THE EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIREA BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ENGLAND

BYMARY PARMELE

PREFACE.

Will the readers of this little work please bear in mind thedifficulties which must attend the painting of a very large picture,with multitudinous characters and details, upon a very small canvas!This book is mainly an attempt to trace to their sources some of thecurrents which enter into the life of England to-day; and to indicatethe starting-points of some among the various threads—legislative,judicial, social, etc.—which are gathered into the imposing strand ofEnglish Civilization in this closing 19th Century.

The reader will please observe that there seem to have been two thingsmost closely interwoven with the life of England. RELIGION and MONEYhave been the great evolutionary factors in her development.

It has been, first, the resistance of the people to the extortions ofmoney by the ruling class, and second, the violating of their religiousinstincts, which has made nearly all that is vital in English History.

The lines upon which the government has developed to its presentConstitutional form are chiefly lines of resistance to oppressiveenactments in these two matters. The dynastic and military history ofEngland, although picturesque and interesting, is really only anarrative of the external causes which have impeded the Nation's growthtoward its ideal of "the greatest possible good to the greatestpossible number."

M. P.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Ancient Britain—Caesar's Invasion—Britain a Roman Province—Boadicea
—Lyndin or London—Roman Legions Withdrawn—Angles and Saxons—
Cerdic—Teutonic Invasion—English Kingdoms Consolidated

CHAPTER II.

Augustine—Edwin—Caedmon—Baeda—Alfred—Canute—Edward the
Confessor—Harold—William the Conqueror

CHAPTER III.

"Gilds" and Boroughs—William II.—Crusades—Henry I.—Henry II.—
Becket's Death—Richard I.—John—Magna Charta

CHAPTER IV.

Henry III.—Roger Bacon—First True Parliament—Edward I.—Conquest of
Wales—of Scotland—Edward II.—Edward III.—Battle of Crecy—Richard
II.—Wickliffe

CHAPTER V

House of Lancaster—Henry IV.—Henry V.—Agincourt—Battle of Orleans—
Wars of the Roses—House of York—Edward IV.—Richard III.—Henry VII.
—Printing Introduced

CHAPTER VI

Henry VIII—Wolsey—Reformation—Edward VI—Mary

CHAPTER VII

Elizabeth—East India Company Chartered—Colonization of Virginia—
Flodden Field—Birth of Mary Stuart—Mary Stuart's Death—Spanish
Armada—Francis Bacon

CHAPTER VIII

James I—First New England Colony—Gunpowder Plot—Translation of
Bible—Charles I—Archbishop Laud—John Hampden—Petition of Right—
Massachusetts Chartered—Earl Strafford—Star Chamber

CHAPTER IX

Long Parliament—Death of Strafford and Laud—Oliver Cromwell—Deathof Charles I.—Long Parliament Dispersed—Charles II.