E-text prepared by Paul Dring, Frank van Drogen,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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A
PRINCIPALLY
IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
BY
VOLUME I
Once more I come before the public with a work on the history of anation which is not mine by birth.
It is the ambition of all nations which enjoy a literary culture topossess a harmonious and vivid narrative of their own past history. Andit is of inestimable value to any people to obtain such a narrative,which shall comprehend all epochs, be true to fact and, while resting onthorough research, yet be attractive to the reader; for only by this aidcan the nation attain to a perfect self-consciousness, and feeling thepulsation of its life throughout the story, become fully acquainted withits own origin and growth and character. But we may doubt whether up tothis time works of such an import and compass have ever been produced,and even whether they can be produced. For who could apply criticalresearch, such as the progress of study now renders necessary, to themass of materials already collected, without being lost in itsimmensity? Who again could possess the vivid susceptibility requisitefor doing justice to the several epochs, for appreciating the actions,the modes of thought, and the moral standard of each of them, and forunderstanding their relations to universal history? We must be contentin this department, as well as in others, if we can but approximate tothe ideal we set up. The best-written histories will be accounted the[Pg vi]best.
When then an author undertakes to make the past life of a foreign nationthe object of a comprehensive literary work, he will not think ofwriting its history as a nation in detail: for a foreigner this would beimpossible: but, in accordance with the point of view he would naturallytake, he will direct his eyes to those epochs which have had the mosteffectual influence on the development of mankind: only so far as isnecessary for the comprehension of these, will he introduce anythingthat precedes or comes after them.
There is an especial charm in following, century after century, thehistory of the English nation, in considering the antagonism of theelements out of which it is composed, and its share in the fortunes andenterprises of that great community of western nations to which itbelongs; but it will be readily granted that no other period can becompared in general importance with the epoch of those religious andpolitical wars which fill the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In the sixteenth century the part which England took in the work ofemancipating the world from the rule of the western hierarchy decisivelyinfluenced not only its own constitution, but also the success of thereligious revolution throughout Europe. In England the monarchyperfectly understood its position in relation to this great change;while favouring the movement in its own interest, it neverthelesscontrived to maintain the old historical state of things to a greatextent; nowhere have more of the institutions of the Middle Ages beenretained than in England; nowhere did the spiritual power link itselfmore closely with the temporal. Here less depends on the conflict ofdoctrines, for which Germany is the classic ground: the main interestlies in the political transformation, accomplished amidst[Pg vii]manifold variations of opinions