"Ah, well," an American visitor is said to have soliloquized on the site of the battle of Hastings, "it is but a little island, and it has often been conquered." We have in these few pages to trace the evolution of a great empire, which has often conquered others, out of the little island which was often conquered itself. The mere incidents of this growth, which satisfied the childlike curiosity of earlier generations, hardly appeal to a public which is learning to look upon historical narrative

1066-1272 For nearly two centuries after the Norman Conquest there is no history of the English people. There is history enough of England, but it is the history of a foreign government. We may now feel pride in the strength of our conqueror or pretend claims to descent from William's companions. We may boast of the empire of Henry II and the prowess of Richard I, and we may celebrate the organized law and justice, the scholarship and the architecture, of the early Plantagenet period; but these

1272-1485 In 1265, simultaneously with the appearance of English townsfolk in parliament, an official document couched in the English tongue appeared like a first peak above the subsiding flood of foreign language. When, three generations back, Abbot Samson had preached English sermons, they were noted as exceptions; but now the vernacular language of the subject race was forcing its way into higher circles, and even into literary use. The upper classes were learning English, and those whose nor

1485-1603 England had passed through the Middle Ages without giving any sign of the greatness which awaited its future development. Edward III and Henry V had won temporary renown in France, but English sovereigns had failed to subjugate the smaller countries of Scotland and Ireland, which were more immediately their concern. Wycliffe and Chaucer, with perhaps Roger Bacon, are the only English names of first importance in the realms of medieval thought and literature, unless we put Bede (673- 73

1603-1815 National independence and popular self-government, although they were intimately associated as the two cardinal dogmas of nineteenth-century liberalism, are very different things; and the achievement of complete national independence under the Tudors did not in the least involve any solution of the question of popular self-government. Still, that achievement had been largely the work of the nation itself, and a nation which had braved the spiritual thunders of the papacy and the tempor

1603-1815 In the reign of Elizabeth Englishmen had made themselves acquainted with the world. They had surveyed it from Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand, and from the Orinoco to Japan, where William Adams built the first Japanese navy; they had interfered in the politics of the Moluccas and had sold English woollens in Bokhara; they had sailed through the Golden Gate of California and up the Golden Horn of the Bosphorus; they had crossed the Pacific Ocean and the deserts of Cent

The Industrial Revolution is a phrase invented by Arnold Toynbee, and now generally used to indicate those economic changes which turned England from an agricultural into an industrial community. The period during which these changes took place cannot from the nature of things be definitely fixed; but usually it is taken to extend from about the middle of the eighteenth century to the close of the reign of George III. Two points, however, must be remembered: first, that there was a commercial as

1815-1911 The British realms beyond the seas have little history before the battle of Waterloo, a date at which the Englishman's historical education has commonly come to an end; and if by chance it has gone any further, it has probably been confined to purely domestic events or to foreign episodes of such ephemeral interest as the Crimean War. It may be well, therefore, to pass lightly over these matters in order to sketch in brief outline the development of the empire and the problems which it

The modern national state is the most powerful political organism ever known, because it is the conscious or unconscious agency of a people's will. Government is no longer in England the instrument of a family or a class; and the only real check upon its power is the circumstance that in some matters it acts as the executive committee of one party and is legitimately resisted by the other. Were there no parties, the government would be a popular despotism absolutely uncontrolled. Theoretically i

B.C. 55. Julius Caesar's first invasion of Britain. A.D. 43-110. Roman occupation of Britain. 410-577. Period of Anglo-Saxon colonization and conquest. 597-664. Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. 617-685. Northumbrian supremacy. 685-825. Mercian supremacy. 8O2-839. Ecgberht establishes West Saxon supremacy. 855. Danes first winter in England. 878. Peace of Wedmore between Alfred and the Danes. 900 (?). Death of Alfred. 9OO (?)-975. Edward the Elder, Athelstan, and Edgar. Reconquest

J. R. GREEN'S Short History of the English People (Macmillan), and C. R. L. FLETCHER'S Introductory History of England , 4 vols. (Murray), both eminently readable in very different styles, illustrate the diverse methods of treatment to which English history lends itself. More elaborate surveys are provided by LONGMANS' Political History of England , 12 vols. (edited by W. Hunt and R. L. Poole), and METHUEN'S History of England , 7 vols. (edited by C. Oman). The student of Constitutional History