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of Albion the Giant.' But a more audacious pièce of scepticism remains. Speed does not believe in Brute, and by implication denies that we English are descended from the Trojans; an article which, all through the Middle Ages, was believed in with a firm undoubting faith. After giving the evidence for and against the legend in great detail, and with perfect fairness, he gives judgment himself on the side of reason; and with regard to the Trojan descent, advises Britons to 'disclaim that which bringeth no honour to so renowned a nation.' The same rationality displays itself as the History proceeds. Holinshed speaks in a sort of gingerly way of the miracles attributed to St. Dunstan, as if on the one hand the extraordinary character of some of them staggered even him; while on the other, his natural credulity compelled him to swallow them. But honest Speed brushes out of his path these pious figments. As for angels singing familiarly unto him,' he says, ' and divels in the shape of dogs, foxes, and beares, whipped by him, that was but ordinary; as likewise his making the she-divel to roare, when, coming to tempt him in shape of a beautiful lasse, he caught her by the nose with hot burning pincers, and so spoilde a good face. But to leave these figments wherewith our monkish stories are stuffed,' &c.

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The complimentary verses printed, as the custom then was, at the beginning of the second edition of the work, show that Speed was warmly admired by a circle of contemporary students, who took an eager interest in his labours. This fact, and the rudiments of a sound historical criticism contained in his History, entitle us to conjecture that, had no disturbing influences intervened, the English school of historians, which numbered at this time men like Speed, and Knolles, and Camden, in its ranks, would have progressively developed its powers, and attained to ever wider views, until it had thought out all those critical principles which it was actually left to Niebuhr and the Germans to discover. But the civil war came, and broke the thread of research. The strong intellects that might otherwise have applied themselves to the task of establishing canons of evidence, and testing the relative credibility of various historical materials, were compelled to enter into the arena of political action, and to work and fight either for King or Parliament. We cannot complain; one nation cannot do all that the race requires. Contented to have immensely accelerated, by our civil war and its incidents, the progress of political freedom in Europe, we must resign to Germany that philosophical preeminence, which, had the English intellect peacefully expanded itself during the seventeenth century, we might possibly have contested with her.

work, De jure Regni apud Scotos. This treatise, which is in Latin, is in the form of a dialogue between the author and Thomas Maitland, upon the origin and nature of royal authority in general, and of the authority of the Scottish crown in particular. In either case, he derives the authority, so far as lawful, entirely from the consent of the governed; and argues that its abuse-inasmuch as its possessor is thereby constituted a tyrant exposes him justly even to capital punishment at the hands of his people, and that not by public sentence only, but by the act of any private person. Views so extreme led to the condemnation and prohibition of the work by the Scottish parliament in 1584. It may be granted that Buchanan's close connection with the party of the Regent Murray, whose interest it was to create an opinion of the lawfulness of any proceedings, to whatever lengths they might be carried, against the person and authority of the unhappy Queen, then in confinement in England, was likely to impart an extraordinary keenness and stringency to the anti-monarchical theories advocated in the book. Nevertheless similar views were supported in the sixteenth century in the most unexpected quarters; the Jesuit Mariana, for instance, openly advocates regicide in certain contingencies; and it was quite in character with the daring temper of the age to demolish the awe surrounding any power, however venerable, which thwarted the projects of either the majority or the most active and influential party in a state.

87. Among the political writings of this period there is none more remarkable than Spenser's View of the State of Ireland, which, though written and presented to Elizabeth about the year 1596, was not published till 1633. This is the work of an eye-witness, who was at once a shrewd observer and a profound thinker, upon the difficulties of the Irish question, that problem which pressed for solution in the sixteenth century, and is still unsolved in the nineteenth. Spenser traces the evils afflicting Ireland to three sources, connected respectively with its laws, its customs, and its religion; examines each source in turn; suggests specific remedial measures; and, finally, sketches out a general plan of government calculated to prevent the growth of similar mischiefs for the future.

88. In England, the active and penetrating mind of Raleigh was employed in this direction among others. It is very interesting to find him, in his Observations on Trade and Commerce, advocating the system of low duties on imports, and explaining the immense advantages which the Dutch, in the few

1Upon Scotch Monarchical Law.'

years that had elapsed since they conquered their independence from Spain, had derived from free trade and open ports. The treatise on the Prerogative of Parliament, written in the Tower, and addressed to the King, was designed to induce James to summon a parliament, as the most certain and satisfactory mode of paying the crown debts. It is true, he adapts the reasoning in some places to the base and tyrannical mind which he was attempting to influence; saying, for example, that although the King might be obliged to promise reforms to his parliament in return for subsidies, he need not keep his word when parliament was broken up. But this Machiavelian suggestion may be explained as the desperate expedient of an unhappy prisoner, who saw no hope either for himself or for his country except in the justice of a free Parliament, and, since the King alone could call Parliament together, endeavoured to make the measure as little unpalatable as possible to the contemptible and unprincipled person who then occupied the throne. Much of the

historical inquiry which he institutes into the relations between former parliaments and English kings is extremely acute and valuable. In the Maxims of State, a short treatise, not written, like the one last mentioned, to serve an immediate purpose, Raleigh's naturally honest and noble nature asserts itself. In this he explicitly rejects all the immoral suggestions of Machiavel, and lays down none but sound and enlightened principles for the conduct of governments. Thus, among the maxims to be observed by an hereditary sovereign, we read the following:

15. To observe the laws of his country, and not to encounter them with his prerogative, nor to use it at all where there is a law, for that it maketh a secret and just grudge in the people's hearts, especially if it tend to take from them their commodities, and to bestow them upon other of his courtiers and ministers.

It would have been well for Charles I. if he had laid this maxim to heart before attempting to levy ship-money. Again:

17. To be moderate in his taxes and impositions; and when need doth require to use the subjects' purse, to do it by parliament, and with their consents, making the cause apparent to them, and showing his uuwillingness in charging them. Finally, so to use it that it may seem rather an offer from his subjects than an exaction by him.

A political essay, entitled The Cabinet Council, was left by Raleigh in manuscript at his death, and came into the hands of Milton, by whom it was published with a short preface. Though acute and shrewd, like all that came from the same hand, this treatise is less interesting than those already mentioned, because it enters little into the consideration of general causes, but consists mainly of practical maxims, suited to that age, for the use of statesmen and commanders.

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CHAPTER IV.

CIVIL WAR PERIOD.

1625-1700.

1. THE literature of this period will be better understood after a brief explanation has been given of the political changes which attended the fall, restoration, and ultimate expulsion of the Stuart dynasty.

The Puritan party, whose proceedings and opinions in the two preceding reigns have been already noticed, continued to grow in importance, and demanded with increasing loudness a reform in the Church establishment. They were met at first by a bigotry at least equal, and a power superior, to their own. Archbishop Laud, who presided in the High Commission Court,1 had taken for his motto the word 'Thorough,' and had persuaded himself that only by a system of severity could conformity to the established religion be enforced. Those who wrote against, or even impugned in conversation, the doctrine, discipline, or government of the Church of England, were brought before the High Commission Court and heavily fined; and a repetition of the offence, particularly if any expressions were used out of which a seditious meaning could be extracted, frequently led to an indictment of the offender in the Star Chamber (in which also Laud had a seat), and to his imprisonment and mutilation by order of that iniquitous tribunal. Thus Prynne, a lawyer, Bastwick, a physician, and Burton, a clergyman, after having run the gauntlet of the High Commission Court, and been there sentenced to suspension from the practice of their professions, fined, imprisoned, and excommunicated, were in 1632 summoned before the Star Chamber, and sentenced to stand in the pillory, to lose their ears, and be imprisoned for life. In 1633 Leighton, father of the eminent Archbishop Leighton, was by the same court sentenced to be publicly whipped, to lose both ears, to have his nostrils slit, to be branded on both cheeks, and imprisoned for life. In all these cases the offence was of the same kind; the publication of some book or tract, gene

1 Established by Queen Elizabeth to try ecclesiastical offences.

The Apology, which was directed against Rome, and originally written in Latin, drew forth a reply from the Jesuit Harding, to which Jewel rejoined in his Defence of the Apology, a long and laboured work in English.

78. While Grindal was archbishop, the deviations of the Puritan clergy from the established liturgy were to some extent connived at. But upon the appointment of Whitgift, in 1583, a man of great energy and a strict disciplinarian, uniformity was everywhere enforced; and the Puritans saw no alternative before them, but either to accept a form of Church government of which they doubted the lawfulness, and acquiesce in practices which they detested as relics of 'Popery' (such as the sign of the cross at baptism, the use of vestments, the retention of fast and feast days, &c.), or else to give up their ministry in the Church. Before deciding on the latter course, they tried the effect of putting forth various literary statements of their case. Of these the most important were the Admonition of Cartwright, and the Ecclesiastica Disciplina of Travers. These works drew forth from the Church party a memorable response, in the Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard Hooker. This celebrated man, who never attained to a higher ecclesiastical rank than that of a simple clergyman in the diocese of Canterbury, published the first four books of his treatise of Ecclesiastical Polity in 1594; the fifth book followed in 1597. His life by Izaak Walton is one of our most popular biographies; but it used to be remarked by the late Dr. Arnold, that the gentle, humble, unworldly pastor brought before us by Walton is quite unlike the strong majestic character suggested by the works themselves. The general object of the treatise was to defend the Established Church, its laws, rites, and ceremonies, from the attacks of the Puritans. These attacks reduced themselves to two principal heads: first, that the episcopal government of the Church and the temporal status of bishops, together with all laws connected with and upholding this system, as not being laid down in Scripture, were therefore unlawful, and ought to be exchanged for the Presbyterian system, which they maintained was so laid down; secondly, that many of the rites and practices enjoined by the rubric were superstitious and 'popish, and ought to be abolished. To the first position Hooker replies by establishing the distinction between natural and positive law, the former being essentially immutable, the latter, even though commanded by God Himself for special purposes and at particular times, essentially mutable. Thence he argues, that even if the Puritans could prove their Presbyterian form of Church government to be laid down in Scripture, it would not follow (since such form

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