oo V . ' ■ . tissrc? SIK WALTER RALEIGH. YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF ENGLAND BY CHARLOTTE M. YONGE, Author or "The Heir of Redclyffe,"' "Little Lucys Wonderful Globe," "Book of Golden Deeds, k * "Young Folks' History of Germany," , * * «* ft "Greece," " France;'- 3 — ""Rome," &G. CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK AND WALDEN. NEW YORK: PHILLIPS AND HUNT. 1879. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WASHINGTON m% Copyrighted by D. LOTHKOP & CO., AND ESTKS & LaUBIAT, 1879. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE. 1. — Julius Csesar. B.C. 55 . . . . 13 2.— The Romans in Britain, a.d. 41—418 . . 18 »- ' > Execution of King Charles 2S3 ^ Cromwell dismissing the Long Parliament . . . 289^, Portrait of Monk . . . 293 \ The Great Fire .207 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 x Plymouth Harbor ........ 365 \ Victoria .......... 380 Windsor Castle . ........ S89 - English Manor House . 393 YOUNG FOLKS' HISTOEY OF ENGLAND, CHAPTER I JULIUS CAESAR. B.C. 55. NEARLY two thousand years ago there was a brave captain whose name was Julius Csesar. 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 a scarlet flag fly- ing below, and Avherever the eagle was seen, they all followed, and fought so bravely that nothing could loii^ stand against them. When Julius Caesar rode at their head, with his keen, pale hook-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 Ccesar. 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 onfy 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 country, they saw chiefly bare 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 very little. The men hunted wild boars, 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 enem} r , with all their flocks and cattle ; but 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 Cassar ? 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 Franco 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 IK BKITAIN". A. i). 41—418. TT 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 IS 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 were begun by the Romans, and bits of their walls 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 wild people in the South, and taught them to speak and dress, and read and 22 Young Folks History cf 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 fair 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 Romans in Britain. 28 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 tilings to see and talk about. As to the Britons, the English went on driving thenl 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 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. THE 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 souls of those who died fighting gallantly in battle 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. Seme 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 in 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 He 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 monas- 30 Young Folks' History of England. teries, and the men in them were termed monks, while the women were called nnns, 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 with beautiful colors, and stiff with gold. The English nuns' work was the most beautiful to be seen anywhere. There were schools in the abbeys, where boys were taught reading, writing, 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 without 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. THERE 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 Folk* History of England, I told you of had 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 Allied had excited the hopes and admiration of all who saw him, and while his brothers were bnsy 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 Game 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- a 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 he 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. THE 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 cler 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 Folk* 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 wherever he went ; but ho 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 ('nut- became King of England, as well as of Denmark. He became a Christian, and mar- ried Eninia, Ethelred's widow, though she was much older than himself, lie had been a hard and The Danish Conquest. 43 cruel map, but he now laid aside his 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 npt 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. " I will go over at once before the king." " Will you so," said the king, " then I will come after you, for whatever bears you will bear me." Cnut was a little, slight man, and he got easily over, and Pud- ding got a j)iece of land for his reward. These servants of the king used to natter 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 lime, 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 Jiis 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, and the En- glish learnt this bad custom of them. CANUTE BY THE SEA-SHORE. CHAPTER VL THE NORMAN CONQUEST. a.d. 1035—1066. /^^NT'T 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 was too good-natured, as you will say when you hear that one day, when he was in bed, he saw a thief come cautiously into his room, open the chest where his treasure was, and take out the money-bags. In- 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 kincr — o who had been brought up in Normandy — liking the Normans better than the English. They really were much cleA r erer 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 4 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. 106G— 1087. r I ^HE king who had conquered England was a -1~ 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. clown 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 fode 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 he had reel 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 rlew 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 lono- 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. CHAPTER VIII. WILLIAM II., KUFUS. a.d. 1087—1100. WILLIAM the Conqueror was obliged to let Normandy fall to Robert, his 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 62 Young Folks' History of England. 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 lie would be 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 Villiam 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 lung time past Jerusalem had been in William IL, 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 hi'm 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 fio-ht 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 his 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 II, Rufus. 67 something about the king's death. But he never seems to have told anyone, 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. HENRY, 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, he rode of! 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, 68 Hairy I., Beau-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 w T as 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 the}^ 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 J., Beaurderc. 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 really 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 Geof- frey 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 NEITHER 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 lie 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 would 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 lie 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 al- most 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 Glouces- ter 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 ex- change was brought about. Robert then went to Normandy, to fetcli Maude's little son Henry, who was ten years old, leaving her, as he thought, safe in Oxford 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 win- ter ; the river below the walls was frozen over, and snow was on the ground. One dark 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 Avas " 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 clays of his life, provided Stephen engaged that Henrv should reign instead of Ins own son Stephen. 77 after his death. This made Stephen's son, Eustace, very 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 re- spected there than as queen. CHAPTER XI. HENEY II., FITZ-EMPRESS. a.d. 1154—1189. HENRY Fitz-Empress is counted as the first 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 feelings. 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 73 MURDER OF THOMAS A-BECKET. Henry IL, 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 Avent 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- terbur} r . 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 very 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 of 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 w r ere very unhappy. His wife was not a good woman, and her sons were all disobedient and re- Henry IL, 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 Avar 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 this 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, young 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 his 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 an old man can die, for his sons had brought down his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. • HENRY II. S TOMB AT FONTEVliAXD. CHAPTER XII. RICHARD I., LION-HEART. a.d. 1189—1199. RICHARD was greatly grieved at his father's death, and when he 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 his 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 BANNER. Richard Z, 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 cli- mate 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 Sala- din 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 Sara- cens, 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 carpen- ter or a mason. Richard was so provoked that he struck him a blow, and the duke went home in a 92 Young Folks' History of England. 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- 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 he 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 lie was in bed the boy went into the kitchen with 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 questions, and guessed that the boy's master must be some great man. The Duke of Austria heard of it, sent soldiers to take him, and shut him up as a prisoner in one of his castles. Afterwards, the duke gave him up for a large sum of money to the Emperor of Germany. All this time Richard's wife and mother had been in great sorrow and fear, trying to find out what had become of him. It is said that he was found at last by his friend, the minstrel Blondel. A minstrel was a person who made verses and sung them. Many of the nobles and knights in Queen Eleanor's Duchy of Aqui- taine were minstrels — and Richard was a very good one himself, and amused himself in his cap- tivity by making verses. This is certainly true — though I cannot answer for it that the pretty story is true, which says that Blondel sung at all the castle courts in Germany, till he heard his master's voice take up and reply to his song. The Queens, Eleanor and Berengaria, raised a ransom — that is, a sum of money to buy his free- dom — though his brother John tried to prevent them, and the King of France did his best to hinder the emperor from releasing him ; but the Pope in- sisted that the brave crusader should be set at liberty : 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 for- get 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 shoul- der 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 pris- oner, 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 buried at the feet of his father, in Fontevraud Abbey, where he had 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 fur him. CHAPTER XIIL JOHN, LACKLAND, a.d. 1199—1216. AS a kind of joke, John, King Henry's young- est son, had been called Lackland, because he 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. suacled him to desert Arthur, and marry his son Louis to John's own niece, Blanche, who had a chance of being queen of part of Spain. Still Ar- thur lived at the French King's court, and when he was sixteen years old, Philip helped him to raise an army and go to try his fortune against his uncle. He laid siege to Mirabeau, a town where his grandmother, Queen Eleanor, was living. John, who was then in Normandy, hurried to her rescue, beat Arthur's army, made him prisoner and carried him off, first to Rouen, and then to the strong castle of Falaise. Nobody quite knows 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 put 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 Faliase. 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, and threw his body into the river. There was, any way, no doubt that John was guilty of his nephew's death, and he was fully known to be one of the most selfish and cruel men who ever lived ; and so m :;.■,■■.■■■' ■ill ; ; 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, 7 100 Young Folks' History of England. and made the king and people pay him money whenever he demanded it. r All 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 winch 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'S ANGER AFTER SIGNING MAGNA CHARTA, John, Lackland. 103 for rage, and swore he was no king. Then lie 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 sleep. He supped on peaches and new ale, and soon after became very ill. He died in a few da}*s, 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. 1216—1272. KING John left two little sons, Henry and Richard, nine and seven years old, and all the English barons felt that they would rather have Henry as their king than the French Lonis, whom they had only called in because John was such a wretch- So when little Henry had been crowned 104 Henry III., 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 tlie 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 do 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 Abbuy, as it is now, was one. And 106 Young Folks' History of Fyigland. he was so charitable to the jDoor that, when he had his children weighed, he gave their weight in gold and silver in alms. But he gave to everyone who asked, and so always wanted money ; and some- times his men could get nothing for the king and queen to eat, but by 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 w^as 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 BARON; Henry III., of Winchester. 109 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 do Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who had married his sister, was appointed among the lords who were to keep w^atch over him. Henry could not bear this ; he felt himself to be less than ever a king, and tried to break loose. He had never cared for his promises ; but his brave son EdAvard, 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 LeAves, in Sussex. Edward 110 Young Folks' History of England. got the advantage at first, and galloped away, driving his enemies before him ; but when he turned round and came back, he found that Simon de Montfort had beaten the rest of the army, and made his 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 r,aces, while he was to look on and decide which was the swiftest. Thus they all tired out their horses, and as soon as he saw that they could hardly get them along, Edward spurred his own fresh Henry III., of Winchester. Ill horse, and galloped off to meet the friends who were waiting for him. All who were discontented with the Montforts joined him, and he soon had a large army. He marched against Montfort, and met him at Evesham. The poor old king was in Montfort's army, and in the battle was thrown down, and would have been killed if he had not called out — " Save me, save me, I am Henry of Winchester." His son heard the call, and, rushing to his side, carried him to a place of safety. His army was much the strongest, and Montfort had known from the first that there was no hope for him. " God have mercy on our souls, for our bodies are Sir Edward's," he had said ; and he died brave- ly on the field of battle. Edward brought his father back to reign in all honor, but he took the whole management of the kingdom, and soon set things in order again — taking care that Magna Carta should be properly observed. When everything was peaceful at home, he set out upon a Crusade with the good King of France, and while he was gone his father died, after a reign of fifty-six years. There were only three English Kings who reigned more than fifty years, and these are easy to remember, as each was the 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 money from the people unless the Parliament granted it. The Parliament has, ever since, been made up of 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 llealmo CHAPTER XV. EDWAED I., LONGSHANKS. A.D. 1272—1307. THE son of Henry III. returned from the Holy 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. He built as many churches and was as charitable as his father, but he was much more careful to make only good men bishops, and he al- lowed no wasting or idling. He faithfully obeyed Magna Carta, and made everyone else obey the 113 114 Young Folks History of England. law — indeed many good laws and customs have begun from his time. Order was the great thing he eared for, and under him the English grew prosperous and happy, when nobody was allowed to 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 had never left of! thinking that they had a right to it, and coming down out of their mountains to burn 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 many his cousin, Eleanor de Mont fort. 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 biidge of Builth and killed, without their 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 / / c Edward Z, Longshanks. 117 them a prince who had been born in their country — had never spoken a word of any language but theirs. The}' 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 alwaj-s been Prince of Wales. There was a plan for the little Prince Edward of Caernarvon being married to a little girl, who was grand-daughter 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 his own dukedom of Aquitaine belonged to the King of France over 118 Young Folks' History of England. him; and the Kings of Scotland alwaj'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 Avas" 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 awa}^ 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 Avill- 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 Edivard J., Longshanks. 119 woods and Mils, 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 says, "Edward L, 1308 — The Hammer of the Scots — Keep Treaties." His good wife, Queen Eleanor, had died many years before him, and was Edward Z, Long shanks. 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. UNLIKE 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 III., 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 ; but the mo- ment the old king was dead, Edward turned back from Scotland, where he was so much wanted, and sent for Piers Gaveston again. At the same time 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 dre 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 cou>in, 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 barons 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 Lis 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 Young Folks' History of England. not forget the names he had called them, and he was beheaded on Blacklow Hill. Edward was full of grief and anger for the cruel death of his friend ; but 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 llee at sight of two. Edward II., of Caernarvon. 125 The king comforted himself with a new friend — 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 France, 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- 126 Young Folks' History of England. land to help. All the English who hated the Le Despencers joined her, and she led the young prince against his father. Edward and his friends were hunted across into Wales ; but they were tracked out one by one, and the Despencers were 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, 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 v^ EDWARD II. AND HIS JAILERS. Edward II„ of Caernarvon. 129 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 III. a.d. 1327—1377. FOR 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 tlicm to death, and kept the queen shut up in 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, Ifainault (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 France, Philip 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 3 — 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 lie called himself Kiney. He a to the room called tht hain- I him there. Anotl the si I the kiL_ as if he w and the prince took the crown tha and carried it away. When the king rev Hem ght it back, with mar.; ses. •* Ah. f air ^ -1 the king, "wh : have y the crown ? you know your father had n try, -with your took 1 with i will keep it." ••V . have mercy on my soul," said the Another story tells how the prince, feeling that s Father doubted his loyalty, presented himself one :he king, and him a laggei . _ 1 his PRINCE HENRY OFFERS HIS LIFE TO HIS FATHER. 1 55 father to take his life, if he could no long and love him. We cannot be quite certain about the truth of conver for many people aviII write down stories they have heard, without making sure of them. One thing we ... I Eenry told his Bon, whi< .It was that, unl tade war in I his lords wo \d never let him h nuiet on his throi tnd; and this young TI nry was quil to believe. There had nev r been a real tween V. -land since Edward III. had :r — only truces, which are short in the middle of a great war — and the English were eager to begin again ; for people seldom thought then of the misery that -Teat war. but only of the honor and glory that were to be gai making prisoners and getting ransoms from them. So Henry IV. died, after havin his own life very miserable by taking the crown unjus and, as you will see, leaving a great dual of harm still to come to the whole country, as well i France. He died in the year 1399. His family is called the House of Lancaster, beeaUie hi.? father had 156 Young Folks' Ristory of England. been Duke of Lancaster. You will be amused to hear that Richard Whittington really lived in his time. I cannot answer for his cat, but he was really Lord Mayor of London, and supplied the wardrobe of King Henry's daughter, when she married the King of Denmark. CHAPTER XX. HENRY V., OF MONMOUTH. A.D. 1413—1423. THE young King Henry was full of high, good thoughts. He was most devout in going to church, tried to make good Bishops, gave freely to the poor, and was so kindly, and hearty, and merry in all his words and ways, that everyone loved him. Still, he thought it was his duty to go and make war in France. He had been taught to believe the kingdom belonged to him, and it was in so wretched a state that he thought he could do it good. The poor king, Charles VI., was mad, and had a wicked wife besides; and his sons, and uncles, and cousins were always fighting, till the streets of Paris were often red with blood, and the whole country was miserable. Henry hoped to set all in order for them, and gathering an army 157 158 1 bung Folks* History of England. together, crossed to Normandy. lie called on the people to own him as their true king, and never let any h :rn be done to them, for he hung any soldier who was caught stealing, or misusing anyone. He took the town of Harfleur, on the coast of Normandy, but not till after a long siege, when his camp was in so wet a place that ther; was much illness among his men, The store of food was nearly used up, and he was obliged to march his troops across to Calais, which you know belonged to England, to get some more. But on the way the French army came up to meet him — a very grand, splendid-looking army, commanded by the king*s eldest son the dauphin. Just as the English kings' eldest son was always Prince of Wales, the French kings' eldest son was always called Dau- phin of Vienne, because Viennc, the country that belonged to him, had a dolphin on its shield. The French army was very large — quite twice the number of the English — but, though Henry's men were weary and half-starved, and many of them sick, they were not afraid, but believed their king when he told them that there were enough French- men to kill, enough to run away, and enough to make prisoners. At night, however, the English had solemn prayers, and made themselves ready, and Henry V. of Monmouth, 161 the king walked from tent to tent to see that each man was in his place ; while, on the other hand, the French were feasting and revelling, and settling what they would do to the English when they had made them prisoners. They were close to a little village which the English called AgincOurt, and, though that is not quite its right name, it is what we have called the battle ever since. The French, owing to the quarrelsome state of the country, had no order or obedience among them. Nobody would obey any other; and when their own archers were ill the way, the horsemen began cutting them down as if they were the enemy. Some fought bravely, but it was of little use ; and by night all the French were routed, and King Henry's banner waving in victory over the field. He went back to England in great glory, and all the aldermen of London came out to meet him in red gowns and gold chains, and among them was Sir .Richard Wliit- tington, the great silk mercer. \y Henry was so modest that he would not allow the helmet he had worn at Agincou-i, all knocked about with terrible blows, to be carried before him when he rode into London, and he went straight to church, to give thanks to God for his victory. He soon went back to France, and went on conquering 11 162 Young Folks' History of England. it till the queen came to an agreement with him that he should marry her daughter Catherine, and that, though poor, crazy Charles VI. should reign to the end of his life, when he died Henry and Catherine should be king and queen of France. So Henry and Catherine were married, and he took her home to England with great joy and pomp, leaving his brother Thomas, Duke of Clarence, to take care of his army in France. For, of course, though the queen had made this treaty for her mad husband, most brave, honest Frenchmen could not but feel it a wicked and unfair thing to give the kingdom away from her son, the Dauphin Charles. He was not a good man, and had consented to the murder of his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, and this had turned some against him ; but still he was badly treated, and the bravest Frenchmen could not bear to see their country given up to the English. So, though he took no trouble to fight for himself, they fought for him, and got some Scots to help them ; ami by and by news came to Henry that his army had been beaten, and his brother killed. He came back again in haste to France, and his presence made everything go well again ; but all the winter he was besieging the town of Meaux, Henry F., of Monmouth. 163 where there was a very cruel robber, who made all the roads to Paris unsafe, and by the time he had taken it his health was much injured. His queen came to him, and they kept a very grand court at Paris, at Whitsuntide ; but soon after, when Henr}^ set out to join his army, he found himself so ill and weak that he was obliged to turn back to the Castle of Vincennes, where he grew much worse. He called for all his friends, and begged them to be faithful to his little baby son, whom he had never even seen ; and he spoke especially to his brother John, Duke of Bedford, to whom he left the charge of all he had gained. He had tried to be a good man, and though his attack on France was really wrong, and caused great misery, he had meant to do right. So he was not afraid to face death, and he died when only thirty-four years old, while he was listening to the 51st Psalm. Everybody grieved for him — even the French — and nobody had ever been so good and dutiful to poor old King Charles, who sat in a corner lament- ing for his good son Henry, and wasting away till he died, only three weeks later, so that he was buried the same day, at St. Denys Abbey, near Paris, as Henry was buried at Westminster Abbey, near London. CHAPTER XXL HENRY VI., OF WINDSOR. a.d. 1423—1461. THE 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 Franco wen j on all the time : the Duke of Bedford keeping the north and the old lands in the south-west for little Henry, and the 104 Henry VI., of Windsor. 167 French doing their best for their rightful king — though he was so lazy and fond of pleasure that he let them do it all alone. Yet a wonderful thing happened in his favor. The English were besieging Orleans, when a young village girl, named Joan of Arc, came to King Charles and told him that she had had a commission from Heaven to save Orleans, and to lead him to Rheims, where French kings were always crowned. And she did ! She always acted as one led by Heaven. Many wonderful things are told of her, and one circumstance that produced a great im- pression on the public mind was that when brought into the presence of Charles, whom she had never before seen, she recognized him, although he was dressed plainly, and one of the courtiers had on the royal apparel. She never let anything wrong be done in her sight — no bad words spoken, no savage deeds done ; and she never fought herself, only led the French soldiers. The English thought her a witch, and fled like sheep whenever they saw her ; and the French common men were always brave with her to lead them. And so she really saved Orleans, and brought the king to be crowned at Rheims. But neither Charles nor his selfish bad nobles liked her. She was too good for them ; and 168 Young Folks 1 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 say, 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 Henry 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 FT., of Windsor. 169 the lands his brother had won in France. All this time, the king liked the Beauforts 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. Ail these were given back to her father, and this made the Duke of Gloucester aud 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 II. 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. \J 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 eve^one 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 IT., of Windsor. 171 Edmund "was dead, but his 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 be 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 w T as 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 his 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 Avar, backed up by Warwick, and, after much fighting, they made the king prisoner, and forced him to make an agreement that he 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 the 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 Llenry 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 his Henry FX, of Windsor. m friends, and Margaret went to seek help in Scotland and abroad, taking her son with her. Once she brought another army and fought at Hexham, but she was beaten again; and before long King Henry was discovered by his enemies, carried to London, and shut up a prisoner in the Tower. His reign is reckoned to have ended in 1461. r-p CHAPTER XXIL EDWARD IV. a.d. 1461—1483. HOUGH Edward IV. was made king, the wars of the Red and White Roses were not over yet- Queen Margaret and her friends were always trying to get help for poor King Henry. Edward had been so base and mean as to have him led into London, with his feet tied together under his horse, while men struck him on the face, and cried out, "Behold the traitor!" But Henry was meek, patient, and gentle throughout ; and, when ihut up in the Tower, spent his time in reading and praying, or playing with his little dog. Queen Margaret and her son -Edward were living with her father in France, and she was always trying to have her husband set free and brought back to his throne. In the meantime, all England 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 fell in love with her and married her, but for a long time he was afraid to tell the Earl of Warwick ; and when he did, Warwick was greatly offended — and all the more because Elizabeth's relations were proud and gay in their dress, and tried to set themselves above all the old nobles. Warwick himself had no son. but he had two daughters, whom he meant to marry to the king's two brothers — George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Edward thought this would make Warwick too powerful, and though he could not prevent George from marrying Isabel Nevil, the eldest daughter, the discontent grew so strong that Warwick persuaded George to fly with him, turn against his own brother, and offer Queen Margaret their help! No winder Margaret did not trust them, and was very hard to persuade that Warwick could mean well by her; but at last she consented, and sfave her sod 176 Young Folks' History of England. Edward — a fine lad of sixteen — to marry his daughter, Anne Nevil ; after which, Warwick — whom men began to call the king-maker — went back to England with Clarence, to raise their men, while she was to follow with her son and his young wife. Warwick. came so suddenly that he took the Yorkists at unawares, Edward had to flee for his life to Flanders, leaving his wife and his babies to take shelter in \Yestminster Abbey — since no one durst take any one out of a holy place — and poor Henry was taken out of prison and set on the throne again. However, Edward soon got help in Flanders, where his 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. No 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 was killed, with his brother and many others, in the battle. And this was the first news that met Margaret when, after being long hindered by foul weather, she landed at Plymouth. She would have done more wisely to have gone back, but her son INTERVIEW BETWEEN EDWARD IV, AND LOUIS XI. 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 lus 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 ver}' 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. Ac last there was a great outbreak of anger, and the king ordered the Duke of Clarence to be imprisoned in the Tower; and 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 intended 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 Germairy 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 1483: seeing, perhaps, at last, how much better a king he might have been. CHAPTER XXIII. EDWARD V. A.D. 1483. 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, they set out to bring him to London to be crowned king. But, in the meantime, the Duke of Gloucester and several of the noblemen, especially the Duke of Buckingham, agreed that it was unbearable that the queen and her brothers should go on having all the power, as they had done in Edward's time. 183 184 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 Edward V. 187 that this pretence at fear wsls 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 wanted to get rid of them and to reign himself; and she knew that while she had Richard, Edward would be safe, since it would not make him king- to destroy one without the other. Archbishop Morton, who believed Richard's smooth words, and was a very good, kind man, thought this all a woman's nonsense, and told her that if she would not give up the boy freely, he would be taken from her 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 Duke 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. lie 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 the Tower again. They were sent into the prison part of it, and nobody exactly knows what became of them there ; but there cannot be much doubt that they ninst have been murdered. Some years later, two men confessed that they had been employed to smother the two brothers with pillows, as they slept ; and though the}^ added some partic- ulars to the story that can hardly be believed, it is most likely that this was true. Full two hundred years later, a chest was found under a staircase, in what is called the White Tower, containing bones that evidently had belonged to boys of about fourteen and eleven years old ; and these were placed in a marble urn among the tombs of the kings in Westminster Abbey. But even to this day, there are some people who doubt whether Edward V. and Richard of York were really murdered, or if Richard were not a person who came back to England and tried to make himself king. CHAPTER XXIV. RICHARD III. A.D. 1483—1485. RICHARD III. seems to have wished to be a good and great king ; but he had made his way to the throne in too evil a manner to be likely to prosper. How many people he had put to death we do not know, for when the English began to suspect tliat he had murdered his two nephews, they also accused him of the death of everyone who had been secretly slain ever since Edward IV. came to the throne, when he had been a mere boy. He found he must be always on the watch ; and his home was unhappy, for his son, for whose sake he had striven so hard to be king, died while yet a boy, and Anne, his wife, not long after. Then his former staunch friend, the Duke of Buckingham, began to feel that though he wanted the sons of Elizabeth Woodville to be set aside J 90 Richard III. 191 from reigning, it was quite another thing to murder them. He was a vain, proud man, who had a little royal blood — being descended from Thomas, the first Duke of Gloucester, son of Edward III. — and he bethought himself that, now all the House of Lancaster was gone, and so many of the House of York, he might possibly become king. But he had hardly begun to make a plot, before the keen-sighted, watchful Richard found it out, and had him seized and beheaded. There was another plot, though, that Richard did not find out in time. The real House of Lan- caster had ended when poor young Edward was killed at Tewkesbury; but the Beauforts — the children of that younger family of John of Gaunt, who had first begun the quarrel with the Duke of York — were not all dead. Lady Margaret Beau- fort, the daughter of the eldest son, had married a Welsh gentleman named Edmund Tudor, and had a son called Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. Edward IV. had always feared that this youth might rise against him, and he had been obliged to wander about in France and Brittany since the death of his father ; but nobody was afraid of Lady Margaret, and she had married a Yorkist nobleman, Lord 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 Nevil's death. There is a curious old set of verses, written by Lord Stanley's squire, which says that Lady Bessee called Lord Stanley to a secret room, and begged him to send to his stepson, Richmond, to invite him to come to England and set them all free. Stanley said he could not write well enough, and that he could not trust a scribe ; but Lady Bessee said she could write as well as any scribe in England. So she told him to come to her chamber at nine that evening, with his trusty squire ; and there she wrote letters, kneeling by the table, to all the noblemen likely to be discontented with Richard, and appointing a place of meeting with Stanley ; and she promised herself that, if Henry Tudor would come and overthrow the cruel tyrant 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. He kissed the ring, but waited long before he made up his mind to try his fortune. At last HENRY TUDOR CROWNED ON THE BATTLE-FIELD OF BOSWORTH. Richard III. 195 he sailed in a French ship, and landed at Milforcl 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 be 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 horse 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 last king of the Plantagenet family, who had ruled over England for more than three hundred years. This battle of Bosworth likewise finished the whole bloody war of the Red and White Roses. CHAPTER XXV. HENRY VII. a.d. 1485—1509. HENRY Tudor married the Lady Bessee as soon as lie 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 196 Henry VII 197 carved all over the beautiful chapel that he built on to Westminster Abbey to be buried in. He was not a very pjeasant 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 daughter. 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 having married her niece did not make it seem a bit the better to her. There was one nephew left — the poor young orphan son of George, Duke of Clarence — but he had always been quite silly, and Henry VII. had him watched carefully, for fear some one should set him up to claim the crown. 198 Young Folks' 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- dral, 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 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 he himself made prisoner. Then he confessed that he was really a baker's son, named Lambert Simnel ; and, as he turned out to be a poor weak lad, whom designing people had made to do just what they pleased, the king took him into bis 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 this, 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 CHAPEL AND TOMB OF HENRY VII. Henry VII 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 Plantagenct. 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 lie went to Coin wall. However, lie 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 lie 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 out, and Henry, thinking that he should never have any peace or safety whilst either of them was alive, caused Perkin to be hanged, and poor innocent Edward of Warwick to be beheaded. It was thought that this cruel deed was done because Henry found that foreign kings did not think 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 Qncen 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, Hemy, although everyone knew that no mar- riage between a man and his 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 was very sorry for him, for lie had been hard upon everyone, and had encouraged two 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 be 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 of 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 of Spain, mother to Katharine, Princess of Wales. 204 Young Folks' History of England. Henry had been very near sending Columbus, only he 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, I §§^ CHAPTER XXVL HENRY VHX. AND CARDINAL WOLSEY. a.d. 1509—1529. THE new king was very fond of the Princess Katharine, and lie married her soon after his father's death, without asking any more ques- tions about the right or wrong of it. He began with very gallant and prosperous times. He was very handsome, and skilled in all sports and 205 206 Young Folks' History of Engl and. games, and had such 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 Flodclen field ; and King 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 was not another Crecy, 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 promised; and he made peace with the French king, giving him in marriage his beautiful } r oung sister Mary — though King Louis was an old, help- less, sickly man. Indeed, he only lived six weeks after the wedding, and before there was time to fetch Queen Mary home again, she had married a Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wohey. 207 gentleman named Charles Brandon. She told her brother that she had married once to please him, and now she had married to please herself. But he forgave her, and made lier husband Duke of Suffolk. v Henry's chief adviser, at this time, was Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York ; a very able man, and of most splendid tastes and habits — outdoing even the Tudors in love of show. The pope had made him a cardinal — that is, one of the clergy, who are counted as parish priests in the diocese of Jtame, and therefore have a right to choose the pope. They wear scarlet hats, capes, and shoes, and are the highest in rank of all the clergy except the pope. Indeed, Cardinal Wolsey was in hopes of being chosen pope himself, and setting the whole Church to rights — for there had been several very wicked men reigning at Rome, one after the other, and they had brought tilings to such a pass that everyone felt there would be some great judg- ment from God if some improvement were not made. Most of Wolsey's arrangements with for- eign princes had this end in view. The new king of France, Francis I., was }~oung, brilliant and splendid, like Henry, and the two had a conference near Calais, when they brought their queens and 208 Young Folks' History of England. their whole Court, and put up tents of velvet, silk, and gold — while everything was so extraordinarily magnificent, that the meeting has ever since been called the Field of the Cloth of Gold. However, nothing came of it all. Cardinal Wolsey thought Francis's enemy — the Emperor, Charles V. — more likely to help him to be pope, and make his master go over to that side ; but after all an Italian was chosen in his stead. And there came a new trouble in his way. The king and queen had been married a good many years, and they had only one child alive, and that was a girl, the Lady Mary — all the others had died as soon as they were born — and statesmen began to think that if there never was a son at all, there might be fresh wars when Henry died ; while others said that the loss of the children was to punish them for marrying unlawfully. Wolsey himself began to wish that the pope would say that it had never been a real marriage, and so set the king free to put Katharine away and take another wife — some grand princess abroad. This was thinking more of what seemed prudent than of the right; and it turned out ill for Wolsey and all besides, for no sooner had the notion of setting aside poor Katha- rine come into his mind, than the king cast his CARDINAL WOLSEY 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 his 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 by taking a wife like Anne Boleyn. But his secretary, Thomas Crura 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 Young Folks' History of England. his offices of state, and accused of treason against the king; but 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. ;;cC §j CHAPTER XXVIL HENRY VIII. AND HIS WIVES. a.d. 1528 — 1541 WHEN Henry VIII. had so ungratefully treated Cardinal Wolsey, there was no one to keep him in order. He would have no more to do with the pope, but said he was head of the Church of England himself, and could settle matters his own way. He really was a very 21 3 214 Youn j 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 Mm the Defender of the Faith. After the king's or queen's name on an English coin you may see F. D. — Fidel 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 three years' time, she pined away and died. In the meantime, he had married Anne Boleyn, taken Crumwell for his chief adviser, and had made Thomas Cranmer archbishop of Can- terbury. Then, calling himself head of the Church, 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 Church, 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 his way to be PARTING OF SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS DAUGHTER, Henry VI1L and Ms Wives. 217 executed j 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 winch 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 could get it, from the king's good nature ; and, as they wanted more and more, Henry went on breaking up the monasteries, till the whole of them were gone. A good deal of their riches he kept for him- self, and two new bishoprics Avere endowed from their spoils, but most of them were bestowed on the courtiers. The king, however, did not at all intend to change the teaching of the Church, and whenever a person was detected in teaching any thing contrary to her doctrines, as they were at that time understood, he was tried by a court of clergymen and lawyers before the bishop, and, if convicted, was — according to the cruel custom of those times — burnt to death at a stake in the market place of the next town. Meantime, the new queen, Anne Boleyn, whom the king had married privately in May, 1533, had not prospered. She had one little daughter, named Elizabeth, and a son, who died ; and then the king- began to admire one of her ladies, named Jane Seymour. Seeing this Anne's enemies either invented stories against her, or made the worst of 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 VIIL and his Wives. 219 treason, sentenced to death, and beheaded: thus paying a heavy price for the harm she had done good Queen Katharine. The king, directly after, married Jane Seymour; but she lived only a very short time, dying immediately after the christening of her first son, who was named Edward. Then the king was persuaded by Lord Crumwell to many a foreign princess called Anne of Cleves. A great painter was sent to bring her picture, and made her very beautiful in it; but when she arrived, she proved to be not only plain-featured but large and clumsy, and the king could not bear the sight of her, and said they had sent him a great Flanders mare by way of queen. So he made Cranmer find some foolish excuse for breaking this marriage also, and was so angry with Thomas Crumwell for having led him into it, that this favorite was in his turn thrown into prison and be- headed. The king chose another English wife, named Katharine Howard ; but, after he had married her, it was found out that- she had been very ill brought up, and the bad people with whom she had been left came and accused her of the evil into which they Lad led her. So the king cut off her head E likewise, and then wanted to mid another wife ; but no foreign princess would take a husband who had put away two wives and beheaded two more, and i lian lady actually answered that she was much obliged to him. but she could not venture to many him. because she had only one neck. A: last lie found an English widow. Lady Latimer, whose maiden name was Katharine Parr, and married her. He was - 1 now, lame with gout, and very L ; 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 ol their mothers : and she did her best to keep him in good humor, but he went on doing eruel things, even to the end of his 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 VIII. 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. lie died in the year lo47. The changes in his time are generally called the beginning of the Reformation. CHAPTER XXVIII. EDWARD VI. A.d. 1547—1553. THE 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 yet oyer. The Duke of Somerset and Archbishop Cranmer wanted to make many more changes in the Church 222 ■ Edward VI. 223 of England than Henry VITI. had ever allowed. They had all the Prayer-book Services translated into English, leaving out such parts as they did not approve ; the Lessons were read from the English Bible, and people were greatly delighted at being able to worship and to listen to God's Word in their own tongue. The first day on which the English Prayer-book was used was the Whitsunday of 1548. The Bibles were chained to the desks as being so precious and valuable ; and crowds would stand, or sit, and listen for hours together to any one who would read to them, without caring if he were a clergyman or not ; and men who tried to explain, without being properly taught, often made great mistakes. Indeed, in Germany and France a great deal of the same kind had been going on for some time past, though not with any sort of leave from the kings or bishops, as there was in England, and thus the reformers there broke quite off from the Church, and fancied they could do without bishops. This great break was called the Reformation, because it professed to set matters of religion to rights ; and in Germany the reformers called them- selves Protestants, because they protested against some of the teachings of the Church of Rome. 224 Young Folk:/ History of England. Cranmer had at one time been in German}*, 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 w r ere 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 off his head The king at this time was sixteen. He had EDWARD VI. WRITING HIS JOURNAL. Edward VL 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 says 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 be 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 had forbidden her and Elizabeth to be spoken of as princesses or heiresses of the crown ; and, be- sides, Mary held so firmly to the Church, as she had learnt to believe in it in her youth, that the reformers knew she would undo all their work. There was a little Scottish girl, also named Mary — the grand-daughter of Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII. Poor child, she had been a queen from babyhood, for her father had died of grief when she was but a week old; and there had been some notion of marrying her to King Edward, and so ending the Avars, but the Scots did not like this, and sent her away to be married to the Dauphin, Francois, eldest son of the king of France. If Edward's sisters were not to reign, she came next; but 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. Lady 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 they were married, the duke and Oranmer began to persuade the poor, sick, young king that it was his duty to leave lib crown away from his sister Mary to Lady Jane, who would go on with the Reformation, while Mary would try to overthrow it. In truth, young Edward had no right to will away the crown ; but ho was only sixteen, and could only trust to what the archbishop and his council told him So he signed the parchment they brought him, and after that he quickly grew worse. The people grew afraid that Northumberland was shutting him up and misusing him, and once he came to the window of his palace and looked out at them, to show he was alive; but he died only a fortnight later, and we cannot guess what he would have been when he was grown up. CHAPTER XXIX. MARY I. a.d. 155:3 — 155S. THE Duke of Northumberland kept king Edward's death a secret till he had pro- claimed Jane queen of England. The poor girl knew that a great wrong was being done in her name. She wept bitterly, and begged that she might 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 Lent 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 be 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 advisers 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 khe 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 L 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 he 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, lie held his right hand over the flame to be burnt first, because it had signed what he did not really believe, and he cried out, u This unworthy hand ! * ? Altogether, about three hundred people were burnt in Queen Mary's reign for denying one or other of the doctrines that the Pope thought the right ones. It was a terrible time ; and the queen, who had only longed to do right and restore her country to the Church, found herself hated and disliked by everyone. Even the Pope, who had a quarrel with her husband, did not treat her warmly ; and the nobles, who had taken possession of the abbey lands, were determined never to let her restore them. Her husband did not love her, or 236 Young Folks' History of England. like England. However, he 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.d. 1558— 15S7. \ LL through Queen Mary's time, her sister -*■ *■ Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn's daughter, had been in trouble. Those who held by Queen Mary, and maintained Henry's first marriage, said that his wedding with Anne was no real one, and so that Elizabeth ought not to reign ; but then there was 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 the husband of Lady Jane Grey, and she continued to like him better than any other person as long as he lived. When Mary died, Elizabeth was twenty-five, and the English were mostly willing to have her for their queen. She had read, thought, and learnt a great deal ; and she took care to have the advice of wise men, especially of the great Thomas Cecil, whom she made Lord Burleigh, and kept as her adviser as long as he lived. She did not always follow even his advice, however ; but, whenever she did, it was the better for her. She knew Robert Dudley was not wise, so, though she was so fond of him, she never let him manage her affairs for her. She would have wished to marry him, but she knew her subjects would think this disgraceful, so she only made him Earl of Leicester: and her 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 Kenil worth, 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 would 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 his 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 MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. 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 s1;eal 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, which 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. '&Dvm& CHAPTER XXXI. ELIZABETH S EEIGN. a.d. 15S7— 160: NO reign ever was more glorious or better for 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 eye3, 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 marry him ; indeed, there is reason to fear that he had his wife secretly killed, in order that he might be able to wed the queen ; but she saw that the people would not allow her to do so, and gave it up. But she liked to be courted. She allowed foreign £48 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 many 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 Sydney, 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 himself, 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. He 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 clone 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, but 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' a Reign. 251 setting her against him. So he cams 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-by 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." She said 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 XXXIIJ JAMES I. A.U. 1002—1025. AFTER Queen Elizabeth's death, the next heir was James, the son of Mary of Scot- land and of Henry Stuart. He was the sixth James who had been king of Scotland, and had reigned there ever since his mother had been driven away. He had been brought up very strictly by the Scottish Reformers, who had made him very learned, and kept him under great restraint; and all that he had undergone had tended to make him very awkward and strange in his manners, lie was very timid, and could not bear to see a drawn sword ; and he was so much afraid of being murdered, that he used to wear a dress padded and stuffed out ail over with wool, which made him look 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 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 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; bat if he 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 1. 261 learned and exceedingly conceited j indeed, lie liked nothing better than to be called the English Solomon. The worst of Lim 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 XXXIIL CHARLES I. A.D. 1625—1649. SO 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 L 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 }~ears all went on quietly, and there seemed to be a great improvement. But several things 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 surplice. In many churches they took their 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 crpss 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 the}' 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 L 265 Parliament together, and the House of Commons should grant him what he wanted. But there were other means. One was that every place it England should be 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, but only to be 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 with stars — and so w r as 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 w T ere 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, lie was stabbed to the heart by a man named Felton; nobody clearty 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 kinff: and he was obliged to call a Parliament once mure, to get money enough to resist them. ASSASSINATION OF BUCKINGHAM. V CHAPTER XXXrV. THE LONG PARLIAMENT. a.d. 1641—1649. WHEN 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 tAVo 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 269 270 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 EEN HENRIETTA MARIA. 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 arm}' — for things 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 rei