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their masters. Cities and villages found it necessary to hold of some great lord, on whom they might depend for protection, and became no less subject to his arbitrary jurisdiction. The inhabitants were deprived of those rights which, in social life, are deemed most natural and inalienable. They could not dispose of the effects which their own industry had acquired, either by a later will, or by any deed executed during their lives. Neither could they marry, nor carry on lawsuits, without the consent of their lord. But as soon as the cities of Italy began to turn their attention towards commerce, and to conceive some idea of the advantages which they might derive from it, they became impatient to shake off the yoke of their insolent lords, and to establish among themselves such a free and equal government as would render property and industry secure. The Italian cities were the first to emancipate themselves, and their example was followed in other great seats of population, the king of the country in general countenancing the establishment of free communities, in order to gain support against the encroachments of the overgrown power of the barons. The first community of this description formed in Scotland is understood to have been that of Berwick-uponTweed, which received its charter from William the Lion. Towns, upon acquiring the right of community, became so many little republics, governed by known and equal laws. The inhabitants being trained to arms, and being surrounded by walls, they soon began to hold the neighbouring barons in contempt, and to withstand aggressions on their property and privileges. Another great good, of fully more importance, was produced. These free communities were speedily admitted, by their representatives, into the great council of the nation, whether distinguished by the name of a Parliament, a Diet, the Cortes, or the States-General. This is justly esteemed the greatest event in the history of mankind in modern times. Representatives from the English boroughs were first admitted into the great national council by the barons who took up arms against Henry III. in the year 1265; being summoned to add to the greater popularity of their party, and to strengthen the barrier against the encroachments of regal power. Readers may draw their own conclusions from an event which ultimately had the effect of revolutionising the framework of society, and of rearing that great body of the people commonly styled the middle class.'

After having overrun Persia, and a great part of India | try, and were employed in cultivating the estates of and Syria, this great conqueror was invited by some of the minor princes of Asia, who were suffering under the Ottoman tyranny, to come and protect them. Tamerlane was flattered by the request, and having brought a great army into Phrygia, he was there met by Bajazet, the Ottoman emperor, who readily gave battle, but was defeated and made prisoner (1402). Tamerlane made Samarcand the capital of his empire, and there received the homage of all the princes of the East. Illiterate himself, he was solicitous for the cultivation of literature and science in his dominions; and Samarcand became for a while the seat of learning, politeness, and the arts, but was destined to relapse after a short period into its ancient barbarism. The Turks, after the death of Tamerlane, resumed their purpose of destroying the empire of the East. The honour, or disgrace, as it may be thought, of effecting this, fell to the lot of Mohammed II., commonly surnamed the Great. At the early age of twenty-one, Mohammed projected this conquest. His countrymen had already passed into Europe; they had possessed themselves of the city of Adrianople, and indeed had left nothing of all the empire of the East to the Greeks but the city of Constantinople itself. The preparations made for defence were not such as became the descendants of Romans, and the powers of Europe now looked upon the East with the most supine indifference. The Turks assailed the city both on the land side and on that of the sea; and battering down its walls with their cannon, entered sword in hand, and massacred all who opposed them (1453). Mohammed, like many other ambitious conquerors, showed himself unwilling to destroy unnecessarily. The imperial edifices were preserved, and the churches were converted into mosques: the exercise of their religion was freely allowed to the Christians, and this privilege they have never been deprived of. Constantine (for that was the name of the last, as well as the first emperor of the East) was slain in battle. From the time that it was founded by Constantine the Great, the city had subsisted 1123 years. Mohammed liberally patronised the arts and sciences. He was himself not only a politician, but a scholar, and he invited both artists and men of letters to his capital from the kingdoms of Europe. But the taking of Constantinople had an effect contrary to his wishes: it dispersed the learned Greeks, or Greeks who were called learned, all over Europe; and this, among other things, may be looked upon as a help to the great revival of letters which the fifteenth century witnessed. The taking of Constantinople was followed by the conquest of Greece and Epirus; and Italy might probably have met with a similar fate, but for the fleet of the Venetians, who opposed the arms of Mohammed with considerable success, and even attacked him in Greece; but the contending powers soon after put an end to hostilities by a treaty. By this time Europe was trembling at Mohammed's success, and was afraid, not without reason, that he might pursue his conquests westwards. It was relieved from fear by his death, which took place in 1481. His descendants have continued to our own day to occupy one of the finest countries in Europe; and it was only in the present age that Greece was liberated from their dominion.

RISE OF CIVIL FREEDOM AND SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT.

Civil freedom, as we have seen, dawned first in the great commercial cities of Italy, whence it spread to Germany, Flanders, and Britain. This important change in society may be traced to the institution of free communities of traders, or guilds of merchants; and such confederacies were a necessary consequence of the usurpation and tyranny of the nobles and feudal possessors of the soil. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the usurpations of the nobility became intolerable; they had reduced the great body of the people to a state of actual servitude. Nor was such oppression the portion of those alone who dwelt in the coun-I

The enfranchising of burghal communities led to the manumission of slaves. Hitherto the tillers of the ground, all the inferior classes of the country, were the bondsmen of the barons. The monarchs of France, in order to reduce the power of the nobles, set the example, by ordering (1315-1318) all serfs to be set at liberty on just and reasonable conditions. The edicts were carried into immediate execution within the royal domain. The example of their sovereigns, together with the expectation of considerable sums which they might raise by this expedient, led many of the nobles to set their dependents at liberty; and servitude was thus gradually abolished in almost every province of the kingdom. This beneficial practice similarly spread over the rest of Europe; and in England, as the spirit of liberty gained ground, the very name and idea of personal servitude, without any formal interposition of the legislature to prohibit it, was totally banished.

While society was assuming the semblance of the form it now bears, the progress of improvement was accelerated by various collateral circumstances, the first of which worth noticing was

The Revival of Letters. The first restorers of learning in Europe were the Arabians, who, in the course of their Asiatic conquests, became acquainted with some of the ancient Greek authors, discovered their merits, and had them translated into Arabic, esteeming those principally which treated of mathematics, physics, and metaphysics. They disseminated their knowledge in the course of their conquests, and founded schools and colleges in all the countries which they subdued. The

western kingdoms of Europe became first acquainted | with the learning of the ancients through the medium of those Arabian translations. Charlemagne caused them to be retranslated into Latin; and, after the example of the caliphs, founded universities at Bonona, Pavia, Osnaburg, and Paris. Similar efforts were made in England by Alfred; and to him we owe the establishment, or at least the elevation, of the university of Oxford. The first efforts, however, at literary improvement were marred by the subtleties of scholastic divinity. Perhaps the greatest and wisest literary character of the middle ages was an English friar, named Roger Bacon. This extraordinary individual was not only learned, but, what was more uncommon in those times, he was scientific. Hallain asserts that he was acquainted with the nature of gunpowder, though he deemed it prudent to conceal his knowledge. He saw the insufficiency of school philosophy, and was the first to insist on experiment and the observation of nature as the fittest instruments by which to acquire knowledge. He reformed the calendar, and made discoveries in astronomy, optics, chemistry, medicine, and mechanics.

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It is to Italy, however, that we owe the first and greatest exertions in the revival of letters. The spirit of liberty which had arisen among its republics was favourable to the cultivation of literature; and accordingly we find that not only did they produce many individuals who were most active and successful in bringing to light the relics of classical lore, but that there also arose among them men possessed of the highest order of original genius. Florence produced Dante so early as 1265. Dante was associated with the magistracy of his native city in his earlier years; but having given dissatisfaction in that capacity, he was banished, and in his exile produced his great poem entitled the Divine Comedy." It is a representation of the three supposed kingdoms of futurity-Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise-divided into one hundred cantos, and containing about 14,000 lines. The poem has been much praised. Petrarch, born in the year 1304, was likewise a Florentine by birth. The misfortunes of his father had impoverished the family, and Petrarch was too proud to take the usual method of retrieving his affairs. His genius, however, earned for him the friendship of many Italian princes, and even of more popes than one, although he had exerted his talents to expose the vices of their courts. Petrarch's personal character seems to have exhibited some unamiable traits; but he has sung of love, friendship, glory, patriotism, and religion, in language of such sweetness and power as to have made him the admiration of every succeeding age. Boccaccio, like the two great poets named, was also a Florentine. He was born in 1313, and his name has descended to posterity less associated with his poetry than the light, elegant, and easy prose of his novels.

quently on board Mediterranean ships at the latter
part of the preceding age.' The Genoese, however, are
known in the fourteenth century to have come out of
that inland sea, and steered for Flanders and England.
But by far the greatest sailors of the age were the
Spaniards and Portuguese. This latter nation had little
or no existence during the greater part of the middle
ages, but in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth cen-
turies, they were able to expel the Moors from a great
part of their country; and in the beginning of the fif-
teenth, John, surnamed the Bastard, who was then their
king, was the first European prince who exhibited a
respectable navy. It was in 1486 that this adventu-
rous people first doubled the Cape of Good Hope.
The discovery of America (1493) may be mentioned
supplementarily to the invention of the mariner's com-
pass, as an event which, without it, could never have
taken place. The immortal honour of that discovery
rests with Christopher Columbus, a sailor of Genoa.
After unsuccessful applications at almost every court in
Europe, and braving obloquy and contempt, Columbus
at last obtained a miserable force from Ferdinand and
Isabella of Spain; and with no landmark but the hea-
vens, nor any guide but his compass, he launched
boldly into the sea, and at last conducted Europeans
to the great western hemisphere.

In the course of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries, various discoveries in the arts were made, which powerfully tended to the advancement of society; among these the more important were the invention of gunpowder and firearms, clocks and watches, paper-making and printing. This last, the greatest of all, prepared the way for the Reformation in religion, in the sixteenth century, by which religious was added to civil freedom, and a great spur given to individual activity.

Important as these events were in their ultimate tendencies, it is to be remembered that they did not immediately make any distinct change in the comforts of the people. In the latter centuries of the middle ages, the amusements of the common people were metrical and prose romances, unintelligible prophecies, and fables of giants and enchanters. The state of England and of France at this period shows the small advance which had been made towards those comforts and improvements which now exist. Even in the large cities, the houses were roofed with thatch, and had no chimneys. The two most essential improvements in architecture during this period,' says Mr Hallam, 'one of which had been missed by the sagacity of Greece and Rome, were chimneys and glass windows. Nothing apparently can be more simple than the former; yet the wisdom of ancient times had been content to let the smoke escape by an aperture in the centre of the roof; and a discovery, of which Vitruvius had not a glimpse, was made, perhaps in this country [England], by some forgotten semi-barbarian. About the middle of the fourteenth century the use of chimneys is distinctly mentioned in England and in Italy; but they are found in several of our castles which bear a much The invention of the Mariner's Compass must be older date. This country seems to have lost very early reckoned of still greater importance, and yet it is abso- the art of making glass, which was preserved in France, lutely unknown to whom we owe it. That honour has whence artificers were brought into England to furnish been often bestowed on Gioja, a citizen of Amalphi, who the windows of some new churches in the seventh cenlived about the commencement of the fourteenth century. It is said that, in the reign of Henry III., few tury. But the polarity of the magnet at least was known ecclesiastical buildings had glazed windows. Suger, to the Saracens two hundred years before that time; however, a century before, had adorned his great work, though even after the time of Gioia, it was long before the Abbey of St Denis, with windows not only glazed the magnet was made use of as a guide in navigation. but painted; and I presume that other churches of the It is a singular circumstance,' says Mr Hallam, and same class, both in France and England, were geneonly to be explained by the obstinacy with which men rally decorated in a similar manner. Yet glass is said are apt to reject improvement, that the magnetic needle not to have been employed in the domestic architecwas not generally adopted in navigation till very long ture of France before the fourteenth century, and its after the discovery of its properties, and even after introduction into England was probably by no means their peculiar importance had been perceived. The earlier. Nor, indeed, did it come into general use writers of the thirteenth century, who mention the po- during the period of the middle ages. Glazed windows larity of the needle, mention also its use in navigation; were considered as movable furniture, and probably yet Campany has found no distinct proof of its employ- bore a high price. When the Earls of Northumberment till 1403, and does not believe that it was fre- land, as late as the reign of Elizabeth, left Alnwick

The discovery of Justinian's Laws, as detailed in the Pandects (see HISTORY OF LAWS), was another event which powerfully tended to modify the barbarism that prevailed during the middle ages in Europe.

Castle, the windows were taken out of their frames and carefully laid by.'

be extraordinary well provided; few probably had more than two. The walls were commonly bare, withBy far the finest specimens of architecture which out wainscot or even plaster, except that some great the middle ages produced were the religious edifices houses were furnished with hangings, and that perbuilt in the twelfth and three following centuries. The haps hardly so soon as the reign of Edward VI. superstition of the times was favourable to the produc- Neither books nor pictures could find a place in such tion of works of that sort. To leave one's means for dwellings as these. Some inventories of furniture, such a purpose was deemed so meritorious, as to entitle bearing dates in the fourteenth century, have been prethe donor to eternal happiness in the next scene of served to our own day, and they are curious and amusexistence; and men in this world thought it a duty to ing. In Sir F. Eden's work on the State of the Poor, render structures designed for purposes so sacred as a carpenter's stock is said to have been valued, in the beautiful and becoming as they could. It was about year 1301, at a shilling! In an inventory of the goods the middle of the twelfth century that what has been of John Port, late the king's servant,' who died about called the Gothic style of architecture took its rise, of 1524, we find that this gentleman's house had consisted which the peculiar feature is thought to be the pointed of a hall, parlour, buttery, and kitchen, with five bedarch, formed by the segment of two intersecting semi- steads, two chambers, three garrets, and some minor circles, struck from points equidistant from the centre accommodations. From this it may be inferred that of a common diameter. This style of architecture has Mr Port was a rather important man in his day, for been said by different individuals to have originated in very few individuals at that time could boast of such France, in Germany, in Italy, and in England (Vol. I. accommodation. His plate was valued at £94, his p. 438). The truth is, we neither know where it origi-jewels at £23; and, strange to say, his funeral expenses nated nor from what source it was derived. It has amounted to £73, 6s. 8d! afforded antiquaries a curious subject of speculation how so perfect a system, as this has been thought, should not only have originated but reached perfection in times so dark. Any effectual explanation is probably now impossible; the knowledge of the art was never permitted to go beyond a fraternity of freemasons, and it is not to be supposed that the early archives of that association have survived so many revolutions.

The living even of the highest nobility under the Edwards was such as would not prove very palatable to their luxurious descendants. They drank little wine, had no foreign luxuries, rarely kept male servants except for husbandry, and still more rarely travelled beyond their native country. An income of £10 or £20 was reckoned a competent estate for a gentleman-at least the lord of a single manor would seldom have enjoyed more. A knight who possessed £150 a year passed for extremely rich. Sir John Fortescue speaks of five pounds a year as 'a fair living for a yeoman;' and we read that the same sum (5) served as the annual expense of a scholar attending the university. Modern lawyers must be surprised at the following, which Mr Hallam extracts from the churchwarden's accounts of St Margaret, Westminster, for 1476: Also paid to Roger Fylpott, learned in the law, for his counsel giving, 3s. 8d., with fourpence for his dinner.' It has been remarked that the wages of day-labourers, particularly those engaged in agriculture, were better in the times of Edward III. and Henry VI. than they have ever been at any other period of English history; nor can it be denied that this, upon the whole, is true. In the fourteenth century, a harvest man had fourpence a day, which enabled him in a week to buy a comb of wheat; but, says Sir John Cullum, in his History of Hawsted, to buy a comb of wheat a man must now (1784) work ten or twelve days. So,' says Mr Hallam, under Henry VI., if meat was at a farthing and a-half the pound, which, I suppose, was about the mark, a labourer earning threepence a day, or eighteenpence in the week, could buy a bushel of wheat at six shillings the quarter, and twenty-four pounds of meat, for his family. A labourer at present earning twelve shillings a week, can only buy a bushel of wheat at eighty shillings the quarter, and twelve pounds of meat at sevenpence.' It is thus undeniable that the daylabourers' wages could purchase greater quantities of certain kinds of food than the wages given to the same class of persons could do in the present day, but they wanted a thousand comforts which the meanest of our workmen now enjoy; and few surely would be willing to exchange all these blessings for the wars and miseries which Edward caused, even although they were insured, along with them, of daily supplies of beef and ale, of which the ancient yeomen boasted.

The internal accommodation of houses was even less than their outward splendour. A gentleman's house containing three or four beds was thought to

Of all the arts necessary to existence, perhaps that of agriculture was in the most miserable condition during the middle ages. On a thousand spots of land which we now behold subjected to a fruitful cultivation, there was nothing to be seen at that time but tracts of forest ground, stagnating with bog or darkened by native woods, where the wild ox, the roe, the stag, and the wolf, had scarcely learned the supremacy of man.' We owe the first efforts at improvement in agriculture over the greater part of Europe to the monks. They chose, for the sake of retirement, secluded regions, which they cultivated with the labour of their hands. 'Of the Anglo-Saxon husbandry we may remark,' says Mr Turner, that Doom's-day Survey gives us some indication that the cultivation of the church lands was much superior to that of any other. They had much less wood upon them, and their meadow was more abundant, and in more numerous distributions.' The culture of arable land in general was very imperfect: according to Sir John Cullum, a full average crop on an acre sown with wheat amounted only to about nine or ten bushels—a circumstance, the knowledge of which may save us any surprise at a calculation by which it appears that, in the thirteenth century, the average annual rent of an acre of arable land was from sixpence to a shilling. In the time of Edward I., the ordinary price of a quarter of wheat appears to have been about four shillings. A sheep was sold high at a shilling, and an ox might be reckoned at ten or twelve. In considering these statements, however, of positive money values, it must be recollected by persons of this day that the precious metals were depreciated progressively in their value by every sovereign in Europe, who enabled themselves in this way to pay debts in appearance, while in reality they were cheating their creditors to that extent; and sums of small name in those days were every way equal in value to greater sums in our own.

At this time wine was sold only in the shops of the English apothecaries. Yet the progress of luxury, as it was called, had already begun to excite serious aların. The parliament of Edward III. passed an act prohibiting the use of gold and silver in apparel to all who had not a hundred pounds a year; and Charles VI. of France ordained that none should presume to entertain their guests with more than two dishes and a mess of soup. It is almost unnecessary to add, that laws of that sort were passed only with a view to persons in the highest ranks; for others they were not needed. Contemporary history has recorded nothing of the poorer classes but their slaughter in war; but we are at little loss to perceive that domestic comforts must have been few and slender among them, when we know that neither chairs nor looking-glasses could be found in the bedrooms of the nobility. Ages over which this sketch does not extend, were required before the great inass of human beings should become possessed of personal comforts or of political rights.

HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND,

PREVIOUSLY to the year 55 before Christ, the British Islands, in common with the whole of northern and western Europe, were occupied by barbarous tribes, who bore nearly the same relation to the civilised nations of Greece and Italy, which the North American Indians of the present day bear to the inhabitants of Great Britain and the United States. The Romans, who for ages had been extending their power over their rude neighbours, had concluded the conquest of Gaul, now called France, when, in the year just mentioned, their celebrated commander, Julius Cæsar, learning from the merchants of that country that there was another fertile land on the opposite side of the narrow sea now termed the British Channel, resolved to proceed thither, and subject it also to the Roman arms. Disembarking at the place since called Deal, he soon overawed the savage natives, though they were naturally warlike, and averse to a foreign yoke. He did not, however, gain a firm footing in Britain till the succeeding year, when he employed no fewer than 800 vessels to convey his troops from Gaul. Except along the coasts, where some tillage prevailed, the British tribes lived exactly as the Indians now do, upon animals caught in hunting, and fruits which grew spontaneously. They stained and tattooed their bodies, and had no religion but a bloody idolatry called Druidism. The people of Ireland were in much the same condition.

Little was done on this occasion to establish the Roman power in Britain; but about a century afterwards-namely, in the year of Christ 43, when the Emperor Claudius was reigning at Rome-another large army invaded the island, and reduced a considerable part of it. A British prince called Caradoc, or Caractacus, who had made a noble defence against their arms, was finally taken and sent prisoner to Rome, where he was regarded with the same wonder as we should bestow upon a North American chief who had greatly obstructed the progress of our settlements in that quarter of the world. In the year 61, an officer named Suetonius did much to reduce the Britons, by destroying the numerous Druidical temples in the Isle of Anglesea; religion having in this case, as in many others since, been a great support to the patriotic cause. He soon after overthrew the celebrated British princess Boadicea, who had raised an almost general insurrection against the Roman power.

In the year 79, Agricola, a still greater general, extended the influence of Rome to the Firths of Forth and Clyde, which he formed into a frontier, by connectNo. 59,

ing them with a chain of forts. It was his policy, after he had subdued part of the country, to render it permanently attached to Rome, by introducing the pleasures and luxuries of the capital. He was the first to sail round the island. In the year 84, having gone beyond the Forth, he was opposed by a great concourse of the rude inhabitants of the north, under a chief named Galgacus, whom he completely overthrew at Mons Grampius, or the Grampian Mountain; a spot about which there are many disputes, but which was probably at Ardoch in Perthshire, where there are still magnificent remains of a Roman camp. Tacitus, a writer related to Agricola, gives a very impressive account of this great conflict, and exhibits the bravery of the native forces as very remarkable; but the correctness of his details cannot be much relied on.

It appears that Agricola, while on the west coast of Scotland, was desirous of making the conquest of Ireland, which he thought would be useful, both as a medium of communication with Spain, and as a position whence he could overawe Britain. He formed an acquaintance with an Irish chief, who, having been driven from his country by civil commotions, was ready to join in invading it. By him Agricola was informed that the island might be conquered by one legion and a few auxiliaries. The inhabitants, according to Tacitus, bore a close resemblance to the Britons.

It is generally allowed that the Romans experienced an unusual degree of difficulty in subduing the Britons; and it is certain that they were baffled in all their attempts upon the northern part of Scotland, which was then called Caledonia. The utmost they could do with the inhabitants of that country, was to build walls across the island to keep them by themselves. The first wall was built in the year 121, by the Emperor Hadrian, between Newcastle and the Solway Firth. The second was built by the Emperor Antoninus, about the year 140, as a connexion of the line of forts which Agricola had formed between the Firths of Forth and Clyde. This boundary was not long kept, for in 210 we find the Emperor Severus fortifying the rampart between the Tyne and Solway. Roman armies, however, probably under the command of Lollius Urbicus, had penetrated far beyond the more northerly wall, although, unfortunately, no accounts of their reception are preserved. From comparing Roman remains lately discovered with ancient geographies, it is held as established that the Romans reached the north-east end of Loch Ness, near the modern town of Inverness. The number of roads and camps which they made, and the regularity with which the country was divided into stations, prove their desire to preserve these conquests. When the conquest was thus so far completed, the country was governed in the usual manner of a Roman province; and towns began to rise in the course of time-being generally those whose names are now found to end in chester, a termination derived from castra, the Latin word for a camp. The Christian religion was also introduced, and Roman literature made some progress in the country.

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CONQUEST BY THE SAXONS.

At length a time came when the Romans could no longer defend their own native country against the nations in the north of Europe. The soldiers were then withdrawn from Britain (about the year 440), and the people left to govern themselves. The Caledonians, who did not like to be so much straitened in the north, took advantage of the unprotected state of the Britons to pour in upon them from the other side of the wall, and despoil them of their lives and goods. The British had no resource but to call in another set of protectors,

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named Harold. The country was then invaded by William, Duke of Normandy, a man of illegitimate birth, attended by a large and powerful army. Harold opposed him at Hastings (October 14), and after a well-contested battle, his army was defeated, and himself slain. William then caused himself to be crowned king at Westminster; and in the course of a few years he succeeded, by means of his warlike Norman followers, in completely subduing the Saxons. His chiefs were settled upon the lands of those who opposed him, and became the ancestors of most of the present noble families of England.

the Saxons, a warlike people who lived in the north of Germany, and the Jutes and Angles, who inhabited Denmark. The remedy was found hardly any better than the disease. Having once acquired a footing in the island, these hardy strangers proceeded to make it a subject of conquest, as the Romans had done before, with this material difference, that they drove the British to the western parts of the island, particularly into Wales, and settled, with new hordes of their countrymen, over the better part of the land. So completely was the population changed, that, excepting in the names of some of the hills and rivers, the British language was extinguished, and even the name of the country itself was changed from what it originally was to Angle-land, or England, a term taken from the Angles. The conquest required about a hundred and fifty years to be effected, and, like that of the Romans, it extended no farther north than the Firths of Forth and Clyde. Before the Britons were finally cooped up in Wales, many battles were fought; but few of these are accurately recorded. The most distinguished of the British generals were the Princes Vortimer and Aurelius Am-kept in a chain of servile obedience, while some of the brosius. It is probably on the achievements of the latter that the well-known fables of King Arthur and his knights are founded.

Previously to this period, the church of Rome, which was the only surviving part of the power of that empire, had established its supremacy over England. The land was also subjected to what is called the feudal system (see HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES), by which all proprietors of land were supposed to hold it from the king for military service, while their tenants were understood to owe them military service in turn for their use of the land. All orders of men were thus lower orders were actually slaves to their superiors. In the year 853, Kenneth, king of the Scots, had added the Pictish kingdom to his own, and his descendant Malcolm II., in 1020, extended his dominions over not only the south of Scotland, but a part of the north of England. Thus, putting aside Wales, which continued to be an independent country, under its own princes, the island was divided, at the time of the Nor

land and Scotland, as they were for some centuries afterwards. Ireland, which had also been invaded by hordes from the north of Europe, was divided into a number of small kingdoms, like England under the Saxon Heptarchy.

England, exclusive of the western regions, was now divided into seven kingdoms, called Kent, Northumberland, East Anglia, Mercia, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex, each of which was governed by a race descended from the leader who had first subdued it; and the whole have since been called by historians the Saxon Hep-man Conquest, into two considerable kingdoms, Engtarchy, the latter word being composed of two Greek words, signifying seven kingdoms. To the north of the Forth dwelt a nation called the Picts, who also had a king, and were in all probability the people with whom Agricola had fought under the name of Caledonians. In the Western Highlands there was another nation, known by the name of the Scots, or Dalriads, who had gradually migrated thither from Ireland, between the middle of the third century and the year 503, when they established, under a chief named Fergus, a monarchy destined in time to absorb all the rest. About the year 700 there were no fewer than fifteen kings, or chiefs, within the island, while Ireland was nearly in the same situation. In Britain, at the same time, five languages were in use, the Latin, Saxon, Welsh, the Pictish, and the Irish. The general power of the country has been found to increase as these nations and principalities were gradually amassed together.

Although three of the Saxon kingdoms, Wessex, Mercia, and Northumberland, became predominant, the Heptarchy prevailed from about the year 585 to 800, when Egbert, king of Wessex, acquired a paramount influence over all the other states, though their kings still continued to reign. Alfred, so celebrated for his virtues, was the grandson of Egbert, and began to reign in the year 871. At this time the Danes, who are now a quiet, inoffensive people, were a nation of pirates, and at the same time heathens. They used to come in large fleets, and commit dreadful ravages on the shores of Britain. For some time they completely overturned the sovereignty of Alfred, and compelled him to live in obscurity in the centre of a marsh. But he at length fell upon them when they thought themselves in no danger, and regained the greater part of his kingdom. Alfred spent the rest of his life in literary study, of which he was very fond, and in forming laws and regulations for the good of his people. He was perhaps the most able, most virtuous, and most popular prince that ever reigned in Britain; and all this is the more surprising, when we find that his predecessors and successors, for many ages, were extremely cruel and ignorant. He died in the year 901, in the fifty-third year of his age.

CONQUEST BY THE NORMANS.

The Saxon line of princes continued to rule-with the exception of three Danish reigns-till the year 1066, when the crown was in the possession of a usurper

EARLY NORMAN KINGS.

William, surnamed The Conqueror, reigned from 1066 to 1087, being chiefly engaged all that time in completing the subjugation of the Saxons. He is allowed to have been a man of much sagacity, and a firm ruler; but his temper was violent, and his dispositions brutal. At the time of his death, which took place in Normandy, his eldest son Robert happening to be at a greater distance from London than William, who was the second son, the latter individual seized upon the crown, of which he could not afterwards be dispossessed, till he was shot accidentally by an arrow in the New Forest, in the year 1100. Towards the close of this king's reign, the whole of Christian Europe was agitated by the first Crusade-an expedition for the recovery of the Holy Land from the Saracens. Robert of Normandy had a high command in this enterprise, and gained much fame as a warrior; but while he was in Italy, on his return, his youngest brother Henry usurped the throne left vacant by William, so that he was again disappointed of his birthright. HENRY I.-surnamed Beauclere, from his being a fine scholar-was a prince of some ability; but he disgraced himself by putting out the eyes of his eldest brother, and keeping him nearly thirty years in confinement. Such barbarous conduct shows that in this age might was the only right, and that men hesitated at no actions which might promise to advance their own interests.

Contemporary with William the Conqueror in England, was MALCOLM III. in Scotland, surnamed Canmore, from his having a large head. This prince, after overthrowing the celebrated usurper Macbeth, married Margaret, a fugitive Saxon princess, through whom his posterity became the heirs of that race of English sovereigns. He was a good prince, and by settling Saxon refugees upon his lowland territory, did much to improve the character of the Scottish nation, who are described as having been before this time a nation in which there was no admixture of civilisation. At Malcolm's death, in 1093, the crown was contested for a while by a usurper called Donald Bane, and the elder sons of the late monarch, but finally fell to the

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