When adding one more to the numerous histories of England which have appeared of late years, the author feels that he must justify his conduct. Ten years of teaching in the Honour School of Modern History in the University of Oxford have convinced him that there may still be room for a single-volume history of moderate compass, which neither cramps the earlier annals of our island into a few pages, nor expands the last two centuries into unmanageable bulk. He trusts that his book may be useful t

The fact that this book has passed through nine editions in seven years seems to show that it was not altogether written in vain, and has answered the purpose for which it was written. The first edition carried the history of Great Britain to the year 1885. I have now prolonged it to the year 1902. The termination of the long reign of Queen Victoria, the end of the century, and the long-delayed pacification of South Africa, appeared to provide landmarks to which the narrative ought to be extende

In the dim dawn of history our island was a land of wood and marsh, broken here and there by patches of open ground, and pierced by occasional track-ways, which threaded the forest and circled round the edges of the impassable fen. The inhabited districts of the country were not the fertile river-bottoms where population grew thick in after-days; these were in primitive times nothing but sedgy water-meadows or matted thickets. Men dwelt rather on the thinly wooded upland, where, if the soil was

In the early half of the fifth century it seemed likely that Britain would become the prey of its old enemies the Picts and Scots, rather than of the more distant Saxons. But the wild tribes of the North came to plunder only, while the pirates from the Elbe and Eider had larger designs. The conquest of Britain by the Angles and Saxons differed in every way from that of the other Western provinces of the Roman empire by the kindred tribes of the Goths, the Franks, and the Lombards. The Goths and

When Henry of Anjou died broken-hearted at Chinon, his eldest surviving son Richard succeeded him in all his vast dominions, save in the duchy of Brittany, which fell to the child Arthur, the son of Richard's brother Geoffrey. John, the late king's youngest-born, received a fit reward for his treachery to his father in losing the appanage that had been destined for him. He did not obtain any independent principality of his own, but Richard made him Earl of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset.

The little King Richard II. was a boy ten years old, born in the year when his father went on his ill-fated expedition to Spain to help Don Pedro. Richard's mother was Joan, Countess of Kent, the heiress of that unfortunate Earl Edmund, whom Mortimer beheaded in 1330. She had been a widow when the Black Prince wedded her, and had two sons by her first husband, Sir Thomas Holland. These two half-brothers of King Richard were ten years his seniors, and were destined to be not unimportant figures i

Henry of Monmouth had a far easier task before him, when he ascended the throne, than his father had been forced to take in hand. He had the enormous advantage of succeeding to an established heritage, and was no mere usurper legalized by parliamentary election. So firm did he feel himself upon his seat, that he began his reign by releasing the young Earl of March, the legitimate heir of Richard II., whom Henry IV. had always kept in close custody. For he knew that none of the odium of his fathe

England had never yet had a sovereign of such tender age as the infant king who succeeded to the heritage of Henry V. It was under the rule of a child of less than twelve months old that the long and wearisome French war had to be continued. Yet at first the prospects of the reign did not look very dark. The struggle in France was not going ill, and seldom has any orphan had so zealous and capable a guardian by his cradle as John of Bedford, the little king's eldest uncle. He had, moreover, no d

All the males of the house of Lancaster had now fallen by the sword or the dagger, not only the last representatives of the elder and legitimate branch which had occupied the throne, but also the whole family of the Beauforts, the descendants of the natural sons of John of Gaunt, who had been legitimized by the grant of Richard II. Even in the female line there remained no one who showed any signs of disputing the claim of Edward IV. to the throne. The only descendants of John of Gaunt's first f

After the "crowning mercy" of Worcester fight, the rule of England lay nominally in the hands of its mutilated and discredited House of Commons, the representative of a mere fraction of the nation. But really the power to move the realm was in the hands of the army, which had made, and could as easily unmake, the mockery of representative government which sat at Westminster. And in the army Cromwell was growing more and more supreme; his old colleague Fairfax had sunk back into civil life; his m

When the unwilling Walpole was driven into war with Spain in 1739 by the clamours of the nation, he believed that he was about to become responsible for a very dangerous struggle, for he had private knowledge of the existence of the "Family Compact," and knew that France was ready to back up Spain. England, on the other hand, was entirely without allies, having gone to war in defence of her maritime commerce, a subject in which no other power felt any interest. As a matter of fact, however, the

In the last two centuries of English history the accession of a new king has not often caused a complete revolution in politics. The change of sovereigns often gives us an unfortunate and misleading cross-division, cutting periods in two that are really one, or making us dream that there is a unity in periods which are really divided in their interest and meaning. This was not the case, however, when George III. succeeded his grandfather George II. For the last time in English history, the chang

When England bowed before the force of circumstances, and concluded peace with America, France, Spain, and Holland in 1783, she had touched the lowest point of weakness which had been her lot since the fifteenth century. Peace had been imposed by victorious enemies, after a fruitless struggle of eight years. English armies had grown accustomed to defeat; English fleets could barely hold their own upon the seas. Money had been spent with a lavish hand, and the National Debt was doubled. As a resu

THE LONDON SCHOOL ATLAS. Edited by the Right Hon. H. O. Arnold-Forster , M.P., Author of "The Citizen Reader," "This World of Ours," etc. A magnificent Atlas, including 48 pages of Coloured Maps, several of them double-page, and Pictorial Diagrams. With an Introduction on the Construction and Reading of Maps by A. J. Herbertson , Ph.D. Among the notable features of this Atlas are: (1) The Specimens of Ordnance Surveys and Admiralty Charts; (2) the lucid Astronomical Diagrams; (3) the beautifully