Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/youngfolkshistor01yong_0 YOUNG FOLKS’ HISTORY OF ENGLAND BY CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. Author of “The Heir of Redclyffe,” “Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe,” “Book of Golden Deeds,” “Young Folks’ History of Germany,” “Greece,” “France,” “Rome,” &c. V 2.L31 0 BOSTON: D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY, FRANKLIN ST., CORNER OF HAWLEY. Copyright by Lothrop & Co., and Estes & Eaiirtat. 1879 Printed by Rockwell <& Churchill■ f H ^ Y5V P - / CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE. 1. — Julius Cassar. b.c. 55 . . . .13 * 2. —The Romans in Britain, a.d. 41 — 418 . . 18 3. —The Angle Children, a.d. 597 . . .25 4. —The Northmen, a.d. 858 — 95S ... 32 5. —The Danish Conquest, a.d. 958 1035 . . 40 6. —The Norman Conquest, a.d. 1035—1066 . 47 7. —William the Conqueror, a.d. 1066—1087 . . 53 8. —William II., Rufus, a.d. 1087 — 1100 . . 61 9. —Henry I., Beau-Clerc. A.d. 1100 — 1135 . . 68 10. —Stephen, a.d. 1135—1154 ... 72 11. —Henry II., Fitz-Empress. a.d. 1154 — 1189 . . 78 12. —Richard I., Lion-Heart, a.d. 1189—1199 . 87 13. —John, Lackland, a.d. 1199— 1216 . . .95 14. —Henry III., of Winchester, a.d. 1216—1272 . 104 15. —Edward 1., Longshanks, a.d. 1272—1307 . . 113 16. —Edward IL, of Caernarvon, a.d. 1307 — 1327 . 122 5 2 . (s 3 9 0 VI. Contents, CHAP. PAGE. 17. — Edward III. a.d. 1327—1377 . . . .130 18. —Richard II. a.d. 1377—1399 ... 139 19. —Henry IY. a.d. 1399—1413 . . . .148 20. —Henry V., of Monmouth, a.d. 1413—1423 . 157 21. —Henry VI., of Windsor. A.d. 1423 — 14G1 . . 164 22. —Edward IY. a.d. 1461—1483 ... 174 23. — Edward Y. A.d. 1483 . 183 24. — Richard III. a.d. 1483—14S5 . 190 25. — Henry YH. a.d. 1485—1509 . . . .196 26. — Henry VIH. and Cardinal Wolsey. a.d. 1509 —1529 205 27. — Henry YIH. and his Wives, a.d. 152S—1547 . 213 28. —Edward YI. A.d. 1547—1553 ... 222 29. —Mary I. A.d. 1553—1558 . . . .229 30. —Elizabeth, a.d. 155S—15S7 ... 237 31. —Elizabeth (continued), a.d. 1587— 1602 . 246 32. —James 1., a.d. 1602—1625 . . . 253 33. —Charles I., a.d. 1625—1649 . . . .262 34. — The Long Parliament, a.d. 1649 . . 269 35. —Death of Charles I. a.d. 1649—1651 . . 277 36. — Oliver Cromwell, a.d. 1649 — 1660 . . 288 37. — Charles II. a.d. 1660—1685 . . . .297 38. —James II. a.d. 1685—1688 ... 305 39. — William III. and Mary II. a.d. 1689—1702 . . 314 40. —Anne. A.D. 1702—1714 .... 322 41. — George I. a.d. 1714 — 1725 .... 332 42. — George II. a.d. 1725 — 1760 . . . 337 43. — George III. a.d. 1760—17S5 . . . .346 Contents. vii. CHAP. PAGE. 44. —George III. (continued.) a.d. 1785—1810 . 354 45. —George III.—The Regency, a.d. 1810—1820 . 362 46— George IV. a.d. 1820—1839 . 369 47. — William IV. a.d. 1S30—1837 . . . 375 48. — Victoria, a.d. 1837 — 1855 . . . 380 49. —Victoria (continued). 1S55 — 1860 . . . 386 50. — Victoria (continued), a.d. 1860 — 1872 . . 393 Questions for Examination .... 398 JV ; LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Frontispiece. Sir Walter Raleigh. PAGE. Caesar landing in Britain .... 13 Caractacus and his Wife before Claudius . 19 Augustine preaching to Ethelbert 27 Alfred and his Mother .... Alfred in the Herdsman’s Hut . 35 Canute by the Sea-shore .... . 45 William the Conqueror reviewing his Troops 49 Robert’s Encounter with his Father . 57 The Crusaders’ March. . . 61 Death of Wm. Rufus. Escape of the Empress Maude 72 Murder of Thomas a Becket . 79 Henry II.’s Tomb at Fontevraud 86 Richard removing the Archduke’s Banner . 89 Murder of Prince Arthur. 97 John’s Anger after signing Magna Charta . 101 Hubert de Burgh taking Refuge in a Church . . 104 IX. X. List of Illustrations. FAGE. King Henry and his Barons . 107 Caernarvon Castle .. 115 Edward II. and his Jailers . . . 127 Death of Edward III. . 130 Queen Philippa on her Knees before the King . . . 133 The Black Prince serving the French King . . . 135 Death of Wat Tyler . 141 Prince Henry offers his Life to his Father .... 153 Henry Y.’s He view before Agincourt .... 159 Joan of Arc recognizes the French King .... 165 Interview between Edward IY. and Louis XI. . . 177 Tower of London . 185 Henry Tudor crowned on the Battle-field of Bosworth . 193 Henry YII. laying the Banners on the Altar . . . 196 Chapel and Tomb of Henry VII . 199 Henry VIII. starting for the Hunt . 205 Cardinal Wolsey served by Noblemen .... 209 Marriage of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn . . . 213 Parting of Sir Thomas More and his Daughter . . 215 Edward VI. writing his Journal . 225 The New Service . 229 Mary vows to marry Philip II . 231 Queen Elizabeth’s Progress . 237 Mary Queen of Scots . 241 Naval Engagement . 246 The Gunpowder Plot discovered .257 Assassination of Buckingham . 267 List of Illustrations. xi. PAGE. Queen Henrietta Maria . 271 Burial of King Charles . 277 King Charles’ Children . 279 Execution of King Charles . 283 Cromwell dismissing the Long Parliament . . . 289 Portrait of Monk . 293 The Great Fire . 297 Lord Russell’s Trial . 301 King James’ Escape . 305 Portrait of Monmouth . 307 King James at the Battle of Boyne .... 317 Queen Anne . 323 Duke and Duchess of Marlborough . 327 Charles Edward welcomed by the Highlanders . . . 337 Death of Wolfe . 341 Destruction of Tea . 346 Franklin . 349 Portrait of Pitt . 355 Plymouth Harbor . 365 Victoria . 380 Windsor Castle . . 389 English Manor House . 393 YOUNG FOLKS’ HISTORY OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER I. JULIUS CJESAR. B.C. 55. TVTEARLY two thousand years ago there was ^ a brave captain whose name was Julius Caesar. The soldiers he led to battle were very strong, and conquered the people wherever they 13 14 Young Folks' History of England. went. They had no guns or gunpowder then; but they had swords and spears, and, to prevent themselves from being hurt, they had helmets or brazen caps on their heads, with long tufts of horse-hair upon them, by way of ornament, and breast-plates of brass on their breasts, and on their arms they carried a sort of screen, made of strong leather. One of them carried a little brass figure of an eagle on a long pole, with 4 scarlet flag fly¬ ing below, and wherever the eagle was seen, they all followed, and fought so bravely that nothing could long stand against them. When Julius Caesar rode at their head, with his keen, pale ]look-nosed face, and the scarlet cloak that the general always wore, they were so proud of him, and so fond of him, that there was nothing they would not do for him. Julius Caesar heard that a little way off there was a country nobody knew anything about, ex¬ cept that the people were very fierce and savage, and that a sort of pearl was found in the shells of mussels which lived in the rivers. He could not bear that there should be any place that his own people, the Romans, did not know and subdue. So he commanded the ships to be prepared, and he and his soldiers embarked, watching the white Julius Coesar. 15 cliffs on the other side of the sea grow higher and higher as he came nearer and nearer. When he came quite up to them, he found the savages were there in earnest. They were tall men, with long red streaming hair, and such clothes as they had were woollen, checked like plaid; but many had their arms and breasts naked, and painted all over in blue patterns. They had spears and darts, and the chief men among them were in basket-work chariots, with a scythe in the middle of each wheel to cut down their enemies. They yelled and brandished their darts, to make Julius Caesar and his Roman soldiers keep away ; but he only went on to a place where the shore was not quite so steep, and there commanded his soldiers to land. The savages had run along the shore too, and there was a terrible fight; but at last the man who carried the eagle jumped down into the middle of the natives, calling out to his fellows that they must come after him, or they would lose their eagle. They all came rushing and leaping down, and thus they managed to force back the savages, and make their way to the shore. There was not much worth having when they had made their way there. Though they came again 16 Young Folks’ History of England. the next year, and forced their way a good deal farther into the county, they saw chiefly hare downs, or heaths, or thick woods. The few houses were little more than piles of stones, and the peo¬ ple were rough and wild, and could do veiy little. The men hunted wild hoars, and wolves and stags, and the women dug the ground, and raised a little corn, which they ground to flour between two stones to make bread ; and they spun the wool of their sheep, dyed it with bright colors, and wove it into dresses. They had some strong places in the woods, with trunks of trees, cut down to shut them in from the enemj r , with all their flocks and cattle; hut Caesar did not get into any of these. He only made the natives give him some of their pearls, and call the Romans their masters, and then he went back to his ships, and none of the set of savages who were alive when he came saw him or his Romans any more. Do you know who these savages were who fought with Julius Caesar? They were called Britons. And the country he came to see ? That was our very own island, England, only it was not called so then. And the place where Julius Caesar landed is called Deal, and, if you look at the map, where England and France most nearly touch one Julius Ccesar. 17 another, I think you will see the name Deal, and remember it was there Julius Caesar landed, and fought with the Britons. It was fifty-five years before our blessed Saviour was born that the Romans came. So at the top of this chapter stands B. c. (Before Christ) 55. CHAPTER II. THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN. A.D. 41—418. I T was nearly a hundred years before any more of the Romans came to Britain; but they were people who could not hear of a place without want¬ ing to conquer it, and they never left off trying till they had done what they undertook. One of their emperors, named Claudius, sent his soldiers to conquer the island, and then came to see it himself, and called himself Britannicus in honor of the victory, just as if he had done it him¬ self, instead of his generals. One British chief, whose name was Caractacus, who had fought very bravely against the Romans, was brought to Rome, with chains on his hands and feet, and set before the emperor. As he stood there, he said that, when he looked at all the grand buildings of stone 18 The Romans in Britain. 21 and marble in the streets, he could not think why the Romans should want to take away the poor rough-stone huts of the Britons. The wife of Carac- tacus, who had also been brought a prisoner to Rome, fell upon her knees imploring pity, but the conquered chief asked for nothing and exhibited no signs of fear. Claudius was kind to Carac- tacus; but the Romans went on conquering Britain till they had won all the part of it that lies south of the river Tweed; and, as the people beyond that point were more fierce and savage still, a very strong wall, with a bank of earth and deep ditch was made to keep them out, and always watched by Roman soldiers. The Romans made beautiful straight roads all over the country, and they built towns. Almost all the towns whose names end in Chester Avere begun by the Romans, and bits of their Avails are to be seen still, built of very small bricks. Some¬ times people dig up a bit of the beautiful pavement of colored tiles, in patterns, which used to be the floors of their houses, or a piece of their money, or one of their ornaments. For the Romans held Britain for four hundred years;) and tamed the Avild people in the South, and taught them to speak and dress, and read and 22 Young Folks' History of England. write like themselves, so that they could hardly be known from Romans. Only the wild ones beyond the wall, and in the mountains, were as savage as ever, and, now and then, used to come and steal the cattle, and burn the houses of their neigh¬ bors who had learnt better. Another set of wild people used to come over in boats across the North Sea and German Ocean. These people had their home in the country that is called Holstein and Jutland. They were tall men, and had blue eyes and fail- hair, and they were very strong, and good-natured in a rough sort of way, though they were fierce to their enemies. There was a great deal more fighting than any one has told us about; but the end of it all was that the Roman soldiers were wanted at home, and though the great British chief we call King Arthur fought very bravely, he could not drive back the blue¬ eyed men in the ships; but more and more came, till, at last, they got all the country, and drove the Britons, some up into the North, some into the mountains that rise along the West of the island, and some out into its west point. The Britons used to call the blue-eyed men Saxons; but they called themselves Angles, and the country was called after them Angle-land. The Homans in Britain. 23 Don’t you know what it is called now ? England itself, and the people English. They spoke much the same language as we do, only more as untaught country people, and they had not so many words, because they had not so many things to see and talk about. As to the Britons, the English went on driving them back till they only kept their mountains. There they have gone on living ever since, and talking their own old language. The English called them Welsh, a name that meant strangers, and we call them Welsh still, and their country Wales. They made a great many grand stories about their last brave chief, Arthur, till, at last, they turned into a sort of fairy tale. It was said that, when King Arthur lay badly wounded after his last battle, he bade his friend fling his sword into the river, and that then three lovely ladies came in a boat, and carried him away to a secret island. The Welsh kept on saying, for years and years, that one day King Arthur would wake up again, and give them back all Britain, which used to be their own before the English O got it for themselves; but the English have had England now for thirteen hundred years, and we 24 Young Folks' History of England. cannot doubt they will keep it as long as the world lasts. It was about 400 years after our Lord was born that the Romans were going and the English coming. CHAPTER III. THE ANGLE CHILDREN. a.d. 597 . T HE old English who had come to Britain were heathen, and believed in many false gods: the Sun, to whom they made Sunday sacred, as Monday was to the Moon, Wednesday to a great, terrible god, named Woden, and Thursday to a god named Thor, or Thunder. They thought a clap of thunder was the sound of the great ham¬ mer he carried in his hand. They thought their gods cared for people being brave, and that the i souls of those who died fighting gallantly in battle i were the happiest of all; but they did not care for kindness or gentleness. Thus they often did very cruel things, and one of the worst that they did was the stealing of men, women, and children from their homes, and selling 26 Young Folks' History of England. them to strangers, who made slaves of them. All England had not one king. There were generally about seven kings, each with a different part of the island; and as they were often at war with one an¬ other, they used to steal one another’s subjects, and sell them to merchants who came from Italy and Greece for them. Some English children were made slaves, and carried to Rome, where they were set in the market¬ place to be sold. A good priest, named Gregory, was walking by. He saw their fair faces, blue eyes, and long light hair, and, stopping, he asked who they were. “ Angles,” he was told, “ from the isle of Britain.” “Angles ? ” he said, “ they have angel faces, and they ought to be heirs with the angels jn heaven.” From that time this good man tried to find means to send teachers to teach the English the Christian faith. He had to wait for many years, and, in that time, he was made Pope, namely, Father-Bishop of Rome. At last he heard that one of the chief English kings, Ethelbert of Kent, had married Bertha, the daughter of the King of Paris, who was a Christian, and that she was to be allowed to bring a priest with her, and have a church to worship in. Gregory thought this would make a beginning : The Angle Children. 29 so he sent a priest, whose name was Augustine, with a letter to King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha, and asked the King to listen to him. Ethelbert met Augustine in the open air, under a tree at Can¬ terbury, and heard him tell about the true God, and Jesus Christ, whom lie has sent; and, after some time, and a great deal of teaching, Ethelbert gave up worshiping Woden and Thor, and be¬ lieved in the true God, and was baptized, and many of his people with him. Then Augustine was made Archbishop of Canterbury; and, one after another, in the course of the next hundred years, all the English kingdoms learnt to know God, and broke down their idols, and became Christian. Bishops were appointed, and churches were built, and parishes were marked off—a great many of them the very same that we have now. Here and there, when men and women wanted to be very good in¬ deed, and to give their whole lives to doing nothing but serving God, without any of the fighting and feasting, the buying and selling of the outer world, they built houses, where they might live apart, and churches, where there might be services seven times a day. These houses were named abbeys. Those for men were, sometimes, also called rnonas- 30 Young Folks' History of England. teries, and the men in them were termed monks, wliile the women were called nuns, and their homes convents or nunneries. They had plain dark dresses, and hoods, and the women always had veils. The monks used to promise that they would work as well as pray, so they used to build their abbeys by some forest or marsh, and bring it all into order, turning the wild place into fields, full of wheat. Others used to copy out the Holy Scriptures and other good books upon parchment — because there was no paper in those days, nor any printing — drawing beautiful painted pictures at the beginning of the chapters, which were called illuminations. The nuns did needlework and em¬ broidery, as hangings for the altar, and garments for the priests, all bright Avith beautiful colors, and stiff Avith gold. The English nuns’ work Avas the O O most beautiful to be seen anyAvhere There Avere schools in the abbeys, where boys Avere taught reading, Avriting, singing, and Latin, to prepare them for being clergymen; but not many others thought it needful to have anything to do with books. Even the great men thought they could farm and feast, advise the king, and consent to the laws, hunt or fight, quite as well Avithout reading, and they did not care for much The Angle Children. 31 besides; for, though they were Christians, they were still rude, rough, ignorant men, who liked nothing so well as a hunt or a feast, and slept away all the evening, especially when they could get a harper to sing to them. The English men used to wear a long dress like a carter’s frock, and their legs were wound round with strips of cloth by way of stockings. Their houses were only one story, and had no chim¬ neys — only a hole at the top for the smoke to go out at; and no glass in the windows. The only glass there was at all had been brought from Italy to put into York Cathedral, and it was thought a great wonder. So the windows had shutters to keep out the rain and wind, and the fire was in the middle of the room. At dinner-time, about twelve o’clock, the lord and lady of the house sat upon cross-legged stools, and their children and ser¬ vants sat on benches; and square bits of wood called trenchers, were put before them for plates, while the servants carried round the meat on spits, and everybody cut off a piece with his own knife and ate it without a fork. They drank out of cows’ horns, if they had not silver cups. But though they were so rough they were often good, brave people. CHAPTER IV. THE NORTHMEN. a.d. 858 — 958 . T HERE were many more of the light-haired, blue-eyed people on the further side of the North Sea who worshiped Thor and Woden still, and thought that their kindred in England had fallen from the old ways. Besides, they liked to make their fortunes by getting what they could 32 The Northmen. 33 from their neighbors. Nobody was thought brave or worthy, in Norway or Denmark, who had not made some voyages in a “ long keel,” as a ship was called, and fought bravely, and brought home gold cups and chains or jewels to show where he had been. Their captains were called Sea Kings, and some of them went a great way, even into the Mediterranean Sea, and robbed the beautiful shores of Italy. So dreadful was it to see the fleet of long ships coming up to the shore, with a ser¬ pent for the figure-head, and a raven as the flag, and crowds of fierce warriors with axes in their hands longing for prey and bloodshed, that where we pray in church that God would deliver us from lightning and tempest, and battle and murder, our forefathers used to add, “From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us.” To England these Northmen came in great swarms, and chiefly from Denmark, so that they were generally called “ the Danes.” They burnt the houses, drove off the cows and sheep, killed the men, and took away the women and children to be slaves ; and they were always most cruel of all where they found an Abbey with any monks or nuns, because they hated the Christian faith. By this time those seven English kingdoms 34 Young Folks’ History of England. I told you of liad all fallen into the hands of one king. Egbert, King of the West Saxons, who reigned at Winchester, is counted as the first king of all England. His four grandsons had dreadful battles with the Danes all their lives, and the three eldest all died quite young. The youngest was the greatest and best king England ever had— Alfred the Truth-teller. As a child Alfred had excited the hopes and admiration of all who saAv him, and while his brothers were busy with their , sports, it was his delight to kneel at his mother's knee, and recite to her the Saxon ballads which his tutor had read to him. inspiring him, at that early age, with the ardent patriotism and the passionate love of literature which rendered his character so illustrious. He was only twenty-two years old when he came to the throne, and the king¬ dom was overrun everywhere with the Danes. In the northern part some had even settled down, and made themselves at home, as the English had done four hundred years before, and more and more kept coming in their ships: so that, though Alfred beat them in battle again and again, there was no such thing as driving them away. At last he had so very few faithful men left with him, that he thought it wise to send them away, and hide him- The Northmen. 37 self in the Somersetshire marsh country. There is a pretty story told of him that he was hidden in the hut of a poor herdsman, whose wife, thinking he was a poor wandering soldier as he sat by the fire mending his bow and arrows, desired him to turn the cakes she had set to bake upon the hearth. Presently she found them burning, and cried out angrily, “ Lazy rogue ! you can't turn the cakes, though you can eat them fast enough.” However, that same spring, the brave English gained more victories ; Alfred came out of his hiding place and gathered them all together, and beat the Danes, so that they asked for peace. He said he would allow those who had settled in the North of England to stay there, provided they would become Christians; and he stood godfather to their chief, and gave him the name of Ethelstane. After this, Alfred had stout English ships built to meet the Danes at sea before they could come and land in England; and thus he kept them off, so that for all the rest of his reign, and that of his son and grandsons, they could do very little mis¬ chief, and for a time left off coming at all, but went to rob other countries that were not so well guard¬ ed by brave kings. But Alfred was not only a brave warrior. He 38 Young Folks' History of England. was a most good and holy man, who feared God above all things, and tried to do his very best for his people. He made good laws for them, and took care that every one should be justly treated, and that nobody should do his neighbor wrong without being punished. So many Abbeys had been burnt and the monks killed by the Danes, that there were hardly any books to be had, or scholars to read them. He invited learned men from abroad, and wrote and translated books him¬ self for them ; and he had a school in his house, where he made the young nobles learn with his own sons. He built up the churches, and gave alms to the poor ; and he was always ready to hear the troubles of any poor man. Though he was always working so hard, he had a disease that used to cause him terrible pain almost every day. His last years were less peaceful than the middle ones of his reign, for the Danes tried to come again; but he beat them off by his ships at sea, and when he died at fifty-two years old, in the year 901, he left England at rest and quiet,' and we always think of him as one of the greatest and best kings who ever reigned in England, or in any other coun¬ try. As long as his children after him and his people went on in the good way lie had taught The Northmen. 39 them, all prospered with them, and no enemies hurt them ; and this was all through the reigns of his son, his grandson, and great-grandsons. Their council of great men was called by a long word that is in our English, “Wise Men’s Meeting,” and there they settled the affairs of the kingdom. The king’s wife was not called queen, but lady; and what do you think lady means? It means “ loaf-giver ” — giver of bread to her household and the poor. So a lady’s great work is to be charitable. CHAPTER V. THE DANISH CONQUEST. A. d. 958 — 1035 . 'T'HE last very prosperous king was Alfred’s great-grandson, Edgar, who was owned as their over-lord by all the kings of the remains of the Britons in Wales and Scotland. Once eight of these kings came to meet him at Chester, and rowed him in his barge along the river Dee. It was the grandest day a king of England enjoyed for many years. Edgar was called the peaceable, because there were no attacks by the Danes at all throughout his reign. In fact, the Northmen and Danes had been fighting among themselves at home, and these fights generally ended in some one going off as a Sea-King, with all his friends, and trying to gain a new home in some fresh country. One great party of Northmen, un- 40 The Danish Conquest. 41 der a very tall and mighty chief named Rollo, had, some time before, thus gone to France, and forced the king to give them a great piece of his country, just opposite to England, which was called after them Normandy. There they learned to talk French, and grew like Frenchmen, though they remained a great deal braver, and more spirited than any of their neighbors. There were continually fleets of Danish ships coming to England; and the son of Edgar, whose name was Ethelred, was a helpless, cowardly sort of man, so slow and tardy, that his people called him Ethelred the Unready. Instead of fitting out ships to fight against the Danes, he took the money the ships ought to have cost to pay them to go away without plundering; and as to those who had come into the country without his leave, he called them his guard, took them into his pay, and let them live in the houses of the English, where they were very rude, and gave themselves great airs, making the English feed them on all their best meat, and bread, and beer, and always call them Lord Danes. He made friends himself with the Northmen, or Normans, who had settled in France, and married Emma, the daughter of their duke ; but none of his plans prospered: things 42 Young Folks' History of England. grew worse and worse, and his mind and his peo¬ ple’s grew so bitter against the Danes, that at last it was agreed that, all over the South of England, every Englishman should rise up in one night and murder the Dane who lodged in his house. Among those Danes who were thus wickedly killed was the sister of the King of Denmark. Of course he was furious when he heard of it, and came over to England determined to punish the cruel, treacherous king and people, and take the whole island for his own. He did punish the peo¬ ple, killing, burning, and plundering Avlierever he went; but he could never get the king into his hands, for Ethelred went off in the height of the danger to Normandy, where he had before sent his wife Emma, and her children, leaving his eldest son (child of his first wife), Edmund Ironside, to fight for the kingdom as best he might. This King of Denmark died in the midst of his English war; but his son Cnut went on with the conquest he had begun, and before long Ethelred, the Unready died, and Edmund Ironside was mur¬ dered, and Cnut became King of England, as well as of Denmark. He became a Christian, and mar¬ ried Emma, Ethelred’s widow, though she was much older than himself. He had been a hard and The Danish Conquest. 43 cruel man, but lie now laid aside liis evil ways, and became a noble and wise and just king, a lover of churches and good men ; and the English seem to have been as well off under him as if he had been one of their own kings. There is no king of whom more pleasant stories are told. One is of his wanting to go to church at Ely Abbey one cold Candlemas Day. Ely was on a hill in the middle of a great marsh. The marsh was frozen over; but the king’s servants told him that the ice was not strong enough to bear, and they all stood look¬ ing at it. Then out stepped a stout countryman, who was so fat, that his nickname was The Pud¬ ding. “Are you all afraid ? ” he said. “ 1 will go over at once before the king.” “ Will } r ou so,” said the king, “ then I will come after you, for whatever bears 3 'ou will bear me.” Cnut was a little, slight man, and he got easily over, and Pud¬ ding got a piece of land for his reward. These servants of the king used to flatter him. They told him he was lord of land and sea, and that every thing would obey him. “ Let us try,” said Cnut, who wished to show them how foolish and profane they were ; “ bring out my chair to the sea-side.” He was at Southampton at the time, close to the sea, and the tide was coming in. 44 Young Folks' History of England. “ Now sea,” he said, as he sat down, “ I am thy lord, dare not to come near, nor to wet my feet.” Of course the waves rolled on, and splashed over him; and he turned to his servants, and bade them never say words that took away from the honor due to the only Lord of heaven and earth. He never put on his crown again after this, but hung it up in Winchester Cathedral. He was a thorough good king, and there was much grief when he died, stranger though he was. A great many Danes had made their homes in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, ever since Alfred’s time, and some of their customs are still left there, and some of their words. The worst of them was that they were great drunkards, aud the En¬ glish learnt this bad custom of them. CANUTE BY THE SEA-SHORE CHAPTER VI. THE NORMAN CONQUEST. A.D. 1035—106G. C NUT left three sons; but one was content to be only King of Denmark, and the other two died very soon. So a great English nobleman, called Earl Godwin, set up as king, Edward, one of those sons of Ethelred the Unready who had been sent away to Normandy. He was a very kind, good, pious man, who loved to do good. He began the building of our grand church at West¬ minster Abbey, and he was so holy that he was called the Confessor, which is a word for good men not great enough to be called saints. He Avas too good-natured, as you will say when you hear that one day, Avhen he Avas in bed, he saiv a thief come cautiously into his room, open the chest Avliere his treasure was, and take out the money-bags. In- 47 48 Young Folks' History of England. stead of calling anyone, or seizing the man, the king only said, sleepily, “ Take care, you rogue, or my chancellor will catch you and give you a good whipping.” You can fancy that nobody much minded such a king as this, and so there were many disturbances in his time. Some of them rose out of the king — who had been brought up in Normandy—liking the Normans better than the English. They really were much cleverer and more sensible, for they had learnt a great deal in France, while the En¬ glish had forgotten much of what Alfred and his sons had taught them, and all through the long, sad reign of Ethelred had been getting more dull, and clumsy and rude. Moreover, they had learnt of the Danes to be sad drunkards ; but both they and the Danes thought the Norman French fine gentle¬ men, and could not bear the sight of them. Think, then, how angry they all were when it ' began to be said that King Edward wanted to leave his kingdom of England to his mother’s Nor¬ man nephew, Duke William, because all his own near relations were still little boys, not likely to be grown up by the time the old king died. Many of the English wished for Harold, the son of Earl Godwin, a brave, spirited man; but Edward sent The Norman Conquest. 51 him to Normandy, and there Duke William made him swear an oath not to do anything to hinder the kingdom from being given to Duke William. Old King Edward died soon after, and Harold said at once that his promise had been forced and cheated from him, so that he need not keep it, and he was crowned King of England. This filled William with anger. He called all his fighting Normans together, fitted out ships, and sailed across the English Channel to Dover. The figure¬ head of his own ship was a likeness of his second little boy, named William. He landed at Peven- sey, in Sussex, and set up his camp while Harold was away in the North, fighting with a runaway brother of his own, who had brought the Nor¬ wegians to attack Yorkshire. Harold had just won a great battle over these enemies when he heard that William and his Normans had landed, and he had to hurry the whole length of England to meet them. Many of the English would not join him, be¬ cause they did not want him for their king. But though his army was not large, it was very brave. When he reached Sussex, he placed all his men on the top of a low hill, near Hastings, aud caused them to make a fence all round, with a ditch before 52 Young Folks' History of England. it, and in the middle was his own standard, with a fighting man embroidered upon it. Then the Nor¬ mans rode up on their war-horses to attack him, one brave knight going first, singing. The war- horses stumbled in the ditch, and the long spears of the English killed both men and horses. Then William ordered his archers to shoot their arrows high in the air. They came down like hail into the faces and on the heads of the English. Harold himself was pierced by one in the eye. The Nor¬ mans charged the fence again, and broke through; and, by the time night came on, Harold himself and all his brave Englishmen were dead. They did not flee away ; they all staid, and were killed, fighting to the last; and only then was Harold’s standard of the fighting man rooted up, and Wil¬ liam’s standard — a cross, which had been blessed by the Pope—planted instead of it. So ended the battle of Hastings, in the year 1066. The land has had a great many “ conquests ” hitherto—the Roman conquest, the English con¬ quest, the Danish conquest, and now the Norman conquest. But there have been no more since; and the kings and queens have gone on in one long line ever since, from William of Normandy down to Queen Victoria. CHAPTER VII. WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. A. d. 1060—1087. nr'HE king who had conquered England was a brave, strong man, who had been used to fighting and struggling ever since he was a young child. He really feared God, and was in many ways a good man ; but it had not been right of him to come and take another people’s country by force ; and the having done one wrong thing often makes people grow worse and worse. Many of the En¬ glish were unwilling to have William as their king, and his Norman friends were angry that he would not let them have more of the English lands, nor break the English laws. So they were often rising up against him ; and each time he had to put them 53 54 Young Folks' History of England. down he grew more harsh and stern. He did not want to be cruel; but he did many cruel things, because it was the only way to keep England. When the people of Northumberland rose against him, and tried to get back the old set of kings, he had the whole country wasted with fire and sword, till hardly a town or village was left standing. He did this to punish the Northumbrians, and frighten the rest. But he did another thing that was worse, because it was only for his own amuse¬ ment. In Hampshire, near his castle of Win¬ chester, there was a great space of heathy ground, and holly copse and beeches and oaks above it, with deer and boars running wild in the glades — a beautiful place for hunting, only that there were so many villages in it that the creatures were dis¬ turbed and killed. William liked hunting more than anything else — his people said he loved the high deer as if he was their father, — and to keep the place clear for them, he turned out all the in¬ habitants, and pulled down their houses, and made laws against any one killing his game. The place he thus cleared is still called the New Forest, though it is a thousand years old. An old Norman law that the English grumbled about very much was, that as soon as a bell was William the Conqueror. 55 rung, at eight o’clock every evening, everyone was to put out candle and fire, and go to bed. The bell was called the curfew, and many old churches ring it still. William caused a great list to be made of all the lands in the country, and who held them. We have this list still, and it is called Domesday Book. It shews that a great deal had been taken from the English and given to the Normans. The king built castles, with immensely thick, strong walls, and loop-hole windows, whence to shoot arrows; and here he placed his Normans to keep the En¬ glish down. But the Normans were even more unruly than the English, and only his strong hand kept them in order. They rode about in armor — helmets on their heads, a shirt of mail, made of chains of iron linked together, over their bodies, gloves and boots of iron, swords by their sides, and lances in their hands — and thus they could bear down all before them. They called them¬ selves knights, and were always made to take an oath to befriend the weak, and poor, and helpless; but they did not often keep it towards the poor English. William had four sons — Robert, who was called Court-hose or Short-legs; William, called Rufus, 56 Young Folks' History of England. because lie had red hair ; Henry, called Beau-clerc, or the fine scholar ; and Richard, who was still a lad when he was killed by a stag in the New Forest. Robert, the eldest, was a wild, rude, thoughtless youth ; but he fancied himself fit to govern Nor¬ mandy, and asked his father to give it up to him. King William answered, “ I never take my clothes off before I go to bed," meaning that Robert must wait for his death. Robert could not bear to be laughed at, and was very angry. Soon after, when he was in the castle court, his two brothers, Wil¬ liam and Henry, grew riotous, and poured water down from the upper windows on him and his friends. He flew into a passion, dashed up-stairs with his sword in his hand, and might have killed his brothers if their father had not come in to pro¬ tect them. Then he threw himself on his horse and galloped away, persuaded some friends to join him, and actually fought a battle with his own father, in which the old king was thrown off his horse, and hurt in the hand; but we must do the prince the justice to say that when he recognized his father in the knight whom he had unseated, he was filled with grief and horror, and eagerly be- ROBERT’S ENCOUNTER WITH HIS FATHER. William the Conqueror. 59 sought his pardon, and tenderly raised him from the ground. Then Robert wandered about, liv¬ ing on money that his mother, Queen Matilda, sent him, though his father was angry with her for doing so, and this made the first quarrel the husband and wife had ever had. Not long after, William went to war with the King of France. He had caused a city to be burnt down, and was riding through the ruins, when his horse trod on some hot ashes, and began to plunge. The king was thrown forward on the saddle, and, being a very heavy, stout man, was so much hurt, that, after a few weeks, in the year 1087, he died at a little monastery, a short way from Rouen, the chief city of his dukedom of Normandy. He was the greatest man of his time, and he had much good in him; and when he lay on his death¬ bed he grieved much for all the evil he had brought upon the English; but that could not undo it. He had been a great church-builder, and so were his Norman bishops and barons. You may always know their work, because it has round pillars, and round arches, with broad borders of zig-zags, and all manner of patterns round them. In the end, the coming of the Normans did the 60 Young Folks' History of England. English much good, by brightening them up and making them less dull and heavy; but they did not like having a king and court who talked French, and cared more for Normandy than for England. r CHAPTER VIII. WILLIAM II., BUFIIS. a.d. 1087 — 1100 . ILLIAM the Conqueror was obliged to let * ▼ Normandy fall to Robert, bis eldest son; but he thought he could do as he pleased about England, which he had won for himself. He had sent off his second son, William, to England, with his ring to Westminister, giving him a message Young Folk* TFixt org of England. R2 that he hoped the English people would have him for their king. And they did take him, though they would hardly have done so if they had known what he would he like when he was left to himself. But while he was kept under by his father, they only knew that he had red hair and a ruddy face, and had more sense than his brother Robert. He is sometimes called the Red King, but more com¬ monly William Rufus. Things went worse than ever with the poor English in his time ; for at least William the Conqueror had made everybody mind the law, but now William Rufus let his cruel sol¬ diers do just as they pleased, and spoil what they did not want. It was 'of no use to complain, for the king would only laugh and make jokes. He did not care for God or man ; only for being pow¬ erful, for feasting, and for hunting. Just at this time there was a great stir in Europe. Jerusalem — that holy city, where our blessed Lord had taught, where he had been crucified, and where he had risen from the dead — was a place where everyone wished to go and worship, and this they called going on pilgrimage. A beautiful church had once been built over the sepulchre where our Lord had lain, and enriched with gifts. But for a long time past Jerusalem had been in Willi am 11., Rufus. 63 the hands of an Eastern people, who think their false prophet, Mahommed, greater than our blessed Lord. These Mahommedans used to rob and ill- treat the pilgrims, and make them pay great sums of money for leave to come into Jerusalem. At last a pilgrim, named Peter the Hermit, came home, and got leave from the Pope to try to waken up all the Christian princes and knights to go to the Holy Land, and fight to get the Holy Sepul¬ chre back into Christian hands again. He used to preach in the open air, and the people who heard him were so stirred up that they all shouted out, “ It is God’s will ! It is God’s will! ” And each who undertook to go and fight in the East received a cross cut out in cloth, red or white, to wear on his shoulder. Many thousands promised to go on this crusade, as they called it, and among them was Robert, Duke of Normandy. But he had wasted his money, so that he could not fit out an army to take with him. So he offered to give up Normandy to Ins brother William while he was gone, if William would let him have the money he wanted. The Red King was very ready to make such a bargain, and he laughed at the Crusaders, and thought that they were wasting their time and trouble. 64 Young Folks History of England. They had a very good man to lead them, named Godfrey de Bouillon : and, after many toils and troubles, they did gain Jerusalem, and could kneel, weeping, at the Holy Sepulchre. It was proposed to make Robert King of Jerusalem, but he would not accept the offer, and Godfrey was made king instead, and staid to guard the holy places, while Duke Robert set out on his return home. In the meantime, the Red King had gone on in as fierce and ungodly a way as ever, laughing good advice to scorn, and driving away the good Arch¬ bishop of Canterbury, St. Anselm, and everyone else who tried to warn him or withstand his wick¬ edness. One day, in the year 1100, he went out to hunt deer in the New Forest, which his father had wasted, laughing and jesting in his rough way. By and by he was found dead under an oak tree, with an arrow through his heart; and a wood¬ cutter took up his body in his cart, and carried it to Winchester Cathedral, where it was buried. Who shot the arrow nobody knew, and nobody ever will know. Some thought it must be a knight, named Walter Tyrrell, to whom the king had given three long good arrows that morning. He rode straight away- to Southampton, and went off to the Holy Land; so it is likely that he knew DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS. William 11 ., Rufus. 67 something about the king’s death. But he never seems to have told any one, whether it was only an accident, or a murder, or who did it. Anyway, it was a fearful end, for a bad man to die in his sin, without a moment to repent and pray. CHAPTER IX. HENRY I., BEAU-CLERC. A.D. 1100—1135. H ENRY, the brother of William Rufus, was one of the hunting party; and as soon as the cry spread through the forest that the king was dead, lie rode off at full speed to Winchester, and took possession of all his brother’s treasure. Wil¬ liam Rufus had never been married, and left no children, and Henry was much the least violent and most sensible of the brothers; and, as he promised to govern according to the old laws of England, he did not find it difficult to persuade the people to let him be crowned king. He was not really a good man, and he could be very cruel sometimes, as well as false and cunning ; but he kept good order, and would not allow such horrible things to be done as in his brother’s time. So the English were better off than they had been, 63 Henry /., Beaio-clerc. 69 and used to say the king would let no one break the laws but himself. They were pleased, too, that Henry married a lady who was half English — Maude, the daughter of Malcolm Greathead, King of Scotland, and of a lady of the old English royal line. They loved her greatly, and called her good Queen Maude. Robert came back to Normandy, and tried to make himself King of England; but Henry soon drove him back. The brothers went on quarreling for some years, and Robert managed Normandy miserably, and wasted his money, so that he some¬ times had no clothes to wear, and lay in bed for want of them. Some of the Normans could not bear this any longer, and invited Henry to come and take the dukedom. He came with an army, many of whom were English, and fought a battle with Robert and his faithful Normans at Tenchebray, in Normandy. They gained a great victory, and the English thought it made up for Hastings. Poor Robert was made prisoner by his brother, who sent him off to Cardiff Castle, in Wales, where he lived for twenty-eight years, and then died, and was buried in Gloucester Cathedral, with his figure made in bog oak over his monument. 70 Young Folks' History of England. Henry had two children — William and Maude. The girl was married to the Emperor of Germany and the boy was to be the husband of Alice, daughter to the Count of Anjou, a great French Prince, whose lands were near Normandy. It was the custom to marry children very young then, before they were old enough to leave their parents and make a home for themselves. So William was taken by his father to Anjou, and there married to the little girl, and then she was left behind, while he was to return to England with his father. Just as he was going to embark, a man came to the king, and begged to have the honor of taking him across in his new vessel, called the White Ship, saying that his father had steered William the Conqueror’s ship. Henry could not change his own plans ; but, as the man begged so hard, he said his son, the young bridegroom, and his friends might go in the White .Ship. They sailed in the evening, and there was a great merry- making on board, till the sailors grew so drunk that they did not know now to guide the ship, and ran her against a rock. She filled "with water and began to sink. A boat was lowered, and William safely placed in it; but, just as he was rowed off he heard the cries of the ladies who were left be- Henry /., Beau-olerc. 71 hind, and caused the oarsmen to turn back for them. So many drowning wretches crowded into it, as soon as it came near, that it sank with their weight, and all were lost. Only the top-mast of the ship remained above water, and to it clung a butcher and the owner of the ship all night long. When daylight came, and the owner knew that the king’s son was reall}' dead, and by his fault, he lost heart, let go the mast and was drowned. Only the butcher was taken off alive ; and for a long time no one durst tell the king what had happened. At last a boy was sent to fall at his feet, and tell him his son was dead. He was a broken-hearted man, and never knew gladness again all the rest of his life. His daughter Maude had lost her German hus¬ band, and came home. He made her marry Geoffrey of Anjou, the brother of his son’s wife, and called upon all his chief noblemen to swear that they would take her for their queen in England and their duchess in Normandy after his own death. He did not live much longer. His death was caused, in the year 1135, by eating too much of the fish called lamprey, and he was "buried in Reading Abbey. CHAPTER X. STEPHEN. a.d. 1135—1154. N EITHER English nor Normans had ever been ruled by a woman, and the Empress Maude, as she still called herself, was a proud, dis¬ agreeable, ill-tempered woman, whom nobody liked. So her cousin. Stephen de Blois — whose mother, 72 Stephen. 73 Adela, had been daughter of William the Con¬ queror— thought to obtain the crown of England by promising to give everyone what they wished. It was very wrong of him ; for he, like all the other barons, had sworn that Maude should reign. But the people knew he was a kindly, gracious sort of person, and greatly preferred him to her. So he was crowned; and at once all the Norman barons, whom King Henry had kept down, began to think they could have their own way. They built strong castles, and hired men, with whom they made war upon each other, robbed one an¬ other’s tenants, and, when they saw a peaceable traveler on his way, they would dash down upon him, drag him into the castle, take away all the jewels or money he had about him, or, if he had none, they woxdd shut him up and torment him till he could get His friends to pay them a sum to let him loose. Stephen, who was a kind-hearted man himself, tried to stop these cruelties; but then the barons turned round on him, told him he was not their proper king, and invited Maude to come and be crowned in his stead. She came very willingly; and her uncle, King David of Scotland, set out with an army to fight for her; but all the English 74 Young Folks' History of England. in the north came out to drive him back; and they beat him and his Scots at what they call the Battle of the Standard, because the English had a holy standard, which was kept in Durham Cathe¬ dral. Soon after, Stephen was taken prisoner at a battle at Lincoln, and there was nothing to prevent Maude from being queen but her own bad temper. She went to Winchester, and was there proclaimed ; but she would not speak kindly or gently to the people ; and when her friends entreated her to re¬ ply more kindly, she flew into a passion, and it is even said that she gave a box on the ear to her uncle — the good King of Scotland, who had come to help her — for reproving her for her harsh an¬ swers. When Stephen's wife came to beg her to set him free, promising that he should go away beyond the seas, and never interfere with her again, she would not listen, and drove her away. But she soon found how foolish she had been. Stephen’s friends would have been willing that he should give up trying to be king, but they could not leave him in prison for life; and so they went on fighting for him, while more and more of the English joined them, as they felt how bad and un¬ kind a queen they had in the Empress. Indeed, she was so proud and violent, that her husband Stephen. 75 would not come over to England to help her, but staid to govern Normandy. She was soon in great distress, and had to flee from Winchester, riding through the midst of the enemy, and losing almost all her friends by the way as they were slain or made prisoners. Her best helper of all — Earl Robert of Gloucester — was taken while guarding her ; and she could only get to his town of Gloucester by lying down in a coffin, with holes for air, and being thus carried through all the country, where she had made everyone hate her. Stephen’s wife offered to set the Earl free, if the other side would release her husband ; and this exchange was brought about. Robert then went to Normandy, to fetch Maude’s little son Henry, who was ten years old, leaving hex 1 , as he thought, safe in Oxfoi’d Castle ; but no sooner was he gone than Stephen brought his army, and besieged the Castle — that is, he brought his men round it, tried to climb up the walls, or beat them down with heavy beams, and hindered any food from being brought in. Everything in the castle that could be eaten was gone ; but Maude was determined not to fall into her enemy’s hands. It was the depth of winter; the river below the walls was frozen over, and snow was on the ground. One night, Maude 76 Young Folks' History of England. dressed herself and three of her knights all in white, and they were, one by one, let down by ropes from the walls. No one saw them in the snow. They crossed the river on the ice, walked a great part of the night, and at last came to Abing¬ don, where horses were waiting for them, and thence they rode to Wallingford, where Maude met her little son. There was not much more fighting after this. Stephen kept all the eastern part of the kingdom, and Henry was brought up at Gloucester till his father sent for him, to take leave of him before going on a crusade. Geoffrey died during this crusade. He was fond of hunting, and was gene¬ rally seen with a spray of broom blossom in his cap. The French name for this plant is genet; and thus his nickname was “ Plantagenet; ” and this became a kind of surname to the kings of England. Henry, called Fitz-empress—or “the Empress’s son ” — came to England again as soon as he was grown up; but instead of going to war, he made an agreement with Stephen. Henry would not attack Stephen any more, but leave him to reign all the days of his life, provided Stephen engaged that Henry should reign instead of his own son Stephan. 77 after his death. This made Stephen’s son, Eus¬ tace, veiy angry, and he went away in a rage to raise troops to maintain his cause; but he died suddenly in the midst of his wild doings, and the king, his father, did not live long after him, but died in the year 1154. Maude had learnt wisdom by her misfortunes. She had no further desire to be queen, but lived a retired life in a convent, and was much more respected there than as queen. CHAPTER XI. HENKY II., FITZ-EMPKESS. A. d. 1154—1189. ENRY Fitz-Empress is counted as the first X X king of the Plantagenet family, also called the House of Anjou. He was a very clever, brisk, spirited man, who hardly ever sat down, but was always going from place to place, and who would let no one disobey him. He kept everybody in order, pulled down almost all the Castles that had been built in Stephen’s time, and would not let the barons ill-treat the people. Indeed,- everyone had been so mixed up together during the wars in Stephen’s reign, that the grandchildren of the Normans who had come over with William the Conqueror were now quite English in their feel¬ ings. French was, however, chiefly spoken at court. The king was really a Frenchman, and he married a French wife Eleanor, the lady of Aquitaine, a 78 MURDER OF TIIOMAS A-BECKET. Henry II ., Fitz-empress. 81 great dukedom in the South of France; and, as Henry had already Normandy and Anjou, he really was lord of nearly half France. He ruled England well; but he was not a good man, for he cared for power and pleasure more than for what was right; and sometimes he fell into such rages that he would roll on the floor, and bite the rushes and sticks it was strewn with. He made many laws. One was that, if a priest or monk was thought to have committed any crime, he should be tried by the king’s judge, instead of the bishop. The Arch¬ bishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, did not think it right to consent to this law; and, though he and the king had once been great friends, Henry was so angry with him that he was forced to leave England, and take shelter with the King of France. Six years passed by, and the king pre¬ tended to be reconciled to him, but still, when they met, would not give him the kiss of peace. The archbishop knew that this showed that the king still hated him ; but his flock had been so long without a shepherd that he thought it his duty to go back to them. Just after his return, he laid under censure some persons who had given offence. They went and complained to the king, and Henry exclaimed in a passion, “ Will no one 82 Young Folks' History of England. rid me of this turbulent priest ? ” Four of his knights who heard these words set forth for Can¬ terbury. The archbishop guessed why they were come; but he would not flee again, and waited for them by the altar in the cathedral, not even letting the doors be shut. There they slew him; and thither, in great grief at the effect of his own words, the king came — three years later—to show his penitence by entering barefoot, kneeling before Thomas’s tomb, and causing every priest or monk in turn to strike him with a rod. "We should not exactly call Thomas a martyr now, but he was thought so then, because he died for upholding the privileges of the Church, and he was held to be a yen' great saint. While this dispute was going on, the Earl of Pembroke, called Strongbow, one of Henry’s no¬ bles, had gone over to Ireland, and obtained a little kingdom there, which he professed to hold of Henry ; and thus the Kings of England became Lords ot Ireland, though for a long time they only had the Province of Leinster, and were always at war with the Irish around. Henry was a most powerful king ; but his latter years Avere very unhappy. His wife was not a good woman, and her sons were all disobedient and re- Henry II, Fitz-empress. 83 bellious. Once all the three eldest, Henry, Rich¬ ard, and Geoffrey, and their mother, ran away together from his court, and began to make war upon him. He was much stronger and wiser than they, so he soon forced them to submit; and he sent Queen Eleanor away, and shut her up in a strong castle in England as long as he lived. Her sons were much more fond of her than of their father, and they thought this usage so hard, that they were all the more ready to break out against him. The eldest son, Henry, was leading an army against his father, when he was taken ill, and felt himself dying. He sent an entreaty that his father would forgive him, and come to see him; but the young man had so often been false and treacherous, that Henry feared it was only a trick to get him as a prisoner, and only sent his ring and a message of pardon; and young Henry died, pressing the ring to his lips, and longing to hear his father’s voice. Geoffrey, the third son, was killed by a fall from his horse, and there were only two left alive, Rich¬ ard and John. Just at tliis time, news came that the Mahommedans in the Holy Land had won Je¬ rusalem back again ; and the pope called on all Christian princes to leave off quarreling, and go on a crusade to recover the Holy Sepulchre. 84 Young Folks’ History of England. The kings of England and France, j'oung Rich¬ ard, and many more, were roused to take the cross; but while arrangements for going were being made, a fresh dispute about them arose, and Richard went away in a rage, got Inis friends together, and, with King Philip of France to help him, began to make war. His father was feeble, and worn out, and could not resist as in former times. He fell ill, and gave up the struggle, saying he would grant all they asked. The list of Richard's friends whom he was to pardon was brought to him, and the first name he saw in it was that of John, his youngest son, and his darling, the one who had never before rebelled. That quite broke his heart, his illness grew worse, and he talked about an old eagle being torn to pieces by his eaglets. And so, in the year 1189, Henry II. died the saddest death, perhaps, that au old man can die, for his sons had brought down his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. HENRY II.’S TOMB AT FONTEVRAND CHAPTER XII. RICHARD I., LION-HEART. A.D. 1180—1109. R ICHARD was greatly grieved at his father’s death, and when lie came and looked at the dead body, in Fontevraud Abbey Church, he cried out, “ Alas ! it was I who killed him ! ” But it was too late now: he could not make up for what he had done, and he had to think about the Cru¬ sade he had promised to make. Richard was so brave and strong that he was called Lion-heart; he was very noble and good in some ways, but his fierce, passionate temper did him a great deal of harm. He, and King Philip of France, and several other great princes, all met in the island of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea, and thence sailed for the Holy Land. The lady whom Richard was to marry came to meet him in Sicily. Her name was Beren- garia; but, as it was Lent, he did not marry her 87 88 Young Folks' History of England. then. She went on to the Holy Land in a ship with his sister Joan, and tried to land in the island of Cypress; but the people were inhospitable, and would not let them come. So Richard, in his great anger, conquered the isle, and was married to Berengaria there. The Mahommedans who held Palestine at that time were called Saracens, and had a very brave prince at their head named Saladin, which means Splendor of Religion. He was very good, just, upright, and truth-telling, and his Saracens fought so well, that the Crusaders would hardly have won a bit of ground if the Lion-heart had not been so brave. At last, they did take one city on the coast named Acre; and one of the princes, Leo¬ pold, Duke of Austria, set up Lis banner on the walls. Richard did not think it ought to be there : he pulled it up and threw it down into the ditch, asking the duke how he durst take the honors of a king. Leopold was sullen, and brooded over the insult, and King Philip thought Richard so over¬ bearing, that he could not bear to be in the army with him any longer. In truth, though Philip had pretended to be his friend, and had taken his part against his father, that was really only to hurt King Henry; he hated Richard quite as much, or RICHARD REMOVING THE ARCHDUKE’S DANNER. Richard /., Lion^heart. 91 more, and only wanted to get home first in order to do him as much harm as he could while he was away. So Philip said it was too hot for him in the Holy Land, and made him ill. He sailed back to France, while Richard remained, though the climate really did hurt his health, and he often had fevers there. When he was ill, Saladin used to send him grapes, and do all he could to show how highly he thought of so brave a man. Once Sal¬ adin sent him a beautiful horse ; Richard told the Earl of Salisbury to try it, and no sooner was the earl mounted, than the horse ran away with him to the Saracen army. Saladin was very much vexed, and was afraid it would be taken for a trick to take the English king prisoner, and he gave the earl a quieter horse to ride back with. Richard fought one terrible battle at Joppa with the Saracens, and then he tried to go on to take Jerusalem; but he wanted to leave a good strong- castle behind him at Ascalon, and set all his men to work to build it up. When they grumbled, he worked with them, and asked the duke to do the same ; but Leopold said gruffly that he was not a carpenter or a mason. Richard was so provoked that he struck him a blow, and the duke went home in a rage. 92 Fount/ Folks History of Enyland. So many men had gone home, that Richard found his army was not strong enough to try to take Jerusalem. He was greatly grieved, for he knew it was his own fault for not having shewn . the temper of a Crusader; and when he came to the top of a hill whence the Holy City could be seen, he would not look at it, but turned away, saying, “ They who are not worthy to win it are . not worthy to behold it.” It was of no use for . him to stay with so few men ; besides, tidings came ^ from home that King Philip and his own brother, . John, were doing all the mischief they could. So . he made a peace for three years between the Sara- j cens and Christians, hoping to come back again ... after that to rescue Jerusalem. But on his way ... home there were terrible storms; his ships were _ scattered, and his own ship was driven up into ^ the Adriatic Sea, where lie was robbed by pirates, or sea robbers, and then was shipwrecked. There was no way for him to get home but through the ] lands of Leopold of Austria; so he pretended to . be a merchant, and set out attended only by a boy. He fell ill at a little inn, and while he was in bed the boy went into the kitchen witK the king’s . glove in his belt. It was an embroidered glove, such as merchants never used, and people asked Richard I., Lion-heart. 93 11 questions, and guessed that the boy’s master must pe some great man. The Duke of Austria heard )f it, sent soldiers to take him, and shut him up is a prisoner in one of his castles. Afterwards, die duke gave him up for a large sum of money to he Emperor of Germany. All this time Richard’s vife and mother had been in great sorrow and ear, trying to find out what had become of him. t is said that he was found at last by his friend, he minstrel Blondel. A minstrel was a person vho made verses and sang them. Many of the lobles and knights in Queen Eleanor’s Duchy of Vquitaine were minstrels — and Richard was a r ery good one himself, and amused himself in his ■aptivity by making verses. This is certainly true — though I cannot answer for it that the pretty tory. is true, which says that Blondel sung at ,11 the castle courts in Germany, till he heard iis master’s voice take up and reply to his song. The Queens, Eleanor and Berengaria, raised a ansom —-that is, a sum of money to buy his free- lorn— though his brother John tried to prevent hem, and the King of France did his best to hin- ler the emperor from releasing him; but the Pope Qsisted that the brave crusader should be set at iberty : and Richard came home, after a year and 94 Young Folks' History of England. a-half of captivity. He freely forgave John for all the mischief he had done or tried to do, though he thought so ill of him as to say, “ I wish I may forget John’s injuries to me as soon as he will forget my pardon of him.” Richard only lived two years after he came back. He was besieging a castle in Aquitaine, where there was some treasure that he thought was unlawfully kept from him, when he was struck in the shoulder by a bolt from a cross-bow, and the surgeons treated it so unskilfully that in a few days he died. The man who had shot the bolt was made prisoner, but the Lion-heart’s last act was to command that no harm should be done to him. The soldiers, however, in their grief and rage for the king, did put him to death in a cruel manner. Richard desired to be burned at the feet of his father, in Fontevraud Abbey, where he once bewailed his undutiful conduct, and now wished his body forever to lie in penitence. The figures in stone, of the father, mother, and son, who quarreled so much in life, all lie on one monument now, and with them Richard’s youngest sister Joan, who died nearly at the same time as he died, partly of grief for him. CHAPTER XIII. JOHN, LACKLAND. A.D. 1 199 I2l6. S a kind of joke, John, King Henry’s young- J. est son, had been called Lackland, because lie had nothing when his brothers each had some great dukedom. The name suited him only too well before the end of his life. The English made him king at once. They always did take a grown¬ up man for their king, if the last king’s son was but a child. Richard had never had any children, but his brother Geoffrey, who was older than John, had left a son named Arthur, who was about twelve years old, and who was rightly the Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou. King Philip, who was always glad to vex whoever was king of England, took Arthur under his protection, and promised to get Normandy out of John’s hands. However, John had a meeting with him and per- 95 96 Young Folks' History of England. suadecl him to desert Arthur, and marry his so Louis to John's own niece, Blanche, who had chance of being queen of part of Spain. Still A) thur lived at the French King’s court, and whe he was sixteen years old, Philip helped him t raise an army and go to try his fortune agains : his uncle. He laid siege to Mirabeau, a towiM where his grandmother, Queen Eleanor, was living John, who was then in Normandy, hurried to he rescue, heat Arthur's army, made him prisoner ana i| carried him off, first to Rouen, and then to th | strong castle of Falaise. Nobody quite know] | what was done to him there. The governor; Hubert de Burgh, once found him fighting hard! though with no weapon but a stool, to defend him self from some ruffians who had been sent to pu out his eyes. Hubert saved him from these men but shortly after this good man was sent elsewhere by the king, and John came himself to Falaise .j Arthur was never seen alive again, and it is be ■ lieved that John took him out in a boat in the river at night, stabbed him with his own hand, ami i threw his body into the river. There was, an) way, no doubt that John was guilty of his nephew’: death, and he was fully known to be one of thA most selfish and cruel men who ever lived ; and S( < John , Lackland. 99 lazy, that he let Philip take Normandy from him, without stirring a finger to save the grand old dukedom of his forefathers ; so that nothing is left of it to us now but the four little islands, Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, and Sark. Matters became much worse in England, when he quarreled with the Pope, whose name was Inno¬ cent, about who should be archbishop of Canter¬ bury. The Pope wanted a man named Stephen Langton to be archbishop, but the king swore he should never come into the kingdom. Then the Pope punished the kingdom, by forbidding all church services in all parish churches. This was termed putting the kingdom under an interdict. John was not much distressed by this, though his people were ; but when he found that Innocent was stirring up the King of France to come to at¬ tack him, he thought it time to make his peace with the Pope. So he not only consented to re¬ ceive Stephen Langton, but he even knelt down before the Pope’s legate, or messenger, and took off his crown, giving it up to the legate, in token that he only held the kingdom from the Pope. It was two or three days before it was given back to him : and the Pope held himself to be lord of England, 100 Young Folks History of England. and made the king and people pay him money whenever he demanded it. Ail this time John’s cruelty and savageness were making the whole kingdom miserable ; and at last the great barons could bear it no longer. They met together and agreed that they would make John swear to govern by the good old English laws that had prevailed before the Normans came. The diffi¬ culty was to be sure of what these laws were, for most of the copies of them had been lost. However, Archbishop Langton and some of the wisest of the barons put together a set of laws — some copied, some recollected, some old, some new — but all such as to give the barons some control of the king, and hinder him from getting savage soldiers to¬ gether to frighten people into doing whatever he chose to make them. These laws they called Magna Carta, or the great charter; and they all came in armor, and took John by surprise at Wind¬ sor. He came to meet them in a meadow named Runnymede, on the bank of the Thames, and there they forced him to sign the charter, for which all Englishmen are grateful to them. But he did not mean to keep it! No, not he! He had one of his father’s fits of rage when he got back to Windsor Castle — he gnawed the sticks John , Lackland. 103 for rage, and swore he was no king. Then he sent for more of the fierce soldiers, who went about in bands, ready to be hired, and prepared to take ven¬ geance on the barons. They found themselves not strong enough to make head against him; so they invited Louis, the son of Philip of France and hus¬ band of John’s niece, to come and be their king. He came, and was received in London, while John and his bands of soldiers were roaming about the eastern counties, wasting and burning everywhere till they came to the Wash — that curious bay be¬ tween Lincolnshire and Norfolk, where so many rivers run into the sea. There is a safe way across the sands in this bay when the tide is low, but when it is coming in and meets the rivers, the waters rise suddenly into a flood. So it happened to King John ; he did get out himself, but all the carts with his goods and treasures were lost, and many of his men. He was full of rage and grief, but he went on to the abbey where he meant to steep. He supped on peaches and new ale, and soon after became very ill. He died in a few days, a miserable, disgraced man, with half his people fighting against him and London in the hands of his worst enemy. CHAPTER XIV. HENRY III.. OF WINCHESTER. A.D. 1210 — 1272 . TV 7 " YNG John left two little sons, Henry ami Richard, nine and seven years old, and all the English barons felt that they would rather have Henry as their king than the French Louis, whom they had only called in because John was such a wretch. So when little Henry had been crowned 104 Henry 111., of Winchester. 105 at Gloucester, with his mother’s bracelet, swearing to rule according to Magna Carta, and good Hubert de Burgh undertook to govern for him, one baron after another came back to him. Louis was beaten in a battle at Lincoln ; and when his wife sent him more troops, Hubert de Burgh got ships together and sunk many vessels, and drove the others back in the Straits of Dover; so that Louis was forced to go home and leave England in peace. Henry must have been too young to understand about Magna Carta when he'swore to it, but it was the trouble of all his long reign to get him to observe it. It was not that he was wicked like his father —for he was very religious and kind-hearted—but he was too good-natured, and never could say No to anybody. Bad advisers got about him when he grew up, and persuaded him to let them take good Hubert de Burgh and imprison him. He had taken refuge in a church, but they dragged him out and took him to a blacksmith to have chains put on his feet; the smith however said he would never forge chains for the man who had saved his coun¬ try from the French. De Burgh was afterwards set free, and died in peace and honor. Henry was a builder of beautiful churches. Westminster Abbe)-, as it is now, was one. And 106 Youny Folk* History of England. lie was so charitable to the poor that, when he had his children weighed, he gave their weight in gold and silver in alms. Rut he gave to everyone who asked, and so always wanted money; and some¬ times his men could get nothing for the king arid queen to eat, but bv going and taking sheep and poultry from the poor farmers around; so that things were nearly as bad as under William Rufus — because the king was so foolishly good-natured. The Pope was always sending for money, too; and the king tried to raise it in ways that, according to Magna Carta, he had sworn not to do. His foreign friends told him that if he minded Magna Carta he would be a poor creature — not like a king who might do all he pleased; and whenever he listened to them he broke the laws of Magna Carta. Then, when his barons complained and frightened him, he swore again to keep them ; so that nobody could trust him, and his weakness was almost as bad for the kingdom as John’s wickedness. When they could bear it no longer, the barons all met him at the council which was called the Parliament, from a French word meaning talk. This time they came in armor, bringing all their fighting men, and declared that he had broken his word so often that they should appoint some of their own number to KING HENRY AND HIS BARONS. Henri/ III., of Winchester. 100 watch him, and hinder his doing anything against the laws he had sworn to observe, or from getting money from the people without their consent. He was very angry; but he was in their power, and had to submit to swear that so it should be ; and Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who had married his sister, was appointed among the lords who were to keep watch over him. Henry could not bear this; he felt himself to be less than evei a king, and tried to break loose. He had never cared for his promises ; but his brave son Edward, who was now grown up, cared a great deal: and they put the question to Louis, King of France, whether the king was bound by the oath he had made to be under Montfort and his council. This Louis was son to the one who had been driven back by Hubert de Burgh. He was one of the best men and kings that ever lived, and he tried to judge rightly; but he scarcely thought how much provocation Henry had given, when he said that subjects had no right to frighten their king, and so that Henry and Edward were not obliged to keep the oath. Thereupon they got an army together, and so did Simon de Montfort and the barons; and they met at a place called Lewes, in Sussex. Edward 110 Young Folks' History of England. got the advantage at first, and galloped away.l 1 driving his enemies before him; hut when he I turned round and came back, he found that Simon 1 de Montfort had beaten the rest of the army, and made Ins father and uncle Richard prisoners. In¬ deed the barons threatened to cut off Richard’s head if Edward went on fighting with them ; and to save his uncle’s life, he too, gave himself up to them. Simon de Montfort now governed all the king¬ dom. He still called Henry king, but did not let him do anything, and watched him closely that he might not get away; and Edward was kept a prisoner — first in one castle, then in another. ' Simon was a good and high-minded man himself, who only wanted to do what was best for every¬ one ; but he had a family of proud and overbearing sons, who treated all who came in their way so ill, that most of the barons quarreled with them. One of these barons sent Edward a beautiful horse; and one day when he was riding out from Here¬ ford Castle with his keepers, he proposed to them to ride races, while he was to look on and decide ] which was the swiftest. Thus they all tired out I their horses, and as soon as he saw that they could i hardly get them along, Edward spurred his own fresh j Henry III., of Winchester. Ill lorse, and galloped off to meet the friends who re re waiting for him. All who were discontented vith the Montforts joined him, and he soon had a arge army. He marched against Montfort, and net him at Evesham. The poor old king was in dontfort’s army, and in the battle was thrown own, and would have been killed if he had not ailed out — “ Save me, save me, I am Henry of Winchester.” His son heard the call, and, rushing o his side, carried him to a place of safety. His rmy was much the strongest, and Montfort had nown from the first that there was no hope for im. “ God have merc} r on our souls, for our bodies re Sir Edward’s,” he had said ; and he died brave- I a on the field of battle. Edward brought his father back to reign in all onor, but he took the whole management of the ingdom, and soon set things in order again — iking care that Magna Carta should be properly >served. When everything was peaceful at home, i set out upon a Crusade with the good King of ranee, and while he was gone his father died, ’ter a reign of fifty-six years. There were only tree English Kings who reigned more than fifty 3ars, and these are easy to remember, as each was te third of his name — Henry III., Edward III., 112 Young Folks' History of England. and George III. In the reign of Henry III. the custom of having Parliaments was established and the king was prevented from getting monej from the people unless the Parliament granted it. The Parliament has, ever since, been made up oi great lords, who are born to it: and, besides them, of men chosen by the people in the counties and towns, to speak and decide for them. The clergy have a meeting of their own called Convocation; and these three — Clergy, Lords, and Commons — are called the Three Estates of the Realm. ft CHAPTER XV. EDWARD I., LONGSHANKS. A.D. 1272 — 1307 . HE son of Henry III. returned from the Holy A Land to be one of our noblest, best, and wisest kings. Edward I. — called Longshanks in a kind of joke, because he was the tallest man in the Court — was very grand-looking and hand¬ some ; and could leap, run, ride, and fight in his heavy armor better than anyone else. He was brave, just, and affectionate; and his sweet wife, Eleanor of Castille, was warmly loved by him and all the nation. lie built as many churches and was as charitable as his father, but he was much more careful to make only good men bishops, and lie al¬ lowed no wasting or idling. He faithfully obeyed Magna Carta, and made everyone else obey the 113 114 Yount/ Folks' Histori / of England. law — indeed many good laws and customs have begun from his time. Order was the great thing he cared for, and under him the English greu prosperous and happy, when nobody was allowed tc rob them. The Welsh were, however, terrible robbers. You remember that they are the remains of the old Britons, who used to have all Britain. They hadw never left off thinking that they had a right to it. and coming down out of their mountains to burnj the houses and steal the cattle of the Saxons, as they still called the English. Edward tried to make friends with their princes — Llewellyn and David — and to make them keep their people in order. He gave David lands in England, and let Llewel¬ lyn marry his cousin, Eleanor de Montfort. But they broke their promises shamefully, and did such savage things to the English on their borders that he was forced to put a stop to it, and went to war. David was made prisoner, and put to death as a traitor; and Llewellyn was met by some soldiers near the bridge of Builth and killed, without then- knowing who he was. Edward had, in the mean¬ time, conquered most of the country; and he told the Welsh chiefs that, if they would come and meet him at Caernarvon Castle, he would give Edward /., Longshanks. 117 them a prince who had been born in their country —had never spoken a word of any language but theirs. They all came, and the king came down to them with his own little baby son in his arms, who had lately been born in Caernarvon Castle, and, of course, had never spoken any language at all. The Welsh were obliged to accept him ; and he had a Welsh nurse, that the first words he spoke might be Welsh. They thought he would have been altogether theirs, as he then had an elder brother; but in a year or two the oldest boy died; and, ever since that time, the eldest son of the King of England has always been Prince of Wales. There was a plan for the little Prince Edward of Caernarvon being married to a little girl, who was grand-daugliter to the King of Scotland, and would be Queen of Scotland herself — and this would have led to the whole island being under one king — but, unfortunately, the little maiden died. It was so hard to decide who ought to reign, out of all her cousins, that they asked king Edward to choose among them — since everyone knew that a great piece of Scotland belonged to him as over-lord, just as liis own dukedom of Aquitaine belonged to the King of France over 118 Young Folks' History of England. him; ancl the Kings of Scotland alwa 3 's used to pay homage to those of England for it. Edward chose John Balliol, the one who had the best right; but he made him understand that, as over- lord, he meant to see that as good order was kept in Scotland as in England. Now, the English kings had never meddled with Scottish affairs be¬ fore, and the Scots were furious at finding that he did so. They said it was insulting them and their king; and poor Balliol did not know what to do among them, but let them defy Edward in his name. This brought Edward and his army to Scotland. The strong places were taken and filled with English soldiers, and Balliol was made pris¬ oner, adjudged to have rebelled against his lord and forfeited his kingdom, and was sent away to France. Edward thought it would be much better for the whole country to join Scotland to England, and rule it himself. And so, no doubt, it would have been ; but many of the Scots were not will¬ ing, — and in spite of all the care he could take, the soldiers who guarded his castles often behaved shamefully to the people round them. One gen¬ tleman, named William Wallace, whose home had been broken up by some soldiers, fled to the Edward /., Longslianhs. > 119 woods and hills, and drew so many Scots round him that he had quite an army. There was a great fight at the Bridge of Stirling ; the English governors were beaten, and Wallace led his men over the Border into Northumberland, where they plundered and burnt wherever they went, in re¬ venge for what had been done in Scotland. Edward gathered his forces and came to Scot¬ land. The army that Wallace had drawn together could not stand before him, but was defeated at Falkirk, and Wallace had to take to the woods. Edward promised pardon to all who would submit, — and almost all did ; but Wallace still lurked in the.hills, till one of his own countrymen betrayed him to the English, when he was sent to London, and put to death. All seemed quieted, and English garrisons — that is, guarding soldiers — were in all the Scottish towns and castles, when, suddenly, Robert Bruce, one of the half English, half Scottish nobles be¬ tween whom Edward had judged, ran away from the English court, with his horse’s shoes put on backwards. The next thing that was heard of him was, that he had quarreled with one of his cousins in the church at Dumfries, and stabbed him to the 120 Young Folks’ History of England. heart, and then had gone to Scone and had been crowned King of Scotland. Edward was bitterly angry now. He sent on an army to deal unsparingly with the rising, and set out to follow with his son, now grown to man’s estate. Crueller things than he had ever allowed before were done to the places where Robert Bruce had been acknowledged as king, and his friends were hung as traitors wherever they were found; but Bruce himself could not be caught. He was living a wild life among the lakes and hills; and Edward, who was an old man now, had been taken so ill at Carlisle, that he could not come on to keep his own strict rule among his men. All the winter he lay sick there ; and in the spring he heard that Bruce, whom he thought quite crushed, had sud¬ denly burst upon the English, defeated them, and was gathering strength every day. Edward put on his armor and set out for Scot¬ land; but at Burgh-on-the-Sands his illness came on again, and he died there at seventy years old. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, under a great block of stone, and the inscription on it only sa} r s, “ Edward I., 1308 — The Hammer of the Scots — Keep Treaties.” His good wife, Queen Eleanor, had died many years before him, and was Edward I ., Longshanks. 121 also buried at Westminster. All the way from Grantham, in Lincolnshire—where she died — to London, Edward set up a beautiful stone cross wherever her body rested for the night — fifteen of them — but only three are left now. CHAPTER XVI. EDWARD II., OF CAERNARVON. a.d. 1307 — 1327 . NLIKE his father in everything was the young Edward, who had just come to man¬ hood when he became king. Nay, he never did come to manhood in mind, for he was as silly and easily led as his grandfather, Henry TIL, had been. He had a friend — a gay, handsome, thoughtless, careless young man — named Piers Gaveston, who had often led him into mischief. His father had banished this dangerous companion, and forbidden, under pain of his heaviest displeasure, the two young men from ever meeting again ; hut the mo¬ ment the old king ivas dead, Edward turned back from Scotland, where he Avas so much Avanted, and sent for Piers Gaveston again. At the same time 122 Edward II., of Caernarvon. 123 his bride arrived — Isabel, daughter to the King of France, a beautiful girl — and there was a splendid wedding feast; but the king and Gaveston were both so vain and conceited, that they cared more about their own beauty and fine dress than the young queen's, and she found herself quite neg¬ lected. The nobles, too, were angered at the airs that Gaveston gave himself; he not only dressed splendidly, had a huge train of servants, and man¬ aged the king- as he pleased, but he was very insolent to them, and gave them nick-names. He called the king’s cousin, the Earl of Lancaster, “the old hog;” the Earl of Pembroke, “Joseph the Jew ; ” and the Earl of Warwick, “the black dog.” Meantime, the king and he were wasting the treasury, and doing harm of all kinds, till the harons gathered together and forced the king to send his favorite into banishment. Gaveston went, but he soon came back again and joined the king, who was at last setting out for Scotland. The nobles, however, would not endure his re¬ turn. They siezed him, brought him to Warwick Castle, and there held a kind of Court, which could hardly be called of Justice, for they had no right at all to sentence him. He spoke them fair now, and begged hard for his life ; but they could 124 Yount) Folks' History of England. not forget the names lie had called them, and he was beheaded on Blacklow Hill. Edward was frill of grief and anger for the cruel death of his friend; hut he was forced to keep it out of sight, for all the barons were coming round him for the Scottish war. While he had been wasting his time, Robert Bruce had obtained every strong place in Scotland, except Stirling Castle, and there the English governor had promised to yield, if succor did not come from England within a year and a day. The year was almost over when Edward came into Scotland with a fine army of English, Welsh, and Gascons from Aquitaine; but Robert Bruce was a great and able general, and he was no gene¬ ral at all; so when the armies met at Bannock¬ burn, under the walls of Stirling, the English were worse beaten than ever they had been anywhere else, except at Hastings. Edward was obliged to flee away to England, and though Bruce was never owned by the English to be King of Scotland, there he really reigned, having driven every Englishman away, and taken all the towns and castles. Indeed, the English had grown so much afraid of the Scots, that a hundred would flee at sight of two. Edward IT.. "t Caernarvon. 125 The king comforted, liimseli with a new tiiend _ Hugh le Despencer — who, with his old father, had his own way, just like Gaveston. Again the barons rose, and required that they should be ban¬ ished. They went, but the Earl of Lancaster car¬ ried his turbulence too far, and, when he heard that the father had come back, raised an army, and was even found to have asked Robert Bruce to help him against his own king, this made the other barons so angry that they joined the king against him, and he was made prisoner and put to death for making war on the king, and making friends with the enemies of the country. Edward had his Le Despencers back again, and very discontented the sight made the whole coun¬ try _ and especially the queen, whom he had al¬ ways neglected, though she now had four children. He had never tried to gain her love, and she hated him more and more. There was some danger of a quarrel with her brother, the King of 1 ranee, and she offered to go with her son Edward, now about fourteen, and settle it. But this was only an excuse. She went about to the princes abroad, telling them how ill she was used by her husband, and asking for help. A good many knights be¬ lieved and pitied her, and came with her to Eng- 12H Yount/ Folk -s' History of England. land to help. All the English who hated the he I Despencers joined her, and she led the young ] prince against his father. Edward and Ids friends were hunted across into Wales; but they were i tracked out one 1>}' one, and the Despencers were l put to a cruel death, though Edward gave himself up in hopes of saving them. The queen and her friends made him own that ; he did not deserve to reign, and would give up the crown to his son. Then they kept him in prison, j taking him from one castle to another, in great misery. The rude soldiers of his guard mocked him and crowned him with hay, and gave him dirty ditch water to shave with; and when they found he was too strong and healthy to die only of bad food and damp lodging, they murdered him one night in Berkeley Castle. He lies buried in Gloucester Cathedral, not far from that other fool¬ ish and unfortunate prince, Robert of Normandy. \ He had reigned twenty years, and was dethroned in 1327. The queen then wanted to get rid of Edmund, Earl of Kent, the poor king's youngest brother. So a report was spread that Edward was alive, and Edmund was allowed to peep into a dark prison room, where he saw a man who he thought was his EDWARD II. AND IIIS JAILERS. Edward //., of Caernarvon. 12y brother. He tried to stir up friends to set the king free ; but this was called rebelling, and he was taken and beheaded at Winchester by a criminal condemned to die, for it was such a wicked sentence that nobody else could be found to carry it out. CHAPTER XVII. EDWARD 111 a.d. 1327—137 F OR about three years, the cruel Queen Isabel and her friends managed all the country ; but as soon as her son — Edward III., who had been crowned instead of his father — understood how wicked she had been, and was strong enough to deal with her party, he made them prisoners, put 130 Edward III. 131 the worst of them to death, and kept the queen shut up iu a castle as long as she lived. He had a very good queen of his own, named Philippa, who brought cloth-workers over from her own country, Hainault (now part of Belgium), to teach the En¬ glish their trade, and thus began to render England the chief country in the world for wool and cloth. Queen Isabel, Edward's mother, had, you remem¬ ber, been daughter of the King of France. All her three brothers died without leaving a son, and their cousin, whose name was Philip, began to reign in their stead. Edward, however, fancied that the crown of France properly belonged to him, in right of his mother; but he did not stir about it at once, and, perhaps, never would have done so at all, but for two things. One was, that the King of h ranee, P hili p VI., had been so foolish as to fancy that one of his lords, named Robert of Artois, had been bewitching him — by sticking pins into a wax figure and roasting it before a fire. So this Robert was driven out of France and, coming to England, stirred Edward up to go and overthrow Philip. The other was, that the English barons had grown so restless and troublesome, that they would not stay peacefully at home and mind their own estates; — but if they had not wars abroad, they 132 Young Folks' History of England. always gave the king trouble at home ; and Edward liked better that they should fight for him than against him. So he called himself King of France and England, and began a war which lasted — with short spaces of quiet — for full one hundred years, and only ended in the time of the great grand¬ children of the men who entered upon it. There was one great sea-fight riff Sluvs, when the king sat in his ship, in a black velvet dress, and gained a great victory; but it was a good while before there was an}’ great battle by land — so long, that the king's eldest son, Edward Prince of Wales, was sixteen years old. He is generally called the Black Prince — no one quite knows why, for his hair, like that of all these old English kings, was quite light, and his eyes were blue. He was such a spirited young soldier, that when the French army under King Philip came in sight of the English one, near the village of Crecy, King Edward said he should have the honor of the day, and stood under a wind¬ mill on a hill watching the fight, while the prince led the English army. He gained a very great victory, and in the evening came and knelt before his father, saying the praise was not his own but the king’s, who had ordered all so wisely. Afterwards, while Philip had fled away, Edward besieged Calais, the QUEEN PHIMPPA ON HER KNEES BEFORE THE KING. V, Edward III. 133 town just opposite to Dover. The inhabitants were very brave, and held out for a long time; and while Edward was absent, the Scots under David, the son of Robert Bruce, came over the Border, and began to burn and plunder in North¬ umberland. However, Philippa could be brave in time of need. She did not send for her husband, but called an army together, and the Scots were so well beaten at Neville’s Cross, that their king, David himself, was obliged to give himself up to an English squire.. The man would not let the queen have his prisoner, but rode day and night to Dover, and then crossed to Calais to tell the king, who bade him put King David into Queen Philippa’s keeping. She came herself to the camp, just as the brave men of Calais had been starved out; and Edward had said he would only consent not to burn the town down, if six of the chief townsmen would bring him the keys of the gates, kneeling, with sackcloth on, and halters round their necks, ready to be hung. Queen Philippa wept when she saw them, and begged that they might be spared; and when the king granted them to her she had them led away, and gave each a good dinner and a fresh suit of clothes. The king, however, turned all the French people out of 134 Young Folks’ History of England. Calais, and filled it with English, and it remained quite an English town for more than 200 years. King Philip VI. of France died, and his son John became King, while still the war went on. The Black Prince and John had a terrible battle at a place called Poitiers, and the English gained another great victory. King John and one of his sons were made prisoners, but when they were brought to the tent where the Black Prince was to sup, he made them sit down at the table before him, and waited on them as if they had been his guests instead of his prisoners. He did all he could to prevent captivity being a pain to them; and when he brought them to London, he gave John a tall white horse to ride, and only rode a small pony himself by his side. There were two kings prison¬ ers in the Tower of London at once, and they were treated as if they were visitors and friends. John was allowed to go home, provided he would pay a ransom by degrees, as he could get the money together; and, in the meantime, his two elder sons ■were to be kept at Calais in his stead. But the}' would not stay at Calais, and King John could not obtain the sum for his ransom; so, rather than cheat King Edward, he went back to his prison in England again. He died soon after; and his son thk black prince serving the french king. Edward III. 137 Charles was a cleverer and wiser man, who knew it was better not to fight battles with the English, but made a truce, or short peace. Prince Edward governed that part of the south of France that belonged to his father; but he went on a foolish expedition into Spain, to help a very bad king whom his subjects had driven out, and there caught an illness from which he never quite recovered. While he "was ill King Charles began the war again; and, though there was no battle, he tormented the English, and took the castles and towns they held. The Black Prince tried to fight, but he was too weak and ill to do much, and was obliged to go home, and leave the government to his brother John, Duke of Lancaster. He lived about six years after lie came home, and then died, to the great sorrow of everyone. His father, King Edward, was now too old and feeble to attend to the affairs of the country. Queen Philippa was dead too, and as no one took proper care of the poor old king, he fell into the hands of bad ser¬ vants, who made themselves rich and neglected him. When, at length, he lay dying, they stole the ring off his finger before he had breathed his last, and left him all alone, with the doors open, till 138 Young Folks' History of England. a priest came by, and stayed and prayed by him till his last moment. He had reigned exactly fifty years. You had better learn and remember the names of his sons, as you will hear more about some of them. They were Edward, Lionel, John, i Edmund, and Thomas. Edward was Prince of Wales; Lionel, Duke of Clarence; John, Duke of Lancaster; Edmund, Duke of York; and Thomas, j ’ I Duke of Cloucester. Edward and Lionel both ' died before their father. Edward had left a son I named Richard; Lionel had left a daughter named Philippa. CHAPTER XVIII. RICHARD II. A.d. 1377—1399. T HESE were not very good times in England. The new king, Richard, was only eleven years old, and his three uncles did not care much for his good or the good of the nation. There was not much fighting going on in France, but for the little there was a great deal of money was wanting, and the great lords were apt to be very hard upon the poor people on their estates. They would not let them be taught to read; and if a poor man who belonged to an estate went away to a town, his lord could have him brought back to his old home. Any tax, too, fell more heavily on the poor than the rich. One tax, especially, called the poll tax, which was made when Richard was sixteen, vexed 139 140 Young Folks' History of England. them greatly. Everyone above fifteen years old had to pay fourpence, and the collectors were often very rude and insolent. A man named Wat Tyler, in Kent, was so angry with a rude collector as to strike him dead. All the villagers came together with sticks, and scythes, and flails; and Wat Tyler told them they would all go to London, and tell the king how his poor commons were treated. More people and more joined them on the way, and an immense multitude of wild looking men came pouring into London, where the Lord Mayor and Aldermen were taken by surprise, and could do nothing to stop them. They did not do much harm then; they lay on the grass all night round the Tower, and said they wanted to speak to the king. In the morning he came down to his barge, and meant to have spoken to them; but his people, seeing such a host of wild men, took fright, and carried him back again. He went out again the next day on horseback; but while he was speaking to some of them, the worst of them broke into the Tower, where they seized Archbishop Simon of Canterbury, and fancying he was one of the king’s bad advisers, the}' cut off his head. Richard had to sleep in the house called the Royal Wardrobe that night, but he went out again on horseback among the mob, and began trying to understand Richard II. 143 what they wanted. Wat Tyler, while talking, grew violent, forgot to whom he was speaking, and laid his hand on the king’s bridle, as if to threaten or take him prisoner. Upon this, the Lord Mayor, with his mace — the large crowned staff that is carried before him — dealt the man such a blow that he fell from his horse, and an attendant thrust him through with a sword. The people wavered, md seemed not to know what to do: and the young king, with great readiness, rode forward md said — “Good fellows, have you lost your eader ? This fellow was but a traitor, I am your dug, and will be your captain and guide.” Then le rode at their head out into the fields, and the gentlemen, who had mustered their men by this ime, were able to get between them and the city, "he people of each county were desired to state heir grievances ; the king engaged to do what he ould for them, and they went home. Richard seems to have really wished to take way some of the laws that were so hard upon them, ut his lords would not let him, and he had as yet cry little power — being only a boy — and by the me he grew up his head was full of vanity and 'lly. He was very handsome, and he cared more r fine clothes and amusements than for business; 144 Young Folks' History of England. and his youngest uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, did all he could to keep him back, and hinder him from taking his affairs into his own hands. Not till he was twenty-four did Richard begin to govern for himself; and then the Duke of Gloucester was always grumbling and setting the people to grum¬ ble, because the king choose to have peace with France. Duke Thomas used to lament over the glories of the battles of Edward III., and tell the people they had taxes to pay to keep the king in ermine robes, and rings, and jewels, and to let him give feasts and tilting matches — when the knights, in beautiful, gorgeous armor, rode against one another in sham fight, and the king and ladies looked on and gave the prize. Now, Richard knew very well that all this did not cost half so much as his grandfather’s wars, and he said it did not signify to the people what he wore, or how he amused himself, as long as he did not tax them and take their lambs and sheaves to pay for it. But the people would not believe him. and Gloucester was always stirring them up against him, and interfering with him in council. At last. Richard went as if on a visit' to his uncle at Pleshv Castle, and there, in his own presence, caused him to be seized and sent off to Calais. In a few days’ Edward IV. 179 Edward longed to strike a blow for his inheritance, and they had friends in Wales whom they hoped to meet. So they made their way into Glouces¬ tershire ; but there King Edward, with both bis brothers, came down upon them at Tewkesbury, and there their army was routed, and the young prince taken and killed—some say by the king him¬ self and his brothers. Poor broken hearted Queen Margaret was made prisoner too, and carried to the Tower, where she arrived a day or two after the meek and crazed captive, Henry VI., had been slain, that there might be no more risings in his name. And so ended the long war of York and Lancaster — though not in peace or joy to the savage, faithless family who had conquered. Edward was merry and good-natured when not angered, and had quite sense and ability enough to have been a very good king, if he had not been lazy, selfish, and full of vices. He actually set out to conquer France, and then let himself be per¬ suaded over and paid off by the cunning King of France, and went home again, a laughing-stock to everybody. The two kings had an interview on a bridge over the River Somme in France, where they talked through a kind of fence, each being too 180 Young Folks' History of England. suspicious of the other to meet, without such a barrier between them. As to George, the king had never trusted him since his shameful behavior when Warwick rebelled; besides, he was always abusing the queen’s relations, and Richard was always telling the king of all the bad and foolish things he did or said. At last there was a great outbreak of anger, and the king ordered the Duke of Clarence to be imprisoned in the Towner; aud there, before long, he too was killed. The saying was that he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine, but this is not at all likely to be true. He left two little children, a boy and a girl. So much cruel slaughter had taken place, that most of the noble families in England had lost many sons, and a great deal of their wealth, and none of them ever became again so mighty as the king-maker had been. His daughter, Anne, the wife of poor Edward of Lancaster, was found by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, hidden as a cook- maid in London, and she was persuaded to marry him — as, indeed, she had always been 'utended for him. He was a little, thin, slight man, with one shoulder higher than the other, and keen, cun¬ ning dark eyes ; and as the king was very tall, with Edward IV. 181 a handsome, blue-eyed, fair face, people laughed at the contrast, called Gloucester Richard Crook¬ back and were very much afraid of him. It was in this reign that books began to be printed in England instead of written. Printing had been found out in Germany a little before, and books had been shown to Henry VI., but the troubles of his time kept him from attending to them. Now, however, Edward’s sister, the Duchess of Burgundy, much encouraged a printer named Caxton, whose books she sent her brother, and other presses were set up in London. Another great change had now come in. Long ago, in the time of Henry III., a monk named Roger Bacon had made gunpowder; but nobody used it much until, in the reign of Edward III., it was found out how cannon might be fired with it; and some say it was first used in the battle of Crecy. But it was not till the reign of Edward IV. that smaller guns, such as each soldier could carry one of for himself, were invented — harquebuses, as they were called; — and after this the whole way of fighting was gradually altered. Printing and gunpowder both made very great changes in everything, though not all at once. 182 Young Folks History of England. King Edward did not live to see the changes. He had hurt his health with his revellings and amusements, and died quite in middle age, in the year 1488: seeing, perhaps, at last, how much better a king he might have been. 7 CHAPTER XXIII. EDWARD V. A. i). 1483. E DWARD IV. left several daughters and two sons—Edward, Prince of Wales, who was fourteen years old, and Richard, Duke of York, who was eleven. Edward was at Ludlow Castle— where the princes of Wales were always brought up—with his mother’s brother, Lord Rivers; his half-brother, Richard Grey; and other gentlemen. When the tidings came of his father’s death, hey set out to bring him to London to be crowned dng. But, in the meantime, the Duke of Gloucester md several of the noblemen, especially the Duke >f Buckingham, agreed that it was unbearable that he queen and her brothers should go on having all ho power, as they had done in Edward’s time. 184 Young Folks' History of England. Till the king was old enough to govern, his father's brother, the Duke of Gloucester, was the proper person to rule for him, and they would soon put an end to the Woodvilles. The long wars had made everybody cruel and regardless of the laws, so that no one made much objection when Gloucester and Buckingham met the king and took him from his uncle and half-brother, who were sent off to Ponte¬ fract Castle, and in a short time their heads were cut off there. Another of the late king’s friends was Lord Hastings; and as he sat at the council table in the Tower of London, with the other lords, Richard came in, and showing his own lean, shrunken arm, declared that Lord Hastings had bewitched him, and made it so. The other lords began to say that if he had done so it was horrible. But Richard would listen to no ifs, and said he would not dine till Hastings’s head was off. And his cruel word was done. ' The queen saw that harm was intended, and went with all her other children to her former refuge in the sanctuary at Westminster; nor would she leave it when her son Edward rode in state into London and was taken to the Tower, which was then a palace as well as a prison. The Duke of Gloucester and the Council said Richard II 145 time Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, was dead; and to this day nobody knows whether his grief and rage brought on a fit, or if he was put to death. It is certain, at least, that Richard's other two uncles do not seem to have treated the king as if he had been to blame. The elder of these uncles, the Duke of Lancaster, was called John of Gaunt because he had been born at Ghent, a town in Flanders. He was becoming an old man, and only tried to help the king and keep things quiet; but Henry, his eldest son, was a fine high-spirited young man — a favorite with everybody, and was always putting himself forward — and the king was very much afraid of him. One day, when Parliament met, the king stood up, and commanded Henry of Lancaster to tell all Lose present what the Duke of Norfolk had said vhen they were riding together. Henry gave in a ■vritten paper, saying that the duke had told him hat they should all be ruined, like the Duke of Houcester, and that the king would find some way o destroy them. Norfolk angrily sprang up, and eclared he had said no such thing. In those ays, when no one could tell which spoke truth, lie two parties often would offer to fight, and it 146 Young Folks’’ History of England. was believed that God would show the right, by- giving the victory to the sincere one. So Henry and Norfolk were to fight; but just as they were mounted on their horses, with their lances in their hands, the king threw down his staff before them, stopped the combat, and sentenced Norfolk to be banished from England for life, and Henry for ten years. Not long after Henry had gone, his old father — John of Gaunt—died, and the king kept all his great dukedom of Lancaster. Henry would not bear this, and knew that many people at home thought it very unfair ; so he came to England, and as soon as he landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire, people flocked to him so eagerly, that he began to think he could do more than make himself duke of Lancaster. King Richard was in Ireland, where his cousin, the governor — Roger Mortimer — had been killed by the wild Irish. He came home in haste on hearing of Henry's arrival, but everybody turned against him: and the Earl of Northumber¬ land, whom he had chiefly trusted, made him prisoner and carried him to Henry. He was taken to London, and there set before Parliament, to confess that he had ruled so ill that he was ItieJiard II. 147 unworthy to reign, and gave up the crown to his dear cousin Henry of Lancaster, in the year 1399. Then lie was sent away to Pontefract Castle, and what happened to him there nobody knows, but he never came out of it alive. CHAPTER XIX. HENRY IV. a.d. 1399—1413. HE English people had often chosen their J- king out of the royal family in old times, but from John to Richard II., he had always been the son and heir of the last king. Now, though poor Richard had no child, Henry of Lancaster was not the next of kin to him, for Lionel, Duke of Clarence, had come between the Black Prince and John of Gaunt; and his great grandson, Edmund Mortimer, was thought by many to have a better right to be king than Henry. Besides, people did not know whether Richard was alive, and they thought him hardly used, and wanted to set him free. So Henry had a very uneasy time. Every¬ one had been fond of him when he was a bright, Henry IV 149 friendly, free-spoken noble, and he had thought that he would be a good king and much loved ; but he had gained the crown in an evil way, and it never gave him any peace or joy. The Welsh, who always had loved Richard, took up arms for him, and the Earl of Northumberland, who had be¬ trayed Richard, expected a great deal too much from Henry. The earl had a brave son — Henry Percy — who was so fiery and eager that he was commonly called Hotspur. He was sent to fight with the Welsh: and with the king’s son, Henry, Prince of Wales — a brave boy of fifteen or sixteen — under his charge, to teach him the art of war; and they used to climb the mountains and sleep in tents together as good friends. But the Scots made an attack on England. Henry Percy went north to fight with them, and beat-them in a great battle, making many prisoners. The King sent to ask to have the prisoners sent to London, and this made the proud Percy so angry that he gave up the cause of King Henry, and went off to Wales, taking his prisoners with him; and there — being by this time nearly sure that poor Richard must be dead — he joined the Welsh in choosing, as the only right king of England, young Edmund Mortimer. Henry IY. and hi? 150 Young Folks Ilistorg of England. sons gathered an army easily — for the Welsh were so savage and cruel, that the English were sure to fight against them if they broke into England. The battle was fought near Shrewsbury. It was a very fierce one, and in it Hotspur was killed, the Welsh put to flight, and the Prince of Wales fought so well that everyone saw he was likely to be a brave, warlike king, like Edward I. or Edward III. The troubles were not over, however, for the Earl of Northumberland himself, and Archbishop Scrope of York, took up arms against the king; but they were put down without a battle. The Earl fled and hid himself, but the archbishop was taken and beheaded — the first bishop whom a king of England had ever put to death. The Welsh went on plundering and doing harm, and Prince Henry had to be constantly on the watch against them ; and, in fact, there never was a reign so full of plots and conspiracies. The king never knew whom to trust: one friend after another turned against him, and he became soured and wretched: he was worn out with disappointment and guarding against everyone, and at last he grew even suspicious of his brave son Henry, because he was so bright and bold, and was so much loved. Hen ry IV. 151 The prince was ordered home from Wales, and obliged to live at Windsor, with nothing to do, while his youngest brothers were put before him and trusted by their father — one of them even sent to command the army in France. But hap¬ pily the four brothers — Henry, Thomas, John and Humfrey— all loved each other so well that nothing could make them jealous or at enmity with one another. At Windsor, too, the king kept young Edmund Mortimer — whom the Welsh had tried to make king, — and also the young Prince of Scotland, whom an English ship had caught as lie was sailing for France to be educated. It was very dishonorable of the king to have taken him : but he was brought up with the young English princes, and they all led a happy life together. There are stories told of Henry — Prince Hal, as he was called — leading a wild, merry life, as a sort # of madcap; playing at being a robber, and break¬ ing into the wagons that were bringing treasure for his father, and then giving the money back again. Also, there is a story that, when one of his friends was taken before the Lord Chief Justice, he went and ordered him to be released, and that when the justice refused he drew his sword, upon which the justice sent him to prison; and he went !■)- .) "nii'/ Fbey any other; and when their own archers were n the way, the horsemen began cutting them down is if they were the enemy. Some fought bravely, iut it was of little use ; and by night all the French vere routed, and King Henry’s banner waving in ictory over the field. He went back to England 1 great glory, and all the aldermen of London ame out to meet him in red gowns and gold bains, and among them was Sir Richard Wliit- ngton, the great silk mercer. Henry was so modest that he would not allow le helmet he had worn at Agincou.i, all knocked jout with terrible blows, to be carried before him hen he rode into London, and he went straight to lurch, to give thanks to God for his victory. He ion went back k> France, and went on conquering 162 Young Folks' History of England. it till the queen came to an agreement with hii that he should marry her daughter Catherine, au that, though poor, crazy Charles VI. should reig to the end of his life, when he died Henry au Catherine should be king and queen of Franc. So Henry and Catherine were married, and he too her home to England with great joy and porn leaving his brother Thomas, Duke of Clarence, 1 take care of his army in France. For, of coins though the queen had made this treaty for her ma husband, most brave, honest Frenchmen could nd but feel it a wicked and unfair thing to give tl kingdom away from her son, the Dauphin Charle He was not a good man, and had consented to tl murder of his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, an this had turned some against him ; but still he wa badly treated, and the bravest Frenchmen coul not bear to see their country given up to tl English. So, though he took no trouble to figl for himself, they fought for him, and got son Scots to help them; and by and by news came 1 Henry that his army had been beaten, and h brother killed. He came back again in haste to France, and h presence made everything go well again; but a the winter he Avas besieging the town of Meau Renry V ., of Monmouth. 163 ■here there was a very cruel robber, who made all le roads to Paris unsafe, and by the time he had ken it his health was much injured. His queen une to him, and they kept a very grand court at aris, at Whitsuntide; but soon after, when Henry t out to join his army, he found himself so ill and eak that he was obliged to turn back to the astle of Vincennes, where he grew much worse, e called for all his friends, and begged them to be itliful to his little baby son, whom he had never i r en seen; and he spoke especially to his brother ,)hn, Duke of Bedford, to whom he left the (’large of all he had gained. He had tried to be a |iod man, and though his attack on France was ially wrong, and caused great misery, he had leant to do right. So he was not afraid to face (ath, and he died when only thirty-four years cl, while he was listening to the 51st Psalm, keryhody grieved for him — even the French — t d nobody had ever been so good and dutiful to for old King Charles, who sat in a corner lament- i i for his good son Henry, and wasting away till 1 died, only three weeks later, so that he was 1 ried the same day, at St. Denys Abbey, near Iris, as Henry was buried at Westminster Abbey, rar London. CHAPTER XXL HENRY VI., OF WINDSOR. A.D. 1423—1461. 'T'HE poor little baby, Henry VI., was but nine ^ months old when — over the grave of his father in England, and his grandfather in France— he was proclaimed King of France and England. The crown of England was held over his head, and his lords made their oaths to him: and when he was nine years old he was sent to Paris, and there crowned King of France. He was a very good, little, gentle boy, as meek and obedient as possible; but his friends, who knew that a king must be brave, strong, and firm for his people’s sake, began to be afraid that nothing would ever make him manly. The war in France went on all the time: the Duke of Bedford keeping the north and the old lands in the south-west for little Henry, and the 164 Henry VI., of Windsor. 167 Yench doing their best for their rightful king — hough he was so lazy and fond of pleasure that he 3 t them do it all alone. Yet a wonderful thing happened in his favor, [he English were besieging Orleans, when a young illage girl, named Joan of Arc, came to King diaries and told him that she had had a commission l'oni Heaven to save Orleans, and to lead him to theims, where French kings were always crowned. \nd she did! She always acted as one led by leaven. Many wonderful things are told of her, nd one circumstance that produced a great im- iression on the public mind was that when brought nto the presence of Charles, whom she had never >efore seen, she recognized him, although he was Iressed plainly, and one of the courtiers had on the •oyal apparel. She never let anything wrong be lone in her sight — no bad words spoken, no avage deeds done; and she never fought herself, inly led the French soldiers. The English thought ler a witch, and fled like sheep whenever they saw ler; and the French common men were always irave with her to lead them. And so she really ,aved Orleans, and brought the king to be crowned it Rheims. But neither Charles nor his selfish bad lobles liked her. She was too good for them; and 168 Young Folks' History of England. so, though they would not let her go home to her village as she wished, they gave her no proper help; and once, when there was a fight going on outside the walls of a town, the French all ran away and left her outside, where she was taken by the English. And then, I grieve to sa}', the court that sat to judge her — some English and some French of the English party—sentenced her to be burnt to death in the market place at Rouen as a witch, and her own king never tried to save her. But the spirit she had stirred up never died away. The French went on winning back more and more; and there were so many quarrels among the English that they had little chance of keeping anything. The king’s youngest uncle, Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester, was always disputing with the Beaufort family, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lan¬ caster— father to Heniy IV.—had, late in life, married a person of low birth, and her children were called Beaufort, after the castle where they were born — not Plantagenet — and were hardly reckoned as princes by other people ; but they were very proud, and thought themselves equal to any¬ body. The good Duke of Bedford died quite worn out with trying to keep the peace among them, and to get proper help from England to save Henry J / . of Windsor. 169 the lands his brother had won in France. All this time, the king liked the Beanforts much better than Duke Humfrey, and he followed their advice, and that of their friends, the Earl of Suffolk, in marrying Margaret of Anjou — the daughter of a French prince, who had a right to a great part of the lands the English held. All these were given back to her father, and this made the Duke of Gloucester and all the English more angry, and they hated the young queen as the cause. She was as bold and high-spirited as the king was gentle and meek. He loved nothing so well as praying, praising God, and reading; and he did one great thing for the country — which did more for it than all the fighting kings had done — he founded Eton College, close to Windsor Castle ; and there many of our best clergymen, and soldiers, and statesmen, have had their education. But while he was happy over rules for his scholars, and in plans for the beautiful chapel, the queen was eagerly taking part in the quarrels, and the nation hated her the more for interfering. And very strangely, Hum¬ frey, Duke of Gloucester, was, at the meeting of Parliament, accused of high treason and sent to prison, where, in a few days, he was found dead in his bed — just like his great-uncle, Thomas, Duke 170 Young Folks’ History of England. of Gloucester; nor does anyone understand the mystery in one case better than in the other, except that we are more sure that gentle Henry VI. had nothing to do with it than we can be of Richard IT. These were very bad times. There was a rising like Wat Tyler's, under a man named Jack Cade, who held London for two or three days before he was put down; and. almost at the same time, the queen’s first English friend, Suffolk, was exiled by her enemies, and taken at sea and murdered by some sailors. Moreover, the last of the brave old friends of Henry V. was killed in France, while trying to save the remains of the old duchy of Aquitaine, which had belonged to the English kings ever since Henry II. married Queen Eleanor. That was the end of the hundred years’ war, for peace was made at last, and England kept nothing in France but the one city of Calais. Still things were growing worse. Duke Hum- frey left no children, and as time went on and the king had none, the question was who should reign. If the Beauforts were to be counted as princes, they came next; but everyone hated them, so that people recollected that Henry IV. had thrust aside the young Edmund Mortimer, grandson to Lionel, who had been next eldest to the Black Prince. Henry FT., of Windsor. 171 Edmund was dead, but liis sister Anne had married a son of the Duke of York, youngest son of Edward III.; and her son Richard, Duke of York, could not help feeling that he had a much better right to he king than any Beaufort. There was a great English noble named Richard Nevil, Earl of Warwick, who liked to manage everything—just the sort of baron that was always mischievous at home, if not fighting in France — and he took up York’s cause hotly. York's friends used to wear white roses, Beaufort’s friends red roses, and the two parties kept on getting more bitter; but as no one wished any ill to gentle King Henry — who, to make matters worse, sometimes had fits of madness, like Ins poor grandfather in France—■ they would hardly have fought it out in his lifetime, if he had not at last had a little son, who was born while he was so mad that he did not know of it. Then, when York found it was of no use to wait, he began to make war, backed up by Warwick, and, after much fighting, they made the king prisoner, and forced him to make an agreement that lie should reign as long as he lived, but that after that Richard of York should be king, and his son Edward be only Duke of Lancaster. This made the queen furiously angry. She would not give 172 Young Folks' History of England. up her son’s rights, and she gathered a great army, with which she came suddenly on the Duke of York near Wakefield, and destroyed nearly his whole army. He was killed in the battle ; and his second son, Edmund, was met on Wakefield bridge and stabbed by Lord Clifford; and Margaret had their heads set up over the gates of York, while she went on to London to free her husband. But Edward, York’s eldest son, was a better captain than he, and far fiercer and more cruel. He made the war much more savage than it had been before ; and after beating tire queen’s friends at Mortimer’s Cross, he hurried on to London, where the people — who had always been very fond of his father, and hated Queen Margaret — greeted him gladly. He was handsome and stately look¬ ing ; and though he was really cruel when offended, had easy, good-natured manners, and everyone in London was delighted to receive him and own him as king. But Henry and Margaret were in the north with many friends, and he followed them thither to Towton Moor, where, in a snow storm, began the most cruel and savage battle of all the war. Edward gained the victory, and nobody was spared, or made prisoner — all were killed who could not flee. Poor Henry was hidden among Ms Henry VI., of Windsor. 173 riends, and Margaret went to seek help in cotland and abroad, taking her son with her. •nee she brought another army and fought at 'exham, but she was beaten again; and before ng King Henry was discovered by his enemies, i.rried to London, and shut up a prisoner in the ' nver. His reign is reckoned to have ended i 1461. CHAPTER XXII. EDWARD IV. v. n. 14<> 1 — 1483. r I ''HOUGH Edward IV. was made king, tl wars of the Red and White Roses were n over yet. Queen Margaret and her friends we •always trying to get help for poor King Henr Edward had been so base and mean as to have hi led into London, with his feet tied together und his horse, while men struck him on the face, ai cried out, “ Behold the traitor! ” But Henry \v meek, patient, and gentle throughout; and, wh shut up in the Tower, spent his time in readi: and praying, or playing with his little dog. Queen Margaret and her son Edward were livi with her father in France, and she was alwai trying to have her husband set free and broug back to his throne. In the meantime, all Englal 174 Edward IV 175 was exceedingly surprised to find that Edward IV. had been secretly married to a beautiful lady named Elizabeth Woodville — Lady Grey. Her first husband had been killed fighting for Henry, and she had stood under an oak tree, when King Edward was passing, to entreat that his lands might not be taken from her little boys. The king- ell in love with her and married her, but for a ong time he was afraid to tell the Earl of Varwick; and when he did, Warwick was greatly tended — and all the more because Elizabeth’s elations were proud and gay in their dress, and 'tied to set themselves above all the old nobles. Varwick himself had no son, but he had two aughters, whom he meant to marry to the king’s vo brothers — George, Duke of Clarence, and ichard, Duke of Gloucester. Edward thought I is would make Warwick too powerful, and 1 ough he could not prevent George from marrying libel Nevil, the eldest daughter, the discontent £3W so strong that Warwick persuaded George to f with him, turn against his own brother, and oer Queen Margaret their help! No wonder Mrgaret did not trust them, and was very hard to p-suade that Warwick could mean well by her; b ', at last she consented, and gave her son 17fi Young Folks' History of England. Edward — a fine lad of sixteen — to many his daughter, Anne Nevil; after which, Warwick — whom men began to call the king-maker — went hack to England with Clarence, to raise their men, while she was to follow' with her son and his young j wife. Warw ick came so suddenly that he took the Yorkists at unawares. Edward had to flee for his j life to Flanders, leaving his wife and his babies to take shelter in Westminster Abbey — since no one 1 durst take any one out of a holy place — and poor i Henry was taken out of prison and set on the throne again. However, Edward soon got help inf Flanders, where bis sister was married to the Duke of Burgundy. He came back again, gathered his friends, and sent messages to his brother Clarence that he would forgive him if he would desert the earl. Xo one ever had less faith or honor than George of Clarence. He did desert Warwick, just as the battle of Barnet Heath was beginning; and Warwick's king-making all ended, for he wa; killed, with his brother and many others, in the battle. And this was the first news that met Margare when, after being long hindered by foul veathei she landed at Plymouth. She would have doc more wisely to have gone back, but her so" INTERVIEW BETWEEN EDWARD IV. AND LOUIS XI. Fdward V. 187 that this pretence at fear was very foolish, and was only intended to do them harm, and that, the little Duke of York ought to be with his brother; and they sent the Archbishop of Canterbury to desire her to give the boy up. He found the queen sit¬ ting desolate, with all her long light hair streaming about her, and her children round her; and he spoke kindly to her at first, and tried to persuade her of what he really believed himself — that it was all her foolish fears and fancies that the Duke of Gloucester could mean any ill to his little nephew, and that the two brothers ought to be together in his keeping. Elizabeth cried, and said that the boys were better apart, for they quarrelled when they were together, and that she could not give up little Richard. In truth, she guessed that their uncle vanted to get rid of them and to reign himself; ind she knew that while she had Richard, Edward ,vould be safe, since it would not make him king ,o destroy one without the other. Archbishop Vlorton, who believed Richard’s smooth words, and vas a very good, kind man, thought this all a voman’s nonsense, and told her that if she would lot give up the boy freely, he would be taken from ter by force. If she had been really a wise, brave 188 Young Folks’ History of England. mother, she would have gone to the Tower with her boy, as queen and mother, and watched over her children herself. But she had always been a silly, selfish woman, and she was afraid for herself. So she let the archbishop lead her child away, and only sat crying in the sanctuary instead of keeping sight of him. The next thing that happened was, that the I )uke of Gloucester caused one Dr. Shaw to preach a sermon to the people of London in the open air, explaining that King Edward IV. had been a very bad man, and had never been properly married to Lady Grey, and so that she was no queen at all, and her children had no right to reign. The Lon¬ doners liked Gloucester and hated the Woodvilles. and all belonging to them, and after some sermons and speeches of this sort, there were so many people inclined to take as their king the man rather than the boy, that the Duke of Buckingham led a deputation to request Richard to accept the crown in his nephew’s stead. He met it as if the whole notion was quite new to him, but, of course, accepted the crown, sent for his wife, Anne Nevil, and her son, and was soon crowned as King Richard III. of England. As for the two boys, they were never seen out of Edward V. 189 he Tower again. They were sent into the prison art of it, and nobody exactly knows what became f them there ; but there cannot he much doubt lat the} - must have been murdered. Some years iter, two men confessed that they had been nployed to smother the two brothers with pillows, is they slept; and though they added some partic- ars to the story that can hardly be believed, it is ost likely that this was true. Full two hundred ears later, a chest was found under a staircase, in hat is called the White Tower, containing bones tat evidently had belonged to boys of about f irteen and eleven years old; and these were 1 iced in a marble urn among the tombs of the figs in Westminster Abbey. But even to this dy, there are some people who doubt whether 1 ward Y. and Richard of York were really o rdered, or if Richard were not a person who cine back to England and tried to make himself kg. CHAPTER XXIV. RICHARD IIT. a. i). 1483 — 1485 . ~Q ICHARD III. seems to have 'washed to be ■*- good and great king; but be had made h way to the throne in too evil a manner to be like to prosper. How many people he had put to dea we do not know, for when the English began suspect that he had murdered his two nephew they also accused him of the death of everyone w had been secretly slain ever since Edward I came to the throne, when he had been a mere be He found he must be always on the watch; a his home was unhappy, for his son, for whose sa he had striven so hard to be king, died while y a boy, and Anne, his wife, not long after. Then his former staunch friend, the Duke I Buckingham, began to feel that though he wanil the sons of Elizabeth Woodville to be set as? 190 t Richard III. 191 Tom reigning, it was quite another thing to nurder them. He was a vain, proud man, who lad a little royal blood — being descended from Thomas, the first Duke of Gloucester, son of idward III. — and he bethought himself that, now 11 the House of Lancaster was gone, and so many f the House of York, lie might possibly become ing. But he had hardly begun to make a plot, efore the keen-sighted, watchful Richard found it ut, and had him seized and beheaded. There was another plot, though, that Richard id not find out in time. The real House of Ban¬ ister had ended when poor young Edward was Idled at Tewkesbury; but the Beauforts— the pildren of that younger family of John of Gaunt, ho had first begun the quarrel with the Duke of ork — were not all dead. Lady Margaret Beau- trt, the daughter of the eldest son, had married a elsh gentleman named Edmund Tudor, and had son called Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. |lward IV. had always feared that this youth 1 ght rise against him, and he had been obliged to under about in France and Brittany since the dath of his father; but nobody was afraid of Lady Jiirgaret, and she had married a Yorkist nobleman, I rd Stanley. 192 Young Folks’ History of England. Now, the eldest, daughter of Edward IV. — Elizabeth, or Lady Bessee, as she was called — was older than her poor young brothers; and she heard, to her great horror, that her uncle wanted to commit the great wickedness of making her his wife, after poor Anne Nerd's death. There is a curious old set of verses, written by Lord Stanley’s squire, which says that Lady Bessee called Lore Stanley to a secret room, and begged him to sene to his stepson, Richmond, to invite him to come tel England and set them all free. Stanley said he could not write well enough, anc that he could not trust a scribe; but Lady Bessee saiel she could write as well as any scribe ir England. So she told him to come to her chambei at nine that evening, with his trusty squire; anc there she wrote letters, kneeling by the table, to all the noblemen likely to be discontented witl Richard, and appointing a place of meeting witl j Stanley; and she promised herself that, if Henrj I Tudor would come and overthrow the cruel tyranl Richard, she would marry him: and she sent him a ring in pledge of her promise. Henry was in Brittany when he received the letter, lie kissed the ring, but waited long before he made up his mind to try his fortune. At last 2Ji|y TUDOR CROWNED ON THE BATTI. E-FIELD OF BOSWORTH. Richard JII. 195 he sailed in a French ship, and landed at Milford Haven — for he knew the Welsh would be de¬ lighted to see him ; and, as he was really descended from the great old British chiefs, they seemed to think that to make him king of England would he almost like having King Arthur back again. They gathered round him, and so did a great many English nobles and gentlemen. But Richard, though very angry, was not much alarmed, for he knew Henry Tudor had never seen a battle. He marched out to meet him, and a terrible fight took place at Redmore Heath, near Market Bosworth, where, after long and desperate struggling, Richard was overwhelmed and slain, his banner taken, and his men either killed or driven from the field. His body was found gashed, bleeding, and stripped; and thus was thrown across a hoi’se and carried into Leicester, where he had slept the night before. The crown he had worn over his helmet was picked up from the branches of a hawthorn, and set on the head of Henry Tudor. Richard was the hist, king of the Plantagenet family, who had ■ uled over England for more than three hundred years. This battle of Bosworth likewise finished Re whole bloody war of the Red and White Roses. H ENRY Tudor married the Lady Lessee as soon as he came to London, and by this marriage the causes of the Red and White Roses were united; so that he took for his badge a great rose — half red and half white. You may see it 1UG Henry VII. 197 carved all over the beautiful chapel that he built jon to Westminster Abbey to be buried in. He was not a very pleasant person; he was stiff, and cold, and dry, and very mean and covetous in some ways — though he liked to make a grand show, and dress all his court in cloth of gold and silver, and the very horses in velvet housings, whenever there was any state occasion. Nobody greatly cared for him; but the whole country was so worn out with the troubles of the Wars of the Roses./that there was no desire to interfere with him ; and people only grumbled, and said he did not treat his gentle, beautiful wife Elizabeth as he ought to do, but was jealous of her being a king’s laughter. There was one person who did hate him most bitterly, and that was the Duchess of Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV. and Richard III.: the same who, as I told you, encouraged printing so much. She felt as if a mean upstart had got into the place of her brothers, and his naving married her niece did not make it seem a ait the better to her. There was one nephew left — the poor young orphan son of George, Duke of Clarence — but lie had always been quite silly, and Henry VII. had him watched carefully, for fear iome one should set him up to claim the crown. 198 Young Folk T History of England. He was called Earl of Warwick, as heir to his grandfather, the king-maker. Suddenly, a young man came to Ireland and pretended to be this Earl of Warwick. He de- . ceived a good many of the Irish, and the Mayor of Dublin actually took him to St, Patrick’s Cathe- : dial, where he was crowned as King Edward the Sixth : and then he was carried to the banquet upon an Irish chieftain's back. He came to England O ’ ■ with some Irish followers, and some German soldiers hired by the duchess; and a few, but not many, English joined him. Henry met him at a village called Stoke, near Newark, and all his Ger¬ mans and Irish were killed, and lie himself made prisoner. Then he confessed that lie was really a baker’s son, named Lambert Simnel; and, as lie turned out to be a poor weak lad, whom designing?; people had made to do just what they pleased, the king took him into his kitchen as a scullion ; and, as he behaved well there, afterwards set him to look after the falcons, that people used to keep to go out with to catch partridges and herons. But after tliis, a young man appeared under the protection of the Duchess of Burgundy, who said he was no other than the poor little Duke of York, | Richard, who had escaped from the Tower when Henry 177 . 201 his brother was murdered. Englishmen, wno came from Flanders, said that he was a clever, cowardly lad of the name of Peter (or Perkin) Warbeck, the son of a townsman of Tournay; but the duchess persuaded King James IV. of Scotland to believe him a real royal Plantagenet. He went to Edin¬ burgh, married a beautiful lady, cousin to the king, and James led him into England at the head of an army to put forward his claim. But nobody would join him, and the Scots did not care about him; so James sent him away to Ireland, whence he went to Cornwall. However, he soon found fighting was of no use, and fled away to the New Forest, where he was taken prisoner. He was set in the stocks, and there made to confess that he was really Perkin Warbeck and no duke, and then he was shut up in the Tower. But there he made friends with the real Earl of Warwick, and persuad¬ ed him into a plan for escape ; but this was found )ut, and Henry, thinking that he should never iave any peace or safety whilst either of them was dive, caused Perkin to be hanged, and poor nnocent Edward of Warwick to be beheaded. It was thought that this cruel deed was done oecause Henry found that foreign kings did not hink him safe upon the throne while one Plan- 202 Young Folks History of England. tagnet was left alive, and would not give their children in marriage to his sons and daughters. He was very anxious to make grand marriages for his children, and make peace with Scotland by a wedding between King James and his eldest daughter, Margaret. For his eldest son, Arthur, Prince of Wales, he obtained Katharine, the daughter of the King of Aragon and Queen of Castille, and she was brought to England while both were mere children. Prince Arthur died when only eighteen years old; and King Henry then said that they had been both such children that they could not be considered as really married, and so that Katharine had better marry his next- son, Henry, although everyone knew that no mar¬ riage between a man and Ins brother’s widow' could be lawful. The truth was that he did not like to give up all the money and jewels she had brought; and the matter remained in dispute for some years — nor was it settled when King Henry himself died, after an illness that no one expected would cause his death. Nobody w r as very sorry for him, for he had been hard upon everyone, and had encouraged tu r o wicked judges, named Dudley and Empson, who made people pay most unjust de- Henry VII. 203 mands, and did everything to fill the king’s treasury and make themselves rich at the same time. It was a time when many changes were going on peacefully. The great nobles had grown much poorer and less powerful; and the country squires and chief people in the towns reckoned for much more in the State. Moreover, there was much learning and study going on everywhere. Greek began to he taught as well as Latin, and the New ’testament was thus read in the language in which the apostles themselves wrote ; and that led people to think over some of the evil ways that had grown up in their churches and abbeys, during those long, grievous years, when no one thought of much but fighting, or ot getting out of the way of the enemy. The king himself, and all his family, loved learn- ing, and nobody more than his son Henry, who—if his elder brother had lived—was to have been archbishop of Canterbury. It was in this reign, too, that America was discovered —though not by the English, but by Christopher Columbus, an Italian, who came out in ships that were lent to him by Isabel, the Queen af Spain, mother to Katharine, Princess of Wales. 204 Young Folks' History of England. Henry had been very near sending Columbus, only be did not like spending so much money. How¬ ever. he afterwards did send out some ships, which discovered Newfoundland. Henry died in the year 1509. t CHAPTER XXVI. HENRY VIII. ANI) CARDINAL WOLSEY. A.D. 1509—1529. "PHE new king was very fond of the Princess Katharine, and lie married her soon after is father’s death, without asking any more ques- ons about the right or wrong of it. He began ith very gallant and prosperous times. He was sry handsome, and skilled in all sports and 205 206 Young Folks' History of England. games, and had sneli frank, free manners, that the people felt as if they had one of their best old Plan- tagenets back again. They were pleased, too, when he quarreled with the King of France, and like an old Plantagenet, led an army across the sea and besieged the town of Tournay. Again, it was like the time of Edward III., for James IV. of Scotland was a friend of the French king, and came across the Border with all the strength of Scotland, to ravage England while Henry was away. But there were plenty of stout Englishmen left, and under the Earl of Surrey, they beat the Scots ■ entirely at the battle of Flodden field; and King i James himself was not taken, but left dead upon the field, while his kingdom went to his poor little baby | son. Though there had been a battle in France it i was not another Creey, for the French ran away so fast that it was called the battle of the Spurs. However, Henry's expedition did not come to ( much, for he did not get all the help he was S promised : and he made peace with the Frenct ■ king, giving him in marriage his beautiful young I sister Alary — though King Louis was an old, help* ldss, sickly man. Indeed, he only lived six week i after the wedding, and before there was time to:( }] fetch Queen Alary home again, she had married i > Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey. 207 t ntleman named Charles Brandon. She told her lother that she had married once to please him, ; d now she had married to please herself. But ] forgave her, and’ made her husband Duke of tiffolk. Henry’s chief adviser, at this time, was Thomas Tolsey, Archbishop of York ; a very able man, and i most splendid tastes and habits — outdoing even t3 Tudors in love of show. The pope had made 1 n a cardinal — that is, one of the clergy, who a? counted as parish priests in the diocese of bine, and therefore have a right to choose the fpe. They wear scarlet hats, capes, and shoes, ad are the highest in rank of all the clergy except 13 pope. Indeed, Cardinal Wolsey was in hopes o being chosen pope himself, and setting the viole Church to rights — for there had been several vry wicked men reigning at -Rome, one after the oier, and they had brought things to such a pass t it everyone felt there would be some great judg- ii nt from God if some improvement were not n de. Most of Wolsey’s arrangements with for- e n princes had this end in view. The new king o France, Francis I., was young, brilliant and siendid, like Henry, and the two had a conference mr Calais, when they brought their queens and 208 Young Folks' History of England. tlieir whole Court, and put up tents of velvet, si and gold — while everything was so extraordinai magnificent, that the meeting has ever since b§ called the Field of the Cloth of Gold. However, nothing came of it all. Cardin Wolsey thought Francis's enemy — the Empe]« Charles V. — more likely to help him to be pcLj and make his master go over to that side ; but an all an Italian was chosen in his stead. And this came a new trouble in his way. The king il queen had been married a good many years, « they had only one child alive, and that was a gl the Lady Mary—all the others had died as soorj| they were born — and statesmen began to tlrfi that if there never was a son at all, there might 5 fresh wars when Henry died; while others sh that the loss of the children was to punish thl for marrying unlawfully. Wolsey himself bep to wish that the pope would say that it had ue f been a real marriage, and so set the king free I put Katharine away and take another wife — sol grand princess abroad. This was thinking moref what seemed-prudent than of the right; and.t turned out ill for Wolsey and all besides, for b sooner had the notion of setting aside poor Kat“ line come into his mind, than the king cast 1 T* V'Wg ': :; i pf||j|j[ si. M K‘ g mSm CARDINAL WOLSKV SERVED BY NOBLEMEN. Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey. 211 eyes on Anne Boleyn, one of her maids of honor — a lively lady, who had been to France with his sister Mary. He was bent on marrying her, and insisted on the pope’s giving sentence against Kath¬ arine. But the pope would not make any answer at all; first, because he was enquiring, and then because he could not well offend Katharine’s nephew, the Emperor. Time went on, and the king grew more impatient, and at last a clergyman, named Thomas Cranmer, said that he might settle the matter by asking the learned men at the uni¬ versities whether it was lawful for a man to marry Ms brother’s widow. “ He has got the right sow by the ear,” cried Henry, who was not choice in his words, and he determined that the universities should decide it. But Wolsey would not help the king here. He knew that the pope had been the only person to decide such questions all over the Western Church for many centuries; and, besides, he had never intended to assist the king to lower himself b} r taking a wife like Anne Boleyn. But Ms secretary, Thomas Crum well, told the king all of Wolsey’s disapproval, and between them they found out something that the cardinal had done by the king’s own wish, but which did not agree with the old disused laws. He was put down from all 212 Y<>\nu) Folks’ History of England. his offices of state, and accused of treason against the king; hut while he was being brought to London to be tried, he became so ill at the abbey at Leicester that he was forced to remain there, and in a few days he died, saying, sadly — “If I had served my God as I have served my king, He would not have forsaken me in my old age.” With Cardinal Wolsey ended the first twenty years of Henry's reign, and all that had ever been good in it. HENRY VIII. AND HIS WIVES. A. i). 1528—1547. W HEN Henry VIII. had so ungratefully treated Cardinal Wolsey, there was no pne to keep him in order. He would have no more to do with the pope, hut said he was head of the Church of England himself, and could settle matters his own way. He really was a very 214 Young Folks' History of England. learned man, and had written a book to uphold the doctrines of the Church, which had caused the people to call him the Defender of the Faith. After the king's or queen’s name on an English coin you may see F. D. —Fidei Defensor. This stands for that name in Latin. But Henry used his learning now against the pope. He declared that his marriage with Katharine was good for nothing, and sent her away to a house in Hunting¬ donshire, where, in tlirSe years’ time, she pined away and died. In the meantime, he had married Anne Boleyn, taken Crum well for his chief adviser, and had made Thomas Cranmer archbishop of Can¬ terbury. Then, calling himself head of the Chinch, he insisted that all his people should own him as such; but the good ones knew that our Lord Jesus Christ is the only real Head of the Chinch, and they had learnt to believe that the pope is the father bishop of the west, though he had sometimes taken more power than he ought, and no king could ever be the same as a patriarch or father bishop. So they refused, and Henry cut off the heads of two of the best — Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More — though they had been his great friends. Sir Thomas More’s good daughter Mar¬ garet, came and kissed him on Iris way to be iPMimumm ■ . PARTING OF SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS DAUGHTER, inffTTTTTnitiiii.iiMmniiiiiiiniiiiii Henry VIII. and his Wives. 217 executed; and afterwards, when his head was placed on a spike on London Bridge, she came by night in a boat and took it home in her arms. There were many people, however, who were glad to break with the pope, because so much had gone amiss in the Church, and they wanted to set it to rights. There was so much more reading, now that printing had been invented, that many persons could read who had never learnt Latin, and so a translation of the Bible was to be made for them: and there was a great desire that the Church Services — many of which had also been in Latin — should likewise be put into English, and the litany was first translated, but no more at present. The king and Crumwell had taken it upon them to go on with what had been begun in Wolsey’s time — the looking into the state of all the monasteries. Some were found going on badly, and the messengers took care to make the worst of 'everything. So all the worst houses were broken up, and the monks sent to their homes, with a small payment to maintain them for the rest of their lives. As to the lands that good men of old had given to keep up the convents, that God might be praised there, Henry made gifts of them to the lords about 218 Young Folks' History of England. Court. Whoever chose to ask for an abbey coulo, get it, from the king’s good nature; and, as the) wanted more and more, Henry went on breaking: up the monasteries, till the whole of them wen gone. A good deal of their riches he kept for him self, and two new bishoprics were endowed froir their spoils, but most of them were bestowed or the courtiers. The king, however, did not at al intend to change the teaching of the Church, anc i whenever a person was detected in teaching any thing contrary to her doctrines, as they were al that time understood, he was tried by a court o: clergymen and lawyers before the bishop, and, i i convicted, was — according to the cruel custom o: those times — burnt to death at a stake in tht market place of the next town. Meantime, the new qneen, Anne Boleyn, whom the king had married privately in May, 1533, hac i not prospered. She had one little daughter, named | Elizabeth, and a son, who died; and then the king A began to admire one of her ladies, named Jam 'i Seymour. Seeing this Anne’s enemies either ;| invented stories against her, or made the worst oi ; some foolish, unlady-like, and unqueen-like things she had said and done, so that the king thought she wished for his death. She was accused of high Henry VIII. and his Wives. 219 reason, sentenced to death, and beheaded: thus laying a heavy price for the harm she had done ood Queen Katharine. The king, directly after, married Jane Seymour; ut she lived only a very short time, dying inmediately after the christening of her first son, . ho was named Edward. Then the king was persuaded by Lord Crumwell o marry a foreign princess called Anne of Cleves. t great painter was sent to bring her picture, and fade her very beautiful in it; but when she rrived, she proved to be not only plain-featured ut large and clumsy, and the king could not bear he sight of her, and said they had sent him a great landers mare by way of queen. So he made ranmer find some foolish excuse for breaking this carriage also, and was so angry with Thomas 'rumwell for having led him into it, that this ivorite was in his turn thrown into prison and be- eaded. The king chose another English wife, named .atharine Howard; but, after he had married her, . was found out that she had been very ill brought p, and the bad people with whom she had been :ft came and accused her of the evil into which ley had led her. So the king cut off her head 220 Young Folks' History of England. likewise, and then wanted to find another wife; but no foreign princess would take a husband who had put away two wives and beheaded two more, and one Italian lady actually answered that she was much obliged to him, but she could not venture to marry him, because she had only one neck. At last he found an English widow, Lady Latimer, whose maiden name was Katharine Parr, and married her. He was diseased now, lame with gout, and very large and fat; and she nursed him kindly, and being a good-natured woman, persuad¬ ed him to be kinder to his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, than he had ever been since the disgrace of their mothers; and she did her best to keep him in good humor, but he went on doing cruel things, even to the end of liis life : and, at the very last, had in prison the very same Duke of Norfolk who had won the battle of Flodden, and would have put him to death in a few days’ time, only that his own death prevented it. Yet, strange to say, Henry YIII. was not hated as might have been expected. His cruelties were chiefly to the nobles, not to the common people: and he would do good-natured things, and speak with a frank, open manner, that was much liked. Henry VIII. and his Wives. 221 England was prosperous, too, and shopkeepers, farmers, and all were well off; there was plenty of bread and meat for all, and the foreign nations were afraid to go to war with us. So the English people, on the whole, loved “ Bluff King Hal,” as they called him, and did not think much about his many wickednesses, or care how many heads he cut off. He died in the year 1547. The changes in his time are generally called the beginning of the Reformation. 1 / CHAPTER XXVIII. EDWARD VI. a.d. 1547 — 1553 . T HE little son of Henry VIII. and Jane Sey¬ mour of course reigned after him as Edward VI. He was a.quiet, gentle boy, exceedingly fond of learning and study, and there were great expec¬ tations of him ; but, as he was only nine years old. the affairs of state were managed by his council. The chief of the council were his two uncles — his mother’s brothers, Edward and Thomas Sey¬ mour, the elder of whom had been made Duke of Somerset — together with Archbishop Cranmer; but it was not long before the duke quarreled with his brother Thomas, put him into the Tower, and cut off his head, so that it seemed as if the sad days of Henry VIII. were not }'et over. The Duke of Somerset and Archbishop Cranmer wanted to make many more changes in the Church 222 Edward VI. 223 f England than Henry VIII. had ever allowed, 'hey had all the Prayer-book Services translated ito English, leaving out such parts as they did not pprove; the Lessons were read from the English ;ible, and people were greatly delighted at being ble to worship and to listen to God’s Word in leir own tongue. The first day on which the English Prayer-hook was used was the Whitsunday f 1548. The Bibles were chained to the desks as eing so precious and valuable ; and crowds would ;and, or sit, and listen for hours together to any ue who would read to them, without caring if he r ere a clergyman or not; and men who tried to xplain, without being properly taught, often made reat mistakes. Indeed, in Germany and France a great deal of le same kind had been going on for some time ast, though not with any sort of leave from the ings or bishops, as there was in England, and ius the reformers there broke quite off from the hurch, and fancied they could do without bishops, 'his great break was called the Reformation, ecause it professed to set matters of religion to ghts; and in Germany the reformers called them- dves Protestants, because they protested against nne of the teachings of the Church of Rome. 224 Young Folks’ History of England. Cranmer had at one time been in Germany, and had made friends with some of these German and Swiss Protestants, and he invited them to England to consult and help him and his friends. Several of them came, and they found fault with our old English Prayer-book — though it had never been the same as the Roman one — and it was altered again to please them and their friends, and brought out as King Edward’s second book. Indeed, they tried to persuade the English to be like themselves — with very few services, no ornaments in the churches, and no bishops; and things seemed to be tending more and more to what they desired, for the king was too young not to do what his tutors and governors wished, and his uncle and Cranmer were all on their side. However, there was another great nobleman, the Duke of Northumberland, who wanted to be as powerful as the Duke of Somerset. He was the son of Dudley, the wicked judge under Henry VII., who had made himself so rich, and he man¬ aged to take advantage of the people being discon¬ tented with Somerset to get the king into his own hands, accuse Somerset of treason, send him to the Tower, and cut oft his head The king at this time was sixteen. He had KDWAKI) VI. WHITING I IIS JOUKNAL. Edward VI. 227 never been strong, and he had learnt and worked much more than was good for him. He wrote a journal, and though he never saj r s he grieved for his uncles, most likely he did, for he had few near him who really loved or cared for him, and he was fast falling into a decline, so that it became quite plain that he was not likely ever to he a grown-up king. There was a great difficulty as to who was to reign after him. The natural person would have been his eldest sister, Mary, but King Henry lad forbidden her and Elizabeth to be spoken of is princesses or heiresses of the crown; and, be- ;ides, Mary held so firmly to the Church, as she tad learnt to believe in it in her youth, that the eformers knew she would undo all their work. There was a little Scottish girl, also named Mary -the grand-daughter of Margaret, eldest daughter i Henry VII. Poor child, she had been a queen om babyhood, for her father had died of grief hen she was but a week old; and there had been me notion of marrying her to King Edward, and : ending the wars, but the Scots did not like this, ; d sent her away to be married to the Dauphin, i'an^ois, eldest son of the king of France. If 1 Iward’s sisters were not to reign, she came next; It the English would not have borne to be joined 228 Young Folks History of England. on to the French; and there were the grand¬ daughters of Mary, that other sister of Henry VIII., who were thorough Englishwomen. Ladv Jane Grey, the eldest of them, was a good, sweet, pious, and diligent girl of fifteen, wonderfully learned. But it was not for that reason, only for the sake of the royal blood, that the Duke of Northumberland asked her in marriage for his son, Guildford Dudley. When the} - were married, the duke and Cranmer began to persuade the poor, sick, young king that it was his duty to leave hi? crown away from his sister Mary to Lady Jane who would go on with the Reformation, whil< Mary would try to overthrow it. In truth, youns Edward had no right to will away the crown; bu he was only sixteen, and could only trust to wha the archbishop and his council told him So h signed the parchment they brought him, and afte that he quickly grew worse. The people grew afraid that Northumberlan was shutting him up and misusing him, and om he came to the window of his palace and look* out at them, to show he was alive; but he dit only a fortnight later, and we cannot guess wk he would have been when he was grown up. CHAPTER XXIX. MARY I. A.D. 1553 — 1558 . r HE Duke of Northumberland kept king Edward’s death a secret till he had pro- laimed Jane queen of England. The poor girl new that a great wrong was being done in her ame. She wept bitterly, and begged that she light not be forced to accept the crown; but she 229 230 Young Folks' History of England. could do nothing to prevent it, when her father and husband, and his father, all were bent on making her obey them; and so she had to sit as a queen in the royal apartments in the Tower of London. But as soon as the news reached Mary, she set off riding towards London ; and, as everyone knew her to be the right queen, and no one would he tricked by Dudley, the whole of the people joined her, and even Northumberland was obliged to throw up his hat and cry “ God save Queen Mary.” Jane and her husband were safely kept, but Mary meant no harm by them if their friends would have been quiet. However, the people became discon¬ tented when Mary began to have the Latin service used again, and put Archbishop Cranmer in prison for having favored Jane. She showed in every way that she thought all her brothers adviser's had done very wrong. She wanted to be under the Pope again, and she engaged herself to marry the King of Spain, her cousin, Philip II. This was very foolish of her, for she was a middle-aged woman, pale, and low-spirited; and he was much younger, and of a silent, gloomy temper, so that everyone was afraid of him. All her best friends advised her not, and the English hated the notion Mary I. 233 so much, that the little children played at the queen's wedding in their games, and always ended by pretending to hang the King of Spain. North¬ umberland thought this discontent gave another chance for his plan, and tried to raise the people in favor of Jane; but so few joined him that Mary very soon put them down, and beheaded North¬ umberland. She thought, too, that the quiet of the country would never be secure while Jane lived, and so she consented to her being put to death. Jane behaved with beautiful firmness and patience. Her husband was led out first and beheaded, and then she followed. She was most good and innocent in herself, and it was for the faults of others that she suffered. Mary’s sister, Elizabeth, was suspected, and sent to the Tower. She came in a boat on the Thames to the Traitor’s Gate; but, when she found where she was, she sat down on the stone steps, and said, “ This is a place for traitors, and I am none.” After a time she was allowed to live in the country, but closely watched. Philip of Spain came and was married to Mary. She was very fond of him, but he was not very kind to her, and he had too much to do in his other kingdoms to spend much time with her, so that she 234 Young Folks' History of England. was always pining after him. Her great wish in choosing him was to be helped in bringing the country back to the old obedience to the Pope; and she succeeded in having the English Church reconciled, and received again to communion with Rome. The new service she would under no con¬ sideration have established in her house. This displeased many of her subjects exceedingly. They thought they should be forbidden to read the Bible — they could not endure the Latin service — and those who had been taught by the foreigners fancied that all proper reverence and beauty in church was a sort of idolatry. Some fled away into Holland and Germany, and others, who staid, and taught loudly against the doctrines that were to be brought back again, were seized and thrown into prison. Those bishops who had been foremost in the changes of course were the first to be tried for their teaching. The punishment was the dreadful one of being burnt alive, chained to a stake. Bishop Hooper died in this way at Gloucester, and Bishop Ridley and Bishop Latimer were both burnt at the same time at Oxford, encouraging one another to die bravely as martyrs for the truth, as they held it. Cranmer was in prison already for Mary I. 235 supporting Jane Grey, and he was condemned to death; but he was led to expect that he would be spared the fire if he would allow that the old faith, as Rome held it, was the right one. Paper after paper was brought, such as would please the queen and his judges, and lie signed them all; but after all, it turned out that none would do, and that he was to be burnt in spite of them. Then he felt what a base part he had acted, and was ashamed when he thought how bravely his brethren had died on the same spot: and when he was chained to the stake and the fire lighted, he held his right liand over the flame to be burnt first, because it had signed what he did not really believe, and he ried out, “This unworthy hand ! ” Altogether, about three hundred people were mint in Queen Mary's reign for denying one or ither of the doctrines that the Pope thought the ,’ight ones. It was a terrible time ; and the queen, .vho had only longed to do right and restore her country to the Church, found herself hated and lisliked by everyone. Even the Pope, who had a [uarrel with her husband, did not treat her warmly; tnd the nobles, who had taken possession of the ibbey lands, were determined never to let her ■estore them. Tier husband did not love her, or 236 Young Folks' History of England. like England. However, lie persuaded her to help him in a war with the French, with which England ought to have had nothing to do, and the conse¬ quence was that a brave French duke took the city of Calais, the very last possession of the English in France. Mary was so exceedingly grieved, that she said that when she died the name of Calais would be found written on her heart. She was already ill, and there was a bad fever at the time, of which many of those she most loved and trusted had fallen sick. She died, in 1558, a melancholy and sorrowful woman, after reigning only five years. CHAPTER XXX. ELIZABETH. A. i). 1558 — 1587 . \ LL through Queen Mary’s time, her sister - Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn’s daughter, had een in trouble. Those who held by Queen Mary, nd maintained Henry’s first marriage, said that is wedding with Anne was no real one, and so lat Elizabeth ought not to reign ; but then there as no one else to take in her stead, except the 237 238 Young Folks' History of England. young Queen Mary of Scotland, wife to the French dauphin. All who wished for the Reformation, and dreaded Mary’s persecutions had hoped to see Elizabeth queen, and this had made Mary much afraid of her; and she was so closely watched and guarded that once she even said she wished she was a milkmaid, to be left in peace. While she had been in the Tower she had made friends with another prisoner, Robert Dudley, brother to th( husband of Lady Jane Grey, and she continued t< like him better than any other person as long a: he lived. When Mary died, Elizabeth was twenty-five, aiw the English were mostly willing to have her for thei queen. She had read, thought, and learnt a grea deal; and she took care to have the advice of Avis men, especially of the great Thomas Cecil, whor. she made Lord Burleigh, and kept as her ad\ r ise as long as he lived. She did not always follow even his advice, however; but, whenever she clit it was the better for her. She knew Robe) Dudley was not wise, so, though she was so fou of him, she never let him manage her affairs ft her. She would have Vished to marry him, hi she knew her subjects Avould think this disgracefu so she only made him Earl of Leicester: and he Elizabeth. 239 liking for him prevented her from ever bringing herself to accept any of the foreign princes who were always making proposals to her. Unfortu¬ nately he was not a good man, and did not make a good use of her favor, and he was much disliked by all the queen’s best friends. She was very fond of making stately journeys through the country. All the poor people ran to see her and admire her; but the noblemen who had to entertain her were almost ruined, she brought so many people who ate so much, and she expected such presents. These journeys were called Pro¬ gresses. The most famous was to Lord Leicester’s castle of Kenilworth, but he could quite afford it. He kept the clock’s hands at twelve o'clock all the time, that it might always seem to be dinner time! Elizabeth wanted to keep the English Church a pure and true branch of the Church, free of the mistakes that had crept in before her father’s time. So she restored the English Prayer-book, and can¬ celled all that Mary had done; the people ‘who had gone into exile returned, and all the Protestants abroad reckoned her as on their side. But, on the other hand, the Pope woidd not regard her as queen at all, and cut her and her country off from the Church, while Mary of Scotland and her 240 Young Folks' History of England. husband called themselves the true queen and king of England; and such of the English as believed the Pope to have the first right over the Church, held with him and Mary of Scotland. They were called Roman Catholics, while Elizabeth and her friends were the real Catholics, for they held with the Church Universal of old: and it was the Pope who had broken off with them for not accepting liis doctrines, not they with the Pope. The English who had lived abroad in Mary’s time wanted to have much more altered, and to have churches and services much less beautiful and more plain than they were. But Elizabeth never would consent to this; and these people called themselves Puritans, and continued to object to the Episcopal form of worship. Mary of Scotland was two years queen of France, and then her husband died, and she had to come back to Scotland. There most of the people had taken up doctrines that made them hate the sight of the clergy and services she had brought home from France; they called her an idolater, and would hardly bear that she should hear the old service in her own chapel. She was one of the most beautiful and charming women who ever lived, and if she had been as true and good as she MAKY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. I Elizabeth. 243 was lovely, nobody could have done more good; but the court of France at that time was a wicked place, and she had learnt much of the "wickedness. She married a young nobleman named Henry Stuart, a cousin of her own, but he turned out foolish, selfish, and head-strong, and made her miserable; indeed, he helped to kill her secretary in her own bedroom before her eyes. She hated him so much at last, that there is only too much reason to fear that she knew of the plot, laid by some of her lords, to blow the poor man’s house up with gunpowder, while he lay in his bed ill of smallpox. At any rate, she very soon married one of the very worst of the nobles who had committed the murder. Her subjects could not bear this, and they rose against her and made her prisoner, while her husband fled the country They shut her up in a castle in the middle of a lake, and obliged her to give up her crown to her little son, James YI. — a baby not a year old. However, her sweet words persuaded a boy who waited on her to steal the keys, and row her across the lake, and she was soon at the head of an army of her Roman Catholic subjects. They were defeated, however, and she found no place safe for her in Scotland, so she fled across the Border to England. Queen 244 Young Folks' History of England. Elizabeth hardly knew what to do. She believed that Mary had really had to do with Henry Stuart’s death, but she could not bear to make such a crime known in a cousin and queen; and what made it all more difficult to judge was, that the kings of France and Spain, and all the Roman Catholics at home, thought Mary ought to be queen instead of Elizabeth, and she might have been set up against England if she had gone abroad, or been left at large, while in Scotland she would have been murdered. The end of it was, that Elizabeth kept her shut up in different castles. There she managed to interest the English Roman Catholics in her, and get them to lay plots, winch always were found out. Then the nobles were put to death, and Mary was more closely watched. This went on for nineteen years, and at last a worse plot than all was found out — for actually killing Queen Elizabeth. Her servants did not act honorably, for when they found out what was going on they pretended not to know, so that Mary might go on writing worse and worse things, and then, at last, the whole was made known. Mary was tried and sentenced to death, but Elizabeth was a long time making up her mind to sign the order for her Elizabeth. 245 execution, and at last punished the clerks who sent it off, as if it had been their fault. So Queen Mary of Scotland was beheaded at Fotheringay Castle, showing much bravery and piety. There are many people who still believe that she was really innocent of all that she was accused of, and that she only was ruined by the plots that were laid against her. CHAPTER XXXI. ELIZABETH’ S REIGN. a.d. 15S7—1002. "XT O reign ever was more glorious or better for -L ^ the people than Queen Elizabeth’s. It was a time when there were many very great men living — soldiers, sailors, writers, poets — and they all loved and looked up to the queen as the mother of her country. There really was nothing she did 246 Elizabeth's Reign. 247 love like the good of her people, and somehow they all felt and knew it, and “ Good Queen Bess ” had their hearts — though she was not always right, and had some very serious faults. The worst of her faults was not telling truth. Somehow kings and rulers had, at that time, learnt to believe that when they were dealing with other countries anything was fair, and that it was not wrong to tell falsehoods to hide a secret, nor to make promises they never meant to keep. People used to do so who would never have told a lie on their own account to their neighbor, and Lord Burleigh and Queen Elizabeth did so very often, and often behaved meanly and shabbily to people who had trusted to their promises. Her other fault was vanity. She was a little woman, with bright eyes, and rather hooked nose, and sandy hair, but she managed to look every inch a queen, and her eye, when displeased, was like a lion’s. She had really been in love with Lord Leicester, and every now and then he hoped she would marr}' him; indeed, there is reason to fear that he had Iris wife secretly killed, in order that he might be able to wed the queen; but she saw that the people woiild not allow her to do so, and gave it up. But she liked to be courted. She allowed foreign 248 Young Folks' History of England. princes to send her their portraits, rings, and jewels, and sometimes to come and see her, but she never made up her mind to take them. And as to the gentlemen at her own court, she liked them to make the most absurd and ridiculous compliments to her, calling her their sun and goddess, and her hair golden beams of the morning, and the like; and the older she grew the more of these fine speeches she required of them. Her dress — a huge hoop, a tall ruff all over lace, and jewels in the utmost profusion — was as splendid as it could be made, and in wonderful variety. She is said to have had three hundred gowns and thirty wigs. Lord Burleigh said of her that she was sometimes more than a man, and sometimes less than a woman. And so she was, when she did not like her ladies to wear handsome dresses. One of the people who had wanted to marry her was her brother-in-law, Philip of Spain, but she was far too wise, and he and she were bitter enemies all the rest of their lives. His subjects in Holland had become Protestants, and he persecuted them so harshly that they broke away from him. They wanted Elizabeth to be their queen, but she would not, though she sent Lord Leicester to help them with an army. With him went his nephew, Sir Elizabeth's Reign. 249 Philip Sj'dney, the most good, and learned, and graceful gentleman at court. There was great grief when Sir Philip was struck by a cannon ball in the thigh, and died after nine days pain. It was as he was being carried from the field, faint and thirsty, that some one had just brought him a cup of water, when he saw a poor soldier, worse hurt than liimself, looking at it with longing eyes. He put it from him untasted, and said, “ Take it, thy necessity is greater than mine.” After the execution of Mary of Scotland, Philip of Spain resolved to punish Elizabeth and the English, and force them back to obedience to the pope. Pie fitted out an immense fleet, and filled it with fighting men. So strong was it that, as armada is the Spanish for a fleet, it was called the Invincible Armada. It sailed for England, the men expecting to burn and ruin all before them. But the English ships were ready. Little as they were, they hunted and tormented the big Spaniards all the way up the English Channel; and, just as the Armada had passed the Straits of Dover, there came on such dreadful storms that the ships were driven and broken before it, and wrecked all round the coasts — even in Scotland and Ireland — and very few ever reached home again. The English 250 Young Folks’ History of England. felt that God had protected them with His wind and storm, and had fought for them. Lord Leicester died not long after, and the queen became almost equally fond of his stepson, the Earl of Essex, who was a brave, high-spirited young man, only too proud. The sailors of Queen Elizabeth’s time were some of the bravest and most skilful that ever lived. Sir Francis Drake sailed round the world in the good ship Pelican, and when he brought her into the Thames the queen went to look at her. Sir Walter Raleigh was another great sailor, and a most courtly gentleman besides. He took out the first English settlers to North America, and named their new home Virginia — after the virgin queen — and he brought home from South America our good friend the potato root; and, also, he learnt there to smoke tobacco. The first time his servant saw this done in England, he thought his master must be on fire, and threw a bucket of water over him to put it out. The queen valued these brave men much, hut she liked none so well as Lord Essex, till at last he displeased her, and she sent him to govern Ireland. There he fell into difficulties, and she wrote angry letters, which made him think his enemies were Elizabeth's Reign. 251 setting her against him. So he came back without leave; and. one morning came straight into her dressing chamber, where she was sitting, with her thin grey hair being combed, before she put on one of her thirty wigs, or painted her face. She was very angry, and would not forgive him, and he got into a rage, too; and she heard he had said she was an old woman, crooked in temper as in person. What was far worse, he raised the Londoners to break out in a tumult to uphold him. He was taken and sent to the Tower, tried for treason, and found guilty of death. But the queen still loved him, and waited and waited for some message or token to ask her pardon. None came, and she thought he was too proud to beg for mercy. She signed the death warrant, and Essex died on the block. But soon she found that he had really sent a ring she once had given him, to a lady who was to show it to her, in token that he craved her pardon. The ring had been taken by mistake to a cruel lady who hated him, and kept it back. But by-and-bv this lady was sick to death. Then she repented, and sent for the queen and gave her the ring, and confessed her wickedness. Poor Queen Elizabeth — her very heart was broken. She said to the dying woman, “ God may forgive you, but I 252 Young Folks' History of England. cannot.” Slie saicl little more after that. She was old, and her strength failed her. Day after day she sat on a pile of cushions, with her finger on her lip, still growing weaker, and begging for the prayers the archbishop read her. And thus, she who had once been so great and spirited, sank into death, when seventy years old, in the year 1602. CHAPTER XXXII. JAMES I. a.d. 1002 — 1625 . A FTER Queen Elizabeth’s death, the next heir was James, the son of Mary of Scot- and and of Henry Stuart. He was the sixth lames who had been king of Scotland, and had eianed there ever since his mother had been driven O iway. He had been brought up very strictly by he Scottish Reformers, who had made him very earned, and kept him under great restraint; md all that he had undergone had tended to make iim very awkward and strange in his manners. Ie was very timid, and could not bear to see a Irawn sword; and he was so much afraid of being nurdered, that he used to wear a dress padded and tufted out all over with wool, which made him ook even more clumsy than he was by nature. 258 254 Young Folks’ History of England. The English did not much admire their new king, though it really was a great blessing that England and Scotland should be under the same king at last, so as to end all the long and bloody wars that had gone on for so many years. Still, the Puritans thought that, as James had been brought up in their way of thinking, they would be allowed to make all the changes that Queen Elizabeth had stopped; and the Roman Catholics recollected that he was Queen Mary’s son, and that his Reformed tutors had not made his life very pleasant to him as a boy, so they had hopes from him. But they both were wrong. James had really read and thought much, and was a much wiser man at the bottom than anyone would have thought who had seen his disagreeable ways, and heard his silly' way of talking. He thought the English Church was much more in the right than either of them, and he only r wished that things should go on the same in England, and that the Scots should be brought to have bishops, and to use the prayers that Christians had used from the very old times, instead of each minister praying out of his own head, as had become the custom. But though he could not change the ways of the James I. 255 Scots at once, he caused all the best scholars and clergymen in his kingdom to go to work to make the translation of the Bible as right and good as it could be. Long before this was finished, however, some of the Roman Catholics had formed a conspiracy for getting rid of all the chief people in the kingdom; and so, as they hoped, bringing the rest back to the pope. There were good men among the Roman Catholics who knew such an act would be horrible; but there were some among them who had learnt to hate everyone that they did not reckon as of the right religion, and to believe that everything was right that was done for the cause of their Church. So these men agreed that on the day of the meeting of Parliament, when the king, with the queen and Prince of Wales, would all be meeting the lords and commons, they would blow the whole of them up with gunpowder; and, while the country was all in confusion, the king dead, and almost all his lords and the chief country squires, they would take the king’s younger chil¬ dren— Elizabeth or Charles, who were both quite little — and bring one up as a Roman Catholic to govern England. They hired some cellars under the Houses of 256 Young Folks’ History of England. Parliament, and stored them with barrels of gun¬ powder, hidden by faggots; and the time was nearly come, when one of the lords called Monteagle, received a letter that puzzled him very much, advising him not to attend the meeting of Parliament, since a sudden destruction, would come upon all who would there be present, and yet so that they would not know the doer of it. No one knows who wrote the letter, but most likely it was one of the gentlemen who had been asked to join in the plot, and, though he would not betray his friends, could not bear that Lord Monteagle should perish. Lord Monteagle took the letter to the council, and there, after puzzling over it and wondering if it were a joke, the king said gunpowder was a means of sudden destruc¬ tion ; and it was agreed that, at any rate, it would be safer to look into the vaults. A party was sent to search, and there they found all the powder ready prepared, and, moreover, a man with a lantern, one Guy Fawkes, who had undertaken to be the one to set fire to the train of gunpowder, hoping to escape before the explosion. However, he was seized in time, and was forced to make confession. Most of the gentlemen concerned fled into the country, and shut themselves up in a - - B \uM ite 1 JS1L fSISlSi j §1 ^i§If 11' p 1' J ill THE GUNPOWDER PLOT DISCOVERED. James I. 259 fortified house; but there, strange to say, a barrel of gunpowder chanced to get lighted, and thus many were much hurt in the very way they had meant to hurt others. There was a great thanksgiving all over the country, and it became the custom that, on the 5th of November — the day when the gunpowder plot was to have taken effect — there should be bonfires and fireworks, and Guy Fawkes’ figure burnt, but people are getting wiser now, and think it better not to keep up the memory of old crimes and hatreds. Henry, Prince of Wales, was a fine lad, fond of all that was good, but a little too apt to talk of wars, and of being like Henry V. He was very fond of ships and sailors, and delighted in watching the building of a grand vessel that was to take his sister Elizabeth across the sea, when she was to marry the Count Palatine of the Rhine. Before the wedding, however, Prince Henry fell suddenly ill and died. King James was as fond of favorites as ever Elizabeth had been, though not of the same persons. One of the worst things he ever did was the keeping Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower for many years, and at last cutting off his head. It 260 Young Folks' History of England. was asserted that Sir Walter had tried, when first James came, to set up a lady named Arabella Stuart to be queen ; but if lie was to be punished for that, it ought to have been directly, instead of keeping the sentence hanging over his head for years. The truth was that Sir Walter had been a great enemy to the Spaniards, and James wanted to please them, for he wished his son Charles to marry the daughter of the King of Spain. Charles wanted to see her first, and set off for Spain, in disguise, with the Duke of Buckingham, who was his friend, and his father’s greatest favorite. But when he reached Madrid, he found that the princesses were not allowed to speak to any gentle¬ man, nor to show their faces; and though he climbed over a wall to speak to her when she was walking in the garden, an attendant begged him to go away, or all her train would be punished. Charles went back disappointed, and, on his way through Paris, saw Henrietta Maria, the bright¬ eyed sister of the King of France, and set his heart on marrying her. Before this was settled, however, King James was seized with an ague and died, in the year 1625. He was the first king of the family of Stuart, and a very strange person he was — wonderfully James I. 261 learned and exceedingly conceited; indeed, lie liked nothing better than to be called the English Solomon. The worst of him was that, like Eliza¬ beth, he thought kings and rulers might tell falsehoods and deceive. He called this kingcraft, and took this very bad sort of cunning for wisdom. CHAPTER XXXIII. CHARLES I. A. d. 1625—1649. S O many of the great nobles had been killed in the Wars of the Roses, that the barons had lost all that great strength and power they had gained when they made King John sign Magna Carta. The kings got the power - instead; and all through the reigns' of the five Tudors, the sov¬ ereign had very little to hinder him from doing exactly as he pleased. But, in the meantime, the country squires and the great merchants who sat in the House of Commons had been getting richer and stronger, and read and thought more. As long as Queen Elizabeth lived they were contented, for they loved her and were proud of her, and she knew how to manage them. She scolded them sometimes, but when she saw that 262 Charles 1. 263 she was really vexing them she always changed, and she had smiles and good words for them, so that she could really do what she pleased with them. But James I. was a disagreeable man to have to do with; and, instead of trying to please them, he talked a great deal about his own power as a king, and how they ought to obey him ; so that they were angered, and began to read the laws, and wonder how much power properly belonged to him. Now, when he died, his son Charles was a much pleasanter person; he was a gentleman in all his looks and ways, and had none of his father’s awkward, ungainly tricks and habits. He was good and earnest, too, and there was nothing to take offence at in himself; so for some years all went on quietly, and there seemed to be a great improvement. But several tilings were against him. His friend, the Duke of Buckingham, was a proud, selfish man, who affronted almost everyone, and made a bad use of the king’s favor; and the people were also vexed that the king should marry a Roman Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, who would not go to church with him, nor even let her¬ self be crowned by an English archbishop. You heard that, in Queen Elizabeth’s time, there 264 Young Folks' History of England. were Puritans who would have liked to have the Prayer-book much more altered, and who fancied that every pious rule of old times must be wrong. They did not like the cross in baptism, nor the ring in marriage; and they could nor bear to see a clergyman in a siu-plice. In many churches they took then' own way, and did just as they pleased. But under James and Charles matters changed. Dr. Laud, whom Charles had made archbishop of Canterbury, had all the churches visited, and insisted on the parishioners setting them in order; and if a clergyman would not wear a surplice, nor make a cross on the baptized child’s forehead, nor obey the other laws of the Prayer-book, he was punished. The Puritans were greatly displeased. They fancied the king and Dr. Laud wanted to make them all Roman Catholics again ; and a great many so hated these Church rules, that they took ship and went off to North America to found a colony, where they might set up their own religion as they liked it. Those who staid continued to murmur and struggle against Laud. There was another great matter of displeasure, and that was the way in which the king raised money. The right way is that he should call his Charles I 265 Parliament together, and the House of Commons should grant him what he wanted. But there were other means. One was that every place in England should he called on to pay so much for ship money. This had begun when King Alfred raised his fleet to keep off the Danes; but it had come not to be spent on ships at all, hut only to he money for the king to use. Another way that the kings had of getting money was from fines. People who committed some small offence, that did not come under the regular laws, were brought before the Council in a room at Westminster, that had a ceiling painted Avith stars — and so was called the Star Chamber — and there were sen¬ tenced, sometimes to pay heavy sums of money, sometimes to have their ears cut off. This Court of the Star Chamber had been begun in the days of Henry VII., and. it is only a wonder that the English had borne it so long. One thing Charles I. did that pleased his people, and that was sending help to the French Prot¬ estants, who were having their town of Rochelle besieged. But the English were not pleased that the command of the army was given to the Duke of Buckingham, his proud, insolent favorite. But Buckingham never went. As he was going to 266 Young Folks' History of England. embark at Portsmouth, he was stabbed to the heart by a man named Felton; nobody clearly knows why. Charles did not get on much better even when : Buckingham was dead. Whenever he called a Parliament, fault was always found with him and with the laws. Then he tried to do without a Parliament; and, as he, of course, needed money, • the calls for ship money came oftener, and the fines in the Star Chamber became heavier, and more cases for them were hunted out. Then mur¬ murs arose. Just then, too, he and Archbishop Laud were trying to make the Scots return to the Church, by giving them bishops and a Prayer-book. But the first time the Service was read in a church at Edinburgh, a fishwoman, named Jenny Geddes, jumped up in a rage and threw a three-legged stool at the clergyman’s head. Some Scots fancied they were being brought back to Rome; others hated whatever was commanded in England. All these leagued together, and raised an army to resist the king; and he was obliged to call a Parliament once more, to get money enough to resist them. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE LONG PARLIAMENT. A.T). 1641—1649. W HEN Charles I. was obliged to call his Par¬ liament, the House of Commons met, angered at the length of time that had passed since they had been called, and determined to use their opportunity. They speedily put an end both to the payment of ship money and to the Court of the Star Chamber; and they threw into prison the two among the king's friends whom they most disliked, namely, Archbishop Laud and the Earl of Strafford. The earl had been governor of Ireland, and had kept great order there, but severely; and he thought that the king was the only person who ought to have any power, and was always advising the king to put down all resistance by the strong 270 Young Folks' History of England. hand. He was thought a hard man, and very much hated; and when he was tried the Houses of Parliament gave sentence against him that he should be beheaded. Still, this could not be done without the king’s warrant; and Charles at first stood out against giving up his faithful friend. But there was a great tumult, and the queen and her mother grew frightened, and entreated the king to save himself by giving up Lord Strafford, until at last he consented, and signed the paper ordering the execution. It was a sad act of weak¬ ness and cowardice, and he mourned over it all the days of his life. The Parliament only asked more and more, and at last the king thought he must put a check on them. So he resolved to go down to the House and cause the five members who spoke most against his power to be taken prisoners in his own presence. But he told his wife what he intended, and Henrietta Maria was so foolish as to tell Lady Carlisle, one of her ladies, and she sent warning to the five gentlemen, so that they were not in the House when Charles arrived; and the Londoners rose up in a great mob, and showed themselves so angry with him, that he took the queen and his children away into the country. The queen took her QUEEN HKNKIETTA MAI:I \ The Long Parliament. 273 daughter Mary to Holland to marry the Prince of Orange; and there she bought muskets and gun¬ powder for her husband’s army — for tilings had come to such a pass now that a civil war began. A civil war is the worst of all wars, for it is one between the people of the same country. England had had two civil wars before. There were the Barons’ wars, between Henry III. and Simon de Montfort, about the keeping of Magna Carta; and there were the wars of the Roses, to settle whether York or Lancaster should reign. This war be¬ tween Charles I. and the Parliament was to decide whether the king or the House of Commons should be most powerful. Those who held with the king called themselves Cavaliers, but the friends of the Parliament called them M alignan ts; and they in turn nicknamed the Parliamentary party Round- heads, because they often chose not to wear their hair in the prevailing fashion, long and flowing on their shoulders, but cut short round their heads. Most of the Roundheads were Puritans, and hated the Prayer-book, and all the strict rules for relig¬ ious worship that Archbishop Laud had brought in; and the Cavaliers, on the other hand, held by the bishops and the Prayer-book. Some of the Cavaliers were very good men indeed, and led holy 274 Young Folks’ History of England. and Christian lives, like their master the king, but there were others who were only hold, dashing men, careless and full of mirth and mischief; and the Puritans were apt to think all amusements and pleasures wrong, so that they made out the Cava¬ liers worse than they really were. I do not think you would understand about all the battles, so I shall only tell you now that the king’s army was chiefly led by his nephew, Prince Rupert, the son of his sister Elizabeth. Rupert was a fiery, brave young man, who was apt to think a battle was won before it really was, and would ride after the people he had beaten himself without waiting to see whether his help was wanted by the other captains; and so he did Iris uncle’s cause as much harm as good. The king’s party had been tlie most used to war, and they prospered the most at first; but as the soldiers of the Parliament became more trained, they gained the advantage. One of the members of Parliament, a gentleman named Oliver Crom¬ well, soon shewed himself to be a much better captain than any one else in England, and from the time he came to the chief command the Parliament always had the victory. The places of the three chief battles were Edgehill, Marston Moor, and The Long Parliament. 275 Naseby. The first was doubtful, but the other two were great victories of the Roundheads. Just after Marston Moor, the Parliament put to death Arch¬ bishop Laud; and, at the same time, they forbade the use of the Prayer-book, and turned out all the parish priests from the churches, putting in their stead men chosen after their own fashion, and not ordained by bishops. They likewise destroyed all they disliked in the churches — the painted glass, the organs, and the carvings; and when the Puritan soldiers took possession of a town or village, they would stable their horses in the churches, use the font for a trough, and shoot at the windows as marks. After the battle of Naseby, King Charles was in such distress that he thought he would go to the Scots, remembering that, though he had offended them by trying to make them use the Prayer-book, he had been born among them, and he thought they would prefer him to the English. Rut when he came, the Scottish army treated him like a prisoner, and showed him very few honors; and at last they gave him up to the English Parliament for a great sum of money. So Charles was a prisoner to his own subjects. 276 Young Folks' History of England. This Parliament is called the Long Parliament <■ because it sat longer than any other Parliamen ever did: indeed it had passed a resolution that i , I could not be dissolved. CHAPTER XXXV. DEATH OF CHARLES I. a.d 1649 — 1651 . T he l ong Parliament did not wish to have no king, only to make him do what they pleased; and then went on trying whether he would come back to reign according to their notions. He would have given up a great deal, but when they wanted him to declare that there 277 278 Young Folks’ History of England. should be no bishops in England he would never consent, for he thought there could be no real Church without bishops, as our Lord himself had J appointed. At last, after there had been much debating, and i it was plain that it would never come to an end, Oliver Cromwell sent some of his officers to take ' King Charles into their hands, instead of the persons appointed by Parliament. So the king I was prisoner to the army instead of to the Parliament. Cromwell was a very able man, and he saw that nobody could settle the difficulties about the law and the rights of the people but himself. He saw that things never would be settled while the king lived, nor by the Parliament, so he sent one of his officers, named Pryde, to turn out all the members of Parliament who would not do his will, and then the fifty who were left appointed a court of officers and lawyers to try the king. Charles was brought before them ; but, as they had no right to try him, he would not say a word in answer to them. Nevertheless, they sentenced him to have his head cut off. He had borne all his troubles in the most meek and patient way, forgiving all his enemies and praying for them : and he was ready to die in Death of Charles I. 281 the same temper. His queen was in France, and all his children were safe out of England, except his daughter Elizabeth, who was twelve years old, and little Henry, who was five. They were brought to Whitehall Palace for him to see the night before he was to die. He took the little boy on his knee, and talked a long time to Elizabeth, telling her what books to read and giving her his messages to her mother and brothers; and then he told little Henry to mark what he said, and to mind that he must never be set up as a king while his elder brothers, Charles and James were alive. The little boy said through his tears, “ I will be torn in pieces first.” His father kissed and blessed the two children, and left them. The next day was the 30th of January, 1649. The king was allowed to have Bishop Juxon to read and pray with him, and to give him the holy communion. After that, forgiving his enemies, and praying for them, he was led to the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and out through a window, on to a scaffold hung with black cloth. He said his last prayers, and the executioner cut off his head with one blow, and held it up to the people. He was buried at night, — a light snow falling at the time, — in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor, by 282 Young Folks' History of England. four faithful noblemen, but they were-not allowed to use an}’ service over his grave. The Scots were so much shocked to find what their selling of their king had come to, that they invited his eldest son, Charles, a young man of nineteen, to come and reign over them, and offered to set him on the English throne again. Young Charles came ; but they were so strict that they made his life very dull and weary, since they saw sin in every amusement. However, they kept their promise of marching into England, and some of the English cavaliers joined them; but Oliver Cromwell and his army met them at Worcester, and they were entirely beaten. Young King Charles had to go away with a few gentlemen, and he was so closely followed that they had to put him in charge of some woodmen named Penderel, who lived in Boscobel Forest. They dressed him in a rough leather suit like their own, and when the Roundhead soldiers came to search, he was hidden among the branches of an oak tree above their heads. Afterwards, a lady named Jane Lane helped him over another part of his journey, by letting him ride on horseback before her as her ser¬ vant ; but, when she stopped at an inn, he was very near being found out, because he did not know EXECUTION OK KINO CHARLES. Death of Charles I. 285 how to turn the spit in the kitchen when the cook asked him. However, he got safely to Brighton, which was only a little village then, and a boat took him to France, where his mother was living. In the meantime, his young sister and brother, Elizabeth and Henry, had been sent to the Isle of Wight, to Carisbrook Castle. Elizabeth was pin¬ ing away with sorrow, and before long she was found dead, with her cheek resting on her open Bible. After this, little Henry was sent to be with his mother in France. The eldest daughter, Mary, had been married just as the war began to the Prince of Orange, who lived in Holland, and was left a widow with one little son. James, Duke of York, the second brother, had at first been in the keeping of a Par¬ liamentary nobleman, with his brother and sister, in London; but, during a game of hide-and-seek, he crept out of the gardens and met some friends, who dressed him in girls clothes and took him to a ship in the Thames, which carried him to Holland. Little Henrietta, the youngest, had been left, when only six weeks old, to the care of one of her mother’s ladies. When she was nearly three, the lady did not think it safe to keep her any longer in England. So she stained her face and hands* 286 Young Folks' History of England. brown, with walnut juice, to look like a gipsy, took the child upon her back, and trudged to the coast. Little Henrietta could not speak plain, but she always called herself by a name she meant to be princess, and the lady was obliged to call her Piers, and pretend that she was a little boy, when the poor child grew angry at being treated so differ¬ ently from usual, and did all she possibly could to make the strangers understand that she was no beggar boy. However, at last she was safe across the sea, and was with her mother at Paris, where the king of France, Queen Henrietta’s nephew, was very kind to the poor exiles. The misfortune was, that the queen brought up little Henrietta as a Roman Catholic, and tried to make Henry one also; but he was old enough to be firm to his father’s Church, and he went away to his sister in Holland. Janies, however, did somewhat later be¬ come a Roman Catholic; and Charles would have been one, if he had cared enough about religion to do what would have lessened his chance of getting back to England as king. But these two brothers were learning no good at Paris, and were growing careless of the right and fond of pleasure. James and Henry, after a time, joined the French army, Death of Charles I. 287 that they might learn the art of war. They were both very brave, but it was sad that when France and England went to war, they should be in the army of the enemies of their country. CHAPTER XXXVI. OLIVER CROMWELL. A.D. 1G49—1660. O LIVER Cromwell felt, as lias been said, that there was no one who could set matters to rights as he could in England. He had shewn that the country could not do without him, if it was to go on without the old government. Xot only had he conquered and slain Charles I., and beaten that king’s friends and those of his son in Scotland, but he had put down a terrible rising of the Irish, and suppressed them with much more cruelty than he generally showed. He found that the old Long Parliament did nothing but blunder and talk, so he marched into the House one day with a company of soldiers, and sterniy ordered the members all off, calling out, as he pointed to the mace that lay before the Speaker's 288 CROMWELL DISMISSING THE LONG PARLIAMENT. Oliver Cromwell. 291 chair, “ Take away that bauble.” After that he called together a fresh Parliament; but there were- very few members, and those only men who would do as he bade them. The Speaker was a leather- seller named Barebones, so that this is generally known as Barebones’ Parliament. By these people he was named Lord Protector of England ; and as his soldiers would still do anything for him, he reigned for five years, just as a king might have done, and a good king too. He was by no means a cruel or unmerciful man, and he did not persecute the Cavaliers more than he could help, if he was to keep up his power; though, of course, they suffered a great deal, since they had fines laid upon them, and some forfeited their estates for having resisted the Parliament. Many had to live in Holland or France, because there was no safety for them in England, and their wives went backwards and forwards to their homes to collect their rents, and obtain something to live upon. The bishops and clergy had all been driven out, and in no church was it allowable to use the Prayer-book; so there used to be secret meetings in rooms, or vaults^ or in woods, where the prayers could be used as of old, and the holy sacrament administered. 292 Young Folks' History of England. For five years Cromwell was Lord Protector, but in the year 1658 be died, advising that bis son Richard should be chosen Protector in his stead. Richard Cromwell was a kind, amiable gentleman, but not clever or strong like his father, and he very soon found that to govern England was quite beyond his power; so he gave up, and went to live at his own home again, while the English people gave him the nick-name of Tumble-down-Dick. No one seemed well to know what was to be done next; but General Monk, who was now at J the head of the army, thought the best thing j possible would be to bring back the king. A new Parliament was elected, and sent an invitation to ; Charles II. to come back again and reign like his forefathers. He accepted it; the fleet was sent to fetch him, and on the 29th of May, 1660, he rode into London between his brothers, James and Hemy. The streets were dressed with green boughs, the windows hung with tapestry, and everyone shewed such intense joy and delight, that the king said he could not think why he should have stayed away so long, since everyone was so glad to see him back again. But the joy of his return was clouded by the deaths of his sister Mary, the Princess of Orange, PORTRAIT OP MONK Oliver Cromwell. 295 and of his brother Henry, who was only just twenty. Mary left a son, William, Prince of Orange, of whom you will hear more. The bishops were restored, and, as there had been no archbishop since Laud had been beheaded, good Juxon, who had attended King Charles at his death, was made archbishop in his room. The persons who had been put into the parishes to act as clergymen, were obliged to give place to the real original parish priest; but if he were dead, as was often the case, they were told that they might stay, if they would be ordained by the bishops and obey the Prayer-book. Some did so, some made an arrangement for keeping the parsonages, and paying a curate to take the service in church; but those who were the most really in earnest gave up everything, and were turned out — but only as they had turned out the former clergymen ten or twelve years before. All Oliver Cromwell’s army was broken up, and the men sent to their homes, except one regiment which came from Coldstream in Scotland. These would not disband, and when Charles II. heard it he said he would take them as his guards. This was the beginning of there being always a regular army of men, whose whole business it is to be 296 Young Folks' History of England. soldiers, instead of any man being called from his work when he is wanted. Charles II. promised pardon to all the rebels, but he did try and execute all who had been actually concerned in condemning his father to death. CHAPTER XXXVII. CHARLES H. a.d. 1(360—1685. I T is sad to have to say that, after all his troubles, Charles II. disappointed everybody. Some of these disappointments could not he helped, but others were his own fault. The Puritan party thought, after they had brought liun home again he should have been more favorable to them, and 297 298 Young Folks' History of England. grumbled at the restoration of tlie clergymen and of the Prayer-book. The Cavaliers thought that, after all they had gone through for him and his father, he ought to have rewarded them more; but he said truly enough, that if he had made a noble¬ man of everyone who had deserved well of him, no place bx:t Salisbury Plain would have been big enough for the House of Lords to meet upon. Then those gentlemen who had got into debt to raise soldiers for the king’s service, and had paid fines, or had to sell their estates, felt it hard not to have them again; but when a Roundhead gentle¬ man had honestly bought the property, it would have been still more unjust to turn them out. These two old names of Cavaliers and Roundheads began to turn into two others even more absurd. The Cavalier set came to be called Tories, an Irish name for a robber, and the Puritans got the Scotch name of Whigs, which means buttermilk. It would have taken a very strong, wise, and good man to deal rightly with two such different sets of people; but though Charles II. was a very clever man, he was neither wise nor good. He could not bear to vex himself, nor anybody else; and, rather than be teased, would grant almost anything that was asked of him. He was so bright Charles H. 299 and lively, and made such droll, good-natured answers, that everyone liked him who came near him ; but lie had no steady principle, only to stand easy with everybody, and keep as much power for himself as he could without giving offence. He loved pleasure much better than duty, and kept about him a set of people who amused him, but were a disgrace to his court. They even took money from the French king to persuade Charles against helping the Dutch in their war against the French. The Dutch went to war with the English upon this, and there were many terrible sea-fights, in which James, Duke of York, the king’s brother, shewed himself a good and brave sailor. The year 1665 is remembered as that in which there was a dreadful sickness in London, called the plague. People died of it often after a very short illness, and it was so infectious that it was difficult to escape it. When a person in a house was found to have it, the door was fastened up and marked with a red cross in chalk, and no one was allowed to go out or in; food was set down outside to be fetched in, and carts came round to take away the dead, who were all buried together in long ditches. The plague was worst in the summer and autumn; as winter came on more recovered and 300 Young Folks' History of England. fewer sickened, and at last this frightful sickness was ended; and by God’s good mercy, it has never since that year come to London. The next year, 1666, there was a fire in London, wliich burnt down whole streets, with their churches, and even destroyed St. Paul’s Cathedral. Perhaps it did good by burning down the dirty old houses and narrow streets where the plague might have lingered, but it was a fearful misfortune. It was only stopped at last by blowing up a space with gunpowder all round it, so that the flames might have no way to pass on. The king and liis brother came and were very helpful in giving orders about this, and in finding shelter for many poor, homeless people. There was a good deal of disturbance in Scotland when the king wanted to bring back the bishops and the Prayer-book. Many of the Scots would not go to church, and met on hills and moors to have their prayers in their own way. Soldiers were sent to disperse them, and there was much fierce, bitter feeling. Archbishop Sharpe was dragged out of his carriage and killed, and then there was a civil war, in which the king’s men pre¬ vailed; but the Whigs were harshly treated, and there was great discontent. Charles II. 303 The country was much troubled because the king and queen had no children: and the Duke of York was a Roman Catholic. A strange story was got up that there was what was called a popish plot for killing the king, and putting James on the throne. Charles himself laughed at it, for he knew every¬ one liked him and disliked his brother: “No one would kill me to make you king, James,” he said; but in his easy, selfish way, when he found that all the country believed in it, and wanted to have the men they fancied guilty put to death, he did not try to save their lives. Soon after this false plot, there was a real one called the Rye-house Plot. Long ago, the king- had pretended to marry a girl named Lucy Waters and they had a son whom he had made Duke of Monmouth, but who could not reign because there had been no right marriage. However, Lord Russell and some other gentlemen, who ought to have known better, so hated the idea of the Duke of York being king, that they joined in the Rye- house Plot for killing the duke, and forcing the king to make Monmouth his heir. Some of the more unprincipled sort, who had joined them, even meant to shoot Charles and James both together, on the way to the Newmarket races. However, •°>04 Younf) Folks’ History of England. tlie plot was found out, and the leaders were put to death. Lord Russell’s wife, Lady Rachel, sat by him all the time of his trial, and was his great comfort to the last. Monmouth was pardoned, but fled away into Holland. The best thing to be said of Charles II. was that he made good men bishops, and he never was angry when they spoke out boldly about his wicked ways ; but then, he never tried to leave them off, and he spent the very last Sunday of his life among his bad companions, playing at cards and listening to idle songs. Just after this came a stroke of apo¬ plexy, and, while he lay dying on his bed, he sent for a Roman Catholic priest, and was received into the Church of Rome, in which he had really believed most of his life — though he had never dared to own it, for fear of losing his crown. So, as he was living a lie, of course the fruits showed themselves in his selfish, wasted life. It was in this reign that two grand books were written. John Milton, a blind scholar and poet, who, before he lost his sight, had been Oliver Cromwell’s secretary, wrote his Paradise Lost, or rather dictated it to his daughters; and John Bunyan, a tinker, who had been a Puritan preacher, wrote the Pilgrim’s Progress. CHAPTER XXXVIII. JAMES II. a.d. 1685—1688. J AMES II. had, at least, been honest in openly joining the Church in which he believed ; but the people disliked and distrusted him, and he had not the graces of his brother to gain their hearts with, but was grave, sad, and stern. The Duke of Monmouth came across from 305 306 Young Folks’ History of England. Holland, and was proclaimed king in his uncle’s stead at Exeter. Many people in the West of England joined him, and at Taunton, in Somerset¬ shire, he was received hy rows of little girls stand¬ ing by the gate in white frocks, strewing flowers before him. But at Sedgemoor he was met by the army, and his friends were routed ; he himself fled away, and at last was caught hiding in a ditch, dressed in a laborer’s smock frock, and with his pockets full of peas from the fields. He was taken to London, tried, and executed. He did not deserve much pity, hut James ought not to have let the people who had favored him be cruelly treated. Sir George Jeffreys, the chief justice, was sent to try all who had been concerned, from Win¬ chester to Exeter; and he hung so many, and treated all so savagely, that his progress was called the Bloody Assize. Even the poor little maids at Taunton were thrown into a horrible, dirty jail, and only released on their parents paying a heavy sum of money for them. This was a had beginning for James’s reign; and the English grew more angry and suspicious when they saw that he favored Roman Catholics more than anyone else, and even put them into places that only clergymen of the Church of England James II. 309 could fill. Then he put forth a decree, declaring that a person might be chosen to any office in the State, whether he were a member of the English Church or no; and he commanded that every clergyman should read it from his pulpit on Sunday mornings. Archbishop Sancroft did not think it a right thing for clergymen to read, and he and six more bishops presented a petition to the king against being obliged to read it. One of these was Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, who wrote the morning hymn, “ Awake, my soul, and with the sun,” and the evening hymn, “ All praise to Thee, my God, this night.” Instead of listening to their petition, the king had all the seven bishops sent to the Tower, and tried for libel — that is, for malicious writing. All England was full of anxiety, and when at last the jury gave the verdict of “not guilty,” the whole of London rang with shouts of joy, and the soldiers in their camp shouted still louder. This might have been a warning to the king; for he had thought that, as he paid the army, they were all on his side, and would make the people bear whatever he pleased. The chief comfort peo¬ ple had was in thinking their troubles would only last during his reign: for his first wife, an English- 310 Young Folks' History of England. woman, had only left him two daughters, Mary and Anne, and Mary was married to her cousin, William, Prince of Orange, who was a great enemy of the King of France and of the Pope ; and Anne’s husband, Prince George, brother to the King of Denmark, was a Protestant. He was a dull man, and people laughed at him — because, whenever he heard any news, he never said anything but “ Est il possible?" is it possible? But he had a little son, of whom there was much hope. But James had married again, Mary Beatrice d'Este, an Italian princess; and, though none of her babies had lived before, at last she had a little son who was healthy and likely to live, and who was christened James. Poor little boy! Every¬ one was so angry and disappointed that he should have come into the world at all, that a story was put about that he was not the son of the king and queen, but a strange baby who had been carried into the queen’s room in a warming-pan, because James was resolved to prevent Mary and William from reign lino-. Only silly people could believe such a story as this; but all the Whigs, and most of the Tories, thought in earnest that it was a sad thing for the country to have a young heir to the throne brought James II. 311 up to be a Roman Catholic, and to think it right to treat his subjects as James was treating them. Some would have been patient, and have believed that God would bring it right, but others were resolved to put a stop to the evils they expected; and, knowing what was the state of people’s minds, William of Orange set forth from Holland, and landed at Torbay. Crowds of people came to meet him, and to call on him to deliver them. It was only three years since the Bloody Assize, and they had not forgotten it in those parts. King James heard that one person after another had gone to the Prince of Orange, and he thought it not safe for his wife and child to be any longer in England. So, quietly, one night he put them in charge of a French nobleman who had been visiting him, and who took them to the Thames, where, after wait¬ ing in the dark under a church wall, he brought them a boat, and they reached a ship which took them safely to France. King James staid a little longer. He did not mind when he heard that Prince George of Den¬ mark had gone to the Prince of Orange, but only laughed, and said, “ Est il possible ? ” but when he heard his daughter Anne, to whom he had always been kind, was gone too, the tears came into his 312 Young Folks '’ History of England. eyes, and lie said, “ God help me, my own children are deserting me.” He would have put himself at the head of the army, hut he found that if he did so he was likely to he made prisoner and carried to William. So he disguised himself and set off for France; but at Faversham, some people who took him for a Roman Catholic priest seized him, and he was sent back to London. However, as there was nothing the Prince of Orange wished so little as to keep him in captivity, he was allowed to escape again, and this time he safely reached France, where he was very kindly welcomed, and had the palace of St. Germain given him for a dwelling- place. It was on the 4th of November, 1688, that William landed, and the change that now took place is commonly called the English Revolution. We must think of the gentlemen, during these reigns, as going about in very fine laced and ruffled coats, and the most enormous wigs. You know the Roundheads had short hair and the Cavaliers long: so people were ashamed to have short hair, and wore wigs to hide it if it would not grow, till everybody came to have shaven heads, and mon¬ strous wigs in great curls on their shoulders: and James IT. 318 even little boys’ hair was made to look as like a wig as possible. The barber had the wig every morning to fresh curl, and make it white with hair powder, so that everyone might look like an old .nan, with a huge quantity of white hair. CHAPTER XXXIX. WILLIAM III. AND MARY II. a.d 1689—1702. HEX James II. proved to be entirety gone, the Parliament agreed to offer the crown to William of Orange ■—the next heir after James’s children — and Mary, his wife, James’s eldest daughter; but not until there had been new conditions made, which would prevent the kings from ever being so powerful again as they "had been since the time of Henry VII. Remember, Magna Carta, under King John, gave the power to the nobles. They lost it by the wars of the Roses, and the Tudor kings gained it; but the Stuart kings could not keep it, and the House of Commons became the strongest power in the kingdom, by the Revolution of 1688. The House of Commons is made up of persons chosen — whenever there is a general election — by 814 William III. and Mary IT. 315 the men who have a certain amount of property in each county and large town. There must be a fresh election, or choosing again every seven years; also, whenever the sovereign dies; and the sover¬ eign can dissolve the Parliament — that is, break it up — and have a fresh election whenever it is thought right. But above the House of Commons stands the House of Lords, or Peers. These are not chosen, but the eldest son, or next heir of each lord, succeeds to his seat upon his death; and fresh peerages are given as rewards to great generals, great lawyers, or people who have deserved well of their country. When a law has to be made, it has first t< be agreed to by a majority — that is, the larger number — of the Commons, then by a majority of the Lords, and lastly, by the king or queen. The sovereign’s council are called the ministers, and if the Houses of Parliament do not approve of their way of carrying on the govern¬ ment they vote against their proposals, and this generally makes them resign, that others may be chosen in their place who may please the country better. This arrangement has gone on ever since William and Mary came in. However, James II. still had many friends, only they had been out of reach at Young Folk* History of England. 316 the first alarm. The Latin word for James is Jacobus, and, therefore, they were called Jacobites. All Roman Catholics were, of course, Jacobites; and there were other persons who, though grieved at the king’s conduct, did not think it right to rise against him and drive him away; and, having taken an oath to obey him, held that it would be wrong to swear obedience to anyone else while he was alive. Archbishop Sancroft was one of these. He thought it wrong in the new queen, Mary, to con¬ sent to take her father’s place; and when she sent to ask his blessing, he told her to ask her father’s first, as, without that, Iris own would do her little good. Neither he nor Bishop Ken, nor some other bishops, nor a good many more of the clergy, would take the oaths to William, or put his name instead of that of James in the prayers at church. They rather chose to be turned out of their bishop¬ ries and parishes, and to live in poverty. They were called the non-jurors, or not-swearers. Louis, King of France, tried to send James back, and gave him the service of his fleet; but it was beaten by Admiral Russell, off Cape La Hogue. Poor James could not help crying out, “See my brave English sailors! ” One of Charles’s old officers, Lord Dundee, raised an army of Scots in William III. and Mary II. 319 James’s favor, but be was killed just as be had Avon the battle of Killiecrankie; and there was no one to take up the cause just then, and the Scotch Whigs were glad of the change. Most of James’s friends, the Roman Catholics, were in Ireland, and Louis lent him an army with which to go thither and try to win his croAvn back. He got on pretty well in the South, but in the North — where Oliver Cromwell had given lands to many of his old soldiers — he met Avitli much more resistance. At Londonderry, the ap¬ prentice boys shut the gates of the toAvn and barred them against him. A clergyman named George Walker took the command of the city, and held it out for a hundred and five days against him, till everyone was nearly starved to death — and at last help came from England. William himself came to Ireland, and the father and son-in-law met in battle on the banks of the Boyne, on the 1st of July, 1690. James was routed; and large numbers of the Irish Protestants have ever since kept the 1st of July as a great holiday — commemorating the victory by Avearing orange lilies and orange- colored scarfs. James Avas soon obliged to leave Ireland, and his friends there were severely punished. In the meantime, William was fighting the French in 320 Young Folks' History of England. Holland — as lie had done nearly all his life — while Mary governed the kingdom at home. She was a handsome, stately lady, and was much respected; and there was great grief when she died of the small-pox, never having had any children. It was settled upon this that William should go on reigning as long as he lived, and then that Princess Anne should he queen ; and if she left no children, that the next after her should be the youngest daughter of Elizabeth, daughter of James I. Her name was Sophia, and she was married to Ernest of Brunswick, Elector of Hanover. It was also settled that no Roman Catholic, nor even anyone who married a Roman Catholic, could ever he on the English throne. Most of the Tories disliked this Act of Settle¬ ment ; and nobody had much love for King William, who was a thin, spare man, with a large, hooked nose, and very rough, sharp manners — perhaps the more sharp because he was never in good health, and suffered terribly from the asthma. However, he managed to keep all the countries under him in good order, and he was very active, and always at war with the French. Towards the end of his reign a fresh quarrel began, in which all Europe took part. The King of Spain died with¬ out children, and the question was who should William III and Mary II 321 reign after him. The King of France had married one sister of this king, and the Emperor of Ger¬ many was the son of her aunt. One wanted to make his grandson king of Spain, the other his son, and so there was a gre.it war. William III. took part against the French — as he had always been their enemy; but just as the war was going to begin, as he was riding near his palace of Hampton Court, his horse trod into a mole-hill, and he fell, breaking his collar bone; and this hurt his weak chest so much that he died in a few days, in the year 1702.- The Jacobites were very glad to be rid of him, and used to drink the health of the “little gentleman in a black velvet coat,” meaning the mole which had caused his death. CHAPTER XL. A5JNE. a.d. 1702—1714. Q UEEN Anne, the second daughter of James II., began to reign on the death of William III. She was a well-meaning woman, but very weak and silly; and any person who knew how to manage her could make her have no will of her own. The person who had always had such power over her was Sarah Jennings, a lady in her train, who had married an officer named John Churchill. As this gentleman had risen in the army, he proved to be one of the most able generals who ever lived. He was made a peer, and, step by step, came to be Duke of Marlborough. It ivas he and his wife who, being Whigs, had persuaded Anne to desert her father; and, now she w as queen, she did just as they pleased. The duchess was mistress of the QUEEN ANNE. Anne. 325 robes, and more queen at home than Anne was; and the duke commanded the army which was sent to fight against the French, to decide who should be king of Spain. An expedition was sent to Spain, which gained the rock of Gibraltar, and this has been kept by the English ever since. Never were there greater victories than were gained by the English and German forces together, under the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy, who commanded the Emperor’s armies. The first and greatest battle of them all was fought at Blenheim, in Bavaria, when the French were totally defeated, with great loss. Marlborough was rewarded by the queen and nation buying an estate for him, which was called Blenheim, where woods were planted so as to imitate the position of bis army before the battle, and a grand house built and filled with pictures recording his adventures. The other battles were all in the Low Countries — at Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet. The city of Lisle was taken after a long siege, and not a summer went by without tidings coming of some great victory, and the queen going in a state coach to St Paul's Cathedral to return thanks for it. But all this glory of her husband made the Duchess of Marlborough more and more proud and 326 Young Folks' History of England. overbearing. She thought the queen could not do without her, and so she left off taking any trouble to please her; nay, she would sometimes scold her more rudely than any real lady would do to any woman, however much below her in rank. Some¬ times she brought the poor queen to tears; and on the day on which Anne went in state to St. Paul’s, to return thanks for the victory of Oudenarde, she was seen to be crying all the way from St. James’s Palace in her coach, with the six cream-colored horses, because the duchess had been scolding her for putting on her jewels in the way she liked best, instead of in the duchess's way. Now, Duchess Sarah had brought to the palace, to help to wait on the queen, a poor cousin of her own, named Abigail Masham, a much more smooth and gentle person, but rather deceitful. When the mistress of the robes was unkind and insolent, the queen used to complain to Mrs. Masham; and bv- and-by Abigail told her how to get free. There was a gentleman, well known to Mrs. Masham — Mr. Harley, a member of Parliament and a Tory, and she brought him in by the back stairs to see the queen, without the duchess knowing it. He undertook, if the queen would stand by him, to be her minister, and to turn out the Churcliills and THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. Anne. 329 their Whig friends, send away the tyrant duchess, and make peace, so that the duke 'might not be wanted any more. In fact, the war had gone on quite long enough; the power of the King of France was broken, and he was an old man. whom it was cruel to press further ; but this was not what Anne cared about so much as getting free of the duchess. There was great anger and indignation among all the Whigs at the breaking off the war in the midst of so much glory; and, besides, the nation did not keep its engagements to the others with whom it had allied itself. Marlborough him¬ self was not treated as a man deserved who had won so much honor for his country, and he did not keep his health many years after his fall. Once, when he felt his mind getting weak, he looked up at his own picture at Blenheim, taken when he was one of the handsomest, most able, and active men in Europe, and said sadly, “Ah! that teas a man.” Mr. Harley was made Earl of Oxford, and managed the queen’s affairs for her. He and the Tories did not at all like the notion of the German family of Brunswick — Sophia and her son George — who were to reign next, and they allowed the queen to look towards her own family a little more. 330 Youvff Folks’ History of England. Her father had died in exile, but there remained , the young brother whom she had disowned, and whom the French and the Jacobites called King James III. If he would have joined the English Church Anne would have gladly invited him, and many of the English would have owned him as the right king; but he was too honest to give up his faith, and the queen could do nothing for him. Till her time the Scots — though since James I. they had been under the same king as England — had had a separate Parliament, Lords and Com¬ mons, who sat at Edinburgh; but in the reign of Queen Anne the Scottish Parliament was united to the English one, and the members of it had to come to Westminster. This made many Scotsmen so angry that they became Jacobites; but as every¬ body knew that the queen was a gentle, well- meaning old lad}’, nobody wished to disturb her, and all was quiet as long as she lived, so that her reign was an unusually tranquil one at home, though there were such splendid victories abroad. It was a time, too, when there were almost as many able writers as in Queen Elizabeth’s time. The two books written at that day, which you are most likely to have heard of, are Robinson Crusoe, written by Anne. 331 Daniel Defoe, and Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer’s Iliad. Anne’s Tory friends did not make her happy; they used to quarrel among themselves and fright-, ened her; and after one of their disputes she had an attack of apoplexy, and soon died of it, in the y^ar 1714. It was during Anne’s reign that it became the fashion to drink tea and coffee. One was brought from China, and the other from Arabia, not very long before, and they Avere very dear indeed. The ladies used to drink tea out of little cups of egg¬ shell china, and the clever gentlemen, who Avere called the Avits, used to meet and talk at coffee¬ houses, and read newspapers, and discuss plays and poems ; also, the first magazine Avas then begun. It Avas called “ The Spectator,” and Avas managed by Mr. Addison. It came out once a Aveek, and laughed at or blamed many of the foolish and mischievous habits of the time. Indeed it did much to draw people out of the bad Avays that had come in Avitli Charles II. CHAPTER XLI. GEORGE I. a.d. 1714 — 1725 . T HE Electress Sophia, who had always desired to be queen of England, had died a few months before Queen Anne; and her son George, who liked his own German home much better than the trouble of reigning in a strange country, was in no hurry to come, and waited to see whether the English would not prefer the young James Stuart. But as no James arrived Gearge set off, rather unwillingly, and was received in London in a dull kind of way. He hardly knew any English, and was obliged sometimes to talk bad Latin and sometimes French, when he consulted with his ministers. He did not bring a queen with him, for he had quarreled with his wife, and shut her up in a castle in Germany; but he had a son, also named 332 Greorge I. 333 George, who had a very clever, handsome wife — Caroline of Anspach, a German princess; but the king was jealous of them, and generally made them live abroad. Just when it was too late, and George I. had thoroughly settled into his kingdom, the Jacobites in the North of England and in Scotland began to make a stir, and invited James Stuart over to try to gain the kingdom. The Jacobites used to call him James III., but the Whigs called him the Pretender; and the Tories used, by way of a middle course, to call him the Chevalier — the French word for a knight, as that he certainly was, whether he were king or pretender. A white rose was the Jacobite mark, and the Whigs still held to the orange lily and orange ribbon, for the sake of William of Orange. The Jacobite rising did not come to any good. Two battles were fought between the king's troops and the Jacobites — one in England and the other in Scotland — on the very same day. The Scottish one was at Sheriff-muir, and was so doubtful, that the old Scottish song about it ran thus — Some say that we won, And some say that they won, Some say that none won At a’, man ; 334 Young Folks' History of England, But of one thing I’m sure, That at Sheriff-in uir A battle there was, Which I saw, man. And we ran, and they ran, And they ran, and we ran, And we ran, and they ran — Awa, man. The English one was at Preston, and in it the Jacobites were all defeated and made prisoners; so that when their friend the Chevalier landed in Scotland, he found that nothing could be done, and had to go back again to Italy, where he generally lived, under the Pope’s protection; and where he married a Polish princess, and had two sons, whom he named Charles Edward and Henry. This rising of the Jacobites took place in the year 1715, and is, therefore, generally called the Rebellion of the Fifteen. The chief noblemen who were engaged in it were taken to London to be tried. Three were beheaded ; one was saved upon his wife’s petition ; and one, the Earl of Nitlisdale, by the cleverness of his wife. She was allowed to o-o and see him in the Tower, and she took a tall lady in with her, who contrived to wear a double set of outer garments. The friend went away, George I. 335 after a time ; and then, after waiting till the guard was changed, Lady Nithsdale dressed her husband in the clothes that had been brought in: and he, too, went away, with the hood over his face and a handkerchief up to his eyes, so that the guard might take him for the other lady, crying bitterly at parting with the earl. The wife, meantime, remained for some time, talking and walking up and down as heavily as she could, till the time came when she would naturally be obliged to leave him — when, as she passed by his servant, she said to him that “ My lord will not be ready for the candles just yet,” — and then left the Tower, and went to a little lodging in a back street, where she found her husband, and where they both lay hid while the search for Lord Nithsdale was going on, and where they heard the knell tolling when his friends, the other lords, were being led out to have tneir heads cut off. Afterwards, they made their escape to France, where most of the Jacobites who haci been concerned in the rising were living, as nest they could, on small means — and some of them by becoming soldiers of the King of France. England was prosperous in the time of George I., and the possessions of the country in India were growing, from a merchant’s factory here and there, 336 Young Folks' History of England. to large lands and towns. But the English neve liked King George, nor did he like them; and h generally spent Ins time in his own native couutr of Hanover. He was taking a drive there in ki coach, when a letter was thrown in at the window As he was reading it, a sudden stroke of apoplexy came on, and he died in a few hours’ time. N< one ever knew what was in the letter, but souk thought it was a letter reproaching him with hi.- cruelty to his poor wife, who had died in her prison about eight months before. He died in the yea] 1725. Gentlemen were leaving off full-bottomed wigs now, and wearing smaller ones; and younger men had their own hair powdered, and tied up with ribbon in a long tail behind, called a queue. Ladies powdered their hair, and raised it to an im¬ mense height, and also 'wore monstrous hoops, long ruffles, and high-heeled shoes. Another odd fash¬ ion was that ladies put black patches on their faces, thinking they made them look handsomer. Both ladies and gentlemen took snuff, and carried be»uti ful snuff-boxes. CHAPTER XLII. GEOKGE II. A.D. 1125—1760. T HE reign of George II. was a very warlike one. Indeed he was the last king of Eng¬ land who ever was personally in a battle; and, curiously enough, this battle — that of Fontenoy— was the last that a king of France was also present in. It was, however, not a very interesting battle, 337 338 Young Folks’ History of England. and it was not clear who really won it, nor are the wars of this time very easy to understand. The battle of Fontenoy was fought in the course of a great Avar to decide Avho should be emperor of Germany, in which France and England took different sides; and this made Charles Edward Stuart, the eldest son of James, think it was a good moment for trying once again to get back the croAvn of his forefathers. He was a fine-lookingr young man, with winning manners, and a great deal more spirit than his father: and Avhen he landed in Scotland with a very few folloAvers, one Highland gentleman after another was so delighted with him that they all brought their clans to join him, and he Avas'at the head of quite a large force, with Avhich he took possession of the town of Edin¬ burgh ; but he never could take the castle. The English army was most of it away fighting in Ger¬ many, and the soldiers Avho met him at Preston- pans, close to Edinburgh; were not well managed, and.Avere easily beaten by the Highlanders. Then he marched straight on into England: and there was great terror, for the Highlanders — Avith their plaids, long swords, and strange language — were thought to be all savage robbers, and the London¬ ers expected to have every house and shop ruined CHARLES EDWARD. G-eorge II. 389 and themselves murdered: though on the whole the Highlanders behaved veiy well. They would probably have really entered London if they had gone on, and reached it before the army could come home, blit they grew discontented and frightened at being so far away from their own hills; and at Derby, Charles Edward was obliged to let them turn back to Scotland. The English army had come back by this time, and the Scots were followed closely, getting more sad and forlorn, and losing men in every day’s march, till at last, after they had reached Scotland again, they made a stand against the English under the king’s second son, William, Duke of Cumberland, at the heath of Culloden. There they were entirely routed, and the prince had to fly, and hide himself in strange places and dis¬ guises, much as his great uncle, Charles II., had done before him. A young lady named Flora Macdonald took him from one of the Western Isles to another in a boat as her Irish maid, Betty Bourke; and, at another time, he was hid in a sort of bower, called the cage, woven of branches of trees on a hill side, where he lived with three Highlanders, who used to go out by turns to get food. One of them once brought him a piece of 340 Young Folks' History of England. ginger-bread as a treat — for they loved him heart¬ ily for being patient, cheerful, and thankful for all they did for him ; and when at last he found a way of reaching France, and shook hands with them on bidding them farewell, one of them tied up his right hand, and vowed that no meaner person should ever touch it. His friends suffered as much as he did. The Duke of Cumberland and his soldiers cruelly punished all the places where he had been received, and all the gentlemen who had supported him were, if they were taken, tried and put to death as traitors — mostly at Carlisle. This, which was called the Rebellion of the Forty-five—because it happened in the year 1745 — was the last rising in favor of the Stuarts. Neither Charles Edward nor his brother Henry had any children, and so the family came to an end. The Empress Maria Theresa, of Germany, had a long war with Frederick, King of Prussia, who was nephew to George II., and a very clever and brave man, who made his little kingdom of Prussia very warlike and brave. But he was not a very good man, and these were sad times among the great people, for few of them thought much about being good: and there were clever Frenchmen who George 11 343 laughed at all religion. You know one of the Psalms says, “ The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” There were a great many such fools at that time, and their ways, together with the selfishness of the nobles, soon brought terrible times to France, and all the countries round. The wars under George II. were by sea as well as by land: and, likewise, in the distant countries where Englishmen, on the one hand, and French¬ men, on the other, had made those new homes that we call colonies. In North America, both English and French had large settlements; and when the kings at home were at war, there were likewise battles in these distant parts, and the Indians were stirred up to take part with the one side or the other. They used to attack the homes