Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/11



N the present Volume we have stepped out of feudalism into the first day-spring of modern history. We have left the race of barons, grown too powerful for both Crown and country, and a divided Royal house which consumed the energies and the intellect of the nation in bloody conflicts for the possession of the throne. The predominating space which the Tudor dynasty occupies in the present pages is worthy of all attention. With Henry VII. a new blood and spirit entered the palace, and stirred within the golden circle of the Crown. The grandson of a Welsh yeoman of the guard became the monarch, and a vigour which had dwindled in the ancient race, from the days of Henry V., re-appeared, but linked inseparably with an absolute self-will, which, whilst appearing to resist the onward progress of the nation, really gave to it accelerated momentum and spirit. The old impediments of religion and of aristocracy were swept away, to give unopposed scope to Royal license; but this only cleared the ground for popular action. The nation had so far advanced that its impulses became the unmistakable law of tendency. From the remains of the ancient hierarchy arose the undaunted soul of religious freedom. With religious freedom, civil freedom was a necessity; and on the ruins of the ancient aristocracy arose a new race of landed proprietors, whose interests were more allied to the interest of the people. Before the close of the Tudor dynasty in Elizabeth, we behold unequivocal manifestations of a new order of things, of the limitation of the power of the Crown, and the establishment of the power of Parliament. We shall find in the opening of our next Volume the efforts of an unwise dynasty—that of the Stuarts—to resist this popular development, but only to its own destruction.

In our tracing of these events we have taken an impartial view of the character and conduct of Queen Elizabeth. Perhaps with no other monarch is it so necessary to discriminate between fond traditions and the cold facts of history. Elizabeth was a woman of a masculine and penetrating mind; no ruler ever knew more ably how to select capable ministers, and surround herself with the splendour of statesmanlike talent, bravery, and genius. With a stout heart, and assisted by the counsels and the gallant deeds of those men, she carried the country through an arduous crisis proudly, and bore down and broke to atoms every foreign influence and the Armada which was directed against the Protestant ascendancy of England. All honour to her and to them on that account. But when we penetrate through the splendour of such glories, and through the extravagant adulations of the Elizabethan courtiers, we come to some deeds and characteristics which demand just reprehension.

We must remind our readers that we are not writing romance, in which we can at will colour, turn, and dispose of things as we please; but our object and bounden duty is historic truth. We are tied up to that standard inexorably by harsh and unbendable official documents, which, like the rocks about our coast, may not be shaken in their place or changed in their hard outline. The modern