The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) π
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observations will apply to the contempt with which, in
the last century, it was fashionable to speak of the pilgrimages,
the sanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic institutions of
the middle ages. In times when men were scarcely ever induced to
travel by liberal curiosity, or by the pursuit of gain, it was
better that the rude inhabitant of the North should visit Italy
and the East as a pilgrim, than that he should never see anything
but those squalid cabins and uncleared woods amidst which he was
born. In times when life and when female honour were exposed to
daily risk from tyrants and marauders, it was better that the
precinct of a shrine should be regarded with an irrational awe,
than that there should be no refuge inaccessible to cruelty and
licentiousness. In times when statesmen were incapable of forming
extensive political combinations, it was better that the
Christian nations should be roused and united for the recovery of
the Holy Sepulchre, than that they should, one by one, be
overwhelmed by the Mahometan power. Whatever reproach may, at a
later period, have been justly thrown on the indolence and luxury
of religious orders, it was surely good that, in an age of
ignorance and violence, there should be quiet cloisters and
gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safely cultivated,
in which gentle and contemplative natures could find an asylum,
in which one brother could employ himself in transcribing the
Γneid of Virgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of
Aristotle, in which he who had a genius for art might illuminate
a martyrology or carve a crucifix, and in which he who had a turn
for natural philosophy might make experiments on the properties
of plants and minerals. Had not such retreats been scattered here
and there, among the huts of a miserable peasantry, and the
castles of a ferocious aristocracy, European society would have
consisted merely of beasts of burden and beasts of prey. The
Church has many times been compared by divines to the ark of
which we read in the Book of Genesis: but never was the
resemblance more perfect than during that evil time when she
alone rode, amidst darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath
which all the great works of ancient power and wisdom lay
entombed, bearing within her that feeble germ from which a Second
and more glorious civilisation was to spring.
Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was, in the
dark ages, productive of far more good than evil. Its effect was
to unite the nations of Western Europe in one great commonwealth.
What the Olympian chariot course and the Pythian oracle were to
all the Greek cities, from Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her
Bishop were to all Christians of the Latin communion, from
Calabria to the Hebrides. Thus grew up sentiments of enlarged
benevolence. Races separated from each other by seas and
mountains acknowledged a fraternal tie and a common code of
public law. Even in war, the cruelty of the conqueror was not
seldom mitigated by the recollection that he and his vanquished
enemies were all members of one great federation.
Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted. A
regular communication was opened between our shores and that part
of Europe in which the traces of ancient power and policy were
yet discernible. Many noble monuments which have since been
destroyed or defaced still retained their pristine magnificence;
and travellers, to whom Livy and Sallust were unintelligible,
might gain from the Roman aqueducts and temples some faint notion
of Roman history. The dome of Agrippa, still glittering with
bronze, the mausoleum of Adrian, not yet deprived of its columns
and statues, the Flavian amphitheatre, not yet degraded into a
quarry, told to the rude English pilgrims some part of the story
of that great civilised world which had passed away. The
islanders returned, with awe deeply impressed on their half
opened minds, and told the wondering inhabitants of the hovels of
London and York that, near the grave of Saint Peter, a mighty
race, now extinct, had piled up buildings which would never be
dissolved till the judgment day. Learning followed in the train
of Christianity. The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was
assiduously studied in Mercian and Northumbrian monasteries. The
names of Bede and Alcuin were justly celebrated throughout
Europe. Such was the state of our country when, in the ninth
century, began the last great migration of the northern
barbarians
During many years Denmark and Scandinavia continued to pour forth
innumerable pirates, distinguished by strength, by valour, by
merciless ferocity, and by hatred of the Christian name. No
country suffered so much from these invaders as England. Her
coast lay near to the ports whence they sailed; nor was any shire
so far distant from the sea as to be secure from attack. The same
atrocities which had attended the victory of the Saxon over the
Celt were now, after the lapse of ages, suffered by the Saxon at
the hand of the Dane. Civilization,-just as it began to rise,
was met by this blow, and sank down once more. Large colonies of
adventurers from the Baltic established themselves on the eastern
shores of our island, spread gradually westward, and, supported
by constant reinforcements from beyond the sea, aspired to the
dominion of the whole realm. The struggle between the two fierce
Teutonic breeds lasted through six generations. Each was
alternately paramount. Cruel massacres followed by cruel
retribution, provinces wasted, convents plundered, and cities
rased to the ground, make up the greater part of the history of
those evil days. At length the North ceased to send forth a
constant stream of fresh depredators; and from that time the
mutual aversion of the races began to subside. Intermarriage
became frequent. The Danes learned the religion of the Saxons;
and thus one cause of deadly animosity was removed. The Danish
and Saxon tongues, both dialects of one widespread language, were
blended together. But the distinction between the two nations was
by no means effaced, when an event took place which prostrated
both, in common slavery and degradation, at the feet of a third
people.
The Normans were then the foremost race of Christendom. Their
valour and ferocity had made them conspicuous among the rovers
whom Scandinavia had sent forth to ravage Western Europe. Their
sails were long the terror of both coasts of the Channel. Their
arms were repeatedly carried far into the heart of: the
Carlovingian empire, and were victorious under the walls of
Maestricht and Paris. At length one of the feeble heirs of
Charlemagne ceded to the strangers a fertile province, watered by
a noble river, and contiguous to the sea which was their
favourite element. In that province they founded a mighty state,
which gradually extended its influence over the neighbouring
principalities of Britanny and Maine. Without laying aside that
dauntless valour which had been the terror of every land from the
Elbe to the Pyrenees, the Normans rapidly acquired all, and more
than all, the knowledge and refinement which they found in the
country where they settled. Their courage secured their territory
against foreign invasion. They established internal order, such
as had long been unknown in the Frank empire. They embraced
Christianity; and with Christianity they learned a great part of
what the clergy had to teach. They abandoned their native speech,
and adopted the French tongue, in which the Latin was the
predominant element. They speedily raised their new language to a
dignity and importance which it had never before possessed. They
found it a barbarous jargon; they fixed it in writing; and they
employed it in legislation, in poetry, and in romance. They
renounced that brutal intemperance to which all the other
branches of the great German family were too much inclined. The
polite luxury of the Norman presented a striking contrast to the
coarse voracity and drunkenness of his Saxon and Danish
neighbours. He loved to display his magnificence, not in huge
piles of food and hogsheads of strong drink, but in large and
stately edifices, rich armour, gallant horses, choice falcons,
well ordered tournaments, banquets delicate rather than abundant,
and wines remarkable rather for their exquisite flavour than for
their intoxicating power. That chivalrous spirit, which has
exercised so powerful an influence on the politics, morals, and
manners of all the European nations, was found in the highest
exaltation among the Norman nobles. Those nobles were
distinguished by their graceful bearing and insinuating address.
They were distinguished also by their skill in negotiation, and
by a natural eloquence which they assiduously cultivated. It was
the boast of one of their historians that the Norman gentlemen
were orators from the cradle. But their chief fame was derived
from their military exploits. Every country, from the Atlantic
Ocean to the Dead Sea, witnessed the prodigies of their
discipline and valour. One Norman knight, at the head of a
handful of warriors, scattered the Celts of Connaught. Another
founded the monarchy of the Two Sicilies, and saw the emperors
both of the East and of the West fly before his arms. A third,
the Ulysses of the first crusade, was invested by his fellow
soldiers with the sovereignty of Antioch; and a fourth, the
Tancred whose name lives in the great poem of Tasso, was
celebrated through Christendom as the bravest and most generous
of the deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre.
The vicinity of so remarkable a people early began to produce an
effect on the public mind of England. Before the Conquest,
English princes received their education in Normandy. English
sees and English estates were bestowed on Normans. The French of
Normandy was familiarly spoken in the palace of Westminster. The
court of Rouen seems to have been to the court of Edward the
Confessor what the court of Versailles long afterwards was to the
court of Charles the Second.
The battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it, not
only placed a Duke of Normandy on the English throne, but gave up
the whole population of England to the tyranny of the Norman
race. The subjugation of a nation by a nation has seldom, even in
Asia, been more complete. The country was portioned out among the
captains of the invaders. Strong military institutions, closely
connected with the institution of property, enabled the foreign
conquerors to oppress the children of the soil. A cruel penal
code, cruelly enforced, guarded the privileges, and even the
sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, though beaten
down and trodden underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some bold
men, the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook
themselves to the woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws
and forest laws, waged a predatory war against their oppressors.
Assassination was an event of daily occurrence.
the last century, it was fashionable to speak of the pilgrimages,
the sanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic institutions of
the middle ages. In times when men were scarcely ever induced to
travel by liberal curiosity, or by the pursuit of gain, it was
better that the rude inhabitant of the North should visit Italy
and the East as a pilgrim, than that he should never see anything
but those squalid cabins and uncleared woods amidst which he was
born. In times when life and when female honour were exposed to
daily risk from tyrants and marauders, it was better that the
precinct of a shrine should be regarded with an irrational awe,
than that there should be no refuge inaccessible to cruelty and
licentiousness. In times when statesmen were incapable of forming
extensive political combinations, it was better that the
Christian nations should be roused and united for the recovery of
the Holy Sepulchre, than that they should, one by one, be
overwhelmed by the Mahometan power. Whatever reproach may, at a
later period, have been justly thrown on the indolence and luxury
of religious orders, it was surely good that, in an age of
ignorance and violence, there should be quiet cloisters and
gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safely cultivated,
in which gentle and contemplative natures could find an asylum,
in which one brother could employ himself in transcribing the
Γneid of Virgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of
Aristotle, in which he who had a genius for art might illuminate
a martyrology or carve a crucifix, and in which he who had a turn
for natural philosophy might make experiments on the properties
of plants and minerals. Had not such retreats been scattered here
and there, among the huts of a miserable peasantry, and the
castles of a ferocious aristocracy, European society would have
consisted merely of beasts of burden and beasts of prey. The
Church has many times been compared by divines to the ark of
which we read in the Book of Genesis: but never was the
resemblance more perfect than during that evil time when she
alone rode, amidst darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath
which all the great works of ancient power and wisdom lay
entombed, bearing within her that feeble germ from which a Second
and more glorious civilisation was to spring.
Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was, in the
dark ages, productive of far more good than evil. Its effect was
to unite the nations of Western Europe in one great commonwealth.
What the Olympian chariot course and the Pythian oracle were to
all the Greek cities, from Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her
Bishop were to all Christians of the Latin communion, from
Calabria to the Hebrides. Thus grew up sentiments of enlarged
benevolence. Races separated from each other by seas and
mountains acknowledged a fraternal tie and a common code of
public law. Even in war, the cruelty of the conqueror was not
seldom mitigated by the recollection that he and his vanquished
enemies were all members of one great federation.
Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted. A
regular communication was opened between our shores and that part
of Europe in which the traces of ancient power and policy were
yet discernible. Many noble monuments which have since been
destroyed or defaced still retained their pristine magnificence;
and travellers, to whom Livy and Sallust were unintelligible,
might gain from the Roman aqueducts and temples some faint notion
of Roman history. The dome of Agrippa, still glittering with
bronze, the mausoleum of Adrian, not yet deprived of its columns
and statues, the Flavian amphitheatre, not yet degraded into a
quarry, told to the rude English pilgrims some part of the story
of that great civilised world which had passed away. The
islanders returned, with awe deeply impressed on their half
opened minds, and told the wondering inhabitants of the hovels of
London and York that, near the grave of Saint Peter, a mighty
race, now extinct, had piled up buildings which would never be
dissolved till the judgment day. Learning followed in the train
of Christianity. The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was
assiduously studied in Mercian and Northumbrian monasteries. The
names of Bede and Alcuin were justly celebrated throughout
Europe. Such was the state of our country when, in the ninth
century, began the last great migration of the northern
barbarians
During many years Denmark and Scandinavia continued to pour forth
innumerable pirates, distinguished by strength, by valour, by
merciless ferocity, and by hatred of the Christian name. No
country suffered so much from these invaders as England. Her
coast lay near to the ports whence they sailed; nor was any shire
so far distant from the sea as to be secure from attack. The same
atrocities which had attended the victory of the Saxon over the
Celt were now, after the lapse of ages, suffered by the Saxon at
the hand of the Dane. Civilization,-just as it began to rise,
was met by this blow, and sank down once more. Large colonies of
adventurers from the Baltic established themselves on the eastern
shores of our island, spread gradually westward, and, supported
by constant reinforcements from beyond the sea, aspired to the
dominion of the whole realm. The struggle between the two fierce
Teutonic breeds lasted through six generations. Each was
alternately paramount. Cruel massacres followed by cruel
retribution, provinces wasted, convents plundered, and cities
rased to the ground, make up the greater part of the history of
those evil days. At length the North ceased to send forth a
constant stream of fresh depredators; and from that time the
mutual aversion of the races began to subside. Intermarriage
became frequent. The Danes learned the religion of the Saxons;
and thus one cause of deadly animosity was removed. The Danish
and Saxon tongues, both dialects of one widespread language, were
blended together. But the distinction between the two nations was
by no means effaced, when an event took place which prostrated
both, in common slavery and degradation, at the feet of a third
people.
The Normans were then the foremost race of Christendom. Their
valour and ferocity had made them conspicuous among the rovers
whom Scandinavia had sent forth to ravage Western Europe. Their
sails were long the terror of both coasts of the Channel. Their
arms were repeatedly carried far into the heart of: the
Carlovingian empire, and were victorious under the walls of
Maestricht and Paris. At length one of the feeble heirs of
Charlemagne ceded to the strangers a fertile province, watered by
a noble river, and contiguous to the sea which was their
favourite element. In that province they founded a mighty state,
which gradually extended its influence over the neighbouring
principalities of Britanny and Maine. Without laying aside that
dauntless valour which had been the terror of every land from the
Elbe to the Pyrenees, the Normans rapidly acquired all, and more
than all, the knowledge and refinement which they found in the
country where they settled. Their courage secured their territory
against foreign invasion. They established internal order, such
as had long been unknown in the Frank empire. They embraced
Christianity; and with Christianity they learned a great part of
what the clergy had to teach. They abandoned their native speech,
and adopted the French tongue, in which the Latin was the
predominant element. They speedily raised their new language to a
dignity and importance which it had never before possessed. They
found it a barbarous jargon; they fixed it in writing; and they
employed it in legislation, in poetry, and in romance. They
renounced that brutal intemperance to which all the other
branches of the great German family were too much inclined. The
polite luxury of the Norman presented a striking contrast to the
coarse voracity and drunkenness of his Saxon and Danish
neighbours. He loved to display his magnificence, not in huge
piles of food and hogsheads of strong drink, but in large and
stately edifices, rich armour, gallant horses, choice falcons,
well ordered tournaments, banquets delicate rather than abundant,
and wines remarkable rather for their exquisite flavour than for
their intoxicating power. That chivalrous spirit, which has
exercised so powerful an influence on the politics, morals, and
manners of all the European nations, was found in the highest
exaltation among the Norman nobles. Those nobles were
distinguished by their graceful bearing and insinuating address.
They were distinguished also by their skill in negotiation, and
by a natural eloquence which they assiduously cultivated. It was
the boast of one of their historians that the Norman gentlemen
were orators from the cradle. But their chief fame was derived
from their military exploits. Every country, from the Atlantic
Ocean to the Dead Sea, witnessed the prodigies of their
discipline and valour. One Norman knight, at the head of a
handful of warriors, scattered the Celts of Connaught. Another
founded the monarchy of the Two Sicilies, and saw the emperors
both of the East and of the West fly before his arms. A third,
the Ulysses of the first crusade, was invested by his fellow
soldiers with the sovereignty of Antioch; and a fourth, the
Tancred whose name lives in the great poem of Tasso, was
celebrated through Christendom as the bravest and most generous
of the deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre.
The vicinity of so remarkable a people early began to produce an
effect on the public mind of England. Before the Conquest,
English princes received their education in Normandy. English
sees and English estates were bestowed on Normans. The French of
Normandy was familiarly spoken in the palace of Westminster. The
court of Rouen seems to have been to the court of Edward the
Confessor what the court of Versailles long afterwards was to the
court of Charles the Second.
The battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it, not
only placed a Duke of Normandy on the English throne, but gave up
the whole population of England to the tyranny of the Norman
race. The subjugation of a nation by a nation has seldom, even in
Asia, been more complete. The country was portioned out among the
captains of the invaders. Strong military institutions, closely
connected with the institution of property, enabled the foreign
conquerors to oppress the children of the soil. A cruel penal
code, cruelly enforced, guarded the privileges, and even the
sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, though beaten
down and trodden underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some bold
men, the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook
themselves to the woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws
and forest laws, waged a predatory war against their oppressors.
Assassination was an event of daily occurrence.
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