Part 30 (2/2)

Markham, _Life of Lord Fairfax_ (1870).

THE CROMWELLIAN ReGIME. The standard treatise is that of S. R.

Gardiner, _The History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate_, 4 vols.

(1903). Among numerous biographies of Oliver Cromwell, the following are noteworthy: C. H. Firth, _Cromwell_ (1900). in ”Heroes of the Nations” Series; S. R. Gardiner, _Cromwell_ (1899), and, by the same author, _Cromwell's Place in History_ (1897); John (Viscount) Morley, _Oliver Cromwell_ (1899); A. F. Pollard, _Factors in Modern History_ (1907), ch. ix-x; Thomas Carlyle, _Cromwell's Letters and Speeches_, ed. by S. C. Lomas, 3 vols. (1904). The _Diary_ of John Evelyn, a royalist contemporary, affords naturally a somewhat different point of view: the best edition is that of H. B. Wheatley, 4 vols. (1906).

Various special phases of the regime: C. H. Firth, _Cromwell's Army_, 2d ed. (1912); Edward Jenks, _The Const.i.tutional Experiments of the Protectorate_ (1890); Sir J. R. Seeley, _Growth of British Policy_, Vol. II (1895), Part III; G. L. Beer, _Cromwell's Policy in its Economic Aspects_ (1902); Sir W. L. Clowes, _The Royal Navy: a History_, Vol. II (1898); G. B. Tatham, _The Puritans in Power, a Study of the English Church from 1640 to 1660_ (1913); W. A. Shaw, _History of the English Church, 1640-1660_, 2 vols. (1900); Robert Dunlop, _Ireland under the Commonwealth_, 2 vols. (1913), largely a collection of doc.u.ments; C. H. Firth, _The Last Years of the Protectorate_, 2 vols. (1909).

THE RESTORATION. Richard Lodge, _The Political History of England, 1660-1702_, a survey of the chief political facts, conservative in tone; J. N. Figgis, _English History Ill.u.s.trated from Original Sources, 1660-1715_ (1902), a convenient companion volume to Lodge's; Osmund Airy, _Charles II_ (1901), inimical to the first of the restored Stuart kings. Of contemporary accounts of the Restoration, the most entertaining is Samuel Pepys, _Diary_, covering the years 1659-1669 and written by a bibulous public official, while the most valuable, though tainted with strong Whig partisans.h.i.+p, is Gilbert (Bishop) Burnet, _History of My Own Times_, edited by Osmund Airy, 2 vols. (1897-1900).

See also H. B. Wheatley, _Samuel Pepys and the World he Lived In_ (1880). Special topics in the reign of Charles II: W. E. Sydney, _Social Life in England, 1660-1660_ (1892); J. H. Overton, _Life in the English Church, 1663-1714_ (1885); John Pollock, _The Popish Plot_ (1903); G.B. Hertz, _English Public Opinion after the Restoration_ (1902); C. B. R. Kent, _The Early History of the Tories_ (1908).

JAMES II AND THE ”GLORIOUS REVOLUTION.” The best brief account is that of Arthur Ha.s.sall, _The Restoration and the Revolution_ (1912). The cla.s.sic treatment is that of T. B. (Lord) Macaulay, _History of England, 1685-1702_, a literary masterpiece but marred by vigorous Whig sympathies, new ed. by C. H. Firth, 6 vols. (1913-1914). Sir James Mackintosh, _Review of the Causes of the Revolution of 1688_ (1834), an old work but still prized for the large collection of doc.u.ments in the appendix; _Adventures of James II_ (1904), an anonymous and sympathetic account of the career of the deposed king; H. B. Irving, _Life of Lord Jeffreys_ (1898), an apology for a much-a.s.sailed agent of James II; Alice s.h.i.+eld and Andrew Lang, _The King over the Water_ (1907), and, by the same authors, _Henry Stuart, Cardinal of York, and his Times_ (1908), popular treatments of subsequent Stuart pretenders to the British throne. A good account of the reign of William III is that of Sir J. R. Seeley, _Growth of British Policy_, Vol. II (1895), Part V.

GREAT BRITAIN IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. General histories: _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. VI (1909), ch. i-iii; I. S.

Leadam, _Political History of England, 1702-1760_ (1909), conservative and matter-of-fact; W. E. H. Lecky, _A History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, new ed., 7 vols. (1892-1899), especially Vol. I, brilliantly written and very informing, and, by the same author, _A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century_, 5 vols. (1893); C. G.

Robertson, _England under the Hanoverians_ (1911), ch. i, ii, iv; Earl Stanhope (Lord Mahon), _History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, 1713-1783_, 5th ed., 7 vols. (1858), particularly Vols. I, II, tedious but still useful especially for foreign affairs. On the union of England and Scotland: P. H. Brown, _The Legislative Union of England and Scotland_ (1914); W. L.

Matthieson, _Scotland and the Union_, 1695-1747 (1905); Daniel Defoe, _History of the Union between England and Scotland_ (1709). On the rise of the cabinet system: Mary T. Blauvelt, _The Development of Cabinet Government in England_ (1902), a clear brief outline; Edward Jenks, _Parliamentary England: the Evolution of the Cabinet System_ (1903); and the general const.i.tutional histories mentioned above. The best account of _Sir Robert Walpole_ is the biography by John (Viscount) Morley (1889).

CHAPTER IX

THE WORLD CONFLICT OF FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN

FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLONIES IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

In the sixteenth century, while Spain and Portugal were carving out vast empires beyond the seas, the sovereigns of France and England, distracted by religious dissensions or absorbed in European politics, did little more than to send out a few privateers and explorers. But in the seventeenth century the England of the Stuarts and the France of the Bourbons found in colonies a refuge for their discontented or venturesome subjects, a source of profit for their merchants, a field for the exercise of religious zeal, or gratification for national pride. Everywhere were commerce and colonization growing apace, and especially were they beginning to play a large part in the national life of England and of France. We have already noticed how the Dutch, themselves the despoilers of Portugal [Footnote: See above, pp. 58f] in the first half of the seventeenth century, were in turn attacked by the English in a series of commercial wars [Footnote: The Dutch Wars of 1652-1654, 1665-1667, and 1672-1674. See above pp. 59, 243, 278.]

during the second half of the seventeenth century. By 1688 the period of active growth was past for the colonial empires of Holland, Portugal, and Spain; but England and France, beginning to realize the possibilities for power in North America, in India, and on the high seas, were just on the verge of a world conflict, which, after raging intermittently for more than a hundred years, was to leave Great Britain the ”mistress of the seas.”

[Sidenote: Relative Position of the Rivals in 1688. In North America]

Before plunging into the struggle itself, let us review the position of the two rivals in 1688: first, their claims and possessions in the New World and in the Old; secondly, their comparative resources and policies. It will be remembered that the voyage of John Cabot (1497) gave England a claim to the mainland of North America. The Tudors (1485-1603), however, could not occupy so vast a territory, nor were there any fences for the exclusion of intruders. Consequently the actual English settlements in North America, made wholly under the Stuarts, [Footnote: However much modern Englishmen may condemn the efforts of the Stuart sovereigns to establish political absolutism at home, they can well afford to praise these same royal Stuarts for contributing powerfully to the foundations of England's commercial and colonial greatness abroad.] were confined to Newfoundland, to a few fur depots in the region of Hudson Bay, and to a strip of coastland from Maine to South Carolina; while the French not only had sent Verrazano (1524), who explored the coast of North America, and Cartier (1534- 1536), who sailed up the St. Lawrence, but by virtue of voyages of discovery and exploration, especially that of La Salle (1682), laid claim to the whole interior of the Continent.

Of all the North American colonies, the most populous were those which later became the United States. In the year 1688 there were ten of these colonies. The oldest one, Virginia, had been settled in 1607 by the London Company under a charter from King James I. Plymouth, founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims (Separatists or Independents driven from England by the enforcement of religious conformity to the Anglican Church), was presently to be merged with the neighboring Puritan colony of Ma.s.sachusetts. Near these first, New England settlements had grown up the colonies of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hamps.h.i.+re: Maine was then a part of Ma.s.sachusetts. Just as New England was the Puritans'

refuge, so Maryland, granted to Lord Baltimore in 1632, was a haven for the persecuted Roman Catholics. A large tract south of Virginia, known as Carolina, had been granted to eight n.o.bles in 1663; but it was prospering so poorly that its proprietors were willing to sell it to the king in 1729 for a mere 50,000. The capture of the Dutch colony of New Netherland [Footnote: Rechristened New York. It included New Jersey also.] in 1664, and the settlement of Pennsylvania (1681) by William Penn and his fellow Quakers [Footnote: The Swedish colony on the Delaware was temporarily merged with Pennsylvania.] at last filled up the gap between the North and the South.

Numerous causes had contributed to the growth of the British colonies in America. Religious intolerance had driven Puritans to New England and Roman Catholics to Maryland; the success of the Puritan Revolution had sent Cavaliers to Virginia; thousands of others had come merely to acquire wealth or to escape starvation. And America seemed a place wherein to mend broken fortunes. Upon the estates (plantations) of southern gentlemen negro slaves toiled without pay in the tobacco fields. [Footnote: Subsequently, rice and cotton became important products of Southern agriculture.] New England was less fertile, but shrewd Yankees found wealth in fish, lumber, and trade. No wonder, then, that the colonies grew in wealth and in population until in 1688 there were nearly three hundred thousand English subjects in the New World.

The French settlers were far less numerous [Footnote: Probably not more than 20,000 Frenchmen were residing in the New World in 1688. By 1750 their number had increased perhaps to 60,000.] but more widespread.

From their first posts in Acadia (1604) and Quebec (1608) they had pushed on up the St. Lawrence. Jesuit and other Roman Catholic missionaries had led the way from Montreal westward to Lake Superior and southward to the Ohio River. In 1682 the Sieur de La Salle, after paddling down the Mississippi, laid claim to the whole basin of that mighty stream, and named the region Louisiana in honor of Louis XIV of France. Nominally, at least, this territory was claimed by the English, for in most of the colonial charters emanating from the English crown in the seventeenth century were clauses which granted lands ”from sea to sea”--that is, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The heart of ”New France” remained on the St. Lawrence, but, despite English claims, French forts were commencing to mark the trails of French fur-traders down into the ”Louisiana,” and it was clear that whenever the English colonists should cross the Appalachian Mountains to the westward they would have to fight the French.

[Sidenote: In West Indies]

French and English were neighbors also in the West Indies. Martinique and Guadeloupe acknowledged French sovereignty, while Jamaica, Barbados, and the Bahamas were English.[Footnote: The following West Indies were also English: Nevis, Montserrat, Antigua, Honduras, St.

Lucia, Virgin Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. St. Kitts was divided between England and France; and the western part of Haiti, already visited by French buccaneers, was definitely annexed to France in 1697. The Bermudas, lying outside the ”West Indies,” were already English.] These holdings in the West Indies were valuable not only for their sugar plantations, but for their convenience as stations for trade with Mexico and South America.

[Sidenote: In Africa]

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