cultivation of the land : and it 
was extremely hard, if not impossible, for any man to rise 
out of the caste into which he was born. This division into 
castes was general among the Aryan peoples, to which both 
the Teutons and the Celts belonged. It took many cen­
turies to get rid of it altogether, and in India, instead of 
becoming weaker, it became stronger and more elaborate 
in course of time, and is still the most marked feature in 
Indian life. 

One of the strongest ties among the ordinary Teuton 
tribesmen was that of kinship. Each village seems to have 
been, at any rate in theory, a group of kinsmen. The whole 
kin was responsible for the conduct of its members. It 
was in kinship groups that the freemen were marshalled for 
battle. And it would appear that the kinship groups worked 
their land more or less in partnership. They needed a large 
area of land for each group, for their methods of tillage 
were rude, and they cultivated different patches of their 
ground in each year, leaving the bulk of it waste for the 
pasture of their cattle. In all this there is no great differ­
ence between the customs of these tribes and those of the 
Celts before the Roman conquest. 

But one peculiar institution these Teuton tribesmen 
possessed, which added greatly to their fighting efficiency, 
and probably accounted for their victories. Each chieftain 
prided himself upon maintaining a war-band of young 
warriors, whom he fed and housed and supplied with 
horse and armour. The members of these war-bands were 
sworn to absolute loyalty, even to the death ; and youths 
of. the proudest birth were not ashamed to belong to 
them. These bands of young warriors, who spent their 
lives wholly in hunting or fighting or preparing for war, 
were very useful in battle-much more useful than the 
bodies of ordinary freemen called from the plough. Their 
upkeep must have demanded the labour of large num­
bers of serfs, or heavy tribute from the freemen. And 
their existence meant constant warfare; the war-band had 
to be kept exercised, or it would become discontented; 
and its members expected to be rewarded for their services. 
These bands of comrades (comites) or gesiths were the 
most important feature of the Teutonic system. They 
must certai~ly have played a principal part in the conquest 
of Britairi. And the tie of loyalty which bound chieftain 



' 
CH. II.] THE TEUTONIC INVADERS rs 
and comrades one to the other was the strongest tie existing 
among the Teutons. On the other hand, the rivalry of 
various chieftains and their war-bands was bound to make 
common action difficult. 

We know very little about the adventures of these fierce_ 
barbarians in Britain during the century and a half follow­
ing the Roman withdrawal, for the Romanised Celts have 
left us nothing but one or two vague and brief lamenta­
tions over the punishment which Britain had to endure 
for her sins ; while the Teuton tribesmen could not write, 
and the scattered and conflicting statements about their 
conquests which have come down to us were only written 
down centuries after the events to which they refer. 

One thing, however, is plain. They found it no easy 
business to conquer Great Britain. The other provinces of 
the Roman Empire were overrun by their barbarian con­
querors with extraordinary rapidity and ease, but Great 
Britain had to be won foot by foot in a long and obstinate 
fight; much of it, and the whole of Ireland, were never 
conquered at all by these invaders. Indeed the Teutons, 
though they no doubt raided the coasts, do not seem 
to have ventured to make a settlement until forty years 
after the Romans had withdrawn their troops; the tra­
ditional date for the first settlement is A.D. 449, when 
a party of Jutes, under Hengist and Horsa, are said 
to have established themselves in Kent. It took more 
than a hundred years for the Teutons to win their 
way half way across England, and another long period 
passed ere they forced an access to the Bristol Channel 
(battle of Deorham, 577), and the Irish Sea (battle of 
Chester, 6r3), and so broke the Celtic states into three 
fragments. 1 Even then Cornwall, Wales and Cumbria, 
South-Western Scotland, the whole of the Highlands, and 
Ireland remained unconquered. This means that the 
Celts, in spite of their desertion by the Romans, offered 
a very desperate resistance-far more vigorous than was 
offered to the Teuton conquerors in any other part of 
Western Europe. The hero of this resistance, in the early 
stages, was a Romanised Briton, whose fame is preserved 
in the romantic legends of King Arthur and his Knights of 
the Round Table ; but these legends have become so wildly 
distorted that it is _impossible to get any historical facts 
out of them. 

1 See the map showing the stages in the Teut~i$<'Ptl~st, Atlas, 
Plate 32 (a). '"' G) 1"1 I" 0 ~ q_._ 

-; "' l .... ) ~-\ 'S:T •:;. (· u Q t u ::: tP 

~ ~JUt ms~ g UBftAlY. f 
::. .q 



y 

r6 MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS (BK. I. 

The main reason for the length of the struggle was, no 
doubt, that instead of coming as a single organised host 
under a single captain, like the Ostrogoths (in Italy) under 
Theodoric, or the Franks (in Gaul) under Clovis, the con­
querors of Britain came in many different tribal groups, 
led by many rival chieftains with their war-bands, each 
striving to carve out a little dominion for himself. We 
can recognise four different peoples among the conquerors. 
The Jutes, who may have come either from the Rhine 
valley or from Jutland in North Denmark, came in two 
distinct bands, one to Kent, another to the Isle of Wight and 
Hampshire. The Saxons, from the Elbe and Weser valleys, 
seem to have organised themselves at first into a big host, 
which tried to advance up the Thames Valley; but they 
were beaten back at the battle of Mount Badon (? 516), 
and they then split up into a number of distinct groups, 
East, Middle, South and West Saxons, each group fighting for 
its own hand. The Frisians, who came from the northern 
Dutch coast, certainly had a share in the invasions, but we 
cannot tell exactly where they settled. The Angles, from 
Holstein, seem to have been the only one of these peoples 
who transplanted themselves in a body, with wives, cattle 
and slaves, from their old homes to their new. They were 
the most numerous of these peoples, and ultimately they 
gave their name to the whole mixed population of South 
Britain; for England simply means Angleland. But 
even the Angles seem to have made many distinct and un­
connected attacks-in East Anglia, in Lincolnshire, up the 
Trent Valley, in Yorkshire, and in Northumberland and the 
Lothians. Scholars have tried to work out the details of 
these settlements, but all their results are very uncertain ; 
and we may well be content to say that, during the century 
following the Roman withdrawal, a large number of petty 
Teutonic kingdoms had established themselves in the 
eastern half of South Britain, from the Forth to the Solent, 
and that these petty settlements were separated from one 
another by the wide stretches of marsh, forest and moor­
land by which England was split up. Several of these 
little kingdoms are represented by modem English counties, 
such as Sussex and Essex (the South and East Saxons), 
Norfolk and Suffolk (the north folk and the south folk of 
the East Angles). 

A prolonged and bitter struggle of this kind would mean 
a great deal of slaughter, and no doubt a much larger pro­
portion of the Britons lost their lives than of the con-



CH. II.J THE TEUTO}!IC INVADERS 

quered provincials in Gaul. But we need not suppose 
that there was a wholesale massacre of the conquered, 
except perhaps in a few walled towns which angered the 
invaders by their resistance. The Teutons hated towns, 
and they left the Roman towns in Britain to fall into 
ruins. In the first conquests, in which the whole mass of 
freemen took part, there may have been a good deal of 
slaughter ; but even at this stage it is likely that the Celtic 
serfs would be kept alive, for it would be wasteful to destroy 
them, and we know that the Teutons had used serfs in their 
own country. But in the later conquests, carried out 
mainly by the war-bands, who would need serf labour to 
till the lands they won, it is impossible to believe that they 
can have been destroyed. Those Celts who could afford 
to do so, including all the educated classes, would take 
refuge with their friends as the conquerors advanced; 
many of them fled to Brittany. But large numbers of 
humble labourers remained, and learnt to speak the lan­
guage of their masters. The only strong argument in 
favour of a wholesale slaughter is that Christianity died 
out in the country occupied by the conquerors; but we 
have seen that it had won no firm hold upon the rural popula­
tion. We must not therefore imagine that the population 
of England became purely Teutonic as a result of the 
invasions. It was probably mixed everywhere, but the 
Celtic element grew increasingly strong the further west 
the Teuton power was extended. In parts of \Vessex, for 
example (i.e. Berkshire, Hampshire, Dorset), the existence 
of a Celtic population is recognised in the earliest laws. 
In Devonshire the population is of almost purely Celtic 
descent. 

Thus the first result of the Teuton invasion was greatly 
to increase the disunity of the country. It was divided 
between several free Celtic realms, and many separate 
English kingdoms. From the first there was constant 
strife between these little States, as each chieftain strove 
to extend his dominion over his neighbours. And the result 
was that some seven or eight substantial English kingdoms 
emerged. The bigger of these included many smaller king­
doms, which became' shires' or counties, but still had their 
hereditary chieftains or kinglets and their distinct folkmoots 
or assemblies of freemen. In the seventh and eighth cen­
turies three of these kingdoms especially stood out, and 
seemed strong enough to try to claim lordship over the 
rest. These were Northumbria, a long narrow realm 

VOL. I. B 



u 

!8 MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS [BK. 1. 

extending from the Humber to the Forth; Mercia, a great 
square block filling the Midlands, and including many petty 
kingships; and Wessex, which included the country south 
of the Thames, from Devonshire to Sussex.1 

While all this confusion reigned among the English 
settlers, things were no better among the independent 
Celts. We know very little about their history in this long 
period, but we know that there were many divisions among 
them. We can trace three groups in South Britain-West 
Wales, which included Devonshire and Cornwall; Wales 
proper ; and Strathclyde and Cumbria, which extended 
from the Mersey to the Clyde. But there were further 
divisions within these groups; Galloway, for example, in 
the south-west of Scotland, was a practically independent 
realm, inhabited bv Gaels or Picts, while the rest of Strath­
clyde was occupied by Britons. In the north of Scotland 
also there were several distinct kingdoms. And during 
this period the confusion was increased by the migration to 
the Western Highlands (503) of the Scots, a conquering 
Celtic people from the north of Ireland, who were, in course 
of time, to give their name to the whole kingdom. 2 

It was no wonder that in the midst of all this confusion 
civilisation decayed. When we reflect upon the condi­
tion of the islands in the sixth and seventh centmies, 
it seems incredible that out of such chaos there should, in 
the fulness of time, have grown a united nation. 

While Britain was in this state of chaos, Western Europe 
also had fallen into the deepest barbarism, for the barbarian 
conquerors had overrun every part of it; the Franks and 
Burgundians in France, the Visigoths in Spain, the Ostro­
goths and later the Lombards in Italy. And during the 
same period a great transformation was being carried out 
in the East. The Arabs, fired by the preaching of the 
prophet Mohammed, had, during the seventh century, 
overrun and conquered most of what remained of the 
eastern half of the Roman Empire, and the whole of Persia. 
Syria and Egypt were in their hands ; they were expanding 
along the north coast of Africa; and at the beginning of 
the eighth century (7rr) they were to cross the straits of 
Gibraltar, and conquer the greater part of Spain. 

But while chaos reigned everywhere else, in Ireland there 
was going on a wonderful development ; for Ireland was 
free from the Teutonic conquerors, as she had been free 

1 See the map, Atlas, Plate 32 (b). 
2 See the map of early Scotland, Atlas, Plate 39· 



CH. II.) THE TEUTONIC INVADERS 19 

from the Romans. In the years following the Roman with­
drawal from Britain, St. Patrick, who l1ad been trained 
in Gaul, undertook the task of completing the conversion 
of the Irish Gaels to Christianity, and from this time a 
wonderful revival of religion and learning made Ireland, 
for two or three centuries, the holy place of Europe, and 
the home of saints and missionaries. The country was 
divided into about eight tribal kingdoms, constantly at 
strife with one another. But that did not matter; the 
holy men withdrew themselves into settlements apart, 
where hundreds of pupils gathered round them, building 
their own wattled huts, and growing their own food, but 
devoting most of their time to the study of religion.1 From 
these monct.stic settlements they went forth with admir­
able courage to preach the gospel in all the pagan lands 
of the West. They found their way as far afield as Iceland. 
They wandered over the whole of Western Germany, from 
the mouth of the Rhine to Switzerland, and converted many 
of the heathens <;>f that region. But for us the most inter­
esting of all their settlements was that which was made 
by St. Columba, a pupil of one of the great monastic schools 
in the north of Ireland, and a cousin of the King of the 
Scots, who had recently established themselves in Argyll­
shire. About 565, on the invitation of his cousin, Columba, 
with twelve companions, established himself in the little 
island of Iona, off the wild west coast of Scotland, and Iona 
henceforth became one of the holy places of Britain. 
Solumba's disciples wandered over Northern Scotland, and 
(~onverted the heathen Picts. And presently they under­
took a still heavier task-that of converting the fierce 
Anglo-Saxon conquerors. · 

§ 2. The Revival of Civilisation. 
The first attempt to convert the English was made, 

however, not by the Celtic missionaries, but by a band of 
monks headed by St. Augustine, who were sent by the great 
Pope Gregory I., and landed in Kent in 597; the site of 
their first church, Canterbury, has ever since been the 
centre of the English Church. But though Augustine and 
his followers converted Kent, and persuaded the kings of 
Northumbria and Essex to accept the new religion, a great 
heathen reaction led by the King of Mercia almost destroyed 
their work. The real conversion of the English did not 
begin until in 635 an exiled Northumbrian king, Oswald, 

1 See the map of early Ireland, Atlas, Plate 41. 



u 

20 MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS (BK. I. 

brought from Iona the great Celtic missionary St. Aidan. 
From the monastery which Aidan founded on the island 
of Lindisfarne missionaries went forth over all England, 
and in a generation the whole country had adopted the new 
faith. Thus the English owed their conversion mainly to 
their Celtic neighbours. 

Unfortunately, in the long period during which the Celtic 
Christians had been cut off by the heathen English from 
the main body of Christians on the Continent, considerable 
differences had sprung up between them, partly on minor 
points, such as the date of Easter, but also on the greater 
question of the way in which the Church should be organised. 
In 664, a council of English bishops was called at Whitby, 
to decide whether the Roman or the Celtic system should 
be followed. This was the first common action taken by 
all the English States. The council decided to adopt the 
Roman methods, and so brought the new Christian Church 
into contact and agreement with the rest of the Western 
\Yorld. A continental bishop, Theodore of Tarsus, was 
sent by the Pope to organise the new English Church. He 
divided the land into bishoprics, more or less corresponding 
with the little kingdoms; 1 and the councils which these 
bishops held from time to time formed the first recogni­
tion of the unity of the English realms. Unfortunately 
the decision of 664 at first meant that a new cleavage was 
introduced between the Celtic and the Teutonic regions of 
the islands, just when their adoption of a common faith 
promised to unite them. But this did not last very long: 
most of the Celtic lands gradually accepted the Roman 
order, and thus all the peoples of the islands had at last 
something in common. For them, as for the rest of the 
European peoples, a common religion was to provide a 
binding force. It could only work slowly, and was not 
of itself enough to weld them into a nation; but without 
it unity could never have come. 

The adoption of Christianity did not merely bring the 
islands once more into contact with the other peoples of 
Europe: it brought them again under the influence of the 
great heritage of Western civilisation, of which, through 
these dark centuries, the Church was the only guardian. 
They felt not only the influence of Christian morals and 
Christian thought ; through the Church they also felt the 
influence of the traditions of old Rome, although in a 
very faint and remote way; and none of the barbarian 

1 See the map of Anglo-Saxon dioceses, Atlas, Plate 37 (a). 



CH. II.) THE TEVTONIC INVADERS 2! 

tribes ever succeeded in achieving much that was of value 
until this happened. Under the stimulus of educated priests 
and monks, intellectual life sprang into being; and for a 
time Northern England at least was probably more civi­
lised than any of the countries of Western Europe where 
the German barbarians had settled. The Venerable Bede, 
who wrote his Ecclesiastical History in the monastery of 
J arrow-on-Tyne, and died in 735, was the only great writer of 
Europe in his age. When the conquering Frankish kings began 
in the eighth century to tame the savagery of Germany, and to 
bring that country, in its turn, indirectly under the influence 
of Rome, it was to England that they sent for missionaries 
to complete the work which the Irish preachers had earlier 
begun, and the organisation of the Christian Church in 
Germany was due to an Englishman, St. Boniface. When 
the greatest of the Frankish kings, Charlemagne (768-8I4), 
having made himself master of all the West, tried to restore 
the Roman Empire, and to make his court the centre of a 
revival of learning, his chief adviser and helper was the 
English scholar Alcuin. In Ireland also and (to a less 
degree) in Scotland, learning and religion made progress 
during this period; so that, on the whole, the islands had 
begun to emerge from their darkness, and were probably 
for a time the most enlightened region in Europe. 

But the old strife between the English kingdoms and 
their Celtic neighbours, and among the English kingdoms 
themselves, still continued, though with much less ferocity. 
The main feature of the seventh and eighth centuries was 
the long struggle for supremacy between the three chief 
English kingdoms, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. At 
first Northumbria led, but it was weakened by divisions 
between its northern and southern halves, and by its strife 
with its Celtic neighbours; its greatness may be said to 
end with the crushing victory of the Picts of Scotland at 
Nectansmere in 685. Then Mercia succeeded to the leader­
ship. Its greatest king, Offa (758-796), not only mastered 
all the little kingdoms of the Midlands, but beat back the 
Welsh, penning them behind the Dyke to which his name is 
still attached. But Mercia was not a unified State; it was a 
bundle of vassal kingdoms, and was only formidable under 
the rule of a great leader. Finally Wessex, the kingdom 
of the south, achieved supremacy over all the English 
kingdoms, under the leadership of Egbert, who succeeded 
to the West Saxon throne in 802. He conquered Devon, 
which was still Celtic ; he defeated the Mercians at Ellandun 



22 MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS [BK. I. 

(825); he made Kent and Sussex recognise his overlord­
ship ; and within the next few years all the little kings in 
England had offered him obedience and allegiance. Here, 
for the first time, was something resembling a single Kingdom 
of England ; though, in fact, the little kingdoms still main­
tained their separate existence, and real unity was far 
from being secured. 

It is a strange coincidence that just at the time when 
the English tribes were attaining some unity, a great united 
realm had been organised in Western Europe. During the 
eighth century the Frankish kings of the Carolingian house 
had rapidly made themselves the hope of Western civilisa­
tion. They had beaten back the Saracens at the battle of 
Poitiers (732), when they seemed likely to conquer France 
as they had already conquered Spain. They had unified 
all France and Western Germany under their rule. They 
had taken the Church and the Papacy under their guardian­
ship, and tamed the fierce Lombards in Italy. They had 
begun to bring the still unconquered tribes of Central and 
Northern Germany under civilising influences, and had 
given their protection and help to Christian missionaries 
preaching in these lands. They had even begun to conquer 
the Slavonic tribes east of the Elbe, and fought success­
fully against the A vars, a Mongolian raiding tribe who had 
fixed themselves in Hungary. Something dimly resembling 
the old order of the Roman Empire seemed to be emerging 
in Western Europe.1 In A.D. 8oo, just two years before 
Egbert ascended the West Saxon throne, the feeling of all 
good Europeans and lovers of civilisation that the days of 
peace and law were coming back again, received expression 
when the Pope placed upon the head of Charlemagne, the 
greatest of all the Frankish kings, an imperial crown, and 
hailed him as Emperor, as the reviver of old Rome, as 
the successor of the long line of Roman emperors who had 
given peace to the world. 

But the empire of Charlemagne, like the united England 
of Egbert, was still too weak to stand any severe strain; 
and upon both of them there was to fall, during the ninth 
century, a terrible series of trials, which for a time destroyed 
all the work that had been done, and plunged not only the 
islands, but the whole of Western Europe, into a long 
new period of barbarism and anarchy. Charlemagne's 
empire was divided among his descendants and tom asunder 

l See the map of Charlemagne's Empire, Atlas, Plate 4, and compilT'.l 
with it the Mohammedan Empire in the south. 



CH. II.] THE TEUTONIC INVADERS 23 

by their quarrels, while their nobles set up for themselves, 
and what is known as feudalism came into being. Mean­
while the once great empire was attacked on all sides­
by the Saracens in Italy and the south; by the Magyars, 
a new wave of Mongolian invaders, from Hungary and the 
south-east; by the Slavonic tribes, whom Charlemagne had 
held in check, on the east; and, above all, by the fierce 
Norse and Danish raiders from the Scandinavian lards of 
the north. Under these attacks, combined with its internal 
weakness, the empire of Charlemagne rapidly collapsed. 

England and the rest of the islands were subjected only 
to the attacks of the Norse and Danish raiders, but the full 
force of the storm fell upon them even more severely than 
npon France. These attacks had, indeed, already begun 
before Egbert's time, and were beginning to be serious 
before his death. His recently created and loosely organ­
ised power was not strong enough to stand the strain ; 
during the generation after his death the conquering North­
men settled in large numbers in the lands which had accepted 
his supremacy, and a new and very important element was 
added to the mixed population of the islands. 

§ 3· England in 8oo A.D. 
Yet the appearance of the first king of all England marks 

an era ; and before we turn to consider the raids and settle­
ments of the Northmen, it will be worth while to review 
briefly what was the condition at which England had 
arrived in Egbert's time, four centuries after the first 
Teutonic invasions; especially because some of the features 
of this period were to survive, and to have a lasting influ­
ence upon English institutions. 

We can form but a dim idea of the mode of life of the 
English at this period, for there is no material of a detailed 
kind until the time of the Norman Conquest; and a yet 
dimmer notion of the life of the other parts of the islands. 
But we must conceive of the great mass of Englishmen as 
probably living in village communities, and deriving their 
livelihood from the labours of the fields. Many of the 
villagers were freemen, holding substantial amounts of 
land, often about rzo acres, and being liable for service 
in the army and for attendance at the law courts. Many 
others were serfs, not owing these obligations, but on the 
other hand not free to leave their land, and subject to 
many vexatious dues and services to their masters, whose 
land they had to till as well as their own. These village 



24 MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS [BK. I. 

communities (whether free or servile) were practically self­
supporting. They grew their own food, made their own 
clothes and utensils, and needed scarcely anything from 
outside, except iron for their ploughshares and (in most 
villages) salt. Therefore the villagers knew and cared very 
little about what went on beyond the limits of the village. 
It was very difficult to stir them up to meet a common 
danger, as the Danish invasions showed; and it was almost 
impossible to create among them a sense of patriotism for 
England as a whole ; England as a whole meant nothing 
to them. 

The old military obligations of the freemen seem almost 
to have fallen into disuse ; because in the petty wars of 
the kingdoms the fighting was carried on, as perhaps it had 
mainly been carried on almost from the beginning, by the 
king's comrades or special fighting men. This class had 
consequently grown very much in importance. They were 
now known as thegns or royal servants, afl:d they had 
swallowed up all the old hereditary aristocracy. They had 
access to the king's person. The chief among them were 
members of hi,s council. They were rewarded for their 
services with grants of land, often including whole villages 
of serfs. In short, they were tending to become a sort of 
feudal nobility, although they had not yet obtained formal 
legal powers over the freemen. 

At the head of all was the King, whose position was 
now, in the greater kingdoms, much more exalted than 
that of the chieftains of the first conquering bands. Not 
only the greater extent of his kingdom, but the solemnity 
of Christian coronation, had raised him in dignity ; and 
now all the chief men of the kingdom were his thegns or 
servants. He maintained himself, and the cost of his 
government, chiefly by the profits of his private estates 
and the proceeds of the law courts ; and his court had to 
travel about unceasingly in order to eat up the produce of 
each of his estates in tum. In governing his realm, he 
was assisted by a council of wise men, or Wt'tan, which 
generally included the ealdormen, who were the adminis­
trative heads of the shires, together with the bishops and 
the leading thegns. This body was the only common 
ruling authority of the whole kingdom; and it was with 
its advice that the king made new laws, or took measures 
of attack or defence against other kings. But the king 
had no official staff, apart from a few chaplains who 
did such secretarial work as was necessary. There was no 



CH. II.] THE TEUTONIC INVADERS 25 

regular machinery of government, and this made it impos­
sible that effective control should be exercised over the 
whole of a wide realm like that of Mercia, and still more 
over all England. 

The highest educative and civilising influences at work 
in the islands were, of course, those of the Church; and 
it was perhaps only through the Church that men felt 
themselves to be members of something wider and greater 
than their village community or their shire-kingdom. The 
organisation of the Church, however, was as yet far from 
perfect. Many villages, no doubt, had churches of their 
own; and some may have had settled priests, who were 
kept up by a payment of one-tenth of the produce of the 
village lands. But this system was as yet far from universal. 
The main centres of spiritual and intellectual life were the 
monasteries, inhabited by groups of men who had vowed 
themselves to a religious life. They were the only schools 
and centres of learning. Some of them did splendid work, 
but generally, in the eighth century, tney were undergoing 
some decay, and the first flush of enthusiasm for the new 
religion was growing faint. EnglaD-d, in fact, had to pass 
through many searching experiences yet before she was to 
achieve either real unity or real civilisation. 

It is a remarkable fact that the Teutonic settlers in 
England, who had begun their attacks as pirates and sea­
rovers, had almost abandoned the sea from the time of 
their settlement. The English of A.D. 8oo were not a sea­
faring people. When they were attacked, as they were 
now to be, by the most daring mariners who have ever 
been seen on the seas of the world, they were altogether 
unable to meet them on their own element. 

[As before, Oman's England before the Norman Conquest provides 
the best general summary of recent knowledge. For the contem­
porary history of Europe, Church's Beginning of the Middle Ages, 
and Fletcher's 1VIaking of Western Europe. See also the first volume 
of Hume Brown's History of Scotland, and Bury's St. Patrick. 
Freeman's Old English History deals with this period; also 
Green's 1'tiaking of England, vivid but rather unreliable. For 
the early settlements. Leeds' A rchmology of the Anglo- Saxon 
Settlements. There is a good description of earJv English society in 
:Yiiss B. A. Lees' Alfred the Great, and a lively and picturesque one 
in the first volume of Fletcher's Introductory History of England.] 



CHAPTER III 

THE IXVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN 
(A.D. Szs-ro66) 

§ r. The Vikings and their Ravages. 

THE next wave of invad~rs were the Northmen or Vikmgs, 
who came from Norway and Denmark, the one a land of 
barren mountains pendrated by deep fjords, the other a 
land of sandy flats intersected by tortuous channels; 1 

both therefore lands which naturally bred sailors. These 
Northmen were of Teutonic stock, but as distinct from the 
Germans as the British Celts were from the Gaelic Celts. 
They had taken no part in the earlier invasions of the 
Roman Empire, and we know nothing about their early 
history; for though they later developed a splendid litera­
ture, this was not until they had learnt the art from the 
Christian world, and especially from the Celts of Ireland. 

With inexplicable suddenness they burst out in all 
directions from their original homes towards the end of the 
eighth century. Their ravages and adventures extended 
over the whole of Western Europe during more than a 
century. Then great bands of them settled down in the 
British Islands and in France; those who remained at 
home organised civilised and Christian kingdoms ; their 
piratical raids in Europe came to an end as suddenly as 
they had begun; and their extraordinary daring at sea 
showed itself instead in the exploration of Greenland and 
the shores of North America. In this later period they also 
produced, in the sagas, some of the finest poetry of war and 
adventure that has ever been written. 

It is impossible to exaggerate the energy and daring of 
these Vikings during the great Viking age, which may be 
said to extend from A.D. 789 (the date of the first recorded 
raid in England) to A.D. 913 (the date of their settlement in 
Normandy). Vikings from Sweden swept into Russia, and 
laid the foundations of the Russian kingdom. Others made 

1 See the map, Atlas, Plate 3t, 



CH. m.] INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN 27 

their way down the Russian rivers to the Black Sea, and 
entered the service of the Eastern Emperor at Constanti­
nople. The main bands kept the whole of Western Europe 
in a state of terror, so that a special petition, A juroreNorman­
norum Ubera nos, found a place in theLitanyofmanyWestem 
churches. Their long open boats, with high prows and stems 
carved into the likeness of dragons or serpents, were manned 
by about sixty men apiece, whose painted shields hung over 
the bulwarks. Without map or compass, driven by oar 
and sail, and steered only by a long paddle on the right or 
'steer-board' side of the ship, these open boats ventured 
through the roughest seas, swept up all the great rivers of 
Germany and France, and terrorised even the distant shores 
of Spain, Italy and Northern Africa. Nothing dismay~d 
the Vikings, and nobody seemed to be able to resist them. 
They began by sudden plundering descents, in which they 
showed the utmost ferocity, especially towards the priests 
of the Christian religion, for they were fierce pagans. Their 
next stage was to make a base on some convenient island 
or headland, from which they ravaged the mainland, and 
this they did all along the coasts of North-Western Europe. 
Their final stage was the systematic conquest and settle­
ment of a large area ; and when they reached that stage 
(which happened in France and England), they showed 
a remarkable capacity for assimilating and improving the 
civilisation of the people among whom they settled. 

Such a people, in spite of their ferocity and treachery, 
formed a wonderful enrichment of any land in which they 
settled; and we may rejoice that it was mainly upon the 
British Islands that they concentrated their attention. 
Their first recorded raid was in England, in A.D. 789 ; and 
in England, Ireland and Scotland they settled in larger 
numbers than anywhere else. Unlike the earlier Teutonic 
hordes, they penetrated to almost every part of the islands. 

It was to Ireland that they seem first to have given 
their serious attention. During the first thirty years of the 
ninth century they raided it unceasingly, and the rest of 
the West had peace. By the middle of the ninth century 
half of the country was said to have submitted to them, 
and a Northman was in 853 over-king of all Ireland. But 
they did not settle in very large numbers. They chiefly 
established themselves in and ro1md the three ports of 
Dublin, Waterford and Wexford, which they founded 
and turned into thriving centres of trade.1 Most of them 

! See the map of Ireland, Atlas, Pl<:~te .p. 



MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS [BK. I. 

were expelled by the Irish Celts early in the tenth century; 
but they had learnt much, and apparently owed to the 
Irish poets their f1rst training in the art of poetry. Un­
happily their ravages brought to an end the golden age 
of Irish letters and religion. 

They also paid repeated visits, and in great numbers, 
to the coasts of Scotland, though we have little record of 
these attacks. They conquered and peopled the Orkney 
and Shetland Islands, and the county of Caithness. They 
settled in considerable numbers on the shores of the Moray 
Firth, and southwards along the coast as far as the Forth. 
They made themselves masters of most of the Hebrides, 
which they called the Sudereys, or Southern Islands, and 
of the Isle of Man; that is why there is a Bishop of Sodor 
(Sudercys) and Man. And the same bands who came by 
this western route also settled in large numbers in Cumber­
land, hitherto mainly Celtic, and along the north-western 
shores of England, as far as the Mersey and the Dee. Of 
most of these attacks there is no historical record, except 
in the names of the places where they settled ; for where­
ever you see a place-name ending in by or thwaite, you know 
it was a Viking settlement. 

But the main attacks on England were directed against 
the inviting and accessible east coast, and here it was, in 
the end, that the scattered bands of Vikings gathered them­
selves into great hosts, and deliberately set to work to sub­
jugate the whole country. 

The first serious attacks on England were made in the 
later years of Egbert's reign, and on the whole that king 
got the better of all attacks in Wessex. But they con­
tinued with growing frequency and growing seriousness 
during the reigns of his son and his grandsons, while the 
opposite continental coasts suffered equally. At length, 
in the middle of the ninth century, the Danes began to 
make systematic attempts to conquer and settle. In 854 
they wintered for the first time on English SQil, in the Isle 
of Thanet. In 867 a great swarm of them descended 
upon Yorkshire, from which they were never again driven 
out, and where they created a little kingdom. In 869 or 
870 another band conquered East Anglia, thus establish­
ing a second Danish kingdom in England.1 

The most striking feature of all these attacks is that, 
except in Wessex, no effective organised resistance was 
anywhere offered to them. Each little district or old tribal 

1 See the map, Atlas, Plate ~':! (c). 



en. III.] INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN 29 

kingdom seemed to consider that it was none of its busi­
ness to help its neighbours, and, when its own turn came, 
found itself quite unable to resist. Only in Wessex did 
the English hold their own against the raiders, who were con­
stantly beaten back. And at length, in 871, the Danes decided 
to concentrate their attacks upon Wessex. If Wessex had 
succumbed, all England would have become a Danish realm. 

§ 2. Alfred the Great and the Emperor Kings. 
The desperate struggle of Wessex against the Danes 

brought into the foreground the first great national hero of 
England, and the noblest of English kings, Alfred the Great.! 
Alfred was the youngest of the four grandsons of Egbert 
who successively occupied the West Saxon throne. From 
his earliest youth he had shown an exceptional vigour and 
intelligence of mind, and this had been stimulated by a 
pilgrimage to Rome, which he made with his royal father 
when he was a child. From the age of seventeen he played 
a leading part., under his brother Ethelred, in the endless 
struggle against the Danes, and his gallantry and resource­
fulness formed one of the chief reasons for the success of 
the West Saxons. When the great attack came in 871, 
Alfred, then about twenty-three years old, was the principal 
leader on the West Saxon side. Many desperate pitched 
battles were fought in this year. In one of them, on Ash­
down, Alfred's generalship gained a brilliant victory. But 
the Danes were not to be defeated in a single fight. In a 
later battle they killed King Ethelred; and now Alfred 
became king, and assumed the whole burden of the resist­
ance against the conquerors, and of defending Christianity 
and civilisation. It took him eight years of unceasing 
fighting. He was, in the later part of these years, reduced 
to the lowest ebb, and had to take refuge among the marshes 
of Athelney in Somerset, while the triumphant Danes de­
voured his Christmas fare at the royal manor of Chippen­
ham. But he emerged from his retreat to inflict a final 
and decisive defeat upon the Danes. They were driven 
out of Wessex. By the treaty of Chippenham (878) they 
were compelled to admit their defeat and to accept Christi­
anity; and a definition of boundaries eight years later 
left Alfred in control not only of Wessex, but of half of 
Mercia, south-west of a line drawn from London to Chester. 2 

1 The best modern biography of Alfred the Great is by Miss B. A. Lees 
(Heroes of the Nations\. 

= 1he division is shown in Atlas, Plate 32 (c). 



30 MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS [BK. I. 

In this enlarged realm Alfred set to work to organise the 
forces of resistance. He built fortified towns, to be centres 
of defence. He reorganised the jyrd, or national levy of 
freemen, which had long been almost useless, because most 
of the fighting had long been done by the professional fight­
ing class of the thegns. He even organised a small fighting 
fleet, borrowing Frisian sailors for the purpose, because the 
English had ceased to be a seafaring race. The result was 
that when a new storm of Danish attack burst upon him 
in 885-895, he definitely got the better of his foes, and greatly 
strengthened the position of his kingdom. 

Alfred's reign left more than half of England under 
Danish rule, and in a state of anan~hy. But in the region 
which remained under his control there was far greater 
strength and efficiency than there had ever been before, 
and Wessex could look forward confidently to the recon­
quest of the rest of England, which was to be achieved by 
Alfred's successors. Moreover Alfred established friendly 
relations with the neighbouring Celtic kingdoms, which 
recognised that his strength was their chief defence against 
a common danger. Cornwall had become practically a part 
of Wessex, perhaps before Alfred's time. The British princes 
of South and North Wales offered him their allegiance; and 
he welcomed at his court scholar-monks from Ireland. 

But, great as he was as a soldier and an organiser of 
victory, Alfred was much more. He not only gave to his 
countrymen a noble tradition of steadfast valour; he also 
laboured to obtain a real improvement of civilisation. 
For the Danish raiders had been terribly destructive. They 
had brought anarchy and disorder everywhere ; they had 
destroyed many of the monasteries, which were the chief 
centres of enlightenment; in short, they had woefully set 
back civilisation. Alfred revised, improved and codified 
the laws. He restored public order, and earned the title 
of Protector of the Poor. Above all, seeing, as only a 
really great ma;n could in that age of brute force, that the 
strength of a nation's life depends upon the chance 
which it offers for making the best of the highest gifts of 
its citizens, he laboured to revive letters and learning. He 
restored monasteries. He started a school for the sons of 
nobles at his own court. He began the history of real 
English literature, by translating with his own hand the 
books which he thought most likely to help his people to 
think wisely. And in order to keep alive the traditions of 
the past, which make the soul of a nation, he set his monks 



CH. m.) INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN 31 

to work in compiling the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is 
henceforth, for a long period, our chief source of informa­
tion about the fortunes of the English. We know too little 
about Alfred's many-sided work to be able to describe it in 
detail. But we know enough to say that there has never 
been in all history a more noble or devoted king. 

During the seventy-five years following the death of 
Alfred, his successors, building on the foundations he had 
laid, established the supremacy of the reorganised Wessex 
over all the other States in Great Britain (English, Danish, 
or Celtic), and for the first time gave a semblance of political 
unity to the whole island. Alfred's son, Edward the Elder 
(899-924), with the aid of his warlike sister Ethelfleda, 
gradually reconquered Danish Mercia and East Anglia, 
securing his conquests, step by step, by the erection of 
burhs or fortresses, some of which became the administra­
tive centres of the new shires into which he or his successor 
divided out this part of England. Unlike the southern 
shires, the midland shires are of more or less equal size, 
and are named after their chief towns. They are artificial 
creations, and their formation shows that the old tribal 
divisions of this district had at last been got rid of, under 
the pressure of the Danish conquest. When the Midlands 
had been conquered and organised, the Danish king of 
Yorkshire thought it wise to offer his submission, though 
this region remained a distinct dependent realm for some 
time. Farther north the little English region between the 
Tyne and the Forth, which had escaped Danish conquest, 
also recognised the overlordship of the West Saxon king, 
while the princes of Wales, who had paid allegiance to 
Alfred, continued to recognise, in a vague way, the superi­
ority of his sucqessor. 

Scotland also now for the first time entered into political 
relations with England. Scotland, as we have seen, had 
suffered terribly from the raids of the Vikings, who had 
sacked most of the Scottish and Pictish strongholds, and 
devastated Iona and other monastic settlements. It was 
partly, no doubt, the pressure of the Vikings that led to the 
union of the two Scottish kingdoms, the realm of the Scots 
in the west, and the Pictish realm of Alban or Caledonia 
in the east. This was in 843, and from that date there is 
always a united kingdom of Scotland. But it was a very 
small and poor kingdom as yet. The Northmen held Caith­
ness and Sutherland and the Western Isles. The British 
kingdom of Strathclyde still survived in the south-west, 



32 MAKING OF THE FOUR NATIONS [BK. I. 

though it was very weak, and was tending to pass under 
the control of the King of Scots. In the year 919 both of 
these kings, the King of Scotland and the King of Strath­
clyde, recognised the supremacy of the English king, 
' taking him,' as the Chronicle puts it, 'for f<tther and lord.' 
This was later made the basis for a claim of feudal supre­
macy on the part of the English kings over Scotland. It 
did not mean anything so definite as that. But it did mean 
that the King of Wessex, who may henceforth be called 
the King of England, was recognised throughout Britain 
as the most powerful ruler in the island, and the best source 
of protection against the Northmen. 

But this vague superiority did not amount to much, and 
Athelstan, Edward's very able successor (924-940), had to 
fight hard to maintain it. He suppressed the Danish 
kingdom in Yorkshire, and brought it under his direct rule. 
And presently we find him at war with the King of Scots, 
and invading his territory as far north as Aberdeen (933), 
while his fleet penetrated the Moray Firth. The King of 
Scots was apparently trying to extend his power by getting 
control both over Strathclyde and over the English region of 
Northumbria between the Forth and the Tweed or Tyne, 
both of which districts were ultimately to become parts of the 
kingdom of Scotland. King Constantine did not submit to 
his defeat of 933, which may be said to mark the beginning 
of the long war of independence between Scotland and 
England. In 937 he formed a confederacy against the 
English king, which included not only Strathclyde, but 
the Northmen of Cumberland, and even those of Ireland. 
A great battle was fought at Brunanburh, which was 
probably somewhere near the Solway Firth, though many 
other places claim to have been the scene of the famous fight. 
It is perhaps the best known battle of early English history, 
for a long and stirring poem about it has been preserved in 
the English Chronicle. The slaughter was tremendous, and, 
at the end of a long day's fighting, three kings lay dead on 
the field. Athelstan won a complete victory, and thereafter 
enjoyed undisputed superiority over the island. 

We must not exaggerate the reality of this general 
dominion : Athelstan's successors had to fight against their 
rebellious vassals time and again, and over the region north 
of the Humber, or at any rate north of the Tyne, their 
authority was never more than nominal. But, for all that, 
they were great and formidable kings. They began to 
assume magnificent titles, such as Rex totius Britannice, 



CH. III.] INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN 33 

and even to borrow titles used by the Roman emperors. 
Their alliance was sought after by the ruling princes of the 
Continent. For in this period Europe, like England, was 
beginning to recover from the disorder of the previous time ; 
from the ruins of the empire of Charlemagne the kingdoms 
of Germany and France began to arise. At first, and for a 
long time, Germany was the strongest State in Europe, and 
its ruler, Otto the Great, revived in 962 the title of Roman 
Emperor, which continued to be attached to the German 
kingdom until the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
France was for a long time much less powerful ; the 
Capetian dynasty, which ascended the throne in 987, was 
for nearly two centuries overshadowed by its great feudal 
vassals, and could only count upon the allegiance of a little 
island of land round Paris-the Ile de France. Still there 
was now a kingdom of France as well as a kingdom of 
Germany; and with both of these realms, as well as with 
some of the greater feudal principalities of France, the 
powerful English State which Athelstan ruled began to 
enter into relations. Otto of Germany married one of 
Athelstan's sisters ; and Athelstan's four other sisters also 
found husbands among the leading princes of Europe. The 
realm of England was beginning to take a place among the 
great States that were emerging out of the chaos of the dark 
ages. 

With one exception, Athelstan's next successors were all 
men of sufficient vigour and ability to maintain the high 
standing of their kingdom. But it was under the rule of 
his fourth successor, Edgar (959-975), that the greatness of 
the new empire-realm reached its highest point. The whole 
reign was practically untouched by invasion from without 
or disorder within, and in the troublous times that followed 
it was looked back upon as a sort of golden age. The 
vassal states remained submissive ; and the chronicles 
record with pride how, during a visit to Chester in 973, 
Edgar was met by eight vassal kings, who plighted their 
troth to him, and rowed him in state up the Dee as far as 
the Church of St. John. All these eight kings came from 
Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man. But the fact that 
there were so many rulers entitled to bear the royal title 
snows how insecure was the chief king's hold over his 
extended realm. 

The 'Emperor-Kings,' as the sovereigns from Athelstan 
to Edgar are sometimes called, did their best to improve 
a