118 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



sense of the word, those who were committed to their spiritual 

 care. Stephen Langton had the address to gather up into his 

 hand, and to direct the force of the men of the sword, the men 

 who alone were capable of forcing concessions from the king, 

 and he used his power to obtain for all free men privileges which 

 hitherto had existed, if at all, by sufferance. Magna Charta 

 provided protection for the persons and property of all free 

 men, and established the right of free men to be exempt from 

 all taxation which had not originated with, or been agreed to 

 by themselves. It also provided for a Court of Common Pleas, 

 wherein all suits of a civil nature between subject and subject 

 were heard and determined ; it forbade the infliction of ruinous 

 fines for misdemeanours, and it laid the foundation of that 

 fabric of political and social freedom which the exertions and 

 wisdom of succeeding generations have reared in England. 

 One thing, however, it failed to do. It did not give the people, 

 not even the recognised freemen, admission or representation at 

 the National Council, neither did it guard laymen against the 

 tyranny of churchmen, nor make the churchmen give any 

 security for their good behaviour. For this second matter, 

 Henry II., some years previously, had tried to assert once and 

 for ever the supremacy of the State over the Church ; but by 

 the wicked blunder of the murder of Thomas a Becket his 

 purpose was thwarted. 



The omission of the framers of the Great Charter to procure 

 representative authority for the people was probably inten- 

 tional ; the barons and great tenants of the crown could not 

 brook the notion of any but their peers being associated with 

 them in council. But half a century later, in 1265, it was 

 found impossible to exclude any longer from some political 

 status those who contributed so largely to the burdens of the 

 country. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, acting on 

 behalf of liberty and of the English people, summoned in his 

 king's name the first Parliament, in which counties and the 

 large towns were represented by delegates chosen by the free- 

 holders ; and though, under the circumstances stated in 

 Sketch VI., it was subsequently attempted to repudiate the 

 idea of representation, the ruling powers found it absolutely 

 necessary, not only to recognise what had been done, but 

 to systematise representation, and finally to erect into one 

 of the permanent institutions of the land a House of Commons, 

 acting in concert with, but independent of, the House of 

 Lords. 



In Sketch VII. was shown the effect of wilfully keeping the 

 people in ignorance, and of a system of legislation by which 

 even the nominally free labourers were reduced to a condition 

 of slavery. The rising of the labourers in the reign of 

 Eichard II. was the natural outcome of the relation in which 

 employer and employed had stood to one another since the 

 Conquest ; and though in its immediate result it fell far 

 short of the good aimed at by the Commons, and even brought 

 down upon the rebels a temporary aggravation of their lot, 

 it gained for those most concerned the attention and good- 

 will of a section of the House of Commons, which was then 

 daily increasing in power and importance. It showed, more- 

 over, what strength there was in that great multitude known 

 as the people, and wise statesmen laid the knowledge to heart, 

 and utilised it later for the benefit of the masses and of the 

 nation. They relied upon it, with success, for carrying out the 

 grand idea first practised, if not originated, by Simon de Mont- 

 fort, of governing the nation by the nation, and not by a 

 minute section of it ; they used it to back up their pretensions 

 to make the House of Commons master in England, a position 

 the House actually did occupy under the very king whose per- 

 sonal courage so much contributed to the overthrow of Wat 

 Tyler and his . followers ; they used it in the succeeding ages, 

 down to comparatively modern times, in order to build up and 

 strengthen that fabric of constitutional liberty which has been 

 the growth of many centuries, which has been the subject of 

 many struggles, even of civil war, but which secures to those 

 under it all the liberty possible in the freest republic, without 

 imposing upon them the inconveniences which seem to be in- 

 separable from that form of government. 



Our next sketch is from a period which seems to be common 

 to all nations whatever, a period of active bigotry and super- 

 stition, when those who had spiritual charge of Christ's chil- 

 dren in the land deemed it to be their duty to eradicate all 

 differences of opinion in religious matters by a free use of the 



halter and fagots. The check which Henry II. tried to place 

 on the clergy when he offered the Constitutions of Clarendon 

 for their assent, was not only thrown utterly away, but the 

 recoil of that famous piece of State artillery seemed only to 

 make itself felt about the time the House of Lancaster came 

 to the throne. A flaw in the title to the Crown the clergy 

 agreed to wink at in consideration of recognition being ac- 

 corded to them for all their claims ; they procured the passing 

 of the first Statute of Heresy, under which they burned and 

 destroyed a great number of people, ostensibly with the object 

 of saving their souls by the sacrifice of their bodies. The cir- 

 cumstances under which the first martyr for freedom of con- 

 science William Sautre suffered are depicted in the sketch 

 bearing his name. He was the first of a long line of successors 

 at the stake, some of them enthusiasts' of the aggressive or 

 demonstrative kind, some of them including among their num- 

 ber the gentlest and softest-hearted believers of their day. 

 Though open persecution for conscience' sake virtually ceased 

 with James I., the power to persecute was not taken away 

 from the law till the reign of Charles II., when the infamous 

 writ de hceretico comhurendo was formally abolished. 



In the two sketches of Sir Eichard Grenville and Sir Walter 

 Ealeigh, the object was to pourtray, as far as might be done 

 in so limited a space, the men of action who made England's 

 arm felt in the cause of political and religious liberty all over 

 the world during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The spirit 

 which actuated these men was of the old heroic kind. They 

 willingly renounced a life of ease and pleasure, the sweet in- 

 fluences of home-life, the sunshine of the court, and the society 

 of the most elegant and most brilliant men of the period, in 

 order to pursue their ideal, the overthrow of the two incar- 

 nations, as it seemed to them, of royal and priestly despotism 

 Spain and the Eoman Catholic religion. To this end they 

 worked ever, Sir Eichard Grenville representing the rougher 

 and more uncompromising specimen of English dogged- 

 ness of purpose ; Sir Walter Ealeigh representing in addition 

 the refined man of learning, the elegant courtier, the thought- 

 ful founder of colonies, the man of science, and the speculator. 

 What such men achieved, how they worked, fought, lived and 

 died, constitute a large portion of the history of Elizabeth's 

 reign. Space failed to allow of mention of more than these 

 two. Had it not dono so, it would have been our pleasant task 

 to declare the wisdom, the valour, the devotedness, and the suc- 

 cess of those many other splendid ornaments of the Elizabethan 

 age, when the danger of England, and incidentally of all Pro- 

 testant Europe, was greater from the assaults of foreign and 

 domestic foes than it ever was before or ever has been since. 

 It was due, under God's providence, to the marvellous array 

 of individual power, focussed, as it were, into a common space, 

 of which the Queen was the centre, that England and her 

 brethren on the Continent came out of the struggle with Spain 

 and the Papacy stronger for the war. Nothing short of a great 

 self-sacrifice, entire, perhaps even exaggerated loyalty, and a 

 responsible apprehension of the greatness of the interests at 

 stake, could have effected this ; and such qualities were pos- 

 sessed by the typical men whose sketches we have tried to 

 draw Sir Eichard Grenville, who died rather than surrender, 

 at the Azores ; and Sir Walter Ealeigh, whom a master, 

 all unworthy of so noble a subject, put to death in Palace 

 Yard by way of peace-offering to the offended majesty of 

 Spain. 



Three of the next four sketches deal with the troublous era 

 in English history known as that of the Great Eebellion. It 

 was impossible not to take the sketches from several points of 

 view, in order to give a better general idea of the whole subject. 

 The three we have taken " King Charles's Veto on Emigration," 

 " Charles I., when the Commons cried 'Privilege ! ' " and " The 

 Protector of the Commonwealth,'' are intended to give some 

 idea of the state of England and of her politics at the great 

 crises of her domestic sickness. In the first was shown the 

 state of England when Charles I. began, with the advice of evil 

 counsellors, that governmental system of " thorough," which 

 had for its sole aim and object the elevation of the kingly 

 power at the expense of all the constitutional powers that 

 were equally valid with it. The almost blind way in which 

 the king rushed headlong upon his fate is likewise foreshadowed ; 

 and in the second sketch of the three is shown both the height 

 to which the idea of royalism had risen, and the temper in 



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