Produced by Anne Soulard, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLANDA STUDY IN POLITICAL EVOLUTION
BY A. F. POLLARD, M.A., LITT.D.
CONTENTS
CHAP. I THE FOUNDATIONS OF ENGLAND, 55 B.C.-A.D. 1066 II THE SUBMERGENCE OF ENGLAND, 1066-1272 III EMERGENCE OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, 1272-1485 IV THE PROGRESS OF NATIONALISM, 1485-1603 V THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT, 1603-1815 VI THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND, 1603-1815 VII THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONVIII A CENTURY OF EMPIRE, 1815-1911 IX ENGLISH DEMOCRACY
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLEBIBLIOGRAPHYINDEX
CHAPTER I
THE FOUNDATIONS OF ENGLAND
55 B.C.—A.D. 1066
"Ah, well," an American visitor is said to have soliloquized on thesite of the battle of Hastings, "it is but a little island, and it hasoften been conquered." We have in these few pages to trace theevolution of a great empire, which has often conquered others, out ofthe little island which was often conquered itself. The mere incidentsof this growth, which satisfied the childlike curiosity of earliergenerations, hardly appeal to a public which is learning to look uponhistorical narrative not as a simple story, but as an interpretation ofhuman development, and upon historical fact as the complex resultant ofcharacter and conditions; and introspective readers will look less fora list of facts and dates marking the milestones on this national marchthan for suggestions to explain the formation of the army, the spiritof its leaders and its men, the progress made, and the obstaclesovercome. No solution of the problems presented by history will becomplete until the knowledge of man is perfect; but we cannot approachthe threshold of understanding without realizing that our nationalachievement has been the outcome of singular powers of assimilation, ofadaptation to changing circumstances, and of elasticity of system.Change has been, and is, the breath of our existence and the conditionof our growth.
Change began with the Creation, and ages of momentous development areshrouded from our eyes. The land and the people are the two foundationsof English history; but before history began, the land had received theinsular configuration which has largely determined its fortune; and thevarious peoples, who were to mould and be moulded by the land, haddifferentiated from the other races of the world. Several of thesepeoples had occupied the land before its conquest by the Anglo-Saxons,some before it was even Britain. Whether neolithic man supersededpalaeolithic man in these islands by invasion or by domestic evolution,we do not know; but centuries before the Christian era the Britonsoverran the country and superimposed themselves upon its swarthy, squatinhabitants. They mounted comparatively high in the scale ofcivilization; they tilled the soil, worked mines, cultivated variousforms of art, and even built towns. But their loose tribal organizationleft them at the mercy of the Romans; and though Julius Caesar's tworaids in 55 B.C. and 54 B.C. left no permanent results, the conquestwas soon completed when the Romans came in earnest in A.D. 43.
The extent to which the Romans during the three and a half centuries oftheir rule in Britain civilized its inhabitants is a matter of doubtfulinference. The remains of Roman roads, Roman walls, and Roman villasstill bear witness to their material activity; and an occupation of theland by Roman troops and Roman officials, spread over three hundred andfifty years,