SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER. HENRY HARRETT LEARNED. 1 I .[From The Yale Scientific Monthly of June, 1902.] History belongs half to science and half to literature. In so far as it aims at the discovery of the triith abotd the past, it partakes of the nature of. a science ; in so far as it aims at a represe7itation of the past, it partakes of the ?iature of an art. The Quarterly Review. April, 1902. P. 549. LIKE other studies, history during the past fifty years has been approached more and more from the standpoint of science : much effort has been devoted to the investigation of old facts and to the discovery of new facts The zeal for historic truth may have been no gTeater than ever, but the methods of attaining to it have undergone marked changes. The ways of stating truth have been simplified, and a certain bareness is noticeable in the writer who presents his thought only after the hard labor of investigation. Partly as a consequence the literary " half " of history has suffered, at least for the ordinary reader. This reader still finds, notwithstanding the critics, a real pleasure in Macaulay. And he does so largely because Macaulay, not for- getful that history is based on a knowledge of the past, was pri- marily interested in narration— he desired, according to the com- monplace, to make history more fascinating than the novels read in his day. There are men- much nearer our own time than Macaulay who illustrate in their various ways some truths about historical work, especially historical work in England. Three of these men have died since the coming in of the new century : Mandell h a-' Creighton,* Bishop of London, author of a ^ History of the Papacy during the Reformation ; William Stubbs,t Bishop of Oxford, greatly distingtiished for his Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development, an epoch-making work of patient historic investigation which appeared early in the 70's ; and, last, Samuel Rawson Gardiner whose life was devoted chiefly to the telling of the story of English history from the accession of James I. in 1603 through the period of the Civil War to the later da3's of the Protectorate — the close of the year 1656. Creighton, Stubbs and Gardiner together with Freeman, Froude and J. R. Green form a group of Oxford historians. All of them except Creighton were attracted to the annals of their own countr)^ Creighton alone went to a foreign, field, and chose a phase of papal history for his chief work. From this group the name of Samuel Rawson Gardiner has been most recently on the lips of those who care for history, for historical scholarship sustained a severe loss when on the night of February 23, 1902, Mr. G,ardiner died at his home near London. Samuel Rawson Gardiner was born March 4, 1829 — the day that Andrew Jackson was inaugurated as President at Washing- ton, D. C. — in Ropley, a small village in southern England, Hampshire, not many miles from Winchester. His mother was Margaret Baring Gould. His father, Rawson Boddam Gardiner, was descended from Cromwell. |. The boy was about eighteen when, in 1847, having finished his early training at Winchester School he was ready for the university. He was entered at Christ Church College, Oxford ; four years later he was gradu- ated with the customary pass degree B. A., holding a first class in Uteris humanioribus . During Gardiner's undergraduate years Froude was for part of the time a Fellow of Exeter College. Older by eleven years than Gardiner he had already become interested in history, having been much impressed by Carlyle's French Revolution. In 1849 Froude first met Carlyle, and then began an intimacy which only ended with Carhde's death. F'reeman, six years older than *Died January 14, 1901. t Died April 22, igoi. \ Pre/ace to The Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I., 1637-1649. Vol. I. P Gardiner, was settled as a Fellow of Trinity. He was dabbling in the history of Gothic architecture, and he had already tried his hand at some historic features of the Normans whose epoch in Kngland he was later on so thoroughly to reveal to his country- men. With neither Freeman nor Froude did young Gardiner hold any intimacy. But a younger man attracted the under- graduate — William Stubbs. Stubbs was older than Gardiner by four years and was a recent graduate of Christ Church, Gardiner's own college, though he accepted a fellowship in Trinity. Only in 1901 was this intimacy broken by the death of the older man. The religious controversy which had had its center in Oxford during the decade 1830-1840, was still unsettling to young minds. All thinking men were stirred.. Froude in particular had been driven to historical studies under the impulse of religious ques- tionings and doubts. And his later work on the sixteenth century was tinged with his' ethical ideal : he cared so much for what men ought to be that he was not skillful in presenting them as they really were. Freeman, Stubbs and Gardiner must have felt the commotion, but they escaped the turmoil of Froude, and at a later time developed their work with a pretty strict sense of historic truth. Gardiner left Oxford the year of his graduation (1851). He soon became interested in the Irvingites, and in 1855 — at the age of twenty-six — he married a daughter of Kdward Irving, founder of the sect. The following of the Catholic Apostolic Church gained no sympathy in conservative Oxford . The young scholar accordingly was debarred from any possible opening in the com- munity which would have seemed most congenial to him. Un- daunted, however, he must very soon have outlined his heroic task which was to begin with a study of the reign of James I. preliminary to the history of the Puritan revolution as far as 1660. Many years later when in 1882 he was approaching the begin- nings of the Civil War, the really perplexingly difficult portion of his task, he wrote : Many years ago, as a young and unknown writer I deliber- ately refrained from selecting a subject more attractive in its own nature than the reign of James I. could possibly be. It seemed to me then as it seems to me now that it was the duty of a serious inquirer to search into the original causes of great events rather than, for the sake of catching an audience, to rush unpre- pared upon the great events themselves. My reward has been that, whether the present work is well or ill done, it is at all events far better done than it could have been if I had com- menced with the tale of the Puritan Revolution itself. To appreciate this task is the beginning of an understand- ing of Gardiner's place as a historian. B}^ about 1882 Gardiner had won late recognition as a historian of extraordinary powers. People were buying his books. Gladstone that very year got for him an annual pension of ^150. And very soon he had received honorary degrees from Edinburgh, Cambridge, Gottingen and Oxford. In 1894 on the death of Froude he was offered the Regius Professorship of Modern History at Oxford by Lord Rosebery. This he declined. Christ Church led the way at Oxford in 1878 in recognizing his merits, and All Soul's and Merton were eager to honor him later. Two volumes published by him in- 1882 were in such demand that the edition was soon exhausted, and he issued in 1884 a uniform edition of his first ten volumes. So for twenty years or so Gardiner has been well known to a wide circle. He was over fifty when fame met him. He had published his books at inter- vals since 1863. As early as i860 he had published some remarkable con- siderations on the position of the English Catholics under James I. Three years later he issued his two earliest volumes. History of Engla7id fro'm the Accession of James I. to the Disgrace of Chief- Justice Coke, 1603-16 ly. Only .140 copies, it is reported, were sold. The period, as he knew well,* was not a dramatic one. He had labored among original documents : and his method was a very honest one, but neither originality nor honesty could win him readers. Five years later two new volumes appeared : Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage, i6iy-i62^. This time 500 copies were sold. He had shown two marked characteristics of his method : (i) strict study of original sources, with facility in obtaining new light ; and (ii) an especial effort to understand England's foreign relations at a time when they had been frequently misunderstood. His ideal had forced him to equip himself not only in French and German, but in . Dutch, in Spanish, in Italian and in Swedish. " It can only produce con- fusion," he wrote, " to attempt to unravel the politics of England without understanding the intentions of continental statesmen and the aims of continental diplomatists. The point, for instance, which caused the breach between James and the Parliament of •Preface to Vol. I., Hist, of England from the Accession of James I., etc. 1 62 1 was the question of the part which it was fit for England to take in the war in Germany. ' '* These four, together with the six volumes that followed (two at a time) in 1875, 1877, and in 1882, were the chief means of winning Gardiner his tardy recog- nition : yet they were hardly more than the solid basis for his future work. Next he had to write the history of the great Civil War (1642 -1 649), and finally that of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. Seven large volumes added to the original teii brought the story to 1656. Thus four years of his early plan had, because of his untimely death, to be abandoned. His friend, Mr. C. H. Firth is likely to complete the work.f Seventeen volumes are by no means the only evidences of Gardiner's years of industry. Quite as many more might be named by title were it worth while to recount his editions of original papers, documents, and various sorts of records which he gathered from their hiding places in the private collections of England, in the archives at Brussels, in Paris, in Simancas (Spain), in Venice and elsewhere. On his seventeen volumes of narrative history his fame as a historian will rest. He taught for many years at King's College, Eondon ; he lectured in many University Extension centers in England ; he wrote two small volumes of history for the popular Epoch Series ; he delivered six Ford lectures at Oxford on Cromwell in i8g6 ; he tried once for all to establish the facts about the famous Gunpowder Plot (1897) ; and he spent some valuable time in preparing a mono- graph on Cromwell for the Messrs. Goupil which was published in 1899. He did his work chiefly in the British Museum — that had to be, because of his materials, his work -shop. Altogether he had many interests, though not wide interests. It remains to speak of his method and his rank. II. Gardiner meant to do his tasks so well that they would not need to be done again. He is probably the first man who has ever been systematically through the Thomasson Tracts^, that collection of books, pamphlets, single sheets, and sermons which, pouring forth from the press during the years 1640 — 1660, were assiduously gathered by an antiquary of the time to the number * Preface to Vol. I, Prince Charles, etc. t Obituary in London Times, Tixes., Feb. 25, igo2. t Preface to Vol. I. History of the Great Civil War. of 23,000. These together with about 100 MSS. are bound up in 1983 volumes, and constitute a unique set in the British Museum. His work in deciphering letters was very large, and sometimes of great importance. He relates, — with respect to his power of accomplishment — that he once took off in writing dur- ing 13 working daj^s, copies from a set of MS. letters which cover in print about 250 pages*. His especial stud}^ during all his life was the foreigh correspondence passing between the Eng- lish court and foreign courts and ministers from 1600 to 1660. He was the closest observer of chronology. Classify events as they come — by chronology — and not according to the nature of the events. That was the gist of his dictum. In his latest volumes he seems to be working ahead only from day to day like a mere annalist. And even a reader with much interest in the period is likely to iind Gardiner's prose rather slow — strictly a pedestrian prose. Gardiner was a marvel of intellectual honesty. That quality along with the discriminating judgment of his later years was behind his best work. " We have had historians in plenty," he wrote, ' ' but they have been Whig historians or Tory historians "f It was fundamental to his conception of the careful writer of his- tory that he should be able to divest himself of his contemporary^ notions. He must live in the epoch which he was studying — in- deed, in the very year — and move slowly forwards. He must not, above all, work from the present back wards. + With an epoch as with a character he sought to follow its gradual un- folding from within outwards or onwards. His portrayal of Count Gondomar is one of the remarkable presentations in an earlier volume ; and his account of the diflSculties he experienced in overcoming a misapprehension gained from the conventional contemporary glimpses of the Spaniard becomes full of signifi- cance. § History led Gardiner into the heart of the great conflict be- tween King and Parliament. His problem in its largest aspect was to interpret the real relations between Church and State. The constitutional and legal situation was ever demanding the closest attention. His work might seem to be unsatisfactory for * Preface to The Hamilton Papers. t Preface to A History of England under the Duke of Buckingham and Charles I. Vol. I. tCp. London Atheiiaenm. March i, igoa. i Preface and narrative in Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage. Vol. I. its failure to regard the economic and the social phases of the subject. He felt at times that he was only on the surface of things. But, as he wrote, " nothing is more difficult than to de- scend below the surface to the depths of society : nothing more easy than to be led astray into imagining the chance utterance of some poetaster or pamphleteer to be the echo of the popular mind."* His judgment of Cromwell is probably indicative of one of his most difficult tasks. A judgment of Cromwell would be diffi- cult to any conscientious investigator, particularly so to the man that was conscious of having some of Cromwell's blood in his own veins. He regarded him " as no divinely inspired hero, in- deed, or faultless monster, but a brave, honorable man, striving according to his lights, to lead his countrymen into the paths of peace and godliness. ' ' Cromwell was no hypocrite, though it was natural that other men should think him one.f Here, as always in interpreting a man, he started with the man himself. " To start by trying to understand what a man appears to himself, and only when that has been done, to try him by the standard of the judg- ment of others " — this was his first rule of historic portraiture. | Gardiner had not 'the brilliancy of a Gibbon or indeed of Macaulay. He was prerfectly free from the pedantry of Freeman. Unlike Froude, he felt no need of adjudging this or that character until all possible evidence had been examined. And he made quite sure of his evidence. As investigators Freeman, Stubbs and Gardiner each had the scientific instinct. In an especial de- gree it would seem to be true of Gardiner that he ' ' firmly grasped the profound distinction which lies at the root of all science, be- tween the judgment of fact and the judgment of value, and knew that the validity of the first can only be secured if it is provision- ally treated as an end in itself, in perfect abstraction from any possible application, of it."* He contributed chiefly to that " half" of history which belongs not to literature but to science. His genius was to a marked degree that of the discoverer. * Preface to Vol. I. The Personal Government of Charles I. t Preface to Vol III. History of the Great Civil War. tPre/aee.to The Thirty Years' War.