XXII. DEATH OF SIMON OF MONTFORT-Prothero XXIII. AN EARLY ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT-Palgrave VII. THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD-Yonge IX. THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE-Green. 4I XV. THE FIRST DAY'S FIGHT WITH THE ARMADA-Motley 74 XVI. THE LAST DAY'S FIGHT WITH THE ARMADA-Motley 78 XVII. SHAKSPERE'S EARLY LIFE-Green XVIII. THE PILGRIM FATHERS-Bancroft. XXVI. EXECUTION OF CHARLES THE FIRST-Masson XXVII. ESCAPE OF CHARLES THE SECOND-Guizot X. MARLBOROUGH AT BLENHEIM-Green XI. SIR ROBERT WALPOLE-Macaulay. XII. BATTLE OF PRESTON PANS-Scott. 86 91 PROSE READINGS FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. PART I I. THE EARLY ENGLISHMEN. GREEN. [Britain, or the island in which we live, was first made known to the civilized world by a Roman General, Julius Cæsar, in the year 55 before the birth of Christ. Cæsar had conquered Gaul, a country which included our present France and Belgium, and brought it under the rule of Rome; but in the course of his conquest he learned that to the west of Gaul lay an island named Britain, whose peoples were mainly of the same race with the Gauls and gave them help in their struggles against the Roman armies. He resolved therefore to invade Britain; and in two successive descents he landed on its shores, defeated the Britons, and penetrated at last beyond the Thames. No event in history is more memorable than this landing of Cæsar. In it the greatest man of the Roman race made known to the world a land whose people in the after-time were to recall, both in their temper and in the breadth of their rule, the temper and empire of Rome. Cæsar however was recalled from Britain by risings in Gaul; and for a hundred years more the island remained unconquered. It was not till the time of the Emperor Claudius that its conquest was again undertaken; and a war which only ended under the Emperor Domitian at last brought all the southern part of the island under the rule of Rome. Britain remained a province of the Roman Empire for more than three hundred years. During this time its tribes were reduced to order, the land was civilized, towns were built, roads made from one end of the island to the other, mines were opened, and London grew into one of the great ports of the world. But much oppression was mingled with this work of progress, and throughout these centuries the province was wasted from time to time by inroads of the unconquered Britons of the north, whose attacks grew more formidable as Rome grew weaker in her struggle against the barbarians who beset her on every border. At last the Empire was forced to withdraw its troops from Britain, and to leave the province to defend itself against its foes. To aid in doing this, the Britons called in bands of soldiers from northern Germany, who gradually grew into a host of invaders, and became in turn a danger to the island. These were our forefathers, the first Englishmen who set foot in Britain.] FOR the fatherland of the English race we must look far away from England itself. In the fifth century after the birth of Christ the one country which we know to have borne the name of Angeln or England lay within the district which is now called Sleswick, a district in the heart of the peninsula that parts the Baltic from the northern seas.1 Its pleasant pastures, its black-timbered homesteads, its prim little townships looking down on inlets of purple water, were then but a wild waste of heather and sand, girt along the coast with a sunless woodland broken here and there by meadows that crept down to the marshes and the sea. The dwellers in this district however seem to have been merely an outlying fragment of what was called the The peninsula of Sleswick-Holstein and of Jutland. |