The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

observations will apply to the contempt with which, in

the last century, it was fashionable to speak of the pilgrimages,

the sanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic institutions of

the middle ages. In times when men were scarcely ever induced to

travel by liberal curiosity, or by the pursuit of gain, it was

better that the rude inhabitant of the North should visit Italy

and the East as a pilgrim, than that he should never see anything

but those squalid cabins and uncleared woods amidst which he was

born. In times when life and when female honour were exposed to

daily risk from tyrants and marauders, it was better that the

precinct of a shrine should be regarded with an irrational awe,

than that there should be no refuge inaccessible to cruelty and

licentiousness. In times when statesmen were incapable of forming

extensive political combinations, it was better that the

Christian nations should be roused and united for the recovery of

the Holy Sepulchre, than that they should, one by one, be

overwhelmed by the Mahometan power. Whatever reproach may, at a

later period, have been justly thrown on the indolence and luxury

of religious orders, it was surely good that, in an age of

ignorance and violence, there should be quiet cloisters and

gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safely cultivated,

in which gentle and contemplative natures could find an asylum,

in which one brother could employ himself in transcribing the

Æneid of Virgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of

Aristotle, in which he who had a genius for art might illuminate

a martyrology or carve a crucifix, and in which he who had a turn

for natural philosophy might make experiments on the properties

of plants and minerals. Had not such retreats been scattered here

and there, among the huts of a miserable peasantry, and the

castles of a ferocious aristocracy, European society would have

consisted merely of beasts of burden and beasts of prey. The

Church has many times been compared by divines to the ark of

which we read in the Book of Genesis: but never was the

resemblance more perfect than during that evil time when she

alone rode, amidst darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath

which all the great works of ancient power and wisdom lay

entombed, bearing within her that feeble germ from which a Second

and more glorious civilisation was to spring.


Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was, in the

dark ages, productive of far more good than evil. Its effect was

to unite the nations of Western Europe in one great commonwealth.

What the Olympian chariot course and the Pythian oracle were to

all the Greek cities, from Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her

Bishop were to all Christians of the Latin communion, from

Calabria to the Hebrides. Thus grew up sentiments of enlarged

benevolence. Races separated from each other by seas and

mountains acknowledged a fraternal tie and a common code of

public law. Even in war, the cruelty of the conqueror was not

seldom mitigated by the recollection that he and his vanquished

enemies were all members of one great federation.


Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted. A

regular communication was opened between our shores and that part

of Europe in which the traces of ancient power and policy were

yet discernible. Many noble monuments which have since been

destroyed or defaced still retained their pristine magnificence;

and travellers, to whom Livy and Sallust were unintelligible,

might gain from the Roman aqueducts and temples some faint notion

of Roman history. The dome of Agrippa, still glittering with

bronze, the mausoleum of Adrian, not yet deprived of its columns

and statues, the Flavian amphitheatre, not yet degraded into a

quarry, told to the rude English pilgrims some part of the story

of that great civilised world which had passed away. The

islanders returned, with awe deeply impressed on their half

opened minds, and told the wondering inhabitants of the hovels of

London and York that, near the grave of Saint Peter, a mighty

race, now extinct, had piled up buildings which would never be

dissolved till the judgment day. Learning followed in the train

of Christianity. The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was

assiduously studied in Mercian and Northumbrian monasteries. The

names of Bede and Alcuin were justly celebrated throughout

Europe. Such was the state of our country when, in the ninth

century, began the last great migration of the northern

barbarians


During many years Denmark and Scandinavia continued to pour forth

innumerable pirates, distinguished by strength, by valour, by

merciless ferocity, and by hatred of the Christian name. No

country suffered so much from these invaders as England. Her

coast lay near to the ports whence they sailed; nor was any shire

so far distant from the sea as to be secure from attack. The same

atrocities which had attended the victory of the Saxon over the

Celt were now, after the lapse of ages, suffered by the Saxon at

the hand of the Dane. Civilization,-just as it began to rise,

was met by this blow, and sank down once more. Large colonies of

adventurers from the Baltic established themselves on the eastern

shores of our island, spread gradually westward, and, supported

by constant reinforcements from beyond the sea, aspired to the

dominion of the whole realm. The struggle between the two fierce

Teutonic breeds lasted through six generations. Each was

alternately paramount. Cruel massacres followed by cruel

retribution, provinces wasted, convents plundered, and cities

rased to the ground, make up the greater part of the history of

those evil days. At length the North ceased to send forth a

constant stream of fresh depredators; and from that time the

mutual aversion of the races began to subside. Intermarriage

became frequent. The Danes learned the religion of the Saxons;

and thus one cause of deadly animosity was removed. The Danish

and Saxon tongues, both dialects of one widespread language, were

blended together. But the distinction between the two nations was

by no means effaced, when an event took place which prostrated

both, in common slavery and degradation, at the feet of a third

people.


The Normans were then the foremost race of Christendom. Their

valour and ferocity had made them conspicuous among the rovers

whom Scandinavia had sent forth to ravage Western Europe. Their

sails were long the terror of both coasts of the Channel. Their

arms were repeatedly carried far into the heart of: the

Carlovingian empire, and were victorious under the walls of

Maestricht and Paris. At length one of the feeble heirs of

Charlemagne ceded to the strangers a fertile province, watered by

a noble river, and contiguous to the sea which was their

favourite element. In that province they founded a mighty state,

which gradually extended its influence over the neighbouring

principalities of Britanny and Maine. Without laying aside that

dauntless valour which had been the terror of every land from the

Elbe to the Pyrenees, the Normans rapidly acquired all, and more

than all, the knowledge and refinement which they found in the

country where they settled. Their courage secured their territory

against foreign invasion. They established internal order, such

as had long been unknown in the Frank empire. They embraced

Christianity; and with Christianity they learned a great part of

what the clergy had to teach. They abandoned their native speech,

and adopted the French tongue, in which the Latin was the

predominant element. They speedily raised their new language to a

dignity and importance which it had never before possessed. They

found it a barbarous jargon; they fixed it in writing; and they

employed it in legislation, in poetry, and in romance. They

renounced that brutal intemperance to which all the other

branches of the great German family were too much inclined. The

polite luxury of the Norman presented a striking contrast to the

coarse voracity and drunkenness of his Saxon and Danish

neighbours. He loved to display his magnificence, not in huge

piles of food and hogsheads of strong drink, but in large and

stately edifices, rich armour, gallant horses, choice falcons,

well ordered tournaments, banquets delicate rather than abundant,

and wines remarkable rather for their exquisite flavour than for

their intoxicating power. That chivalrous spirit, which has

exercised so powerful an influence on the politics, morals, and

manners of all the European nations, was found in the highest

exaltation among the Norman nobles. Those nobles were

distinguished by their graceful bearing and insinuating address.

They were distinguished also by their skill in negotiation, and

by a natural eloquence which they assiduously cultivated. It was

the boast of one of their historians that the Norman gentlemen

were orators from the cradle. But their chief fame was derived

from their military exploits. Every country, from the Atlantic

Ocean to the Dead Sea, witnessed the prodigies of their

discipline and valour. One Norman knight, at the head of a

handful of warriors, scattered the Celts of Connaught. Another

founded the monarchy of the Two Sicilies, and saw the emperors

both of the East and of the West fly before his arms. A third,

the Ulysses of the first crusade, was invested by his fellow

soldiers with the sovereignty of Antioch; and a fourth, the

Tancred whose name lives in the great poem of Tasso, was

celebrated through Christendom as the bravest and most generous

of the deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre.


The vicinity of so remarkable a people early began to produce an

effect on the public mind of England. Before the Conquest,

English princes received their education in Normandy. English

sees and English estates were bestowed on Normans. The French of

Normandy was familiarly spoken in the palace of Westminster. The

court of Rouen seems to have been to the court of Edward the

Confessor what the court of Versailles long afterwards was to the

court of Charles the Second.


The battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it, not

only placed a Duke of Normandy on the English throne, but gave up

the whole population of England to the tyranny of the Norman

race. The subjugation of a nation by a nation has seldom, even in

Asia, been more complete. The country was portioned out among the

captains of the invaders. Strong military institutions, closely

connected with the institution of property, enabled the foreign

conquerors to oppress the children of the soil. A cruel penal

code, cruelly enforced, guarded the privileges, and even the

sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, though beaten

down and trodden underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some bold

men, the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook

themselves to the woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws

and forest laws, waged a predatory war against their oppressors.

Assassination was an event of daily occurrence.