STANLEY LANE-POOLE Gradually, however, a more orderly society emerged. Maritime commerce developed in two separate areas, the northern and western, and the Mediterranean. The first great commerce in the north arises from the manufacture in Flanders of the wool exported from England. And in the fourteenth century England herself began to compete in the woollen manufacture. The German free manufacturing towns established the Great Hanseatic League; but maritime commerce between the Northern and Southern areas was practically non-existent till the fifteenth century, by which time English ships were carrying on a fairly extensive traffic in the Mediterranean. In that area the great seaports of Italy, and in a less degree, of Catalonia and the French Mediterranean seaboard, developed a large commerce. Naturally, however, the law which it was sufficiently difficult to enforce by land was even more easily defied on the sea, and piracy was extremely prevalent. Governments as well as private persons were under a frequent necessity of borrowing, and for a long time the great money lenders were the Jews. They, however, were later to a great extent displaced by the merchants of Lombardy, and the fifteenth century witnesses the rise of the great bankers, Italian and German. The structure and furniture of all buildings for private purposes made exceedingly little provision for comfort, offering an extreme contrast to the dignity of the public buildings and the sublimity of ecclesiastical architecture. During the last three hundred years of our period it is clear that there was a great diminution of the status of servitude and a great increase in the privileges extended to corporate towns. Private warfare was checked and lawless robbery to a considerable extent restrained. It is tolerably clear that the rise of heretical sects were both the cause and the result of moral dissatisfaction, tending to the adoption of higher moral standards. Some of these sects were cruelly crushed by merciless persecution, as in the case of the Albigenses. The doctrines of Wickliffe, however, were never stamped out in England; and the form which they took in Bohemia among the followers of the martyred John Huss had little about them that was beneficial. The great moral school of the Middle Ages was the institution of chivalry, which existed to animate and cherish the principle of honour. To this a strong religious flavor was superadded, perhaps by the Crusades. To valour and devotion was added the law of service to womanhood, and chivalry may fairly claim to have developed generally the three virtues essential to it, of loyalty, courtesy, and liberality. Resting, however, as it did on the personal prowess and skill of the individual in single combat, the whole system of chivalry was destroyed by the introduction on an extensive scale of the use of firearms. We turn lastly to the intellectual improvement which may be referred to four points: the study of civil laws the institution of universities; the application of modern languages to literature, and especially to poetry; and the revival of ancient learning. Education may almost be said to have begun with the establishment of the great schools by Charlemagne out of which sprang the European universities. For a long time of course all studies were dominated by that of theology, and the scholastic philosophy which pertained to it. Barren as these pursuits were, they kept alive an intellectual activity which ultimately found fresh channels. The Romance languages developed a new literature first on the tongues of the troubadours and then in Italy--the Italy which gave birth to Dante and Petrarch. It was about the fourteenth century that a new enthusiasm was born for the study of classical authors, though Greek was still unknown. And the final and decisive impulse was given when the invention of printing made the great multiplication of books possible. STANLEY LANE-POOLE Egypt in the Middle Ages Stanley Lane-Poole, born on December 18, 1845, studied Arabic under his great-uncle, Lane, the Orientalist, and, before going up to Oxford for his degree, began his "Catalogue of Oriental Coins in the British Museum," which appeared in fourteen volumes between 1875 and 1892, and founded his reputation as the first living authority on Arabic numismatics. In 1883, 1896, and 1897 he was at Cairo officially employed by the British Government upon the Mohammedan antiquities, and published his treatise on "The Art of the Saracens in Egypt" in 1886, in which year he visited Stockholm, Helsingfors, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Constantinople to examine their Oriental collections. He has written histories of the "Moors in Spain," "Turkey," "The Barbary Corsairs," and "Mediæval India," which have run to many editions; and biographies of Saladin, Babar, Aurangzib; of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and Sir Harry Parkes. He has also published a miniature Koran in the "Golden Treasury" series, and written "Studies in a Mosque," besides editing three volumes of Lane's "Arabic Lexicon." For five years he held the post of Professor of Arabic at Trinity College, Dublin, of which he is Litt.D. Mohammedan Egypt, his special subject, he has treated in several books on Cairo, the latest being "The Story of Cairo." But his most complete work on this subject is "The History of Egypt in the Middle Ages," here epitomised by the author. I.--A Province of the Caliphate Ever since the Arab conquest in 641 Egypt has been ruled by Mohammedans, and for more than half the time by men of Turkish race. Though now and again a strong man has gathered all the reins of control into his own hands and been for a time a personal monarch, as a rule the government has been, till recent years, a military bureaucracy. The people, of course, had no voice in the government. The Egyptians have never been a self-governing race, and such a dream as constitutional democracy was never heard of until a few years ago. By the Arab conquest in the seventh century the people merely changed masters. They were probably not indisposed to welcome the Moslems as their deliverers from the tyranny of the Orthodox Church of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire, invincibly intolerant of the native monophysite heresy; and when the conquest was complete they found themselves, on the whole, better off than before. They paid their taxes to officials with Arabic instead of Greek titles, but the taxes were lighter and the amount was strictly laid down by law. The land-tax of about a pound per acre was not excessive on so fertile a soil, and the poll-tax on nonconformity, of the same amount, was a moderate price to pay for entire liberty of conscience and freedom in public worship guaranteed by solemn treaty. The other taxes were comparatively insignificant, and the total revenue in the eighth century was about £7,000,000. The surplus went to the caliph, the head of the vast Mohammedan empire, which then stretched from Seville to Samarkand, whose capital was first Damascus and afterwards Baghdad. For over 200 years (till 868) Egypt was a mere province of this huge caliphate, and was governed, like other provinces, with a sole view to revenue. "Milk till the udder be dry and let blood to the last drop" was a caliph's instructions to a governor of Egypt. As these governors were constantly changed--there were sixty-seven in 118 years under the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad--and as a governor's main object was to "make hay while the sun shines," the process of milking the Egyptian cow was often accelerated by illegal extortion, and the governor's harvest was reaped before it was due. Illegality was, however, checked to some extent by the generally wise and just influence of the chief justice, or kadi, whose probity often formed the best feature of the Arab government in Egypt. Nor did the caliphs extort taxes without giving something in return. The development of irrigation works was always a main consideration with the early Mohammedan rules, from Spain to India, and in Egypt, where irrigation is the country's very life, it was specially cared for, with a corresponding increase in the yield. Moreover, the governors usually held to the agreement that the Christians should have liberty of conscience, and protected them from the Moslem soldiery. As time went on, this toleration abated, partly because the Moslems had gradually become the predominant population. At the beginning the caliphs had taken anxious precautions against the colonising of Egypt; they held it by an army, but they were insistent that the army should not take root, but be always free to join the caliph's standard. But it was inevitable that the Arabs should settle in so fertile and pleasant a land. Each governor brought a small army as his escort, and these Arab troops naturally intermarried with Egyptian women, who were constitutionally inclined to such alliances. A few Arab tribes also settled in Egypt. This gradual and undesigned Arabising of the country would lead to oppression of the Christians, to the "squeezing" of wealthy natives, and occasionally to the institution of humiliating distinctions of dress and other vexations, and even to the spoiling of Coptic churches. Then sometimes the Copts, as the Egyptian Christians are called, would rebel. Their last and greatest rebellion, which occurred in the Delta in 830-832, was ruthlessly trampled out by Turkish troops under Mamun, the only Abbasid caliph who made a visit to Egypt. Many Copts now apostatised, and from this time dates the predominance of the Moslem population and the settling of Arabs in the villages and on the land, instead of as heretofore only in the two or three large towns. The coming of the Turkish troops with the caliph Mamun was an ominous event for the country. Up to 846 all the successive governors had been Arabs, and many of them were related to the caliphs themselves. With some unfortunate exceptions, they seem to have been men of simple habits--the Arabs were never luxurious--and usually of strict Mohammedan principles. They made money, honestly if possible, during their brief tenure; but they did not harass the people much by their personal interference, and left the local officials to manage matters in their own way, as had always been the custom. They lived at the new capital, Fustat, which grew up on the site of the conqueror's camp, and very near the modern Cairo; for Alexandria, the symbol of Roman domination, was dismantled in 645 after the Emperor Manuel's attempt at reconquest. If they did not do much active good, they did little harm, and Egypt pursued her immemorial ways. The last Arab governor, Anbasa, was a man of fine character, and his term of office was distinguished by the building of the fort of Damietta, as a protection against Roman raids, and by a defeat of the tributary Sudanis near Dongola. II.--Turkish Governors The Arabs have neither the ferocity nor the luxuriousness, nor, it should be added, the courage and the genius for administration of the Turkish race. In the arrival of Turkish troops in 830 we see a symptom of what was going on all over the eastern caliphate. Turks were taking the place of Arabs in the army and the provincial governments, just as the Persians were filling up the civil appointments. The caliph's Turkish bodyguard was the beginning of the dismemberment of the caliphate. It became the habit of the caliphs to grant the government of Egypt, as a sort of fief, to a leading Turkish officer, who usually appointed a deputy to do his work and to pay him the surplus revenue. Such a deputy was Ahmad-ibn-Tulun (868-884), the first of the many Turkish despots of Egypt. Ibn-Tulun was the first ruler to raise Egypt from a mere tax-paying appendage of the caliphate to a kingdom, independent save for the recognition of the caliph on the coinage, and he was the first to found a Moslem dynasty there. A man of fair Mohammedan education, iron will, and ubiquitous personal attention to affairs, he added Syria to his dominions, defeated the East Romans with vast slaughter near Tarsus (883), kept an army of 30,000 Turkish slaves and a fleet of a hundred fighting ships. He beautified his capital by building a sumptuous palace and his well-known mosque, which still stands in his new royal suburb of Katai; he encouraged the small farmers and reduced the taxation, yet he left five millions in the treasury when he died in 884. His son maintained his power, and more than his luxury and artistic extravagance; but there were no elements of stability in the dynasty, which depended solely upon the character of the ruler. The next generation saw Egypt once more (905) a mere province of the caliphate, but with this difference, that its governors were now Turks, generally under the control of their own soldiery, and much less dependent upon the ever-weakening power of the Caliph of Baghdad. One of them, the Ikhshid, in 935 emulated Ibn-Tulun and united part of Syria to Egypt; but the sons he left were almost children, and the power fell into the hands of the regent Kafur, a black eunuch from the Sudan, bought for £25, who combined a luxurious and cultivated court with some military successes and real administrative capacity. III.--The Fatimid Caliphs The Mohammedan world is roughly divided into Sunnis and Shia. The Shia are the idealists, the mystics of Islam; the Sunnis are the formalists, the schoolmen. The Shia trace an apostolic succession from Ali, the husband of the prophet Mohammed's daughter Fatima, hold doctrines of immanence and illumination, adopt an allegorical interpretation of scripture, and believe in the coming of a Mahdi or Messiah. The Sunnis adhere to the elective historical caliphate descended from Mohammed's uncle, maintain the eternal uncreated sufficiency of the Koran, literally interpreted, and believe in no Messiah save Mohammed. The Shia, whatever their racial origin, form the Persian, the Aryan, adaptation of Islam, which is an essentially Semitic creed. In the tenth century they had established a caliph among the Berbers at Kayrawan (908). They had thence invaded Egypt with temporary success in 914 and 919. When the death of Kafur in 968 left the country a prey to rival military factions, the fourth of the caliphs of Kayrawan--called the Fatimid caliphs, because they claimed a very doubtful descent from Fatima--sent his army into Egypt. The people, who had too long been the sport of Turkish mercenaries, received the invaders as deliverers, just as the Copts had welcomed the Arabs three centuries before. Gauhar, the Fatimid general, entered Fustat (or Misr, as it was usually called, a name still applied both to Egypt and to its capital) amid acclamations in 969, and immediately laid the foundations of the fortified palace which he named, astrologically, after the planet Mars (Kahir), El-Kahira, "the Martial," or "the Victorious," which gradually expanded to the city of Cairo. He also founded the great historic university mosque of the Azhar, which, begun by the heretical Shia, became the bulwark of rigid scholasticism and the theological centre of orthodox Islam. The theological change was abrupt. It was as though Presbyterian Scotland had suddenly been put under the rule of the Jesuits. But, like the Society of Jesus, the Shia were pre-eminently intellectual and recognised the necessity of adapting their teaching to the capacities of their hearers, and the conditions of the time. They did not force extreme Shia doctrine upon the Egyptians. Their esoteric system, with its graduated stages of initiation, permitted a large latitude, and they were content to add their distinctive formulas to the ordinary Mohammedan ritual, and to set them conspicuously on their coinage, without entering upon a propaganda. The bulk of the Egyptian Moslems apparently preserved their orthodoxy and suffered an heretical caliphate for two centuries with traditional composure. The Christian Copts found the new régime a marked improvement. Mysticism finds kindred elements in many faiths, and the Fatimid caliphs soon struck up relations with the local heads of the Christian religion. The second Egyptian caliph, Aziz (975-996), was greatly influenced by a Christian wife, who encouraged his natural clemency. Bishop Severus attended his court, and Coptic churches were rebuilt. Throughout the Fatimid period we constantly find Christians and Jews, and especially Armenians, advanced to the highest offices of state. This was partly due, of course, to their special qualifications as scribes and accountants, for Arabs and Turks were no hands at "sums." The land had rest under this wise and tolerant caliph. If he set a dangerous example in his luxury and love of display, he unquestionably maintained law, enforced equity, punished corruption, and valiantly defended his kingdom. He fitted out a fleet of 600 sail at Maks (then the port of Cairo, on the Nile), which kept the Emperor Basil at a distance and assured the caliph's ascendancy from end to end of the Mediterranean Sea. After these two great rulers the Fatimid caliphate subsisted for nearly two centuries by no virtue or energy of its own. The caliphs lived secluded, like veiled prophets, in their huge palace at Cairo, given over to sensual delights (Saladin found 12,000 women in the Great Palace when he entered it in 1171), and wholly regardless of their kingdom, which they left to the care of vezirs, who were chiefly bent on making their own fortunes, though there were many able, and a few honest men amongst them. The real power rested with the army, and the only check upon the tyranny and debauchery of the army lay in its own jealous divisions. The fanatical Berber regiments imported from Tunis, the bloody blacks recruited in the Sudan, and the mutinous Turkish troops long established in the country, were always at daggers drawn, and their rivalry was the vezirs' opportunity. In such anarchy the country fell from bad to worse. The reign of Hakim, the frantic son of Aziz and his Christian wife, was a personal despotism of the most eccentric kind, marked by apparently unreasonable regulations, such as keeping the shops open by night instead of by day, and confining all women to the house for seven years, as well as by intermittent persecution of Christians and Jews; and also by enlightened acts, such as the founding of the Hall of Science and the building of mosques, for all the Fatimides were friends to the arts; and ending in the proclamation of Hakim as the incarnation of the Divine Reason, in which capacity he is still adored by the Druses of the Lebanon. This assumption led to popular tumults and an orgy of carnage, in the midst of which Hakim mysteriously disappeared (1021). His successors, Zahir (1021-1036), and Mustansir (1036-1096) did nothing to retrieve the anarchic situation, of which the soldiers were the unruly masters. Palace cliques, disastrous famines (one of which lasted seven years, 1066-1072, and even led to the public selling of human joints as butcher's meat), slave, or rather freedmen's, revolts, military tumults, and the occasional temporary ascendancy of a talented vezir, sum up the history of Egypt during most of the eleventh century. The wisdom and firmness of two great Armenian vezirs, Bedr-el-Gemali (1073-1094) and his son Afdal (1094-1121), brought a large degree of order, but the last years of the Fatimid caliphate were blotted by savage murders both of caliphs and vezirs, and by the loss of their Syrian dominions to Seljuks and Crusaders. IV.--The House of Saladin It was a question whether Egypt would fall to the Christian king of Jerusalem or the Moslem king of Damascus; but, after several invasions by both, Nur-ed-din settled the problem by sending his Syrian army to Cairo in 1169, when the Crusaders withdrew without offering battle, and the Fatimid caliphate came to an end in 1171. On the Syrian general's death, two months after the conquest, his nephew, Salah-ed-din ibn-Ayyub (Saladin), succeeded to the vezirate, and after Nur-ed-din's death, in 1174, he made himself independent sultan, not only of Egypt but of Syria and Mesopotamia. Saladin was a Kurd from the Tigris districts; but his training and his following were purely Turkish, moulded on the Seljuk model, and recruited largely from the Seljuk lands. His fame was won outside Egypt, and only eight of the twenty-four years of his reign were spent in Cairo; the rest was passed in waging wars in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, culminating in the catastrophic defeat of the Crusaders near Tiberias in 1187, and the conquest of Jerusalem and all of the Holy Land. The famous crusade of Richard I., though it resulted only in recovering a strip of coast from Acre to Jaffa, and did not rescue Jerusalem, wore out Saladin's strength, and in 1193 the chivalrous and magnanimous "Soldan" died. In Egypt his chief work, after repressing revolts of black troops and Shia conspiracies, and repelling successive naval attacks on Damietta and Alexandria by the Eastern emperor and the kings of Jerusalem and Sicily, was the building of the Citadel of Cairo after the model of Norman fortresses in Syria, and the encouragement of Sunni orthodoxy by the founding and endowment of medresas, or theological colleges. The people, who had never been really converted to the Fatimid creed, accepted the latest reformation with their habitual nonchalance. This was really the greatest achievement of Saladin and his house. Cairo succeeded to Baghdad and Cordova as the true metropolis of Islam, and Egypt has remained true to the most narrow school of orthodoxy ever since. Saladin's kinsmen, known as the Ayyubid dynasty, ruled Egypt for over half a century after the death of their great leader. First his politic brother, Adil Seyf-ed-din ("Saphadin") carried on his fine tradition for a quarter of a century, and then from 1218 to 1238 Seyf-ed-din's able son Kamil, who had long been the ruler of Egypt during his father's frequent absences, followed in his steps. The futile efforts of the discredited Crusaders disturbed their peace. John of Brienne's seizure of Damietta was a serious menace, and it took all Kamil's energy to defeat the "Franks" at Mansura (1219) and drive them out of the country. On the other hand, he cultivated very friendly relations with the Emperor Frederic II., who concluded a singular defensive alliance with him in 1229, to the indignation of the Pope. He was tolerant to Christians, and listened to the preaching of St. Francis of Assisi; he granted trading concessions to the Venetians and Pisans, who established a consulate at Alexandria. At the same time he notably encouraged Moslem learning, built colleges, and developed the resources of the kingdom in every way. What had happened to the dynasties of Tulun, Ikhshid, and the Fatimides, was repeated on the death of Kamil. Two sons kept the throne successively till 1249, and then, in the midst of Louis IX's crusade, the salvation of Egypt devolved on the famous Mamluks, or white slaves, who had formed the corps d'élite of Saladin's army. V.--The Mamluks Political women have played a great rôle in Egypt from Hatshepsut and Cleopatra to the Christian wife of Aziz, the princess royal who engineered the downfall of Hakim, and the black mother who dominated Mustansir; and it was a woman who was the first queen of the Mamluks. Sheger-ed-durr ("Tree of Pearls"), widow of Salih, the last reigning Ayyubid of Egypt, was the brain of the army which broke the chivalry of France. At the second battle of Mansura in 1249, she took Louis prisoner. Then she married a leading Mamluk emir, to conciliate Moslem prejudice against a woman's rule, and thenceforth for more than two centuries and a half one Mamluk after another seized the throne, held it as long as he could, and sometimes transmitted it to his son. When it is noted that forty-eight sultans (twenty-five Bahri Mamluks, or "white slaves of the river," so called from the barracks on an island in the Nile, and twenty-three Burgis, named after the burg, or citadel, where their quarters originally were), succeeded one another from 1250 to 1517, it will be seen that their average reign was but three and a half years. The throne, in fact, belonged to the man with the longest sword. The bravest and richest generals and court officials surrounded themselves with bands of warrior slaves, and reached a power almost equal to the reigning sultan, who was, in fact, only primus inter pares , and on his death--usually by assassination--they fought for his title. All were alike slaves by origin, but this term implied no degradation. Any slave with courage and address had the chance of becoming a freedman, rising to influence, and climbing into his master's seat. Every man was every other man's equal--if he could prove it; but the process of proving it often turned Cairo into a shambles. The Mamluks were physically superb, a race of born soldiers, dashing horsemen, skilled leaders, brilliant alike in battle and in all manly sports. They were at the same time the most luxurious of men, heavy drinkers, debauched sensualists, magnificent in their profusion, in their splendid prodigality in works of art and luxury, and in the munificence with which they filled their capital with noble monuments of the most exquisite Saracenic architecture. Most of the beautiful mosques of Cairo were built by these truculent soldiers, all foreigners, chiefly Turks, a caste apart, with no thought for the native Egyptians whose lands they received as fiefs from the sultan; with no mercy when ambition called for secret assassination or wholesale massacre; yet fastidious in dress, equipment, and manners, given to superb pageants, laborious in business, and fond of music and poetry. Their orthodoxy is attested not only by their innumerable religious foundations and endowments, but by their importing into Cairo a line of Abbasid caliphs-- fainéants indeed, but in a manner representative of the great caliphs of Baghdad, extinguished by the Mongols in 1258--and in maintaining them till the Ottoman sultan usurped their very nominal authority as Commanders of the Faithful. The greatest of all the Mamluks was Beybars (1260-1277). He it was who had charged St. Louis's knights at Mansura in 1249, and afterwards helped to rout the Mongol hordes at the critical battle of Goliath's Spring in 1260; and he was the real founder of the Mamluk empire, and organised and consolidated his wide dominions so skilfully and firmly that all the follies and jealousies and crimes of his successors could not destroy the fabric. He made his army perfect in discipline, built a navy, made canals, roads, and bridges, annexed Nubia, organised a regular postal service, built fortifications, mosques, colleges, halls of justice, and managed everything, from the fourth cataract of the Nile and the Holy Cities of Arabia to the Pyramus and the Euphrates, by his immense capacity for work and amazing rapidity of movements. Egypt prospered exceedingly under his just, firm, and capable rule; he was severe to immorality and strictly prohibited wine, beer, and hashish. He entered into diplomatic relations with European powers to the great advantage of his country's trade; and his bravery, munificence, and justice have made him a popular hero in Arabic romances down to the present day. None of his successors approached his high example Khalil indeed recovered Acre and all that remained of the Crusader's possessions in Palestine, and the Mamluks, who never lost their soldierly qualities whoever happened to be their nominal ruler, handsomely defeated the Mongols again in 1299 and 1303, and for ever saved Egypt from the unspeakable curse of a Mongol conquest Nasir, whose reign covers most of the first half of the fourteenth century, was a great builder, and so were many of the nobles of his court. It was the golden age of Saracenic architecture, and Cairo is still full of the monuments of Nasir's emirs. He encouraged agriculture, stockbreeding, farming, falconry, as well as literature and art, everything, in short, except vice, wine, and Christians. The Burgi, or Circassian Mamluks (1382-1517), were little more than chief among the emirs. Widespread corruption, the open sale of high offices and of "justice," and general debauchery characterised their rule. Yet they built many of the loveliest mosques in Cairo, and the conquest of Cyprus, long a nest of Mediterranean piracy, by Bars Bey in 1426 may be added to their credit. Kait Bey (1468-1496) was a great builder, and in every way a wise, brave, and energetic, public-spirited sovereign, and was an exception to the general baseness. Egypt was rich in his day. The European trade had swelled enormously, and the duties brought in a prodigious revenue. The Italian Republics had their consulates or their marts in Alexandria, and Marseilles, Narbonne, and Catalonia sent their representatives. The Indian trade was also very considerable; we read of £36,000 paid at one time in customs dues at Gidda, then an Egyptian port on the Red Sea. The Mamluk sultan took toll on every bale of goods that passed between Europe and India in the palmy days that preceded Vasco de Gama's discovery of the Cape route in 1497. It was an immense monopoly, extortionately used, and it was not resigned without a struggle. The Mamluk fleet engaged the Portuguese off Chaul in the Bay of Bengal in 1508 and defeated them; but Almeida avenged the honour of his country by a victory over the Mamluk admiral Hoseyn off Diu in the following year, and the prolific transit trade of Egypt was to a great extent lost. This final effort was made by the last great sultan of the Circassian dynasty, Kansuh Ghuri (1501-1516), who also exerted himself manfully in defending his country from the impending disaster of Ottoman invasion. But the Othmanli Turks, greatly heartened by the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, had been steadily encroaching in Asia, and, after defeating the shah of Persia, their advance upon Syria and Egypt was only a matter of time. The victory was made easier by jealousies and treachery among the Mamluks. Kansuh fell at the head of his gallant troops in a battle near Aleppo in August 1516; a last desperate stand of the Mamluks under the Mukattam Hill at Cairo in January 1517, was overcome, and Sultan Selim made Egypt a province of the Turkish empire. Such it remains, formally, to this day. RAPHAEL HOLINSHED Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland Raphael Holinshed, who was born about 1520, is one of the most celebrated of English chroniclers. The "Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland," known by his name, cover a long period of English history, beginning with a "Description" of Britain from the earliest times, and carried on until the reign of Elizabeth, in the course of which, between 1580 and 1584, Holinshed died. The work did good service to Shakespeare, who drew from it much of the material for his historical plays. The first edition, published in 1577, was succeeded in 1587 by another, in which the "Chronicles" were continued by John Hooker and others. An edition appeared in 1807, in the foreword to which the "Chronicles" are described as containing "the most curious and authentic account of the manners and customs of our island in the reign of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth "; and being the work of a contemporary observer this is not too much to claim for it. Owing to the great scope of this work, it is impossible to convey an impression of the whole, which is best represented by means of selected examples of the chronicler's method. Being the work of so many different authors, the literary quality of the "Chronicles" naturally varies; but the learning and research they show make them an invaluable aid to the study of the manners and customs of early England. I.--Master Holinshed to his Good Lord and Master, Sir William Brooke, Knight Being earnestlie required, Right Honorable, of divers my freends, to set down some breefe discourse of some of those things which I had observed in the reading of manifold antiquities, I was at first verie loth to yeeld to their desires. But, they pressing their irksome sute, I condescended to it, and went in hand with the work, with hopes of good, although no gaie success. In the process of this Booke, if your Honor regard the substance of that which is here declared, I must needs confess that it is none of mine owne; but if your lordship have consideration of the barbarous composition shewed herein, that I may boldlie claim and challenge for mine owne. Certes, I protest before God and your Honor, that I never made any choise of stile, or words, neither regarded to handle this Treatise in such precise order and method as manie other would have done, thinking it sufficient, truelie and plainelie to set forth such things as I minded to intreat of, rather than with vain affectation of eloquence to paint out a rotten sepulchre, a thing neither commendable in a writer, nor profitable to the reader. But howsoever it be done, I have had an especial eye unto the truth of things, and for the rest, I hope that this foule frizeled Treatise of mine will prove a spur to others better learned to handle the self-same argument, if in my life-time I doo not peruse it again. II.--Some Account of the Historie of Britaine As few or no nations can justlie boast themselves to have continued sithence their countrie was first replenished, without anie mixture, more or lesse, of forreine inhabitant mixture, more or lesse, of forreine inhabitants; no more can this our Iland, whose manifold commodities have oft allured sundrie princes and famous capteines of the world to conquer and subdue the same unto their owne subjection. Manie sorts of people therefore have come in hither and settled themselves here in this Ile, and first of all other, a parcell of the lineage and posteritie of Japhet, brought in by Samothes, in the 1910 after the creation of Adam. Howbeit in process of time, and after they had indifferentlie replenished and furnished this Iland with people, Albion, the giant, repaired hither with a companie of his owne race proceeding from Cham, and not onelie annexed the same to his owne dominion, but brought all such as he found here of the line of Japhet, into miserable servitude and most extreame thraldome. After him also, and within lesse than six hundred and two yeares, came Brute, the son of Sylvius, with a great train of the posteritie of the dispersed Trojans in 324 ships; who rendering the like courtesie unto Chemminits as they had done before unto the seed of Japhet, brought them also wholie under his rule and governance, and dispossessing them he divided the countrie among such princes and capteines as he had led out of Grecia with him. Then after some further space of time the Roman Emperours subdued the land to their dominion; and after the coming of the Romans, it is hard to say with how manie sorts of people we were dailie pestered. For their armies did commonlie consist of manie sorts of people, and were (as I may call them) a confused mixture of all other countries and nations then living in the world. Howbeit I thinke it best, because they did all beare the title of Romans, to retaine onelie that name for them all, albeit they were wofull guests to this our Iland: sith that with them came all kinds of vice, all riot and excess of behaviour into our countrie, which their legions brought with them from each corner of their dominions. Then did follow the Saxons, and the Danes, and at last the Normans, of whom it is worthilie doubted whether they were more hard and cruell to our countrymen than the Danes, or more heavie and intollerable to our Iland than the Saxons or the Romans. For they were so cruellie bent to our utter subversion and overthrow, that in the beginning it was lesse reproach to be accounted a slave than an Englishman, or a drudge in anie filthie businesse than a Britaine: insomuch that everie French page was superiour to the greatest Peere; and the losse of an Englishman's life but a pastime to such of them as contended in their braverie who should give the greatest strokes or wounds unto their bodies when their toiling and drudgerie could not please them or satisfie their greedie humours. Yet such was our lot in those daies by the divine appointed order, that we must needs obey such as the Lord did set pyer us, and this all because we refused grace offered in time, and would not heare when God by his preachers did call us so favourablie unto him. By all this then we perceive, how from time to time this Hand hath not onelie been a prey, but as it were a common receptacle for strangers, the naturall homelings or Britons being still cut shorter and shorter, till in the end they came not onelie to be driven into a corner of this region, but in time also verie like utterlie to have been extinguished. Thus we see how England hath been manie times subject to the reproach of conquest. And whereas the Scots seeme to challenge manie famous victories also over us, it shall suffice for answer, that they deale in this as in the most part of their historie, which is to seeke great honour by lying, and great renown by prating and craking. Indeed they have done great mischief in this Hand, and with extreime crueltie; but as for anie conquest the first is yet to heare of. But beside those conquests aforementioned, Huntingdon, the old historiographer, speaketh of another, likelie (as he saith) to come one daie out of the North, which is a wind that bloweth no man to good, sith nothing is to be had in those parts, but hunger and much cold. III.--Of King Richard, the First, and his Journie to the Holie Land Richard the First of that name, and second sonne of Henrie the Second, began his reign over England the sixt day of Julie, in the yere of our Lord 1189. He received the crowne with all due and accustomed sollemnitie, at the hands of Baldwin, the archbishop of Canterburie, the third daie of September. Upon this daie of King Richard's coronation, the Jewes that dwelt in London and in other parts of the realme, being there assembled, had but sorie hap, as it chanced. For they meaning to honour the same coronation with their presence, and to present to the king some honourable gift, whereby they might declare themselves glad for his advancement, and procure his freendship towards them, for the confirming of their privileges and liberties; he of a zealous mind to Christes religion, abhorring their nation (and doubting some sorcerie by them to be practised) commanded that they should not come within the church when he should receive the crowne, nor within the palace whilest he was at dinner. But at dinner-time, among other that pressed in at the palace gate, diverse of the Jews were about to thrust in, till one of them was striken by a Christian, who alledging the king's commandment, kept them backe from comming within the palace. Which some of the unrulie people, perceiving, and supposing it had been done by the king's commandement, tooke lightlie occasion thereof, and falling upon the Jewes with staves, bats, and stones, beat them and chased them home to their houses and lodgings. Then did they set fire on the houses, and the Jewes within were either smoldred and burned to death within, or else at their comming forth most cruellie received upon the points of speares, billes, and swords of their adversaries that watched for them verie diligentlie. This great riot well deserved sere and grievous punishment, but yet it passed over without correction, because of the hatred generallie conceived against the obstinate frowardnesse of the Jewes. Finallie, after the tumult was ceased, the king commanded that no man should hurt or harm any of the Jewes, and so they were restored to peace after they had susteined infinit damage. No great while after this his coronation, the king sought to prepare himself to journey to the holie land, and to this end he had great need of money. Therefore he made such sale of things appertaining to him, as well in right of the crowne, as otherwise, that it seemed to divers that he made his reckoning never to return agan, in so much that some of his councillors told him plainelie, that he did not well in making things awaie so freelie; unto whom he answered "that in time of need it was no evill policie for a man to help himself with his owne." and further, "that if London at that time of need would be bought, he would surelie sell it, if he might meet with a convenient merchant that were able to give him monie enough for it." Then all things being readie, King Richard set forth, and, after great hindrance by tempests, and at the hands of the men of Cyprus, who warred against him and were overcome, he came to the citie of Acres, which then was besieged by the Christian armie. Such was the valiancie of King Richard shown in manfull constraining of the citie, that his praise was greatly bruted both amongst the Christians and also the Saracens. At last, on the twelfth date of Julie, in the yeare of grace 1192, the citie of Acres was surrendered into the Christian men's hands. These things being concluded, the French King Philip, upon envie and malice conceived against King Richard (although he pretended sickness for excuse) departed homewards. Now touching this departure, divers occasions are remembered by writers of the emulation and secret spite which he should bear towards King Richard. But, howsoever, it came to passe, partlie through envie (as hath beene thought) conceived at the great deeds of King Richard, whose mightie power and valiantnesse he could not well abide, and partlie for other respects him moving, he took the sea with three gallies of the Genevois, and returned into Italie, and so home into France, having promised first unto King Richard in the holie land, and after to pope Celestine at Rome, that he would not attempt any hurtfull enterprise against the English dominions, till King Richard should be returned out of the holie land. But this promise was not kept, for he sought to procure Earle John, King Richard's brother, to rebell against him, though he then sought it in vaine. Yet were matters nowise peacefull within the realme of England, and because of this, and likewise because the froward humours of the French so greatlie hindered him in warring against the Saracens, King Richard determined fullie to depart homewards, and at last there was a peace concluded with Saladin. But on his journie homewards the King had but sorie hap, for he made shipwracke on the coast of Istria, and then fell into captivitie; and this was the manner that it came to passe. IV.--Of King Richard's Captivitie King Richard, doubting to fall into the hands of those who might bear him ill-will, made the best shift he could to passe through quietlie, yet were many of his servants made captive, and he himself came with but three men to Vienna. There causing his servants to provide meat for him more sumptuous and fine than was thought requisite for so meane a person as he counterfeited then, he was straightway remarked, and some gave knowledge to the Duke of Austrich named Leopold, who loved him not for some matter that had passed in the holie land. Moreover, his page, going about the towne to change gold, and buy vittels, bewraied him, having by chance the King's gloves under his girdle: whereupon, being examined, for fear of tortures he confessed the truth. The Duke sent men to apprehend him, but he, being warie that he was descried, got him to his weapon; but they alledging the Duke's commandement, he boldly answered, "that sith he must be taken, he being a King, would yeeld himselfe to none of the companie but to the Duke alone." The Duke hearing of this, speedilie came unto him, whom he meeting, delivered up his sword, and committed him unto his custodie. Then was he brought before the princes and lords of the empire, in whose presence the emperour charged him with diverse unlawfull doings. King Richard notwithstanding the vaine and frivolous objections laid to his charge, made his answers always so pithilie and directlie to all that could be laid against him, and excused himself e in everie point so thoroughlie, that the emperour much marvelled at his high wisdom and prudence, and not onelie greatlie commended him for the same, but from thenceforth used him more courteously. Yet did King Richard perceive that no excuses would serve, but that he must paie to his covetous host some great summe of monie for his hard entertainment. Therefore he sent the bishop of Salisburie into England to provide for the paiment of his ransome. Finallie the King, after he had beene prisoner one yeare, six weekes, and three daies, was set at libertie on Candle-mass day, and then with long and hastie journies, not keeping the high waies, he hasted forth towards England. It is reported that if he had lingered by the way, he had beene eftsoones apprehended. For the emperour being incensed against him by ambassadors that came from the French king, immediatlie after he was set forward, began to repent himselfe in that he had suffered him so soon to depart from him, and hereupon sent men after him with all speed to bring him backe if they could by any means overtake him, meaning as then to have kept him in perpetual prison. But these his knavish tricks being in the good providence of God defeated, King Richard at length in good safetie landed at Sandwich, and the morrow after came to Canterburie, where he was received with procession. From thence he came unto London, where he was received with great joy and gladnesse of the people, giving heartie thanks to almightie God for his safe return and deliverance. The same yeare that King Richard was taken by the Duke of Austrich, one night in the month of Januarie about the first watch of the night, the northwest side of the element appeared of such a ruddie colour as though it had burned, without any clouds or other darknesse to cover it, so that the stars showed through that redness and might be verie well discerned. Diverse bright strakes appeared to flash upwards now and then, dividing the rednesse, through the which the stars seemed to be of a bright sanguine colour. In Februarie next insuing, one night after midnight the like wonder was seene and shortlie after newes came that the king was taken in Almaigne. And the same daie and selfe houre that the king arrived at Sandwich, whitest the sunne shone verie bright and cleare, there appeared a most brightsome and unaccustomed clearnesse, not farre distant from the sunne, as it were to the length and breadth of a man's personage, having a red shining brightnesse withall, like to the rainbow, which strange sight when manie beheld, there were that prognosticated the king alreadie to be arrived. V.--Of Good Queen Elisabeth, and How She Came into Her Kingdom After all the stormie, tempestuous, and blustering windie weather of Queene Marie was overblowne, the darksome clouds of discomfort dispersed, the palpable fogs and mists of most intollerable miserie consumed, and the dashing showers of persecution overpast, it pleased God to send England a calm and quiet season, a cleare and lovelie sunshine, and a world of blessings by good Queene Elisabeth, into whose gracious reign we are now to make an happie entrance as followeth. On her entering the citie of London, she was received of the people with prayers, wishes, welcomings, cries, and tender words, all which argued a wonderfull earnest love of most obedient subjects towards their sovereign. And on the other side, her grace, by holding up her hands, and merrie countenance to such as stood farre off, and most tender and gentle language to those that stood nigh unto her grace, did declare herselfe no lesse thankfullie to receive her people's good will, than they lovinglie offered it to her. And it was not onelie to those her subjects who were of noble birth that she showed herself thus verie gracious, but also to the poorest sort. How manie nose gaies did her grace receive at poore women's hands? How oftentimes staid she her chariot, when she saw anie simple bodie offer to speake to her grace? A branch of rosemarie given her grace with a supplication about Fleetbridge, was seene in her chariot till her grace came to Westminster, not without the marvellous wondering of such as knew the presenter, and noted the queene's most gracious receiving and keeping the same. Therefore may the poore and needie looke for great hope at her grace's hand, who hath shown so loving a carefulnesse for them. Moreover, because princes be set in their seat by God's appointing, and they must therefore first and chieflie tender the glorie of Him from whom their glorie issueth; it is to be noted in her grace that for so much as God hath so wonderfullie placed her in the seat of government of this realme, she in all her doings doth show herselfe most mindful of His goodness and mercie shewed unto her. And one notable signe thereof her grace gave at the verie time of her passage through London, for in the Tower, before she entered her chariot, she lifted up her eies to Heaven and saith as followeth: "O Lord Almightie and everlasting God, I give Thee most heartie thanks that Thou hast beene so mercifull unto me as to spare me to behold this joy full daie. And I acknowledge that Thou hast dealt as wonderfullie and as mercifullie with me as Thou diddest with Thy true and faithfull servant Daniell Thy prophet, whom Thou deliveredst out of the den from the crueltie of the greedie and raging lions; even so was I overwhelmed, and onlie by Thee delivered. To Thee, therefore, onlie be thankes, honor, and praise, for ever. Amen." On Sundaie, the five and twentieth daie of Januarie, her majestie was with great solemnitie crowned at Westminster, in the Abbey church there, by doctor Oglethorpe bishop of Carlisle. She dined in Westminster hall, which was richlie hung, and everything ordered in such royall manner, as to such a regall and most solemn feast appertained. In the meane time, whilst her grace sat at dinner, Sir Edward Dimmocke, knight, her champion by office, came riding into the hall in faire complete armour, mounted upon a beautifull courser, richlie trapped in cloth of gold, and in the midst of the hall cast downe his gauntlet, with offer to fight in her quarell with anie man that should denie her to be the righteous and lawfull queene of this realme. The queene, taking a cup of gold full of wine, dranke to him thereof, and sent it to him for his fee. Finallie, this feast being celebrated with all due and fitting royall ceremonies, tooke end with great joy and contentation to all the beholders. Yet, though there was thus an end of the ceremonies befitting the queene's coronation, her majesty was everywhere received with brave shows, and with pageants, all for the love and respect that her subjects bare her. Thus on Whitsundaie, in the first year of her reign, the citizens of London set forth a muster before the queene's majestie at Greenwich in the parke there, of the number of 1,400 men, whereof 800 were pikes, armed in fine corselets, 400 shot in shirts of mail, and 200 halberdiers armed in Almaine rivets; these were furnished forth by the crafts and companies of the citie. To everie hundred two wifflers were assigned, richlie appointed and apparelled for the purpose. There were also twelve wardens of the best companies mounted on horsebacke in coates of blacke velvet, to conduct them, with drums and fifes, and sixe ensigne all in lerkins of white sattin of Bridges, cut and lined with black sarsenet, and caps, hosen, and scarfs according. The sergeant-majors, captaine Constable, and captaine Sanders, brought them in order before the queene's presence, placing them in battell arraie, even as they should have fought; so the shew was verie faire, the emperour's and the French king's ammbassadors being present. Verilie the queene hath ever shown herself forward and most willing that her faithfull subjects should be readie and skilfull in war as in peace. Thus in the fourteenth yeare of her reign, by order of her council, the citizens of London, assembling in their several halles, the masters chose out the most likelie and active persons of their companies to be pikemen and shot. To these were appointed diverse valiant captaines, who to train them up in warlike feats, mustered them thrice everie weeke, sometimes in the artillerie yard, teaching the gunners to handle their pieces, sometimes at the Miles end, and in saint George's field, teaching them to skirmish. In the arts of peace likewise, she is greatlie pleased with them who are good craftsmen, and shews them favour. In government we have peace and securitie, and do not greatlie fear those who may stir up wicked rebellion within our land, or may come against us from beyond the sea. In brief, they of Norwich did say well, when the queene's majestie came thither, and in a pageant in her honour, one spake these words: "Dost them not see the joie of all this flocke? Vouchsafe to view their passing gladsome cheere, Be still (good queene) their refuge and their rocke, As they are thine to serve in love and feare; So fraud, nor force, nor forreine foe may stand Against the strength of thy most puissant hand." EDWARD A. FREEMAN The Norman Conquest of England Edward Augustus Freeman was born at Harborne, Staffordshire, England, Aug. 2, 1823. His precocity as a child was remarkable; at seven he read English and Roman history, and at eleven he had acquired a knowledge of Greek and Latin, and had taught himself the rudiments of Hebrew. An increase in fortune in 1848 enabled him to settle down and devote himself to historical research, and from that time until his death on March 17, 1892, his life was one spell of literary strenuousness. His first published work, other than a share in two volumes of verse, was "A History of Architecture," which appeared in 1849. Freeman's reputation as historian rests principally on his monumental "History of the Norman Conquest." It was published in fifteen volumes between 1867 and 1876, and, in common with all his works, is distinguished by critical ability, exhaustiveness of research, and an extraordinary degree of insight. His historical scenes are remarkably clear and vivid, as though, according to one critic "he had actually lived in the times." Preliminary Events The Norman Conquest is important, not as the beginning of English history, but as its chief turning point. Its whole importance is that which belongs to a turning point. This conquest is an event which stands by itself in the history of Europe. It took place at a transitional period in the world's development. A kingdom which had hitherto been only Teutonic, was brought within the sphere of the laws, manners, and speech of the Romance nations. At the very moment when Pope and Cæsar held each other in the death grasp, a church which had hitherto maintained a sort of insular and barbaric independence was brought into a far more intimate connection with the Roman See. The conquest of England by William wrought less immediate change than when the first English conquerors slew, expelled, or enslaved the whole nation of the vanquished Britons or than when Africa was subdued by Genseric. But it wrought a greater immediate change than the conquest of Sicily by Charles of Anjou. It brought with it not only a new dynasty, but a new nobility. It did not expel or transplant the English nation or any part of it; but it gradually deprived the leading men and families of England of their land and offices, and thrust them down into a secondary position under the alien intruders. It must not be forgotten that the old English constitution survived the Norman Conquest. What the constitution had been under the Saxon Eadgar, that it remained under William. The laws, with a few changes in detail, and also the language of the public documents, remained the same. The powers vested in King William and his Witan remained constitutionally the same as those which had been vested in King Eadgar and his Witan a hundred years before. Immense changes ensued in social condition and administration, and in the relation of the kingdom to foreign lands. There was also a vast increase of royal power, and new relations were introduced between the king and every class of his subjects; but formal constitutional changes there were none. I cannot too often repeat, for the saying is the very summing up of the whole history, that the Norman Conquest was not the wiping out of the constitution, the laws, the language, the national life of Englishmen. The English kingship gradually changed from the old Teutonic to the later mediæval type; but the change began before the Norman Conquest. It was hastened by that event; it was not completed till long after it, and the gradual transition, was brought to perfection by Henry II. Certain events indicate the remoter causes of the Norman Conquest. The accession of Eadward at once brings us among the events that led immediately to that conquest, or rather we may look on the accession of this Saxon king as the first stage of the conquest itself. Swend and Cnut, the Danes, had shown that it was possible for a foreign power to overcome England by force of arms. The misgovernment of the sons of Cnut hindered the formation of a lasting Danish dynasty in England. The throne of Cerdic was again filled by a son of Woden; but there can be no doubt that the shock given to the country by the Danish Conquest, especially the way in which the ancient nobility was cut off in the long struggle with Swend and Cnut, directly opened the way for the coming of the Norman. Eadward did his best, wittingly or unwillingly, to make his path still easier. This he did by accustoming Englishmen to the sight of strangers--not national kinsmen like Cnut's Danes, but Frenchmen, men of utterly alien speech and manners--enjoying every available place of honour or profit in the country. The great national reaction under Godwine and Harold made England once more England for a few years. But this change, happy as it was, could not altogether do away with the effects of the French predilections of Eadward. With Eadward, then, the Norman Conquest really begins. The men of the generation before the Conquest, the men whose eyes were not to behold the event itself, but who were to do all that they could do to advance or retard it, are now in the full maturity of life, in the full possession of power. Eadward is on the throne of England; Godwine, Leofric, and Siward divide among them the administration of the realm. The next generation, the warriors of Stamfordbridge and Senlac, of York and Ely, are fast growing into maturity. Harold Hadrada is already pursuing his wild career of night-errantry in distant lands, and is astonishing the world by his exploits in Russia and Sicily, at Constantinople and at Jerusalem. The younger warriors of the Conquest, Eadwine and Morcere and Waltheof and Hereward, were probably born, but they must still have been in their cradles or in their mothers' arms. But, among the leaders of Church and State, Ealdred, who lived to place the crown on the head both of Harold and of William, is already a great prelate, abbot of the great house of Tewkesbury, soon to succeed Lyfing in the chair of Worcester. Tostig must have been on the verge of manhood; Swegen and Harold were already men, bold and vigorous, ready to march at their father's bidding, and before long to affect the destiny of their country for evil and for good. Beyond the sea, William, still a boy in years but a man in conduct and counsel, is holding his own among the storms of a troubled minority, and learning those arts of the statesman and the warrior which fitted him to become the wisest ruler of Normandy, the last and greatest conqueror of England. The actors in the great drama are ready for their parts; the ground is gradually preparing for the scene of their performance. The great struggle of nations and tongues and principles in which each of them had his share, the struggle in which William of Normandy and Harold of England stand forth as worthy rivals of the noblest of prizes, will form the subject of the next, the chief and central portion of my history. The struggle between Normans and Englishmen began with the accession of Eadward in 1042, although the actual subjugation of England by force of arms was still twenty-four years distant. The thought of another Danish king was now hateful. "All folk chose Eadward to King." As the son of Æthelred and Emma, the brother of the murdered and half-canonised Alfred, he had long been-familiar to English imaginations. Eadward, and Eadward alone, stood forth as the heir of English royalty, the representative of English nationality. In his behalf the popular voice spoke out at once, and unmistakably. His popular election took place in June, immediately on the death of Harthacnut, and even before his burial. Eadward, then, was king, and he reigned as every English king before him had reigned, by that union of popular election and royal descent which formed the essence of all ancient Teutonic kingship. He was crowned at Winchester, April 3, 1043. But by virtue of his peculiar character, his natural place was not on the throne of England, but at the head of a Norman abbey, for all his best qualities were those of a monk. Like him father, he was constantly under the dominion of favourites. It was to the evil choice of his favourites during the early part of his reign that most of the misfortunes of his time were owing, and that a still more direct path was opened for the ambition of his Norman kinsman. In the latter part of his reign, either by happy accident or returning good sense, led him to a better choice. Without a guide he could not reign, but the good fortune of his later years gave him the wisest and noblest of all guides. We have now reached the first appearance of the illustrious man round whom the main interest of this history will henceforth centre. The second son of Godwine lived to be the last of our kings, the hero and martyr of our native freedom. The few recorded actions of Harold, Earl of the East Angles, could hardly have enabled me to look forward to the glorious career of Harold, Earl of the West Saxons, King of the English. Tall in stature, beautiful in countenance, of a bodily strength whose memory still lives in the rude pictorial art of his time, he was foremost alike in the active courage and in the passive endurance of the warrior. It is plain that in him, no less than in his more successful, and, therefore, more famous, rival, we have to admire not only the mere animal courage, but that true skill of the leader of armies which would have placed both Harold and William high among the captains of any age. Great as Harold was in war, his character as a civil ruler is still more remarkable, still more worthy of admiration. The most prominent feature in his character is his singular gentleness and mercy. Never, either in warfare or in civil strife, do we find Harold bearing hardly upon an enemy. From the time of his advancement to the practical government of the kingdom there is not a single harsh or cruel action with which he can be charged. Such was the man who, seemingly in the fourth year of Eadward, in the twenty-fourth of his own age, was invested with the rule of one of the great divisions of England, who, seven years later, became the virtual ruler of the kingdom; who, at last, twenty-one years from his first elevation, received, alone among English kings, the crown of England as the free gift of her people, and, alone among English kings, died axe in hand on her soil in the defence of England against foreign invaders. William of Normandy bears a name which must for ever stand forth among the foremost of mankind. No man that ever trod this earth was endowed with greater natural gifts; to no man was it ever granted to accomplish greater things. No man ever did his work more effectually at the moment; no man ever left his work behind him as more truly an abiding possession for all time. In his character one feature stands out pre-eminently above all others. Throughout his career we admire in him the embodiment in the highest degree that human nature will allow of the fixed purpose and the unbending will. We are too apt to look upon William as simply the conqueror of England. But so to do is to look at him only in his most splendid, but at the same time his least honourable, aspect. William learned to become the conqueror of England only by first becoming the conqueror of Normandy and the conqueror of France. He found means to conquer Normandy by the help of France, and to conquer France by the help of Normandy. He came to his duchy under every disadvantage. At once bastard and minor, with competitors for his coronet arising at every moment, he was throughout the whole of his early life beset by troubles, none of which were of his own making, and he came honourably out of all. In 1052, William paid his memorable visit to England. At that time both Normandy and England were at rest, enjoying peace. Visits of mere friendship and courtesy among sovereign princes were rare in those days. Such visits as those which William and Eustace of Boulogne paid at this time to this country were altogether novelties, and unlikely to be acceptable to the English mind. We may be sure that every patriotic Englishman looked with an evil eye on any French-speaking prince who made his way to the English court. William came with a great following; he tarried awhile in his cousin's company; he went away loaded with gifts and honours. And he can hardly doubt that he went away encouraged by some kind of promise of succeeding to the kingdom which he now visited as a stranger. Direct heirs were lacking to the royal house, and William was Eadward's kinsman. The moment was in every way favourable for suggesting to William on the one hand, to Eadward on the other, the idea of an arrangement by which William should succeed to the English crown on Eadward's death. The Norman writers are full of Eadward's promise to William, and also of some kind of oath that Harold swore to him. Had either the promise or the oath been a pure Norman invention, William could never have paraded both in the way that he did in the eyes of Europe. I admit, then, some promise of Eadward, some oath of Harold. But when the time came for Eadward the Confessor to make his final recommendation of a successor, he certainly changed his purpose; for his last will, so far as such an expression can be used, was undoubtedly in favour of Harold. There is not the slightest sign of any intention on the part of Eadward during his later years to nominate William to the Witan as future king. The two streams of English and Norman history were joined together in the year when the two sovereigns met for the only time in their reigns. Those streams again diverged. England shook off the Norman influence to all outward appearance, and became once more the England of Æthelstan and Eadgar. But the effects of Eadgar's Norman tendencies were by no means wholly wiped away. Normans still remained in the land, and circumstances constituted secondary causes of the expedition of William. It was in the year 1051 that the influence of strangers reached its height. During the first nine years of Eadward's reign we find no signs of any open warfare between the national and the Normanising parties. The course of events shows that Godwine's power was being practically undermined, but the great earl was still Jutwardly in the enjoyment of royal favour, and his fast possessions were still being added to by royal grants. But soon England began to feel how great is the evil when a king and those immediately around him are estranged from the mass of his people in feeling. To the French favourites who gradually crowded the court of Eadward the name, the speech, and the laws of England were things on which their ignorant pride looked with utter contempt. Count Eustace of Boulogne, now brother-in-law of the king of the English, presently came, like the rest of the world, to the English Court. The king was spending the autumn at Gloucester. Thither came Count Eustace, and, after his satisfactory interview with the king, he turned his face homewards. When a few miles from Dover he felt himself, in a region specially devoted to Godwine, to be still more thoroughly in an enemy's country than in other parts of England, and he and all his company took the precaution of putting on their coats of mail. The proud Frenchmen expected to find free quarters at Dover, and they attempted to lodge themselves at their pleasure in the houses of the burghers. One Englishman resisted, and was struck dead on the spot. The count's party then rode through the town, cutting and slaying at pleasure. In a skirmish which quickly ensued twenty Englishmen and nineteen Frenchmen were slain. Count Eustace and the remnant of the party hastened back to Gloucester, and told the story after their own fashion. On the mere accusation of a stranger, the English king condemned his own subjects without a hearing. He sent for Godwine, as earl of the district in which lay the offending town, and commanded him to inflict chastisement on Dover. The English champion was then in the midst of a domestic rejoicing. He had, like the king, been strengthening himself by a foreign alliance, and had just connected his house with that of a foreign prince. Tostig, the third son of Godwine, had just married Judith, the daughter of Baldwin of Flanders. Godwine, however, bidden without the least legal proof of offence, to visit with all the horrors of fire and sword, was not long in choosing his course. Official duty and public policy, no less than abstract justice and humanity, dictated a distinct refusal. Now or never a stand was to be made against strangers, and the earl demanded a legal trial for the burghers of Dover. But there were influences about Eadward which cut off all hope of a peaceful settlement of the matter. Eustace probably still lingered about the king, and there was another voice ever at the royal ear, ever ready to poison the royal mind against the people of England and their leader. It was the voice of a foreign monk, Archbishop Robert. Godwine and three other earls summoned their followers and demanded the surrender of Eustace, but the frightened king sent for the Northern Earls Siward, Leofric, and Ralph, bidding them bring a force strong enough to keep Godwine in check. Thus the northern and southern sections were arrayed against each other. There were, however, on the king's side, men who were not willing to see the country involved in civil war. Leofric, the good Earl of Mercia, stood forth as the champion of compromise and peace, and it was agreed that hostilities should be avoided and that the witenagemot should assemble at Michaelmas in London. Of this truce King Eadward and his foreign advisers took advantage to collect an army, at the head of which they appeared in London. Godwine and his son Harold were summoned to the gemot, but refused to appear without a security for a safe conduct. The hostages and safe-conduct were refused. The refusal was announced by Bishop Stigand to the earl as he sat at his evening meal. The bishop wept; the earl sprang to his feet, overthrew the table, leaped on his horse, and, with his sons, rode for his life all that night. In the morning the king held his witenagemot, and by a vote of the king and his whole army, Godwine and his sons were declared outlaws, but five days were allowed them to get out of the land. Godwine, Swegen, Tostig, and Gyrth, together with Gytha and Judith, the newly-married wife of Tostig, set sail for Bruges in a ship laden with as much treasure as it would hold. They reached the court of Flanders in safety, were honourably received by the count, and passed the whole winter with him. Two of Godwine's sons, however, sought another refuge. Harold and his younger brother Leofwine determined on resistance, and resolved to seek shelter among the Danish settlers in Ireland, where they were cordially received by King Diarmid. For the moment the overthrow of the patriotic leaders in England was complete, and the dominion of the foreigners over the feeble mind of the king was complete. It was while Godwine dwelt as an exile at Bruges, and Harold was planning schemes of vengeance in the friendly court of Dublin, that William the Bastard, afterwards known as William the Conqueror, paid his memorable visit to England, that visit which has already been referred to as a stage, and a most important one, among the immediate causes of the Norman Conquest. Stirring events followed in quick succession. General regret was felt among all patriotic Englishmen at the absence of Godwine. The common voice of England soon began to call for the return of the banished earl, who was looked to by all men as the father of his country. England now knew that in his fall a fatal blow had been dealt to her own welfare and freedom. And Godwine, after sending many petitions to the king, vainly petitioning for a reconciliation, determined to return by force, satisfied that the great majority of Englishmen would be less likely to resist him than to join his banners. Harold sailed from Ireland to meet his father by way of the English Channel. Godwine sailed up the Thames, and London declared for him. Panic reigned among the favourites of King Eadward. The foreigners took to flight, among the fugitives being Archbishop Robert and Bishop Ulf. The gemot met and decreed the restoration of the earl and the outlawry of many Normans. The king yielded, and accorded to Godwine the kiss of peace, and a revolution was accomplished of which England may well be proud. But a tragedy soon followed, in the death of the most renowned Englishman of that generation. During a meal at the Easter festival Godwine fell from his seat, and died after lying insensible for three days. Great was the grief of the nation. Harold, in the years that followed, became so increasingly popular that he was virtually chief ruler of England, even before the death of Eadward, which happened on January 5, 1066. His burial was followed by the coronation of Harold. But the moment of struggle was now come. The English throne had become vacant, and the Norman duke knew how to represent himself as its lawful heir, and to brand the king of the nation's choice as an usurper. The days of debate were past, and the sword alone could decide between England and her enemy. William found one Englishman willing to help him in all his schemes, in the person of Tostig, Harold's brother, who had been outlawed at the demand of the nation, owing to his unfitness to rule his province as Earl of Northumberland. He had sunk from bad to worse. Harold had done all he could for his fallen brother, but to restore him was impossible. Tostig was at the Norman court, urging William to the invasion of England. At his own risk, he was allowed to make an incursion on the English coast. Entering the Humber, he burned several towns and slew many men. But after these ravages Tostig repaired to ask help of Harold Hardrada, whom he induced to prepare a great expedition. Harold Hardrada and Tostig landed and marched towards York. A battle was fought between the Mercians and Norwegians at Fulford, in which the former were worsted, but Harold was marching northward. In the fearful battle of Stamford Bridge both Harold Hardrada and Tostig were slain, and the Viking host was shattered. The victorious English king was banqueting in celebration of the great victory, when a messenger appeared who had come at fleetest pace from the distant coast of Sussex.