www.ourfavouritebooks.co.uk --- Your favourite books + my favourite books = Our Favourite Books
Home - Copyright - Contact - Links 





A CHILD?S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 
by
Charles Dickens 

A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication


Contents 

CHAPTER I ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS....... 7
CHAPTER II ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS .... 18
CHAPTER III ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED........ 24
CHAPTER IV ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS ........ 31
CHAPTER V ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE ...... 44
CHAPTER VI ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, AND ED-
WARD THE CONFESSOR ... 46
CHAPTER VII ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND CONQUERED BY
THE NORMANS  55
CHAPTER VIII ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE NORMAN CON-
QUEROR... 59
CHAPTER IX ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED RUFUS.... 68
CHAPTER X ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIRST, CALLED FINE-SCHOLAR ........ 76
CHAPTER XIENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN ..... 88
CHAPTER XII ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SECOND - PART THE FIRST .... 92 

A Child’s History of England
iii


PART THE SECOND...... 106
CHAPTER XIII ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE FIRST, CALLED THE LION-HEART .....115
CHAPTER XIVENGLAND UNDER KING JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND .... 126
CHAPTER XV ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE THIRD, CALLED, OF WINCHESTER . . . 140
CHAPTER XVI ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIRST, CALLED LONGSHANKS 155
CHAPTER XVII ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SECOND.. 175
CHAPTER XVIII ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE THIRD.... 186
CHAPTER XIX ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE SECOND .. 201
CHAPTER XX ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FOURTH, CALLED BOLINGBROKE
214
CHAPTER XXI ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIFTH FIRST PART....... 221
SECOND PART ..... 229
CHAPTER XXII ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTHPART THE FIRST....... 233
PART THE SECOND: THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC...... 235
PART THE THIRD ......... 245
CHAPTER XXIII ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FOURTH 253 

A Child’s History of England
iv


CHAPTER XXIV ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIFTH..... 261
CHAPTER XXVENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE THIRD ..... 265
CHAPTER XXVI ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH . 269
CHAPTER XXVII ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH, CALLED BLUFF KING
HAL AND BURLY KING HARRY ........ 279
CHAPTER XXVIII ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH, PART THE SECOND . 291
CHAPTER XXIX ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SIXTH .... 300
CHAPTER XXX ENGLAND UNDER MARY .... 308
CHAPTER XXXI ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH.. 320
SECOND PART ..... 328
THIRD PART......... 337
CHAPTER XXXII ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE FIRST........ 343
SECOND PART ..... 352
CHAPTER XXXIII ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST  359
SECOND PART ..... 367
THIRD PART......... 375
FOURTH PART ..... 379
CHAPTER XXXIV ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL . 386 

A Child’s History of England
v


SECOND PART ..... 394
CHAPTER XXXV ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, CALLED THE MERRY
MONARCH ....... 402
SECOND PART ..... 409
CHAPTER XXXVI ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND.. 422
CHAPTER XXXVII ........ 435
Index.... 437 

A Child’s History of England
vi


Charles Dickens
7 

A Child’s History
of England 

by
Charles Dickens 

CHAPTER I
 ANCIENT ENGLAND
AND
THE ROMANS 

IF YOU LOOK AT A MAP of the World, you will see, in
the left-hand upper corner of the Eastern Hemi-
sphere, two Islands lying in the sea. They are
England and Scotland, and Ireland. England
and Scotland form the greater part of these Is-
lands. Ireland is the next in size. The little 

neighbouring islands, which are so small upon
the Map as to be mere dots, are chiefly little
bits of Scotland, — broken off, I dare say, in the
course of a great length of time, by the power of
the restless water.
In the old days, a long, long while ago, before
Our Saviour was born on earth and lay asleep in
a manger, these Islands were in the same place,
and the stormy sea roared round them, just as it
roars now. But the sea was not alive, then, with
great ships and brave sailors, sailing to and from
all parts of the world. It was very lonely. The Is-
lands lay solitary, in the great expanse of water.
The foaming waves dashed against their cliffs,
and the bleak winds blew over their forests; but
the winds and waves brought no adventurers to
land upon the Islands, and the savage Islanders
knew nothing of the rest of the world, and the
rest of the world knew nothing of them.
It is supposed that the Phoenicians, who were an
ancient people, famous for carrying on trade, came


A Child’s Histroy of England
8

in ships to these Islands, and found that they
produced tin and lead; both very useful things,
as you know, and both produced to this very hour
upon the sea-coast. The most celebrated tin
mines in Cornwall are, still, close to the sea. One
of them, which I have seen, is so close to it that it
is hollowed out underneath the ocean; and the
miners say, that in stormy weather, when they
are at work down in that deep place, they can
hear the noise of the waves thundering above
their heads. So, the Phoenicians, coasting about
the Islands, would come, without much difficulty,
to where the tin and lead were.
The Phoenicians traded with the Islanders for
these metals, and gave the Islanders some other
useful things in exchange. The Islanders were,
at first, poor savages, going almost naked, or
only dressed in the rough skins of beasts, and
staining their bodies, as other savages do, with
coloured earths and the juices of plants. But
the Phoenicians, sailing over to the opposite 

coasts of France and Belgium, and saying to
the people there, ‘We have been to those white
cliffs across the water, which you can see in
fine weather, and from that country, which is
called  Britain, we bring this tin and lead,’
tempted some of the French and Belgians to
come over also. These people settled themselves
on the south coast of England, which is now
called Kent; and, although they were a rough
people too, they taught the savage Britons some
useful arts, and improved that part of the Is-
lands. It is probable that other people came over
from Spain to Ireland, and settled there.
Thus, by little and little, strangers became
mixed with the Islanders, and the savage Brit-
ons grew into a wild, bold people; almost sav-
age, still, especially in the interior of the coun-
try away from the sea where the foreign settlers
seldom went; but hardy, brave, and strong.
The whole country was covered with forests,
and swamps. The greater part of it was very


Charles Dickens
9

misty and cold. There were no roads, no bridges,
no streets, no houses that you would think de-
serving of the name. A town was nothing but a
collection of straw-covered huts, hidden in a
thick wood, with a ditch all round, and a low
wall, made of mud, or the trunks of trees placed
one upon another. The people planted little or
no corn, but lived upon the flesh of their flocks
and cattle. They made no coins, but used metal
rings for money. They were clever in basket-
work, as savage people often are; and they could
make a coarse kind of cloth, and some very bad
earthenware. But in building fortresses they
were much more clever.
They made boats of basket-work, covered with
the skins of animals, but seldom, if ever, ven-
tured far from the shore. They made swords, of
copper mixed with tin; but, these swords were
of an awkward shape, and so soft that a heavy
blow would bend one. They made light shields,
short pointed daggers, and spears — which they 

jerked back after they had thrown them at an
enemy, by a long strip of leather fastened to the
stem. The butt-end was a rattle, to frighten an
enemy’s horse. The ancient Britons, being di-
vided into as many as thirty or forty tribes, each
commanded by its own little king, were con-
stantly fighting with one another, as savage
people usually do; and they always fought with
these weapons.
They were very fond of horses. The standard
of Kent was the picture of a white horse. They
could break them in and manage them won-
derfully well. Indeed, the horses (of which they
had an abundance, though they were rather
small) were so well taught in those days, that
they can scarcely be said to have improved since;
though the men are so much wiser. They un-
derstood, and obeyed, every word of command;
and would stand still by themselves, in all the
din and noise of battle, while their masters went
to fight on foot. The Britons could not have suc-


A Child’s Histroy of England
10

ceeded in their most remarkable art, without
the aid of these sensible and trusty animals.
The art I mean, is the construction and man-
agement of war-chariots or cars, for which they
have ever been celebrated in history. Each of
the best sort of these chariots, not quite breast
high in front, and open at the back, contained
one man to drive, and two or three others to
fight — all standing up. The horses who drew
them were so well trained, that they would tear,
at full gallop, over the most stony ways, and
even through the woods; dashing down their
masters’ enemies beneath their hoofs, and cut-
ting them to pieces with the blades of swords,
or scythes, which were fastened to the wheels,
and stretched out beyond the car on each side,
for that cruel purpose. In a moment, while at
full speed, the horses would stop, at the driver’s
command. The men within would leap out, deal
blows about them with their swords like hail,
leap on the horses, on the pole, spring back into 

the chariots anyhow; and, as soon as they were
safe, the horses tore away again.
The Britons had a strange and terrible reli-
gion, called the Religion of the Druids. It seems
to have been brought over, in very early times
indeed, from the opposite country of France,
anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up the
worship of the Serpent, and of the Sun and
Moon, with the worship of some of the Heathen
Gods and Goddesses. Most of its ceremonies
were kept secret by the priests, the Druids, who
pretended to be enchanters, and who carried
magicians’ wands, and wore, each of them,
about his neck, what he told the ignorant people
was a Serpent’s egg in a golden case. But it is
certain that the Druidical ceremonies included
the sacrifice of human victims, the torture of
some suspected criminals, and, on particular
occasions, even the burning alive, in immense
wicker cages, of a number of men and animals
together. The Druid Priests had some kind of


Charles Dickens
11

veneration for the Oak, and for the mistletoe —
the same plant that we hang up in houses at
Christmas Time now — when its white berries
grew upon the Oak. They met together in dark
woods, which they called Sacred Groves; and
there they instructed, in their mysterious arts,
young  men who came to them as pupils, and
who sometimes stayed with them as long as
twenty years.
These Druids built great Temples and altars,
open to the sky, fragments of some of which are
yet remaining. Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain,
in Wiltshire, is the most extraordinary of these.
Three curious stones, called Kits Coty House,
on Bluebell Hill, near Maidstone, in Kent, form
another. We know, from examination of the great
blocks of which such buildings are made, that
they could not have been raised without the aid
of some ingenious machines, which are com-
mon now, but which the ancient Britons cer-
tainly did not use in making their own uncom- 

fortable houses. I should not wonder if the Dru-
ids, and their pupils who stayed with them
twenty years, knowing more than the rest of the
Britons, kept the people out of sight while they
made these buildings, and then pretended that
they built them by magic. Perhaps they had a
hand in the fortresses too; at all events, as they
were very powerful, and very much believed in,
and as they made and executed the laws, and
paid no taxes, I don’t wonder that they liked
their trade. And, as they persuaded the people
the more Druids there were, the better off the
people would be, I don’t wonder that there were
a good many of them. But it is pleasant to think
that there are no Druids,  now, who go on in
that way, and pretend to carry Enchanters’
Wands and Serpents’ Eggs — and of course there
is nothing of the kind, anywhere.
Such was the improved condition of the an-
cient Britons, fifty-five years before the birth of
Our Saviour, when the Romans, under their


A Child’s Histroy of England
12

great General, Julius Caesar, were masters of
all the rest of the known world. Julius Caesar
had then just conquered Gaul; and hearing, in
Gaul, a good deal about the opposite Island with
the white cliffs, and about the bravery of the
Britons who inhabited it —some of whom had
been fetched over to help the Gauls in the war
against him—he resolved, as he was so near, to
come and conquer Britain next.
So, Julius Caesar came sailing over to this
Island of ours, with eighty vessels and twelve
thousand men. And he came from the French
coast between Calais and Boulogne, ‘because
thence was the shortest passage into Britain;’
just for the same reason as our steam-boats
now take the same track, every day. He expected
to conquer Britain easily: but it was not such
easy work as he supposed —for the bold Brit-
ons fought most bravely; and, what with not
having his horse-soldiers with him (for they had
been driven back by a storm), and what with 

having some of his vessels dashed to pieces by
a high tide after they were drawn ashore, he
ran great risk of being totally defeated. How-
ever, for once that the bold Britons beat him,
he beat them twice; though not so soundly but
that he was very glad to accept their proposals
of peace, and go away.
But, in the spring of the next year, he came
back; this time, with eight hundred vessels and
thirty thousand men. The British tribes chose,
as their general-in-chief, a Briton, whom the
Romans in their Latin language called  —, but
whose British name is supposed to have been
Caswallon. A brave general he was, and well he
and his soldiers fought the Roman army! So well,
that whenever in that war the Roman soldiers
saw a great cloud of dust, and heard the rattle
of the rapid British chariots, they trembled in
their hearts. Besides a number of smaller
battles, there was a battle fought near Canter-
bury, in Kent; there was a battle fought near


Charles Dickens
13

Chertsey, in Surrey; there was a battle fought
near a marshy little town in a wood, the capital
of that part of Britain which belonged to
Cassivellaunus, and which was probably near
what is now Saint Albans, in Hertfordshire.
However, brave Cassivellaunus had the worst
of it, on the whole; though he and his men al-
ways fought like lions. As the other British chiefs
were jealous of him, and were always quarrel-
ling with him, and with one another, he gave
up, and proposed peace. Julius Caesar was very
glad to grant peace easily, and to go away again
with all his remaining ships and men. He had
expected to find pearls in Britain, and he may
have found a few for anything I know; but, at
all events, he found delicious oysters, and I am
sure he found tough Britons — of whom, I dare
say, he made the same complaint as Napoleon
Bonaparte the great French General did, eigh-
teen hundred years afterwards, when he said
they were such unreasonable fellows that they 

never knew when they were beaten. They never
did know, I believe, and never will.
Nearly a hundred years passed on, and all that
time, there was peace in Britain. The Britons
improved their towns and mode of life: became
more civilised, travelled, and learnt a great deal
from the Gauls and Romans. At last, the Ro-
man Emperor, Claudius, sent Aulus Plautius, a
skilful general, with a mighty force, to subdue
the Island, and shortly afterwards arrived him-
self. They did little; and  Ostorius Scapula, an-
other general, came. Some of the British Chiefs
of Tribes submitted. Others resolved to fight to
the death. Of these brave men, the bravest was
Caractacus, or Caradoc, who gave battle to the
Romans, with his army, among the mountains
of North Wales. ‘This day,’ said he to his sol-
diers, ‘decides the fate of Britain! Your liberty,
or your eternal slavery, dates from this hour.
Remember your brave ancestors, who drove the
great Caesar himself across the sea!’ On hear-


A Child’s Histroy of England
14

ing these words, his men, with a great shout,
rushed upon the Romans. But the strong Ro-
man swords and armour were too much for the
weaker British weapons in close conflict. The
Britons lost the day. The wife and daughter of
the brave Caractacus were taken prisoners; his
brothers delivered themselves up; he himself
was betrayed into the hands of the Romans by
his false and base stepmother: and they car-
ried him, and all his family, in triumph to Rome.
But a great man will be great in misfortune,
great in prison, great in chains. His noble air,
and dignified endurance of distress, so touched
the Roman people who thronged the streets to
see him, that he and his family were restored to
freedom. No one knows whether his great heart
broke, and he died in Rome, or whether he ever
returned to his own dear country. English oaks
have grown up from acorns, and withered away,
when they were hundreds of years old—and
other oaks have sprung up in their places, and 

died too, very aged—since the rest of the his-
tory of the brave Caractacus was forgotten.
Still, the Britons  would not yield. They rose
again and again, and died by thousands, sword
in hand. They rose, on every possible occasion.
Suetonius, another Roman general, came, and
stormed the Island of Anglesey (then called
Mona), which was supposed to be sacred, and
he burnt the Druids in their own wicker cages,
by their own fires. But, even while he was in
Britain, with his victorious troops, the  Britons
rose. Because  Boadicea, a British queen, the
widow of the King of the Norfolk and Suffolk
people, resisted the plundering of her property
by the Romans who were settled in England,
she was scourged, by order of  Catus a Roman
officer; and her two daughters were shamefully
insulted in her presence, and her husband’s
relations were made slaves. To avenge this in-
jury, the Britons rose, with all their might and
rage. They drove Catus into Gaul; they laid the


Charles Dickens
15

Roman possessions waste; they forced the Ro-
mans out of London, then a poor little town,
but a trading place; they hanged, burnt, cruci-
fied, and slew by the sword, seventy thousand
Romans in a few days. Suetonius strengthened
his army, and advanced to give them battle. They
strengthened their army, and desperately at-
tacked his, on the field where it was strongly
posted. Before the first charge of the Britons
was made, Boadicea, in a war-chariot, with her
fair hair streaming in the wind, and her injured
daughters lying at her feet, drove among the
troops, and cried to them for vengeance on their
oppressors, the licentious Romans. The Britons
fought to the last; but they were vanquished
with great slaughter, and the unhappy queen
took poison.
Still, the spirit of the Britons was not broken.
When Suetonius left the country, they fell upon
his troops, and retook the Island of Anglesey.
Agricola came, fifteen or twenty years afterwards, 

and retook it once more, and devoted seven years
to subduing the country, especially that part of it
which is now called Scotland; but, its people, the
Caledonians, resisted him at every inch of ground.
They fought the bloodiest battles with him; they
killed their very wives and children, to prevent
his making prisoners of them; they fell, fighting,
in such great numbers that certain hills in Scot-
land are yet supposed to be vast heaps of stones
piled up above their graves. Hadrian came, thirty
years afterwards, and still they resisted him.
Severus came, nearly a hundred years afterwards,
and they worried his great army like dogs, and
rejoiced to see them die, by thousands, in the bogs
and swamps. Caracalla, the son and successor of
Severus, did the most to conquer them, for a time;
but not by force of arms. He knew how little that
would do. He yielded up a quantity of land to the
Caledonians, and gave the Britons the same privi-
leges as the Romans possessed. There was peace,
after this, for seventy years.


A Child’s Histroy of England
16

Then new enemies arose. They were the Sax-
ons, a fierce, sea-faring people from the coun-
tries to the North of the Rhine, the great river of
Germany on the banks of which the best grapes
grow to make the German wine. They began to
come, in pirate ships, to the sea-coast of Gaul
and Britain, and to plunder them. They were
repulsed by Carausius, a native either of Bel-
gium or of Britain, who was appointed by the
Romans to the command, and under whom the
Britons first began to fight upon the sea. But,
after this time, they renewed their ravages. A
few years more, and the Scots (which was then
the name for the people of Ireland), and the Picts,
a northern people, began to make frequent plun-
dering incursions into the South of Britain. All
these attacks were repeated, at intervals, dur-
ing two hundred years, and through a long suc-
cession of Roman Emperors and chiefs; during
all which length of time, the Britons rose against
the Romans, over and over again. At last, in the 

days of the Roman Honorius, when the Roman
power all over the world was fast declining, and
when Rome wanted all her soldiers at home,
the Romans abandoned all hope of conquering
Britain, and went away. And still, at last, as at
first, the Britons rose against them, in their old
brave manner; for, a very little while before, they
had turned away the Roman magistrates, and
declared themselves an independent people.
Five hundred years had passed, since Julius
Caesar’s first invasion of the Island, when the
Romans departed from it for ever. In the course
of that time, although they had been the cause
of terrible fighting and bloodshed, they had done
much to improve the condition of the Britons.
They had made great military roads; they had
built forts; they had taught them how to dress,
and arm themselves, much better than they had
ever known how to do before; they had refined
the whole British way of living. Agricola had built
a great wall of earth, more than seventy miles


Charles Dickens
17

long, extending from Newcastle to beyond
Carlisle, for the purpose of keeping out the Picts
and Scots;  Hadrian  had strengthened it;
Severus, finding it much in want of repair, had
built it afresh of stone.
Above all, it was in the Roman time, and by
means of Roman ships, that the Christian Reli-
gion was first brought into Britain, and its people
first taught the great lesson that, to be good in
the sight of GOD, they must love their
neighbours as themselves, and do unto others
as they would be done by. The Druids declared
that it was very wicked to believe in any such
thing, and cursed all the people who did believe
it, very heartily. But, when the people found that
they were none the better for the blessings of
the Druids, and none the worse for the curses
of the Druids, but, that the sun shone and the
rain fell without consulting the Druids at all,
they just began to think that the Druids were
mere men, and that it signified very little 

whether they cursed or blessed. After which,
the pupils of the Druids fell off greatly in num-
bers, and the Druids took to other trades.
Thus I have come to the end of the Roman
time in England. It is but little that is known of
those five hundred years; but some remains of
them are still found. Often, when labourers are
digging up the ground, to make foundations for
houses or churches, they light on rusty money
that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments
of plates from which they ate, of goblets from
which they drank, and of pavement on which
they trod, are discovered among the earth that
is broken by the plough, or the dust that is
crumbled by the gardener’s spade. Wells that
the Romans sunk, still yield water; roads that
the Romans made, form part of our highways.
In some old battle-fields, British spear-heads
and Roman armour have been found, mingled
together in decay, as they fell in the thick pres-
sure of the fight. Traces of Roman camps over-


A Child’s Histroy of England
18

grown with grass, and of mounds that are the
burial-places of heaps of Britons, are to be seen
in almost all parts of the country. Across the
bleak moors of Northumberland, the wall of
Severus, overrun with moss and weeds, still
stretches, a strong ruin; and the shepherds and
their dogs lie sleeping on it in the summer
weather. On Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge yet
stands: a monument of the earlier time when
the Roman name was unknown in Britain, and
when the Druids, with their best magic wands,
could not have written it in the sands of the
wild sea-shore. 

CHAPTER II
ANCIENT ENGLAND
UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS 

THE ROMANS HAD scarcely gone away from Brit-
ain, when the Britons began to wish they had
never left it. For, the Romans being gone, and 

the Britons being much reduced in numbers by
their long wars, the Picts and Scots came pour-
ing in, over the broken and unguarded wall of
Severus, in swarms. They plundered the rich-
est towns, and killed the people; and came back
so often for more booty and more slaughter, that
the unfortunate Britons lived a life of terror. As
if the Picts and Scots were not bad enough on
land, the Saxons attacked the islanders by sea;
and, as if something more were still wanting to
make them miserable, they quarrelled bitterly
among themselves as to what prayers they ought
to say, and how they ought to say them. The
priests, being very angry with one another on
these questions, cursed one another in the
heartiest manner; and (uncommonly like the old
Druids) cursed all the people whom they could
not persuade. So, altogether, the Britons were
very badly off, you may believe.
They were in such distress, in short, that they
sent a letter to Rome entreating help—which


Charles Dickens
19

they called the Groans of the Britons; and in
which they said, ‘The barbarians chase us into
the sea, the sea throws us back upon the bar-
barians, and we have only the hard choice left
us of perishing by the sword, or perishing by
the waves.’ But, the Romans could not help
them, even if they were so inclined; for they had
enough to do to defend themselves against their
own enemies, who were then very fierce and
strong. At last, the Britons, unable to bear their
hard condition any longer, resolved to make
peace with the Saxons, and to invite the Sax-
ons to come into their country, and help them
to keep out the Picts and Scots.
It was a British Prince named  Vortigern who
took this resolution, and who made a treaty of
friendship with Hengist and Horsa, two Saxon
chiefs. Both of these names, in the old Saxon
language, signify Horse; for the Saxons, like
many other nations in a rough state, were fond
of giving men the names of animals, as Horse, 

Wolf, Bear, Hound. The Indians of North
America,—a very inferior people to the Saxons,
though—do the same to this day.
Hengist and  Horsa drove out the Picts and
Scots; and Vortigern, being grateful to them for
that service, made no opposition to their set-
tling themselves in that part of England which
is called the Isle of Thanet, or to their inviting
over more of their countrymen to join them. But
Hengist  had a beautiful daughter named
Rowena; and when, at a feast, she filled a golden
goblet to the brim with wine, and gave it to
Vortigern, saying in a sweet voice, ‘Dear King,
thy health!’ the King fell in love with her. My
opinion is, that the cunning Hengist meant him
to do so, in order that the Saxons might have
greater influence with him; and that the fair
Rowena came to that feast, golden goblet and
all, on purpose.
At any rate, they were married; and, long af-
terwards, whenever the King was angry with the


A Child’s Histroy of England
20

Saxons, or jealous of their encroachments,
Rowena would put her beautiful arms round
his neck, and softly say, ‘Dear King, they are
my people! Be favourable to them, as you loved
that Saxon girl who gave you the golden goblet
of wine at the feast!’ And, really, I don’t see how
the King could help himself.
Ah! We must all die! In the course of years,
Vortigern died—he was dethroned, and put in
prison, first, I am afraid; and Rowena died; and
generations of Saxons and Britons died; and
events that happened during a long, long time,
would have been quite forgotten but for the tales
and songs of the old Bards, who used to go about
from feast to feast, with their white beards, re-
counting the deeds of their forefathers. Among
the histories of which they sang and talked,
there was a famous one, concerning the brav-
ery and virtues of King Arthur, supposed to have
been a British Prince in those old times. But,
whether such a person really lived, or whether 

there were several persons whose histories came
to be confused together under that one name,
or whether all about him was invention, no one
knows.
I will tell you, shortly, what is most interest-
ing in the early Saxon times, as they are de-
scribed in these songs and stories of the Bards.
In, and long after, the days of Vortigern, fresh
bodies of Saxons, under various chiefs, came
pouring into Britain. One body, conquering the
Britons in the East, and settling there, called
their kingdom Essex; another body settled in
the West, and called their kingdom Wessex; the
Northfolk, or Norfolk people, established them-
selves in one place; the Southfolk, or Suffolk
people, established themselves in another; and
gradually seven kingdoms or states arose in
England, which were called the Saxon
Heptarchy. The poor Britons, falling back be-
fore these crowds of fighting men whom they
had innocently invited over as friends, retired


Charles Dickens
21

into Wales and the adjacent country; into
Devonshire, and into Cornwall. Those parts of
England long remained unconquered. And in
Cornwall now—where the sea-coast is very
gloomy, steep, and rugged—where, in the dark
winter-time, ships have often been wrecked close
to the land, and every soul on board has per-
ished—where the winds and waves howl drea-
rily and split the solid rocks into arches and
caverns—there are very ancient ruins, which the
people call the ruins of King Arhtur’s Castle.
Kent is the most famous of the seven Saxon
kingdoms, because the Christian religion was
preached to the Saxons there (who domineered
over the Britons too much, to care for what they
said about their religion, or anything else) by Au-
gustine, a monk from Rome.  King Ethelbert, of
Kent, was soon converted; and the moment he
said he was a Christian, his courtiers all said
they were Christians; after which, ten thousand
of his subjects said they were Christians too. 

Augustine built a little church, close to this King’s
palace, on the ground now occupied by the beau-
tiful cathedral of Canterbury. Sebert, the King’s
nephew, built on a muddy marshy place near
London, where there had been a temple to Apollo,
a church dedicated to Saint Peter, which is now
Westminster Abbey. And, in London itself, on the
foundation of a temple to Diana, he built an-
other little church which has risen up, since that
old time, to be Saint Paul’s.
After the death of  Ethelbert, Edwin, King of
Northumbria, who was such a good king that it
was said a woman or child might openly carry a
purse of gold, in his reign, without fear, allowed
his child to be baptised, and held a great council
to consider whether he and his people should all
be Christians or not. It was decided that they
should be. Coifi, the chief priest of the old reli-
gion, made a great speech on the occasion. In
this discourse, he told the people that he had
found out the old gods to be impostors. ‘I am


A Child’s Histroy of England
22

quite satisfied of it,’ he said. ‘Look at me! I have
been serving them all my life, and they have done
nothing for me; whereas, if they had been really
powerful, they could not have decently done less,
in return for all I have done for them, than make
my fortune. As they have never made my for-
tune, I am quite convinced they are impostors!’
When this singular priest had finished speak-
ing, he hastily armed himself with sword and
lance, mounted a war-horse, rode at a furious
gallop in sight of all the people to the temple,
and flung his lance against it as an insult. From
that time, the Christian religion spread itself
among the Saxons, and became their faith.
The next very famous prince was  Egbert. He
lived about a hundred and fifty years afterwards,
and claimed to have a better right to the throne
of Wessex than Beortric, another Saxon prince
who was at the head of that kingdom, and who
married Edburga, the daughter of Offa, king of
another of the seven kingdoms. This  Queen 

Edburga was a handsome murderess, who poi-
soned people when they offended her. One day,
she mixed a cup of poison for a certain noble
belonging to the court; but her husband drank
of it too, by mistake, and died. Upon this, the
people revolted, in great crowds; and running
to the palace, and thundering at the gates, cried,
‘Down with the wicked queen, who poisons men!’
They drove her out of the country, and abol-
ished the title she had disgraced. When years
had passed away, some travellers came home
from Italy, and said that in the town of Pavia
they had seen a ragged beggar-woman, who had
once been handsome, but was then shrivelled,
bent, and yellow, wandering about the streets,
crying for bread; and that this beggar-woman
was the poisoning English queen. It was, in-
deed, Edburga; and so she died, without a shel-
ter for her wretched head.
Egbert, not considering himself safe in En-
gland, in consequence of his having claimed the


Charles Dickens
23

crown of Wessex (for he thought his rival might
take him prisoner and put him to death), sought
refuge at the court of  Charlemagne, King of
France. On the death of Beortric, so unhappily
poisoned by mistake, Egbert came back to Brit-
ain; succeeded to the throne of Wessex; con-
quered some of the other monarchs of the seven
kingdoms; added their territories to his own;
and, for the first time, called the country over
which he ruled, England.
And now, new enemies arose, who, for a long
time, troubled England sorely. These were the
Northmen, the people of Denmark and Norway,
whom the English called the Danes. They were
a warlike people, quite at home upon the sea;
not Christians; very daring and cruel. They came
over in ships, and plundered and burned where-
soever they landed. Once, they beat  Egbert in
battle. Once, Egbert beat them. But, they cared
no more for being beaten than the English them-
selves. In the four following short reigns, of 

Ethelwulf, and his sons,  Ethelbald, Ethelbert,
and Ethelred, they came back, over and over
again, burning and plundering, and laying En-
gland waste. In the last-mentioned reign, they
seized  Edmund, King of East England, and
bound him to a tree. Then, they proposed to
him that he should change his religion; but he,
being a good Christian, steadily refused. Upon
that, they beat him, made cowardly jests upon
him, all defenceless as he was, shot arrows at
him, and, finally, struck off his head. It is im-
possible to say whose head they might have
struck off next, but for the death of King Ethelred
from a wound he had received in fighting against
them, and the succession to his throne of the
best and wisest king that ever lived in England.


A Child’s Histroy of England
24 

CHAPTER III
ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD
SAXON, ALFRED 

ALFRED THE GREAT WAS a young man, three-and-
twenty years of age, when he became king. Twice
in his childhood, he had been taken to Rome,
where the Saxon nobles were in the habit of
going on journeys which they supposed to be
religious; and, once, he had stayed for some time
in Paris. Learning, however, was so little cared
for, then, that at twelve years old he had not
been taught to read; although, of the sons of
King Ethelwulf , he, the youngest, was the
favourite. But he had - as most men who grow
up to be great and good are generally found to
have had—an excellent mother; and, one day,
this lady, whose name was Osburga, happened,
as she was sitting among her sons, to read a
book of Saxon poetry. The art of printing was
not known until long and long after that period, 

and the book, which was written, was what is
called ‘illuminated,’ with beautiful bright letters,
richly painted. The brothers admiring it very
much, their mother said, ‘I will give it to that
one of you four princes who first learns to read.’
Alfred sought out a tutor that very day, applied
himself to learn with great diligence, and soon
won the book. He was proud of it, all his life.
This great king, in the first year of his reign,
fought nine battles with the Danes. He made
some treaties with them too, by which the false
Danes swore they would quit the country. They
pretended to consider that they had taken a very
solemn oath, in swearing this upon the holy
bracelets that they wore, and which were al-
ways buried with them when they died; but they
cared little for it, for they thought nothing of
breaking oaths and treaties too, as soon as it
suited their purpose, and coming back again to
fight, plunder, and burn, as usual. One fatal
winter, in the fourth year of King Alfred’s reign,


Charles Dickens
25

they spread themselves in great numbers over
the whole of England; and so dispersed and
routed the King’s soldiers that the King was left
alone, and was obliged to disguise himself as a
common peasant, and to take refuge in the cot-
tage of one of his cowherds who did not know
his face.
Here, King Alfred, while the Danes sought him
far and near, was left alone one day, by the
cowherd’s wife, to watch some cakes which she
put to bake upon the hearth. But, being at work
upon his bow and arrows, with which he hoped
to punish the false Danes when a brighter time
should come, and thinking deeply of his poor
unhappy subjects whom the Danes chased
through the land, his noble mind forgot the cakes,
and they were burnt. ‘What!’ said the cowherd’s
wife, who scolded him well when she came back,
and little thought she was scolding the King, ‘you
will be ready enough to eat them by-and-by, and
yet you cannot watch them, idle dog?’ 

At length, the Devonshire men made head
against a new host of Danes who landed on their
coast; killed their chief, and captured their flag;
on which was represented the likeness of a
Raven—a very fit bird for a thievish army like
that, I think. The loss of their standard troubled
the Danes greatly, for they believed it to be en-
chanted—woven by the three daughters of one
father in a single afternoon—and they had a
story among themselves that when they were
victorious in battle, the Raven stretched his
wings and seemed to fly; and that when they
were defeated, he would droop. He had good
reason to droop, now, if he could have done
anything half so sensible; for, King Alfred joined
the Devonshire men; made a camp with them
on a piece of firm ground in the midst of a bog
in Somersetshire; and prepared for a great at-
tempt for vengeance on the Danes, and the de-
liverance of his oppressed people.
But, first, as it was important to know how


A Child’s Histroy of England
26

numerous those pestilent Danes were, and how
they were fortified,  King Alfred, being a good
musician, disguised himself as a glee-man or
minstrel, and went, with his harp, to the Dan-
ish camp. He played and sang in the very tent
of Guthrum the Danish leader, and entertained
the Danes as they caroused. While he seemed
to think of nothing but his music, he was watch-
ful of their tents, their arms, their discipline,
everything that he desired to know. And right
soon did this great king entertain them to a dif-
ferent tune; for, summoning all his true follow-
ers to meet him at an appointed place, where
they received him with joyful shouts and tears,
as the monarch whom many of them had given
up for lost or dead, he put himself at their head,
marched on the Danish camp, defeated the
Danes with great slaughter, and besieged them
for fourteen days to prevent their escape. But,
being as merciful as he was good and brave, he
then, instead of killing them, proposed peace: 

on condition that they should altogether depart
from that Western part of England, and settle
in the East; and that Guthrum should become a
Christian, in remembrance of the Divine reli-
gion which now taught his conqueror, the noble
Alred, to forgive the enemy who had so often
injured him. This, Guthrum did. At his baptism,
King Alfred was his godfather. And Guthrum was
an honourable chief who well deserved that
clemency; for, ever afterwards he was loyal and
faithful to the king. The Danes under him were
faithful too. They plundered and burned no
more, but worked like honest men. They
ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, and led good
honest English lives. And I hope the children of
those Danes played, many a time, with Saxon
children in the sunny fields; and that Danish
young men fell in love with Saxon girls, and
married them; and that English travellers, be-
nighted at the doors of Danish cottages, often
went in for shelter until morning; and that


Charles Dickens
27

Danes and Saxons sat by the red fire, friends,
talking of King Alfred the Great.
All the Danes were not like these under Guthrum;
for, after some years, more of them came over, in
the old plundering and burning way—among them
a fierce pirate of the name of Hastings, who had
the boldness to sail up the Thames to Gravesend,
with eighty ships. For three years, there was a
war with these Danes; and there was a famine in
the country, too, and a plague, both upon human
creatures and beasts. But  King Alfred, whose
mighty heart never failed him, built large ships
nevertheless, with which to pursue the pirates on
the sea; and he encouraged his soldiers, by his
brave example, to fight valiantly against them on
the shore. At last, he drove them all away; and
then there was repose in England.
As great and good in peace, as he was great
and good in war, King Alfred never rested from
his labours to improve his people. He loved to
talk with clever men, and with travellers from 

foreign countries, and to write down what they
told him, for his people to read. He had studied
Latin after learning to read English, and now
another of his labours was, to translate Latin
books into the English-Saxon tongue, that his
people might be interested, and improved by
their contents. He made just laws, that they
might live more happily and freely; he turned
away all partial judges, that no wrong might be
done them; he was so careful of their property,
and punished robbers so severely, that it was a
common thing to say that under the great King
Alfred, garlands of golden chains and jewels
might have hung across the streets, and no man
would have touched one. He founded schools;
he patiently heard causes himself in his Court
of Justice; the great desires of his heart were,
to do right to all his subjects, and to leave En-
gland better, wiser, happier in all ways, than
he found it. His industry in these efforts was
quite astonishing. Every day he divided into


A Child’s Histroy of England
28

certain portions, and in each portion devoted
himself to a certain pursuit. That he might di-
vide his time exactly, he had wax torches or
candles made, which were all of the same size,
were notched across at regular distances, and
were always kept burning. Thus, as the candles
burnt down, he divided the day into notches,
almost as accurately as we now divide it into
hours upon the clock. But when the candles
were first invented, it was found that the wind
and draughts of air, blowing into the palace
through the doors and windows, and through
the chinks in the walls, caused them to gutter
and burn unequally. To prevent this, the King
had them put into cases formed of wood and
white horn. And these were the first lanthorns
ever made in England.
All this time, he was afflicted with a terrible
unknown disease, which caused him violent and
frequent pain that nothing could relieve. He bore
it, as he had borne all the troubles of his life, like

a brave good man, until he was fifty-three years
old; and then, having reigned thirty years, he
died. He died in the year nine hundred and one;
but, long ago as that is, his fame, and the love
and gratitude with which his subjects regarded
him, are freshly remembered to the present hour.
In the next reign, which was the reign of Ed-
ward, surnamed The Elder, who was chosen in
council to succeed, a nephew of  King Alfred
troubled the country by trying to obtain the
throne. The Danes in the East of England took
part with this usurper (perhaps because they
had honoured his uncle so much, and honoured
him for his uncle’s sake), and there was hard
fighting; but, the King, with the assistance of
his sister, gained the day, and reigned in peace
for four and twenty years. He gradually extended
his power over the whole of England, and so the
Seven Kingdoms were united into one.
When England thus became one kingdom,
ruled over by one Saxon king, the Saxons had


Charles Dickens
29

been settled in the country more than four hun-
dred and fifty years. Great changes had taken
place in its customs during that time. The Sax-
ons were still greedy eaters and great drinkers,
and their feasts were often of a noisy and
drunken kind; but many new comforts and even
elegances had become known, and were fast
increasing. Hangings for the walls of rooms,
where, in these modern days, we paste up pa-
per, are known to have been sometimes made
of silk, ornamented with birds and flowers in
needlework. Tables and chairs were curiously
carved in different woods; were sometimes deco-
rated with gold or silver; sometimes even made
of those precious metals. Knives and spoons
were used at table; golden ornaments were
worn—with silk and cloth, and golden tissues
and embroideries; dishes were made of gold and
silver, brass and bone. There were varieties of
drinking-horns, bedsteads, musical instru-
ments. A harp was passed round, at a feast, 

like the drinking-bowl, from guest to guest; and
each one usually sang or played when his turn
came. The weapons of the Saxons were stoutly
made, and among them was a terrible iron ham-
mer that gave deadly blows, and was long re-
membered. The Saxons themselves were a hand-
some people. The men were proud of their long
fair hair, parted on the forehead; their ample
beards, their fresh complexions, and clear eyes.
The beauty of the Saxon women filled all En-
gland with a new delight and grace.
I have more to tell of the Saxons yet, but I
stop to say this now, because under the  Great
Alfred, all the best points of the English-Saxon
character were first encouraged, and in him first
shown. It has been the greatest character among
the nations of the earth. Wherever the descen-
dants of the Saxon race have gone, have sailed,
or otherwise made their way, even to the re-
motest regions of the world, they have been
patient, persevering, never to be broken in spirit,


A Child’s Histroy of England
30

never to be turned aside from enterprises on
which they have resolved. In Europe, Asia, Af-
rica, America, the whole world over; in the
desert, in the forest, on the sea; scorched by a
burning sun, or frozen by ice that never melts;
the Saxon blood remains unchanged. Whereso-
ever that race goes, there, law, and industry,
and safety for life and property, and all the great
results of steady perseverance, are certain to
arise.
I pause to think with admiration, of the noble
king who, in his single person, possessed all
the Saxon virtues. Whom misfortune could not
subdue, whom prosperity could not spoil, whose
perseverance nothing could shake. Who was
hopeful in defeat, and generous in success. Who
loved justice, freedom, truth, and knowledge.
Who, in his care to instruct his people, prob-
ably did more to preserve the beautiful old Saxon
language, than I can imagine. Without whom,
the English tongue in which I tell this story might

have wanted half its meaning. As it is said that
his spirit still inspires some of our best English
laws, so, let you and I pray that it may animate
our English hearts, at least to this—to resolve,
when we see any of our fellow-creatures left in
ignorance, that we will do our best, while life is
in us, to have them taught; and to tell those
rulers whose duty it is to teach them, and who
neglect their duty, that they have profited very
little by all the years that have rolled away since
the year nine hundred and one, and that they
are far behind the bright example of King Alfred
the Great.


Charles Dickens
31 

CHAPTER IV
ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN
AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS 

ATHELSTAN ,  THE SON of Edward the Elder, succeeded
that king. He reigned only fifteen years; but he
remembered the glory of his grandfather, the
great Alfred, and governed England well. He re-
duced the turbulent people of Wales, and obliged
them to pay him a tribute in money, and in
cattle, and to send him their best hawks and
hounds. He was victorious over the Cornish
men, who were not yet quite under the Saxon
government. He restored such of the old laws
as were good, and had fallen into disuse; made
some wise new laws, and took care of the poor
and weak. A strong alliance, made against him
by Anlaf a Danish prince,  Constantine King of
the Scots, and the people of North Wales, he
broke and defeated in one great battle, long fa-
mous for the vast numbers slain in it. After that, 

he had a quiet reign; the lords and ladies about
him had leisure to become polite and agreeable;
and foreign princes were glad (as they have
sometimes been since) to come to England on
visits to the English court.
When Athelstan died, at forty-seven years old,
his brother  Edmund, who was only eighteen,
became king. He was the first of six boy-kings,
as you will presently know.
They called him the Magnificent, because he
showed a taste for improvement and refinement.
But he was beset by the Danes, and had a short
and troubled reign, which came to a troubled
end. One night, when he was feasting in his
hall, and had eaten much and drunk deep, he
saw, among the company, a noted robber named
Leof, who had been banished from England.
Made very angry by the boldness of this man,
the King turned to his cup-bearer, and said,
‘There is a robber sitting at the table yonder,
who, for his crimes, is an outlaw in the land—a


A Child’s Histroy of England
32

hunted wolf, whose life any man may take, at
any time. Command that robber to depart!’ ‘I
will not depart!’ said Leof. ‘No?’ cried the King.
‘No, by the Lord!’ said Leof. Upon that the King
rose from his seat, and, making passionately at
the robber, and seizing him by his long hair,
tried to throw him down. But the robber had a
dagger underneath his cloak, and, in the scuffle,
stabbed the King to death. That done, he set
his back against the wall, and fought so des-
perately, that although he was soon cut to pieces
by the King’s armed men, and the wall and pave-
ment were splashed with his blood, yet it was
not before he had killed and wounded many of
them. You may imagine what rough lives the
kings of those times led, when one of them could
struggle, half drunk, with a public robber in his
own dining-hall, and be stabbed in presence of
the company who ate and drank with him.
Then succeeded the boy-king Edred, who was
weak and sickly in body, but of a strong mind. 

And his armies fought the Northmen, the Danes,
and Norwegians, or the Sea-Kings, as they were
called, and beat them for the time. And, in nine
years, Edred died, and passed away.
Then came the boy-king Edwy, fifteen years
of age; but the real king, who had the real power,
was a monk named Dunsstan—a clever priest,
a little mad, and not a little proud and cruel.
Dunstan was then Abbot of Glastonbury Ab-
bey, whither the body of King Edmund the Mag-
nificent was carried, to be buried. While yet a
boy, he had got out of his bed one night (being
then in a fever), and walked about Glastonbury
Church when it was under repair; and, because
he did not tumble off some scaffolds that were
there, and break his neck, it was reported that
he had been shown over the building by an an-
gel. He had also made a harp that was said to
play of itself—which it very likely did, as Æolian
Harps, which are played by the wind, and are
understood now, always do. For these wonders


Charles Dickens
33

he had been once denounced by his enemies,
who were jealous of his favour with the late King
Athelstan, as a magician; and he had been way-
laid, bound hand and foot, and thrown into a
marsh. But he got out again, somehow, to cause
a great deal of trouble yet.
The priests of those days were, generally, the
only scholars. They were learned in many things.
Having to make their own convents and mon-
asteries on uncultivated grounds that were
granted to them by the Crown, it was necessary
that they should be good farmers and good gar-
deners, or their lands would have been too poor
to support them. For the decoration of the chap-
els where they prayed, and for the comfort of
the refectories where they ate and drank, it was
necessary that there should be good carpenters,
good smiths, good painters, among them. For
their greater safety in sickness and accident,
living alone by themselves in solitary places, it
was necessary that they should study the vir- 

tues of plants and herbs, and should know how
to dress cuts, burns, scalds, and bruises, and
how to set broken limbs. Accordingly, they
taught themselves, and one another, a great
variety of useful arts; and became skilful in ag-
riculture, medicine, surgery, and handicraft.
And when they wanted the aid of any little piece
of machinery, which would be simple enough
now, but was marvellous then, to impose a trick
upon the poor peasants, they knew very well
how to make it; and  did make it many a time
and often, I have no doubt.
Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was
one of the most sagacious of these monks. He
was an ingenious smith, and worked at a forge
in a little cell. This cell was made too short to
admit of his lying at full length when he went to
sleep—as if that did any good to anybody!—and
he used to tell the most extraordinary lies about
demons and spirits, who, he said, came there
to persecute him. For instance, he related that


A Child’s Histroy of England
34

one day when he was at work, the devil looked
in at the little window, and tried to tempt him
to lead a life of idle pleasure; whereupon, hav-
ing his pincers in the fire, red hot, he seized the
devil by the nose, and put him to such pain,
that his bellowings were heard for miles and
miles. Some people are inclined to think this
nonsense a part of Dunstan’s madness (for his
head never quite recovered the fever), but I think
not. I observe that it induced the ignorant people
to consider him a holy man, and that it made
him very powerful. Which was exactly what he
always wanted.
On the day of the coronation of the handsome
boy-king Edwy, it was remarked by Odo, Arch-
bishop of Canterbury (who was a Dane by birth),
that the King quietly left the coronation feast,
while all the company were there. Odo, much
displeased, sent his friend Dunstan to seek him.
Dunstan finding him in the company of his
beautiful young wife  Elgiva, and her mother 

Ethelgiva, a good and virtuous lady, not only
grossly abused them, but dragged the young
King back into the feasting-hall by force. Some,
again, think Dunstan did this because the young
King’s fair wife was his own cousin, and the
monks objected to people marrying their own
cousins; but I believe he did it, because he was
an imperious, audacious, ill-conditioned priest,
who, having loved a young lady himself before
he became a sour monk, hated all love now,
and everything belonging to it.
The young King was quite old enough to feel
this insult. Dunstan had been Treasurer in the
last reign, and he soon charged Dunstan with
having taken some of the last king’s money. The
Glastonbury Abbot fled to Belgium (very nar-
rowly escaping some pursuers who were sent
to put out his eyes, as you will wish they had,
when you read what follows), and his abbey was
given to priests who were married; whom he
always, both before and afterwards, opposed.


Charles Dickens
35

But he quickly conspired with his friend, Odo
the Dane, to set up the King’s young brother,
Edgarr, as his rival for the throne; and, not con-
tent with this revenge, he caused the beautiful
queen Elgiva, though a lovely girl of only seven-
teen or eighteen, to be stolen from one of the
Royal Palaces, branded in the cheek with a red-
hot iron, and sold into slavery in Ireland. But
the Irish people pitied and befriended her; and
they said, ‘Let us restore the girl-queen to the
boy-king, and make the young lovers happy!’
and they cured her of her cruel wound, and sent
her home as beautiful as before. But the villain
Dunstan, and that other villain, Odo, caused
her to be waylaid at Gloucester as she was joy-
fully hurrying to join her husband, and to be
hacked and hewn with swords, and to be bar-
barously maimed and lamed, and left to die.
When Edwy the Fair (his people called him so,
because he was so young and handsome) heard
of her dreadful fate, he died of a broken heart; 

and so the pitiful story of the poor young wife
and husband ends! Ah! Better to be two cottag-
ers in these better times, than king and queen
of England in those bad days, though never so
fair!
Then came the boy-king,  Edgar, called the
Peaceful, fifteen years old. Dunstan, being still
the real king, drove all married priests out of
the monasteries and abbeys, and replaced them
by solitary monks like himself, of the rigid or-
der called the Benedictines. He made himself
Archbishop of Canterbury, for his greater glory;
and exercised such power over the neighbouring
British princes, and so collected them about the
King, that once, when the King held his court
at Chester, and went on the river Dee to visit
the monastery of St. John, the eight oars of his
boat were pulled (as the people used to delight
in relating in stories and songs) by eight crowned
kings, and steered by the King of England. As
Edgar was very obedient to Dunstan and the


A Child’s Histroy of England
36

monks, they took great pains to represent him
as the best of kings. But he was really profli-
gate, debauched, and vicious. He once forcibly
carried off a young lady from the convent at
Wilton; and Dunstan, pretending to be very
much shocked, condemned him not to wear his
crown upon his head for seven years - no great
punishment, I dare say, as it can hardly have
been a more comfortable ornament to wear, than
a stewpan without a handle. His marriage with
his second wife,  Elfrida, is one of the worst
events of his reign. Hearing of the beauty of this
lady, he despatched his favourite courtier,
Athelwold, to her father’s castle in Devonshire,
to see if she were really as charming as fame
reported. Now, she was so exceedingly beauti-
ful that Athelwold fell in love with her himself,
and married her; but he told the King that she
was only rich - not handsome. The King, sus-
pecting the truth when they came home, re-
solved to pay the newly-married couple a visit; 

and, suddenly, told Athelwold to prepare for his
immediate coming. Athelwold, terrified, con-
fessed to his young wife what he had said and
done, and implored her to disguise her beauty
by some ugly dress or silly manner, that he
might be safe from the King’s anger. She prom-
ised that she would; but she was a proud
woman, who would far rather have been a queen
than the wife of a courtier. She dressed herself
in her best dress, and adorned herself with her
richest jewels; and when the King came, pres-
ently, he discovered the cheat. So, he caused
his false friend, Athelwold, to be murdered in a
wood, and married his widow, this bad Elfrida.
Six or seven years afterwards, he died; and was
buried, as if he had been all that the monks
said he was, in the abbey of Glastonbury, which
he—or Dunstan for him—had much enriched.
England, in one part of this reign, was so
troubled by wolves, which, driven out of the open
country, hid themselves in the mountains of


Charles Dickens
37

Wales when they were not attacking travellers
and animals, that the tribute payable by the
Welsh people was forgiven them, on condition
of their producing, every year, three hundred
wolves’ heads. And the Welshmen were so sharp
upon the wolves, to save their money, that in
four years there was not a wolf left.
Then came the boy-king, Edward, called the
Martyr, from the manner of his death. Elfrida
had a son, named  Ethelred, for whom she
claimed the throne; but Dunstan did not choose
to favour him, and he made Edward king. The
boy was hunting, one day, down in Dorsetshire,
when he rode near to Corfe Castle, where Elfrida
and Ethelred lived. Wishing to see them kindly,
he rode away from his attendants and galloped
to the castle gate, where he arrived at twilight,
and blew his hunting-horn. ‘You are welcome,
dear King,’ said Elfrida, coming out, with her
brightest smiles. ‘Pray you dismount and en-
ter.’ ‘Not so, dear madam,’ said the King. ‘My 

company will miss me, and fear that I have met
with some harm. Please you to give me a cup of
wine, that I may drink here, in the saddle, to
you and to my little brother, and so ride away
with the good speed I have made in riding here.’
Elfrida, going in to bring the wine, whispered
an armed servant, one of her attendants, who
stole out of the darkening gateway, and crept
round behind the King’s horse. As the King
raised the cup to his lips, saying, ‘Health!’ to
the wicked woman who was smiling on him, and
to his innocent brother whose hand she held in
hers, and who was only ten years old, this armed
man made a spring and stabbed him in the back.
He dropped the cup and spurred his horse away;
but, soon fainting with loss of blood, dropped
from the saddle, and, in his fall, entangled one
of his feet in the stirrup. The frightened horse
dashed on; trailing his rider’s curls upon the
ground; dragging his smooth young face through
ruts, and stones, and briers, and fallen leaves,


A Child’s Histroy of England
38

and mud; until the hunters, tracking the
animal’s course by the King’s blood, caught his
bridle, and released the disfigured body.
Then came the sixth and last of the boy-kings,
Ethelred, whom Elfrida, when he cried out at the
sight of his murdered brother riding away from
the castle gate, unmercifully beat with a torch
which she snatched from one of the attendants.
The people so disliked this boy, on account of his
cruel mother and the murder she had done to
promote him, that Dunstan would not have had
him for king, but would have made Edgitha, the
daughter of the dead King Edgar, and of the lady
whom he stole out of the convent at Wilton, Queen
of England, if she would have consented. But she
knew the stories of the youthful kings too well,
and would not be persuaded from the convent
where she lived in peace; so, Dunstan put Ethelred
on the throne, having no one else to put there,
and gave him the nickname of  The Unready—
knowing that he wanted resolution and firmness. 

At first, Elfrida possessed great influence over
the young King, but, as he grew older and came
of age, her influence declined. The infamous
woman, not having it in her power to do any
more evil, then retired from court, and, accord-
ing, to the fashion of the time, built churches
and monasteries, to expiate her guilt. As if a
church, with a steeple reaching to the very stars,
would have been any sign of true repentance
for the blood of the poor boy, whose murdered
form was trailed at his horse’s heels! As if she
could have buried her wickedness beneath the
senseless stones of the whole world, piled up
one upon another, for the monks to live in!
About the ninth or tenth year of this reign,
Dunstan died. He was growing old then, but was
as stern and artful as ever. Two circumstances
that happened in connexion with him, in this
reign of Ethelred, made a great noise. Once, he
was present at a meeting of the Church, when
the question was discussed whether priests


Charles Dickens
39

should have permission to marry; and, as he sat
with his head hung down, apparently thinking
about it, a voice seemed to come out of a crucifix
in the room, and warn the meeting to be of his
opinion. This was some juggling of Dunstan’s,
and was probably his own voice disguised. But
he played off a worse juggle than that, soon af-
terwards; for, another meeting being held on the
same subject, and he and his supporters being
seated on one side of a great room, and their
opponents on the other, he rose and said, ‘To
Christ himself, as judge, do I commit this cause!’
Immediately on these words being spoken, the
floor where the opposite party sat gave way, and
some were killed and many wounded. You may
be pretty sure that it had been weakened under
Dunstan’s direction, and that it fell at Dunstan’s
signal. HIS part of the floor did not go down. No,
no. He was too good a workman for that.
When he died, the monks settled that he was
a Saint, and called him Saint Dunstan ever af- 

terwards. They might just as well have settled
that he was a coach-horse, and could just as
easily have called him one.
Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare
say, to be rid of this holy saint; but, left to him-
self, he was a poor weak king, and his reign
was a reign of defeat and shame. The restless
Danes, led by Sweyn, a son of the King of Den-
mark who had quarrelled with his father and
had been banished from home, again came into
England, and, year after year, attacked and de-
spoiled large towns. To coax these sea-kings
away, the weak Ethelred paid them money; but,
the more money he paid, the more money the
Danes wanted. At first, he gave them ten thou-
sand pounds; on their next invasion, sixteen
thousand pounds; on their next invasion, four
and twenty thousand pounds: to pay which large
sums, the unfortunate English people were
heavily taxed. But, as the Danes still came back
and wanted more, he thought it would be a good


A Child’s Histroy of England
40

plan to marry into some powerful foreign family
that would help him with soldiers. So, in the
year one thousand and two, he courted and
married Emma, the sister of Richard Duke of
Normandy; a lady who was called the Flower of
Normandy.
And now, a terrible deed was done in England,
the like of which was never done on English
ground before or since. On the thirteenth of
November, in pursuance of secret instructions
sent by the King over the whole country, the
inhabitants of every town and city armed, and
murdered all the Danes who were their
neighbours.
Young and old, babies and soldiers, men and
women, every Dane was killed. No doubt there
were among them many ferocious men who had
done the English great wrong, and whose pride
and insolence, in swaggering in the houses of
the English and insulting their wives and daugh-
ters, had become unbearable; but no doubt 

there were also among them many peaceful
Christian Danes who had married English
women and become like English men. They were
all slain, even to Gunhilda, the sister of the King
of Denmark, married to an English lord; who
was first obliged to see the murder of her hus-
band and her child, and then was killed her-
self.
When the King of the sea-kings heard of this
deed of blood, he swore that he would have a
great revenge. He raised an army, and a mightier
fleet of ships than ever yet had sailed to En-
gland; and in all his army there was not a slave
or an old man, but every soldier was a free man,
and the son of a free man, and in the prime of
life, and sworn to be revenged upon the English
nation, for the massacre of that dread thirteenth
of November, when his countrymen and
countrywomen, and the little children whom
they loved, were killed with fire and sword. And
so, the sea-kings came to England in many great


Charles Dickens
41

ships, each bearing the flag of its own com-
mander. Golden eagles, ravens, dragons, dol-
phins, beasts of prey, threatened England from
the prows of those ships, as they came onward
through the water; and were reflected in the
shining shields that hung upon their sides. The
ship that bore the standard of the King of the
sea-kings was carved and painted like a mighty
serpent; and the King in his anger prayed that
the Gods in whom he trusted might all desert
him, if his serpent did not strike its fangs into
England’s heart.
And indeed it did. For, the great army landing
from the great fleet, near Exeter, went forward,
laying England waste, and striking their lances
in the earth as they advanced, or throwing them
into rivers, in token of their making all the is-
land theirs. In remembrance of the black No-
vember night when the Danes were murdered,
wheresoever the invaders came, they made the
Saxons prepare and spread for them great 

feasts; and when they had eaten those feasts,
and had drunk a curse to England with wild
rejoicings, they drew their swords, and killed
their Saxon entertainers, and marched on. For
six long years they carried on this war: burning
the crops, farmhouses, barns, mills, granaries;
killing the labourers in the fields; preventing the
seed from being sown in the ground; causing
famine and starvation; leaving only heaps of ruin
and smoking ashes, where they had found rich
towns. To crown this misery, English officers
and men deserted, and even the favourites of
Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, seized
many of the English ships, turned pirates
against their own country, and aided by a storm
occasioned the loss of nearly the whole English
navy.
There was but one man of note, at this miser-
able pass, who was true to his country and the
feeble King. He was a priest, and a brave one.
For twenty days, the Archbishop of Canterbury


A Child’s Histroy of England
42

defended that city against its Danish besiegers;
and when a traitor in the town threw the gates
open and admitted them, he said, in chains, ‘I
will not buy my life with money that must be
extorted from the suffering people. Do with me
what you please!’ Again and again, he steadily
refused to purchase his release with gold wrung
from the poor.
At last, the Danes being tired of this, and be-
ing assembled at a drunken merry-making, had
him brought into the feasting-hall.
‘Now, bishop,’ they said, ‘we want gold!’
He looked round on the crowd of angry faces;
from the shaggy beards close to him, to the
shaggy beards against the walls, where men
were mounted on tables and forms to see him
over the heads of others: and he knew that his
time was come.
‘I have no gold,’ he said.
‘Get it, bishop!’ they all thundered.
‘That, I have often told you I will not,’ said he. 

They gathered closer round him, threatening,
but he stood unmoved. Then, one man struck
him; then, another; then a cursing soldier picked
up from a heap in a corner of the hall, where
fragments had been rudely thrown at dinner, a
great ox-bone, and cast it at his face, from which
the blood came spurting forth; then, others ran
to the same heap, and knocked him down with
other bones, and bruised and battered him; until
one soldier whom he had baptised (willing, as I
hope for the sake of that soldier’s soul, to
shorten the sufferings of the good man) struck
him dead with his battle-axe.
If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the
courage of this noble archbishop, he might have
done something yet. But he paid the Danes forty-
eight thousand pounds, instead, and gained so
little by the cowardly act, that Sweyn soon af-
terwards came over to subdue all England. So
broken was the attachment of the English
people, by this time, to their incapable King and


Charles Dickens
43

their forlorn country which could not protect
them, that they welcomed Sweyn on all sides,
as a deliverer. London faithfully stood out, as
long as the King was within its walls; but, when
he sneaked away, it also welcomed the Dane.
Then, all was over; and the King took refuge
abroad with the Duke of Normandy, who had
already given shelter to the King’s wife, once
the Flower of that country, and to her children.
Still, the English people, in spite of their sad
sufferings, could not quite forget the great King
Alfred and the Saxon race. When Sweyn died
suddenly, in little more than a month after he
had been proclaimed King of England, they gen-
erously sent to Ethelred, to say that they would
have him for their King again, ‘if he would only
govern them better than he had governed them
before.’ The Unready, instead of coming him-
self, sent Edward, one of his sons, to make prom-
ises for him. At last, he followed, and the En-
glish declared him King. The Danes declared 

Canute, the son of Sweyn, King. Thus, direful
war began again, and lasted for three years,
when the Unready died. And I know of nothing
better that he did, in all his reign of eight and
thirty years.
Was Canute to be King now? Not over the Sax-
ons, they said; they must have Edmund, one of
the sons of the Unready, who was surnamed
Ironside, because of his strength and stature.
Edmund and Canute thereupon fell to, and
fought five battles—O unhappy England, what
a fighting-ground it was!—and then Ironside,
who was a big man, proposed to Canute, who
was a little man, that they two should fight it
out in single combat. If Canute had been the
big man, he would probably have said yes, but,
being the little man, he decidedly said no. How-
ever, he declared that he was willing to divide
the kingdom—to take all that lay north of
Watling Street, as the old Roman military road
from Dover to Chester was called, and to give


A Child’s Histroy of England
44

Ironside all that lay south of it. Most men being
weary of so much bloodshed, this was done. But
Canute soon became sole King of England; for
Ironside died suddenly within two months. Some
think that he was killed, and killed by Canute’s
orders. No one knows. 

CHAPTER V
ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE
THE DANE 

CANUTE REIGNED EIGHTEEN YEARS. He was a merci-
less King at first. After he had clasped the hands
of the Saxon chiefs, in token of the sincerity
with which he swore to be just and good to them
in return for their acknowledging him, he de-
nounced and slew many of them, as well as
many relations of the late King. ‘He who brings
me the head of one of my enemies,’ he used to
say, ‘shall be dearer to me than a brother.’ And
he was so severe in hunting down his enemies, 

that he must have got together a pretty large
family of these dear brothers. He was strongly
inclined to kill Edmund and Edward, two chil-
dren, sons of poor Ironside; but, being afraid to
do so in England, he sent them over to the King
of Sweden, with a request that the King would
be so good as ‘dispose of them.’ If the King of
Sweden had been like many, many other men
of that day, he would have had their innocent
throats cut; but he was a kind man, and brought
them up tenderly.
Normandy ran much in Canute’s mind. In
Normandy were the two children of the late king
—Edward and Alfred by name; and their uncle
the Duke might one day claim the crown for
them. But the Duke showed so little inclination
to do so now, that he proposed to Canute to
marry his sister, the widow of The Unready; who,
being but a showy flower, and caring for noth-
ing so much as becoming a queen again, left
her children and was wedded to him.


Charles Dickens
45

Successful and triumphant, assisted by the
valour of the English in his foreign wars, and
with little strife to trouble him at home, Canute
had a prosperous reign, and made many im-
provements. He was a poet and a musician. He
grew sorry, as he grew older, for the blood he
had shed at first; and went to Rome in a Pilgrim’s
dress, by way of washing it out. He gave a great
deal of money to foreigners on his journey; but
he took it from the English before he started.
On the whole, however, he certainly became a
far better man when he had no opposition to
contend with, and was as great a King as En-
gland had known for some time.
The old writers of history relate how that Canute
was one day disgusted with his courtiers for their
flattery, and how he caused his chair to be set
on the sea-shore, and feigned to command the
tide as it came up not to wet the edge of his robe,
for the land was his; how the tide came up, of
course, without regarding him; and how he then 

turned to his flatterers, and rebuked them, say-
ing, what was the might of any earthly king, to
the might of the Creator, who could say unto the
sea, ‘Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther!’ We
may learn from this, I think, that a little sense
will go a long way in a king; and that courtiers
are not easily cured of flattery, nor kings of a
liking for it. If the courtiers of Canute had not
known, long before, that the King was fond of
flattery, they would have known better than to
offer it in such large doses. And if they had not
known that he was vain of this speech (anything
but a wonderful speech it seems to me, if a good
child had made it), they would not have been at
such great pains to repeat it. I fancy I see them
all on the sea-shore together; the King’s chair
sinking in the sand; the King in a mighty good
humour with his own wisdom; and the courtiers
pretending to be quite stunned by it!
It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go
‘thus far, and no farther.’ The great command


A Child’s Histroy of England
46

goes forth to all the kings upon the earth, and
went to Canute in the year one thousand and
thirty-five, and stretched him dead upon his bed.
Beside it, stood his Norman wife. Perhaps, as
the King looked his last upon her, he, who had
so often thought distrustfully of Normandy, long
ago, thought once more of the two exiled Princes
in their uncle’s court, and of the little favour
they could feel for either Danes or Saxons, and
of a rising cloud in Normandy that slowly moved
towards England. 

CHAPTER VI
ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD
HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, AND
EDWARD THE CONFESSOR 

CANUTE LEFT THREE SONS, by name Sweyn, Harold,
and Hardicanute; but his Queen, Emma, once
the Flower of Normandy, was the mother of only
Hardicanute. Canute had wished his dominions 

to be divided between the three, and had wished
Harold to have England; but the Saxon people in
the South of England, headed by a nobleman
with great possessions, called the powerful Earl
Godwin (who is said to have been originally a
poor cow-boy), opposed this, and desired to have,
instead, either Hardicanute, or one of the two
exiled Princes who were over in Normandy. It
seemed so certain that there would be more
bloodshed to settle this dispute, that many people
left their homes, and took refuge in the woods
and swamps. Happily, however, it was agreed to
refer the whole question to a great meeting at
Oxford, which decided that Harold should have
all the country north of the Thames, with Lon-
don for his capital city, and that Hardicanute
should have all the south. The quarrel was so
arranged; and, as Hardicanute was in Denmark
troubling himself very little about anything but
eating and getting drunk, his mother and Earl
Godwin governed the south for him.


Charles Dickens
47

They had hardly begun to do so, and the trem-
bling people who had hidden themselves were
scarcely at home again, when Edward, the el-
der of the two exiled Princes, came over from
Normandy with a few followers, to claim the
English Crown. His mother Emma, however,
who only cared for her last son Hardicanute,
instead of assisting him, as he expected, op-
posed him so strongly with all her influence that
he was very soon glad to get safely back. His
brother Alfred was not so fortunate. Believing
in an affectionate letter, written some time af-
terwards to him and his brother, in his mother’s
name (but whether really with or without his
mother’s knowledge is now uncertain), he al-
lowed himself to be tempted over to England,
with a good force of soldiers, and landing on
the Kentish coast, and being met and welcomed
by Earl Godwin, proceeded into Surrey, as far
as the town of Guildford. Here, he and his men
halted in the evening to rest, having still the 

Earl in their company; who had ordered lodg-
ings and good cheer for them. But, in the dead
of the night, when they were off their guard,
being divided into small parties sleeping soundly
after a long march and a plentiful supper in
different houses, they were set upon by the
King’s troops, and taken prisoners. Next morn-
ing they were drawn out in a line, to the num-
ber of six hundred men, and were barbarously
tortured and killed; with the exception of every
tenth man, who was sold into slavery. As to the
wretched Prince Alfred, he was stripped naked,
tied to a horse and sent away into the Isle of
Ely, where his eyes were torn out of his head,
and where in a few days he miserably died. I
am not sure that the Earl had wilfully entrapped
him, but I suspect it strongly.
Harold was now King all over England, though
it is doubtful whether the Archbishop of Can-
terbury (the greater part of the priests were Sax-
ons, and not friendly to the Danes) ever con-


A Child’s Histroy of England
48

sented to crown him. Crowned or uncrowned,
with the Archbishop’s leave or without it, he was
King for four years: after which short reign he
died, and was buried; having never done much
in life but go a hunting. He was such a fast run-
ner at this, his favourite sport, that the people
called him Harold Harefoot.
Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders,
plotting, with his mother (who had gone over
there after the cruel murder of Prince Alfred),
for the invasion of England. The Danes and Sax-
ons, finding themselves without a King, and
dreading new disputes, made common cause,
and joined in inviting him to occupy the Throne.
He consented, and soon troubled them enough;
for he brought over numbers of Danes, and
taxed the people so insupportably to enrich
those greedy favourites that there were many
insurrections, especially one at Worcester,
where the citizens rose and killed his tax-col-
lectors; in revenge for which he burned their 

city. He was a brutal King, whose first public
act was to order the dead body of poor Harold
Harefoot to be dug up, beheaded, and thrown
into the river. His end was worthy of such a
beginning. He fell down drunk, with a goblet of
wine in his hand, at a wedding-feast at Lambeth,
given in honour of the marriage of his standard-
bearer, a Dane named Towed the Proud. And he
never spoke again.
Edward, afterwards called by the monks The
Confessor, succeeded; and his first act was to
oblige his mother Emma, who had favoured him
so little, to retire into the country; where she
died some ten years afterwards. He was the ex-
iled prince whose brother Alfred had been so
foully killed. He had been invited over from
Normandy by Hardicanute, in the course of his
short reign of two years, and had been hand-
somely treated at court. His cause was now
favoured by the powerful Earl Godwin, and he
was soon made King. This Earl had been sus-


Charles Dickens
49

pected by the people, ever since Prince Alfred’s
cruel death; he had even been tried in the last
reign for the Prince’s murder, but had been pro-
nounced not guilty; chiefly, as it was supposed,
because of a present he had made to the swin-
ish King, of a gilded ship with a figure-head of
solid gold, and a crew of eighty splendidly armed
men. It was his interest to help the new King
with his power, if the new King would help him
against the popular distrust and hatred. So they
made a bargain. Edward the Confessor got the
Throne. The Earl got more power and more land,
and his daughter Editha was made queen; for it
was a part of their compact that the King should
take her for his wife.
But, although she was a gentle lady, in all
things worthy to be beloved - good, beautiful,
sensible, and kind—the King from the first ne-
glected her. Her father and her six proud broth-
ers, resenting this cold treatment, harassed the
King greatly by exerting all their power to make 

him unpopular. Having lived so long in
Normandy, he preferred the Normans to the
English. He made a Norman Archbishop, and
Norman Bishops; his great officers and
favourites were all Normans; he introduced the
Norman fashions and the Norman language; in
imitation of the state custom of Normandy, he
attached a great seal to his state documents,
instead of merely marking them, as the Saxon
Kings had done, with the sign of the cross—
just as poor people who have never been taught
to write, now make the same mark for their
names. All this, the powerful Earl Godwin and
his six proud sons represented to the people as
disfavour shown towards the English; and thus
they daily increased their own power, and daily
diminished the power of the King.
They were greatly helped by an event that oc-
curred when he had reigned eight years.
Eustace, Earl of Bologne, who had married the
King’s sister, came to England on a visit. After


A Child’s Histroy of England
50

staying at the court some time, he set forth, with
his numerous train of attendants, to return
home. They were to embark at Dover. Entering
that peaceful town in armour, they took posses-
sion of the best houses, and noisily demanded
to be lodged and entertained without payment.
One of the bold men of Dover, who would not
endure to have these domineering strangers jin-
gling their heavy swords and iron corselets up
and down his house, eating his meat and drink-
ing his strong liquor, stood in his doorway and
refused admission to the first armed man who
came there. The armed man drew, and wounded
him. The man of Dover struck the armed man
dead. Intelligence of what he had done, spread-
ing through the streets to where the Count
Eustace and his men were standing by their
horses, bridle in hand, they passionately
mounted, galloped to the house, surrounded it,
forced their way in (the doors and windows be-
ing closed when they came up), and killed the 

man of Dover at his own fireside. They then clat-
tered through the streets, cutting down and
riding over men, women, and children. This did
not last long, you may believe. The men of Dover
set upon them with great fury, killed nineteen of
the foreigners, wounded many more, and, block-
ading the road to the port so that they should
not embark, beat them out of the town by the
way they had come. Hereupon, Count Eustace
rides as hard as man can ride to Gloucester,
where Edward is, surrounded by Norman monks
and Norman lords. ‘Justice!’ cries the Count,
‘upon the men of Dover, who have set upon and
slain my people!’ The King sends immediately for
the powerful Earl Godwin, who happens to be
near; reminds him that Dover is under his gov-
ernment; and orders him to repair to Dover and
do military execution on the inhabitants. ‘It does
not become you,’ says the proud Earl in reply,
‘to condemn without a hearing those whom you
have sworn to protect. I will not do it.’


Charles Dickens
51

The King, therefore, summoned the Earl, on
pain of banishment and loss of his titles and
property, to appear before the court to answer
this disobedience. The Earl refused to appear.
He, his eldest son Harold, and his second son
Sweyn, hastily raised as many fighting men as
their utmost power could collect, and demanded
to have Count Eustace and his followers sur-
rendered to the justice of the country. The King,
in his turn, refused to give them up, and raised
a strong force. After some treaty and delay, the
troops of the great Earl and his sons began to
fall off. The Earl, with a part of his family and
abundance of treasure, sailed to Flanders;
Harold escaped to Ireland; and the power of the
great family was for that time gone in England.
But, the people did not forget them.
Then, Edward the Confessor, with the true
meanness of a mean spirit, visited his dislike of
the once powerful father and sons upon the
helpless daughter and sister, his unoffending 

wife, whom all who saw her (her husband and
his monks excepted) loved. He seized rapa-
ciously upon her fortune and her jewels, and
allowing her only one attendant, confined her
in a gloomy convent, of which a sister of his—
no doubt an unpleasant lady after his own heart
was abbess or jailer.
Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well
out of his way, the King favoured the Normans
more than ever. He invited over  William, Duke
of Normandy, the son of that Duke who had re-
ceived him and his murdered brother long ago,
and of a peasant girl, a tanner’s daughter, with
whom that Duke had fallen in love for her beauty
as he saw her washing clothes in a brook. Wil-
liam, who was a great warrior, with a passion
for fine horses, dogs, and arms, accepted the
invitation; and the Normans in England, find-
ing themselves more numerous than ever when
he arrived with his retinue, and held in still
greater honour at court than before, became


A Child’s Histroy of England
52

more and more haughty towards the people, and
were more and more disliked by them.
The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad,
knew well how the people felt; for, with part of the
treasure he had carried away with him, he kept
spies and agents in his pay all over England.
Accordingly, he thought the time was come
for fitting out a great expedition against the
Norman-loving King. With it, he sailed to the
Isle of Wight, where he was joined by his son
Harold, the most gallant and brave of all his
family. And so the father and son came sailing
up the Thames to Southwark; great numbers of
the people declaring for them, and shouting for
the English Earl and the English Harold, against
the Norman favourites!
The King was at first as blind and stubborn
as kings usually have been whensoever they
have been in the hands of monks. But the people
rallied so thickly round the old Earl and his son,
and the old Earl was so steady in demanding 

without bloodshed the restoration of himself and
his family to their rights, that at last the court
took the alarm. The Norman Archbishop of Can-
terbury, and the Norman Bishop of London,
surrounded by their retainers, fought their way
out of London, and escaped from Essex to
France in a fishing-boat. The other Norman
favourites dispersed in all directions. The old
Earl and his sons (except Sweyn, who had com-
mitted crimes against the law) were restored to
their possessions and dignities. Editha, the vir-
tuous and lovely Queen of the insensible King,
was triumphantly released from her prison, the
convent, and once more sat in her chair of state,
arrayed in the jewels of which, when she had
no champion to support her rights, her cold-
blooded husband had deprived her.
The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his
restored fortune. He fell down in a fit at the
King’s table, and died upon the third day after-
wards. Harold succeeded to his power, and to a


Charles Dickens
53

far higher place in the attachment of the people
than his father had ever held. By his valour he
subdued the King’s enemies in many bloody
fights. He was vigorous against rebels in Scot-
land—this was the time when Macbeth slew
Duncan, upon which event our English
Shakespeare, hundreds of years afterwards,
wrote his great tragedy; and he killed the rest-
less Welsh King Griffith, and brought his head
to England.
What Harold was doing at sea, when he was
driven on the French coast by a tempest, is not
at all certain; nor does it at all matter. That his
ship was forced by a storm on that shore, and
that he was taken prisoner, there is no doubt.
In those barbarous days, all shipwrecked strang-
ers were taken prisoners, and obliged to pay
ransom. So, a certain Count Guy, who was the
Lord of Ponthieu where Harold’s disaster hap-
pened, seized him, instead of relieving him like
a hospitable and Christian lord as he ought to 

have done, and expected to make a very good
thing of it.
But Harold sent off immediately to Duke Will-
iam of Normandy, complaining of this treatment;
and the Duke no sooner heard of it than he or-
dered Harold to be escorted to the ancient town of
Rouen, where he then was, and where he received
him as an honoured guest. Now, some writers tell
us that Edward the Confessor, who was by this
time old and had no children, had made a will,
appointing Duke William of Normandy his suc-
cessor, and had informed the Duke of his having
done so. There is no doubt that he was anxious
about his successor; because he had even invited
over, from abroad, Edward the Outlaw, a son of
Ironside, who had come to England with his wife
and three children, but whom the King had
strangely refused to see when he did come, and
who had died in London suddenly (princes were
terribly liable to sudden death in those days),
and had been buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The


A Child’s Histroy of England
54

King might possibly have made such a will; or,
having always been fond of the Normans, he
might have encouraged Norman William to as-
pire to the English crown, by something that he
said to him when he was staying at the English
court. But, certainly William did now aspire to
it; and knowing that Harold would be a powerful
rival, he called together a great assembly of his
nobles, offered Harold his daughter  Adele in
marriage, informed him that he meant on King
Edward’s death to claim the English crown as
his own inheritance, and required Harold then
and there to swear to aid him. Harold, being in
the Duke’s power, took this oath upon the Mis-
sal, or Prayer-book. It is a good example of the
superstitions of the monks, that this Missal, in-
stead of being placed upon a table, was placed
upon a tub; which, when Harold had sworn, was
uncovered, and shown to be full of dead men’s
bones - bones, as the monks pretended, of saints.
This was supposed to make Harold’s oath a great

deal more impressive and binding. As if the great
name of the Creator of Heaven and earth could
be made more solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a
double-tooth, or a finger-nail, of Dunstan!
Within a week or two after Harold’s return to
England, the dreary old Confessor was found to
be dying. After wandering in his mind like a very
weak old man, he died. As he had put himself
entirely in the hands of the monks when he was
alive, they praised him lustily when he was dead.
They had gone so far, already, as to persuade
him that he could work miracles; and had
brought people afflicted with a bad disorder of
the skin, to him, to be touched and cured. This
was called ‘touching for the King’s Evil,’ which
afterwards became a royal custom. You know,
however, Who really touched the sick, and
healed them; and you know His sacred name is
not among the dusty line of human kings.


Charles Dickens
55 

CHAPTER VII
ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD
THE SECOND,
AND CONQUERED BY THE NORMANS 

HAROLD WAS CROWNED King of England on the very
day of the maudlin Confessor’s funeral. He had
good need to be quick about it. When the news
reached Norman William, hunting in his park
at Rouen, he dropped his bow, returned to his
palace, called his nobles to council, and pres-
ently sent ambassadors to Harold, calling on
him to keep his oath and resign the Crown.
Harold would do no such thing. The barons of
France leagued together round Duke William
for the invasion of England. Duke William prom-
ised freely to distribute English wealth and En-
glish lands among them. The Pope sent to
Normandy a consecrated banner, and a ring
containing a hair which he warranted to have
grown on the head of Saint Peter. He blessed 

the enterprise; and cursed Harold; and re-
quested that the Normans would pay ‘Peter’s
Pence’—or a tax to himself of a penny a year on
every house—a little more regularly in future, if
they could make it convenient.
King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders,
who was a vassal of  Harold Hardrada, King of
Norway. This brother, and this Norwegian King,
joining their forces against England, with Duke
William’s help, won a fight in which the English
were commanded by two nobles; and then be-
sieged York. Harold, who was waiting for the
Normans on the coast at Hastings, with his
army, marched to Stamford Bridge upon the
river Derwent to give them instant battle.
He found them drawn up in a hollow circle,
marked out by their shining spears. Riding
round this circle at a distance, to survey it, he
saw a brave figure on horseback, in a blue
mantle and a bright helmet, whose horse sud-
denly stumbled and threw him.


A Child’s Histroy of England
56

‘Who is that man who has fallen?’ Harold
asked of one of his captains.
‘The King of Norway,’ he replied.
‘He is a tall and stately king,’ said Harold, ‘but
his end is near.’
He added, in a little while, ‘Go yonder to my
brother, and tell him, if he withdraw his troops,
he shall be Earl of Northumberland, and rich
and powerful in England.’
The captain rode away and gave the message.
‘What will he give to my friend the King of Nor-
way?’ asked the brother.
‘Seven feet of earth for a grave,’ replied the
captain.
‘No more?’ returned the brother, with a smile.
‘The King of Norway being a tall man, perhaps
a little more,’ replied the captain.
‘Ride back!’ said the brother, ‘and tell King
Harold to make ready for the fight!’
He did so, very soon. And such a fight King
Harold led against that force, that his brother, 

and the Norwegian King, and every chief of note
in all their host, except the Norwegian King’s
son, Olave, to whom he gave honourable dis-
missal, were left dead upon the field. The victo-
rious army marched to York. As King Harold
sat there at the feast, in the midst of all his
company, a stir was heard at the doors; and
messengers all covered with mire from riding
far and fast through broken ground came hur-
rying in, to report that the Normans had landed
in England.
The intelligence was true. They had been
tossed about by contrary winds, and some of
their ships had been wrecked. A part of their
own shore, to which they had been driven back,
was strewn with Norman bodies. But they had
once more made sail, led by the Duke’s own
galley, a present from his wife, upon the prow
whereof the figure of a golden boy stood point-
ing towards England. By day, the banner of the
three Lions of Normandy, the diverse coloured


Charles Dickens
57

sails, the gilded vans, the many decorations of
this gorgeous ship, had glittered in the sun and
sunny water; by night, a light had sparkled like
a star at her mast-head. And now, encamped
near Hastings, with their leader lying in the old
Roman castle of Pevensey, the English retiring
in all directions, the land for miles around
scorched and smoking, fired and pillaged, was
the whole Norman power, hopeful and strong
on English ground.
Harold broke up the feast and hurried to Lon-
don. Within a week, his army was ready. He sent
out spies to ascertain the Norman strength. Will-
iam took them, caused them to be led through his
whole camp, and then dismissed. ‘The Normans,’
said these spies to Harold, ‘are not bearded on the
upper lip as we English are, but are shorn. They
are priests.’ ‘My men,’ replied Harold, with a laugh,
‘will find those priests good soldiers!’
‘The Saxons,’ reported Duke William’s out-
posts of Norman soldiers, who were instructed 

to retire as King Harold’s army advanced, ‘rush
on us through their pillaged country with the
fury of madmen.’
‘Let them come, and come soon!’ said Duke
William.
Some proposals for a reconciliation were made,
but were soon abandoned. In the middle of the
month of October, in the year one thousand and
sixty-six, the Normans and the English came
front to front. All night the armies lay encamped
before each other, in a part of the country then
called Senlac, now called (in remembrance of
them) Battle. With the first dawn of day, they
arose. There, in the faint light, were the English
on a hill; a wood behind them; in their midst,
the Royal banner, representing a fighting war-
rior, woven in gold thread, adorned with precious
stones; beneath the banner, as it rustled in the
wind, stood King Harold on foot, with two of his
remaining brothers by his side; around them,
still and silent as the dead, clustered the whole


A Child’s Histroy of England
58

English army—every soldier covered by his
shield, and bearing in his hand his dreaded
English battle-axe.
On an opposite hill, in three lines, archers,
foot-soldiers, horsemen, was the Norman force.
Of a sudden, a great battle-cry, ‘God help us!’
burst from the Norman lines. The English an-
swered with their own battle-cry, ‘God’s Rood!
Holy Rood!’ The Normans then came sweeping
down the hill to attack the English.
There was one tall Norman Knight who rode be-
fore the Norman army on a prancing horse, throw-
ing up his heavy sword and catching it, and singing
of the bravery of his countrymen. An English Knight,
who rode out from the English force to meet him,
fell by this Knight’s hand. Another English Knight
rode out, and he fell too. But then a third rode out,
and killed the Norman. This was in the first begin-
ning of the fight. It soon raged everywhere.
The English, keeping side by side in a great
mass, cared no more for the showers of Norman 

arrows than if they had been showers of Norman
rain. When the Norman horsemen rode against
them, with their battle-axes they cut men and
horses down. The Normans gave way. The En-
glish pressed forward. A cry went forth among
the Norman troops that Duke William was killed.
Duke William took off his helmet, in order that
his face might be distinctly seen, and rode along
the line before his men. This gave them cour-
age. As they turned again to face the English,
some of their Norman horse divided the pursu-
ing body of the English from the rest, and thus
all that foremost portion of the English army
fell, fighting bravely. The main body still remain-
ing firm, heedless of the Norman arrows, and
with their battle-axes cutting down the crowds
of horsemen when they rode up, like forests of
young trees, Duke William pretended to retreat.
The eager English followed. The Norman army
closed again, and fell upon them with great
slaughter.


Charles Dickens
59

‘Still,’ said Duke William, ‘there are thousands
of the English, firms as rocks around their King.
Shoot upward, Norman archers, that your ar-
rows may fall down upon their faces!’
The sun rose high, and sank, and the battle
still raged. Through all the wild October day,
the clash and din resounded in the air. In the
red sunset, and in the white moonlight, heaps
upon heaps of dead men lay strewn, a dreadful
spectacle, all over the ground.
King Harold, wounded with an arrow in the
eye, was nearly blind. His brothers were already
killed. Twenty Norman Knights, whose battered
armour had flashed fiery and golden in the sun-
shine all day long, and now looked silvery in
the moonlight, dashed forward to seize the Royal
banner from the English Knights and soldiers,
still faithfully collected round their blinded King.
The King received a mortal wound, and dropped.
The English broke and fled. The Normans ral-
lied, and the day was lost. 

O what a sight beneath the moon and stars,
when lights were shining in the tent of the vic-
torious Duke William, which was pitched near
the spot where Harold fell—and he and his
knights were carousing, within—and soldiers
with torches, going slowly to and fro, without,
sought for the corpse of Harold among piles of
dead—and the Warrior, worked in golden thread
and precious stones, lay low, all torn and soiled
with blood—and the three Norman Lions kept
watch over the field! 

CHAPTER VIII
ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE
FIRST, THE NORMAN CONQUEROR 

UPON THE GROUND where the brave Harold fell, Wil-
liam the Norman afterwards founded an abbey,
which, under the name of Battle Abbey, was a
rich and splendid place through many a
troubled year, though now it is a grey ruin over-


A Child’s Histroy of England
60

grown with ivy. But the first work he had to do,
was to conquer the English thoroughly; and that,
as you know by this time, was hard work for
any man.
He ravaged several counties; he burned and
plundered many towns; he laid waste scores
upon scores of miles of pleasant country; he
destroyed innumerable lives. At length Stigand,
Archbishop of Canterbury, with other represen-
tatives of the clergy and the people, went to his
camp, and submitted to him. Edgar, the insig-
nificant son of Edmund Ironside, was pro-
claimed King by others, but nothing came of it.
He fled to Scotland afterwards, where his sis-
ter, who was young and beautiful, married the
Scottish King. Edgar himself was not important
enough for anybody to care much about him.
On Christmas Day, William was crowned in
Westminster Abbey, under the title of  William
the First; but he is best known as  William the
Conqueror. It was a strange coronation. One of 

the bishops who performed the ceremony asked
the Normans, in French, if they would have
Duke William for their king? They answered Yes.
Another of the bishops put the same question
to the Saxons, in English. They too answered
Yes, with a loud shout. The noise being heard
by a guard of Norman horse-soldiers outside,
was mistaken for resistance on the part of the
English. The guard instantly set fire to the
neighbouring houses, and a tumult ensued; in
the midst of which the King, being left alone in
the Abbey, with a few priests (and they all being
in a terrible fright together), was hurriedly
crowned. When the crown was placed upon his
head, he swore to govern the English as well as
the best of their own monarchs. I dare say you
think, as I do, that if we except the Great Alfred,
he might pretty easily have done that.
Numbers of the English nobles had been killed
in the last disastrous battle. Their estates, and
the estates of all the nobles who had fought


Charles Dickens
61

against him there, King William seized upon,
and gave to his own Norman knights and nobles.
Many great English families of the present time
acquired their English lands in this way, and
are very proud of it.
But what is got by force must be maintained
by force. These nobles were obliged to build
castles all over England, to defend their new
property; and, do what he would, the King could
neither soothe nor quell the nation as he wished.
He gradually introduced the Norman language
and the Norman customs; yet, for a long time
the great body of the English remained sullen
and revengeful. On his going over to Normandy,
to visit his subjects there, the oppressions of
his half-brother Odo, whom he left in charge of
his English kingdom, drove the people mad. The
men of Kent even invited over, to take posses-
sion of Dover, their old enemy Count Eustace
of Boulogne, who had led the fray when the
Dover man was slain at his own fireside. The 

men of Hereford, aided by the Welsh, and com-
manded by a chief named Edric the Wild, drove
the Normans out of their country. Some of those
who had been dispossessed of their lands,
banded together in the North of England; some,
in Scotland; some, in the thick woods and
marshes; and whensoever they could fall upon
the Normans, or upon the English who had sub-
mitted to the Normans, they fought, despoiled,
and murdered, like the desperate outlaws that
they were. Conspiracies were set on foot for a
general massacre of the Normans, like the old
massacre of the Danes. In short, the English
were in a murderous mood all through the king-
dom.
King William, fearing he might lose his con-
quest, came back, and tried to pacify the Lon-
don people by soft words. He then set forth to
repress the country people by stern deeds.
Among the towns which he besieged, and where
he killed and maimed the inhabitants without


A Child’s Histroy of England
62

any distinction, sparing none, young or old,
armed or unarmed, were Oxford, Warwick, Le-
icester, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, York. In all
these places, and in many others, fire and sword
worked their utmost horrors, and made the land
dreadful to behold. The streams and rivers were
discoloured with blood; the sky was blackened
with smoke; the fields were wastes of ashes; the
waysides were heaped up with dead. Such are
the fatal results of conquest and ambition! Al-
though William was a harsh and angry man, I
do not suppose that he deliberately meant to
work this shocking ruin, when he invaded En-
gland. But what he had got by the strong hand,
he could only keep by the strong hand, and in
so doing he made England a great grave.
Two sons of Harold, by name  Edmund and
Godwin, came over from Ireland, with some
ships, against the Normans, but were defeated.
This was scarcely done, when the outlaws in
the woods so harassed York, that the Governor 

sent to the King for help. The King despatched
a general and a large force to occupy the town
of Durham. The Bishop of that place met the
general outside the town, and warned him not
to enter, as he would be in danger there. The
general cared nothing for the warning, and went
in with all his men. That night, on every hill
within sight of Durham, signal fires were seen
to blaze. When the morning dawned, the En-
glish, who had assembled in great strength,
forced the gates, rushed into the town, and slew
the Normans every one. The English afterwards
besought the Danes to come and help them.
The Danes came, with two hundred and forty
ships. The outlawed nobles joined them; they
captured York, and drove the Normans out of
that city. Then, William bribed the Danes to go
away; and took such vengeance on the English,
that all the former fire and sword, smoke and
ashes, death and ruin, were nothing compared
with it. In melancholy songs, and doleful sto-


Charles Dickens
63

ries, it was still sung and told by cottage fires
on winter evenings, a hundred years afterwards,
how, in those dreadful days of the Normans,
there was not, from the River Humber to the
River Tyne, one inhabited village left, nor one
cultivated field—how there was nothing but a
dismal ruin, where the human creatures and
the beasts lay dead together.
The outlaws had, at this time, what they called
a Camp of Refuge, in the midst of the fens of
Cambridgeshire. Protected by those marshy
grounds which were difficult of approach, they
lay among the reeds and rushes, and were hid-
den by the mists that rose up from the watery
earth. Now, there also was, at that time, over
the sea in Flanders, an Englishman named
Hereward, whose father had died in his absence,
and whose property had been given to a Norman.
When he heard of this wrong that had been done
him (from such of the exiled English as chanced
to wander into that country), he longed for re- 

venge; and joining the outlaws in their camp of
refuge, became their commander. He was so
good a soldier, that the Normans supposed him
to be aided by enchantment. William, even af-
ter he had made a road three miles in length
across the Cambridgeshire marshes, on purpose
to attack this supposed enchanter, thought it
necessary to engage an old lady, who pretended
to be a sorceress, to come and do a little en-
chantment in the royal cause. For this purpose
she was pushed on before the troops in a wooden
tower; but Hereward very soon disposed of this
unfortunate sorceress, by burning her, tower
and all. The monks of the convent of Ely near at
hand, however, who were fond of good living,
and who found it very uncomfortable to have
the country blockaded and their supplies of
meat and drink cut off, showed the King a se-
cret way of surprising the camp. So Hereward
was soon defeated. Whether he afterwards died
quietly, or whether he was killed after killing


A Child’s Histroy of England
64

sixteen of the men who attacked him (as some
old rhymes relate that he did), I cannot say. His
defeat put an end to the Camp of Refuge; and,
very soon afterwards, the King, victorious both
in Scotland and in England, quelled the last re-
bellious English noble. He then surrounded him-
self with Norman lords, enriched by the prop-
erty of English nobles; had a great survey made
of all the land in England, which was entered
as the property of its new owners, on a roll called
Doomsday Book; obliged the people to put out
their fires and candles at a certain hour every
night, on the ringing of a bell which was called
The Curfew; introduced the Norman dresses and
manners; made the Normans masters every-
where, and the English, servants; turned out
the English bishops, and put Normans in their
places; and showed himself to be the Conqueror
indeed.
But, even with his own Normans, he had a
restless life. They were always hungering and 

thirsting for the riches of the English; and the
more he gave, the more they wanted. His priests
were as greedy as his soldiers. We know of only
one Norman who plainly told his master, the
King, that he had come with him to England to
do his duty as a faithful servant, and that prop-
erty taken by force from other men had no
charms for him. His name was  Guilbert. We
should not forget his name, for it is good to re-
member and to honour honest men.
Besides all these troubles, William the Con-
queror was troubled by quarrels among his sons.
He had three living.  Robert, called  Curthose,
because of his short legs; William, called Rufus
or the Red, from the colour of his hair; and
Henry, fond of learning, and called, in the
Norman language, Beauclerc, or Fine-Scholar.
When Robert grew up, he asked of his father
the government of Normandy, which he had
nominally possessed, as a child, under his
mother, Matilda. The King refusing to grant it,


Charles Dickens
65

Robert became jealous and discontented; and
happening one day, while in this temper, to be
ridiculed by his brothers, who threw water on
him from a balcony as he was walking before
the door, he drew his sword, rushed up-stairs,
and was only prevented by the King himself from
putting them to death. That same night, he hotly
departed with some followers from his father’s
court, and endeavoured to take the Castle of
Rouen by surprise. Failing in this, he shut him-
self up in another Castle in Normandy, which
the King besieged, and where Robert one day
unhorsed and nearly killed him without know-
ing who he was. His submission when he dis-
covered his father, and the intercession of the
queen and others, reconciled them; but not
soundly; for Robert soon strayed abroad, and
went from court to court with his complaints.
He was a gay, careless, thoughtless fellow,
spending all he got on musicians and dancers;
but his mother loved him, and often, against 

the King’s command, supplied him with money
through a messenger named Samson. At length
the incensed King swore he would tear out
Samson’s eyes; and Samson, thinking that his
only hope of safety was in becoming a monk,
became one, went on such errands no more,
and kept his eyes in his head.
All this time, from the turbulent day of his
strange coronation, the Conqueror had been
struggling, you see, at any cost of cruelty and
bloodshed, to maintain what he had seized. All
his reign, he struggled still, with the same ob-
ject ever before him. He was a stern, bold man,
and he succeeded in it.
He loved money, and was particular in his eat-
ing, but he had only leisure to indulge one other
passion, and that was his love of hunting. He
carried it to such a height that he ordered whole
villages and towns to be swept away to make
forests for the deer. Not satisfied with sixty-eight
Royal Forests, he laid waste an immense dis-


A Child’s Histroy of England
66

trict, to form another in Hampshire, called the
New Forest. The many thousands of miserable
peasants who saw their little houses pulled
down, and themselves and children turned into
the open country without a shelter, detested him
for his merciless addition to their many suffer-
ings; and when, in the twenty-first year of his
reign (which proved to be the last), he went over
to Rouen, England was as full of hatred against
him, as if every leaf on every tree in all his Royal
Forests had been a curse upon his head. In the
New Forest, his son Richard (for he had four
sons) had been gored to death by a Stag; and
the people said that this so cruelly-made For-
est would yet be fatal to others of the
Conqueror’s race.
He was engaged in a dispute with the King of
France about some territory. While he stayed
at Rouen, negotiating with that King, he kept
his bed and took medicines: being advised by
his physicians to do so, on account of having 

grown to an unwieldy size. Word being brought
to him that the King of France made light of
this, and joked about it, he swore in a great
rage that he should rue his jests. He assembled
his army, marched into the disputed territory,
burnt—his old way!—the vines, the crops, and
fruit, and set the town of Mantes on fire. But, in
an evil hour; for, as he rode over the hot ruins,
his horse, setting his hoofs upon some burning
embers, started, threw him forward against the
pommel of the saddle, and gave him a mortal
hurt. For six weeks he lay dying in a monastery
near Rouen, and then made his will, giving En-
gland to William, Normandy to Robert, and five
thousand pounds to Henry. And now, his vio-
lent deeds lay heavy on his mind. He ordered
money to be given to many English churches
and monasteries, and—which was much better
repentance—released his prisoners of state,
some of whom had been confined in his dun-
geons twenty years.


Charles Dickens
67

It was a September morning, and the sun was
rising, when the King was awakened from slum-
ber by the sound of a church bell. ‘What bell is
that?’ he faintly asked. They told him it was the
bell of the chapel of Saint Mary. ‘I commend my
soul,’ said he, ‘to Mary!’ and died.
Think of his name, The Conqueror, and then
consider how he lay in death! The moment
he was dead, his physicians, priests, and
nobles, not knowing what contest for the
throne might now take place, or what might
happen in it, hastened away, each man for
himself and his own property; the mercenary
servants of the court began to rob and plun-
der; the body of the King, in the indecent
strife, was rolled from the bed, and lay alone,
for hours, upon the ground. O Conqueror, of
whom so many great names are proud now,
of whom so many great names thought noth-
ing then, it were better to have conquered
one true heart, than England! 

By-and-by, the priests came creeping in with
prayers and candles; and a good knight, named
Herluin, undertook (which no one else would
do) to convey the body to Caen, in Normandy,
in order that it might be buried in St. Stephen’s
church there, which the Conqueror had
founded. But fire, of which he had made such
bad use in his life, seemed to follow him of itself
in death. A great conflagration broke out in the
town when the body was placed in the church;
and those present running out to extinguish the
flames, it was once again left alone.
It was not even buried in peace. It was about
to be let down, in its Royal robes, into a tomb
near the high altar, in presence of a great con-
course of people, when a loud voice in the crowd
cried out, ‘This ground is mine! Upon it, stood
my father’s house. This King despoiled me of
both ground and house to build this church. In
the great name of GOD, I here forbid his body
to be covered with the earth that is my right!’


A Child’s Histroy of England
68

The priests and bishops present, knowing the
speaker’s right, and knowing that the King had
often denied him justice, paid him down sixty
shillings for the grave. Even then, the corpse
was not at rest. The tomb was too small, and
they tried to force it in. It broke, a dreadful smell
arose, the people hurried out into the air, and,
for the third time, it was left alone.
Where were the Conqueror’s three sons, that
they were not at their father’s burial? Robert
was lounging among minstrels, dancers, and
gamesters, in France or Germany. Henry was
carrying his five thousand pounds safely away
in a convenient chest he had got made. William
the Red was hurrying to England, to lay hands
upon the Royal treasure and the crown. 

CHAPTER IX
ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM
THE SECOND, CALLED RUFUS 

WILLIAM THE RED, in breathless haste, secured the
three great forts of Dover, Pevensey, and
Hastings, and made with hot speed for Winches-
ter, where the Royal treasure was kept. The trea-
surer delivering him the keys, he found that it
amounted to sixty thousand pounds in silver,
besides gold and jewels. Possessed of this
wealth, he soon persuaded the Archbishop of
Canterbury to crown him, and became William
the Second, King of England.
Rufus was no sooner on the throne, than he
ordered into prison again the unhappy state
captives whom his father had set free, and di-
rected a goldsmith to ornament his father’s tomb
profusely with gold and silver. It would have
been more dutiful in him to have attended the
sick Conqueror when he was dying; but England


Charles Dickens
69

itself, like this Red King, who once governed it,
has sometimes made expensive tombs for dead
men whom it treated shabbily when they were
alive.
The King’s brother, Robert of Normandy, seem-
ing quite content to be only Duke of that coun-
try; and the King’s other brother, Fine-Scholar,
being quiet enough with his five thousand
pounds in a chest; the King flattered himself,
we may suppose, with the hope of an easy reign.
But easy reigns were difficult to have in those
days. The turbulent Bishop  Odo(who had
blessed the Norman army at the Battle of
Hastings, and who, I dare say, took all the credit
of the victory to himself) soon began, in concert
with some powerful Norman nobles, to trouble
the Red King.
The truth seems to be that this bishop and
his friends, who had lands in England and lands
in Normandy, wished to hold both under one
Sovereign; and greatly preferred a thoughtless 

good-natured person, such as Robert was, to
Rufus; who, though far from being an amiable
man in any respect, was keen, and not to be
imposed upon. They declared in Robert’s favour,
and retired to their castles (those castles were
very troublesome to kings) in a sullen humour.
The Red King, seeing the Normans thus falling
from him, revenged himself upon them by ap-
pealing to the English; to whom he made a vari-
ety of promises, which he never meant to per-
form—in particular, promises to soften the cru-
elty of the Forest Laws; and who, in return, so
aided him with their valour, that  Odo was be-
sieged in the Castle of Rochester, and forced to
abandon it, and to depart from England for ever:
whereupon the other rebellious Norman nobles
were soon reduced and scattered.
Then, the Red King went over to Normandy,
where the people suffered greatly under the loose
rule of Duke Robert. The King’s object was to
seize upon the Duke’s dominions. This, the


A Child’s Histroy of England
70

Duke, of course, prepared to resist; and miser-
able war between the two brothers seemed in-
evitable, when the powerful nobles on both
sides, who had seen so much of war, interfered
to prevent it. A treaty was made. Each of the
two brothers agreed to give up something of his
claims, and that the longer-liver of the two
should inherit all the dominions of the other.
When they had come to this loving understand-
ing, they embraced and joined their forces
against Fine-Scholar; who had bought some
territory of Robert with a part of his five thou-
sand pounds, and was considered a dangerous
individual in consequence.
St. Michael’s Mount, in Normandy (there is an-
other St. Michael’s Mount, in Cornwall, wonder-
fully like it), was then, as it is now, a strong place
perched upon the top of a high rock, around
which, when the tide is in, the sea flows, leaving
no road to the mainland. In this place, Fine-
Scholar shut himself up with his soldiers, and 

here he was closely besieged by his two broth-
ers. At one time, when he was reduced to great
distress for want of water, the generous Robert
not only permitted his men to get water, but sent
Fine-Scholar wine from his own table; and, on
being remonstrated with by the Red King, said
‘What! shall we let our own brother die of thirst?
Where shall we get another, when he is gone?’ At
another time, the Red King riding alone on the
shore of the bay, looking up at the Castle, was
taken by two of Fine-Scholar’s men, one of whom
was about to kill him, when he cried out, ‘Hold,
knave! I am the King of England!’ The story says
that the soldier raised him from the ground re-
spectfully and humbly, and that the King took
him into his service. The story may or may not
be true; but at any rate it is true that Fine-Scholar
could not hold out against his united brothers,
and that he abandoned Mount St. Michael, and
wandered about - as poor and forlorn as other
scholars have been sometimes known to be.


Charles Dickens
71

The Scotch became unquiet in the Red King’s
time, and were twice defeated - the second time,
with the loss of their King, Malcolm, and his
son. The Welsh became unquiet too. Against
them, Rufus was less successful; for they fought
among their native mountains, and did great
execution on the King’s troops. Robert of
Normandy became unquiet too; and, complain-
ing that his brother the King did not faithfully
perform his part of their agreement, took up
arms, and obtained assistance from the King of
France, whom Rufus, in the end, bought off with
vast sums of money. England became unquiet
too. Lord Mowbray, the powerful Earl of
Northumberland, headed a great conspiracy to
depose the King, and to place upon the throne,
Stephen, the Conqueror’s near relative. The plot
was discovered; all the chief conspirators were
seized; some were fined, some were put in
prison, some were put to death. The Earl of
Northumberland himself was shut up in a dun- 

geon beneath Windsor Castle, where he died,
an old man, thirty long years afterwards. The
Priests in England were more unquiet than any
other class or power; for the Red King treated
them with such small ceremony that he refused
to appoint new bishops or archbishops when
the old ones died, but kept all the wealth be-
longing to those offices in his own hands. In
return for this, the Priests wrote his life when
he was dead, and abused him well. I am in-
clined to think, myself, that there was little to
choose between the Priests and the Red King;
that both sides were greedy and designing; and
that they were fairly matched.
The Red King was false of heart, selfish, cov-
etous, and mean. He had a worthy minister in
his favourite, Ralph, nicknamed—for almost ev-
ery famous person had a nickname in those
rough days—Flambard, or the Firebrand. Once,
the King being ill, became penitent, and made
Anselm, a foreign priest and a good man, Arch-


A Child’s Histroy of England
72

bishop of Canterbury. But he no sooner got well
again than he repented of his repentance, and
persisted in wrongfully keeping to himself some
of the wealth belonging to the archbishopric.
This led to violent disputes, which were aggra-
vated by there being in Rome at that time two
rival Popes; each of whom declared he was the
only real original infallible Pope, who couldn’t
make a mistake. At last, Anselm, knowing the
Red King’s character, and not feeling himself
safe in England, asked leave to return abroad.
The Red King gladly gave it; for he knew that as
soon as Anselm was gone, he could begin to
store up all the Canterbury money again, for
his own use.
By such means, and by taxing and oppress-
ing the English people in every possible way,
the Red King became very rich. When he wanted
money for any purpose, he raised it by some
means or other, and cared nothing for the in-
justice he did, or the misery he caused. Having 

the opportunity of buying from Robert the whole
duchy of Normandy for five years, he taxed the
English people more than ever, and made the
very convents sell their plate and valuables to
supply him with the means to make the pur-
chase. But he was as quick and eager in put-
ting down revolt as he was in raising money;
for, a part of the Norman people objecting—very
naturally, I think—to being sold in this way, he
headed an army against them with all the speed
and energy of his father. He was so impatient,
that he embarked for Normandy in a great gale
of wind. And when the sailors told him it was
dangerous to go to sea in such angry weather,
he replied, ‘Hoist sail and away! Did you ever
hear of a king who was drowned?’
You will wonder how it was that even the care-
less Robert came to sell his dominions. It hap-
pened thus. It had long been the custom for
many English people to make journeys to
Jerusalem, which were called pilgrimages, in


Charles Dickens
73

order that they might pray beside the tomb of
Our Saviour there. Jerusalem belonging to the
Turks, and the Turks hating Christianity, these
Christian travellers were often insulted and ill
used. The Pilgrims bore it patiently for some time,
but at length a remarkable man, of great ear-
nestness and eloquence, called Peter the Hermit,
began to preach in various places against the
Turks, and to declare that it was the duty of good
Christians to drive away those unbelievers from
the tomb of Our Saviour, and to take possession
of it, and protect it. An excitement such as the
world had never known before was created. Thou-
sands and thousands of men of all ranks and
conditions departed for Jerusalem to make war
against the Turks. The war is called in history
the first Crusade, and every Crusader wore a
cross marked on his right shoulder.
All the Crusaders were not zealous Christians.
Among them were vast numbers of the restless,
idle, profligate, and adventurous spirit of the 

time. Some became Crusaders for the love of
change; some, in the hope of plunder; some,
because they had nothing to do at home; some,
because they did what the priests told them;
some, because they liked to see foreign coun-
tries; some, because they were fond of knock-
ing men about, and would as soon knock a Turk
about as a Christian. Robert of Normandy may
have been influenced by all these motives; and
by a kind desire, besides, to save the Christian
Pilgrims from bad treatment in future. He
wanted to raise a number of armed men, and to
go to the Crusade. He could not do so without
money. He had no money; and he sold his do-
minions to his brother, the Red King, for five
years. With the large sum he thus obtained, he
fitted out his Crusaders gallantly, and went
away to Jerusalem in martial state. The Red
King, who made money out of everything, stayed
at home, busily squeezing more money out of
Normans and English.


A Child’s Histroy of England
74

After three years of great hardship and suf-
fering—from shipwreck at sea; from travel in
strange lands; from hunger, thirst, and fever,
upon the burning sands of the desert; and from
the fury of the Turks—the valiant Crusaders got
possession of Our Saviour’s tomb. The Turks
were still resisting and fighting bravely, but this
success increased the general desire in Europe
to join the Crusade. Another great French Duke
was proposing to sell his dominions for a term
to the rich Red King, when the Red King’s reign
came to a sudden and violent end.
You have not forgotten the New Forest which
the Conqueror made, and which the miserable
people whose homes he had laid waste, so hated.
The cruelty of the Forest Laws, and the torture
and death they brought upon the peasantry,
increased this hatred. The poor persecuted
country people believed that the New Forest was
enchanted. They said that in thunder-storms,
and on dark nights, demons appeared, moving 

beneath the branches of the gloomy trees. They
said that a terrible spectre had foretold to
Norman hunters that the Red King should be
punished there. And now, in the pleasant sea-
son of May, when the Red King had reigned al-
most thirteen years; and a second Prince of the
Conqueror’s blood—another Richard, the son
of Duke Robert - was killed by an arrow in this
dreaded Forest; the people said that the second
time was not the last, and that there was an-
other death to come.
It was a lonely forest, accursed in the people’s
hearts for the wicked deeds that had been done
to make it; and no man save the King and his
Courtiers and Huntsmen, liked to stray there.
But, in reality, it was like any other forest. In
the spring, the green leaves broke out of the
buds; in the summer, flourished heartily, and
made deep shades; in the winter, shrivelled and
blew down, and lay in brown heaps on the moss.
Some trees were stately, and grew high and


Charles Dickens
75

strong; some had fallen of themselves; some
were felled by the forester’s axe; some were hol-
low, and the rabbits burrowed at their roots;
some few were struck by lightning, and stood
white and bare. There were hill-sides covered
with rich fern, on which the morning dew so
beautifully sparkled; there were brooks, where
the deer went down to drink, or over which the
whole herd bounded, flying from the arrows of
the huntsmen; there were sunny glades, and
solemn places where but little light came
through the rustling leaves. The songs of the
birds in the New Forest were pleasanter to hear
than the shouts of fighting men outside; and
even when the Red King and his Court came
hunting through its solitudes, cursing loud and
riding hard, with a jingling of stirrups and
bridles and knives and daggers, they did much
less harm there than among the English or
Normans, and the stags died (as they lived) far
easier than the people. 

Upon a day in August, the Red King, now rec-
onciled to his brother, Fine-Scholar, came with
a great train to hunt in the New Forest. Fine-
Scholar was of the party. They were a merry
party, and had lain all night at Malwood-Keep,
a hunting-lodge in the forest, where they had
made good cheer, both at supper and break-
fast, and had drunk a deal of wine. The party
dispersed in various directions, as the custom
of hunters then was. The King took with him
only Sir Walter Tyrrel, who was a famous sports-
man, and to whom he had given, before they
mounted horse that morning, two fine arrows.
The last time the King was ever seen alive, he
was riding with Sir Walter Tyrrel, and their dogs
were hunting together.
It was almost night, when a poor charcoal-
burner, passing through the forest with his cart,
came upon the solitary body of a dead man,
shot with an arrow in the breast, and still bleed-
ing. He got it into his cart. It was the body of the


A Child’s Histroy of England
76

King. Shaken and tumbled, with its red beard
all whitened with lime and clotted with blood, it
was driven in the cart by the charcoal-burner
next day to Winchester Cathedral, where it was
received and buried.
Sir Walter Tyrrel, who escaped to Normandy,
and claimed the protection of the King of France,
swore in France that the Red King was suddenly
shot dead by an arrow from an unseen hand,
while they were hunting together; that he was
fearful of being suspected as the King’s mur-
derer; and that he instantly set spurs to his
horse, and fled to the sea-shore. Others declared
that the King and Sir Walter Tyrrel were hunt-
ing in company, a little before sunset, standing
in bushes opposite one another, when a stag
came between them. That the King drew his bow
and took aim, but the string broke. That the
King then cried, ‘Shoot, Walter, in the Devil’s
name!’ That Sir Walter shot. That the arrow
glanced against a tree, was turned aside from 

the stag, and struck the King from his horse,
dead.
By whose hand the Red King really fell, and
whether that hand despatched the arrow to his
breast by accident or by design, is only known
to GOD. Some think his brother may have
caused him to be killed; but the Red King had
made so many enemies, both among priests and
people, that suspicion may reasonably rest upon
a less unnatural murderer. Men know no more
than that he was found dead in the New Forest,
which the suffering people had regarded as a
doomed ground for his race. 

CHAPTER X
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE
FIRST, CALLED FINE-SCHOLAR 

FINE-SCHOLAR, ON HEARING of the Red King’s death,
hurried to Winchester with as much speed as
Rufus himself had made, to seize the Royal trea-


Charles Dickens
77

sure. But the keeper of the treasure who had been
one of the hunting-party in the Forest, made haste
to Winchester too, and, arriving there at about
the same time, refused to yield it up. Upon this,
Fine-Scholar drew his sword, and threatened to
kill the treasurer; who might have paid for his
fidelity with his life, but that he knew longer re-
sistance to be useless when he found the Prince
supported by a company of powerful barons, who
declared they were determined to make him King.
The treasurer, therefore, gave up the money and
jewels of the Crown: and on the third day after
the death of the Red King, being a Sunday, Fine-
Scholar stood before the high altar in Westminster
Abbey, and made a solemn declaration that he
would resign the Church property which his
brother had seized; that he would do no wrong to
the nobles; and that he would restore to the people
the laws of Edward the Confessor, with all the
improvements of William the Conqueror. So be-
gan the reign of King Henry the First. 

The people were attached to their new King,
both because he had known distresses, and
because he was an Englishman by birth and
not a Norman. To strengthen this last hold upon
them, the King wished to marry an English lady;
and could think of no other wife than Maud the
Good, the daughter of the King of Scotland. Al-
though this good Princess did not love the King,
she was so affected by the representations the
nobles made to her of the great charity it would
be in her to unite the Norman and Saxon races,
and prevent hatred and bloodshed between
them for the future, that she consented to be-
come his wife. After some disputing among the
priests, who said that as she had been in a con-
vent in her youth, and had worn the veil of a
nun, she could not lawfully be married—against
which the Princess stated that her aunt, with
whom she had lived in her youth, had indeed
sometimes thrown a piece of black stuff over
her, but for no other reason than because the


A Child’s Histroy of England
78

nun’s veil was the only dress the conquering
Normans respected in girl or woman, and not
because she had taken the vows of a nun, which
she never had—she was declared free to marry,
and was made King Henry’s Queen. A good
Queen she was; beautiful, kind-hearted, and
worthy of a better husband than the King.
For he was a cunning and unscrupulous man,
though firm and clever. He cared very little for
his word, and took any means to gain his ends.
All this is shown in his treatment of his brother
Robert—Robert, who had suffered him to be re-
freshed with water, and who had sent him the
wine from his own table, when he was shut up,
with the crows flying below him, parched with
thirst, in the castle on the top of St. Michael’s
Mount, where his Red brother would have let
him die.
Before the King began to deal with Robert, he
removed and disgraced all the favourites of the
late King; who were for the most part base char- 

acters, much detested by the people. Flambard,
or Firebrand, whom the late King had made
Bishop of Durham, of all things in the world,
Henry imprisoned in the Tower; but Firebrand
was a great joker and a jolly companion, and
made himself so popular with his guards that
they pretended to know nothing about a long
rope that was sent into his prison at the bottom
of a deep flagon of wine. The guards took the
wine, and Firebrand took the rope; with which,
when they were fast asleep, he let himself down
from a window in the night, and so got cleverly
aboard ship and away to Normandy.
Now Robert, when his brother Fine-Scholar
came to the throne, was still absent in the Holy
Land. Henry pretended that Robert had been
made Sovereign of that country; and he had
been away so long, that the ignorant people
believed it. But, behold, when Henry had been
some time King of England, Robert came home
to Normandy; having leisurely returned from


Charles Dickens
79

Jerusalem through Italy, in which beautiful
country he had enjoyed himself very much, and
had married a lady as beautiful as itself! In
Normandy, he found Firebrand waiting to urge
him to assert his claim to the English crown,
and declare war against King Henry. This, after
great loss of time in feasting and dancing with
his beautiful Italian wife among his Norman
friends, he at last did.
The English in general were on King Henry’s
side, though many of the Normans were on
Robert’s. But the English sailors deserted the
King, and took a great part of the English fleet
over to Normandy; so that Robert came to in-
vade this country in no foreign vessels, but in
English ships. The virtuous Anselm, however,
whom Henry had invited back from abroad, and
made Archbishop of Canterbury, was steadfast
in the King’s cause; and it was so well supported
that the two armies, instead of fighting, made a
peace. Poor Robert, who trusted anybody and 

everybody, readily trusted his brother, the King;
and agreed to go home and receive a pension
from England, on condition that all his follow-
ers were fully pardoned. This the King very faith-
fully promised, but Robert was no sooner gone
than he began to punish them.
Among them was the Earl of Shrewsbury, who,
on being summoned by the King to answer to
five-and-forty accusations, rode away to one of
his strong castles, shut himself up therein,
called around him his tenants and vassals, and
fought for his liberty, but was defeated and ban-
ished. Robert, with all his faults, was so true to
his word, that when he first heard of this noble-
man having risen against his brother, he laid
waste the Earl of Shrewsbury’s estates in
Normandy, to show the King that he would
favour no breach of their treaty. Finding, on
better information, afterwards, that the Earl’s
only crime was having been his friend, he came
over to England, in his old thoughtless, warm-


A Child’s Histroy of England
80

hearted way, to intercede with the King, and
remind him of the solemn promise to pardon
all his followers.
This confidence might have put the false King
to the blush, but it did not. Pretending to be
very friendly, he so surrounded his brother with
spies and traps, that Robert, who was quite in
his power, had nothing for it but to renounce
his pension and escape while he could. Getting
home to Normandy, and understanding the King
better now, he naturally allied himself with his
old friend the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had still
thirty castles in that country. This was exactly
what Henry wanted. He immediately declared
that Robert had broken the treaty, and next year
invaded Normandy.
He pretended that he came to deliver the
Normans, at their own request, from his
brother’s misrule. There is reason to fear that
his misrule was bad enough; for his beautiful
wife had died, leaving him with an infant son, 

and his court was again so careless, dissipated,
and ill-regulated, that it was said he sometimes
lay in bed of a day for want of clothes to put on
—his attendants having stolen all his dresses.
But he headed his army like a brave prince and
a gallant soldier, though he had the misfortune
to be taken prisoner by King Henry, with four
hundred of his Knights. Among them was poor
harmless Edgar Atheling, who loved Robert well.
Edgar was not important enough to be severe
with. The King afterwards gave him a small pen-
sion, which he lived upon and died upon, in
peace, among the quiet woods and fields of En-
gland.
And Robert—poor, kind, generous, wasteful,
heedless Robert, with so many faults, and yet
with virtues that might have made a better and
a happier man—what was the end of him? If
the King had had the magnanimity to say with
a kind air, ‘Brother, tell me, before these noble-
men, that from this time you will be my faithful


Charles Dickens
81

follower and friend, and never raise your hand
against me or my forces more!’ he might have
trusted Robert to the death. But the King was
not a magnanimous man. He sentenced his
brother to be confined for life in one of the Royal
Castles. In the beginning of his imprisonment,
he was allowed to ride out, guarded; but he one
day broke away from his guard and galloped of.
He had the evil fortune to ride into a swamp,
where his horse stuck fast and he was taken.
When the King heard of it he ordered him to be
blinded, which was done by putting a red-hot
metal basin on his eyes.
And so, in darkness and in prison, many
years, he thought of all his past life, of the time
he had wasted, of the treasure he had squan-
dered, of the opportunities he had lost, of the
youth he had thrown away, of the talents he
had neglected. Sometimes, on fine autumn
mornings, he would sit and think of the old
hunting parties in the free Forest, where he had 

been the foremost and the gayest. Sometimes,
in the still nights, he would wake, and mourn
for the many nights that had stolen past him at
the gaming-table; sometimes, would seem to
hear, upon the melancholy wind, the old songs
of the minstrels; sometimes, would dream, in
his blindness, of the light and glitter of the
Norman Court. Many and many a time, he
groped back, in his fancy, to Jerusalem, where
he had fought so well; or, at the head of his
brave companions, bowed his feathered helmet
to the shouts of welcome greeting him in Italy,
and seemed again to walk among the sunny
vineyards, or on the shore of the blue sea, with
his lovely wife. And then, thinking of her grave,
and of his fatherless boy, he would stretch out
his solitary arms and weep.
At length, one day, there lay in prison, dead,
with cruel and disfiguring scars upon his eye-
lids, bandaged from his jailer’s sight, but on
which the eternal Heavens looked down, a worn


A Child’s Histroy of England
82

old man of eighty. He had once been Robert of
Normandy. Pity him!
At the time when Robert of Normandy was
taken prisoner by his brother, Robert’s little son
was only five years old. This child was taken,
too, and carried before the King, sobbing and
crying; for, young as he was, he knew he had
good reason to be afraid of his Royal uncle. The
King was not much accustomed to pity those
who were in his power, but his cold heart seemed
for the moment to soften towards the boy. He
was observed to make a great effort, as if to pre-
vent himself from being cruel, and ordered the
child to be taken away; whereupon a certain
Baron, who had married a daughter of Duke
Robert’s (by name, Helie of Saint Saen), took
charge of him, tenderly. The King’s gentleness
did not last long. Before two years were over, he
sent messengers to this lord’s Castle to seize
the child and bring him away. The Baron was
not there at the time, but his servants were faith-

ful, and carried the boy off in his sleep and hid
him. When the Baron came home, and was told
what the King had done, he took the child
abroad, and, leading him by the hand, went from
King to King and from Court to Court, relating
how the child had a claim to the throne of En-
gland, and how his uncle the King, knowing that
he had that claim, would have murdered him,
perhaps, but for his escape.
The youth and innocence of the pretty little
William Fitz-Robert (for that was his name) made
him many friends at that time. When he be-
came a young man, the King of France, uniting
with the French Counts of Anjou and Flanders,
supported his cause against the King of En-
gland, and took many of the King’s towns and
castles in Normandy. But, King Henry, artful
and cunning always, bribed some of William’s
friends with money, some with promises, some
with power. He bought off the Count of Anjou,
by promising to marry his eldest son, also


Charles Dickens
83

named William, to the Count’s daughter; and
indeed the whole trust of this King’s life was in
such bargains, and he believed (as many an-
other King has done since, and as one King did
in France a very little time ago) that every man’s
truth and honour can be bought at some price.
For all this, he was so afraid of William Fitz-
Robert and his friends, that, for a long time, he
believed his life to be in danger; and never lay
down to sleep, even in his palace surrounded
by his guards, without having a sword and buck-
ler at his bedside.
To strengthen his power, the King with great
ceremony betrothed his eldest daughter Matilda,
then a child only eight years old, to be the wife
of Henry the Fifth, the Emperor of Germany. To
raise her marriage-portion, he taxed the English
people in a most oppressive manner; then
treated them to a great procession, to restore
their good humour; and sent Matilda away, in
fine state, with the German ambassadors, to be 

educated in the country of her future husband.
And now his Queen, Maud the Good, unhap-
pily died. It was a sad thought for that gentle
lady, that the only hope with which she had
married a man whom she had never loved—the
hope of reconciling the Norman and English
races - had failed. At the very time of her death,
Normandy and all France was in arms against
England; for, so soon as his last danger was
over, King Henry had been false to all the French
powers he had promised, bribed, and bought,
and they had naturally united against him. Af-
ter some fighting, however, in which few suf-
fered but the unhappy common people (who
always suffered, whatsoever was the matter),
he began to promise, bribe, and buy again; and
by those means, and by the help of the Pope,
who exerted himself to save more bloodshed,
and by solemnly declaring, over and over again,
that he really was in earnest this time, and
would keep his word, the King made peace.


A Child’s Histroy of England
84

One of the first consequences of this peace
was, that the King went over to Normandy with
his son Prince William and a great retinue, to
have the Prince acknowledged as his successor
by the Norman Nobles, and to contract the
promised marriage (this was one of the many
promises the King had broken) between him and
the daughter of the Count of Anjou. Both these
things were triumphantly done, with great show
and rejoicing; and on the twenty-fifth of Novem-
ber, in the year one thousand one hundred and
twenty, the whole retinue prepared to embark
at the Port of Barfleur, for the voyage home.
On that day, and at that place, there came to
the King, Fitz-Stephen, a sea-captain, and said:
‘My liege, my father served your father all his
life, upon the sea. He steered the ship with the
golden boy upon the prow, in which your father
sailed to conquer England. I beseech you to
grant me the same office. I have a fair vessel in
the harbour here, called The White Ship, 

manned by fifty sailors of renown. I pray you,
Sire, to let your servant have the honour of steer-
ing you in The White Ship to England!’
‘I am sorry, friend,’ replied the King, ‘that my
vessel is already chosen, and that I cannot
(therefore) sail with the son of the man who
served my father. But the Prince and all his
company shall go along with you, in the fair
White Ship, manned by the fifty sailors of re-
nown.’
An hour or two afterwards, the King set sail
in the vessel he had chosen, accompanied by
other vessels, and, sailing all night with a fair
and gentle wind, arrived upon the coast of En-
gland in the morning. While it was yet night,
the people in some of those ships heard a faint
wild cry come over the sea, and wondered what
it was.
Now, the Prince was a dissolute, debauched
young man of eighteen, who bore no love to the
English, and had declared that when he came


Charles Dickens
85

to the throne he would yoke them to the plough
like oxen. He went aboard The White Ship, with
one hundred and forty youthful Nobles like him-
self, among whom were eighteen noble ladies of
the highest rank. All this gay company, with
their servants and the fifty sailors, made three
hundred souls aboard the fair White Ship.
‘Give three casks of wine, Fitz-Stephen,’ said
the Prince, ‘to the fifty sailors of renown! My
father the King has sailed out of the harbour.
What time is there to make merry here, and yet
reach England with the rest?’
‘Prince!’ said Fitz-Stephen, ‘before morning,
my fifty and The White Ship shall overtake the
swiftest vessel in attendance on your father the
King, if we sail at midnight!’
Then the Prince commanded to make merry;
and the sailors drank out the three casks of
wine; and the Prince and all the noble company
danced in the moonlight on the deck of The
White Ship. 

When, at last, she shot out of the harbour of
Barfleur, there was not a sober seaman on
board. But the sails were all set, and the oars
all going merrily. Fitz-Stephen had the helm.
The gay young nobles and the beautiful ladies,
wrapped in mantles of various bright colours to
protect them from the cold, talked, laughed, and
sang. The Prince encouraged the fifty sailors to
row harder yet, for the honour of The White Ship.
Crash! A terrific cry broke from three hun-
dred hearts. It was the cry the people in the
distant vessels of the King heard faintly on the
water. The White Ship had struck upon a rock -
was filling—going down!
Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat,
with some few Nobles. ‘Push off,’ he whispered;
‘and row to land. It is not far, and the sea is
smooth. The rest of us must die.’
But, as they rowed away, fast, from the sink-
ing ship, the Prince heard the voice of his sister
Marie, the Countess of Perche, calling for help.


A Child’s Histroy of England
86

He never in his life had been so good as he was
then. He cried in an agony, ‘Row back at any
risk! I cannot bear to leave her!’
They rowed back. As the Prince held out his
arms to catch his sister, such numbers leaped
in, that the boat was overset. And in the same
instant The White Ship went down.
Only two men floated. They both clung to the
main yard of the ship, which had broken from
the mast, and now supported them. One asked
the other who he was? He said, ‘I am a noble-
man, Godfrey by name, the son of  Gilbert de
L’aigle. And you?’ said he. ‘I am Berold, a poor
butcher of Rouen,’ was the answer. Then, they
said together, ‘Lord be merciful to us both!’ and
tried to encourage one another, as they drifted
in the cold benumbing sea on that unfortunate
November night.
By-and-by, another man came swimming to-
wards them, whom they knew, when he pushed
aside his long wet hair, to be Fitz-Stephen. 

‘Where is the Prince?’ said he. ‘Gone! Gone!’ the
two cried together. ‘Neither he, nor his brother,
nor his sister, nor the King’s niece, nor her
brother, nor any one of all the brave three hun-
dred, noble or commoner, except we three, has
risen above the water!’ Fitz-Stephen, with a
ghastly face, cried, ‘Woe! woe, to me!’ and sunk
to the bottom.
The other two clung to the yard for some
hours. At length the young noble said faintly, ‘I
am exhausted, and chilled with the cold, and
can hold no longer. Farewell, good friend! God
preserve you!’ So, he dropped and sunk; and of
all the brilliant crowd, the poor Butcher of Rouen
alone was saved. In the morning, some fisher-
men saw him floating in his sheep-skin coat,
and got him into their boat - the sole relater of
the dismal tale.
For three days, no one dared to carry the in-
telligence to the King. At length, they sent into
his presence a little boy, who, weeping bitterly,


Charles Dickens
87

and kneeling at his feet, told him that The White
Ship was lost with all on board. The King fell to
the ground like a dead man, and never, never
afterwards, was seen to smile.
But he plotted again, and promised again, and
bribed and bought again, in his old deceitful
way. Having no son to succeed him, after all his
pains (‘The Prince will never yoke us to the
plough, now!’ said the English people), he took
a second wife—Adelais or Alice, a duke’s daugh-
ter, and the Pope’s niece. Having no more chil-
dren, however, he proposed to the Barons to
swear that they would recognise as his succes-
sor, his daughter Matilda, whom, as she was
now a widow, he married to the eldest son of
the Count of Anjou,  Geoffrey , surnamed
Plantagenet, from a custom he had of wearing a
sprig of flowering broom (called Genˆt in French)
in his cap for a feather. As one false man usu-
ally makes many, and as a false King, in par-
ticular, is pretty certain to make a false Court, 

the Barons took the oath about the succession
of Matilda (and her children after her), twice
over, without in the least intending to keep it.
The King was now relieved from any remaining
fears of William Fitz-Robert, by his death in the
Monastery of St. Omer, in France, at twenty-six
years old, of a pike-wound in the hand. And as
Matilda gave birth to three sons, he thought the
succession to the throne secure.
He spent most of the latter part of his life,
which was troubled by family quarrels, in
Normandy, to be near Matilda. When he had
reigned upward of thirty-five years, and was
sixty-seven years old, he died of an indigestion
and fever, brought on by eating, when he was
far from well, of a fish called Lamprey, against
which he had often been cautioned by his phy-
sicians. His remains were brought over to Read-
ing Abbey to be buried.
You may perhaps hear the cunning and prom-
ise-breaking of King Henry the First, called


A Child’s Histroy of England
88

‘policy’ by some people, and ‘diplomacy’ by oth-
ers. Neither of these fine words will in the least
mean that it was true; and nothing that is not
true can possibly be good.
His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love
of learning—I should have given him greater
credit even for that, if it had been strong enough
to induce him to spare the eyes of a certain poet
he once took prisoner, who was a knight be-
sides. But he ordered the poet’s eyes to be torn
from his head, because he had laughed at him
in his verses; and the poet, in the pain of that
torture, dashed out his own brains against his
prison wall. King Henry the First was avaricious,
revengeful, and so false, that I suppose a man
never lived whose word was less to be relied
upon. 

CHAPTER XI
ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA
AND STEPHEN 

THE KING WAS NO SOONER dead than all the plans
and schemes he had laboured at so long, and
lied so much for, crumbled away like a hollow
heap of sand. Stephen, whom he had never mis-
trusted or suspected, started up to claim the
throne.
Stephen was the son of Adela, the Conqueror’s
daughter, married to the Count of Blois. To
Stephen, and to his brother Henry, the late King
had been liberal; making Henry Bishop of Win-
chester, and finding a good marriage for
Stephen, and much enriching him. This did not
prevent Stephen from hastily producing a false
witness, a servant of the late King, to swear that
the King had named him for his heir upon his
death-bed. On this evidence the Archbishop of
Canterbury crowned him. The new King, so sud-


Charles Dickens
89

denly made, lost not a moment in seizing the
Royal treasure, and hiring foreign soldiers with
some of it to protect his throne.
If the dead King had even done as the false
witness said, he would have had small right to
will away the English people, like so many sheep
or oxen, without their consent. But he had, in
fact, bequeathed all his territory to Matilda; who,
supported by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, soon
began to dispute the crown. Some of the power-
ful barons and priests took her side; some took
Stephen’s; all fortified their castles; and again
the miserable English people were involved in
war, from which they could never derive advan-
tage whosoever was victorious, and in which all
parties plundered, tortured, starved, and ruined
them.
Five years had passed since the death of Henry
the First—and during those five years there had
been two terrible invasions by the people of Scot-
land under their King, David, who was at last 

defeated with all his army—when Matilda, at-
tended by her brother Robert and a large force,
appeared in England to maintain her claim. A
battle was fought between her troops and King
Stephen’s at Lincoln; in which the King himself
was taken prisoner, after bravely fighting until
his battle-axe and sword were broken, and was
carried into strict confinement at Gloucester.
Matilda then submitted herself to the Priests,
and the Priests crowned her Queen of England.
She did not long enjoy this dignity. The people
of London had a great affection for Stephen;
many of the Barons considered it degrading to
be ruled by a woman; and the Queen’s temper
was so haughty that she made innumerable
enemies. The people of London revolted; and, in
alliance with the troops of Stephen, besieged
her at Winchester, where they took her brother
Robert prisoner, whom, as her best soldier and
chief general, she was glad to exchange for
Stephen himself, who thus regained his liberty.


A Child’s Histroy of England
90

Then, the long war went on afresh. Once, she
was pressed so hard in the Castle of Oxford, in
the winter weather when the snow lay thick
upon the ground, that her only chance of es-
cape was to dress herself all in white, and, ac-
companied by no more than three faithful
Knights, dressed in like manner that their fig-
ures might not be seen from Stephen’s camp as
they passed over the snow, to steal away on foot,
cross the frozen Thames, walk a long distance,
and at last gallop away on horseback. All this
she did, but to no great purpose then; for her
brother dying while the struggle was yet going
on, she at last withdrew to Normandy.
In two or three years after her withdrawal her
cause appeared in England, afresh, in the per-
son of her son Henry, young Plantagenet, who,
at only eighteen years of age, was very power-
ful: not only on account of his mother having
resigned all Normandy to him, but also from
his having married Eleanor, the divorced wife of 

the French King, a bad woman, who had great
possessions in France. Louis, the French King,
not relishing this arrangement, helped Eustace,
King Stephen’s son, to invade Normandy: but
Henry drove their united forces out of that coun-
try, and then returned here, to assist his parti-
sans, whom the King was then besieging at
Wallingford upon the Thames. Here, for two
days, divided only by the river, the two armies
lay encamped opposite to one another—on the
eve, as it seemed to all men, of another desper-
ate fight, when the  Earl of Arundel took heart
and said ‘that it was not reasonable to prolong
the unspeakable miseries of two kingdoms to
minister to the ambition of two princes.’
Many other noblemen repeating and support-
ing this when it was once uttered, Stephen and
young Plantagenet went down, each to his own
bank of the river, and held a conversation across
it, in which they arranged a truce; very much to
the dissatisfaction of Eustace, who swaggered


Charles Dickens
91

away with some followers, and laid violent hands
on the Abbey of St. Edmund’s-Bury, where he
presently died mad. The truce led to a solemn
council at Winchester, in which it was agreed
that Stephen should retain the crown, on con-
dition of his declaring Henry his successor; that
William, another son of the King’s, should in-
herit his father’s rightful possessions; and that
all the Crown lands which Stephen had given
away should be recalled, and all the Castles he
had permitted to be built demolished. Thus ter-
minated the bitter war, which had now lasted
fifteen years, and had again laid England waste.
In the next year Stephen died, after a troubled
reign of nineteen years.
Although King Stephen was, for the time in
which he lived, a humane and moderate man,
with many excellent qualities; and although
nothing worse is known of him than his usur-
pation of the Crown, which he probably excused
to himself by the consideration that King Henry 

the First was a usurper too - which was no ex-
cuse at all; the people of England suffered more
in these dread nineteen years, than at any
former period even of their suffering history. In
the division of the nobility between the two ri-
val claimants of the Crown, and in the growth
of what is called the Feudal System (which made
the peasants the born vassals and mere slaves
of the Barons), every Noble had his strong
Castle, where he reigned the cruel king of all
the neighbouring people. Accordingly, he per-
petrated whatever cruelties he chose. And never
were worse cruelties committed upon earth than
in wretched England in those nineteen years.
The writers who were living then describe them
fearfully. They say that the castles were filled
with devils rather than with men; that the peas-
ants, men and women, were put into dungeons
for their gold and silver, were tortured with fire
and smoke, were hung up by the thumbs, were
hung up by the heels with great weights to their


A Child’s Histroy of England
92

heads, were torn with jagged irons, killed with
hunger, broken to death in narrow chests filled
with sharp-pointed stones, murdered in count-
less fiendish ways. In England there was no
corn, no meat, no cheese, no butter, there were
no tilled lands, no harvests. Ashes of burnt
towns, and dreary wastes, were all that the trav-
eller, fearful of the robbers who prowled abroad
at all hours, would see in a long day’s journey;
and from sunrise until night, he would not come
upon a home.
The clergy sometimes suffered, and heavily
too, from pillage, but many of them had castles
of their own, and fought in helmet and armour
like the barons, and drew lots with other fight-
ing men for their share of booty. The Pope (or
Bishop of Rome), on King Stephen’s resisting
his ambition, laid England under an Interdict
at one period of this reign; which means that
he allowed no service to be performed in the
churches, no couples to be married, no bells to 

be rung, no dead bodies to be buried. Any man
having the power to refuse these things, no
matter whether he were called a Pope or a
Poulterer, would, of course, have the power of
afflicting numbers of innocent people. That noth-
ing might be wanting to the miseries of King
Stephen’s time, the Pope threw in this contri-
bution to the public store - not very like the
widow’s contribution, as I think, when Our Sav-
iour sat in Jerusalem over-against the Treasury,
‘and she threw in two mites, which make a far-
thing.’ 

CHAPTER XII
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY
THE SECOND - PART THE FIRST 

HENRY PLANTAGENET, when he was but twenty-one
years old, quietly succeeded to the throne of
England, according to his agreement made with
the late King at Winchester. Six weeks after


Charles Dickens
93

Stephen’s death, he and his Queen, Eleanor,
were crowned in that city; into which they rode
on horseback in great state, side by side, amidst
much shouting and rejoicing, and clashing of
music, and strewing of flowers.
The reign of King Henry the Second began well.
The King had great possessions, and (what with
his own rights, and what with those of his wife)
was lord of one-third part of France. He was a
young man of vigour, ability, and resolution, and
immediately applied himself to remove some of
the evils which had arisen in the last unhappy
reign. He revoked all the grants of land that had
been hastily made, on either side, during the
late struggles; he obliged numbers of disorderly
soldiers to depart from England; he reclaimed
all the castles belonging to the Crown; and he
forced the wicked nobles to pull down their own
castles, to the number of eleven hundred, in
which such dismal cruelties had been inflicted
on the people. The King’s brother, Geoffrey, rose 

against him in France, while he was so well
employed, and rendered it necessary for him to
repair to that country; where, after he had sub-
dued and made a friendly arrangement with his
brother (who did not live long), his ambition to
increase his possessions involved him in a war
with the French King, Louis, with whom he had
been on such friendly terms just before, that to
the French King’s infant daughter, then a baby
in the cradle, he had promised one of his little
sons in marriage, who was a child of five years
old. However, the war came to nothing at last,
and the Pope made the two Kings friends again.
Now, the clergy, in the troubles of the last
reign, had gone on very ill indeed. There were
all kinds of criminals among them—murderers,
thieves, and vagabonds; and the worst of the
matter was, that the good priests would not give
up the bad priests to justice, when they com-
mitted crimes, but persisted in sheltering and
defending them. The King, well knowing that


A Child’s Histroy of England
94

there could be no peace or rest in England while
such things lasted, resolved to reduce the power
of the clergy; and, when he had reigned seven
years, found (as he considered) a good opportu-
nity for doing so, in the death of the Archbishop
of Canterbury. ‘I will have for the new Arch-
bishop,’ thought the King, ‘a friend in whom I
can trust, who will help me to humble these
rebellious priests, and to have them dealt with,
when they do wrong, as other men who do wrong
are dealt with.’ So, he resolved to make his
favourite, the new Archbishop; and this favourite
was so extraordinary a man, and his story is so
curious, that I must tell you all about him.
Once upon a time, a worthy merchant of Lon-
don, named Gilbert a Becket, made a pilgrim-
age to the Holy Land, and was taken prisoner
by a Saracen lord. This lord, who treated him
kindly and not like a slave, had one fair daugh-
ter, who fell in love with the merchant; and who
told him that she wanted to become a Chris- 

tian, and was willing to marry him if they could
fly to a Christian country. The merchant re-
turned her love, until he found an opportunity
to escape, when he did not trouble himself about
the Saracen lady, but escaped with his servant
Richard, who had been taken prisoner along
with him, and arrived in England and forgot her.
The Saracen lady, who was more loving than
the merchant, left her father’s house in disguise
to follow him, and made her way, under many
hardships, to the sea-shore. The merchant had
taught her only two English words (for I sup-
pose he must have learnt the Saracen tongue
himself, and made love in that language), of
which London was one, and his own name, Gil-
bert, the other. She went among the ships, say-
ing, ‘London! London!’ over and over again, un-
til the sailors understood that she wanted to
find an English vessel that would carry her
there; so they showed her such a ship, and she
paid for her passage with some of her jewels,


Charles Dickens
95

and sailed away. Well! The merchant was sit-
ting in his counting-house in London one day,
when he heard a great noise in the street; and
presently Richard came running in from the
warehouse, with his eyes wide open and his
breath almost gone, saying, ‘Master, master,
here is the Saracen lady!’ The merchant thought
Richard was mad; but Richard said, ‘No, mas-
ter! As I live, the Saracen lady is going up and
down the city, calling Gilbert! Gilbert!’ Then, he
took the merchant by the sleeve, and pointed
out of window; and there they saw her among
the gables and water-spouts of the dark, dirty
street, in her foreign dress, so forlorn, sur-
rounded by a wondering crowd, and passing
slowly along, calling Gilbert, Gilbert! When the
merchant saw her, and thought of the tender-
ness she had shown him in his captivity, and of
her constancy, his heart was moved, and he ran
down into the street; and she saw him coming,
and with a great cry fainted in his arms. They 

were married without loss of time, and Richard
(who was an excellent man) danced with joy the
whole day of the wedding; and they all lived
happy ever afterwards.
This merchant and this Saracen lady had one
son, Thomas a Becket. He it was who became
the Favourite of King Henry the Second.
He had become Chancellor, when the King
thought of making him Archbishop. He was
clever, gay, well educated, brave; had fought in
several battles in France; had defeated a French
knight in single combat, and brought his horse
away as a token of the victory. He lived in a noble
palace, he was the tutor of the young Prince
Henry, he was served by one hundred and forty
knights, his riches were immense. The King once
sent him as his ambassador to France; and the
French people, beholding in what state he trav-
elled, cried out in the streets, ‘How splendid must
the King of England be, when this is only the
Chancellor!’ They had good reason to wonder at


A Child’s Histroy of England
96

the magnificence of Thomas a Becket, for, when
he entered a French town, his procession was
headed by two hundred and fifty singing boys;
then, came his hounds in couples; then, eight
waggons, each drawn by five horses driven by
five drivers: two of the waggons filled with strong
ale to be given away to the people; four, with
his gold and silver plate and stately clothes; two,
with the dresses of his numerous servants.
Then, came twelve horses, each with a monkey
on his back; then, a train of people bearing
shields and leading fine war-horses splendidly
equipped; then, falconers with hawks upon their
wrists; then, a host of knights, and gentlemen
and priests; then, the Chancellor with his bril-
liant garments flashing in the sun, and all the
people capering and shouting with delight.
The King was well pleased with all this, think-
ing that it only made himself the more magnifi-
cent to have so magnificent a favourite; but he
sometimes jested with the Chancellor upon his 

splendour too. Once, when they were riding to-
gether through the streets of London in hard
winter weather, they saw a shivering old man
in rags. ‘Look at the poor object!’ said the King.
‘Would it not be a charitable act to give that
aged man a comfortable warm cloak?’ ‘Undoubt-
edly it would,’ said Thomas a Becket, ‘and you
do well, Sir, to think of such Christian duties.’
‘Come!’ cried the King, ‘then give him your cloak!’
It was made of rich crimson trimmed with er-
mine. The King tried to pull it off, the Chancel-
lor tried to keep it on, both were near rolling
from their saddles in the mud, when the Chan-
cellor submitted, and the King gave the cloak to
the old beggar: much to the beggar’s astonish-
ment, and much to the merriment of all the
courtiers in attendance. For, courtiers are not
only eager to laugh when the King laughs, but
they really do enjoy a laugh against a Favourite.
‘I will make,’ thought King Henry the second,
‘this Chancellor of mine, Thomas a Becket, Arch-


Charles Dickens
97

bishop of Canterbury. He will then be the head
of the Church, and, being devoted to me, will
help me to correct the Church. He has always
upheld my power against the power of the clergy,
and once publicly told some bishops (I remem-
ber), that men of the Church were equally bound
to me, with men of the sword. Thomas a Becket
is the man, of all other men in England, to help
me in my great design.’ So the King, regardless
of all objection, either that he was a fighting
man, or a lavish man, or a courtly man, or a
man of pleasure, or anything but a likely man
for the office, made him Archbishop accordingly.
Now, Thomas a Becket was proud and loved to
be famous. He was already famous for the pomp
of his life, for his riches, his gold and silver plate,
his waggons, horses, and attendants. He could
do no more in that way than he had done; and
being tired of that kind of fame (which is a very
poor one), he longed to have his name celebrated
for something else. Nothing, he knew, would ren-

der him so famous in the world, as the setting of
his utmost power and ability against the utmost
power and ability of the King. He resolved with
the whole strength of his mind to do it.
He may have had some secret grudge against
the King besides. The King may have offended
his proud humour at some time or other, for
anything I know. I think it likely, because it is a
common thing for Kings, Princes, and other
great people, to try the tempers of their
favourites rather severely. Even the little affair
of the crimson cloak must have been anything
but a pleasant one to a haughty man. Thomas
a Becket knew better than any one in England
what the King expected of him. In all his sump-
tuous life, he had never yet been in a position
to disappoint the King. He could take up that
proud stand now, as head of the Church; and
he determined that it should be written in his-
tory, either that he subdued the King, or that
the King subdued him.


A Child’s Histroy of England
98

So, of a sudden, he completely altered the
whole manner of his life. He turned off all his
brilliant followers, ate coarse food, drank bitter
water, wore next his skin sackcloth covered with
dirt and vermin (for it was then thought very
religious to be very dirty), flogged his back to
punish himself, lived chiefly in a little cell,
washed the feet of thirteen poor people every
day, and looked as miserable as he possibly
could. If he had put twelve hundred monkeys
on horseback instead of twelve, and had gone
in procession with eight thousand waggons in-
stead of eight, he could not have half aston-
ished the people so much as by this great
change. It soon caused him to be more talked
about as an Archbishop than he had been as a
Chancellor.
The King was very angry; and was made still
more so, when the new Archbishop, claiming
various estates from the nobles as being right-
fully Church property, required the King him- 

self, for the same reason, to give up Rochester
Castle, and Rochester City too. Not satisfied with
this, he declared that no power but himself
should appoint a priest to any Church in the
part of England over which he was Archbishop;
and when a certain gentleman of Kent made
such an appointment, as he claimed to have
the right to do, Thomas a Becket excommuni-
cated him.
Excommunication was, next to the Interdict I
told you of at the close of the last chapter, the
great weapon of the clergy. It consisted in de-
claring the person who was excommunicated,
an outcast from the Church and from all reli-
gious offices; and in cursing him all over, from
the top of his head to the sole of his foot, whether
he was standing up, lying down, sitting, kneel-
ing, walking, running, hopping, jumping, gap-
ing, coughing, sneezing, or whatever else he was
doing. This unchristian nonsense would of
course have made no sort of difference to the


Charles Dickens
99

person cursed—who could say his prayers at
home if he were shut out of church, and whom
none but GOD could judge—but for the fears
and superstitions of the people, who avoided
excommunicated persons, and made their lives
unhappy. So, the King said to the New Arch-
bishop, ‘Take off this Excommunication from
this gentleman of Kent.’ To which the Arch-
bishop replied, ‘I shall do no such thing.’
The quarrel went on. A priest in Worcestershire
committed a most dreadful murder, that
aroused the horror of the whole nation. The King
demanded to have this wretch delivered up, to
be tried in the same court and in the same way
as any other murderer. The Archbishop refused,
and kept him in the Bishop’s prison. The King,
holding a solemn assembly in Westminster Hall,
demanded that in future all priests found guilty
before their Bishops of crimes against the law
of the land should be considered priests no
longer, and should be delivered over to the law 

of the land for punishment. The Archbishop
again refused. The King required to know
whether the clergy would obey the ancient cus-
toms of the country? Every priest there, but one,
said, after Thomas a Becket, ‘Saving my order.’
This really meant that they would only obey
those customs when they did not interfere with
their own claims; and the King went out of the
Hall in great wrath.
Some of the clergy began to be afraid, now,
that they were going too far. Though Thomas a
Becket was otherwise as unmoved as
Westminster Hall, they prevailed upon him, for
the sake of their fears, to go to the King at
Woodstock, and promise to observe the ancient
customs of the country, without saying anything
about his order. The King received this submis-
sion favourably, and summoned a great coun-
cil of the clergy to meet at the Castle of
Clarendon, by Salisbury. But when the council
met, the Archbishop again insisted on the words


A Child’s Histroy of England
100

‘saying my order;’ and he still insisted, though
lords entreated him, and priests wept before him
and knelt to him, and an adjoining room was
thrown open, filled with armed soldiers of the
King, to threaten him. At length he gave way,
for that time, and the ancient customs (which
included what the King had demanded in vain)
were stated in writing, and were signed and
sealed by the chief of the clergy, and were called
the Constitutions of Clarendon.
The quarrel went on, for all that. The Archbishop
tried to see the King. The King would not see him.
The Archbishop tried to escape from England. The
sailors on the coast would launch no boat to take
him away. Then, he again resolved to do his worst
in opposition to the King, and began openly to set
the ancient customs at defiance.
The King summoned him before a great coun-
cil at Northampton, where he accused him of
high treason, and made a claim against him,
which was not a just one, for an enormous sum 

of money. Thomas a Becket was alone against
the whole assembly, and the very Bishops ad-
vised him to resign his office and abandon his
contest with the King. His great anxiety and
agitation stretched him on a sick-bed for two
days, but he was still undaunted. He went to
the adjourned council, carrying a great cross in
his right hand, and sat down holding it erect
before him. The King angrily retired into an in-
ner room. The whole assembly angrily retired
and left him there. But there he sat. The Bish-
ops came out again in a body, and renounced
him as a traitor. He only said, ‘I hear!’ and sat
there still. They retired again into the inner
room, and his trial proceeded without him. By-
and-by, the Earl of Leicester, heading the bar-
ons, came out to read his sentence. He refused
to hear it, denied the power of the court, and
said he would refer his cause to the Pope. As he
walked out of the hall, with the cross in his hand,
some of those present picked up rushes—rushes


Charles Dickens
101

were strewn upon the floors in those days by
way of carpet—and threw them at him. He
proudly turned his head, and said that were he
not Archbishop, he would chastise those cow-
ards with the sword he had known how to use
in bygone days. He then mounted his horse,
and rode away, cheered and surrounded by the
common people, to whom he threw open his
house that night and gave a supper, supping
with them himself. That same night he secretly
departed from the town; and so, travelling by
night and hiding by day, and calling himself
‘Brother Dearman,’ got away, not without diffi-
culty, to Flanders.
The struggle still went on. The angry King took
possession of the revenues of the archbishopric,
and banished all the relations and servants of
Thomas a Becket, to the number of four hun-
dred. The Pope and the French King both pro-
tected him, and an abbey was assigned for his
residence. Stimulated by this support, Thomas 

a Becket, on a great festival day, formally pro-
ceeded to a great church crowded with people,
and going up into the pulpit publicly cursed and
excommunicated all who had supported the
Constitutions of Clarendon: mentioning many
English noblemen by name, and not distantly
hinting at the King of England himself.
When intelligence of this new affront was car-
ried to the King in his chamber, his passion was
so furious that he tore his clothes, and rolled
like a madman on his bed of straw and rushes.
But he was soon up and doing. He ordered all
the ports and coasts of England to be narrowly
watched, that no letters of Interdict might be
brought into the kingdom; and sent messen-
gers and bribes to the Pope’s palace at Rome.
Meanwhile, Thomas a Becket, for his part, was
not idle at Rome, but constantly employed his
utmost arts in his own behalf. Thus the contest
stood, until there was peace between France and
England (which had been for some time at war),


A Child’s Histroy of England
102

and until the two children of the two Kings were
married in celebration of it. Then, the French
King brought about a meeting between Henry
and his old favourite, so long his enemy.
Even then, though Thomas a Becket knelt be-
fore the King, he was obstinate and immovable
as to those words about his order. King Louis of
France was weak enough in his veneration for
Thomas a Becket and such men, but this was a
little too much for him. He said that a Becket
‘wanted to be greater than the saints and better
than St. Peter,’ and rode away from him with
the King of England. His poor French Majesty
asked a Becket’s pardon for so doing, however,
soon afterwards, and cut a very pitiful figure.
At last, and after a world of trouble, it came to
this. There was another meeting on French
ground between King Henry and Thomas a
Becket, and it was agreed that Thomas a Becket
should be Archbishop of Canterbury, according
to the customs of former Archbishops, and that 

the King should put him in possession of the
revenues of that post. And now, indeed, you
might suppose the struggle at an end, and Tho-
mas a Becket at rest. no, not even yet. For Tho-
mas a Becket hearing, by some means, that King
Henry, when he was in dread of his kingdom
being placed under an interdict, had had his el-
dest son Prince Henry secretly crowned, not only
persuaded the Pope to suspend the Archbishop
of York who had performed that ceremony, and
to excommunicate the Bishops who had assisted
at it, but sent a messenger of his own into En-
gland, in spite of all the King’s precautions along
the coast, who delivered the letters of excommu-
nication into the Bishops’ own hands. Thomas a
Becket then came over to England himself, after
an absence of seven years. He was privately
warned that it was dangerous to come, and that
an ireful knight, named  Ranulf de Broc , had
threatened that he should not live to eat a loaf of
bread in England; but he came.


Charles Dickens
103

The common people received him well, and
marched about with him in a soldierly way,
armed with such rustic weapons as they could
get. He tried to see the young prince who had
once been his pupil, but was prevented. He hoped
for some little support among the nobles and
priests, but found none. He made the most of
the peasants who attended him, and feasted
them, and went from Canterbury to Harrow-on-
the-Hill, and from Harrow-on-the-Hill back to
Canterbury, and on Christmas Day preached in
the Cathedral there, and told the people in his
sermon that he had come to die among them,
and that it was likely he would be murdered. He
had no fear, however—or, if he had any, he had
much more obstinacy—for he, then and there,
excommunicated three of his enemies, of whom
Ranulf de Broc, the ireful knight, was one.
As men in general had no fancy for being
cursed, in their sitting and walking, and gaping
and sneezing, and all the rest of it, it was very 

natural in the persons so freely excommunicated
to complain to the King. It was equally natural
in the King, who had hoped that this trouble-
some opponent was at last quieted, to fall into a
mighty rage when he heard of these new af-
fronts; and, on the Archbishop of York telling
him that he never could hope for rest while Tho-
mas a Becket lived, to cry out hastily before his
court, ‘Have I no one here who will deliver me
from this man?’ There were four knights present,
who, hearing the King’s words, looked at one
another, and went out.
The names of these knights were  Reginald
Fitzurse,William Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Rich-
ard Brito; three of whom had been in the train of
Thomas a Becket in the old days of his splendour.
They rode away on horseback, in a very secret man-
ner, and on the third day after Christmas Day ar-
rived at Saltwood House, not far from Canter-
bury, which belonged to the family of Ranulf de
Broc. They quietly collected some followers here,


A Child’s Histroy of England
104

in case they should need any; and proceeding to
Canterbury, suddenly appeared (the four knights
and twelve men) before the Archbishop, in his
own house, at two o’clock in the afternoon. They
neither bowed nor spoke, but sat down on the
floor in silence, staring at the Archbishop.
Thomas a Becket said, at length, ‘What do you want?’
‘We want,’ said Reginald Fitzurse, ‘the excom-
munication taken from the Bishops, and you to
answer for your offences to the King.’ Thomas a
Becket defiantly replied, that the power of the
clergy was above the power of the King. That it
was not for such men as they were, to threaten
him. That if he were threatened by all the swords
in England, he would never yield.
‘Then we will do more than threaten!’ said the
knights. And they went out with the twelve men,
and put on their armour, and drew their shin-
ing swords, and came back.
His servants, in the meantime, had shut up
and barred the great gate of the palace. At first, 

the knights tried to shatter it with their battle-
axes; but, being shown a window by which they
could enter, they let the gate alone, and climbed
in that way. While they were battering at the
door, the attendants of Thomas a Becket had
implored him to take refuge in the Cathedral;
in which, as a sanctuary or sacred place, they
thought the knights would dare to do no violent
deed. He told them, again and again, that he
would not stir. Hearing the distant voices of the
monks singing the evening service, however, he
said it was now his duty to attend, and there-
fore, and for no other reason, he would go.
There was a near way between his Palace and
the Cathedral, by some beautiful old cloisters
which you may yet see. He went into the Cathe-
dral, without any hurry, and having the Cross
carried before him as usual. When he was safely
there, his servants would have fastened the door,
but he said no! it was the house of God and not
a fortress.


Charles Dickens
105

As he spoke, the shadow of Reginald Fitzurse
appeared in the Cathedral doorway, darkening
the little light there was outside, on the dark
winter evening. This knight said, in a strong
voice, ‘Follow me, loyal servants of the King!’
The rattle of the armour of the other knights
echoed through the Cathedral, as they came
clashing in.
It was so dark, in the lofty aisles and among
the stately pillars of the church, and there were
so many hiding-places in the crypt below and
in the narrow passages above, that Thomas a
Becket might even at that pass have saved him-
self if he would. But he would not. He told the
monks resolutely that he would not. And though
they all dispersed and left him there with no
other follower than Edward Gryme, his faithful
cross-bearer, he was as firm then, as ever he
had been in his life.
The knights came on, through the darkness,
making a terrible noise with their armed tread 

upon the stone pavement of the church. ‘Where
is the traitor?’ they cried out. He made no an-
swer. But when they cried, ‘Where is the Arch-
bishop?’ he said proudly, ‘I am here!’ and came
out of the shade and stood before them.
The knights had no desire to kill him, if they
could rid the King and themselves of him by
any other means. They told him he must either
fly or go with them. He said he would do nei-
ther; and he threw William Tracy off with such
force when he took hold of his sleeve, that Tracy
reeled again. By his reproaches and his steadi-
ness, he so incensed them, and exasperated
their fierce humour, that Reginald Fitzurse,
whom he called by an ill name, said, ‘Then die!’
and struck at his head. But the faithful Edward
Gryme put out his arm, and there received the
main force of the blow, so that it only made his
master bleed. Another voice from among the
knights again called to Thomas a Becket to fly;
but, with his blood running down his face, and


A Child’s Histroy of England
106

his hands clasped, and his head bent, he com-
manded himself to God, and stood firm. Then
they cruelly killed him close to the altar of St.
Bennet; and his body fell upon the pavement,
which was dirtied with his blood and brains.
It is an awful thing to think of the murdered
mortal, who had so showered his curses about,
lying, all disfigured, in the church, where a few
lamps here and there were but red specks on a
pall of darkness; and to think of the guilty
knights riding away on horseback, looking over
their shoulders at the dim Cathedral, and re-
membering what they had left inside.
PART THE SECOND
WHEN THE KING HEARD how Thomas a Becket had
lost his life in Canterbury Cathedral, through
the ferocity of the four Knights, he was filled with
dismay. Some have supposed that when the King
spoke those hasty words, ‘Have I no one here 

who will deliver me from this man?’ he wished,
and meant a Becket to be slain. But few things
are more unlikely; for, besides that the King was
not naturally cruel (though very passionate), he
was wise, and must have known full well what
any stupid man in his dominions must have
known, namely, that such a murder would rouse
the Pope and the whole Church against him.
He sent respectful messengers to the Pope, to
represent his innocence (except in having uttered
the hasty words); and he swore solemnly and
publicly to his innocence, and contrived in time
to make his peace. As to the four guilty Knights,
who fled into Yorkshire, and never again dared
to show themselves at Court, the Pope excom-
municated them; and they lived miserably for
some time, shunned by all their countrymen.
At last, they went humbly to Jerusalem as a
penance, and there died and were buried.
It happened, fortunately for the pacifying of
the Pope, that an opportunity arose very soon


Charles Dickens
107

after the murder of a Becket, for the King to
declare his power in Ireland—which was an ac-
ceptable undertaking to the Pope, as the Irish,
who had been converted to Christianity by one
Patricius (otherwise Saint Patrick) long ago,
before any Pope existed, considered that the
Pope had nothing at all to do with them, or they
with the Pope, and accordingly refused to pay
him Peter’s Pence, or that tax of a penny a house
which I have elsewhere mentioned. The King’s
opportunity arose in this way.
The Irish were, at that time, as barbarous a
people as you can well imagine. They were con-
tinually quarrelling and fighting, cutting one
another’s throats, slicing one another’s noses,
burning one another’s houses, carrying away
one another’s wives, and committing all sorts
of violence. The country was divided into five
kingdoms Desmond, Thomond, Connaught, Ul-
ster, and Leinster—each governed by a separate
King, of whom one claimed to be the chief of the 

rest. Now, one of these Kings, named Dermond
Mac Murrough (a wild kind of name, spelt in more
than one wild kind of way), had carried off the
wife of a friend of his, and concealed her on an
island in a bog. The friend resenting this (though
it was quite the custom of the country), com-
plained to the chief King, and, with the chief
King’s help, drove Dermond Mac Murrough out
of his dominions. Dermond came over to En-
gland for revenge; and offered to hold his realm
as a vassal of King Henry, if King Henry would
help him to regain it. The King consented to
these terms; but only assisted him, then, with
what were called Letters Patent, authorising any
English subjects who were so disposed, to en-
ter into his service, and aid his cause.
There was, at Bristol, a certain  Earl Richard
de Clare, called Strongbow; of no very good char-
acter; needy and desperate, and ready for any-
thing that offered him a chance of improving
his fortunes. There were, in South Wales, two


A Child’s Histroy of England
108

other broken knights of the same good-for-noth-
ing sort, called Robert Fitz-Stephen, and Maurice
Fitz-Gerald. These three, each with a small band
of followers, took up Dermond’s cause; and it
was agreed that if it proved successful,
Strongbow should marry Dermond’s daughter
Eva, and be declared his heir.
The trained English followers of these knights
were so superior in all the discipline of battle to
the Irish, that they beat them against immense
superiority of numbers. In one fight, early in
the war, they cut off three hundred heads, and
laid them before Mac Murrough; who turned
them every one up with his hands, rejoicing,
and, coming to one which was the head of a
man whom he had much disliked, grasped it by
the hair and ears, and tore off the nose and lips
with his teeth. You may judge from this, what
kind of a gentleman an Irish King in those times
was. The captives, all through this war, were
horribly treated; the victorious party making 

nothing of breaking their limbs, and casting
them into the sea from the tops of high rocks. It
was in the midst of the miseries and cruelties
attendant on the taking of Waterford, where the
dead lay piled in the streets, and the filthy gut-
ters ran with blood, that Strongbow married Eva.
An odious marriage-company those mounds of
corpse’s must have made, I think, and one quite
worthy of the young lady’s father.
He died, after Waterford and Dublin had been
taken, and various successes achieved; and
Strongbow became King of Leinster. Now came
King Henry’s opportunity. To restrain the grow-
ing power of Strongbow, he himself repaired to
Dublin, as Strongbow’s Royal Master, and de-
prived him of his kingdom, but confirmed him
in the enjoyment of great possessions. The King,
then, holding state in Dublin, received the hom-
age of nearly all the Irish Kings and Chiefs, and
so came home again with a great addition to his
reputation as Lord of Ireland, and with a new


Charles Dickens
109

claim on the favour of the Pope. And now, their
reconciliation was completed—more easily and
mildly by the Pope, than the King might have
expected, I think.
At this period of his reign, when his troubles
seemed so few and his prospects so bright, those
domestic miseries began which gradually made the
King the most unhappy of men, reduced his great
spirit, wore away his health, and broke his heart.
He had four sons. Henry, now aged eighteen -
his secret crowning of whom had given such
offence to Thomas a Becket. Richard, aged six-
teen; Geoffrey, fifteen; and John, his favourite,
a young boy whom the courtiers named
Lackland, because he had no inheritance, but
to whom the King meant to give the Lordship of
Ireland. All these misguided boys, in their turn,
were unnatural sons to him, and unnatural
brothers to each other. Prince Henry, stimulated
by the French King, and by his bad mother,
Queen Eleanor, began the undutiful history, 

First, he demanded that his young wife, Mar-
garet, the French King’s daughter, should be
crowned as well as he. His father, the King, con-
sented, and it was done. It was no sooner done,
than he demanded to have a part of his father’s
dominions, during his father’s life. This being
refused, he made off from his father in the night,
with his bad heart full of bitterness, and took
refuge at the French King’s Court. Within a day
or two, his brothers Richard and Geoffrey fol-
lowed. Their mother tried to join them—escap-
ing in man’s clothes—but she was seized by King
Henry’s men, and immured in prison, where she
lay, deservedly, for sixteen years. Every day,
however, some grasping English noblemen, to
whom the King’s protection of his people from
their avarice and oppression had given offence,
deserted him and joined the Princes. Every day
he heard some fresh intelligence of the Princes
levying armies against him; of Prince Henry’s
wearing a crown before his own ambassadors


A Child’s Histroy of England
110

at the French Court, and being called the Jun-
ior King of England; of all the Princes swearing
never to make peace with him, their father, with-
out the consent and approval of the Barons of
France. But, with his fortitude and energy un-
shaken, King Henry met the shock of these di-
sasters with a resolved and cheerful face. He
called upon all Royal fathers who had sons, to
help him, for his cause was theirs; he hired,
out of his riches, twenty thousand men to fight
the false French King, who stirred his own blood
against him; and he carried on the war with
such vigour, that Louis soon proposed a con-
ference to treat for peace.
The conference was held beneath an old wide-
spreading green elm-tree, upon a plain in France.
It led to nothing. The war recommenced. Prince
Richard began his fighting career, by leading an
army against his father; but his father beat him
and his army back; and thousands of his men
would have rued the day in which they fought in 

such a wicked cause, had not the King received
news of an invasion of England by the Scots, and
promptly come home through a great storm to
repress it. And whether he really began to fear
that he suffered these troubles because a Becket
had been murdered; or whether he wished to rise
in the favour of the Pope, who had now declared
a Becket to be a saint, or in the favour of his own
people, of whom many believed that even a
Becket’s senseless tomb could work miracles, I
don’t know: but the King no sooner landed in
England than he went straight to Canterbury;
and when he came within sight of the distant
Cathedral, he dismounted from his horse, took
off his shoes, and walked with bare and bleeding
feet to a Becket’s grave. There, he lay down on
the ground, lamenting, in the presence of many
people; and by-and-by he went into the Chapter
House, and, removing his clothes from his back
and shoulders, submitted himself to be beaten
with knotted cords (not beaten very hard, I dare


Charles Dickens
111

say though) by eighty Priests, one after another.
It chanced that on the very day when the King
made this curious exhibition of himself, a com-
plete victory was obtained over the Scots; which
very much delighted the Priests, who said that it
was won because of his great example of repen-
tance. For the Priests in general had found out,
since a Becket’s death, that they admired him of
all things—though they had hated him very cor-
dially when he was alive.
The Earl of Flanders, who was at the head of
the base conspiracy of the King’s undutiful sons
and their foreign friends, took the opportunity
of the King being thus employed at home, to lay
siege to Rouen, the capital of Normandy. But
the King, who was extraordinarily quick and
active in all his movements, was at Rouen, too,
before it was supposed possible that he could
have left England; and there he so defeated the
said Earl of Flanders, that the conspirators pro-
posed peace, and his bad sons Henry and 

Geoffrey submitted. Richard resisted for six
weeks; but, being beaten out of castle after
castle, he at last submitted too, and his father
forgave him.
To forgive these unworthy princes was only to
afford them breathing-time for new faithless-
ness. They were so false, disloyal, and
dishonourable, that they were no more to be
trusted than common thieves. In the very next
year, Prince Henry rebelled again, and was again
forgiven. In eight years more, Prince Richard
rebelled against his elder brother; and Prince
Geoffrey infamously said that the brothers could
never agree well together, unless they were
united against their father. In the very next year
after their reconciliation by the King, Prince
Henry again rebelled against his father; and
again submitted, swearing to be true; and was
again forgiven; and again rebelled with Geoffrey.
But the end of this perfidious Prince was come.
He fell sick at a French town; and his conscience


A Child’s Histroy of England
112

terribly reproaching him with his baseness, he
sent messengers to the King his father, implor-
ing him to come and see him, and to forgive
him for the last time on his bed of death. The
generous King, who had a royal and forgiving
mind towards his children always, would have
gone; but this Prince had been so unnatural,
that the noblemen about the King suspected
treachery, and represented to him that he could
not safely trust his life with such a traitor,
though his own eldest son. Therefore the King
sent him a ring from off his finger as a token of
forgiveness; and when the Prince had kissed it,
with much grief and many tears, and had con-
fessed to those around him how bad, and
wicked, and undutiful a son he had been; he
said to the attendant Priests: ‘O, tie a rope about
my body, and draw me out of bed, and lay me
down upon a bed of ashes, that I may die with
prayers to God in a repentant manner!’ And so
he died, at twenty-seven years old. 

Three years afterwards, Prince Geoffrey, be-
ing unhorsed at a tournament, had his brains
trampled out by a crowd of horses passing over
him. So, there only remained Prince Richard,
and Prince John—who had grown to be a young
man now, and had solemnly sworn to be faith-
ful to his father. Richard soon rebelled again,
encouraged by his friend the French King, Philip
the Second (son of Louis, who was dead); and
soon submitted and was again forgiven, swear-
ing on the New Testament never to rebel again;
and in another year or so, rebelled again; and,
in the presence of his father, knelt down on his
knee before the King of France; and did the
French King homage: and declared that with
his aid he would possess himself, by force, of
all his father’s French dominions.
And yet this Richard called himself a soldier
of Our Saviour! And yet this Richard wore the
Cross, which the Kings of France and England
had both taken, in the previous year, at a broth-


Charles Dickens
113

erly meeting underneath the old wide-spread-
ing elm-tree on the plain, when they had sworn
(like him) to devote themselves to a new Cru-
sade, for the love and honour of the Truth!
Sick at heart, wearied out by the falsehood of
his sons, and almost ready to lie down and die,
the unhappy King who had so long stood firm,
began to fail. But the Pope, to his honour, sup-
ported him; and obliged the French King and
Richard, though successful in fight, to treat for
peace. Richard wanted to be Crowned King of
England, and pretended that he wanted to be
married (which he really did not) to the French
King’s sister, his promised wife, whom King
Henry detained in England. King Henry wanted,
on the other hand, that the French King’s sister
should be married to his favourite son, John:
the only one of his sons (he said) who had never
rebelled against him. At last King Henry, deserted
by his nobles one by one, distressed, exhausted,
broken-hearted, consented to establish peace. 

One final heavy sorrow was reserved for him,
even yet. When they brought him the proposed
treaty of peace, in writing, as he lay very ill in
bed, they brought him also the list of the de-
serters from their allegiance, whom he was re-
quired to pardon. The first name upon this list
was John, his favourite son, in whom he had
trusted to the last.
‘O John! child of my heart!’ exclaimed the King,
in a great agony of mind. ‘O John, whom I have
loved the best! O John, for whom I have con-
tended through these many troubles! Have you
betrayed me too!’ And then he lay down with a
heavy groan, and said, ‘Now let the world go as
it will. I care for nothing more!’
After a time, he told his attendants to take
him to the French town of Chinon—a town he
had been fond of, during many years. But he
was fond of no place now; it was too true that
he could care for nothing more upon this earth.
He wildly cursed the hour when he was born,


A Child’s Histroy of England
114

and cursed the children whom he left behind
him; and expired.
As, one hundred years before, the servile fol-
lowers of the Court had abandoned the Con-
queror in the hour of his death, so they now aban-
doned his descendant. The very body was
stripped, in the plunder of the Royal chamber;
and it was not easy to find the means of carrying
it for burial to the abbey church of Fontevraud.
Richard was said in after years, by way of
flattery, to have the heart of a Lion. It would
have been far better, I think, to have had the
heart of a Man. His heart, whatever it was, had
cause to beat remorsefully within his breast,
when he came—as he did—into the solemn
abbey, and looked on his dead father’s uncov-
ered face. His heart, whatever it was, had been
a black and perjured heart, in all its dealings
with the deceased King, and more deficient in
a single touch of tenderness than any wild
beast’s in the forest. 

There is a pretty story told of this Reign, called
the story of Fair Rosamond. It relates how the
King doted on Fair Rosamond, who was the love-
liest girl in all the world; and how he had a beau-
tiful Bower built for her in a Park at Woodstock;
and how it was erected in a labyrinth, and could
only be found by a clue of silk. How the bad
Queen Eleanor, becoming jealous of Fair
Rosamond, found out the secret of the clue, and
one day, appeared before her, with a dagger and
a cup of poison, and left her to the choice be-
tween those deaths. How Fair Rosamond, after
shedding many piteous tears and offering many
useless prayers to the cruel Queen, took the
poison, and fell dead in the midst of the beauti-
ful bower, while the unconscious birds sang
gaily all around her.
Now, there was a fair Rosamond, and she was
(I dare say) the loveliest girl in all the world,
and the King was certainly very fond of her, and
the bad Queen Eleanor was certainly made jeal-


Charles Dickens
115

ous. But I am afraid—I say afraid, because I
like the story so much—that there was no bower,
no labyrinth, no silken clue, no dagger, no poi-
son. I am afraid fair Rosamond retired to a nun-
nery near Oxford, and died there, peaceably;
her sister-nuns hanging a silken drapery over
her tomb, and often dressing it with flowers, in
remembrance of the youth and beauty that had
enchanted the King when he too was young,
and when his life lay fair before him.
It was dark and ended now; faded and gone.
Henry Plantagenet lay quiet in the abbey church
of Fontevraud, in the fifty-seventh year of his
age - never to be completed—after governing En-
gland well, for nearly thirty-five years. 

CHAPTER XIII
ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE
FIRST, CALLED THE LION-HEART 

IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD one thousand one hun-
dred and eighty-nine, Richard of the Lion Heart
succeeded to the throne of King Henry the Sec-
ond, whose paternal heart he had done so much
to break. He had been, as we have seen, a rebel
from his boyhood; but, the moment he became
a king against whom others might rebel, he
found out that rebellion was a great wickedness.
In the heat of this pious discovery, he punished
all the leading people who had befriended him
against his father. He could scarcely have done
anything that would have been a better instance
of his real nature, or a better warning to fawn-
ers and parasites not to trust in lion-hearted
princes.
He likewise put his late father’s treasurer in
chains, and locked him up in a dungeon from


A Child’s Histroy of England
116

which he was not set free until he had relin-
quished, not only all the Crown treasure, but
all his own money too. So, Richard certainly got
the Lion’s share of the wealth of this wretched
treasurer, whether he had a Lion’s heart or not.
He was crowned King of England, with great
pomp, at Westminster: walking to the Cathe-
dral under a silken canopy stretched on the tops
of four lances, each carried by a great lord. On
the day of his coronation, a dreadful murdering
of the Jews took place, which seems to have
given great delight to numbers of savage per-
sons calling themselves Christians. The King
had issued a proclamation forbidding the Jews
(who were generally hated, though they were
the most useful merchants in England) to ap-
pear at the ceremony; but as they had as-
sembled in London from all parts, bringing pre-
sents to show their respect for the new Sover-
eign, some of them ventured down to
Westminster Hall with their gifts; which were 

very readily accepted. It is supposed, now, that
some noisy fellow in the crowd, pretending to
be a very delicate Christian, set up a howl at
this, and struck a Jew who was trying to get in
at the Hall door with his present. A riot arose.
The Jews who had got into the Hall, were driven
forth; and some of the rabble cried out that the
new King had commanded the unbelieving race
to be put to death. Thereupon the crowd rushed
through the narrow streets of the city, slaugh-
tering all the Jews they met; and when they
could find no more out of doors (on account of
their having fled to their houses, and fastened
themselves in), they ran madly about, breaking
open all the houses where the Jews lived, rush-
ing in and stabbing or spearing them, some-
times even flinging old people and children out
of window into blazing fires they had lighted up
below. This great cruelty lasted four-and-twenty
hours, and only three men were punished for
it. Even they forfeited their lives not for mur-


Charles Dickens
117

dering and robbing the Jews, but for burning
the houses of some Christians.
King Richard, who was a strong, restless, burly
man, with one idea always in his head, and that
the very troublesome idea of breaking the heads
of other men, was mightily impatient to go on a
Crusade to the Holy Land, with a great army. As
great armies could not be raised to go, even to
the Holy Land, without a great deal of money, he
sold the Crown domains, and even the high of-
fices of State; recklessly appointing noblemen to
rule over his English subjects, not because they
were fit to govern, but because they could pay
high for the privilege. In this way, and by selling
pardons at a dear rate and by varieties of avarice
and oppression, he scraped together a large trea-
sure. He then appointed two Bishops to take care
of his kingdom in his absence, and gave great
powers and possessions to his brother John, to
secure his friendship. John would rather have
been made Regent of England; but he was a sly 

man, and friendly to the expedition; saying to
himself, no doubt, ‘The more fighting, the more
chance of my brother being killed; and when he
is killed, then I become King John!’
Before the newly levied army departed from
England, the recruits and the general populace
distinguished themselves by astonishing cruel-
ties on the unfortunate Jews: whom, in many
large towns, they murdered by hundreds in the
most horrible manner.
At York, a large body of Jews took refuge in
the Castle, in the absence of its Governor, after
the wives and children of many of them had
been slain before their eyes. Presently came the
Governor, and demanded admission. ‘How can
we give it thee, O Governor!’ said the Jews upon
the walls, ‘when, if we open the gate by so much
as the width of a foot, the roaring crowd behind
thee will press in and kill us?’
Upon this, the unjust Governor became an-
gry, and told the people that he approved of their


A Child’s Histroy of England
118

killing those Jews; and a mischievous maniac
of a friar, dressed all in white, put himself at
the head of the assault, and they assaulted the
Castle for three days.
Then said  Jocen, the head-Jew (who was a
Rabbi or Priest), to the rest, ‘Brethren, there is
no hope for us with the Christians who are ham-
mering at the gates and walls, and who must
soon break in. As we and our wives and chil-
dren must die, either by Christian hands, or by
our own, let it be by our own. Let us destroy by
fire what jewels and other treasure we have here,
then fire the castle, and then perish!’
A few could not resolve to do this, but the
greater part complied. They made a blazing heap
of all their valuables, and, when those were con-
sumed, set the castle in flames. While the flames
roared and crackled around them, and shoot-
ing up into the sky, turned it blood-red, Jocen
cut the throat of his beloved wife, and stabbed
himself. All the others who had wives or chil- 

dren, did the like dreadful deed. When the popu-
lace broke in, they found (except the trembling
few, cowering in corners, whom they soon killed)
only heaps of greasy cinders, with here and there
something like part of the blackened trunk of a
burnt tree, but which had lately been a human
creature, formed by the beneficent hand of the
Creator as they were.
After this bad beginning, Richard and his
troops went on, in no very good manner, with
the Holy Crusade. It was undertaken jointly by
the King of England and his old friend Philip of
France. They commenced the business by re-
viewing their forces, to the number of one hun-
dred thousand men. Afterwards, they severally
embarked their troops for Messina, in Sicily,
which was appointed as the next place of meet-
ing.
King Richard’s sister had married the King of
this place, but he was dead: and his uncle
Tancred had usurped the crown, cast the Royal


Charles Dickens
119

Widow into prison, and possessed himself of her
estates. Richard fiercely demanded his sister’s
release, the restoration of her lands, and (ac-
cording to the Royal custom of the Island) that
she should have a golden chair, a golden table,
four-and-twenty silver cups, and four-and-
twenty silver dishes. As he was too powerful to
be successfully resisted, Tancred yielded to his
demands; and then the French King grew jeal-
ous, and complained that the English King
wanted to be absolute in the Island of Messina
and everywhere else. Richard, however, cared
little or nothing for this complaint; and in con-
sideration of a present of twenty thousand pieces
of gold, promised his pretty little nephew Arthur,
then a child of two years old, in marriage to
Tancred’s daughter. We shall hear again of
pretty little Arthur by-and-by.
This Sicilian affair arranged without anybody’s
brains being knocked out (which must have
rather disappointed him), King Richard took his 

sister away, and also a fair lady named
Berengaria, with whom he had fallen in love in
France, and whom his mother, Queen Eleanor
(so long in prison, you remember, but released
by Richard on his coming to the Throne), had
brought out there to be his wife; and sailed with
them for Cyprus.
He soon had the pleasure of fighting the King
of the Island of Cyprus, for allowing his sub-
jects to pillage some of the English troops who
were shipwrecked on the shore; and easily con-
quering this poor monarch, he seized his only
daughter, to be a companion to the lady
Berengaria, and put the King himself into silver
fetters. He then sailed away again with his
mother, sister, wife, and the captive princess;
and soon arrived before the town of Acre, which
the French King with his fleet was besieging from
the sea. But the French King was in no trium-
phant condition, for his army had been thinned
by the swords of the Saracens, and wasted by


A Child’s Histroy of England
120

the plague; and Saladin, the brave Sultan of the
Turks, at the head of a numerous army, was at
that time gallantly defending the place from the
hills that rise above it.
Wherever the united army of Crusaders went,
they agreed in few points except in gaming,
drinking, and quarrelling, in a most unholy
manner; in debauching the people among whom
they tarried, whether they were friends or foes;
and in carrying disturbance and ruin into quiet
places. The French King was jealous of the En-
glish King, and the English King was jealous of
the French King, and the disorderly and violent
soldiers of the two nations were jealous of one
another; consequently, the two Kings could not
at first agree, even upon a joint assault on Acre;
but when they did make up their quarrel for
that purpose, the Saracens promised to yield
the town, to give up to the Christians the wood
of the Holy Cross, to set at liberty all their Chris-
tian captives, and to pay two hundred thousand 

pieces of gold. All this was to be done within
forty days; but, not being done, King Richard
ordered some three thousand Saracen prison-
ers to be brought out in the front of his camp,
and there, in full view of their own countrymen,
to be butchered.
The French King had no part in this crime;
for he was by that time travelling homeward with
the greater part of his men; being offended by
the overbearing conduct of the English King;
being anxious to look after his own dominions;
and being ill, besides, from the unwholesome
air of that hot and sandy country. King Richard
carried on the war without him; and remained
in the East, meeting with a variety of adven-
tures, nearly a year and a half. Every night when
his army was on the march, and came to a halt,
the heralds cried out three times, to remind all
the soldiers of the cause in which they were en-
gaged, ‘Save the Holy Sepulchre!’ and then all
the soldiers knelt and said ‘Amen!’ Marching or


Charles Dickens
121

encamping, the army had continually to strive
with the hot air of the glaring desert, or with the
Saracen soldiers animated and directed by the
brave Saladin, or with both together. Sickness
and death, battle and wounds, were always
among them; but through every difficulty King
Richard fought like a giant, and worked like a
common labourer. Long and long after he was
quiet in his grave, his terrible battle-axe, with
twenty English pounds of English steel in its
mighty head, was a legend among the Saracens;
and when all the Saracen and Christian hosts
had been dust for many a year, if a Saracen horse
started at any object by the wayside, his rider
would exclaim, ‘What dost thou fear, Fool? Dost
thou think King Richard is behind it?’
No one admired this King’s renown for brav-
ery more than Saladin himself, who was a gen-
erous and gallant enemy. When Richard lay ill
of a fever, Saladin sent him fresh fruits from
Damascus, and snow from the mountain-tops. 

Courtly messages and compliments were fre-
quently exchanged between them—and then
King Richard would mount his horse and kill
as many Saracens as he could; and Saladin
would mount his, and kill as many Christians
as he could. In this way King Richard fought to
his heart’s content at Arsoof and at Jaffa; and
finding himself with nothing exciting to do at
Ascalon, except to rebuild, for his own defence,
some fortifications there which the Saracens had
destroyed, he kicked his ally the Duke of Aus-
tria, for being too proud to work at them.
The army at last came within sight of the Holy
City of Jerusalem; but, being then a mere nest of
jealousy, and quarrelling and fighting, soon retired,
and agreed with the Saracens upon a truce for three
years, three months, three days, and three hours.
Then, the English Christians, protected by the noble
Saladin from Saracen revenge, visited Our Saviour’s
tomb; and then King Richard embarked with a
small force at Acre to return home.


A Child’s Histroy of England
122

But he was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea,
and was fain to pass through Germany, under
an assumed name. Now, there were many people
in Germany who had served in the Holy Land
under that proud Duke of Austria who had been
kicked; and some of them, easily recognising a
man so remarkable as King Richard, carried
their intelligence to the kicked Duke, who
straightway took him prisoner at a little inn near
Vienna.
The Duke’s master the Emperor of Germany,
and the King of France, were equally delighted
to have so troublesome a monarch in safe keep-
ing. Friendships which are founded on a part-
nership in doing wrong, are never true; and the
King of France was now quite as heartily King
Richard’s foe, as he had ever been his friend in
his unnatural conduct to his father. He mon-
strously pretended that King Richard had de-
signed to poison him in the East; he charged
him with having murdered, there, a man whom 

he had in truth befriended; he bribed the Em-
peror of Germany to keep him close prisoner;
and, finally, through the plotting of these two
princes, Richard was brought before the Ger-
man legislature, charged with the foregoing
crimes, and many others. But he defended him-
self so well, that many of the assembly were
moved to tears by his eloquence and earnest-
ness. It was decided that he should be treated,
during the rest of his captivity, in a manner more
becoming his dignity than he had been, and that
he should be set free on the payment of a heavy
ransom. This ransom the English people will-
ingly raised. When Queen Eleanor took it over
to Germany, it was at first evaded and refused.
But she appealed to the honour of all the princes
of the German Empire in behalf of her son, and
appealed so well that it was accepted, and the
King released. Thereupon, the King of France
wrote to Prince John - ‘Take care of thyself. The
devil is unchained!’


Charles Dickens
123

Prince John had reason to fear his brother, for
he had been a traitor to him in his captivity. He
had secretly joined the French King; had vowed
to the English nobles and people that his brother
was dead; and had vainly tried to seize the crown.
He was now in France, at a place called Evreux.
Being the meanest and basest of men, he con-
trived a mean and base expedient for making
himself acceptable to his brother. He invited the
French officers of the garrison in that town to
dinner, murdered them all, and then took the
fortress. With this recommendation to the good
will of a lion-hearted monarch, he hastened to
King Richard, fell on his knees before him, and
obtained the intercession of Queen Eleanor. ‘I
forgive him,’ said the King, ‘and I hope I may
forget the injury he has done me, as easily as I
know he will forget my pardon.’
While King Richard was in Sicily, there had been
trouble in his dominions at home: one of the bish-
ops whom he had left in charge thereof, arresting

the other; and making, in his pride and ambition,
as great a show as if he were King himself. But
the King hearing of it at Messina, and appointing
a new Regency, this Longchamp (for that was his
name) had fled to France in a woman’s dress, and
had there been encouraged and supported by the
French King. With all these causes of offence
against Philip in his mind, King Richard had no
sooner been welcomed home by his enthusiastic
subjects with great display and splendour, and
had no sooner been crowned afresh at Winches-
ter, than he resolved to show the French King
that the Devil was unchained indeed, and made
war against him with great fury.
There was fresh trouble at home about this
time, arising out of the discontents of the poor
people, who complained that they were far more
heavily taxed than the rich, and who found a
spirited champion in William Fitz-Osbert, called
Longbeard. He became the leader of a secret
society, comprising fifty thousand men; he was


A Child’s Histroy of England
124

seized by surprise; he stabbed the citizen who
first laid hands upon him; and retreated, bravely
fighting, to a church, which he maintained four
days, until he was dislodged by fire, and run
through the body as he came out. He was not
killed, though; for he was dragged, half dead,
at the tail of a horse to Smithfield, and there
hanged. Death was long a favourite remedy for
silencing the people’s advocates; but as we go
on with this history, I fancy we shall find them
difficult to make an end of, for all that.
The French war, delayed occasionally by a
truce, was still in progress when a certain Lord
named Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, chanced
to find in his ground a treasure of ancient coins.
As the King’s vassal, he sent the King half of it;
but the King claimed the whole. The lord re-
fused to yield the whole. The King besieged the
lord in his castle, swore that he would take the
castle by storm, and hang every man of its de-
fenders on the battlements. 

There was a strange old song in that part of
the country, to the effect that in Limoges an
arrow would be made by which King Richard
would die. It may be that Bertrand de Gourdon,
a young man who was one of the defenders of
the castle, had often sung it or heard it sung of
a winter night, and remembered it when he saw,
from his post upon the ramparts, the King at-
tended only by his chief officer riding below the
walls surveying the place. He drew an arrow to
the head, took steady aim, said between his
teeth, ‘Now I pray God speed thee well, arrow!’
discharged it, and struck the King in the left
shoulder.
Although the wound was not at first consid-
ered dangerous, it was severe enough to cause
the King to retire to his tent, and direct the as-
sault to be made without him. The castle was
taken; and every man of its defenders was
hanged, as the King had sworn all should be,
except Bertrand de Gourdon, who was reserved


Charles Dickens
125

until the royal pleasure respecting him should
be known.
By that time unskilful treatment had made
the wound mortal and the King knew that he
was dying. He directed Bertrand to be brought
into his tent. The young man was brought there,
heavily chained, King Richard looked at him
steadily. He looked, as steadily, at the King.
‘Knave!’ said King Richard. ‘What have I done
to thee that thou shouldest take my life?’
‘What hast thou done to me?’ replied the young
man. ‘With thine own hands thou hast killed
my father and my two brothers. Myself thou
wouldest have hanged. Let me die now, by any
torture that thou wilt. My comfort is, that no
torture can save Thee. Thou too must die; and,
through me, the world is quit of thee!’
Again the King looked at the young man
steadily. Again the young man looked steadily
at him. Perhaps some remembrance of his gen-
erous enemy Saladin, who was not a Chris- 

tian, came into the mind of the dying King.
‘Youth!’ he said, ‘I forgive thee. Go unhurt!’
Then, turning to the chief officer who had been
riding in his company when he received the
wound, King Richard said:
‘Take off his chains, give him a hundred shil-
lings, and let him depart.’
He sunk down on his couch, and a dark mist
seemed in his weakened eyes to fill the tent
wherein he had so often rested, and he died.
His age was forty-two; he had reigned ten years.
His last command was not obeyed; for the chief
officer flayed Bertrand de Gourdon alive, and
hanged him.
There is an old tune yet known—a sorrowful
air will sometimes outlive many generations of
strong men, and even last longer than battle-
axes with twenty pounds of steel in the head—
by which this King is said to have been discov-
ered in his captivity. Blondel, a favourite Min-
strel of King Richard, as the story relates, faith-


A Child’s Histroy of England
126

fully seeking his Royal master, went singing it
outside the gloomy walls of many foreign for-
tresses and prisons; until at last he heard it
echoed from within a dungeon, and knew the
voice, and cried out in ecstasy, ‘O Richard, O
my King!’ You may believe it, if you like; it would
be easy to believe worse things. Richard was
himself a Minstrel and a Poet. If he had not been
a Prince too, he might have been a better man
perhaps, and might have gone out of the world
with less bloodshed and waste of life to answer
for. 

CHAPTER XIV
ENGLAND UNDER KING JOHN,
CALLED LACKLAND 

AT TWO-AND-THIRTY YEARS OF AGE, John became King
of England. His pretty little nephew Arthur had
the best claim to the throne; but John seized
the treasure, and made fine promises to the 

nobility, and got himself crowned at
Westminster within a few weeks after his brother
Richard’s death. I doubt whether the crown
could possibly have been put upon the head of
a meaner coward, or a more detestable villain,
if England had been searched from end to end
to find him out.
The French King, Philip, refused to acknowl-
edge the right of John to his new dignity, and
declared in favour of Arthur. You must not sup-
pose that he had any generosity of feeling for
the fatherless boy; it merely suited his ambi-
tious schemes to oppose the King of England.
So John and the French King went to war about
Arthur.
He was a handsome boy, at that time only
twelve years old. He was not born when his fa-
ther, Geoffrey, had his brains trampled out at
the tournament; and, besides the misfortune of
never having known a father’s guidance and
protection, he had the additional misfortune to


Charles Dickens
127

have a foolish mother ( Constance by name),
lately married to her third husband. She took
Arthur, upon John’s accession, to the French
King, who pretended to be very much his friend,
and who made him a Knight, and promised him
his daughter in marriage; but, who cared so little
about him in reality, that finding it his interest
to make peace with King John for a time, he did
so without the least consideration for the poor
little Prince, and heartlessly sacrificed all his
interests.
Young Arthur, for two years afterwards, lived
quietly; and in the course of that time his mother
died. But, the French King then finding it his
interest to quarrel with King John again, again
made Arthur his pretence, and invited the or-
phan boy to court. ‘You know your rights,
Prince,’ said the French King, ‘and you would
like to be a King. Is it not so?’ ‘Truly,’ said Prince
Arthur, ‘I should greatly like to be a King!’ ‘Then,’
said Philip, ‘you shall have two hundred gentle- 

men who are Knights of mine, and with them
you shall go to win back the provinces belong-
ing to you, of which your uncle, the usurping
King of England, has taken possession. I my-
self, meanwhile, will head a force against him
in Normandy.’ Poor Arthur was so flattered and
so grateful that he signed a treaty with the crafty
French King, agreeing to consider him his su-
perior Lord, and that the French King should
keep for himself whatever he could take from
King John.
Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and
King Philip was so perfidious, that Arthur, be-
tween the two, might as well have been a lamb
between a fox and a wolf. But, being so young,
he was ardent and flushed with hope; and, when
the people of Brittany (which was his inherit-
ance) sent him five hundred more knights and
five thousand foot soldiers, he believed his for-
tune was made. The people of Brittany had been
fond of him from his birth, and had requested


A Child’s Histroy of England
128

that he might be called Arthur, in remembrance
of that dimly-famous English Arthur, of whom I
told you early in this book, whom they believed
to have been the brave friend and companion of
an old King of their own. They had tales among
them about a prophet called Merlin (of the same
old time), who had foretold that their own King
should be restored to them after hundreds of
years; and they believed that the prophecy would
be fulfilled in Arthur; that the time would come
when he would rule them with a crown of Brit-
tany upon his head; and when neither King of
France nor King of England would have any
power over them. When Arthur found himself
riding in a glittering suit of armour on a richly
caparisoned horse, at the head of his train of
knights and soldiers, he began to believe this
too, and to consider old Merlin a very superior
prophet.
He did not know—how could he, being so in-
nocent and inexperienced?—that his little army 

was a mere nothing against the power of the
King of England. The French King knew it; but
the poor boy’s fate was little to him, so that the
King of England was worried and distressed.
Therefore, King Philip went his way into
Normandy and Prince Arthur went his way to-
wards Mirebeau, a French town near Poictiers,
both very well pleased.
Prince Arthur went to attack the town of
Mirebeau, because his grandmother Eleanor,
who has so often made her appearance in this
history (and who had always been his mother’s
enemy), was living there, and because his
Knights said, ‘Prince, if you can take her pris-
oner, you will be able to bring the King your
uncle to terms!’ But she was not to be easily
taken. She was old enough by this time—eighty
—but she was as full of stratagem as she was
full of years and wickedness. Receiving intelli-
gence of young Arthur’s approach, she shut
herself up in a high tower, and encouraged her


Charles Dickens
129

soldiers to defend it like men. Prince Arthur with
his little army besieged the high tower. King
John, hearing how matters stood, came up to
the rescue, with his army. So here was a strange
family-party! The boy-Prince besieging his
grandmother, and his uncle besieging him!
This position of affairs did not last long. One
summer night King John, by treachery, got his
men into the town, surprised Prince Arthur’s
force, took two hundred of his knights, and
seized the Prince himself in his bed. The Knights
were put in heavy irons, and driven away in open
carts drawn by bullocks, to various dungeons
where they were most inhumanly treated, and
where some of them were starved to death.
Prince Arthur was sent to the castle of Falaise.
One day, while he was in prison at that castle,
mournfully thinking it strange that one so young
should be in so much trouble, and looking out of
the small window in the deep dark wall, at the
summer sky and the birds, the door was softly 

opened, and he saw his uncle the King standing
in the shadow of the archway, looking very grim.
‘Arthur,’ said the King, with his wicked eyes
more on the stone floor than on his nephew,
‘will you not trust to the gentleness, the friend-
ship, and the truthfulness of your loving uncle?’
‘I will tell my loving uncle that,’ replied the
boy, ‘when he does me right. Let him restore to
me my kingdom of England, and then come to
me and ask the question.’
The King looked at him and went out. ‘Keep
that boy close prisoner,’ said he to the warden
of the castle.
Then, the King took secret counsel with the
worst of his nobles how the Prince was to be got
rid of. Some said, ‘Put out his eyes and keep
him in prison, as Robort of Normandy was kept.’
Others said, ‘Have him stabbed.’ Others, ‘Have
him hanged.’ Others, ‘Have him poisoned.’
King John, feeling that in any case, whatever
was done afterwards, it would be a satisfaction


A Child’s Histroy of England
130

to his mind to have those handsome eyes burnt
out that had looked at him so proudly while his
own royal eyes were blinking at the stone floor,
sent certain ruffians to Falaise to blind the boy
with red-hot irons. But Arthur so pathetically
entreated them, and shed such piteous tears,
and so appealed to Hubert de Bourg (or Burgh),
the warden of the castle, who had a love for him,
and was an honourable, tender man, that
Hubert could not bear it. To his eternal honour
he prevented the torture from being performed,
and, at his own risk, sent the savages away.
The chafed and disappointed King bethought
himself of the stabbing suggestion next, and,
with his shuffling manner and his cruel face,
proposed it to one William de Bray. ‘I am a
gentleman and not an executioner,’ said Will-
iam de Bray, and left the presence with disdain.
But it was not difficult for a King to hire a mur-
derer in those days. King John found one for his
money, and sent him down to the castle of 

Falaise. ‘On what errand dost thou come?’ said
Hubert to this fellow. ‘To despatch young Arthur,’
he returned. ‘Go back to him who sent thee,’
answered Hubert, ‘and say that I will do it!’
King John very well knowing that Hubert
would never do it, but that he courageously sent
this reply to save the Prince or gain time, des-
patched messengers to convey the young pris-
oner to the castle of Rouen.
Arthur was soon forced from the good Hubert
—of whom he had never stood in greater need
than then—carried away by night, and lodged in
his new prison: where, through his grated win-
dow, he could hear the deep waters of the river
Seine, rippling against the stone wall below.
One dark night, as he lay sleeping, dreaming
perhaps of rescue by those unfortunate gentle-
men who were obscurely suffering and dying in
his cause, he was roused, and bidden by his
jailer to come down the staircase to the foot of
the tower. He hurriedly dressed himself and


Charles Dickens
131

obeyed. When they came to the bottom of the
winding stairs, and the night air from the river
blew upon their faces, the jailer trod upon his
torch and put it out. Then, Arthur, in the dark-
ness, was hurriedly drawn into a solitary boat.
And in that boat, he found his uncle and one
other man.
He knelt to them, and prayed them not to mur-
der him. Deaf to his entreaties, they stabbed
him and sunk his body in the river with heavy
stones. When the spring-morning broke, the
tower-door was closed, the boat was gone, the
river sparkled on its way, and never more was
any trace of the poor boy beheld by mortal eyes.
The news of this atrocious murder being
spread in England, awakened a hatred of the
King (already odious for his many vices, and for
his having stolen away and married a noble lady
while his own wife was living) that never slept
again through his whole reign. In Brittany, the
indignation was intense. Arthur’s own sister 

Eleanor was in the power of John and shut up
in a convent at Bristol, but his half-sister Alice
was in Brittany. The people chose her, and the
murdered prince’s father-in-law, the last hus-
band of Constance, to represent them; and car-
ried their fiery complaints to King Philip. King
Philip summoned King John (as the holder of
territory in France) to come before him and de-
fend himself. King John refusing to appear, King
Philip declared him false, perjured, and guilty;
and again made war. In a little time, by con-
quering the greater part of his French territory,
King Philip deprived him of one-third of his do-
minions. And, through all the fighting that took
place, King John was always found, either to be
eating and drinking, like a gluttonous fool, when
the danger was at a distance, or to be running
away, like a beaten cur, when it was near.
You might suppose that when he was losing his
dominions at this rate, and when his own nobles
cared so little for him or his cause that they plainly


A Child’s Histroy of England
132

refused to follow his banner out of England, he
had enemies enough. But he made another en-
emy of the Pope, which he did in this way.
The Archbishop of Canterbury dying, and the
junior monks of that place wishing to get the
start of the senior monks in the appointment of
his successor, met together at midnight, secretly
elected a certain Reginald, and sent him off to
Rome to get the Pope’s approval. The senior
monks and the King soon finding this out, and
being very angry about it, the junior monks gave
way, and all the monks together elected the
Bishop of Norwich, who was the King’s favourite.
The Pope, hearing the whole story, declared that
neither election would do for him, and that he
elected Stephen Langton. The monks submit-
ting to the Pope, the King turned them all out
bodily, and banished them as traitors. The Pope
sent three bishops to the King, to threaten him
with an Interdict. The King told the bishops that
if any Interdict were laid upon his kingdom, he 

would tear out the eyes and cut off the noses of
all the monks he could lay hold of, and send
them over to Rome in that undecorated state as
a present for their master. The bishops, never-
theless, soon published the Interdict, and fled.
After it had lasted a year, the Pope proceeded
to his next step; which was Excommunication.
King John was declared excommunicated, with
all the usual ceremonies. The King was so in-
censed at this, and was made so desperate by
the disaffection of his Barons and the hatred of
his people, that it is said he even privately sent
ambassadors to the Turks in Spain, offering to
renounce his religion and hold his kingdom of
them if they would help him. It is related that
the ambassadors were admitted to the presence
of the Turkish Emir through long lines of Moorish
guards, and that they found the Emir with his
eyes seriously fixed on the pages of a large book,
from which he never once looked up. That they
gave him a letter from the King containing his


Charles Dickens
133

proposals, and were gravely dismissed. That pres-
ently the Emir sent for one of them, and con-
jured him, by his faith in his religion, to say what
kind of man the King of England truly was? That
the ambassador, thus pressed, replied that the
King of England was a false tyrant, against whom
his own subjects would soon rise. And that this
was quite enough for the Emir.
Money being, in his position, the next best
thing to men, King John spared no means of
getting it. He set on foot another oppressing and
torturing of the unhappy Jews (which was quite
in his way), and invented a new punishment for
one wealthy Jew of Bristol. Until such time as
that Jew should produce a certain large sum of
money, the King sentenced him to be impris-
oned, and, every day, to have one tooth violently
wrenched out of his head—beginning with the
double teeth. For seven days, the oppressed man
bore the daily pain and lost the daily tooth; but,
on the eighth, he paid the money. With the trea- 

sure raised in such ways, the King made an
expedition into Ireland, where some English
nobles had revolted. It was one of the very few
places from which he did not run away; because
no resistance was shown. He made another ex-
pedition into Wales—whence he did run away
in the end: but not before he had got from the
Welsh people, as hostages, twenty-seven young
men of the best families; every one of whom he
caused to be slain in the following year.
To Interdict and Excommunication, the Pope
now added his last sentence; Deposition. He
proclaimed John no longer King, absolved all
his subjects from their allegiance, and sent
Stephen Langton and others to the King of
France to tell him that, if he would invade En-
gland, he should be forgiven all his sins—at
least, should be forgiven them by the Pope, if
that would do.
As there was nothing that King Philip desired
more than to invade England, he collected a


A Child’s Histroy of England
134

great army at Rouen, and a fleet of seventeen
hundred ships to bring them over. But the En-
glish people, however bitterly they hated the
King, were not a people to suffer invasion qui-
etly. They flocked to Dover, where the English
standard was, in such great numbers to enrol
themselves as defenders of their native land,
that there were not provisions for them, and
the King could only select and retain sixty thou-
sand. But, at this crisis, the Pope, who had his
own reasons for objecting to either King John
or King Philip being too powerful, interfered. He
entrusted a legate, whose name was  Pandolf,
with the easy task of frightening King John. He
sent him to the English Camp, from France, to
terrify him with exaggerations of King Philip’s
power, and his own weakness in the discontent
of the English Barons and people. Pandolf dis-
charged his commission so well, that King John,
in a wretched panic, consented to acknowledge
Stephen Langton; to resign his kingdom ‘to God, 

Saint Peter, and Saint Paul’ —which meant the
Pope; and to hold it, ever afterwards, by the
Pope’s leave, on payment of an annual sum of
money. To this shameful contract he publicly
bound himself in the church of the Knights
Templars at Dover: where he laid at the legate’s
feet a part of the tribute, which the legate haugh-
tily trampled upon. But they  do say, that this
was merely a genteel flourish, and that he was
afterwards seen to pick it up and pocket it.
There was an unfortunate prophet, the name
of Peter, who had greatly increased King John’s
terrors by predicting that he would be
unknighted (which the King supposed to sig-
nify that he would die) before the Feast of the
Ascension should be past. That was the day
after this humiliation. When the next morning
came, and the King, who had been trembling
all night, found himself alive and safe, he or-
dered the prophet—and his son too—to be
dragged through the streets at the tails of


Charles Dickens
135

horses, and then hanged, for having frightened
him.
As King John had now submitted, the Pope,
to King Philip’s great astonishment, took him
under his protection, and informed King Philip
that he found he could not give him leave to
invade England. The angry Philip resolved to do
it without his leave but he gained nothing and
lost much; for, the English, commanded by the
Earl of Salisbury, went over, in five hundred
ships, to the French coast, before the French
fleet had sailed away from it, and utterly de-
feated the whole.
The Pope then took off his three sentences,
one after another, and empowered Stephen
Langton publicly to receive King John into the
favour of the Church again, and to ask him to
dinner. The King, who hated Langton with all
his might and main—and with reason too, for
he was a great and a good man, with whom such
a King could have no sympathy—pretended to 

cry and to be  very grateful. There was a little
difficulty about settling how much the King
should pay as a recompense to the clergy for
the losses he had caused them; but, the end of
it was, that the superior clergy got a good deal,
and the inferior clergy got little or nothing—
which has also happened since King John’s
time, I believe.
When all these matters were arranged, the
King in his triumph became more fierce, and
false, and insolent to all around him than he
had ever been. An alliance of sovereigns against
King Philip, gave him an opportunity of landing
an army in France; with which he even took a
town! But, on the French King’s gaining a great
victory, he ran away, of course, and made a truce
for five years.
And now the time approached when he was to
be still further humbled, and made to feel, if he
could feel anything, what a wretched creature
he was. Of all men in the world, Stephen Langton


A Child’s Histroy of England
136

seemed raised up by Heaven to oppose and sub-
due him. When he ruthlessly burnt and destroyed
the property of his own subjects, because their
Lords, the Barons, would not serve him abroad,
Stephen Langton fearlessly reproved and threat-
ened him. When he swore to restore the laws of
King Edward, or the laws of King Henry the First,
Stephen Langton knew his falsehood, and pur-
sued him through all his evasions. When the
Barons met at the abbey of Saint Edmund’s-
Bury, to consider their wrongs and the King’s
oppressions, Stephen Langton roused them by
his fervid words to demand a solemn charter of
rights and liberties from their perjured master,
and to swear, one by one, on the High Altar, that
they would have it, or would wage war against
him to the death. When the King hid himself in
London from the Barons, and was at last obliged
to receive them, they told him roundly they would
not believe him unless Stephen Langton became
a surety that he would keep his word. When he 

took the Cross to invest himself with some inter-
est, and belong to something that was received
with favour, Stephen Langton was still immov-
able. When he appealed to the Pope, and the Pope
wrote to Stephen Langton in behalf of his new
favourite, Stephen Langton was deaf, even to the
Pope himself, and saw before him nothing but
the welfare of England and the crimes of the En-
glish King.
At Easter-time, the Barons assembled at
Stamford, in Lincolnshire, in proud array, and,
marching near to Oxford where the King was,
delivered into the hands of Stephen Langton and
two others, a list of grievances. ‘And these,’ they
said, ‘he must redress, or we will do it for our-
selves!’ When Stephen Langton told the King as
much, and read the list to him, he went half
mad with rage. But that did him no more good
than his afterwards trying to pacify the Barons
with lies. They called themselves and their fol-
lowers, ‘The army of God and the Holy Church.’


Charles Dickens
137

Marching through the country, with the people
thronging to them everywhere (except at
Northampton, where they failed in an attack
upon the castle), they at last triumphantly set
up their banner in London itself, whither the
whole land, tired of the tyrant, seemed to flock
to join them. Seven knights alone, of all the
knights in England, remained with the King;
who, reduced to this strait, at last sent the Earl
of Pembroke to the Barons to say that he ap-
proved of everything, and would meet them to
sign their charter when they would. ‘Then,’ said
the Barons, ‘let the day be the fifteenth of June,
and the place, Runny-Mead.’
On Monday, the fifteenth of June, one thou-
sand two hundred and fourteen, the King came
from Windsor Castle, and the Barons came from
the town of Staines, and they met on Runny-
Mead, which is still a pleasant meadow by the
Thames, where rushes grow in the clear water
of the winding river, and its banks are green 

with grass and trees. On the side of the Barons,
came the General of their army,  Robert Fitz-
Walter, and a great concourse of the nobility of
England. With the King, came, in all, some four-
and-twenty persons of any note, most of whom
despised him, and were merely his advisers in
form. On that great day, and in that great com-
pany, the King signed Magna Charta—the great
charter of England—by which he pledged him-
self to maintain the Church in its rights; to re-
lieve the Barons of oppressive obligations as
vassals of the Crown—of which the Barons, in
their turn, pledged themselves to relieve  their
vassals, the people; to respect the liberties of
London and all other cities and boroughs; to
protect foreign merchants who came to England;
to imprison no man without a fair trial; and to
sell, delay, or deny justice to none. As the Bar-
ons knew his falsehood well, they further re-
quired, as their securities, that he should send
out of his kingdom all his foreign troops; that


A Child’s Histroy of England
138

for two months they should hold possession of
the city of London, and Stephen Langton of the
Tower; and that five-and-twenty of their body,
chosen by themselves, should be a lawful com-
mittee to watch the keeping of the charter, and
to make war upon him if he broke it.
All this he was obliged to yield. He signed the
charter with a smile, and, if he could have looked
agreeable, would have done so, as he departed
from the splendid assembly. When he got home
to Windsor Castle, he was quite a madman in
his helpless fury. And he broke the charter im-
mediately afterwards.
He sent abroad for foreign soldiers, and sent
to the Pope for help, and plotted to take London
by surprise, while the Barons should be hold-
ing a great tournament at Stamford, which they
had agreed to hold there as a celebration of the
charter. The Barons, however, found him out
and put it off. Then, when the Barons desired
to see him and tax him with his treachery, he 

made numbers of appointments with them, and
kept none, and shifted from place to place, and
was constantly sneaking and skulking about.
At last he appeared at Dover, to join his foreign
soldiers, of whom numbers came into his pay;
and with them he besieged and took Rochester
Castle, which was occupied by knights and sol-
diers of the Barons. He would have hanged them
every one; but the leader of the foreign soldiers,
fearful of what the English people might after-
wards do to him, interfered to save the knights;
therefore the King was fain to satisfy his vengeance
with the death of all the common men. Then, he
sent the Earl of Salisbury, with one portion of his
army, to ravage the eastern part of his own do-
minions, while he carried fire and slaughter into
the northern part; torturing, plundering, killing,
and inflicting every possible cruelty upon the
people; and, every morning, setting a worthy ex-
ample to his men by setting fire, with his own
monster-hands, to the house where he had slept


Charles Dickens
139

last night. Nor was this all; for the Pope, coming
to the aid of his precious friend, laid the kingdom
under an Interdict again, because the people took
part with the Barons. It did not much matter, for
the people had grown so used to it now, that they
had begun to think nothing about it. It occurred
to them—perhaps to Stephen Langton too - that
they could keep their churches open, and ring
their bells, without the Pope’s permission as well
as with it. So, they tried the experiment—and
found that it succeeded perfectly.
It being now impossible to bear the country,
as a wilderness of cruelty, or longer to hold any
terms with such a forsworn outlaw of a King,
the Barons sent to Louis, son of the French
monarch, to offer him the English crown. Car-
ing as little for the Pope’s excommunication of
him if he accepted the offer, as it is possible his
father may have cared for the Pope’s forgive-
ness of his sins, he landed at Sandwich (King
John immediately running away from Dover, 

where he happened to be), and went on to Lon-
don. The Scottish King, with whom many of the
Northern English Lords had taken refuge; num-
bers of the foreign soldiers, numbers of the Bar-
ons, and numbers of the people went over to
him every day; —King John, the while, continu-
ally running away in all directions.
The career of Louis was checked however, by
the suspicions of the Barons, founded on the
dying declaration of a French Lord, that when
the kingdom was conquered he was sworn to
banish them as traitors, and to give their es-
tates to some of his own Nobles. Rather than
suffer this, some of the Barons hesitated: oth-
ers even went over to King John.
It seemed to be the turning-point of King
John’s fortunes, for, in his savage and murder-
ous course, he had now taken some towns and
met with some successes. But, happily for En-
gland and humanity, his death was near. Cross-
ing a dangerous quicksand, called the Wash,


A Child’s Histroy of England
140

not very far from Wisbeach, the tide came up
and nearly drowned his army. He and his sol-
diers escaped; but, looking back from the shore
when he was safe, he saw the roaring water
sweep down in a torrent, overturn the waggons,
horses, and men, that carried his treasure, and
engulf them in a raging whirlpool from which
nothing could be delivered.
Cursing, and swearing, and gnawing his fin-
gers, he went on to Swinestead Abbey, where
the monks set before him quantities of pears,
and peaches, and new cider—some say poison
too, but there is very little reason to suppose so
- of which he ate and drank in an immoderate
and beastly way. All night he lay ill of a burning
fever, and haunted with horrible fears. Next day,
they put him in a horse-litter, and carried him
to Sleaford Castle, where he passed another
night of pain and horror. Next day, they carried
him, with greater difficulty than on the day be-
fore, to the castle of Newark upon Trent; and 

there, on the eighteenth of October, in the forty-
ninth year of his age, and the seventeenth of
his vile reign, was an end of this miserable brute. 

CHAPTER XV
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE
THIRD, CALLED, OF WINCHESTER 

IF  ANY  OF  THE E NGLISH B ARONS remembered the
murdered Arthur’s sister, Eleanor the fair maid
of Brittany, shut up in her convent at Bristol,
none among them spoke of her now, or main-
tained her right to the Crown. The dead
Usurper’s eldest boy, Henry by name, was taken
by the Earl of Pembroke, the Marshal of En-
gland, to the city of Gloucester, and there
crowned in great haste when he was only ten
years old. As the Crown itself had been lost with
the King’s treasure in the raging water, and as
there was no time to make another, they put a
circle of plain gold upon his head instead. ‘We


Charles Dickens
141

have been the enemies of this child’s father,’
said Lord Pembroke, a good and true gentle-
man, to the few Lords who were present, ‘and
he merited our ill-will; but the child himself is
innocent, and his youth demands our friend-
ship and protection.’ Those Lords felt tenderly
towards the little boy, remembering their own
young children; and they bowed their heads,
and said, ‘Long live King Henry the Third!’
Next, a great council met at Bristol, revised
Magna Charta, and made Lord Pembroke Re-
gent or Protector of England, as the King was
too young to reign alone. The next thing to be
done, was to get rid of Prince Louis of France,
and to win over those English Barons who were
still ranged under his banner. He was strong in
many parts of England, and in London itself;
and he held, among other places, a certain
Castle called the Castle of Mount Sorel, in
Leicestershire. To this fortress, after some skir-
mishing and truce-making, Lord Pembroke laid 

siege. Louis despatched an army of six hundred
knights and twenty thousand soldiers to relieve
it. Lord Pembroke, who was not strong enough
for such a force, retired with all his men. The
army of the French Prince, which had marched
there with fire and plunder, marched away with
fire and plunder, and came, in a boastful swag-
gering manner, to Lincoln. The town submit-
ted; but the Castle in the town, held by a brave
widow lady, named Nichola de Camville (whose
property it was), made such a sturdy resistance,
that the French Count in command of the army
of the French Prince found it necessary to be-
siege this Castle. While he was thus engaged,
word was brought to him that Lord Pembroke,
with four hundred knights, two hundred and
fifty men with cross-bows, and a stout force both
of horse and foot, was marching towards him.
‘What care I?’ said the French Count. ‘The En-
glishman is not so mad as to attack me and my
great army in a walled town!’ But the English-


A Child’s Histroy of England
142

man did it for all that, and did it—not so madly
but so wisely, that he decoyed the great army
into the narrow, ill-paved lanes and byways of
Lincoln, where its horse-soldiers could not ride
in any strong body; and there he made such
havoc with them, that the whole force surren-
dered themselves prisoners, except the Count;
who said that he would never yield to any En-
glish traitor alive, and accordingly got killed. The
end of this victory, which the English called, for
a joke, the Fair of Lincoln, was the usual one in
those times—the common men were slain with-
out any mercy, and the knights and gentlemen
paid ransom and went home.
The wife of Louis, the fair Blanche of Castile,
dutifully equipped a fleet of eighty good ships,
and sent it over from France to her husband’s
aid. An English fleet of forty ships, some good
and some bad, gallantly met them near the
mouth of the Thames, and took or sunk sixty-
five in one fight. This great loss put an end to 

the French Prince’s hopes. A treaty was made
at Lambeth, in virtue of which the English Bar-
ons who had remained attached to his cause
returned to their allegiance, and it was engaged
on both sides that the Prince and all his troops
should retire peacefully to France. It was time
to go; for war had made him so poor that he
was obliged to borrow money from the citizens
of London to pay his expenses home.
Lord Pembroke afterwards applied himself to
governing the country justly, and to healing the
quarrels and disturbances that had arisen
among men in the days of the bad King John.
He caused Magna Charta to be still more im-
proved, and so amended the Forest Laws that a
Peasant was no longer put to death for killing a
stag in a Royal Forest, but was only imprisoned.
It would have been well for England if it could
have had so good a Protector many years longer,
but that was not to be. Within three years after
the young King’s Coronation, Lord Pembroke


Charles Dickens
143

died; and you may see his tomb, at this day, in
the old Temple Church in London.
The Protectorship was now divided.  Peter de
Roches, whom King John had made Bishop of
Winchester, was entrusted with the care of the
person of the young sovereign; and the exercise
of the Royal authority was confided to  Earl
Hubert de Burgh . These two personages had
from the first no liking for each other, and soon
became enemies. When the young King was
declared of age, Peter de Roches, finding that
Hubert increased in power and favour, retired
discontentedly, and went abroad. For nearly ten
years afterwards Hubert had full sway alone.
But ten years is a long time to hold the favour
of a King. This King, too, as he grew up, showed
a strong resemblance to his father, in feeble-
ness, inconsistency, and irresolution. The best
that can be said of him is that he was not cruel.
De Roches coming home again, after ten years,
and being a novelty, the King began to favour 

him and to look coldly on Hubert. Wanting
money besides, and having made Hubert rich,
he began to dislike Hubert. At last he was made
to believe, or pretended to believe, that Hubert
had misappropriated some of the Royal trea-
sure; and ordered him to furnish an account of
all he had done in his administration. Besides
which, the foolish charge was brought against
Hubert that he had made himself the King’s
favourite by magic. Hubert very well knowing
that he could never defend himself against such
nonsense, and that his old enemy must be deter-
mined on his ruin, instead of answering the
charges fled to Merton Abbey. Then the King, in a
violent passion, sent for the Mayor of London, and
said to the Mayor, ‘Take twenty thousand citizens,
and drag me Hubert de Burgh out of that abbey,
and bring him here.’ The Mayor posted off to do
it, but the Archbishop of Dublin (who was a friend
of Hubert’s) warning the King that an abbey was
a sacred place, and that if he committed any vio-


A Child’s Histroy of England
144

lence there, he must answer for it to the Church,
the King changed his mind and called the Mayor
back, and declared that Hubert should have four
months to prepare his defence, and should be safe
and free during that time.
Hubert, who relied upon the King’s word,
though I think he was old enough to have known
better, came out of Merton Abbey upon these
conditions, and journeyed away to see his wife:
a Scottish Princess who was then at St.
Edmund’s-Bury.
Almost as soon as he had departed from the
Sanctuary, his enemies persuaded the weak
King to send out one Sir Godfrey de Crancumb,
who commanded three hundred vagabonds
called the Black Band, with orders to seize him.
They came up with him at a little town in Essex,
called Brentwood, when he was in bed. He
leaped out of bed, got out of the house, fled to
the church, ran up to the altar, and laid his
hand upon the cross. Sir Godfrey and the Black 

Band, caring neither for church, altar, nor cross,
dragged him forth to the church door, with their
drawn swords flashing round his head, and sent
for a Smith to rivet a set of chains upon him.
When the Smith (I wish I knew his name!) was
brought, all dark and swarthy with the smoke
of his forge, and panting with the speed he had
made; and the Black Band, falling aside to show
him the Prisoner, cried with a loud uproar, ‘Make
the fetters heavy! make them strong!’ the Smith
dropped upon his knee—but not to the Black
Band—and said, ‘This is the brave Earl Hubert
de Burgh, who fought at Dover Castle, and de-
stroyed the French fleet, and has done his coun-
try much good service. You may kill me, if you
like, but I will never make a chain for Earl Hubert
de Burgh!’
The Black Band never blushed, or they might
have blushed at this. They knocked the Smith
about from one to another, and swore at him,
and tied the Earl on horseback, undressed as


Charles Dickens
145

he was, and carried him off to the Tower of Lon-
don. The Bishops, however, were so indignant
at the violation of the Sanctuary of the Church,
that the frightened King soon ordered the Black
Band to take him back again; at the same time
commanding the Sheriff of Essex to prevent his
escaping out of Brentwood Church. Well! the
Sheriff dug a deep trench all round the church,
and erected a high fence, and watched the
church night and day; the Black Band and their
Captain watched it too, like three hundred and
one black wolves. For thirty-nine days, Hubert
de Burgh remained within. At length, upon the
fortieth day, cold and hunger were too much
for him, and he gave himself up to the Black
Band, who carried him off, for the second time,
to the Tower. When his trial came on, he re-
fused to plead; but at last it was arranged that
he should give up all the royal lands which had
been bestowed upon him, and should be kept
at the Castle of Devizes, in what was called ‘free 

prison,’ in charge of four knights appointed by
four lords. There, he remained almost a year,
until, learning that a follower of his old enemy
the Bishop was made Keeper of the Castle, and
fearing that he might be killed by treachery, he
climbed the ramparts one dark night, dropped
from the top of the high Castle wall into the
moat, and coming safely to the ground, took
refuge in another church. From this place he
was delivered by a party of horse despatched to
his help by some nobles, who were by this time
in revolt against the King, and assembled in
Wales. He was finally pardoned and restored to
his estates, but he lived privately, and never
more aspired to a high post in the realm, or to a
high place in the King’s favour. And thus end—
more happily than the stories of many favourites
of Kings—the adventures of Earl Hubert de
Burgh.
The nobles, who had risen in revolt, were
stirred up to rebellion by the overbearing con-


A Child’s Histroy of England
146

duct of the Bishop of Winchester, who, finding
that the King secretly hated the Great Charter
which had been forced from his father, did his
utmost to confirm him in that dislike, and in
the preference he showed to foreigners over the
English. Of this, and of his even publicly de-
claring that the Barons of England were infe-
rior to those of France, the English Lords com-
plained with such bitterness, that the King, find-
ing them well supported by the clergy, became
frightened for his throne, and sent away the
Bishop and all his foreign associates. On his
marriage, however, with Eleanor, a French lady,
the daughter of the Count of Provence, he openly
favoured the foreigners again; and so many of
his wife’s relations came over, and made such
an immense family-party at court, and got so
many good things, and pocketed so much
money, and were so high with the English whose
money they pocketed, that the bolder English
Barons murmured openly about a clause there 

was in the Great Charter, which provided for
the banishment of unreasonable favourites. But,
the foreigners only laughed disdainfully, and
said, ‘What are your English laws to us?’
King Philip of France had died, and had been
succeeded by Prince Louis, who had also died
after a short reign of three years, and had been
succeeded by his son of the same name—so
moderate and just a man that he was not the
least in the world like a King, as Kings went.
Isabella, King Henry’s mother, wished very much
(for a certain spite she had) that England should
make war against this King; and, as King Henry
was a mere puppet in anybody’s hands who
knew how to manage his feebleness, she easily
carried her point with him. But, the Parliament
were determined to give him no money for such
a war. So, to defy the Parliament, he packed up
thirty large casks of silver—I don’t know how
he got so much; I dare say he screwed it out of
the miserable Jews—and put them aboard ship,


Charles Dickens
147

and went away himself to carry war into France:
accompanied by his mother and his brother Ri-
chard, Earl of Cornwall, who was rich and clever.
But he only got well beaten, and came home.
The good-humour of the Parliament was not
restored by this. They reproached the King with
wasting the public money to make greedy for-
eigners rich, and were so stern with him, and
so determined not to let him have more of it to
waste if they could help it, that he was at his
wit’s end for some, and tried so shamelessly to
get all he could from his subjects, by excuses
or by force, that the people used to say the King
was the sturdiest beggar in England. He took
the Cross, thinking to get some money by that
means; but, as it was very well known that he
never meant to go on a crusade, he got none. In
all this contention, the Londoners were particu-
larly keen against the King, and the King hated
them warmly in return. Hating or loving, how-
ever, made no difference; he continued in the 

same condition for nine or ten years, when at
last the Barons said that if he would solemnly
confirm their liberties afresh, the Parliament
would vote him a large sum.
As he readily consented, there was a great
meeting held in Westminster Hall, one pleasant
day in May, when all the clergy, dressed in their
robes and holding every one of them a burning
candle in his hand, stood up (the Barons being
also there) while the Archbishop of Canterbury
read the sentence of excommunication against
any man, and all men, who should henceforth,
in any way, infringe the Great Charter of the
Kingdom. When he had done, they all put out
their burning candles with a curse upon the
soul of any one, and every one, who should merit
that sentence. The King concluded with an oath
to keep the Charter, ‘As I am a man, as I am a
Christian, as I am a Knight, as I am a King!’
It was easy to make oaths, and easy to break
them; and the King did both, as his father had


A Child’s Histroy of England
148

done before him. He took to his old courses again
when he was supplied with money, and soon
cured of their weakness the few who had ever
really trusted him. When his money was gone,
and he was once more borrowing and begging
everywhere with a meanness worthy of his na-
ture, he got into a difficulty with the Pope re-
specting the Crown of Sicily, which the Pope
said he had a right to give away, and which he
offered to King Henry for his second son, Prince
Edmund. But, if you or I give away what we have
not got, and what belongs to somebody else, it
is likely that the person to whom we give it, will
have some trouble in taking it. It was exactly so
in this case. It was necessary to conquer the
Sicilian Crown before it could be put upon young
Edmund’s head. It could not be conquered with-
out money. The Pope ordered the clergy to raise
money. The clergy, however, were not so obedi-
ent to him as usual; they had been disputing
with him for some time about his unjust prefer- 

ence of Italian Priests in England; and they had
begun to doubt whether the King’s chaplain,
whom he allowed to be paid for preaching in
seven hundred churches, could possibly be,
even by the Pope’s favour, in seven hundred
places at once. ‘The Pope and the King together,’
said the Bishop of London, ‘may take the mitre
off my head; but, if they do, they will find that I
shall put on a soldier’s helmet. I pay nothing.’
The Bishop of Worcester was as bold as the
Bishop of London, and would pay nothing ei-
ther. Such sums as the more timid or more help-
less of the clergy did raise were squandered
away, without doing any good to the King, or
bringing the Sicilian Crown an inch nearer to
Prince Edmund’s head. The end of the business
was, that the Pope gave the Crown to the brother
of the King of France (who conquered it for him-
self), and sent the King of England in, a bill of
one hundred thousand pounds for the expenses
of not having won it.


Charles Dickens
149

The King was now so much distressed that
we might almost pity him, if it were possible to
pity a King so shabby and ridiculous. His clever
brother, Richard, had bought the title of King of
the Romans from the German people, and was
no longer near him, to help him with advice.
The clergy, resisting the very Pope, were in alli-
ance with the Barons. The Barons were headed
by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, married
to King Henry’s sister, and, though a foreigner
himself, the most popular man in England
against the foreign favourites. When the King
next met his Parliament, the Barons, led by this
Earl, came before him, armed from head to foot,
and cased in armour. When the Parliament
again assembled, in a month’s time, at Oxford,
this Earl was at their head, and the King was
obliged to consent, on oath, to what was called
a Committee of Government: consisting of
twenty-four members: twelve chosen by the
Barons, and twelve chosen by himself. 

But, at a good time for him, his brother Rich-
ard came back. Richard’s first act (the Barons
would not admit him into England on other
terms) was to swear to be faithful to the Com-
mittee of Government—which he immediately
began to oppose with all his might. Then, the
Barons began to quarrel among themselves;
especially the proud Earl of Gloucester with the
Earl of Leicester, who went abroad in disgust.
Then, the people began to be dissatisfied with
the Barons, because they did not do enough for
them. The King’s chances seemed so good again
at length, that he took heart enough—or caught
it from his brother—to tell the Committee of
Government that he abolished them—as to his
oath, never mind that, the Pope said! —and to
seize all the money in the Mint, and to shut
himself up in the Tower of London. Here he was
joined by his eldest son, Prince Edward; and,
from the Tower, he made public a letter of the
Pope’s to the world in general, informing all men


A Child’s Histroy of England
150

that he had been an excellent and just King for
five-and-forty years.
As everybody knew he had been nothing of
the sort, nobody cared much for this document.
It so chanced that the proud Earl of Gloucester
dying, was succeeded by his son; and that his
son, instead of being the enemy of the Earl of
Leicester, was (for the time) his friend. It fell
out, therefore, that these two Earls joined their
forces, took several of the Royal Castles in the
country, and advanced as hard as they could
on London. The London people, always opposed
to the King, declared for them with great joy.
The King himself remained shut up, not at all
gloriously, in the Tower. Prince Edward made
the best of his way to Windsor Castle. His
mother, the Queen, attempted to follow him by
water; but, the people seeing her barge rowing
up the river, and hating her with all their hearts,
ran to London Bridge, got together a quantity of
stones and mud, and pelted the barge as it came 

through, crying furiously, ‘Drown the Witch!
Drown her!’ They were so near doing it, that the
Mayor took the old lady under his protection,
and shut her up in St. Paul’s until the danger
was past.
It would require a great deal of writing on my
part, and a great deal of reading on yours, to
follow the King through his disputes with the
Barons, and to follow the Barons through their
disputes with one another - so I will make short
work of it for both of us, and only relate the
chief events that arose out of these quarrels.
The good King of France was asked to decide
between them. He gave it as his opinion that
the King must maintain the Great Charter, and
that the Barons must give up the Committee of
Government, and all the rest that had been done
by the Parliament at Oxford: which the Royal-
ists, or King’s party, scornfully called the Mad
Parliament. The Barons declared that these were
not fair terms, and they would not accept them.


Charles Dickens
151

Then they caused the great bell of St. Paul’s to
be tolled, for the purpose of rousing up the Lon-
don people, who armed themselves at the dis-
mal sound and formed quite an army in the
streets. I am sorry to say, however, that instead
of falling upon the King’s party with whom their
quarrel was, they fell upon the miserable Jews,
and killed at least five hundred of them. They
pretended that some of these Jews were on the
King’s side, and that they kept hidden in their
houses, for the destruction of the people, a cer-
tain terrible composition called Greek Fire,
which could not be put out with water, but only
burnt the fiercer for it. What they really did keep
in their houses was money; and this their cruel
enemies wanted, and this their cruel enemies
took, like robbers and murderers.
The Earl of Leicester put himself at the head
of these Londoners and other forces, and fol-
lowed the King to Lewes in Sussex, where he
lay encamped with his army. Before giving the 

King’s forces battle here, the Earl addressed his
soldiers, and said that King Henry the Third had
broken so many oaths, that he had become the
enemy of God, and therefore they would wear
white crosses on their breasts, as if they were
arrayed, not against a fellow-Christian, but
against a Turk. White-crossed accordingly, they
rushed into the fight. They would have lost the
day - the King having on his side all the foreign-
ers in England: and, from Scotland,  John
Comyn, John Baliol, and Robert Bruce, with all
their men—but for the impatience of Prince Ed-
ward, who, in his hot desire to have vengeance
on the people of London, threw the whole of his
father’s army into confusion. He was taken Pris-
oner; so was the King; so was the King’s brother
the King of the Romans; and five thousand En-
glishmen were left dead upon the bloody grass.
For this success, the Pope excommunicated
the Earl of Leicester: which neither the Earl nor
the people cared at all about. The people loved


A Child’s Histroy of England
152

him and supported him, and he became the real
King; having all the power of the government in
his own hands, though he was outwardly re-
spectful to King Henry the Third, whom he took
with him wherever he went, like a poor old limp
court-card. He summoned a Parliament (in the
year one thousand two hundred and sixty-five)
which was the first Parliament in England that
the people had any real share in electing; and
he grew more and more in favour with the people
every day, and they stood by him in whatever
he did.
Many of the other Barons, and particularly
the Earl of Gloucester, who had become by this
time as proud as his father, grew jealous of this
powerful and popular Earl, who was proud too,
and began to conspire against him. Since the
battle of Lewes, Prince Edward had been kept
as a hostage, and, though he was otherwise
treated like a Prince, had never been allowed to
go out without attendants appointed by the Earl 

of Leicester, who watched him. The conspiring
Lords found means to propose to him, in se-
cret, that they should assist him to escape, and
should make him their leader; to which he very
heartily consented.
So, on a day that was agreed upon, he said to
his attendants after dinner (being then at Here-
ford), ‘I should like to ride on horseback, this
fine afternoon, a little way into the country.’ As
they, too, thought it would be very pleasant to
have a canter in the sunshine, they all rode out
of the town together in a gay little troop. When
they came to a fine level piece of turf, the Prince
fell to comparing their horses one with another,
and offering bets that one was faster than an-
other; and the attendants, suspecting no harm,
rode galloping matches until their horses were
quite tired. The Prince rode no matches him-
self, but looked on from his saddle, and staked
his money. Thus they passed the whole merry
afternoon. Now, the sun was setting, and they


Charles Dickens
153

were all going slowly up a hill, the Prince’s horse
very fresh and all the other horses very weary,
when a strange rider mounted on a grey steed
appeared at the top of the hill, and waved his
hat. ‘What does the fellow mean?’ said the at-
tendants one to another. The Prince answered
on the instant by setting spurs to his horse,
dashing away at his utmost speed, joining the
man, riding into the midst of a little crowd of
horsemen who were then seen waiting under
some trees, and who closed around him; and
so he departed in a cloud of dust, leaving the
road empty of all but the baffled attendants,
who sat looking at one another, while their
horses drooped their ears and panted.
The Prince joined the Earl of Gloucester at
Ludlow. The Earl of Leicester, with a part of the
army and the stupid old King, was at Hereford.
One of the Earl of Leicester’s sons, Simon de
Montfort, with another part of the army, was in
Sussex. To prevent these two parts from unit- 

ing was the Prince’s first object. He attacked
Simon de Montfort by night, defeated him, seized
his banners and treasure, and forced him into
Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, which be-
longed to his family.
His father, the Earl of Leicester, in the mean-
while, not knowing what had happened,
marched out of Hereford, with his part of the
army and the King, to meet him. He came, on a
bright morning in August, to Evesham, which
is watered by the pleasant river Avon. Looking
rather anxiously across the prospect towards
Kenilworth, he saw his own banners advanc-
ing; and his face brightened with joy. But, it
clouded darkly when he presently perceived that
the banners were captured, and in the enemy’s
hands; and he said, ‘It is over. The Lord have
mercy on our souls, for our bodies are Prince
Edward’s!’
He fought like a true Knight, nevertheless.
When his horse was killed under him, he fought


A Child’s Histroy of England
154

on foot. It was a fierce battle, and the dead lay in
heaps everywhere. The old King, stuck up in a
suit of armour on a big war-horse, which didn’t
mind him at all, and which carried him into all
sorts of places where he didn’t want to go, got
into everybody’s way, and very nearly got knocked
on the head by one of his son’s men. But he man-
aged to pipe out, ‘I am Harry of Winchester!’ and
the Prince, who heard him, seized his bridle, and
took him out of peril. The Earl of Leicester still
fought bravely, until his best son Henry was
killed, and the bodies of his best friends choked
his path; and then he fell, still fighting, sword in
hand. They mangled his body, and sent it as a
present to a noble lady—but a very unpleasant
lady, I should think—who was the wife of his
worst enemy. They could not mangle his memory
in the minds of the faithful people, though. Many
years afterwards, they loved him more than ever,
and regarded him as a Saint, and always spoke
of him as ‘Sir Simon the Righteous.’ 

And even though he was dead, the cause for
which he had fought still lived, and was strong,
and forced itself upon the King in the very hour
of victory. Henry found himself obliged to re-
spect the Great Charter, however much he hated
it, and to make laws similar to the laws of the
Great Earl of Leicester, and to be moderate and
forgiving towards the people at last—even to-
wards the people of London, who had so long
opposed him. There were more risings before
all this was done, but they were set at rest by
these means, and Prince Edward did his best
in all things to restore peace. One Sir Adam de
Gourdon was the last dissatisfied knight in
arms; but, the Prince vanquished him in single
combat, in a wood, and nobly gave him his life,
and became his friend, instead of slaying him.
Sir Adam was not ungrateful. He ever afterwards
remained devoted to his generous conqueror.
When the troubles of the Kingdom were thus
calmed, Prince Edward and his cousin Henry took


Charles Dickens
155

the Cross, and went away to the Holy Land, with
many English Lords and Knights. Four years af-
terwards the King of the Romans died, and, next
year (one thousand two hundred and seventy-
two), his brother the weak King of England died.
He was sixty-eight years old then, and had
reigned fifty-six years. He was as much of a King
in death, as he had ever been in life. He was the
mere pale shadow of a King at all times. 

CHAPTER XVI
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE
FIRST, CALLED LONGSHANKS 

IT WAS NOW THE YEAR of our Lord one thousand two
hundred and seventy-two; and Prince Edward,
the heir to the throne, being away in the Holy
Land, knew nothing of his father’s death. The
Barons, however, proclaimed him King, imme-
diately after the Royal funeral; and the people
very willingly consented, since most men knew 

too well by this time what the horrors of a con-
test for the crown were. So King Edward the
First, called, in a not very complimentary man-
ner, Longshanks, because of the slenderness of
his legs, was peacefully accepted by the English
Nation.
His legs had need to be strong, however long
and thin they were; for they had to support him
through many difficulties on the fiery sands of
Asia, where his small force of soldiers fainted,
died, deserted, and seemed to melt away. But
his prowess made light of it, and he said, ‘I will
go on, if I go on with no other follower than my
groom!’
A Prince of this spirit gave the Turks a deal of
trouble. He stormed Nazareth, at which place,
of all places on earth, I am sorry to relate, he
made a frightful slaughter of innocent people;
and then he went to Acre, where he got a truce
of ten years from the Sultan. He had very nearly
lost his life in Acre, through the treachery of a


A Child’s Histroy of England
156

Saracen Noble, called the Emir of Jaffa, who,
making the pretence that he had some idea of
turning Christian and wanted to know all about
that religion, sent a trusty messenger to Ed-
ward very often—with a dagger in his sleeve. At
last, one Friday in Whitsun week, when it was
very hot, and all the sandy prospect lay beneath
the blazing sun, burnt up like a great overdone
biscuit, and Edward was lying on a couch,
dressed for coolness in only a loose robe, the
messenger, with his chocolate-coloured face and
his bright dark eyes and white teeth, came
creeping in with a letter, and kneeled down like
a tame tiger. But, the moment Edward stretched
out his hand to take the letter, the tiger made a
spring at his heart. He was quick, but Edward
was quick too. He seized the traitor by his choco-
late throat, threw him to the ground, and slew
him with the very dagger he had drawn. The
weapon had struck Edward in the arm, and al-
though the wound itself was slight, it threat- 

ened to be mortal, for the blade of the dagger
had been smeared with poison. Thanks, how-
ever, to a better surgeon than was often to be
found in those times, and to some wholesome
herbs, and above all, to his faithful wife, Eleanor,
who devotedly nursed him, and is said by some
to have sucked the poison from the wound with
her own red lips (which I am very willing to be-
lieve), Edward soon recovered and was sound
again.
As the King his father had sent entreaties to
him to return home, he now began the journey.
He had got as far as Italy, when he met mes-
sengers who brought him intelligence of the
King’s death. Hearing that all was quiet at home,
he made no haste to return to his own domin-
ions, but paid a visit to the Pope, and went in
state through various Italian Towns, where he
was welcomed with acclamations as a mighty
champion of the Cross from the Holy Land, and
where he received presents of purple mantles


Charles Dickens
157

and prancing horses, and went along in great
triumph. The shouting people little knew that
he was the last English monarch who would
ever embark in a crusade, or that within twenty
years every conquest which the Christians had
made in the Holy Land at the cost of so much
blood, would be won back by the Turks. But all
this came to pass.
There was, and there is, an old town standing
in a plain in France, called Chƒlons. When the
King was coming towards this place on his way
to England, a wily French Lord, called the Count
of Chƒlons, sent him a polite challenge to come
with his knights and hold a fair tournament with
the Count and his knights, and make a day of it
with sword and lance. It was represented to the
King that the Count of Chƒlons was not to be
trusted, and that, instead of a holiday fight for
mere show and in good humour, he secretly
meant a real battle, in which the English should
be defeated by superior force. 

The King, however, nothing afraid, went to the
appointed place on the appointed day with a
thousand followers. When the Count came with
two thousand and attacked the English in ear-
nest, the English rushed at them with such
valour that the Count’s men and the Count’s
horses soon began to be tumbled down all over
the field. The Count himself seized the King
round the neck, but the King tumbled him out
of his saddle in return for the compliment, and,
jumping from his own horse, and standing over
him, beat away at his iron armour like a black-
smith hammering on his anvil. Even when the
Count owned himself defeated and offered his
sword, the King would not do him the honour
to take it, but made him yield it up to a com-
mon soldier. There had been such fury shown
in this fight, that it was afterwards called the
little Battle of Chƒlons.
The English were very well disposed to be
proud of their King after these adventures; so,


A Child’s Histroy of England
158

when he landed at Dover in the year one thou-
sand two hundred and seventy-four (being then
thirty-six years old), and went on to Westminster
where he and his good Queen were crowned with
great magnificence, splendid rejoicings took
place. For the coronation-feast there were pro-
vided, among other eatables, four hundred oxen,
four hundred sheep, four hundred and fifty pigs,
eighteen wild boars, three hundred flitches of
bacon, and twenty thousand fowls. The fountains
and conduits in the street flowed with red and
white wine instead of water; the rich citizens hung
silks and cloths of the brightest colours out of
their windows to increase the beauty of the show,
and threw out gold and silver by whole handfuls
to make scrambles for the crowd. In short, there
was such eating and drinking, such music and
capering, such a ringing of bells and tossing of
caps, such a shouting, and singing, and revel-
ling, as the narrow overhanging streets of old
London City had not witnessed for many a long 

day. All the people were merry except the poor
Jews, who, trembling within their houses, and
scarcely daring to peep out, began to foresee that
they would have to find the money for this jovi-
ality sooner or later.
To dismiss this sad subject of the Jews for
the present, I am sorry to add that in this reign
they were most unmercifully pillaged. They were
hanged in great numbers, on accusations of
having clipped the King’s coin—which all kinds
of people had done. They were heavily taxed;
they were disgracefully badged; they were, on
one day, thirteen years after the coronation,
taken up with their wives and children and
thrown into beastly prisons, until they pur-
chased their release by paying to the King twelve
thousand pounds. Finally, every kind of prop-
erty belonging to them was seized by the King,
except so little as would defray the charge of
their taking themselves away into foreign coun-
tries. Many years elapsed before the hope of gain


Charles Dickens
159

induced any of their race to return to England,
where they had been treated so heartlessly and
had suffered so much.
If King Edward the First had been as bad a
king to Christians as he was to Jews, he would
have been bad indeed. But he was, in general, a
wise and great monarch, under whom the coun-
try much improved. He had no love for the Great
Charter—few Kings had, through many, many
years—but he had high qualities. The first bold
object which he conceived when he came home,
was, to unite under one Sovereign England, Scot-
land, and Wales; the two last of which countries
had each a little king of its own, about whom the
people were always quarrelling and fighting, and
making a prodigious disturbance —a great deal
more than he was worth. In the course of King
Edward’s reign he was engaged, besides, in a war
with France. To make these quarrels clearer, we
will separate their histories and take them thus.
Wales, first. France, second. Scotland, third. 

LLEWELLYN WAS THE PRINCE OF WALES. He had been
on the side of the Barons in the reign of the
stupid old King, but had afterwards sworn alle-
giance to him. When King Edward came to the
throne, Llewellyn was required to swear alle-
giance to him also; which he refused to do. The
King, being crowned and in his own dominions,
three times more required Llewellyn to come and
do homage; and three times more Llewellyn said
he would rather not. He was going to be mar-
ried to Eleanor de Montfort, a young lady of the
family mentioned in the last reign; and it
chanced that this young lady, coming from
France with her youngest brother, Emeric, was
taken by an English ship, and was ordered by
the English King to be detained. Upon this, the
quarrel came to a head. The King went, with his
fleet, to the coast of Wales, where, so encom-
passing Llewellyn, that he could only take ref-
uge in the bleak mountain region of Snowdon
in which no provisions could reach him, he was


A Child’s Histroy of England
160

soon starved into an apology, and into a treaty
of peace, and into paying the expenses of the
war. The King, however, forgave him some of
the hardest conditions of the treaty, and con-
sented to his marriage. And he now thought he
had reduced Wales to obedience.
But the Welsh, although they were naturally
a gentle, quiet, pleasant people, who liked to
receive strangers in their cottages among the
mountains, and to set before them with free
hospitality whatever they had to eat and drink,
and to play to them on their harps, and sing
their native ballads to them, were a people of
great spirit when their blood was up. English-
men, after this affair, began to be insolent in
Wales, and to assume the air of masters; and
the Welsh pride could not bear it. Moreover, they
believed in that unlucky old Merlin, some of
whose unlucky old prophecies somebody always
seemed doomed to remember when there was a
chance of its doing harm; and just at this time 

some blind old gentleman with a harp and a
long white beard, who was an excellent person,
but had become of an unknown age and tedious,
burst out with a declaration that Merlin had
predicted that when English money had become
round, a Prince of Wales would be crowned in
London. Now, King Edward had recently forbid-
den the English penny to be cut into halves and
quarters for halfpence and farthings, and had
actually introduced a round coin; therefore, the
Welsh people said this was the time Merlin
meant, and rose accordingly.
King Edward had bought over  Prince David,
Llewellyn’s brother, by heaping favours upon
him; but he was the first to revolt, being per-
haps troubled in his conscience. One stormy
night, he surprised the Castle of Hawarden, in
possession of which an English nobleman had
been left; killed the whole garrison, and carried
off the nobleman a prisoner to Snowdon. Upon
this, the Welsh people rose like one man. King


Charles Dickens
161

Edward, with his army, marching from Worces-
ter to the Menai Strait, crossed it—near to where
the wonderful tubular iron bridge now, in days
so different, makes a passage for railway trains
—by a bridge of boats that enabled forty men to
march abreast. He subdued the Island of
Anglesea, and sent his men forward to observe
the enemy. The sudden appearance of the Welsh
created a panic among them, and they fell back
to the bridge. The tide had in the meantime risen
and separated the boats; the Welsh pursuing
them, they were driven into the sea, and there
they sunk, in their heavy iron armour, by thou-
sands. After this victory Llewellyn, helped by
the severe winter-weather of Wales, gained an-
other battle; but the King ordering a portion of
his English army to advance through South
Wales, and catch him between two foes, and
Llewellyn bravely turning to meet this new en-
emy, he was surprised and killed—very meanly,
for he was unarmed and defenceless. His head 

was struck off and sent to London, where it was
fixed upon the Tower, encircled with a wreath,
some say of ivy, some say of willow, some say of
silver, to make it look like a ghastly coin in ridi-
cule of the prediction.
David, however, still held out for six months,
though eagerly sought after by the King, and
hunted by his own countrymen. One of them
finally betrayed him with his wife and children.
He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and
quartered; and from that time this became the
established punishment of Traitors in England
—a punishment wholly without excuse, as be-
ing revolting, vile, and cruel, after its object is
dead; and which has no sense in it, as its only
real degradation (and that nothing can blot out)
is to the country that permits on any consider-
ation such abominable barbarity.
Wales was now subdued. The Queen giving
birth to a young prince in the Castle of
Carnarvon, the King showed him to the Welsh


A Child’s Histroy of England
162

people as their countryman, and called him
Prince of Wales; a title that has ever since been
borne by the heir-apparent to the English throne
—which that little Prince soon became, by the
death of his elder brother. The King did better
things for the Welsh than that, by improving
their laws and encouraging their trade. Distur-
bances still took place, chiefly occasioned by
the avarice and pride of the English Lords, on
whom Welsh lands and castles had been be-
stowed; but they were subdued, and the coun-
try never rose again. There is a legend that to
prevent the people from being incited to rebel-
lion by the songs of their bards and harpers,
Edward had them all put to death. Some of them
may have fallen among other men who held out
against the King; but this general slaughter is,
I think, a fancy of the harpers themselves, who,
I dare say, made a song about it many years
afterwards, and sang it by the Welsh firesides
until it came to be believed. 

The foreign war of the reign of Edward the First
arose in this way. The crews of two vessels, one
a Norman ship, and the other an English ship,
happened to go to the same place in their boats
to fill their casks with fresh water. Being rough
angry fellows, they began to quarrel, and then
to fight—the English with their fists; the
Normans with their knives—and, in the fight, a
Norman was killed. The Norman crew, instead
of revenging themselves upon those English
sailors with whom they had quarrelled (who were
too strong for them, I suspect), took to their ship
again in a great rage, attacked the first English
ship they met, laid hold of an unoffending mer-
chant who happened to be on board, and bru-
tally hanged him in the rigging of their own ves-
sel with a dog at his feet. This so enraged the
English sailors that there was no restraining
them; and whenever, and wherever, English
sailors met Norman sailors, they fell upon each
other tooth and nail. The Irish and Dutch sail-


Charles Dickens
163

ors took part with the English; the French and
Genoese sailors helped the Normans; and thus
the greater part of the mariners sailing over the
sea became, in their way, as violent and raging
as the sea itself when it is disturbed.
King Edward’s fame had been so high abroad
that he had been chosen to decide a difference
between France and another foreign power, and
had lived upon the Continent three years. At
first, neither he nor the French King Philip (the
good Louis had been dead some time) interfered
in these quarrels; but when a fleet of eighty
English ships engaged and utterly defeated a
Norman fleet of two hundred, in a pitched battle
fought round a ship at anchor, in which no quar-
ter was given, the matter became too serious to
be passed over. King Edward, as Duke of
Guienne, was summoned to present himself
before the King of France, at Paris, and answer
for the damage done by his sailor subjects. At
first, he sent the Bishop of London as his repre- 

sentative, and then his brother  Edmund, who
was married to the French Queen’s mother. I
am afraid Edmund was an easy man, and al-
lowed himself to be talked over by his charming
relations, the French court ladies; at all events,
he was induced to give up his brother’s duke-
dom for forty days—as a mere form, the French
King said, to satisfy his honour—and he was so
very much astonished, when the time was out,
to find that the French King had no idea of giv-
ing it up again, that I should not wonder if it
hastened his death: which soon took place.
King Edward was a King to win his foreign
dukedom back again, if it could be won by en-
ergy and valour. He raised a large army, re-
nounced his allegiance as Duke of Guienne, and
crossed the sea to carry war into France. Be-
fore any important battle was fought, however,
a truce was agreed upon for two years; and in
the course of that time, the Pope effected a rec-
onciliation. King Edward, who was now a wid-


A Child’s Histroy of England
164

ower, having lost his affectionate and good wife,
Eleanor, married the French King’s sister, Mar-
garet; and the Prince of Wales was contracted
to the French King’s daughter Isabella.
Out of bad things, good things sometimes
arise. Out of this hanging of the innocent mer-
chant, and the bloodshed and strife it caused,
there came to be established one of the greatest
powers that the English people now possess.
The preparations for the war being very expen-
sive, and King Edward greatly wanting money,
and being very arbitrary in his ways of raising
it, some of the Barons began firmly to oppose
him. Two of them, in particular,  Humphrey
Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Roger Bigod, Earl
of Norfolk, were so stout against him, that they
maintained he had no right to command them
to head his forces in Guienne, and flatly refused
to go there. ‘By Heaven, Sir Earl,’ said the King
to the Earl of Hereford, in a great passion, ‘you
shall either go or be hanged!’ ‘By Heaven, Sir 

King,’ replied the Earl, ‘I will neither go nor yet
will I be hanged!’ and both he and the other
Earl sturdily left the court, attended by many
Lords. The King tried every means of raising
money. He taxed the clergy, in spite of all the
Pope said to the contrary; and when they re-
fused to pay, reduced them to submission, by
saying Very well, then they had no claim upon
the government for protection, and any man
might plunder them who would—which a good
many men were very ready to do, and very
readily did, and which the clergy found too los-
ing a game to be played at long. He seized all
the wool and leather in the hands of the mer-
chants, promising to pay for it some fine day;
and he set a tax upon the exportation of wool,
which was so unpopular among the traders that
it was called ‘The evil toll.’ But all would not do.
The Barons, led by those two great Earls, de-
clared any taxes imposed without the consent
of Parliament, unlawful; and the Parliament re-


Charles Dickens
165

fused to impose taxes, until the King should
confirm afresh the two Great Charters, and
should solemnly declare in writing, that there
was no power in the country to raise money from
the people, evermore, but the power of Parlia-
ment representing all ranks of the people. The
King was very unwilling to diminish his own
power by allowing this great privilege in the
Parliament; but there was no help for it, and he
at last complied. We shall come to another King
by-and-by, who might have saved his head from
rolling off, if he had profited by this example.
The people gained other benefits in Parliament
from the good sense and wisdom of this King. Many
of the laws were much improved; provision was
made for the greater safety of travellers, and the
apprehension of thieves and murderers; the priests
were prevented from holding too much land, and
so becoming too powerful; and Justices of the Peace
were first appointed (though not at first under that
name) in various parts of the country. 

AND NOW WE COME TO SCOTLAND, which was the great
and lasting trouble of the reign of King Edward
the First.
About thirteen years after King Edward’s coro-
nation, Alexander the Third, the King of Scot-
land, died of a fall from his horse. He had been
married to Margaret, King Edward’s sister. All
their children being dead, the Scottish crown
became the right of a young Princess only eight
years old, the daughter of Eric, King of Norway,
who had married a daughter of the deceased
sovereign. King Edward proposed, that the
Maiden of Norway, as this Princess was called,
should be engaged to be married to his eldest
son; but, unfortunately, as she was coming over
to England she fell sick, and landing on one of
the Orkney Islands, died there. A great commo-
tion immediately began in Scotland, where as
many as thirteen noisy claimants to the vacant
throne started up and made a general confu-
sion.


A Child’s Histroy of England
166

King Edward being much renowned for his
sagacity and justice, it seems to have been
agreed to refer the dispute to him. He accepted
the trust, and went, with an army, to the Bor-
der-land where England and Scotland joined.
There, he called upon the Scottish gentlemen
to meet him at the Castle of Norham, on the
English side of the river Tweed; and to that
Castle they came. But, before he would take any
step in the business, he required those Scot-
tish gentlemen, one and all, to do homage to
him as their superior Lord; and when they hesi-
tated, he said, ‘By holy Edward, whose crown I
wear, I will have my rights, or I will die in main-
taining them!’ The Scottish gentlemen, who had
not expected this, were disconcerted, and asked
for three weeks to think about it.
At the end of the three weeks, another meet-
ing took place, on a green plain on the Scottish
side of the river. Of all the competitors for the
Scottish throne, there were only two who had 

any real claim, in right of their near kindred to
the Royal Family. These were  John Baliol and
Robert Bruce: and the right was, I have no doubt,
on the side of John Baliol. At this particular
meeting John Baliol was not present, but Rob-
ert Bruce was; and on Robert Bruce being for-
mally asked whether he acknowledged the King
of England for his superior lord, he answered,
plainly and distinctly, Yes, he did. Next day,
John Baliol appeared, and said the same. This
point settled, some arrangements were made for
inquiring into their titles.
The inquiry occupied a pretty long time—more
than a year. While it was going on, King Ed-
ward took the opportunity of making a journey
through Scotland, and calling upon the Scot-
tish people of all degrees to acknowledge them-
selves his vassals, or be imprisoned until they
did. In the meanwhile, Commissioners were
appointed to conduct the inquiry, a Parliament
was held at Berwick about it, the two claimants


Charles Dickens
167

were heard at full length, and there was a vast
amount of talking. At last, in the great hall of
the Castle of Berwick, the King gave judgment
in favour of John Baliol: who, consenting to re-
ceive his crown by the King of England’s favour
and permission, was crowned at Scone, in an
old stone chair which had been used for ages in
the abbey there, at the coronations of Scottish
Kings. Then, King Edward caused the great seal
of Scotland, used since the late King’s death, to
be broken in four pieces, and placed in the En-
glish Treasury; and considered that he now had
Scotland (according to the common saying) un-
der his thumb.
Scotland had a strong will of its own yet, how-
ever. King Edward, determined that the Scot-
tish King should not forget he was his vassal,
summoned him repeatedly to come and defend
himself and his judges before the English Par-
liament when appeals from the decisions of Scot-
tish courts of justice were being heard. At length,

John Baliol, who had no great heart of his own,
had so much heart put into him by the brave
spirit of the Scottish people, who took this as a
national insult, that he refused to come any
more. Thereupon, the King further required him
to help him in his war abroad (which was then
in progress), and to give up, as security for his
good behaviour in future, the three strong Scot-
tish Castles of Jedburgh, Roxburgh, and
Berwick. Nothing of this being done; on the con-
trary, the Scottish people concealing their King
among their mountains in the Highlands and
showing a determination to resist; Edward
marched to Berwick with an army of thirty thou-
sand foot, and four thousand horse; took the
Castle, and slew its whole garrison, and the in-
habitants of the town as well—men, women, and
children. Lord Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, then
went on to the Castle of Dunbar, before which a
battle was fought, and the whole Scottish army
defeated with great slaughter. The victory being


A Child’s Histroy of England
168

complete, the Earl of Surrey was left as guard-
ian of Scotland; the principal offices in that king-
dom were given to Englishmen; the more pow-
erful Scottish Nobles were obliged to come and
live in England; the Scottish crown and sceptre
were brought away; and even the old stone chair
was carried off and placed in Westminster Ab-
bey, where you may see it now. Baliol had the
Tower of London lent him for a residence, with
permission to range about within a circle of
twenty miles. Three years afterwards he was
allowed to go to Normandy, where he had es-
tates, and where he passed the remaining six
years of his life: far more happily, I dare say,
than he had lived for a long while in angry Scot-
land.
Now, there was, in the West of Scotland, a
gentleman of small fortune, named  William
Wallace, the second son of a Scottish knight.
He was a man of great size and great strength;
he was very brave and daring; when he spoke 

to a body of his countrymen, he could rouse
them in a wonderful manner by the power of
his burning words; he loved Scotland dearly,
and he hated England with his utmost might.
The domineering conduct of the English who
now held the places of trust in Scotland made
them as intolerable to the proud Scottish people
as they had been, under similar circumstances,
to the Welsh; and no man in all Scotland re-
garded them with so much smothered rage as
William Wallace. One day, an Englishman in
office, little knowing what he was, affronted him.
Wallace instantly struck him dead, and taking
refuge among the rocks and hills, and there join-
ing with his countryman,  Sir William Douglas,
who was also in arms against King Edward,
became the most resolute and undaunted cham-
pion of a people struggling for their indepen-
dence that ever lived upon the earth.
The English Guardian of the Kingdom fled be-
fore him, and, thus encouraged, the Scottish


Charles Dickens
169

people revolted everywhere, and fell upon the
English without mercy. The Earl of Surrey, by
the King’s commands, raised all the power of
the Border-counties, and two English armies
poured into Scotland. Only one Chief, in the face
of those armies, stood by Wallace, who, with a
force of forty thousand men, awaited the invad-
ers at a place on the river Forth, within two miles
of Stirling. Across the river there was only one
poor wooden bridge, called the bridge of Kildean
—so narrow, that but two men could cross it
abreast. With his eyes upon this bridge, Wallace
posted the greater part of his men among some
rising grounds, and waited calmly. When the
English army came up on the opposite bank of
the river, messengers were sent forward to offer
terms. Wallace sent them back with a defiance,
in the name of the freedom of Scotland. Some
of the officers of the Earl of Surrey in command
of the English, with their eyes also on the bridge,
advised him to be discreet and not hasty. He, 

however, urged to immediate battle by some
other officers, and particularly by Cressingham,
King Edward’s treasurer, and a rash man, gave
the word of command to advance. One thou-
sand English crossed the bridge, two abreast;
the Scottish troops were as motionless as stone
images. Two thousand English crossed; three
thousand, four thousand, five. Not a feather,
all this time, had been seen to stir among the
Scottish bonnets. Now, they all fluttered. ‘For-
ward, one party, to the foot of the Bridge!’ cried
Wallace, ‘and let no more English cross! The rest,
down with me on the five thousand who have
come over, and cut them all to pieces!’ It was
done, in the sight of the whole remainder of the
English army, who could give no help.
Cressingham himself was killed, and the Scotch
made whips for their horses of his skin.
King Edward was abroad at this time, and dur-
ing the successes on the Scottish side which
followed, and which enabled bold Wallace to win


A Child’s Histroy of England
170

the whole country back again, and even to ravage
the English borders. But, after a few winter
months, the King returned, and took the field with
more than his usual energy. One night, when a
kick from his horse as they both lay on the ground
together broke two of his ribs, and a cry arose
that he was killed, he leaped into his saddle, re-
gardless of the pain he suffered, and rode through
the camp. Day then appearing, he gave the word
(still, of course, in that bruised and aching state)
Forward! and led his army on to near Falkirk,
where the Scottish forces were seen drawn up on
some stony ground, behind a morass. Here, he
defeated Wallace, and killed fifteen thousand of
his men. With the shattered remainder, Wallace
drew back to Stirling; but, being pursued, set fire
to the town that it might give no help to the En-
glish, and escaped. The inhabitants of Perth af-
terwards set fire to their houses for the same rea-
son, and the King, unable to find provisions, was
forced to withdraw his army. 

Another Robert Bruce, the grandson of him
who had disputed the Scottish crown with Baliol,
was now in arms against the King (that elder
Bruce being dead), and also John Comyn, Baliol’s
nephew. These two young men might agree in
opposing Edward, but could agree in nothing
else, as they were rivals for the throne of Scot-
land. Probably it was because they knew this,
and knew what troubles must arise even if they
could hope to get the better of the great English
King, that the principal Scottish people applied
to the Pope for his interference. The Pope, on
the principle of losing nothing for want of trying
to get it, very coolly claimed that Scotland be-
longed to him; but this was a little too much,
and the Parliament in a friendly manner told
him so.
In the spring time of the year one thousand
three hundred and three, the King sent Sir Hon
Segrave, whom he made Governor of Scotland,
with twenty thousand men, to reduce the rebels.


Charles Dickens
171

Sir John was not as careful as he should have
been, but encamped at Rosslyn, near
Edinburgh, with his army divided into three
parts. The Scottish forces saw their advantage;
fell on each part separately; defeated each; and
killed all the prisoners. Then, came the King
himself once more, as soon as a great army could
be raised; he passed through the whole north
of Scotland, laying waste whatsoever came in
his way; and he took up his winter quarters at
Dunfermline. The Scottish cause now looked so
hopeless, that Comyn and the other nobles
made submission and received their pardons.
Wallace alone stood out. He was invited to sur-
render, though on no distinct pledge that his
life should be spared; but he still defied the ire-
ful King, and lived among the steep crags of the
Highland glens, where the eagles made their
nests, and where the mountain torrents roared,
and the white snow was deep, and the bitter
winds blew round his unsheltered head, as he 

lay through many a pitch-dark night wrapped
up in his plaid. Nothing could break his spirit;
nothing could lower his courage; nothing could
induce him to forget or to forgive his country’s
wrongs. Even when the Castle of Stirling, which
had long held out, was besieged by the King
with every kind of military engine then in use;
even when the lead upon cathedral roofs was
taken down to help to make them; even when
the King, though an old man, commanded in
the siege as if he were a youth, being so re-
solved to conquer; even when the brave garri-
son (then found with amazement to be not two
hundred people, including several ladies) were
starved and beaten out and were made to sub-
mit on their knees, and with every form of dis-
grace that could aggravate their sufferings; even
then, when there was not a ray of hope in Scot-
land, William Wallace was as proud and firm as
if he had beheld the powerful and relentless Ed-
ward lying dead at his feet.


A Child’s Histroy of England
172

Who betrayed William Wallace in the end, is
not quite certain. That he was betrayed—prob-
ably by an attendant—is too true. He was taken
to the Castle of Dumbarton, under  Sir John
Menteith, and thence to London, where the great
fame of his bravery and resolution attracted
immense concourses of people to behold him.
He was tried in Westminster Hall, with a crown
of laurel on his head—it is supposed because
he was reported to have said that he ought to
wear, or that he would wear, a crown there and
was found guilty as a robber, a murderer, and
a traitor. What they called a robber (he said to
those who tried him) he was, because he had
taken spoil from the King’s men. What they
called a murderer, he was, because he had slain
an insolent Englishman. What they called a trai-
tor, he was not, for he had never sworn alle-
giance to the King, and had ever scorned to do
it. He was dragged at the tails of horses to West
Smithfield, and there hanged on a high gallows, 

torn open before he was dead, beheaded, and
quartered. His head was set upon a pole on Lon-
don Bridge, his right arm was sent to Newcastle,
his left arm to Berwick, his legs to Perth and
Aberdeen. But, if King Edward had had his body
cut into inches, and had sent every separate
inch into a separate town, he could not have
dispersed it half so far and wide as his fame.
Wallace will be remembered in songs and sto-
ries, while there are songs and stories in the
English tongue, and Scotland will hold him dear
while her lakes and mountains last.
Released from this dreaded enemy, the King
made a fairer plan of Government for Scotland,
divided the offices of honour among Scottish
gentlemen and English gentlemen, forgave past
offences, and thought, in his old age, that his
work was done.
But he deceived himself. Comyn and Bruce
conspired, and made an appointment to meet
at Dumfries, in the church of the Minorites.


Charles Dickens
173

There is a story that Comyn was false to Bruce,
and had informed against him to the King; that
Bruce was warned of his danger and the neces-
sity of flight, by receiving, one night as he sat at
supper, from his friend the Earl of Gloucester,
twelve pennies and a pair of spurs; that as he
was riding angrily to keep his appointment
(through a snow-storm, with his horse’s shoes
reversed that he might not be tracked), he met
an evil-looking serving man, a messenger of
Comyn, whom he killed, and concealed in whose
dress he found letters that proved Comyn’s
treachery. However this may be, they were likely
enough to quarrel in any case, being hot-headed
rivals; and, whatever they quarrelled about, they
certainly did quarrel in the church where they
met, and Bruce drew his dagger and stabbed
Comyn, who fell upon the pavement. When
Bruce came out, pale and disturbed, the friends
who were waiting for him asked what was the
matter? ‘I think I have killed Comyn,’ said he. 

‘You only think so?’ returned one of them; ‘I will
make sure!’ and going into the church, and find-
ing him alive, stabbed him again and again.
Knowing that the King would never forgive this
new deed of violence, the party then declared
Bruce King of Scotland: got him crowned at
Scone—without the chair; and set up the rebel-
lious standard once again.
When the King heard of it he kindled with
fiercer anger than he had ever shown yet. He
caused the Prince of Wales and two hundred
and seventy of the young nobility to be knighted
—the trees in the Temple Gardens were cut down
to make room for their tents, and they watched
their armour all night, according to the old us-
age: some in the Temple Church: some in
Westminster Abbey - and at the public Feast
which then took place, he swore, by Heaven,
and by two swans covered with gold network
which his minstrels placed upon the table, that
he would avenge the death of Comyn, and would


A Child’s Histroy of England
174

punish the false Bruce. And before all the com-
pany, he charged the Prince his son, in case
that he should die before accomplishing his vow,
not to bury him until it was fulfilled. Next morn-
ing the Prince and the rest of the young Knights
rode away to the Border-country to join the
English army; and the King, now weak and sick,
followed in a horse-litter.
Bruce, after losing a battle and undergoing
many dangers and much misery, fled to Ireland,
where he lay concealed through the winter. That
winter, Edward passed in hunting down and
executing Bruce’s relations and adherents, spar-
ing neither youth nor age, and showing no touch
of pity or sign of mercy. In the following spring,
Bruce reappeared and gained some victories.
In these frays, both sides were grievously cruel.
For instance - Bruce’s two brothers, being taken
captives desperately wounded, were ordered by
the King to instant execution. Bruce’s friend Sir
John Douglas, taking his own Castle of Dou- 

glas out of the hands of an English Lord, roasted
the dead bodies of the slaughtered garrison in
a great fire made of every movable within it;
which dreadful cookery his men called the Dou-
glas Larder. Bruce, still successful, however,
drove the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of
Gloucester into the Castle of Ayr and laid siege
to it.
The King, who had been laid up all the win-
ter, but had directed the army from his sick-
bed, now advanced to Carlisle, and there, caus-
ing the litter in which he had travelled to be
placed in the Cathedral as an offering to Heaven,
mounted his horse once more, and for the last
time. He was now sixty-nine years old, and had
reigned thirty-five years. He was so ill, that in
four days he could go no more than six miles;
still, even at that pace, he went on and reso-
lutely kept his face towards the Border. At
length, he lay down at the village of Burgh-upon-
Sands; and there, telling those around him to


Charles Dickens
175

impress upon the Prince that he was to remem-
ber his father’s vow, and was never to rest until
he had thoroughly subdued Scotland, he yielded
up his last breath. 

CHAPTER XVII
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD
THE SECOND 

KING EDWARD THE SECOND, the first Prince of Wales,
was twenty-three years old when his father died.
There was a certain favourite of his, a young
man from Gascony, named  Piers Gaveston, of
whom his father had so much disapproved that
he had ordered him out of England, and had
made his son swear by the side of his sick-bed,
never to bring him back. But, the Prince no
sooner found himself King, than he broke his
oath, as so many other Princes and Kings did
(they were far too ready to take oaths), and sent
for his dear friend immediately. 

Now, this same Gaveston was handsome
enough, but was a reckless, insolent, audacious
fellow. He was detested by the proud English
Lords: not only because he had such power over
the King, and made the Court such a dissipated
place, but, also, because he could ride better
than they at tournaments, and was used, in his
impudence, to cut very bad jokes on them; call-
ing one, the old hog; another, the stage-player;
another, the Jew; another, the black dog of
Ardenne. This was as poor wit as need be, but
it made those Lords very wroth; and the surly
Earl of Warwick, who was the black dog, swore
that the time should come when Piers Gaveston
should feel the black dog’s teeth.
It was not come yet, however, nor did it seem
to be coming. The King made him Earl of
Cornwall, and gave him vast riches; and, when
the King went over to France to marry the French
Princess, Isabella, daughter of Philip Le Bel: who
was said to be the most beautiful woman in the


A Child’s Histroy of England
176

world: he made Gaveston, Regent of the King-
dom. His splendid marriage-ceremony in the
Church of Our Lady at Boulogne, where there
were four Kings and three Queens present (quite
a pack of Court Cards, for I dare say the Knaves
were not wanting), being over, he seemed to care
little or nothing for his beautiful wife; but was
wild with impatience to meet Gaveston again.
When he landed at home, he paid no attention
to anybody else, but ran into the favourite’s arms
before a great concourse of people, and hugged
him, and kissed him, and called him his brother.
At the coronation which soon followed, Gaveston
was the richest and brightest of all the glittering
company there, and had the honour of carrying
the crown. This made the proud Lords fiercer
than ever; the people, too, despised the favourite,
and would never call him Earl of Cornwall, how-
ever much he complained to the King and asked
him to punish them for not doing so, but per-
sisted in styling him plain Piers Gaveston. 

The Barons were so unceremonious with the
King in giving him to understand that they
would not bear this favourite, that the King was
obliged to send him out of the country. The
favourite himself was made to take an oath
(more oaths!) that he would never come back,
and the Barons supposed him to be banished
in disgrace, until they heard that he was ap-
pointed Governor of Ireland. Even this was not
enough for the besotted King, who brought him
home again in a year’s time, and not only dis-
gusted the Court and the people by his doting
folly, but offended his beautiful wife too, who
never liked him afterwards.
He had now the old Royal want—of money—
and the Barons had the new power of positively
refusing to let him raise any. He summoned a
Parliament at York; the Barons refused to make
one, while the favourite was near him. He sum-
moned another Parliament at Westminster, and
sent Gaveston away. Then, the Barons came,


Charles Dickens
177

completely armed, and appointed a committee
of themselves to correct abuses in the state and
in the King’s household. He got some money on
these conditions, and directly set off with
Gaveston to the Border-country, where they
spent it in idling away the time, and feasting,
while Bruce made ready to drive the English
out of Scotland. For, though the old King had
even made this poor weak son of his swear (as
some say) that he would not bury his bones,
but would have them boiled clean in a caldron,
and carried before the English army until Scot-
land was entirely subdued, the second Edward
was so unlike the first that Bruce gained
strength and power every day.
The committee of Nobles, after some months
of deliberation, ordained that the King should
henceforth call a Parliament together, once ev-
ery year, and even twice if necessary, instead of
summoning it only when he chose. Further, that
Gaveston should once more be banished, and, 

this time, on pain of death if he ever came back.
The King’s tears were of no avail; he was obliged
to send his favourite to Flanders. As soon as he
had done so, however, he dissolved the Parlia-
ment, with the low cunning of a mere fool, and
set off to the North of England, thinking to get
an army about him to oppose the Nobles. And
once again he brought Gaveston home, and
heaped upon him all the riches and titles of
which the Barons had deprived him.
The Lords saw, now, that there was nothing
for it but to put the favourite to death. They
could have done so, legally, according to the
terms of his banishment; but they did so, I am
sorry to say, in a shabby manner. Led by the
Earl of Lancaster, the King’s cousin, they first
of all attacked the King and Gaveston at
Newcastle. They had time to escape by sea, and
the mean King, having his precious Gaveston
with him, was quite content to leave his lovely
wife behind. When they were comparatively safe,


A Child’s Histroy of England
178

they separated; the King went to York to collect
a force of soldiers; and the favourite shut him-
self up, in the meantime, in Scarborough Castle
overlooking the sea. This was what the Barons
wanted. They knew that the Castle could not
hold out; they attacked it, and made Gaveston
surrender. He delivered himself up to the Earl
of Pembroke - that Lord whom he had called
the Jew—on the Earl’s pledging his faith and
knightly word, that no harm should happen to
him and no violence be done him.
Now, it was agreed with Gaveston that he
should be taken to the Castle of Wallingford, and
there kept in honourable custody. They travelled
as far as Dedington, near Banbury, where, in
the Castle of that place, they stopped for a night
to rest. Whether the Earl of Pembroke left his
prisoner there, knowing what would happen, or
really left him thinking no harm, and only going
(as he pretended) to visit his wife, the Countess,
who was in the neighbourhood, is no great mat- 

ter now; in any case, he was bound as an
honourable gentleman to protect his prisoner,
and he did not do it. In the morning, while the
favourite was yet in bed, he was required to dress
himself and come down into the court-yard. He
did so without any mistrust, but started and
turned pale when he found it full of strange armed
men. ‘I think you know me?’ said their leader,
also armed from head to foot. ‘I am the black dog
of Ardenne!’ The time was come when Piers
Gaveston was to feel the black dog’s teeth in-
deed. They set him on a mule, and carried him,
in mock state and with military music, to the
black dog’s kennel—Warwick Castle—where a
hasty council, composed of some great noble-
men, considered what should be done with him.
Some were for sparing him, but one loud voice—
it was the black dog’s bark, I dare say—sounded
through the Castle Hall, uttering these words:
‘You have the fox in your power. Let him go now,
and you must hunt him again.’


Charles Dickens
179

They sentenced him to death. He threw him-
self at the feet of the Earl of Lancaster—the old
hog—but the old hog was as savage as the dog.
He was taken out upon the pleasant road, lead-
ing from Warwick to Coventry, where the beau-
tiful river Avon, by which, long afterwards, Wil-
liam Shakespeare was born and now lies bur-
ied, sparkled in the bright landscape of the beau-
tiful May-day; and there they struck off his
wretched head, and stained the dust with his
blood.
When the King heard of this black deed, in
his grief and rage he denounced relentless war
against his Barons, and both sides were in arms
for half a year. But, it then became necessary
for them to join their forces against Bruce, who
had used the time well while they were divided,
and had now a great power in Scotland.
Intelligence was brought that Bruce was then
besieging Stirling Castle, and that the Gover-
nor had been obliged to pledge himself to sur- 

render it, unless he should be relieved before a
certain day. Hereupon, the King ordered the
nobles and their fighting-men to meet him at
Berwick; but, the nobles cared so little for the
King, and so neglected the summons, and lost
time, that only on the day before that appointed
for the surrender, did the King find himself at
Stirling, and even then with a smaller force than
he had expected. However, he had, altogether,
a hundred thousand men, and Bruce had not
more than forty thousand; but, Bruce’s army
was strongly posted in three square columns,
on the ground lying between the Burn or Brook
of Bannock and the walls of Stirling Castle.
On the very evening, when the King came up,
Bruce did a brave act that encouraged his men.
He was seen by a certain  Henry de Bohun, an
English Knight, riding about before his army
on a little horse, with a light battle-axe in his
hand, and a crown of gold on his head. This
English Knight, who was mounted on a strong


A Child’s Histroy of England
180

war-horse, cased in steel, strongly armed, and
able (as he thought) to overthrow Bruce by
crushing him with his mere weight, set spurs
to his great charger, rode on him, and made a
thrust at him with his heavy spear. Bruce par-
ried the thrust, and with one blow of his battle-
axe split his skull.
The Scottish men did not forget this, next day
when the battle raged.  Randolph, Bruce’s val-
iant Nephew, rode, with the small body of men
he commanded, into such a host of the English,
all shining in polished armour in the sunlight,
that they seemed to be swallowed up and lost,
as if they had plunged into the sea. But, they
fought so well, and did such dreadful execu-
tion, that the English staggered. Then came
Bruce himself upon them, with all the rest of
his army. While they were thus hard pressed
and amazed, there appeared upon the hills what
they supposed to be a new Scottish army, but
what were really only the camp followers, in 

number fifteen thousand: whom Bruce had
taught to show themselves at that place and
time. The Earl of Gloucester, commanding the
English horse, made a last rush to change the
fortune of the day; but Bruce (like Jack the Gi-
ant-killer in the story) had had pits dug in the
ground, and covered over with turfs and stakes.
Into these, as they gave way beneath the weight
of the horses, riders and horses rolled by hun-
dreds. The English were completely routed; all
their treasure, stores, and engines, were taken
by the Scottish men; so many waggons and other
wheeled vehicles were seized, that it is related
that they would have reached, if they had been
drawn out in a line, one hundred and eighty
miles. The fortunes of Scotland were, for the
time, completely changed; and never was a
battle won, more famous upon Scottish ground,
than this great battle of Bannockburn.
Plague and famine succeeded in England; and
still the powerless King and his disdainful Lords


Charles Dickens
181

were always in contention. Some of the turbu-
lent chiefs of Ireland made proposals to Bruce,
to accept the rule of that country. He sent his
brother Edward to them, who was crowned King
of Ireland. He afterwards went himself to help
his brother in his Irish wars, but his brother
was defeated in the end and killed. Robert Bruce,
returning to Scotland, still increased his
strength there.
As the King’s ruin had begun in a favourite,
so it seemed likely to end in one. He was too
poor a creature to rely at all upon himself; and
his new favourite was one Hugh le Despenser,
the son of a gentleman of ancient family. Hugh
was handsome and brave, but he was the
favourite of a weak King, whom no man cared a
rush for, and that was a dangerous place to hold.
The Nobles leagued against him, because the
King liked him; and they lay in wait, both for
his ruin and his father’s. Now, the King had
married him to the daughter of the late Earl of 

Gloucester, and had given both him and his fa-
ther great possessions in Wales. In their
endeavours to extend these, they gave violent
offence to an angry Welsh gentleman, named
John de Mowbray, and to divers other angry
Welsh gentlemen, who resorted to arms, took
their castles, and seized their estates. The Earl
of Lancaster had first placed the favourite (who
was a poor relation of his own) at Court, and he
considered his own dignity offended by the pref-
erence he received and the honours he acquired;
so he, and the Barons who were his friends,
joined the Welshmen, marched on London, and
sent a message to the King demanding to have
the favourite and his father banished. At first,
the King unaccountably took it into his head to
be spirited, and to send them a bold reply; but
when they quartered themselves around
Holborn and Clerkenwell, and went down,
armed, to the Parliament at Westminster, he
gave way, and complied with their demands.


A Child’s Histroy of England
182

His turn of triumph came sooner than he ex-
pected. It arose out of an accidental circum-
stance. The beautiful Queen happening to be
travelling, came one night to one of the royal
castles, and demanded to be lodged and enter-
tained there until morning. The governor of this
castle, who was one of the enraged lords, was
away, and in his absence, his wife refused ad-
mission to the Queen; a scuffle took place among
the common men on either side, and some of
the royal attendants were killed. The people, who
cared nothing for the King, were very angry that
their beautiful Queen should be thus rudely
treated in her own dominions; and the King,
taking advantage of this feeling, besieged the
castle, took it, and then called the two
Despensers home. Upon this, the confederate
lords and the Welshmen went over to Bruce.
The King encountered them at Boroughbridge,
gained the victory, and took a number of dis-
tinguished prisoners; among them, the Earl of 

Lancaster, now an old man, upon whose de-
struction he was resolved. This Earl was taken
to his own castle of Pontefract, and there tried
and found guilty by an unfair court appointed
for the purpose; he was not even allowed to
speak in his own defence. He was insulted,
pelted, mounted on a starved pony without
saddle or bridle, carried out, and beheaded.
Eight-and-twenty knights were hanged, drawn,
and quartered. When the King had despatched
this bloody work, and had made a fresh and a
long truce with Bruce, he took the Despensers
into greater favour than ever, and made the fa-
ther Earl of Winchester.
One prisoner, and an important one, who was
taken at Boroughbridge, made his escape, how-
ever, and turned the tide against the King. This
was Roger Mortimer, always resolutely opposed
to him, who was sentenced to death, and placed
for safe custody in the Tower of London. He
treated his guards to a quantity of wine into


Charles Dickens
183

which he had put a sleeping potion; and, when
they were insensible, broke out of his dungeon,
got into a kitchen, climbed up the chimney, let
himself down from the roof of the building with
a rope-ladder, passed the sentries, got down to
the river, and made away in a boat to where
servants and horses were waiting for him. He
finally escaped to France, where Charles le Bel,
the brother of the beautiful Queen, was King.
Charles sought to quarrel with the King of En-
gland, on pretence of his not having come to do
him homage at his coronation. It was proposed
that the beautiful Queen should go over to ar-
range the dispute; she went, and wrote home to
the King, that as he was sick and could not come
to France himself, perhaps it would be better to
send over the young Prince, their son, who was
only twelve years old, who could do homage to
her brother in his stead, and in whose com-
pany she would immediately return. The King
sent him: but, both he and the Queen remained 

at the French Court, and Roger Mortimer be-
came the Queen’s lover.
When the King wrote, again and again, to the
Queen to come home, she did not reply that she
despised him too much to live with him any more
(which was the truth), but said she was afraid of
the two Despensers. In short, her design was to
overthrow the favourites’ power, and the King’s
power, such as it was, and invade England. Hav-
ing obtained a French force of two thousand men,
and being joined by all the English exiles then in
France, she landed, within a year, at Orewell, in
Suffolk, where she was immediately joined by the
Earls of Kent and Norfolk, the King’s two broth-
ers; by other powerful noblemen; and lastly, by
the first English general who was despatched to
check her: who went over to her with all his men.
The people of London, receiving these tidings,
would do nothing for the King, but broke open
the Tower, let out all his prisoners, and threw up
their caps and hurrahed for the beautiful Queen.


A Child’s Histroy of England
184

The King, with his two favourites, fled to
Bristol, where he left old Despenser in charge
of the town and castle, while he went on with
the son to Wales. The Bristol men being opposed
to the King, and it being impossible to hold the
town with enemies everywhere within the walls,
Despenser yielded it up on the third day, and
was instantly brought to trial for having trai-
torously influenced what was called ‘the King’s
mind’ —though I doubt if the King ever had any.
He was a venerable old man, upwards of ninety
years of age, but his age gained no respect or
mercy. He was hanged, torn open while he was
yet alive, cut up into pieces, and thrown to the
dogs. His son was soon taken, tried at Hereford
before the same judge on a long series of foolish
charges, found guilty, and hanged upon a gal-
lows fifty feet high, with a chaplet of nettles
round his head. His poor old father and he were
innocent enough of any worse crimes than the
crime of having been friends of a King, on whom, 

as a mere man, they would never have deigned
to cast a favourable look. It is a bad crime, I
know, and leads to worse; but, many lords and
gentlemen—I even think some ladies, too, if I
recollect right—have committed it in England,
who have neither been given to the dogs, nor
hanged up fifty feet high.
The wretched King was running here and there,
all this time, and never getting anywhere in par-
ticular, until he gave himself up, and was taken off
to Kenilworth Castle. When he was safely lodged
there, the Queen went to London and met the Par-
liament. And the Bishop of Hereford, who was the
most skilful of her friends, said, What was to be
done now? Here was an imbecile, indolent, miser-
able King upon the throne; wouldn’t it be better to
take him off, and put his son there instead? I don’t
know whether the Queen really pitied him at this
pass, but she began to cry; so, the Bishop said,
Well, my Lords and Gentlemen, what do you think,
upon the whole, of sending down to Kenilworth,


Charles Dickens
185

and seeing if His Majesty (God bless him, and for-
bid we should depose him!) won’t resign?
My Lords and Gentlemen thought it a good
notion, so a deputation of them went down to
Kenilworth; and there the King came into the
great hall of the Castle, commonly dressed in a
poor black gown; and when he saw a certain
bishop among them, fell down, poor feeble-
headed man, and made a wretched spectacle of
himself. Somebody lifted him up, and then Sir
William Trussel, the Speaker of the House of
Commons, almost frightened him to death by
making him a tremendous speech to the effect
that he was no longer a King, and that every-
body renounced allegiance to him. After which,
Sir Thomas Blount, the Steward of the House-
hold, nearly finished him, by coming forward
and breaking his white wand—which was a cer-
emony only performed at a King’s death. Being
asked in this pressing manner what he thought
of resigning, the King said he thought it was 

the best thing he could do. So, he did it, and
they proclaimed his son next day.
I wish I could close his history by saying that
he lived a harmless life in the Castle and the
Castle gardens at Kenilworth, many years - that
he had a favourite, and plenty to eat and drink
—and, having that, wanted nothing. But he was
shamefully humiliated. He was outraged, and
slighted, and had dirty water from ditches given
him to shave with, and wept and said he would
have clean warm water, and was altogether very
miserable. He was moved from this castle to that
castle, and from that castle to the other castle,
because this lord or that lord, or the other lord,
was too kind to him: until at last he came to
Berkeley Castle, near the River Severn, where
(the Lord Berkeley being then ill and absent) he
fell into the hands of two black ruffians, called
Thomas Gournay and William Ogle.
One night—it was the night of September the
twenty-first, one thousand three hundred and


A Child’s Histroy of England
186

twenty-seven—dreadful screams were heard, by
the startled people in the neighbouring town,
ringing through the thick walls of the Castle,
and the dark, deep night; and they said, as they
were thus horribly awakened from their sleep,
‘May Heaven be merciful to the King; for those
cries forbode that no good is being done to him
in his dismal prison!’ Next morning he was dead
—not bruised, or stabbed, or marked upon the
body, but much distorted in the face; and it was
whispered afterwards, that those two villains,
Gournay and Ogle, had burnt up his inside with
a red-hot iron.
If you ever come near Gloucester, and see the
centre tower of its beautiful Cathedral, with its
four rich pinnacles, rising lightly in the air; you
may remember that the wretched Edward the
Second was buried in the old abbey of that an-
cient city, at forty-three years old, after being
for nineteen years and a half a perfectly inca-
pable King. 

CHAPTER XVIII
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD
THE THIRD 

ROGER MORTIMER, THE QUEEN’S LOVER (who escaped
to France in the last chapter), was far from prof-
iting by the examples he had had of the fate of
favourites. Having, through the Queen’s influ-
ence, come into possession of the estates of the
two Despensers, he became extremely proud
and ambitious, and sought to be the real ruler
of England. The young King, who was crowned
at fourteen years of age with all the usual so-
lemnities, resolved not to bear this, and soon
pursued Mortimer to his ruin.
The people themselves were not fond of
Mortimer—first, because he was a Royal
favourite; secondly, because he was supposed
to have helped to make a peace with Scotland
which now took place, and in virtue of which
the young King’s sister Joan, only seven years


Charles Dickens
187

old, was promised in marriage to David, the son
and heir of Robert Bruce, who was only five years
old. The nobles hated Mortimer because of his
pride, riches, and power. They went so far as to
take up arms against him; but were obliged to
submit. The Earl of Kent, one of those who did
so, but who afterwards went over to Mortimer
and the Queen, was made an example of in the
following cruel manner:
He seems to have been anything but a wise
old earl; and he was persuaded by the agents of
the favourite and the Queen, that poor King
Edward the Second was not really dead; and
thus was betrayed into writing letters favouring
his rightful claim to the throne. This was made
out to be high treason, and he was tried, found
guilty, and sentenced to be executed. They took
the poor old lord outside the town of Winches-
ter, and there kept him waiting some three or
four hours until they could find somebody to
cut off his head. At last, a convict said he would 

do it, if the government would pardon him in
return; and they gave him the pardon; and at
one blow he put the Earl of Kent out of his last
suspense.
While the Queen was in France, she had found
a lovely and good young lady, named Philippa,
who she thought would make an excellent wife
for her son. The young King married this lady,
soon after he came to the throne; and her first
child, Edward, Prince of Wales, afterwards be-
came celebrated, as we shall presently see, un-
der the famous title of Edward the Black Prince.
The young King, thinking the time ripe for the
downfall of Mortimer, took counsel with Lord
Montacute how he should proceed. A Parliament
was going to be held at Nottingham, and that
lord recommended that the favourite should be
seized by night in Nottingham Castle, where he
was sure to be. Now, this, like many other
things, was more easily said than done; because,
to guard against treachery, the great gates of


A Child’s Histroy of England
188

the Castle were locked every night, and the great
keys were carried up-stairs to the Queen, who
laid them under her own pillow. But the Castle
had a governor, and the governor being Lord
Montacute’s friend, confided to him how he
knew of a secret passage underground, hidden
from observation by the weeds and brambles
with which it was overgrown; and how, through
that passage, the conspirators might enter in
the dead of the night, and go straight to
Mortimer’s room. Accordingly, upon a certain
dark night, at midnight, they made their way
through this dismal place: startling the rats, and
frightening the owls and bats: and came safely
to the bottom of the main tower of the Castle,
where the King met them, and took them up a
profoundly-dark staircase in a deep silence.
They soon heard the voice of Mortimer in coun-
cil with some friends; and bursting into the room
with a sudden noise, took him prisoner. The
Queen cried out from her bed-chamber, ‘Oh, 

my sweet son, my dear son, spare my gentle
Mortimer!’ They carried him off, however; and,
before the next Parliament, accused him of hav-
ing made differences between the young King
and his mother, and of having brought about
the death of the Earl of Kent, and even of the
late King; for, as you know by this time, when
they wanted to get rid of a man in those old
days, they were not very particular of what they
accused him. Mortimer was found guilty of all
this, and was sentenced to be hanged at Tyburn.
The King shut his mother up in genteel con-
finement, where she passed the rest of her life;
and now he became King in earnest.
The first effort he made was to conquer Scot-
land. The English lords who had lands in Scot-
land, finding that their rights were not respected
under the late peace, made war on their own ac-
count: choosing for their general, Edward, the son
of John Baliol, who made such a vigorous fight,
that in less than two months he won the whole


Charles Dickens
189

Scottish Kingdom. He was joined, when thus tri-
umphant, by the King and Parliament; and he
and the King in person besieged the Scottish forces
in Berwick. The whole Scottish army coming to
the assistance of their countrymen, such a furi-
ous battle ensued, that thirty thousand men are
said to have been killed in it. Baliol was then
crowned King of Scotland, doing homage to the
King of England; but little came of his successes
after all, for the Scottish men rose against him,
within no very long time, and David Bruce came
back within ten years and took his kingdom.
France was a far richer country than Scot-
land, and the King had a much greater mind to
conquer it. So, he let Scotland alone, and pre-
tended that he had a claim to the French throne
in right of his mother. He had, in reality, no
claim at all; but that mattered little in those
times. He brought over to his cause many little
princes and sovereigns, and even courted the
alliance of the people of Flanders—a busy, work- 

ing community, who had very small respect for
kings, and whose head man was a brewer. With
such forces as he raised by these means, Ed-
ward invaded France; but he did little by that,
except run into debt in carrying on the war to
the extent of three hundred thousand pounds.
The next year he did better; gaining a great sea-
fight in the harbour of Sluys. This success, how-
ever, was very shortlived, for the Flemings took
fright at the siege of Saint Omer and ran away,
leaving their weapons and baggage behind them.
Philip, the French King, coming up with his
army, and Edward being very anxious to decide
the war, proposed to settle the difference by
single combat with him, or by a fight of one
hundred knights on each side. The French King
said, he thanked him; but being very well as he
was, he would rather not. So, after some skir-
mishing and talking, a short peace was made.
It was soon broken by King Edward’s favouring
the cause of John, Earl of Montford; a French


A Child’s Histroy of England
190

nobleman, who asserted a claim of his own
against the French King, and offered to do hom-
age to England for the Crown of France, if he
could obtain it through England’s help. This
French lord, himself, was soon defeated by the
French King’s son, and shut up in a tower in
Paris; but his wife, a courageous and beautiful
woman, who is said to have had the courage of
a man, and the heart of a lion, assembled the
people of Brittany, where she then was; and,
showing them her infant son, made many pa-
thetic entreaties to them not to desert her and
their young Lord. They took fire at this appeal,
and rallied round her in the strong castle of
Hennebon. Here she was not only besieged with-
out by the French under Charles de Blois, but
was endangered within by a dreary old bishop,
who was always representing to the people what
horrors they must undergo if they were faithful
—first from famine, and afterwards from fire and
sword. But this noble lady, whose heart never 

failed her, encouraged her soldiers by her own
example; went from post to post like a great
general; even mounted on horseback fully
armed, and, issuing from the castle by a by-
path, fell upon the French camp, set fire to the
tents, and threw the whole force into disorder.
This done, she got safely back to Hennebon
again, and was received with loud shouts of joy
by the defenders of the castle, who had given
her up for lost. As they were now very short of
provisions, however, and as they could not dine
off enthusiasm, and as the old bishop was al-
ways saying, ‘I told you what it would come to!’
they began to lose heart, and to talk of yielding
the castle up. The brave Countess retiring to an
upper room and looking with great grief out to
sea, where she expected relief from England,
saw, at this very time, the English ships in the
distance, and was relieved and rescued! Sir
Walter Manning, the English commander, so
admired her courage, that, being come into the


Charles Dickens
191

castle with the English knights, and having
made a feast there, he assaulted the French by
way of dessert, and beat them off triumphantly.
Then he and the knights came back to the castle
with great joy; and the Countess who had
watched them from a high tower, thanked them
with all her heart, and kissed them every one.
This noble lady distinguished herself after-
wards in a sea-fight with the French off Guern-
sey, when she was on her way to England to
ask for more troops. Her great spirit roused
another lady, the wife of another French lord
(whom the French King very barbarously mur-
dered), to distinguish herself scarcely less. The
time was fast coming, however, when Edward,
Prince of Wales, was to be the great star of this
French and English war.
It was in the month of July, in the year one
thousand three hundred and forty-six, when the
King embarked at Southampton for France, with
an army of about thirty thousand men in all, 

attended by the Prince of Wales and by several
of the chief nobles. He landed at La Hogue in
Normandy; and, burning and destroying as he
went, according to custom, advanced up the left
bank of the River Seine, and fired the small
towns even close to Paris; but, being watched
from the right bank of the river by the French
King and all his army, it came to this at last,
that Edward found himself, on Saturday the
twenty-sixth of August, one thousand three
hundred and forty-six, on a rising ground be-
hind the little French village of Crecy, face to
face with the French King’s force. And, although
the French King had an enormous army—in
number more than eight times his - he there
resolved to beat him or be beaten.
The young Prince, assisted by the Earl of Ox-
ford and the Earl of Warwick, led the first divi-
sion of the English army; two other great Earls
led the second; and the King, the third. When
the morning dawned, the King received the sac-


A Child’s Histroy of England
192

rament, and heard prayers, and then, mounted
on horseback with a white wand in his hand,
rode from company to company, and rank to
rank, cheering and encouraging both officers
and men. Then the whole army breakfasted,
each man sitting on the ground where he had
stood; and then they remained quietly on the
ground with their weapons ready.
Up came the French King with all his great
force. It was dark and angry weather; there was
an eclipse of the sun; there was a thunder-
storm, accompanied with tremendous rain; the
frightened birds flew screaming above the sol-
diers’ heads. A certain captain in the French
army advised the French King, who was by no
means cheerful, not to begin the battle until the
morrow. The King, taking this advice, gave the
word to halt. But, those behind not understand-
ing it, or desiring to be foremost with the rest,
came pressing on. The roads for a great dis-
tance were covered with this immense army, and 

with the common people from the villages, who
were flourishing their rude weapons, and mak-
ing a great noise. Owing to these circumstances,
the French army advanced in the greatest con-
fusion; every French lord doing what he liked
with his own men, and putting out the men of
every other French lord.
Now, their King relied strongly upon a great
body of cross-bowmen from Genoa; and these
he ordered to the front to begin the battle, on
finding that he could not stop it. They shouted
once, they shouted twice, they shouted three
times, to alarm the English archers; but, the
English would have heard them shout three
thousand times and would have never moved.
At last the cross-bowmen went forward a little,
and began to discharge their bolts; upon which,
the English let fly such a hail of arrows, that
the Genoese speedily made off - for their cross-
bows, besides being heavy to carry, required to
be wound up with a handle, and consequently


Charles Dickens
193

took time to re-load; the English, on the other
hand, could discharge their arrows almost as
fast as the arrows could fly.
When the French King saw the Genoese turn-
ing, he cried out to his men to kill those scoun-
drels, who were doing harm instead of service.
This increased the confusion. Meanwhile the
English archers, continuing to shoot as fast as
ever, shot down great numbers of the French
soldiers and knights; whom certain sly Cornish-
men and Welshmen, from the English army,
creeping along the ground, despatched with
great knives.
The Prince and his division were at this time
so hard-pressed, that the Earl of Warwick sent
a message to the King, who was overlooking the
battle from a windmill, beseeching him to send
more aid.
‘Is my son killed?’ said the King.
‘No, sire, please God,’ returned the messen-
ger. 

‘Is he wounded?’ said the King.
‘No, sire.’
‘Is he thrown to the ground?’ said the King.
‘No, sire, not so; but, he is very hard-pressed.’
‘Then,’ said the King, ‘go back to those who
sent you, and tell them I shall send no aid; be-
cause I set my heart upon my son proving him-
self this day a brave knight, and because I am
resolved, please God, that the honour of a great
victory shall be his!’
These bold words, being reported to the Prince
and his division, so raised their spirits, that they
fought better than ever. The King of France
charged gallantly with his men many times; but
it was of no use. Night closing in, his horse was
killed under him by an English arrow, and the
knights and nobles who had clustered thick
about him early in the day, were now completely
scattered. At last, some of his few remaining
followers led him off the field by force since he
would not retire of himself, and they journeyed


A Child’s Histroy of England
194

away to Amiens. The victorious English, light-
ing their watch-fires, made merry on the field,
and the King, riding to meet his gallant son,
took him in his arms, kissed him, and told him
that he had acted nobly, and proved himself
worthy of the day and of the crown. While it
was yet night, King Edward was hardly aware
of the great victory he had gained; but, next day,
it was discovered that eleven princes, twelve
hundred knights, and thirty thousand common
men lay dead upon the French side. Among
these was the King of Bohemia, an old blind
man; who, having been told that his son was
wounded in the battle, and that no force could
stand against the Black Prince, called to him
two knights, put himself on horse-back between
them, fastened the three bridles together, and
dashed in among the English, where he was
presently slain. He bore as his crest three white
ostrich feathers, with the motto Ich Dien, signi-
fying in English ‘I serve.’ This crest and motto 

were taken by the Prince of Wales in remem-
brance of that famous day, and have been borne
by the Prince of Wales ever since.
Five days after this great battle, the King laid
siege to Calais. This siege—ever afterwards
memorable—lasted nearly a year. In order to
starve the inhabitants out, King Edward built
so many wooden houses for the lodgings of his
troops, that it is said their quarters looked like
a second Calais suddenly sprung around the
first. Early in the siege, the governor of the town
drove out what he called the useless mouths,
to the number of seventeen hundred persons,
men and women, young and old. King Edward
allowed them to pass through his lines, and even
fed them, and dismissed them with money; but,
later in the siege, he was not so merciful—five
hundred more, who were afterwards driven out,
dying of starvation and misery. The garrison
were so hard-pressed at last, that they sent a
letter to King Philip, telling him that they had


Charles Dickens
195

eaten all the horses, all the dogs, and all the
rats and mice that could be found in the place;
and, that if he did not relieve them, they must
either surrender to the English, or eat one an-
other. Philip made one effort to give them relief;
but they were so hemmed in by the English
power, that he could not succeed, and was fain
to leave the place. Upon this they hoisted the
English flag, and surrendered to King Edward.
‘Tell your general,’ said he to the humble mes-
sengers who came out of the town, ‘that I re-
quire to have sent here, six of the most distin-
guished citizens, bare-legged, and in their shirts,
with ropes about their necks; and let those six
men bring with them the keys of the castle and
the town.’
When the Governor of Calais related this to
the people in the Market-place, there was great
weeping and distress; in the midst of which, one
worthy citizen, named Eustace de Saint Pierre,
rose up and said, that if the six men required 

were not sacrificed, the whole population would
be; therefore, he offered himself as the first.
Encouraged by this bright example, five other
worthy citizens rose up one after another, and
offered themselves to save the rest. The Gover-
nor, who was too badly wounded to be able to
walk, mounted a poor old horse that had not
been eaten, and conducted these good men to
the gate, while all the people cried and mourned.
Edward received them wrathfully, and ordered
the heads of the whole six to be struck off. How-
ever, the good Queen fell upon her knees, and
besought the King to give them up to her. The
King replied, ‘I wish you had been somewhere
else; but I cannot refuse you.’ So she had them
properly dressed, made a feast for them, and
sent them back with a handsome present, to
the great rejoicing of the whole camp. I hope
the people of Calais loved the daughter to whom
she gave birth soon afterwards, for her gentle
mother’s sake.


A Child’s Histroy of England
196

Now came that terrible disease, the Plague, into
Europe, hurrying from the heart of China; and
killed the wretched people—especially the poor -
in such enormous numbers, that one-half of the
inhabitants of England are related to have died
of it. It killed the cattle, in great numbers, too;
and so few working men remained alive, that
there were not enough left to till the ground.
After eight years of differing and quarrelling,
the Prince of Wales again invaded France with
an army of sixty thousand men. He went
through the south of the country, burning and
plundering wheresoever he went; while his fa-
ther, who had still the Scottish war upon his
hands, did the like in Scotland, but was ha-
rassed and worried in his retreat from that coun-
try by the Scottish men, who repaid his cruel-
ties with interest.
The French King, Philip, was now dead, and
was succeeded by his son John. The Black
Prince, called by that name from the colour of 

the armour he wore to set off his fair complex-
ion, continuing to burn and destroy in France,
roused John into determined opposition; and
so cruel had the Black Prince been in his cam-
paign, and so severely had the French peasants
suffered, that he could not find one who, for
love, or money, or the fear of death, would tell
him what the French King was doing, or where
he was. Thus it happened that he came upon
the French King’s forces, all of a sudden, near
the town of Poitiers, and found that the whole
neighbouring country was occupied by a vast
French army. ‘God help us!’ said the Black
Prince, ‘we must make the best of it.’
So, on a Sunday morning, the eighteenth of
September, the Prince whose army was now
reduced to ten thousand men in all—prepared
to give battle to the French King, who had sixty
thousand horse alone. While he was so engaged,
there came riding from the French camp, a Car-
dinal, who had persuaded John to let him offer


Charles Dickens
197

terms, and try to save the shedding of Chris-
tian blood. ‘Save my honour,’ said the Prince to
this good priest, ‘and save the honour of my
army, and I will make any reasonable terms.’
He offered to give up all the towns, castles, and
prisoners, he had taken, and to swear to make
no war in France for seven years; but, as John
would hear of nothing but his surrender, with a
hundred of his chief knights, the treaty was
broken off, and the Prince said quietly— ‘God
defend the right; we shall fight to-morrow.’
Therefore, on the Monday morning, at break
of day, the two armies prepared for battle. The
English were posted in a strong place, which
could only be approached by one narrow lane,
skirted by hedges on both sides. The French
attacked them by this lane; but were so galled
and slain by English arrows from behind the
hedges, that they were forced to retreat. Then
went six hundred English bowmen round about,
and, coming upon the rear of the French army, 

rained arrows on them thick and fast. The
French knights, thrown into confusion, quitted
their banners and dispersed in all directions.
Said Sir John Chandos to the Prince, ‘Ride for-
ward, noble Prince, and the day is yours. The
King of France is so valiant a gentleman, that I
know he will never fly, and may be taken pris-
oner.’ Said the Prince to this, ‘Advance, English
banners, in the name of God and St. George!’
and on they pressed until they came up with
the French King, fighting fiercely with his battle-
axe, and, when all his nobles had forsaken him,
attended faithfully to the last by his youngest
son Philip, only sixteen years of age. Father and
son fought well, and the King had already two
wounds in his face, and had been beaten down,
when he at last delivered himself to a banished
French knight, and gave him his right-hand
glove in token that he had done so.
The Black Prince was generous as well as
brave, and he invited his royal prisoner to sup-


A Child’s Histroy of England
198

per in his tent, and waited upon him at table,
and, when they afterwards rode into London in
a gorgeous procession, mounted the French
King on a fine cream-coloured horse, and rode
at his side on a little pony. This was all very
kind, but I think it was, perhaps, a little theat-
rical too, and has been made more meritorious
than it deserved to be; especially as I am in-
clined to think that the greatest kindness to the
King of France would have been not to have
shown him to the people at all. However, it must
be said, for these acts of politeness, that, in
course of time, they did much to soften the hor-
rors of war and the passions of conquerors. It
was a long, long time before the common sol-
diers began to have the benefit of such courtly
deeds; but they did at last; and thus it is pos-
sible that a poor soldier who asked for quarter
at the battle of Waterloo, or any other such great
fight, may have owed his life indirectly to Ed-
ward the Black Prince. 

At this time there stood in the Strand, in Lon-
don, a palace called the Savoy, which was given
up to the captive King of France and his son for
their residence. As the King of Scotland had now
been King Edward’s captive for eleven years too,
his success was, at this time, tolerably com-
plete. The Scottish business was settled by the
prisoner being released under the title of Sir
David, King of Scotland, and by his engaging to
pay a large ransom. The state of France encour-
aged England to propose harder terms to that
country, where the people rose against the un-
speakable cruelty and barbarity of its nobles;
where the nobles rose in turn against the people;
where the most frightful outrages were commit-
ted on all sides; and where the insurrection of
the peasants, called the insurrection of the
Jacquerie, from Jacques, a common Christian
name among the country people of France,
awakened terrors and hatreds that have scarcely
yet passed away. A treaty called the Great Peace,


Charles Dickens
199

was at last signed, under which King Edward
agreed to give up the greater part of his con-
quests, and King John to pay, within six years,
a ransom of three million crowns of gold. He
was so beset by his own nobles and courtiers
for having yielded to these conditions—though
they could help him to no better—that he came
back of his own will to his old palace-prison of
the Savoy, and there died.
There was a Sovereign of Castile at that time,
called Pedro the Cruel, who deserved the name
remarkably well: having committed, among
other cruelties, a variety of murders. This ami-
able monarch being driven from his throne for
his crimes, went to the province of Bordeaux,
where the Black Prince—now married to his
cousin Joan, a pretty widow—was residing, and
besought his help. The Prince, who took to him
much more kindly than a prince of such fame
ought to have taken to such a ruffian, readily
listened to his fair promises, and agreeing to 

help him, sent secret orders to some trouble-
some disbanded soldiers of his and his father’s,
who called themselves the Free Companions,
and who had been a pest to the French people,
for some time, to aid this Pedro. The Prince, him-
self, going into Spain to head the army of relief,
soon set Pedro on his throne again - where he
no sooner found himself, than, of course, he
behaved like the villain he was, broke his word
without the least shame, and abandoned all the
promises he had made to the Black Prince.
Now, it had cost the Prince a good deal of money
to pay soldiers to support this murderous King;
and finding himself, when he came back dis-
gusted to Bordeaux, not only in bad health, but
deeply in debt, he began to tax his French sub-
jects to pay his creditors. They appealed to the
French King, Charles; war again broke out; and
the French town of Limoges, which the Prince
had greatly benefited, went over to the French
King. Upon this he ravaged the province of which


A Child’s Histroy of England
200

it was the capital; burnt, and plundered, and
killed in the old sickening way; and refused mercy
to the prisoners, men, women, and children taken
in the offending town, though he was so ill and
so much in need of pity himself from Heaven,
that he was carried in a litter. He lived to come
home and make himself popular with the people
and Parliament, and he died on Trinity Sunday,
the eighth of June, one thousand three hundred
and seventy-six, at forty-six years old.
The whole nation mourned for him as one of
the most renowned and beloved princes it had
ever had; and he was buried with great lamen-
tations in Canterbury Cathedral. Near to the
tomb of Edward the Confessor, his monument,
with his figure, carved in stone, and represented
in the old black armour, lying on its back, may
be seen at this day, with an ancient coat of mail,
a helmet, and a pair of gauntlets hanging from
a beam above it, which most people like to be-
lieve were once worn by the Black Prince. 

King Edward did not outlive his renowned son,
long. He was old, and one Alice Perrers, a beau-
tiful lady, had contrived to make him so fond of
her in his old age, that he could refuse her noth-
ing, and made himself ridiculous. She little de-
served his love, or—what I dare say she valued
a great deal more—the jewels of the late Queen,
which he gave her among other rich presents.
She took the very ring from his finger on the
morning of the day when he died, and left him
to be pillaged by his faithless servants. Only
one good priest was true to him, and attended
him to the last.
Besides being famous for the great victories I
have related, the reign of King Edward the Third
was rendered memorable in better ways, by the
growth of architecture and the erection of
Windsor Castle. In better ways still, by the ris-
ing up of  Wickliffe, originally a poor parish
priest: who devoted himself to exposing, with
wonderful power and success, the ambition and


Charles Dickens
201

corruption of the Pope, and of the whole church
of which he was the head.
Some of those Flemings were induced to come
to England in this reign too, and to settle in
Norfolk, where they made better woollen cloths
than the English had ever had before. The Or-
der of the Garter (a very fine thing in its way,
but hardly so important as good clothes for the
nation) also dates from this period. The King is
said to have picked ‘up a lady’s garter at a ball,
and to have said, Honi soit qui mal y pense—in
English, ‘Evil be to him who evil thinks of it.’
The courtiers were usually glad to imitate what
the King said or did, and hence from a slight
incident the Order of the Garter was instituted,
and became a great dignity. So the story goes. 

CHAPTER XIX
ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD
THE SECOND 

RICHARD,  SON  OF  THE B LACK P RINCE, a boy eleven
years of age, succeeded to the Crown under the
title of King Richard the Second. The whole En-
glish nation were ready to admire him for the
sake of his brave father. As to the lords and
ladies about the Court, they declared him to be
the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best—
even of princes—whom the lords and ladies
about the Court, generally declare to be the most
beautiful, the wisest, and the best of mankind.
To flatter a poor boy in this base manner was
not a very likely way to develop whatever good
was in him; and it brought him to anything but
a good or happy end.
The Duke of Lancaster, the young King’s uncle
—commonly called John of Gaunt, from having
been born at Ghent, which the common people


A Child’s Histroy of England
202

so pronounced—was supposed to have some
thoughts of the throne himself; but, as he was
not popular, and the memory of the Black Prince
was, he submitted to his nephew.
The war with France being still unsettled, the
Government of England wanted money to pro-
vide for the expenses that might arise out of it;
accordingly a certain tax, called the Poll-tax,
which had originated in the last reign, was or-
dered to be levied on the people. This was a tax
on every person in the kingdom, male and fe-
male, above the age of fourteen, of three groats
(or three four-penny pieces) a year; clergymen
were charged more, and only beggars were ex-
empt.
I have no need to repeat that the common
people of England had long been suffering un-
der great oppression. They were still the mere
slaves of the lords of the land on which they
lived, and were on most occasions harshly and
unjustly treated. But, they had begun by this 

time to think very seriously of not bearing quite
so much; and, probably, were emboldened by
that French insurrection I mentioned in the last
chapter.
The people of Essex rose against the Poll-tax,
and being severely handled by the government
officers, killed some of them. At this very time
one of the tax-collectors, going his rounds from
house to house, at Dartford in Kent came to the
cottage of one Wat, a tiler by trade, and claimed
the tax upon his daughter. Her mother, who
was at home, declared that she was under the
age of fourteen; upon that, the collector (as other
collectors had already done in different parts of
England) behaved in a savage way, and bru-
tally insulted Wat Tyler’s daughter. The daugh-
ter screamed, the mother screamed. Wat the
Tiler, who was at work not far off, ran to the
spot, and did what any honest father under such
provocation might have done—struck the col-
lector dead at a blow.


Charles Dickens
203

Instantly the people of that town uprose as one
man. They made Wat Tyler their leader; they joined
with the people of Essex, who were in arms under
a priest called Jack Straw; they took out of prison
another priest named John Ball; and gathering in
numbers as they went along, advanced, in a great
confused army of poor men, to Blackheath. It is
said that they wanted to abolish all property, and
to declare all men equal. I do not think this very
likely; because they stopped the travellers on the
roads and made them swear to be true to King
Richard and the people. Nor were they at all dis-
posed to injure those who had done them no harm,
merely because they were of high station; for, the
King’s mother, who had to pass through their
camp at Blackheath, on her way to her young
son, lying for safety in the Tower of London, had
merely to kiss a few dirty-faced rough-bearded
men who were noisily fond of royalty, and so got
away in perfect safety. Next day the whole mass
marched on to London Bridge. 

There was a drawbridge in the middle, which
William Walworth the Mayor caused to be raised to
prevent their coming into the city; but they soon
terrified the citizens into lowering it again, and
spread themselves, with great uproar, over the
streets. They broke open the prisons; they burned
the papers in Lambeth Palace; they destroyed the
Duke of Lancaster’s Palace, the Savoy, in the
Strand, said to be the most beautiful and splendid
in England; they set fire to the books and docu-
ments in the Temple; and made a great riot. Many
of these outrages were committed in drunkenness;
since those citizens, who had well-filled cellars, were
only too glad to throw them open to save the rest of
their property; but even the drunken rioters were
very careful to steal nothing. They were so angry
with one man, who was seen to take a silver cup at
the Savoy Palace, and put it in his breast, that
they drowned him in the river, cup and all.
The young King had been taken out to treat
with them before they committed these excesses;


A Child’s Histroy of England
204

but, he and the people about him were so fright-
ened by the riotous shouts, that they got back
to the Tower in the best way they could. This
made the insurgents bolder; so they went on
rioting away, striking off the heads of those who
did not, at a moment’s notice, declare for King
Richard and the people; and killing as many of
the unpopular persons whom they supposed to
be their enemies as they could by any means
lay hold of. In this manner they passed one very
violent day, and then proclamation was made
that the King would meet them at Mile-end, and
grant their requests.
The rioters went to Mile-end to the number of
sixty thousand, and the King met them there,
and to the King the rioters peaceably proposed
four conditions. First, that neither they, nor their
children, nor any coming after them, should be
made slaves any more. Secondly, that the rent
of land should be fixed at a certain price in
money, instead of being paid in service. Thirdly, 

that they should have liberty to buy and sell in
all markets and public places, like other free
men. Fourthly, that they should be pardoned
for past offences. Heaven knows, there was noth-
ing very unreasonable in these proposals! The
young King deceitfully pretended to think so,
and kept thirty clerks up, all night, writing out
a charter accordingly.
Now, Wat Tyler himself wanted more than this.
He wanted the entire abolition of the forest laws.
He was not at Mile-end with the rest, but, while
that meeting was being held, broke into the
Tower of London and slew the archbishop and
the treasurer, for whose heads the people had
cried out loudly the day before. He and his men
even thrust their swords into the bed of the Prin-
cess of Wales while the Princess was in it, to
make certain that none of their enemies were
concealed there.
So, Wat and his men still continued armed,
and rode about the city. Next morning, the King


Charles Dickens
205

with a small train of some sixty gentlemen—
among whom was  Walworth the Mayor—rode
into Smithfield, and saw Wat and his people at
a little distance. Says Wat to his men, ‘There is
the King. I will go speak with him, and tell him
what we want.’
Straightway Wat rode up to him, and began
to talk. ‘King,’ says Wat, ‘dost thou see all my
men there?’
‘Ah,’ says the King. ‘Why?’
‘Because,’ says Wat, ‘they are all at my com-
mand, and have sworn to do whatever I bid
them.’
Some declared afterwards that as Wat said
this, he laid his hand on the King’s bridle. Oth-
ers declared that he was seen to play with his
own dagger. I think, myself, that he just spoke
to the King like a rough, angry man as he was,
and did nothing more. At any rate he was ex-
pecting no attack, and preparing for no resis-
tance, when Walworth the Mayor did the not 

very valiant deed of drawing a short sword and
stabbing him in the throat. He dropped from
his horse, and one of the King’s people speedily
finished him. So fell Wat Tyler. Fawners and
flatterers made a mighty triumph of it, and set
up a cry which will occasionally find an echo to
this day. But Wat was a hard-working man, who
had suffered much, and had been foully out-
raged; and it is probable that he was a man of a
much higher nature and a much braver spirit
than any of the parasites who exulted then, or
have exulted since, over his defeat.
Seeing Wat down, his men immediately bent
their bows to avenge his fall. If the young King
had not had presence of mind at that danger-
ous moment, both he and the Mayor to boot,
might have followed Tyler pretty fast. But the
King riding up to the crowd, cried out that Tyler
was a traitor, and that he would be their leader.
They were so taken by surprise, that they set
up a great shouting, and followed the boy until


A Child’s Histroy of England
206

he was met at Islington by a large body of sol-
diers.
The end of this rising was the then usual end.
As soon as the King found himself safe, he un-
said all he had said, and undid all he had done;
some fifteen hundred of the rioters were tried
(mostly in Essex) with great rigour, and executed
with great cruelty. Many of them were hanged
on gibbets, and left there as a terror to the coun-
try people; and, because their miserable friends
took some of the bodies down to bury, the King
ordered the rest to be chained up—which was
the beginning of the barbarous custom of hang-
ing in chains. The King’s falsehood in this busi-
ness makes such a pitiful figure, that I think
Wat Tyler appears in history as beyond com-
parison the truer and more respectable man of
the two.
Richard was now sixteen years of age, and
married Anne of Bohemia, an excellent princess,
who was called ‘the good Queen Anne.’ She de- 

served a better husband; for the King had been
fawned and flattered into a treacherous, waste-
ful, dissolute, bad young man.
There were two Popes at this time (as if one
were not enough!), and their quarrels involved
Europe in a great deal of trouble. Scotland was
still troublesome too; and at home there was
much jealousy and distrust, and plotting and
counter-plotting, because the King feared the
ambition of his relations, and particularly of his
uncle, the Duke of Lancaster, and the duke had
his party against the King, and the King had
his party against the duke. Nor were these home
troubles lessened when the duke went to Castile
to urge his claim to the crown of that kingdom;
for then the Duke of Gloucester, another of
Richard’s uncles, opposed him, and influenced
the Parliament to demand the dismissal of the
King’s favourite ministers. The King said in re-
ply, that he would not for such men dismiss
the meanest servant in his kitchen. But, it had


Charles Dickens
207

begun to signify little what a King said when a
Parliament was determined; so Richard was at
last obliged to give way, and to agree to another
Government of the kingdom, under a commis-
sion of fourteen nobles, for a year. His uncle of
Gloucester was at the head of this commission,
and, in fact, appointed everybody composing it.
Having done all this, the King declared as soon
as he saw an opportunity that he had never
meant to do it, and that it was all illegal; and he
got the judges secretly to sign a declaration to
that effect. The secret oozed out directly, and
was carried to the Duke of Gloucester. The Duke
of Gloucester, at the head of forty thousand men,
met the King on his entering into London to
enforce his authority; the King was helpless
against him; his favourites and ministers were
impeached and were mercilessly executed.
Among them were two men whom the people
regarded with very different feelings; one, Rob-
ert Tresilian, Chief Justice, who was hated for 

having made what was called ‘the bloody cir-
cuit’ to try the rioters; the other, Sir Simon
Burley, an honourable knight, who had been
the dear friend of the Black Prince, and the gov-
ernor and guardian of the King. For this
gentleman’s life the good Queen even begged of
Gloucester on her knees; but Gloucester (with
or without reason) feared and hated him, and
replied, that if she valued her husband’s crown,
she had better beg no more. All this was done
under what was called by some the wonderful—
and by others, with better reason, the merci-
less—Parliament.
But Gloucester’s power was not to last for ever.
He held it for only a year longer; in which year
the famous battle of Otterbourne, sung in the
old ballad of Chevy Chase, was fought. When
the year was out, the King, turning suddenly to
Gloucester, in the midst of a great council said,
‘Uncle, how old am I?’ ‘Your highness,’ returned
the Duke, ‘is in your twenty-second year.’ ‘Am I


A Child’s Histroy of England
208

so much?’ said the King; ‘then I will manage my
own affairs! I am much obliged to you, my good
lords, for your past services, but I need them
no more.’ He followed this up, by appointing a
new Chancellor and a new Treasurer, and an-
nounced to the people that he had resumed the
Government. He held it for eight years without
opposition. Through all that time, he kept his
determination to revenge himself some day upon
his uncle Gloucester, in his own breast.
At last the good Queen died, and then the King,
desiring to take a second wife, proposed to his
council that he should marry Isabella, of France,
the daughter of Charles the Sixth: who, the
French courtiers said (as the English courtiers
had said of Richard), was a marvel of beauty
and wit, and quite a phenomenon—of seven
years old. The council were divided about this
marriage, but it took place. It secured peace
between England and France for a quarter of a
century; but it was strongly opposed to the 

prejudices of the English people. The Duke of
Gloucester, who was anxious to take the occa-
sion of making himself popular, declaimed
against it loudly, and this at length decided the
King to execute the vengeance he had been nurs-
ing so long.
He went with a gay company to the Duke of
Gloucester’s house, Pleshey Castle, in Essex,
where the Duke, suspecting nothing, came out
into the court-yard to receive his royal visitor.
While the King conversed in a friendly manner
with the Duchess, the Duke was quietly seized,
hurried away, shipped for Calais, and lodged in
the castle there. His friends, the Earls of Arundel
and Warwick, were taken in the same treacher-
ous manner, and confined to their castles. A
few days after, at Nottingham, they were im-
peached of high treason. The Earl of Arundel
was condemned and beheaded, and the Earl of
Warwick was banished. Then, a writ was sent
by a messenger to the Governor of Calais, re-


Charles Dickens
209

quiring him to send the Duke of Gloucester over
to be tried. In three days he returned an an-
swer that he could not do that, because the
Duke of Gloucester had died in prison. The Duke
was declared a traitor, his property was confis-
cated to the King, a real or pretended confes-
sion he had made in prison to one of the Jus-
tices of the Common Pleas was produced against
him, and there was an end of the matter. How
the unfortunate duke died, very few cared to
know. Whether he really died naturally; whether
he killed himself; whether, by the King’s order,
he was strangled, or smothered between two
beds (as a serving-man of the Governor’s named
Hall, did afterwards declare), cannot be discov-
ered. There is not much doubt that he was killed,
somehow or other, by his nephew’s orders.
Among the most active nobles in these proceed-
ings were the King’s cousin, Henry Bolingbroke,
whom the King had made Duke of Hereford to
smooth down the old family quarrels, and some 

others: who had in the family-plotting times
done just such acts themselves as they now
condemned in the duke. They seem to have been
a corrupt set of men; but such men were easily
found about the court in such days.
The people murmured at all this, and were
still very sore about the French marriage. The
nobles saw how little the King cared for law,
and how crafty he was, and began to be some-
what afraid for themselves. The King’s life was
a life of continued feasting and excess; his reti-
nue, down to the meanest servants, were
dressed in the most costly manner, and ca-
roused at his tables, it is related, to the number
of ten thousand persons every day. He himself,
surrounded by a body of ten thousand archers,
and enriched by a duty on wool which the Com-
mons had granted him for life, saw no danger
of ever being otherwise than powerful and ab-
solute, and was as fierce and haughty as a King
could be.


A Child’s Histroy of England
210

He had two of his old enemies left, in the per-
sons of the Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk. Spar-
ing these no more than the others, he tampered
with the Duke of Hereford until he got him to
declare before the Council that the Duke of Nor-
folk had lately held some treasonable talk with
him, as he was riding near Brentford; and that
he had told him, among other things, that he
could not believe the King’s oath—which nobody
could, I should think. For this treachery he ob-
tained a pardon, and the Duke of Norfolk was
summoned to appear and defend himself. As
he denied the charge and said his accuser was
a liar and a traitor, both noblemen, according
to the manner of those times, were held in cus-
tody, and the truth was ordered to be decided
by wager of battle at Coventry. This wager of
battle meant that whosoever won the combat
was to be considered in the right; which non-
sense meant in effect, that no strong man could
ever be wrong. A great holiday was made; a great 

crowd assembled, with much parade and show;
and the two combatants were about to rush at
each other with their lances, when the King,
sitting in a pavilion to see fair, threw down the
truncheon he carried in his hand, and forbade
the battle. The Duke of Hereford was to be ban-
ished for ten years, and the Duke of Norfolk
was to be banished for life. So said the King.
The Duke of Hereford went to France, and went
no farther. The Duke of Norfolk made a pilgrim-
age to the Holy Land, and afterwards died at
Venice of a broken heart.
Faster and fiercer, after this, the King went
on in his career. The Duke of Lancaster, who
was the father of the Duke of Hereford, died
soon after the departure of his son; and, the
King, although he had solemnly granted to that
son leave to inherit his father’s property, if it
should come to him during his banishment,
immediately seized it all, like a robber. The
judges were so afraid of him, that they disgraced


Charles Dickens
211

themselves by declaring this theft to be just and
lawful. His avarice knew no bounds. He out-
lawed seventeen counties at once, on a frivo-
lous pretence, merely to raise money by way of
fines for misconduct. In short, he did as many
dishonest things as he could; and cared so little
for the discontent of his subjects—though even
the spaniel favourites began to whisper to him
that there was such a thing as discontent afloat
—that he took that time, of all others, for leav-
ing England and making an expedition against
the Irish.
He was scarcely gone, leaving the Duke of York
Regent in his absence, when his cousin, Henry
of Hereford, came over from France to claim the
rights of which he had been so monstrously
deprived. He was immediately joined by the two
great Earls of Northumberland and
Westmoreland; and his uncle, the Regent, find-
ing the King’s cause unpopular, and the disin-
clination of the army to act against Henry, very 

strong, withdrew with the Royal forces towards
Bristol. Henry, at the head of an army, came
from Yorkshire (where he had landed) to Lon-
don and followed him. They joined their forces—
how they brought that about, is not distinctly
understood—and proceeded to Bristol Castle,
whither three noblemen had taken the young
Queen. The castle surrendering, they presently
put those three noblemen to death. The Regent
then remained there, and Henry went on to
Chester.
All this time, the boisterous weather had pre-
vented the King from receiving intelligence of
what had occurred. At length it was conveyed
to him in Ireland, and he sent over the  Earl of
Salisbury, who, landing at Conway, rallied the
Welshmen, and waited for the King a whole fort-
night; at the end of that time the Welshmen,
who were perhaps not very warm for him in the
beginning, quite cooled down and went home.
When the King did land on the coast at last, he


A Child’s Histroy of England
212

came with a pretty good power, but his men
cared nothing for him, and quickly deserted.
Supposing the Welshmen to be still at Conway,
he disguised himself as a priest, and made for
that place in company with his two brothers
and some few of their adherents. But, there were
no Welshmen left—only Salisbury and a hun-
dred soldiers. In this distress, the King’s two
brothers, Exeter and Surrey, offered to go to
Henry to learn what his intentions were. Sur-
rey, who was true to Richard, was put into
prison. Exeter, who was false, took the royal
badge, which was a hart, off his shield, and as-
sumed the rose, the badge of Henry. After this,
it was pretty plain to the King what Henry’s in-
tentions were, without sending any more mes-
sengers to ask.
The fallen King, thus deserted—hemmed in
on all sides, and pressed with hunger—rode here
and rode there, and went to this castle, and went
to that castle, endeavouring to obtain some pro- 

visions, but could find none. He rode wretch-
edly back to Conway, and there surrendered
himself to the Earl of Northumberland, who
came from Henry, in reality to take him pris-
oner, but in appearance to offer terms; and
whose men were hidden not far off. By this earl
he was conducted to the castle of Flint, where
his cousin Henry met him, and dropped on his
knee as if he were still respectful to his sover-
eign.
‘Fair cousin of Lancaster,’ said the King, ‘you
are very welcome’ (very welcome, no doubt; but
he would have been more so, in chains or with-
out a head).
‘My lord,’ replied Henry, ‘I am come a little
before my time; but, with your good pleasure, I
will show you the reason. Your people complain
with some bitterness, that you have ruled them
rigorously for two-and-twenty years. Now, if it
please God, I will help you to govern them bet-
ter in future.’


Charles Dickens
213

‘Fair cousin,’ replied the abject King, ‘since it
pleaseth you, it pleaseth me mightily.’
After this, the trumpets sounded, and the King
was stuck on a wretched horse, and carried
prisoner to Chester, where he was made to is-
sue a proclamation, calling a Parliament. From
Chester he was taken on towards London. At
Lichfield he tried to escape by getting out of a
window and letting himself down into a garden;
it was all in vain, however, and he was carried
on and shut up in the Tower, where no one pit-
ied him, and where the whole people, whose
patience he had quite tired out, reproached him
without mercy. Before he got there, it is related,
that his very dog left him and departed from his
side to lick the hand of Henry.
The day before the Parliament met, a deputa-
tion went to this wrecked King, and told him
that he had promised the Earl of
Northumberland at Conway Castle to resign the
crown. He said he was quite ready to do it, and 

signed a paper in which he renounced his au-
thority and absolved his people from their alle-
giance to him. He had so little spirit left that he
gave his royal ring to his triumphant cousin
Henry with his own hand, and said, that if he
could have had leave to appoint a successor,
that same Henry was the man of all others whom
he would have named. Next day, the Parliament
assembled in Westminster Hall, where Henry
sat at the side of the throne, which was empty
and covered with a cloth of gold. The paper just
signed by the King was read to the multitude
amid shouts of joy, which were echoed through
all the streets; when some of the noise had died
away, the King was formally deposed. Then
Henry arose, and, making the sign of the cross
on his forehead and breast, challenged the realm
of England as his right; the archbishops of Can-
terbury and York seated him on the throne.
The multitude shouted again, and the shouts
re-echoed throughout all the streets. No one


A Child’s Histroy of England
214

remembered, now, that Richard the Second had
ever been the most beautiful, the wisest, and
the best of princes; and he now made living (to
my thinking) a far more sorry spectacle in the
Tower of London, than Wat Tyler had made, ly-
ing dead, among the hoofs of the royal horses
in Smithfield.
The Poll-tax died with Wat. The Smiths to the
King and Royal Family, could make no chains
in which the King could hang the people’s rec-
ollection of him; so the Poll-tax was never col-
lected. 

CHAPTER XX
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE
FOURTH, CALLED BOLINGBROKE 

DURING THE LAST REIGN, the preaching of Wickliffe
against the pride and cunning of the Pope and
all his men, had made a great noise in England.
Whether the new King wished to be in favour 

with the priests, or whether he hoped, by pre-
tending to be very religious, to cheat Heaven
itself into the belief that he was not a usurper, I
don’t know. Both suppositions are likely enough.
It is certain that he began his reign by making
a strong show against the followers of Wickliffe,
who were called Lollards, or heretics—although
his father, John of Gaunt, had been of that way
of thinking, as he himself had been more than
suspected of being. It is no less certain that he
first established in England the detestable and
atrocious custom, brought from abroad, of burn-
ing those people as a punishment for their opin-
ions. It was the importation into England of one
of the practices of what was called the Holy In-
quisition: which was the most  unholy and the
most infamous tribunal that ever disgraced
mankind, and made men more like demons than
followers of Our Saviour.
No real right to the crown, as you know, was in
this King. Edward Mortimer, the young Earl of


Charles Dickens
215

March—who was only eight or nine years old, and
who was descended from the Duke of Clarence,
the elder brother of Henry’s father—was, by suc-
cession, the real heir to the throne. However, the
King got his son declared Prince of Wales; and,
obtaining possession of the young Earl of March
and his little brother, kept them in confinement
(but not severely) in Windsor Castle. He then re-
quired the Parliament to decide what was to be
done with the deposed King, who was quiet
enough, and who only said that he hoped his
cousin Henry would be ‘a good lord’ to him. The
Parliament replied that they would recommend
his being kept in some secret place where the
people could not resort, and where his friends
could not be admitted to see him. Henry accord-
ingly passed this sentence upon him, and it now
began to be pretty clear to the nation that Rich-
ard the Second would not live very long.
It was a noisy Parliament, as it was an un-
principled one, and the Lords quarrelled so vio- 

lently among themselves as to which of them
had been loyal and which disloyal, and which
consistent and which inconsistent, that forty
gauntlets are said to have been thrown upon
the floor at one time as challenges to as many
battles: the truth being that they were all false
and base together, and had been, at one time
with the old King, and at another time with the
new one, and seldom true for any length of time
to any one. They soon began to plot again. A
conspiracy was formed to invite the King to a
tournament at Oxford, and then to take him by
surprise and kill him. This murderous enter-
prise, which was agreed upon at secret meet-
ings in the house of the Abbot of Westminster,
was betrayed by the Earl of Rutland - one of the
conspirators. The King, instead of going to the
tournament or staying at Windsor (where the
conspirators suddenly went, on finding them-
selves discovered, with the hope of seizing him),
retired to London, proclaimed them all traitors,


A Child’s Histroy of England
216

and advanced upon them with a great force.
They retired into the west of England, proclaim-
ing Richard King; but, the people rose against
them, and they were all slain. Their treason
hastened the death of the deposed monarch.
Whether he was killed by hired assassins, or
whether he was starved to death, or whether he
refused food on hearing of his brothers being
killed (who were in that plot), is very doubtful.
He met his death somehow; and his body was
publicly shown at St. Paul’s Cathedral with only
the lower part of the face uncovered. I can
scarcely doubt that he was killed by the King’s
orders.
The French wife of the miserable Richard was
now only ten years old; and, when her father,
Charles of France, heard of her misfortunes and
of her lonely condition in England, he went mad:
as he had several times done before, during the
last five or six years. The French Dukes of Bur-
gundy and Bourbon took up the poor girl’s 

cause, without caring much about it, but on the
chance of getting something out of England. The
people of Bordeaux, who had a sort of supersti-
tious attachment to the memory of Richard, be-
cause he was born there, swore by the Lord that
he had been the best man in all his kingdom—
which was going rather far—and promised to do
great things against the English. Nevertheless,
when they came to consider that they, and the
whole people of France, were ruined by their own
nobles, and that the English rule was much the
better of the two, they cooled down again; and
the two dukes, although they were very great
men, could do nothing without them. Then, be-
gan negotiations between France and England
for the sending home to Paris of the poor little
Queen with all her jewels and her fortune of two
hundred thousand francs in gold. The King was
quite willing to restore the young lady, and even
the jewels; but he said he really could not part
with the money. So, at last she was safely de-


Charles Dickens
217

posited at Paris without her fortune, and then
the Duke of Burgundy (who was cousin to the
French King) began to quarrel with the Duke of
Orleans (who was brother to the French King)
about the whole matter; and those two dukes
made France even more wretched than ever.
As the idea of conquering Scotland was still
popular at home, the King marched to the river
Tyne and demanded homage of the King of that
country. This being refused, he advanced to
Edinburgh, but did little there; for, his army
being in want of provisions, and the Scotch be-
ing very careful to hold him in check without
giving battle, he was obliged to retire. It is to his
immortal honour that in this sally he burnt no
villages and slaughtered no people, but was
particularly careful that his army should be
merciful and harmless. It was a great example
in those ruthless times.
A war among the border people of England
and Scotland went on for twelve months, and 

then the Earl of Northumberland, the nobleman
who had helped Henry to the crown, began to
rebel against him—probably because nothing
that Henry could do for him would satisfy his
extravagant expectations. There was a certain
Welsh gentleman, named Owen Glendower, who
had been a student in one of the Inns of Court,
and had afterwards been in the service of the
late King, whose Welsh property was taken from
him by a powerful lord related to the present
King, who was his neighbour. Appealing for re-
dress, and getting none, he took up arms, was
made an outlaw, and declared himself sover-
eign of Wales. He pretended to be a magician;
and not only were the Welsh people stupid
enough to believe him, but, even Henry believed
him too; for, making three expeditions into
Wales, and being three times driven back by
the wildness of the country, the bad weather,
and the skill of Glendower, he thought he was
defeated by the Welshman’s magic arts. How-


A Child’s Histroy of England
218

ever, he took Lord Grey and Sir Edmund
Mortimer, prisoners, and allowed the relatives
of Lord Grey to ransom him, but would not ex-
tend such favour to Sir Edmund Mortimer. Now,
Henry Percy, called Hotspur, son of the Earl of
Northumberland, who was married to
Mortimer’s sister, is supposed to have taken
offence at this; and, therefore, in conjunction
with his father and some others, to have joined
Owen Glendower, and risen against Henry. It is
by no means clear that this was the real cause
of the conspiracy; but perhaps it was made the
pretext. It was formed, and was very powerful;
including Scroop, Archbishop of York, and the
Earl of Douglas, a powerful and brave Scottish
nobleman. The King was prompt and active, and
the two armies met at Shrewsbury.
There were about fourteen thousand men in
each. The old Earl of Northumberland being sick,
the rebel forces were led by his son. The King
wore plain armour to deceive the enemy; and 

four noblemen, with the same object, wore the
royal arms. The rebel charge was so furious,
that every one of those gentlemen was killed,
the royal standard was beaten down, and the
young Prince of Wales was severely wounded in
the face. But he was one of the bravest and best
soldiers that ever lived, and he fought so well,
and the King’s troops were so encouraged by
his bold example, that they rallied immediately,
and cut the enemy’s forces all to pieces. Hotspur
was killed by an arrow in the brain, and the
rout was so complete that the whole rebellion
was struck down by this one blow. The Earl of
Northumberland surrendered himself soon af-
ter hearing of the death of his son, and received
a pardon for all his offences.
There were some lingerings of rebellion yet:
Owen Glendower being retired to Wales, and a
preposterous story being spread among the ig-
norant people that King Richard was still alive.
How they could have believed such nonsense it


Charles Dickens
219

is difficult to imagine; but they certainly did
suppose that the Court fool of the late King,
who was something like him, was he, himself;
so that it seemed as if, after giving so much
trouble to the country in his life, he was still to
trouble it after his death. This was not the worst.
The young Earl of March and his brother were
stolen out of Windsor Castle. Being retaken, and
being found to have been spirited away by one
Lady Spencer, she accused her own brother,
that Earl of Rutland who was in the former con-
spiracy and was now Duke of York, of being in
the plot. For this he was ruined in fortune,
though not put to death; and then another plot
arose among the old Earl of Northumberland,
some other lords, and that same Scroop, Arch-
bishop of York, who was with the rebels before.
These conspirators caused a writing to be posted
on the church doors, accusing the King of a
variety of crimes; but, the King being eager and
vigilant to oppose them, they were all taken, and 

the Archbishop was executed. This was the first
time that a great churchman had been slain by
the law in England; but the King was resolved
that it should be done, and done it was.
The next most remarkable event of this time
was the seizure, by Henry, of the heir to the
Scottish throne—James, a boy of nine years old.
He had been put aboard-ship by his father, the
Scottish King Robert, to save him from the de-
signs of his uncle, when, on his way to France,
he was accidentally taken by some English
cruisers. He remained a prisoner in England for
nineteen years, and became in his prison a stu-
dent and a famous poet.
With the exception of occasional troubles with
the Welsh and with the French, the rest of King
Henry’s reign was quiet enough. But, the King
was far from happy, and probably was troubled
in his conscience by knowing that he had
usurped the crown, and had occasioned the
death of his miserable cousin. The Prince of


A Child’s Histroy of England
220

Wales, though brave and generous, is said to
have been wild and dissipated, and even to have
drawn his sword on Gascoigne, the Chief Jus-
tice of the King’s Bench, because he was firm in
dealing impartially with one of his dissolute
companions. Upon this the Chief Justice is said
to have ordered him immediately to prison; the
Prince of Wales is said to have submitted with a
good grace; and the King is said to have ex-
claimed, ‘Happy is the monarch who has so just
a judge, and a son so willing to obey the laws.’
This is all very doubtful, and so is another story
(of which Shakespeare has made beautiful use),
that the Prince once took the crown out of his
father’s chamber as he was sleeping, and tried
it on his own head.
The King’s health sank more and more, and
he became subject to violent eruptions on the
face and to bad epileptic fits, and his spirits
sank every day. At last, as he was praying be-
fore the shrine of St. Edward at Westminster 

Abbey, he was seized with a terrible fit, and was
carried into the Abbot’s chamber, where he pres-
ently died. It had been foretold that he would
die at Jerusalem, which certainly is not, and
never was, Westminster. But, as the Abbot’s
room had long been called the Jerusalem cham-
ber, people said it was all the same thing, and
were quite satisfied with the prediction.
The King died on the 20th of March, 1413, in
the forty-seventh year of his age, and the four-
teenth of his reign. He was buried in Canter-
bury Cathedral. He had been twice married, and
had, by his first wife, a family of four sons and
two daughters. Considering his duplicity before
he came to the throne, his unjust seizure of it,
and above all, his making that monstrous law
for the burning of what the priests called her-
etics, he was a reasonably good king, as kings
went.


Charles Dickens
221 

CHAPTER XXI
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIFTH 

FIRST PART
THE PRINCE OF WALES began his reign like a gener-
ous and honest man. He set the young Earl of
March free; he restored their estates and their
honours to the Percy family, who had lost them
by their rebellion against his father; he ordered
the imbecile and unfortunate Richard to be
honourably buried among the Kings of England;
and he dismissed all his wild companions, with
assurances that they should not want, if they
would resolve to be steady, faithful, and true.
It is much easier to burn men than to burn
their opinions; and those of the Lollards were
spreading every day. The Lollards were repre-
sented by the priests—probably falsely for the
most part—to entertain treasonable designs
against the new King; and Henry, suffering him- 

self to be worked upon by these representations,
sacrificed his friend Sir John Oldcastle, the Lord
Cobham, to them, after trying in vain to con-
vert him by arguments. He was declared guilty,
as the head of the sect, and sentenced to the
flames; but he escaped from the Tower before
the day of execution (postponed for fifty days
by the King himself), and summoned the
Lollards to meet him near London on a certain
day. So the priests told the King, at least. I doubt
whether there was any conspiracy beyond such
as was got up by their agents. On the day ap-
pointed, instead of five-and-twenty thousand
men, under the command of Sir John Oldcastle,
in the meadows of St. Giles, the King found only
eighty men, and no Sir John at all. There was,
in another place, an addle-headed brewer, who
had gold trappings to his horses, and a pair of
gilt spurs in his breast—expecting to be made a
knight next day by Sir John, and so to gain the
right to wear them—but there was no Sir John,


A Child’s Histroy of England
222

nor did anybody give information respecting
him, though the King offered great rewards for
such intelligence. Thirty of these unfortunate
Lollards were hanged and drawn immediately,
and were then burnt, gallows and all; and the
various prisons in and around London were
crammed full of others. Some of these unfortu-
nate men made various confessions of treason-
able designs; but, such confessions were easily
got, under torture and the fear of fire, and are
very little to be trusted. To finish the sad story
of Sir John Oldcastle at once, I may mention
that he escaped into Wales, and remained there
safely, for four years. When discovered by Lord
Powis, it is very doubtful if he would have been
taken alive—so great was the old soldier’s brav-
ery—if a miserable old woman had not come
behind him and broken his legs with a stool. He
was carried to London in a horse-litter, was fas-
tened by an iron chain to a gibbet, and so
roasted to death. 

To make the state of France as plain as I can
in a few words, I should tell you that the Duke
of Orleans, and the Duke of Burgundy, com-
monly called ‘John without fear,’ had had a
grand reconciliation of their quarrel in the last
reign, and had appeared to be quite in a heav-
enly state of mind. Immediately after which, on
a Sunday, in the public streets of Paris, the Duke
of Orleans was murdered by a party of twenty
men, set on by the Duke of Burgundy—accord-
ing to his own deliberate confession. The widow
of King Richard had been married in France to
the eldest son of the Duke of Orleans. The poor
mad King was quite powerless to help her, and
the Duke of Burgundy became the real master
of France. Isabella dying, her husband (Duke of
Orleans since the death of his father) married
the daughter of the Count of Armagnac, who,
being a much abler man than his young son-
in-law, headed his party; thence called after him
Armagnacs. Thus, France was now in this ter-


Charles Dickens
223

rible condition, that it had in it the party of the
King’s son, the Dauphin Louis; the party of the
Duke of Burgundy, who was the father of the
Dauphin’s ill-used wife; and the party of the
Armagnacs; all hating each other; all fighting
together; all composed of the most depraved
nobles that the earth has ever known; and all
tearing unhappy France to pieces.
The late King had watched these dissensions
from England, sensible (like the French people)
that no enemy of France could injure her more
than her own nobility. The present King now
advanced a claim to the French throne. His de-
mand being, of course, refused, he reduced his
proposal to a certain large amount of French
territory, and to demanding the French prin-
cess, Catherine, in marriage, with a fortune of
two millions of golden crowns. He was offered
less territory and fewer crowns, and no prin-
cess; but he called his ambassadors home and
prepared for war. Then, he proposed to take the 

princess with one million of crowns. The French
Court replied that he should have the princess
with two hundred thousand crowns less; he said
this would not do (he had never seen the prin-
cess in his life), and assembled his army at
Southampton. There was a short plot at home
just at that time, for deposing him, and making
the Earl of March king; but the conspirators
were all speedily condemned and executed, and
the King embarked for France.
It is dreadful to observe how long a bad ex-
ample will be followed; but, it is encouraging to
know that a good example is never thrown away.
The King’s first act on disembarking at the
mouth of the river Seine, three miles from
Harfleur, was to imitate his father, and to pro-
claim his solemn orders that the lives and prop-
erty of the peaceable inhabitants should be re-
spected on pain of death. It is agreed by French
writers, to his lasting renown, that even while
his soldiers were suffering the greatest distress


A Child’s Histroy of England
224

from want of food, these commands were rig-
idly obeyed.
With an army in all of thirty thousand men,
he besieged the town of Harfleur both by sea
and land for five weeks; at the end of which time
the town surrendered, and the inhabitants were
allowed to depart with only fivepence each, and
a part of their clothes. All the rest of their pos-
sessions was divided amongst the English army.
But, that army suffered so much, in spite of its
successes, from disease and privation, that it
was already reduced one half. Still, the King was
determined not to retire until he had struck a
greater blow. Therefore, against the advice of
all his counsellors, he moved on with his little
force towards Calais. When he came up to the
river Somme he was unable to cross, in conse-
quence of the fort being fortified; and, as the
English moved up the left bank of the river look-
ing for a crossing, the French, who had broken
all the bridges, moved up the right bank, watch- 

ing them, and waiting to attack them when they
should try to pass it. At last the English found
a crossing and got safely over. The French held
a council of war at Rouen, resolved to give the
English battle, and sent heralds to King Henry
to know by which road he was going. ‘By the
road that will take me straight to Calais!’ said
the King, and sent them away with a present of
a hundred crowns.
The English moved on, until they beheld the
French, and then the King gave orders to form
in line of battle. The French not coming on, the
army broke up after remaining in battle array
till night, and got good rest and refreshment at
a neighbouring village. The French were now
all lying in another village, through which they
knew the English must pass. They were resolved
that the English should begin the battle. The
English had no means of retreat, if their King
had any such intention; and so the two armies
passed the night, close together.


Charles Dickens
225

To understand these armies well, you must
bear in mind that the immense French army
had, among its notable persons, almost the
whole of that wicked nobility, whose debauch-
ery had made France a desert; and so besotted
were they by pride, and by contempt for the
common people, that they had scarcely any bow-
men (if indeed they had any at all) in their whole
enormous number: which, compared with the
English army, was at least as six to one. For
these proud fools had said that the bow was
not a fit weapon for knightly hands, and that
France must be defended by gentlemen only.
We shall see, presently, what hand the gentle-
men made of it.
Now, on the English side, among the little
force, there was a good proportion of men who
were not gentlemen by any means, but who were
good stout archers for all that. Among them, in
the morning—having slept little at night, while
the French were carousing and making sure of 

victory—the King rode, on a grey horse; wear-
ing on his head a helmet of shining steel, sur-
mounted by a crown of gold, sparkling with pre-
cious stones; and bearing over his armour,
embroidered together, the arms of England and
the arms of France. The archers looked at the
shining helmet and the crown of gold and the
sparkling jewels, and admired them all; but,
what they admired most was the King’s cheer-
ful face, and his bright blue eye, as he told them
that, for himself, he had made up his mind to
conquer there or to die there, and that England
should never have a ransom to pay for  him.
There was one brave knight who chanced to say
that he wished some of the many gallant gentle-
men and good soldiers, who were then idle at
home in England, were there to increase their
numbers. But the King told him that, for his
part, he did not wish for one more man. ‘The
fewer we have,’ said he, ‘the greater will be the
honour we shall win!’ His men, being now all in


A Child’s Histroy of England
226

good heart, were refreshed with bread and wine,
and heard prayers, and waited quietly for the
French. The King waited for the French, because
they were drawn up thirty deep (the little En-
glish force was only three deep), on very diffi-
cult and heavy ground; and he knew that when
they moved, there must be confusion among
them.
As they did not move, he sent off two parties:-
one to lie concealed in a wood on the left of the
French: the other, to set fire to some houses
behind the French after the battle should be
begun. This was scarcely done, when three of
the proud French gentlemen, who were to de-
fend their country without any help from the
base peasants, came riding out, calling upon
the English to surrender. The King warned those
gentlemen himself to retire with all speed if they
cared for their lives, and ordered the English
banners to advance. Upon that, Sir Thomas
Erpingham, a great English general, who com- 

manded the archers, threw his truncheon into
the air, joyfully, and all the English men, kneel-
ing down upon the ground and biting it as if
they took possession of the country, rose up
with a great shout and fell upon the French.
Every archer was furnished with a great stake
tipped with iron; and his orders were, to thrust
this stake into the ground, to discharge his ar-
row, and then to fall back, when the French
horsemen came on. As the haughty French
gentlemen, who were to break the English ar-
chers and utterly destroy them with their
knightly lances, came riding up, they were re-
ceived with such a blinding storm of arrows,
that they broke and turned. Horses and men
rolled over one another, and the confusion was
terrific. Those who rallied and charged the ar-
chers got among the stakes on slippery and
boggy ground, and were so bewildered that the
English archers—who wore no armour, and even
took off their leathern coats to be more active—


Charles Dickens
227

cut them to pieces, root and branch. Only three
French horsemen got within the stakes, and
those were instantly despatched. All this time
the dense French army, being in armour, were
sinking knee-deep into the mire; while the light
English archers, half-naked, were as fresh and
active as if they were fighting on a marble floor.
But now, the second division of the French
coming to the relief of the first, closed up in a
firm mass; the English, headed by the King,
attacked them; and the deadliest part of the
battle began. The King’s brother, the Duke of
Clarence, was struck down, and numbers of the
French surrounded him; but, King Henry,
standing over the body, fought like a lion until
they were beaten off.
Presently, came up a band of eighteen French
knights, bearing the banner of a certain French
lord, who had sworn to kill or take the English
King. One of them struck him such a blow with
a battle-axe that he reeled and fell upon his 

knees; but, his faithful men, immediately clos-
ing round him, killed every one of those eigh-
teen knights, and so that French lord never kept
his oath.
The French Duke of Alen‡on, seeing this, made
a desperate charge, and cut his way close up to
the Royal Standard of England. He beat down
the Duke of York, who was standing near it;
and, when the King came to his rescue, struck
off a piece of the crown he wore. But, he never
struck another blow in this world; for, even as
he was in the act of saying who he was, and
that he surrendered to the King; and even as
the King stretched out his hand to give him a
safe and honourable acceptance of the offer; he
fell dead, pierced by innumerable wounds.
The death of this nobleman decided the battle.
The third division of the French army, which had
never struck a blow yet, and which was, in itself,
more than double the whole English power, broke
and fled. At this time of the fight, the English,


A Child’s Histroy of England
228

who as yet had made no prisoners, began to take
them in immense numbers, and were still occu-
pied in doing so, or in killing those who would
not surrender, when a great noise arose in the
rear of the French—their flying banners were
seen to stop—and King Henry, supposing a great
reinforcement to have arrived, gave orders that
all the prisoners should be put to death. As soon,
however, as it was found that the noise was only
occasioned by a body of plundering peasants,
the terrible massacre was stopped.
Then King Henry called to him the French her-
ald, and asked him to whom the victory be-
longed.
The herald replied, ‘To the King of England.’
‘We have not made this havoc and slaughter,’
said the King. ‘It is the wrath of Heaven on the
sins of France. What is the name of that castle
yonder?’
The herald answered him, ‘My lord, it is the
castle of Azincourt.’ Said the King, ‘From hence- 

forth this battle shall be known to posterity, by
the name of the battle of Azincourt.’
Our English historians have made it
Agincourt; but, under that name, it will ever be
famous in English annals.
The loss upon the French side was enormous.
Three Dukes were killed, two more were taken
prisoners, seven Counts were killed, three more
were taken prisoners, and ten thousand knights
and gentlemen were slain upon the field. The
English loss amounted to sixteen hundred men,
among whom were the Duke of York and the
Earl of Suffolk.
War is a dreadful thing; and it is appalling to
know how the English were obliged, next morn-
ing, to kill those prisoners mortally wounded,
who yet writhed in agony upon the ground; how
the dead upon the French side were stripped
by their own countrymen and countrywomen,
and afterwards buried in great pits; how the
dead upon the English side were piled up in a


Charles Dickens
229

great barn, and how their bodies and the barn
were all burned together. It is in such things,
and in many more much too horrible to relate,
that the real desolation and wickedness of war
consist. Nothing can make war otherwise than
horrible. But the dark side of it was little thought
of and soon forgotten; and it cast no shade of
trouble on the English people, except on those
who had lost friends or relations in the fight.
They welcomed their King home with shouts of
rejoicing, and plunged into the water to bear
him ashore on their shoulders, and flocked out
in crowds to welcome him in every town through
which he passed, and hung rich carpets and
tapestries out of the windows, and strewed the
streets with flowers, and made the fountains
run with wine, as the great field of Agincourt
had run with blood. 

SECOND PART
THAT PROUD AND WICKED French nobility who dragged
their country to destruction, and who were ev-
ery day and every year regarded with deeper ha-
tred and detestation in the hearts of the French
people, learnt nothing, even from the defeat of
Agincourt. So far from uniting against the com-
mon enemy, they became, among themselves,
more violent, more bloody, and more false—if that
were possible—than they had been before. The
Count of Armagnac persuaded the French king
to plunder of her treasures Queen Isabella of
Bavaria, and to make her a prisoner. She, who
had hitherto been the bitter enemy of the Duke
of Burgundy, proposed to join him, in revenge.
He carried her off to Troyes, where she proclaimed
herself Regent of France, and made him her lieu-
tenant. The Armagnac party were at that time
possessed of Paris; but, one of the gates of the
city being secretly opened on a certain night to a


A Child’s Histroy of England
230

party of the duke’s men, they got into Paris, threw
into the prisons all the Armagnacs upon whom
they could lay their hands, and, a few nights af-
terwards, with the aid of a furious mob of sixty
thousand people, broke the prisons open, and
killed them all. The former Dauphin was now
dead, and the King’s third son bore the title. Him,
in the height of this murderous scene, a French
knight hurried out of bed, wrapped in a sheet,
and bore away to Poitiers. So, when the revenge-
ful Isabella and the Duke of Burgundy entered
Paris in triumph after the slaughter of their en-
emies, the Dauphin was proclaimed at Poitiers
as the real Regent.
King Henry had not been idle since his vic-
tory of Agincourt, but had repulsed a brave at-
tempt of the French to recover Harfleur; had
gradually conquered a great part of Normandy;
and, at this crisis of affairs, took the important
town of Rouen, after a siege of half a year. This
great loss so alarmed the French, that the Duke 

of Burgundy proposed that a meeting to treat of
peace should be held between the French and
the English kings in a plain by the river Seine.
On the appointed day, King Henry appeared
there, with his two brothers, Clarence and
Gloucester, and a thousand men. The unfortu-
nate French King, being more mad than usual
that day, could not come; but the Queen came,
and with her the Princess Catherine: who was
a very lovely creature, and who made a real
impression on King Henry, now that he saw her
for the first time. This was the most important
circumstance that arose out of the meeting.
As if it were impossible for a French noble-
man of that time to be true to his word of honour
in anything, Henry discovered that the Duke of
Burgundy was, at that very moment, in secret
treaty with the Dauphin; and he therefore aban-
doned the negotiation.
The Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin, each
of whom with the best reason distrusted the


Charles Dickens
231

other as a noble ruffian surrounded by a party
of noble ruffians, were rather at a loss how to
proceed after this; but, at length they agreed to
meet, on a bridge over the river Yonne, where it
was arranged that there should be two strong
gates put up, with an empty space between
them; and that the Duke of Burgundy should
come into that space by one gate, with ten men
only; and that the Dauphin should come into
that space by the other gate, also with ten men,
and no more.
So far the Dauphin kept his word, but no far-
ther. When the Duke of Burgundy was on his
knee before him in the act of speaking, one of
the Dauphin’s noble ruffians cut the said duke
down with a small axe, and others speedily fin-
ished him.
It was in vain for the Dauphin to pretend that
this base murder was not done with his con-
sent; it was too bad, even for France, and caused
a general horror. The duke’s heir hastened to 

make a treaty with King Henry, and the French
Queen engaged that her husband should con-
sent to it, whatever it was. Henry made peace,
on condition of receiving the Princess Catherine
in marriage, and being made Regent of France
during the rest of the King’s lifetime, and suc-
ceeding to the French crown at his death. He
was soon married to the beautiful Princess, and
took her proudly home to England, where she
was crowned with great honour and glory.
This peace was called the Perpetual Peace; we
shall soon see how long it lasted. It gave great
satisfaction to the French people, although they
were so poor and miserable, that, at the time of
the celebration of the Royal marriage, numbers
of them were dying with starvation, on the dung-
hills in the streets of Paris. There was some re-
sistance on the part of the Dauphin in some few
parts of France, but King Henry beat it all down.
And now, with his great possessions in France
secured, and his beautiful wife to cheer him,


A Child’s Histroy of England
232

and a son born to give him greater happiness,
all appeared bright before him. But, in the
fulness of his triumph and the height of his
power, Death came upon him, and his day was
done. When he fell ill at Vincennes, and found
that he could not recover, he was very calm and
quiet, and spoke serenely to those who wept
around his bed. His wife and child, he said, he
left to the loving care of his brother the Duke of
Bedford, and his other faithful nobles. He gave
them his advice that England should establish
a friendship with the new Duke of Burgundy,
and offer him the regency of France; that it
should not set free the royal princes who had
been taken at Agincourt; and that, whatever
quarrel might arise with France, England should
never make peace without holding Normandy.
Then, he laid down his head, and asked the at-
tendant priests to chant the penitential psalms.
Amid which solemn sounds, on the thirty-first
of August, one thousand four hundred and 

twenty-two, in only the thirty-fourth year of his
age and the tenth of his reign, King Henry the
Fifth passed away.
Slowly and mournfully they carried his em-
balmed body in a procession of great state to
Paris, and thence to Rouen where his Queen
was: from whom the sad intelligence of his death
was concealed until he had been dead some
days. Thence, lying on a bed of crimson and
gold, with a golden crown upon the head, and a
golden ball and sceptre lying in the nerveless
hands, they carried it to Calais, with such a
great retinue as seemed to dye the road black.
The King of Scotland acted as chief mourner,
all the Royal Household followed, the knights
wore black armour and black plumes of feath-
ers, crowds of men bore torches, making the
night as light as day; and the widowed Princess
followed last of all. At Calais there was a fleet of
ships to bring the funeral host to Dover. And
so, by way of London Bridge, where the service


Charles Dickens
233

for the dead was chanted as it passed along,
they brought the body to Westminster Abbey,
and there buried it with great respect. 

CHAPTER XXII
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY
THE SIXTH 

PART THE FIRST
IT HAD BEEN THE WISH of the late King, that while
his infant son King Henry the Sixth, at this time
only nine months old, was under age, the Duke
of Gloucester should be appointed Regent. The
English Parliament, however, preferred to ap-
point a Council of Regency, with the Duke of
Bedford at its head: to be represented, in his
absence only, by the Duke of Gloucester. The
Parliament would seem to have been wise in
this, for Gloucester soon showed himself to be
ambitious and troublesome, and, in the gratifi- 

cation of his own personal schemes, gave dan-
gerous offence to the Duke of Burgundy, which
was with difficulty adjusted.
As that duke declined the Regency of France,
it was bestowed by the poor French King upon
the Duke of Bedford. But, the French King dy-
ing within two months, the Dauphin instantly
asserted his claim to the French throne, and
was actually crowned under the title of Charles
the Seventh. The Duke of Bedford, to be a match
for him, entered into a friendly league with the
Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, and gave them
his two sisters in marriage. War with France
was immediately renewed, and the Perpetual
Peace came to an untimely end.
In the first campaign, the English, aided by
this alliance, were speedily successful. As Scot-
land, however, had sent the French five thou-
sand men, and might send more, or attack the
North of England while England was busy with
France, it was considered that it would be a good


A Child’s Histroy of England
234

thing to offer the Scottish King, James, who had
been so long imprisoned, his liberty, on his pay-
ing forty thousand pounds for his board and
lodging during nineteen years, and engaging to
forbid his subjects from serving under the flag
of France. It is pleasant to know, not only that
the amiable captive at last regained his free-
dom upon these terms, but, that he married a
noble English lady, with whom he had been long
in love, and became an excellent King. I am
afraid we have met with some Kings in this his-
tory, and shall meet with some more, who would
have been very much the better, and would have
left the world much happier, if they had been
imprisoned nineteen years too.
In the second campaign, the English gained a
considerable victory at Verneuil, in a battle
which was chiefly remarkable, otherwise, for
their resorting to the odd expedient of tying their
baggage-horses together by the heads and tails,
and jumbling them up with the baggage, so as 

to convert them into a sort of live fortification -
which was found useful to the troops, but which
I should think was not agreeable to the horses.
For three years afterwards very little was done,
owing to both sides being too poor for war, which
is a very expensive entertainment; but, a coun-
cil was then held in Paris, in which it was de-
cided to lay siege to the town of Orleans, which
was a place of great importance to the Dauphin’s
cause. An English army of ten thousand men
was despatched on this service, under the com-
mand of the Earl of Salisbury, a general of fame.
He being unfortunately killed early in the siege,
the Earl of Suffolk took his place; under whom
(reinforced by  Sir John Falstaff, who brought
up four hundred waggons laden with salt her-
rings and other provisions for the troops, and,
beating off the French who tried to intercept him,
came victorious out of a hot skirmish, which
was afterwards called in jest the Battle of the
Herrings) the town of Orleans was so completely


Charles Dickens
235

hemmed in, that the besieged proposed to yield
it up to their countryman the Duke of Burgundy.
The English general, however, replied that his
English men had won it, so far, by their blood
and valour, and that his English men must have
it. There seemed to be no hope for the town, or
for the Dauphin, who was so dismayed that he
even thought of flying to Scotland or to Spain—
when a peasant girl rose up and changed the
whole state of affairs.
The story of this peasant girl I have now to
tell. 
PART THE SECOND:
THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC
In a remote village among some wild hills in the
province of Lorraine, there lived a countryman
whose name was  Jacques d’Arc . He had a
daughter, Joan of Arc, who was at this time in
her twentieth year. She had been a solitary girl 

from her childhood; she had often tended sheep
and cattle for whole days where no human fig-
ure was seen or human voice heard; and she
had often knelt, for hours together, in the
gloomy, empty, little village chapel, looking up
at the altar and at the dim lamp burning before
it, until she fancied that she saw shadowy fig-
ures standing there, and even that she heard
them speak to her. The people in that part of
France were very ignorant and superstitious,
and they had many ghostly tales to tell about
what they had dreamed, and what they saw
among the lonely hills when the clouds and the
mists were resting on them. So, they easily be-
lieved that Joan saw strange sights, and they
whispered among themselves that angels and
spirits talked to her.
At last, Joan told her father that she had one
day been surprised by a great unearthly light,
and had afterwards heard a solemn voice, which
said it was Saint Michael’s voice, telling her that


A Child’s Histroy of England
236

she was to go and help the Dauphin. Soon after
this (she said), Saint Catherine and Saint Mar-
garet had appeared to her with sparkling crowns
upon their heads, and had encouraged her to
be virtuous and resolute. These visions had re-
turned sometimes; but the Voices very often;
and the voices always said, ‘Joan, thou art ap-
pointed by Heaven to go and help the Dauphin!’
She almost always heard them while the chapel
bells were ringing.
There is no doubt, now, that Joan believed
she saw and heard these things. It is very well
known that such delusions are a disease which
is not by any means uncommon. It is probable
enough that there were figures of Saint Michael,
and Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret, in the
little chapel (where they would be very likely to
have shining crowns upon their heads), and that
they first gave Joan the idea of those three per-
sonages. She had long been a moping, fanciful
girl, and, though she was a very good girl, I dare 

say she was a little vain, and wishful for notori-
ety.
Her father, something wiser than his
neighbours, said, ‘I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy.
Thou hadst better have a kind husband to take
care of thee, girl, and work to employ thy mind!’
But Joan told him in reply, that she had taken
a vow never to have a husband, and that she
must go as Heaven directed her, to help the
Dauphin.
It happened, unfortunately for her father’s per-
suasions, and most unfortunately for the poor
girl, too, that a party of the Dauphin’s enemies
found their way into the village while Joan’s dis-
order was at this point, and burnt the chapel,
and drove out the inhabitants. The cruelties she
saw committed, touched Joan’s heart and made
her worse. She said that the voices and the fig-
ures were now continually with her; that they
told her she was the girl who, according to an
old prophecy, was to deliver France; and she


Charles Dickens
237

must go and help the Dauphin, and must re-
main with him until he should be crowned at
Rheims: and that she must travel a long way to
a certain lord named Baudricourt, who could and
would, bring her into the Dauphin’s presence.
As her father still said, ‘I tell thee, Joan, it is
thy fancy,’ she set off to find out this lord, ac-
companied by an uncle, a poor village wheel-
wright and cart-maker, who believed in the re-
ality of her visions. They travelled a long way
and went on and on, over a rough country, full
of the Duke of Burgundy’s men, and of all kinds
of robbers and marauders, until they came to
where this lord was.
When his servants told him that there was a
poor peasant girl named Joan of Arc, accompa-
nied by nobody but an old village wheelwright
and cart-maker, who wished to see him because
she was commanded to help the Dauphin and
save France, Baudricourt burst out a-laughing,
and bade them send the girl away. But, he soon 

heard so much about her lingering in the town,
and praying in the churches, and seeing visions,
and doing harm to no one, that he sent for her,
and questioned her. As she said the same things
after she had been well sprinkled with holy wa-
ter as she had said before the sprinkling,
Baudricourt began to think there might be some-
thing in it. At all events, he thought it worth while
to send her on to the town of Chinon, where the
Dauphin was. So, he bought her a horse, and a
sword, and gave her two squires to conduct her.
As the Voices had told Joan that she was to wear
a man’s dress, now, she put one on, and girded
her sword to her side, and bound spurs to her
heels, and mounted her horse and rode away
with her two squires. As to her uncle the wheel-
wright, he stood staring at his niece in wonder
until she was out of sight —as well he might—
and then went home again. The best place, too.
Joan and her two squires rode on and on, until
they came to Chinon, where she was, after some


A Child’s Histroy of England
238

doubt, admitted into the Dauphin’s presence.
Picking him out immediately from all his court,
she told him that she came commanded by
Heaven to subdue his enemies and conduct him
to his coronation at Rheims. She also told him
(or he pretended so afterwards, to make the
greater impression upon his soldiers) a num-
ber of his secrets known only to himself, and,
furthermore, she said there was an old, old
sword in the cathedral of Saint Catherine at
Fierbois, marked with five old crosses on the
blade, which Saint Catherine had ordered her
to wear.
Now, nobody knew anything about this old,
old sword, but when the cathedral came to be
examined - which was immediately done—there,
sure enough, the sword was found! The Dau-
phin then required a number of grave priests
and bishops to give him their opinion whether
the girl derived her power from good spirits or
from evil spirits, which they held prodigiously 

long debates about, in the course of which sev-
eral learned men fell fast asleep and snored
loudly. At last, when one gruff old gentleman
had said to Joan, ‘What language do your Voices
speak?’ and when Joan had replied to the gruff
old gentleman, ‘A pleasanter language than
yours,’ they agreed that it was all correct, and
that Joan of Arc was inspired from Heaven. This
wonderful circumstance put new heart into the
Dauphin’s soldiers when they heard of it, and
dispirited the English army, who took Joan for
a witch.
So Joan mounted horse again, and again rode
on and on, until she came to Orleans. But she
rode now, as never peasant girl had ridden yet.
She rode upon a white war-horse, in a suit of
glittering armour; with the old, old sword from
the cathedral, newly burnished, in her belt; with
a white flag carried before her, upon which were
a picture of God, and the words Jesus Maria. In
this splendid state, at the head of a great body


Charles Dickens
239

of troops escorting provisions of all kinds for
the starving inhabitants of Orleans, she ap-
peared before that beleaguered city.
When the people on the walls beheld her, they
cried out ‘The Maid is come! The Maid of the
Prophecy is come to deliver us!’ And this, and
the sight of the Maid fighting at the head of their
men, made the French so bold, and made the
English so fearful, that the English line of forts
was soon broken, the troops and provisions were
got into the town, and Orleans was saved.
Joan, henceforth called The Maid of Orleans,
remained within the walls for a few days, and
caused letters to be thrown over, ordering Lord
Suffolk and his Englishmen to depart from be-
fore the town according to the will of Heaven.
As the English general very positively declined
to believe that Joan knew anything about the
will of Heaven (which did not mend the matter
with his soldiers, for they stupidly said if she
were not inspired she was a witch, and it was of 

no use to fight against a witch), she mounted
her white war-horse again, and ordered her
white banner to advance.
The besiegers held the bridge, and some strong
towers upon the bridge; and here the Maid of
Orleans attacked them. The fight was fourteen
hours long. She planted a scaling ladder with
her own hands, and mounted a tower wall, but
was struck by an English arrow in the neck,
and fell into the trench. She was carried away
and the arrow was taken out, during which op-
eration she screamed and cried with the pain,
as any other girl might have done; but pres-
ently she said that the Voices were speaking to
her and soothing her to rest. After a while, she
got up, and was again foremost in the fight.
When the English who had seen her fall and
supposed her dead, saw this, they were troubled
with the strangest fears, and some of them cried
out that they beheld Saint Michael on a white
horse (probably Joan herself) fighting for the


A Child’s Histroy of England
240

French. They lost the bridge, and lost the tow-
ers, and next day set their chain of forts on fire,
and left the place.
But as Lord Suffolk himself retired no farther
than the town of Jargeau, which was only a few
miles off, the Maid of Orleans besieged him there,
and he was taken prisoner. As the white banner
scaled the wall, she was struck upon the head
with a stone, and was again tumbled down into
the ditch; but, she only cried all the more, as
she lay there, ‘On, on, my countrymen! And fear
nothing, for the Lord hath delivered them into
our hands!’ After this new success of the Maid’s,
several other fortresses and places which had
previously held out against the Dauphin were
delivered up without a battle; and at Patay she
defeated the remainder of the English army, and
set up her victorious white banner on a field
where twelve hundred Englishmen lay dead.
She now urged the Dauphin (who always kept
out of the way when there was any fighting) to 

proceed to Rheims, as the first part of her mis-
sion was accomplished; and to complete the
whole by being crowned there. The Dauphin was
in no particular hurry to do this, as Rheims was
a long way off, and the English and the Duke of
Burgundy were still strong in the country
through which the road lay. However, they set
forth, with ten thousand men, and again the
Maid of Orleans rode on and on, upon her white
war-horse, and in her shining armour. When-
ever they came to a town which yielded readily,
the soldiers believed in her; but, whenever they
came to a town which gave them any trouble,
they began to murmur that she was an impos-
tor. The latter was particularly the case at
Troyes, which finally yielded, however, through
the persuasion of one Richard, a friar of the
place. Friar Richard was in the old doubt about
the Maid of Orleans, until he had sprinkled her
well with holy water, and had also well sprinkled
the threshold of the gate by which she came


Charles Dickens
241

into the city. Finding that it made no change in
her or the gate, he said, as the other grave old
gentlemen had said, that it was all right, and
became her great ally.
So, at last, by dint of riding on and on, the
Maid of Orleans, and the Dauphin, and the ten
thousand sometimes believing and sometimes
unbelieving men, came to Rheims. And in the
great cathedral of Rheims, the Dauphin actu-
ally was crowned Charles the Seventh in a great
assembly of the people. Then, the Maid, who
with her white banner stood beside the King in
that hour of his triumph, kneeled down upon
the pavement at his feet, and said, with tears,
that what she had been inspired to do, was done,
and that the only recompense she asked for,
was, that she should now have leave to go back
to her distant home, and her sturdily incredu-
lous father, and her first simple escort the vil-
lage wheelwright and cart-maker. But the King
said ‘No!’ and made her and her family as noble 

as a King could, and settled upon her the in-
come of a Count.
Ah! happy had it been for the Maid of Orleans,
if she had resumed her rustic dress that day,
and had gone home to the little chapel and the
wild hills, and had forgotten all these things, and
had been a good man’s wife, and had heard no
stranger voices than the voices of little children!
It was not to be, and she continued helping the
King (she did a world for him, in alliance with Friar
Richard), and trying to improve the lives of the
coarse soldiers, and leading a religious, an unself-
ish, and a modest life, herself, beyond any doubt.
Still, many times she prayed the King to let her go
home; and once she even took off her bright armour
and hung it up in a church, meaning never to wear
it more. But, the King always won her back again—
while she was of any use to him—and so she went
on and on and on, to her doom.
When the Duke of Bedford, who was a very
able man, began to be active for England, and,


A Child’s Histroy of England
242

by bringing the war back into France and by
holding the Duke of Burgundy to his faith, to
distress and disturb Charles very much, Charles
sometimes asked the Maid of Orleans what the
Voices said about it? But, the Voices had be-
come (very like ordinary voices in perplexed
times) contradictory and confused, so that now
they said one thing, and now said another, and
the Maid lost credit every day. Charles marched
on Paris, which was opposed to him, and at-
tacked the suburb of Saint Honore. In this fight,
being again struck down into the ditch, she was
abandoned by the whole army. She lay unaided
among a heap of dead, and crawled out how
she could. Then, some of her believers went over
to an opposition Maid, Catherine of La Roch-
elle, who said she was inspired to tell where
there were treasures of buried money—though
she never did—and then Joan accidentally broke
the old, old sword, and others said that her
power was broken with it. Finally, at the siege 

of CompiŠgne, held by the Duke of Burgundy,
where she did valiant service, she was basely
left alone in a retreat, though facing about and
fighting to the last; and an archer pulled her off
her horse.
O the uproar that was made, and the thanks-
givings that were sung, about the capture of this
one poor country-girl! O the way in which she
was demanded to be tried for sorcery and her-
esy, and anything else you like, by the Inquisi-
tor-General of France, and by this great man,
and by that great man, until it is wearisome to
think of! She was bought at last by the Bishop
of Beauvais for ten thousand francs, and was
shut up in her narrow prison: plain Joan of Arc
again, and Maid of Orleans no more.
I should never have done if I were to tell you
how they had Joan out to examine her, and
cross-examine her, and re-examine her, and
worry her into saying anything and everything;
and how all sorts of scholars and doctors be-


Charles Dickens
243

stowed their utmost tediousness upon her. Six-
teen times she was brought out and shut up
again, and worried, and entrapped, and argued
with, until she was heart-sick of the dreary busi-
ness. On the last occasion of this kind she was
brought into a burial-place at Rouen, dismally
decorated with a scaffold, and a stake and fag-
gots, and the executioner, and a pulpit with a
friar therein, and an awful sermon ready. It is
very affecting to know that even at that pass
the poor girl honoured the mean vermin of a
King, who had so used her for his purposes and
so abandoned her; and, that while she had been
regardless of reproaches heaped upon herself,
she spoke out courageously for him.
It was natural in one so young to hold to life.
To save her life, she signed a declaration pre-
pared for her—signed it with a cross, for she
couldn’t write—that all her visions and Voices
had come from the Devil. Upon her recanting
the past, and protesting that she would never 

wear a man’s dress in future, she was con-
demned to imprisonment for life, ‘on the bread
of sorrow and the water of affliction.’
But, on the bread of sorrow and the water of
affliction, the visions and the Voices soon re-
turned. It was quite natural that they should
do so, for that kind of disease is much aggra-
vated by fasting, loneliness, and anxiety of mind.
It was not only got out of Joan that she consid-
ered herself inspired again, but, she was taken
in a man’s dress, which had been left—to en-
trap her—in her prison, and which she put on,
in her solitude; perhaps, in remembrance of her
past glories, perhaps, because the imaginary
Voices told her. For this relapse into the sor-
cery and heresy and anything else you like, she
was sentenced to be burnt to death. And, in the
market-place of Rouen, in the hideous dress
which the monks had invented for such spec-
tacles; with priests and bishops sitting in a gal-
lery looking on, though some had the Christian


A Child’s Histroy of England
244

grace to go away, unable to endure the infa-
mous scene; this shrieking girl—last seen
amidst the smoke and fire, holding a crucifix
between her hands; last heard, calling upon
Christ—was burnt to ashes. They threw her
ashes into the river Seine; but they will rise
against her murderers on the last day.
From the moment of her capture, neither the
French King nor one single man in all his court
raised a finger to save her. It is no defence of
them that they may have never really believed in
her, or that they may have won her victories by
their skill and bravery. The more they pretended
to believe in her, the more they had caused her
to believe in herself; and she had ever been true
to them, ever brave, ever nobly devoted. But, it
is no wonder, that they, who were in all things
false to themselves, false to one another, false to
their country, false to Heaven, false to Earth,
should be monsters of ingratitude and treach-
ery to a helpless peasant girl. 

In the picturesque old town of Rouen, where
weeds and grass grow high on the cathedral
towers, and the venerable Norman streets are
still warm in the blessed sunlight though the
monkish fires that once gleamed horribly upon
them have long grown cold, there is a statue of
Joan of Arc, in the scene of her last agony, the
square to which she has given its present name.
I know some statues of modern times—even in
the World’s metropolis, I think—which com-
memorate less constancy, less earnestness,
smaller claims upon the world’s attention, and
much greater impostors.


Charles Dickens
245

PART THE THIRD
BAD  DEEDS  SELDOM  PROSPER, happily for mankind; and the
English cause gained no advantage from the cruel death of
Joan of Arc. For a long time, the war went heavily on. The
Duke of Bedford died; the alliance with the Duke of Bur-
gundy was broken; and Lord Talbot became a great general on
the English side in France. But, two of the consequences of
wars are, Famine—because the people cannot peacefully cul-
tivate the ground—and Pestilence, which comes of want, mis-
ery, and suffering. Both these horrors broke out in both coun-
tries, and lasted for two wretched years. Then, the war went
on again, and came by slow degrees to be so badly conducted
by the English government, that, within twenty years from
the execution of the Maid of Orleans, of all the great French
conquests, the town of Calais alone remained in English hands.
While these victories and defeats were taking place in the
course of time, many strange things happened at home. The
young King, as he grew up, proved to be very unlike his
great father, and showed himself a miserable puny creature.
There was no harm in him—he had a great aversion to shed- 

ding blood: which was something—but, he was a weak, silly,
helpless young man, and a mere shuttlecock to the great
lordly battledores about the Court.
Of these battledores, Cardinal Beaufort, a relation of the
King, and the Duke of Gloucester, were at first the most pow-
erful. The Duke of Gloucester had a wife, who was nonsensi-
cally accused of practising witchcraft to cause the King’s death
and lead to her husband’s coming to the throne, he being the
next heir. She was charged with having, by the help of a ri-
diculous old woman named Margery (who was called a witch),
made a little waxen doll in the King’s likeness, and put it be-
fore a slow fire that it might gradually melt away. It was sup-
posed, in such cases, that the death of the person whom the
doll was made to represent, was sure to happen. Whether the
duchess was as ignorant as the rest of them, and really did
make such a doll with such an intention, I don’t know; but,
you and I know very well that she might have made a thou-
sand dolls, if she had been stupid enough, and might have
melted them all, without hurting the King or anybody else.
However, she was tried for it, and so was old Margery, and
so was one of the duke’s chaplains, who was charged with


A Child’s Histroy of England
246

having assisted them. Both he and Margery were put to death,
and the duchess, after being taken on foot and bearing a
lighted candle, three times round the City, as a penance, was
imprisoned for life. The duke, himself, took all this pretty
quietly, and made as little stir about the matter as if he were
rather glad to be rid of the duchess.
But, he was not destined to keep himself out of trouble
long. The royal shuttlecock being three-and-twenty, the
battledores were very anxious to get him married. The Duke
of Gloucester wanted him to marry a daughter of the Count
of Armagnac; but, the Cardinal and the Earl of Suffolk were
all for Margaret, the daughter of the King of Sicily, who they
knew was a resolute, ambitious woman and would govern
the King as she chose. To make friends with this lady, the
Earl of Suffolk, who went over to arrange the match, con-
sented to accept her for the King’s wife without any fortune,
and even to give up the two most valuable possessions En-
gland then had in France. So, the marriage was arranged, on
terms very advantageous to the lady; and Lord Suffolk
brought her to England, and she was married at Westminster.
On what pretence this queen and her party charged the Duke 

of Gloucester with high treason within a couple of years, it
is impossible to make out, the matter is so confused; but,
they pretended that the King’s life was in danger, and they
took the duke prisoner. A fortnight afterwards, he was found
dead in bed (they said), and his body was shown to the people,
and Lord Suffolk came in for the best part of his estates. You
know by this time how strangely liable state prisoners were
to sudden death.
If Cardinal Beaufort had any hand in this matter, it did
him no good, for he died within six weeks; thinking it very
hard and curious—at eighty years old!—that he could not
live to be Pope.
This was the time when England had completed her loss
of all her great French conquests. The people charged the
loss principally upon the Earl of Suffolk, now a duke, who
had made those easy terms about the Royal Marriage, and
who, they believed, had even been bought by France. So he
was impeached as a traitor, on a great number of charges,
but chiefly on accusations of having aided the French King,
and of designing to make his own son King of England. The
Commons and the people being violent against him, the


Charles Dickens
247

King was made (by his friends) to interpose to save him, by
banishing him for five years, and proroguing the Parliament.
The duke had much ado to escape from a London mob, two
thousand strong, who lay in wait for him in St. Giles’s fields;
but, he got down to his own estates in Suffolk, and sailed
away from Ipswich. Sailing across the Channel, he sent into
Calais to know if he might land there; but, they kept his boat
and men in the harbour, until an English ship, carrying a
hundred and fifty men and called the Nicholas of the Tower,
came alongside his little vessel, and ordered him on board.
‘Welcome, traitor, as men say,’ was the captain’s grim and not
very respectful salutation. He was kept on board, a prisoner,
for eight-and-forty hours, and then a small boat appeared row-
ing toward the ship. As this boat came nearer, it was seen to
have in it a block, a rusty sword, and an executioner in a black
mask. The duke was handed down into it, and there his head
was cut off with six strokes of the rusty sword. Then, the little
boat rowed away to Dover beach, where the body was cast
out, and left until the duchess claimed it. By whom, high in
authority, this murder was committed, has never appeared.
No one was ever punished for it. 

There now arose in Kent an Irishman, who gave himself
the name of Mortimer, but whose real name was Jack Cade.
Jack, in imitation of Wat Tyler, though he was a very differ-
ent and inferior sort of man, addressed the Kentish men
upon their wrongs, occasioned by the bad government of
England, among so many battledores and such a poor shuttle-
cock; and the Kentish men rose up to the number of twenty
thousand. Their place of assembly was Blackheath, where,
headed by Jack, they put forth two papers, which they called
‘The Complaint of the Commons of Kent,’ and ‘The Re-
quests of the Captain of the Great Assembly in Kent.’ They
then retired to Sevenoaks. The royal army coming up with
them here, they beat it and killed their general. Then, Jack
dressed himself in the dead general’s armour, and led his
men to London.
Jack passed into the City from Southwark, over the bridge,
and entered it in triumph, giving the strictest orders to his
men not to plunder. Having made a show of his forces there,
while the citizens looked on quietly, he went back into
Southwark in good order, and passed the night. Next day, he
came back again, having got hold in the meantime of Lord


A Child’s Histroy of England
248

Say, an unpopular nobleman. Says Jack to the Lord Mayor
and judges: ‘Will you be so good as to make a tribunal in
Guildhall, and try me this nobleman?’ The court being hast-
ily made, he was found guilty, and Jack and his men cut his
head off on Cornhill. They also cut off the head of his son-
in-law, and then went back in good order to Southwark again.
But, although the citizens could bear the beheading of an
unpopular lord, they could not bear to have their houses
pillaged. And it did so happen that Jack, after dinner—per-
haps he had drunk a little too much—began to plunder the
house where he lodged; upon which, of course, his men be-
gan to imitate him. Wherefore, the Londoners took counsel
with Lord Scales, who had a thousand soldiers in the Tower;
and defended London Bridge, and kept Jack and his people
out. This advantage gained, it was resolved by divers great
men to divide Jack’s army in the old way, by making a great
many promises on behalf of the state, that were never in-
tended to be performed. This did divide them; some of Jack’s
men saying that they ought to take the conditions which
were offered, and others saying that they ought not, for they
were only a snare; some going home at once; others staying 

where they were; and all doubting and quarrelling among
themselves.
Jack, who was in two minds about fighting or accepting a
pardon, and who indeed did both, saw at last that there was
nothing to expect from his men, and that it was very likely
some of them would deliver him up and get a reward of a
thousand marks, which was offered for his apprehension.
So, after they had travelled and quarrelled all the way from
Southwark to Blackheath, and from Blackheath to Roches-
ter, he mounted a good horse and galloped away into Sussex.
But, there galloped after him, on a better horse, one Alexander
Iden, who came up with him, had a hard fight with him,
and killed him. Jack’s head was set aloft on London Bridge,
with the face looking towards Blackheath, where he had raised
his flag; and Alexander Iden got the thousand marks.
It is supposed by some, that the Duke of York, who had
been removed from a high post abroad through the Queen’s
influence, and sent out of the way, to govern Ireland, was at
the bottom of this rising of Jack and his men, because he
wanted to trouble the government. He claimed (though not
yet publicly) to have a better right to the throne than Henry


Charles Dickens
249

of Lancaster, as one of the family of the Earl of March, whom
Henry the Fourth had set aside. Touching this claim, which,
being through female relationship, was not according to the
usual descent, it is enough to say that Henry the Fourth was
the free choice of the people and the Parliament, and that
his family had now reigned undisputed for sixty years. The
memory of Henry the Fifth was so famous, and the English
people loved it so much, that the Duke of York’s claim would,
perhaps, never have been thought of (it would have been so
hopeless) but for the unfortunate circumstance of the present
King’s being by this time quite an idiot, and the country
very ill governed. These two circumstances gave the Duke
of York a power he could not otherwise have had.
Whether the Duke knew anything of Jack Cade, or not,
he came over from Ireland while Jack’s head was on London
Bridge; being secretly advised that the Queen was setting up
his enemy, the Duke of Somerset, against him. He went to
Westminster, at the head of four thousand men, and on his
knees before the King, represented to him the bad state of
the country, and petitioned him to summon a Parliament to
consider it. This the King promised. When the Parliament 

was summoned, the Duke of York accused the Duke of
Somerset, and the Duke of Somerset accused the Duke of
York; and, both in and out of Parliament, the followers of
each party were full of violence and hatred towards the other.
At length the Duke of York put himself at the head of a large
force of his tenants, and, in arms, demanded the reforma-
tion of the Government. Being shut out of London, he en-
camped at Dartford, and the royal army encamped at
Blackheath. According as either side triumphed, the Duke
of York was arrested, or the Duke of Somerset was arrested.
The trouble ended, for the moment, in the Duke of York
renewing his oath of allegiance, and going in peace to one of
his own castles.
Half a year afterwards the Queen gave birth to a son, who
was very ill received by the people, and not believed to be
the son of the King. It shows the Duke of York to have been
a moderate man, unwilling to involve England in new
troubles, that he did not take advantage of the general dis-
content at this time, but really acted for the public good. He
was made a member of the cabinet, and the King being now
so much worse that he could not be carried about and shown


A Child’s Histroy of England
250

to the people with any decency, the duke was made Lord
Protector of the kingdom, until the King should recover, or
the Prince should come of age. At the same time the Duke
of Somerset was committed to the Tower. So, now the Duke
of Somerset was down, and the Duke of York was up. By the
end of the year, however, the King recovered his memory
and some spark of sense; upon which the Queen used her
power—which recovered with him—to get the Protector
disgraced, and her favourite released. So now the Duke of
York was down, and the Duke of Somerset was up.
These ducal ups and downs gradually separated the whole
nation into the two parties of York and Lancaster, and led to
those terrible civil wars long known as the Wars of the Red
and White Roses, because the red rose was the badge of the
House of Lancaster, and the white rose was the badge of the
House of York.
The Duke of York, joined by some other powerful noble-
men of the White Rose party, and leading a small army, met
the King with another small army at St. Alban’s, and de-
manded that the Duke of Somerset should be given up. The
poor King, being made to say in answer that he would sooner 

die, was instantly attacked. The Duke of Somerset was killed,
and the King himself was wounded in the neck, and took
refuge in the house of a poor tanner. Whereupon, the Duke
of York went to him, led him with great submission to the
Abbey, and said he was very sorry for what had happened.
Having now the King in his possession, he got a Parliament
summoned and himself once more made Protector, but, only
for a few months; for, on the King getting a little better
again, the Queen and her party got him into their posses-
sion, and disgraced the Duke once more. So, now the Duke
of York was down again.
Some of the best men in power, seeing the danger of these
constant changes, tried even then to prevent the Red and
the White Rose Wars. They brought about a great council in
London between the two parties. The White Roses assembled
in Blackfriars, the Red Roses in Whitefriars; and some good
priests communicated between them, and made the proceed-
ings known at evening to the King and the judges. They
ended in a peaceful agreement that there should be no more
quarrelling; and there was a great royal procession to St. Paul’s,
in which the Queen walked arm-in-arm with her old en-


Charles Dickens
251

emy, the Duke of York, to show the people how comfortable
they all were. This state of peace lasted half a year, when a
dispute between the Earl of Warwick (one of the Duke’s
powerful friends) and some of the King’s servants at Court,
led to an attack upon that Earl—who was a White Rose—
and to a sudden breaking out of all old animosities. So, here
were greater ups and downs than ever.
There were even greater ups and downs than these, soon
after. After various battles, the Duke of York fled to Ireland,
and his son the Earl of March to Calais, with their friends the
Earls of Salisbury and Warwick; and a Parliament was held
declaring them all traitors. Little the worse for this, the Earl of
Warwick presently came back, landed in Kent, was joined by
the Archbishop of Canterbury and other powerful noblemen
and gentlemen, engaged the King’s forces at Northampton,
signally defeated them, and took the King himself prisoner,
who was found in his tent. Warwick would have been glad, I
dare say, to have taken the Queen and Prince too, but they
escaped into Wales and thence into Scotland.
The King was carried by the victorious force straight to
London, and made to call a new Parliament, which immedi- 

ately declared that the Duke of York and those other noble-
men were not traitors, but excellent subjects. Then, back comes
the Duke from Ireland at the head of five hundred horsemen,
rides from London to Westminster, and enters the House of
Lords. There, he laid his hand upon the cloth of gold which
covered the empty throne, as if he had half a mind to sit down
in it—but he did not. On the Archbishop of Canterbury,
asking him if he would visit the King, who was in his palace
close by, he replied, ‘I know no one in this country, my lord,
who ought not to visit ME.’ None of the lords present spoke
a single word; so, the duke went out as he had come in, estab-
lished himself royally in the King’s palace, and, six days after-
wards, sent in to the Lords a formal statement of his claim to
the throne. The lords went to the King on this momentous
subject, and after a great deal of discussion, in which the judges
and the other law officers were afraid to give an opinion on
either side, the question was compromised. It was agreed that
the present King should retain the crown for his life, and that
it should then pass to the Duke of York and his heirs.
But, the resolute Queen, determined on asserting her son’s
right, would hear of no such thing. She came from Scotland


A Child’s Histroy of England
252

to the north of England, where several powerful lords armed
in her cause. The Duke of York, for his part, set off with
some five thousand men, a little time before Christmas Day,
one thousand four hundred and sixty, to give her battle. He
lodged at Sandal Castle, near Wakefield, and the Red Roses
defied him to come out on Wakefield Green, and fight them
then and there. His generals said, he had best wait until his
gallant son, the Earl of March, came up with his power; but,
he was determined to accept the challenge. He did so, in an
evil hour. He was hotly pressed on all sides, two thousand of
his men lay dead on Wakefield Green, and he himself was
taken prisoner. They set him down in mock state on an ant-
hill, and twisted grass about his head, and pretended to pay
court to him on their knees, saying, ‘O King, without a king-
dom, and Prince without a people, we hope your gracious
Majesty is very well and happy!’ They did worse than this;
they cut his head off, and handed it on a pole to the Queen,
who laughed with delight when she saw it (you recollect
their walking so religiously and comfortably to St. Paul’s!),
and had it fixed, with a paper crown upon its head, on the
walls of York. The Earl of Salisbury lost his head, too; and 

the Duke of York’s second son, a handsome boy who was
flying with his tutor over Wakefield Bridge, was stabbed in
the heart by a murderous, lord—Lord Clifford by name—
whose father had been killed by the White Roses in the fight
at St. Alban’s. There was awful sacrifice of life in this battle,
for no quarter was given, and the Queen was wild for re-
venge. When men unnaturally fight against their own coun-
trymen, they are always observed to be more unnaturally
cruel and filled with rage than they are against any other
enemy.
But, Lord Clifford had stabbed the second son of the Duke
of York—not the first. The eldest son, Edward Earl of March,
was at Gloucester; and, vowing vengeance for the death of
his father, his brother, and their faithful friends, he began to
march against the Queen. He had to turn and fight a great
body of Welsh and Irish first, who worried his advance. These
he defeated in a great fight at Mortimer’s Cross, near Here-
ford, where he beheaded a number of the Red Roses taken
in battle, in retaliation for the beheading of the White Roses
at Wakefield. The Queen had the next turn of beheading.
Having moved towards London, and falling in, between St.


Charles Dickens
253

Alban’s and Barnet, with the Earl of Warwick and the Duke
of Norfolk, White Roses both, who were there with an army
to oppose her, and had got the King with them; she defeated
them with great loss, and struck off the heads of two prison-
ers of note, who were in the King’s tent with him, and to
whom the King had promised his protection. Her triumph,
however, was very short. She had no treasure, and her army
subsisted by plunder. This caused them to be hated and
dreaded by the people, and particularly by the London people,
who were wealthy. As soon as the Londoners heard that Ed-
ward, Earl of March, united with the Earl of Warwick, was
advancing towards the city, they refused to send the Queen
supplies, and made a great rejoicing.
The Queen and her men retreated with all speed, and
Edward and Warwick came on, greeted with loud acclama-
tions on every side. The courage, beauty, and virtues of young
Edward could not be sufficiently praised by the whole people.
He rode into London like a conqueror, and met with an
enthusiastic welcome. A few days afterwards, Lord
Falconbridge and the Bishop of Exeter assembled the citi-
zens in St. John’s Field, Clerkenwell, and asked them if they 

would have Henry of Lancaster for their King? To this they
all roared, ‘No, no, no!’ and ‘King Edward! King Edward!’
Then, said those noblemen, would they love and serve young
Edward? To this they all cried, ‘Yes, yes!’ and threw up their
caps and clapped their hands, and cheered tremendously.
Therefore, it was declared that by joining the Queen and
not protecting those two prisoners of note, Henry of
Lancaster had forfeited the crown; and Edward of York was
proclaimed King. He made a great speech to the applauding
people at Westminster, and sat down as sovereign of En-
gland on that throne, on the golden covering of which his
father—worthy of a better fate than the bloody axe which
cut the thread of so many lives in England, through so many
years—had laid his hand. 

CHAPTER XXIII
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD
THE FOURTH 

KING EDWARD THE FOURTH was not quite twenty-one years
of age when he took that unquiet seat upon the throne of


A Child’s Histroy of England
254

England. The Lancaster party, the Red Roses, were then as-
sembling in great numbers near York, and it was necessary
to give them battle instantly. But, the stout Earl of Warwick
leading for the young King, and the young King himself
closely following him, and the English people crowding round
the Royal standard, the White and the Red Roses met, on a
wild March day when the snow was falling heavily, at Towton;
and there such a furious battle raged between them, that the
total loss amounted to forty thousand men—all Englishmen,
fighting, upon English ground, against one another. The
young King gained the day, took down the heads of his fa-
ther and brother from the walls of York, and put up the
heads of some of the most famous noblemen engaged in the
battle on the other side. Then, he went to London and was
crowned with great splendour.
A new Parliament met. No fewer than one hundred and
fifty of the principal noblemen and gentlemen on the
Lancaster side were declared traitors, and the King—who
had very little humanity, though he was handsome in per-
son and agreeable in manners—resolved to do all he could,
to pluck up the Red Rose root and branch. 

Queen Margaret, however, was still active for her young
son. She obtained help from Scotland and from Normandy,
and took several important English castles. But, Warwick
soon retook them; the Queen lost all her treasure on board
ship in a great storm; and both she and her son suffered
great misfortunes. Once, in the winter weather, as they were
riding through a forest, they were attacked and plundered
by a party of robbers; and, when they had escaped from
these men and were passing alone and on foot through a
thick dark part of the wood, they came, all at once, upon
another robber. So the Queen, with a stout heart, took the
little Prince by the hand, and going straight up to that rob-
ber, said to him, ‘My friend, this is the young son of your
lawful King! I confide him to your care.’ The robber was
surprised, but took the boy in his arms, and faithfully re-
stored him and his mother to their friends. In the end, the
Queen’s soldiers being beaten and dispersed, she went abroad
again, and kept quiet for the present.
Now, all this time, the deposed King Henry was concealed
by a Welsh knight, who kept him close in his castle. But, next
year, the Lancaster party recovering their spirits, raised a large


Charles Dickens
255

body of men, and called him out of his retirement, to put him
at their head. They were joined by some powerful noblemen
who had sworn fidelity to the new King, but who were ready, as
usual, to break their oaths, whenever they thought there was
anything to be got by it. One of the worst things in the history
of the war of the Red and White Roses, is the ease with which
these noblemen, who should have set an example of honour to
the people, left either side as they took slight offence, or were
disappointed in their greedy expectations, and joined the other.
Well! Warwick’s brother soon beat the Lancastrians, and the
false noblemen, being taken, were beheaded without a moment’s
loss of time. The deposed King had a narrow escape; three of
his servants were taken, and one of them bore his cap of estate,
which was set with pearls and embroidered with two golden
crowns. However, the head to which the cap belonged, got safely
into Lancashire, and lay pretty quietly there (the people in the
secret being very true) for more than a year. At length, an old
monk gave such intelligence as led to Henry’s being taken while
he was sitting at dinner in a place called Waddington Hall. He
was immediately sent to London, and met at Islington by the
Earl of Warwick, by whose directions he was put upon a horse,

with his legs tied under it, and paraded three times round the
pillory. Then, he was carried off to the Tower, where they treated
him well enough.
The White Rose being so triumphant, the young King
abandoned himself entirely to pleasure, and led a jovial life.
But, thorns were springing up under his bed of roses, as he
soon found out. For, having been privately married to Eliza-
beth Woodville, a young widow lady, very beautiful and very
captivating; and at last resolving to make his secret known,
and to declare her his Queen; he gave some offence to the
Earl of Warwick, who was usually called the King-Maker,
because of his power and influence, and because of his hav-
ing lent such great help to placing Edward on the throne.
This offence was not lessened by the jealousy with which
the Nevil family (the Earl of Warwick’s) regarded the pro-
motion of the Woodville family. For, the young Queen was
so bent on providing for her relations, that she made her
father an earl and a great officer of state; married her five
sisters to young noblemen of the highest rank; and provided
for her younger brother, a young man of twenty, by marry-
ing him to an immensely rich old duchess of eighty. The


A Child’s Histroy of England
256

Earl of Warwick took all this pretty graciously for a man of
his proud temper, until the question arose to whom the King’s
sister, Margaret, should be married. The Earl of Warwick
said, ‘To one of the French King’s sons,’ and was allowed to
go over to the French King to make friendly proposals for
that purpose, and to hold all manner of friendly interviews
with him. But, while he was so engaged, the Woodville party
married the young lady to the Duke of Burgundy! Upon
this he came back in great rage and scorn, and shut himself
up discontented, in his Castle of Middleham.
A reconciliation, though not a very sincere one, was
patched up between the Earl of Warwick and the King, and
lasted until the Earl married his daughter, against the King’s
wishes, to the Duke of Clarence. While the marriage was
being celebrated at Calais, the people in the north of En-
gland, where the influence of the Nevil family was stron-
gest, broke out into rebellion; their complaint was, that En-
gland was oppressed and plundered by the Woodville fam-
ily, whom they demanded to have removed from power. As
they were joined by great numbers of people, and as they
openly declared that they were supported by the Earl of 

Warwick, the King did not know what to do. At last, as he
wrote to the earl beseeching his aid, he and his new son-in-
law came over to England, and began to arrange the busi-
ness by shutting the King up in Middleham Castle in the
safe keeping of the Archbishop of York; so England was not
only in the strange position of having two kings at once, but
they were both prisoners at the same time.
Even as yet, however, the King-Maker was so far true to
the King, that he dispersed a new rising of the Lancastrians,
took their leader prisoner, and brought him to the King,
who ordered him to be immediately executed. He presently
allowed the King to return to London, and there innumer-
able pledges of forgiveness and friendship were exchanged
between them, and between the Nevils and the Woodvilles;
the King’s eldest daughter was promised in marriage to the
heir of the Nevil family; and more friendly oaths were sworn,
and more friendly promises made, than this book would hold.
They lasted about three months. At the end of that time,
the Archbishop of York made a feast for the King, the Earl of
Warwick, and the Duke of Clarence, at his house, the Moor,
in Hertfordshire. The King was washing his hands before sup-


Charles Dickens
257

per, when some one whispered him that a body of a hundred
men were lying in ambush outside the house. Whether this
were true or untrue, the King took fright, mounted his horse,
and rode through the dark night to Windsor Castle. Another
reconciliation was patched up between him and the King-
Maker, but it was a short one, and it was the last. A new rising
took place in Lincolnshire, and the King marched to repress
it. Having done so, he proclaimed that both the Earl of
Warwick and the Duke of Clarence were traitors, who had
secretly assisted it, and who had been prepared publicly to
join it on the following day. In these dangerous circumstances
they both took ship and sailed away to the French court.
And here a meeting took place between the Earl of Warwick
and his old enemy, the Dowager Queen Margaret, through
whom his father had had his head struck off, and to whom
he had been a bitter foe. But, now, when he said that he had
done with the ungrateful and perfidious Edward of York,
and that henceforth he devoted himself to the restoration of
the House of Lancaster, either in the person of her husband
or of her little son, she embraced him as if he had ever been
her dearest friend. She did more than that; she married her 

son to his second daughter, the Lady Anne. However agree-
able this marriage was to the new friends, it was very dis-
agreeable to the Duke of Clarence, who perceived that his
father-in-law, the King-Maker, would never make him King,
now. So, being but a weak-minded young traitor, possessed
of very little worth or sense, he readily listened to an artful
court lady sent over for the purpose, and promised to turn
traitor once more, and go over to his brother, King Edward,
when a fitting opportunity should come.
The Earl of Warwick, knowing nothing of this, soon re-
deemed his promise to the Dowager Queen Margaret, by
invading England and landing at Plymouth, where he in-
stantly proclaimed King Henry, and summoned all English-
men between the ages of sixteen and sixty, to join his ban-
ner. Then, with his army increasing as he marched along, he
went northward, and came so near King Edward, who was in
that part of the country, that Edward had to ride hard for it to
the coast of Norfolk, and thence to get away in such ships as
he could find, to Holland. Thereupon, the triumphant King-
Maker and his false son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, went to
London, took the old King out of the Tower, and walked him


A Child’s Histroy of England
258

in a great procession to Saint Paul’s Cathedral with the crown
upon his head. This did not improve the temper of the Duke
of Clarence, who saw himself farther off from being King
than ever; but he kept his secret, and said nothing. The Nevil
family were restored to all their honours and glories, and the
Woodvilles and the rest were disgraced. The King-Maker, less
sanguinary than the King, shed no blood except that of the
Earl of Worcester, who had been so cruel to the people as to
have gained the title of the Butcher. Him they caught hidden
in a tree, and him they tried and executed. No other death
stained the King-Maker’s triumph.
To dispute this triumph, back came King Edward again,
next year, landing at Ravenspur, coming on to York, causing
all his men to cry ‘Long live King Henry!’ and swearing on
the altar, without a blush, that he came to lay no claim to
the crown. Now was the time for the Duke of Clarence,
who ordered his men to assume the White Rose, and declare
for his brother. The Marquis of Montague, though the Earl
of Warwick’s brother, also declining to fight against King
Edward, he went on successfully to London, where the Arch-
bishop of York let him into the City, and where the people 

made great demonstrations in his favour. For this they had
four reasons. Firstly, there were great numbers of the King’s
adherents hiding in the City and ready to break out; sec-
ondly, the King owed them a great deal of money, which
they could never hope to get if he were unsuccessful; thirdly,
there was a young prince to inherit the crown; and fourthly,
the King was gay and handsome, and more popular than a
better man might have been with the City ladies. After a
stay of only two days with these worthy supporters, the King
marched out to Barnet Common, to give the Earl of Warwick
battle. And now it was to be seen, for the last time, whether
the King or the King-Maker was to carry the day.
While the battle was yet pending, the fainthearted Duke
of Clarence began to repent, and sent over secret messages
to his father-in-law, offering his services in mediation with
the King. But, the Earl of Warwick disdainfully rejected them,
and replied that Clarence was false and perjured, and that he
would settle the quarrel by the sword. The battle began at
four o’clock in the morning and lasted until ten, and during
the greater part of the time it was fought in a thick mist—
absurdly supposed to be raised by a magician. The loss of life


Charles Dickens
259

was very great, for the hatred was strong on both sides. The
King-Maker was defeated, and the King triumphed. Both
the Earl of Warwick and his brother were slain, and their
bodies lay in St. Paul’s, for some days, as a spectacle to the
people.
Margaret’s spirit was not broken even by this great blow.
Within five days she was in arms again, and raised her stan-
dard in Bath, whence she set off with her army, to try and
join Lord Pembroke, who had a force in Wales. But, the
King, coming up with her outside the town of Tewkesbury,
and ordering his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, who was a
brave soldier, to attack her men, she sustained an entire de-
feat, and was taken prisoner, together with her son, now
only eighteen years of age. The conduct of the King to this
poor youth was worthy of his cruel character. He ordered
him to be led into his tent. ‘And what,’ said he, ‘brought you
to England?’ ‘I came to England,’ replied the prisoner, with
a spirit which a man of spirit might have admired in a cap-
tive, ‘to recover my father’s kingdom, which descended to
him as his right, and from him descends to me, as mine.’
The King, drawing off his iron gauntlet, struck him with it 

in the face; and the Duke of Clarence and some other lords,
who were there, drew their noble swords, and killed him.
His mother survived him, a prisoner, for five years; after
her ransom by the King of France, she survived for six years
more. Within three weeks of this murder, Henry died one
of those convenient sudden deaths which were so common
in the Tower; in plainer words, he was murdered by the King’s
order.
Having no particular excitement on his hands after this
great defeat of the Lancaster party, and being perhaps desir-
ous to get rid of some of his fat (for he was now getting too
corpulent to be handsome), the King thought of making
war on France. As he wanted more money for this purpose
than the Parliament could give him, though they were usu-
ally ready enough for war, he invented a new way of raising
it, by sending for the principal citizens of London, and tell-
ing them, with a grave face, that he was very much in want
of cash, and would take it very kind in them if they would
lend him some. It being impossible for them safely to refuse,
they complied, and the moneys thus forced from them were
called—no doubt to the great amusement of the King and


A Child’s Histroy of England
260

the Court—as if they were free gifts, ‘Benevolences.’ What
with grants from Parliament, and what with Benevolences,
the King raised an army and passed over to Calais. As no-
body wanted war, however, the French King made proposals
of peace, which were accepted, and a truce was concluded
for seven long years. The proceedings between the Kings of
France and England on this occasion, were very friendly,
very splendid, and very distrustful. They finished with a meet-
ing between the two Kings, on a temporary bridge over the
river Somme, where they embraced through two holes in a
strong wooden grating like a lion’s cage, and made several
bows and fine speeches to one another.
It was time, now, that the Duke of Clarence should be
punished for his treacheries; and Fate had his punishment
in store. He was, probably, not trusted by the King—for
who could trust him who knew him!—and he had certainly
a powerful opponent in his brother Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, who, being avaricious and ambitious, wanted to
marry that widowed daughter of the Earl of Warwick’s who
had been espoused to the deceased young Prince, at Calais.
Clarence, who wanted all the family wealth for himself, se- 

creted this lady, whom Richard found disguised as a servant
in the City of London, and whom he married; arbitrators
appointed by the King, then divided the property between
the brothers. This led to ill-will and mistrust between them.
Clarence’s wife dying, and he wishing to make another mar-
riage, which was obnoxious to the King, his ruin was hurried
by that means, too. At first, the Court struck at his retainers
and dependents, and accused some of them of magic and witch-
craft, and similar nonsense. Successful against this small game,
it then mounted to the Duke himself, who was impeached by
his brother the King, in person, on a variety of such charges.
He was found guilty, and sentenced to be publicly executed.
He never was publicly executed, but he met his death some-
how, in the Tower, and, no doubt, through some agency of
the King or his brother Gloucester, or both. It was supposed
at the time that he was told to choose the manner of his death,
and that he chose to be drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine. I
hope the story may be true, for it would have been a becom-
ing death for such a miserable creature.
The King survived him some five years. He died in the
forty-second year of his life, and the twenty-third of his reign.


Charles Dickens
261

He had a very good capacity and some good points, but he
was selfish, careless, sensual, and cruel. He was a favourite
with the people for his showy manners; and the people were
a good example to him in the constancy of their attachment.
He was penitent on his death-bed for his ‘benevolences,’
and other extortions, and ordered restitution to be made to
the people who had suffered from them. He also called about
his bed the enriched members of the Woodville family, and
the proud lords whose honours were of older date, and en-
deavoured to reconcile them, for the sake of the peaceful
succession of his son and the tranquillity of England. 

CHAPTER XXIV
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIFTH 

THE LATE KING’S ELDEST SOn, the Prince of Wales, called Ed-
ward after him, was only thirteen years of age at his father’s
death. He was at Ludlow Castle with his uncle, the Earl of
Rivers. The prince’s brother, the Duke of York, only eleven
years of age, was in London with his mother. The boldest,
most crafty, and most dreaded nobleman in England at that 

time was their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and ev-
erybody wondered how the two poor boys would fare with
such an uncle for a friend or a foe.
The Queen, their mother, being exceedingly uneasy about
this, was anxious that instructions should be sent to Lord
Rivers to raise an army to escort the young King safely to
London. But, Lord Hastings, who was of the Court party
opposed to the Woodvilles, and who disliked the thought of
giving them that power, argued against the proposal, and
obliged the Queen to be satisfied with an escort of two thou-
sand horse. The Duke of Gloucester did nothing, at first, to
justify suspicion. He came from Scotland (where he was
commanding an army) to York, and was there the first to
swear allegiance to his nephew. He then wrote a condoling
letter to the Queen-Mother, and set off to be present at the
coronation in London.
Now, the young King, journeying towards London too,
with Lord Rivers and Lord Gray, came to Stony Stratford, as
his uncle came to Northampton, about ten miles distant;
and when those two lords heard that the Duke of Gloucester
was so near, they proposed to the young King that they should


A Child’s Histroy of England
262

go back and greet him in his name. The boy being very
willing that they should do so, they rode off and were re-
ceived with great friendliness, and asked by the Duke of
Gloucester to stay and dine with him. In the evening, while
they were merry together, up came the Duke of Buckingham
with three hundred horsemen; and next morning the two
lords and the two dukes, and the three hundred horsemen,
rode away together to rejoin the King. Just as they were en-
tering Stony Stratford, the Duke of Gloucester, checking his
horse, turned suddenly on the two lords, charged them with
alienating from him the affections of his sweet nephew, and
caused them to be arrested by the three hundred horsemen
and taken back. Then, he and the Duke of Buckingham
went straight to the King (whom they had now in their
power), to whom they made a show of kneeling down, and
offering great love and submission; and then they ordered
his attendants to disperse, and took him, alone with them,
to Northampton.
A few days afterwards they conducted him to London,
and lodged him in the Bishop’s Palace. But, he did not re-
main there long; for, the Duke of Buckingham with a ten- 

der face made a speech expressing how anxious he was for
the Royal boy’s safety, and how much safer he would be in
the Tower until his coronation, than he could be anywhere
else. So, to the Tower he was taken, very carefully, and the
Duke of Gloucester was named Protector of the State.
Although Gloucester had proceeded thus far with a very
smooth countenance—and although he was a clever man,
fair of speech, and not ill-looking, in spite of one of his shoul-
ders being something higher than the other—and although
he had come into the City riding bare-headed at the King’s
side, and looking very fond of him - he had made the King’s
mother more uneasy yet; and when the Royal boy was taken
to the Tower, she became so alarmed that she took sanctuary
in Westminster with her five daughters.
Nor did she do this without reason, for, the Duke of
Gloucester, finding that the lords who were opposed to the
Woodville family were faithful to the young King nevertheless,
quickly resolved to strike a blow for himself. Accordingly, while
those lords met in council at the Tower, he and those who were
in his interest met in separate council at his own residence,
Crosby Palace, in Bishopsgate Street. Being at last quite pre-


Charles Dickens
263

pared, he one day appeared unexpectedly at the council in the
Tower, and appeared to be very jocular and merry. He was par-
ticularly gay with the Bishop of Ely: praising the strawberries
that grew in his garden on Holborn Hill, and asking him to
have some gathered that he might eat them at dinner. The
Bishop, quite proud of the honour, sent one of his men to fetch
some; and the Duke, still very jocular and gay, went out; and
the council all said what a very agreeable duke he was! In a little
time, however, he came back quite altered—not at all jocular—
frowning and fierce—and suddenly said,—
‘What do those persons deserve who have compassed my de-
struction; I being the King’s lawful, as well as natural, protector?’
To this strange question, Lord Hastings replied, that they
deserved death, whosoever they were.
‘Then,’ said the Duke, ‘I tell you that they are that sorcer-
ess my brother’s wife;’ meaning the Queen: ‘and that other
sorceress, Jane Shore. Who, by witchcraft, have withered
my body, and caused my arm to shrink as I now show you.’
He then pulled up his sleeve and showed them his arm,
which was shrunken, it is true, but which had been so, as
they all very well knew, from the hour of his birth. 

Jane Shore, being then the lover of Lord Hastings, as she
had formerly been of the late King, that lord knew that he
himself was attacked. So, he said, in some confusion, ‘Cer-
tainly, my Lord, if they have done this, they be worthy of
punishment.’
‘If?’ said the Duke of Gloucester; ‘do you talk to me of ifs?
I tell you that they  have so done, and I will make it good
upon thy body, thou traitor!’
With that, he struck the table a great blow with his fist. This
was a signal to some of his people outside to cry ‘Treason!’ They
immediately did so, and there was a rush into the chamber of so
many armed men that it was filled in a moment.
‘First,’ said the Duke of Gloucester to Lord Hastings, ‘I
arrest thee, traitor! And let him,’ he added to the armed men
who took him, ‘have a priest at once, for by St. Paul I will
not dine until I have seen his head of!’
Lord Hastings was hurried to the green by the Tower
chapel, and there beheaded on a log of wood that happened
to be lying on the ground. Then, the Duke dined with a
good appetite, and after dinner summoning the principal
citizens to attend him, told them that Lord Hastings and the


A Child’s Histroy of England
264

rest had designed to murder both himself and the Duke if
Buckingham, who stood by his side, if he had not providen-
tially discovered their design. He requested them to be so
obliging as to inform their fellow-citizens of the truth of
what he said, and issued a proclamation (prepared and neatly
copied out beforehand) to the same effect.
On the same day that the Duke did these things in the
Tower, Sir Richard Ratcliffe, the boldest and most undaunted
of his men, went down to Pontefract; arrested Lord Rivers,
Lord Gray, and two other gentlemen; and publicly executed
them on the scaffold, without any trial, for having intended
the Duke’s death. Three days afterwards the Duke, not to
lose time, went down the river to Westminster in his barge,
attended by divers bishops, lords, and soldiers, and demanded
that the Queen should deliver her second son, the Duke of
York, into his safe keeping. The Queen, being obliged to
comply, resigned the child after she had wept over him; and
Richard of Gloucester placed him with his brother in the
Tower. Then, he seized Jane Shore, and, because she had
been the lover of the late King, confiscated her property,
and got her sentenced to do public penance in the streets by 

walking in a scanty dress, with bare feet, and carrying a lighted
candle, to St. Paul’s Cathedral, through the most crowded
part of the City.
Having now all things ready for his own advancement, he
caused a friar to preach a sermon at the cross which stood in
front of St. Paul’s Cathedral, in which he dwelt upon the
profligate manners of the late King, and upon the late shame
of Jane Shore, and hinted that the princes were not his chil-
dren. ‘Whereas, good people,’ said the friar, whose name
was Shaw, ‘my Lord the Protector, the noble Duke of
Gloucester, that sweet prince, the pattern of all the noblest
virtues, is the perfect image and express likeness of his fa-
ther.’ There had been a little plot between the Duke and the
friar, that the Duke should appear in the crowd at this mo-
ment, when it was expected that the people would cry ‘Long
live King Richard!’ But, either through the friar saying the
words too soon, or through the Duke’s coming too late, the
Duke and the words did not come together, and the people
only laughed, and the friar sneaked off ashamed.
The Duke of Buckingham was a better hand at such busi-
ness than the friar, so he went to the Guildhall the next day,


Charles Dickens
265

and addressed the citizens in the Lord Protector’s behalf. A
few dirty men, who had been hired and stationed there for
the purpose, crying when he had done, ‘God save King Ri-
chard!’ he made them a great bow, and thanked them with
all his heart. Next day, to make an end of it, he went with
the mayor and some lords and citizens to Bayard Castle, by
the river, where Richard then was, and read an address, hum-
bly entreating him to accept the Crown of England. Rich-
ard, who looked down upon them out of a window and pre-
tended to be in great uneasiness and alarm, assured them
there was nothing he desired less, and that his deep affection
for his nephews forbade him to think of it. To this the Duke
of Buckingham replied, with pretended warmth, that the
free people of England would never submit to his nephew’s
rule, and that if Richard, who was the lawful heir, refused
the Crown, why then they must find some one else to wear
it. The Duke of Gloucester returned, that since he used that
strong language, it became his painful duty to think no more
of himself, and to accept the Crown.
Upon that, the people cheered and dispersed; and the Duke
of Gloucester and the Duke of Buckingham passed a pleas- 

ant evening, talking over the play they had just acted with so
much success, and every word of which they had prepared
together. 
CHAPTER XXV
ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE THIRD 

KING R ICHARD  THE THIRD was up betimes in the morning,
and went to Westminster Hall. In the Hall was a marble
seat, upon which he sat himself down between two great
noblemen, and told the people that he began the new reign
in that place, because the first duty of a sovereign was to
administer the laws equally to all, and to maintain justice.
He then mounted his horse and rode back to the City, where
he was received by the clergy and the crowd as if he really
had a right to the throne, and really were a just man. The
clergy and the crowd must have been rather ashamed of them-
selves in secret, I think, for being such poor-spirited knaves.
The new King and his Queen were soon crowned with a
great deal of show and noise, which the people liked very
much; and then the King set forth on a royal progress through
his dominions. He was crowned a second time at York, in


A Child’s Histroy of England
266

order that the people might have show and noise enough; and
wherever he went was received with shouts of rejoicing—from
a good many people of strong lungs, who were paid to strain
their throats in crying, ‘God save King Richard!’ The plan was
so successful that I am told it has been imitated since, by other
usurpers, in other progresses through other dominions.
While he was on this journey, King Richard stayed a week
at Warwick. And from Warwick he sent instructions home
for one of the wickedest murders that ever was done—the
murder of the two young princes, his nephews, who were
shut up in the Tower of London.
Sir Robert Brackenbury was at that time Governor of the
Tower. To him, by the hands of a messenger named John Green,
did King Richard send a letter, ordering him by some means to
put the two young princes to death. But Sir Robert—I hope
because he had children of his own, and loved them—sent John
Green back again, riding and spurring along the dusty roads,
with the answer that he could not do so horrible a piece of
work. The King, having frowningly considered a little, called to
him Sir James Tyrrel, his master of the horse, and to him gave
authority to take command of the Tower, whenever he would, 

for twenty-four hours, and to keep all the keys of the Tower
during that space of time. Tyrrel, well knowing what was wanted,
looked about him for two hardened ruffians, and chose John
Dighton, one of his own grooms, and Miles Forest, who was a
murderer by trade. Having secured these two assistants, he went,
upon a day in August, to the Tower, showed his authority from
the King, took the command for four-and-twenty hours, and
obtained possession of the keys. And when the black night came
he went creeping, creeping, like a guilty villain as he was, up the
dark, stone winding stairs, and along the dark stone passages,
until he came to the door of the room where the two young
princes, having said their prayers, lay fast asleep, clasped in each
other’s arms. And while he watched and listened at the door, he
sent in those evil demons, John Dighton and Miles Forest, who
smothered the two princes with the bed and pillows, and car-
ried their bodies down the stairs, and buried them under a great
heap of stones at the staircase foot. And when the day came, he
gave up the command of the Tower, and restored the keys, and
hurried away without once looking behind him; and Sir Robert
Brackenbury went with fear and sadness to the princes’ room,
and found the princes gone for ever.


Charles Dickens
267

You know, through all this history, how true it is that trai-
tors are never true, and you will not be surprised to learn
that the Duke of Buckingham soon turned against King Ri-
chard, and joined a great conspiracy that was formed to de-
throne him, and to place the crown upon its rightful owner’s
head. Richard had meant to keep the murder secret; but
when he heard through his spies that this conspiracy ex-
isted, and that many lords and gentlemen drank in secret to
the healths of the two young princes in the Tower, he made
it known that they were dead. The conspirators, though
thwarted for a moment, soon resolved to set up for the crown
against the murderous Richard,  Henry Earl of Richmond,
grandson of Catherine: that widow of Henry the Fifth who
married Owen Tudor. And as Henry was of the house of
Lancaster, they proposed that he should marry the Princess
Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the late King, now the heiress
of the house of York, and thus by uniting the rival families
put an end to the fatal wars of the Red and White Roses. All
being settled, a time was appointed for Henry to come over
from Brittany, and for a great rising against Richard to take
place in several parts of England at the same hour. On a 

certain day, therefore, in October, the revolt took place; but
unsuccessfully. Richard was prepared, Henry was driven back
at sea by a storm, his followers in England were dispersed,
and the Duke of Buckingham was taken, and at once be-
headed in the market-place at Salisbury.
The time of his success was a good time, Richard thought,
for summoning a Parliament and getting some money. So, a
Parliament was called, and it flattered and fawned upon him
as much as he could possibly desire, and declared him to be
the rightful King of England, and his only son Edward, then
eleven years of age, the next heir to the throne.
Richard knew full well that, let the Parliament say what it
would, the Princess Elizabeth was remembered by people as
the heiress of the house of York; and having accurate infor-
mation besides, of its being designed by the conspirators to
marry her to Henry of Richmond, he felt that it would much
strengthen him and weaken them, to be beforehand with
them, and marry her to his son. With this view he went to
the Sanctuary at Westminster, where the late King’s widow
and her daughter still were, and besought them to come to
Court: where (he swore by anything and everything) they


A Child’s Histroy of England
268

should be safely and honourably entertained. They came,
accordingly, but had scarcely been at Court a month when
his son died suddenly—or was poisoned—and his plan was
crushed to pieces.
In this extremity, King Richard, always active, thought, ‘I
must make another plan.’ And he made the plan of marry-
ing the Princess Elizabeth himself, although she was his niece.
There was one difficulty in the way: his wife, the Queen
Anne, was alive. But, he knew (remembering his nephews)
how to remove that obstacle, and he made love to the Prin-
cess Elizabeth, telling her he felt perfectly confident that the
Queen would die in February. The Princess was not a very
scrupulous young lady, for, instead of rejecting the murderer
of her brothers with scorn and hatred, she openly declared
she loved him dearly; and, when February came and the
Queen did not die, she expressed her impatient opinion that
she was too long about it. However, King Richard was not
so far out in his prediction, but, that she died in March—he
took good care of that—and then this precious pair hoped
to be married. But they were disappointed, for the idea of
such a marriage was so unpopular in the country, that the 

King’s chief counsellors, Rat Cliffe and Catesby, would by no
means undertake to propose it, and the King was even obliged
to declare in public that he had never thought of such a
thing.
He was, by this time, dreaded and hated by all classes of
his subjects. His nobles deserted every day to Henry’s side;
he dared not call another Parliament, lest his crimes should
be denounced there; and for want of money, he was obliged
to get Benevolences from the citizens, which exasperated
them all against him. It was said too, that, being stricken by
his conscience, he dreamed frightful dreams, and started up
in the night-time, wild with terror and remorse. Active to
the last, through all this, he issued vigorous proclamations
against Henry of Richmond and all his followers, when he
heard that they were coming against him with a Fleet from
France; and took the field as fierce and savage as a wild boar—
the animal represented on his shield.
Henry of Richmond landed with six thousand men at
Milford Haven, and came on against King Richard, then
encamped at Leicester with an army twice as great, through
North Wales. On Bosworth Field the two armies met; and


Charles Dickens
269

Richard, looking along Henry’s ranks, and seeing them crowded
with the English nobles who had abandoned him, turned pale
when he beheld the powerful Lord Stanley and his son (whom
he had tried hard to retain) among them. But, he was as brave
as he was wicked, and plunged into the thickest of the fight.
He was riding hither and thither, laying about him in all di-
rections, when he observed the Earl of Northumberland—
one of his few great allies—to stand inactive, and the main
body of his troops to hesitate. At the same moment, his des-
perate glance caught Henry of Richmond among a little group
of his knights. Riding hard at him, and crying ‘Treason!’ he
killed his standard-bearer, fiercely unhorsed another gentle-
man, and aimed a powerful stroke at Henry himself, to cut
him down. But, Sir William Stanley parried it as it fell, and
before Richard could raise his arm again, he was borne down
in a press of numbers, unhorsed, and killed. Lord Stanley
picked up the crown, all bruised and trampled, and stained
with blood, and put it upon Richmond’s head, amid loud and
rejoicing cries of ‘Long live King Henry!’
That night, a horse was led up to the church of the Grey
Friars at Leicester; across whose back was tied, like some 

worthless sack, a naked body brought there for burial. It was
the body of the last of the Plantagenet line, King Richard
the Third, usurper and murderer, slain at the battle of
Bosworth Field in the thirty-second year of his age, after a
reign of two years.

CHAPTER XXVI
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH 

KING HENRY THE SEVENTH did not turn out to be as fine a
fellow as the nobility and people hoped, in the first joy of
their deliverance from Richard the Third. He was very cold,
crafty, and calculating, and would do almost anything for
money. He possessed considerable ability, but his chief merit
appears to have been that he was not cruel when there was
nothing to be got by it.
The new King had promised the nobles who had espoused
his cause that he would marry the Princess Elizabeth. The
first thing he did, was, to direct her to be removed from the
castle of Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, where Richard had
placed her, and restored to the care of her mother in Lon-


A Child’s Histroy of England
270

don. The young Earl of Warwick, Edward Plantagenet, son
and heir of the late Duke of Clarence, had been kept a pris-
oner in the same old Yorkshire Castle with her. This boy,
who was now fifteen, the new King placed in the Tower for
safety. Then he came to London in great state, and gratified
the people with a fine procession; on which kind of show he
often very much relied for keeping them in good humour.
The sports and feasts which took place were followed by a
terrible fever, called the Sweating Sickness; of which great
numbers of people died. Lord Mayors and Aldermen are
thought to have suffered most from it; whether, because they
were in the habit of over-eating themselves, or because they
were very jealous of preserving filth and nuisances in the
City (as they have been since), I don’t know.
The King’s coronation was postponed on account of the
general ill-health, and he afterwards deferred his marriage, as
if he were not very anxious that it should take place: and, even
after that, deferred the Queen’s coronation so long that he
gave offence to the York party. However, he set these things
right in the end, by hanging some men and seizing on the rich
possessions of others; by granting more popular pardons to 

the followers of the late King than could, at first, be got from
him; and, by employing about his Court, some very scrupu-
lous persons who had been employed in the previous reign.
As this reign was principally remarkable for two very curi-
ous impostures which have become famous in history, we
will make those two stories its principal feature.
There was a priest at Oxford of the name of Simons, who
had for a pupil a handsome boy named Lambert Simnel, the
son of a baker. Partly to gratify his own ambitious ends, and
partly to carry out the designs of a secret party formed against
the King, this priest declared that his pupil, the boy, was no
other than the young Earl of Warwick; who (as everybody
might have known) was safely locked up in the Tower of
London. The priest and the boy went over to Ireland; and,
at Dublin, enlisted in their cause all ranks of the people:
who seem to have been generous enough, but exceedingly
irrational. The Earl of Kildare, the governor of Ireland, de-
clared that he believed the boy to be what the priest repre-
sented; and the boy, who had been well tutored by the priest,
told them such things of his childhood, and gave them so
many descriptions of the Royal Family, that they were per-


Charles Dickens
271

petually shouting and hurrahing, and drinking his health,
and making all kinds of noisy and thirsty demonstrations, to
express their belief in him. Nor was this feeling confined to
Ireland alone, for the Earl of Lincoln—whom the late usurper
had named as his successor—went over to the young Pre-
tender; and, after holding a secret correspondence with the
Dowager Duchess of Burgundy—the sister of Edward the
Fourth, who detested the present King and all his race—
sailed to Dublin with two thousand German soldiers of her
providing. In this promising state of the boy’s fortunes, he
was crowned there, with a crown taken off the head of a
statue of the Virgin Mary; and was then, according to the
Irish custom of those days, carried home on the shoulders of
a big chieftain possessing a great deal more strength than
sense. Father Simons, you may be sure, was mighty busy at
the coronation.
Ten days afterwards, the Germans, and the Irish, and the
priest, and the boy, and the Earl of Lincoln, all landed in
Lancashire to invade England. The King, who had good in-
telligence of their movements, set up his standard at
Nottingham, where vast numbers resorted to him every day; 

while the Earl of Lincoln could gain but very few. With his
small force he tried to make for the town of Newark; but the
King’s army getting between him and that place, he had no
choice but to risk a battle at Stoke. It soon ended in the
complete destruction of the Pretender’s forces, one half of
whom were killed; among them, the Earl himself. The priest
and the baker’s boy were taken prisoners. The priest, after
confessing the trick, was shut up in prison, where he after-
wards died—suddenly perhaps. The boy was taken into the
King’s kitchen and made a turnspit. He was afterwards raised
to the station of one of the King’s falconers; and so ended
this strange imposition.
There seems reason to suspect that the Dowager Queen—
always a restless and busy woman—had had some share in
tutoring the baker’s son. The King was very angry with her,
whether or no. He seized upon her property, and shut her
up in a convent at Bermondsey.
One might suppose that the end of this story would have
put the Irish people on their guard; but they were quite ready
to receive a second impostor, as they had received the first,
and that same troublesome Duchess of Burgundy soon gave


A Child’s Histroy of England
272

them the opportunity. All of a sudden there appeared at Cork,
in a vessel arriving from Portugal, a young man of excellent
abilities, of very handsome appearance and most winning
manners, who declared himself to be Richard, Duke of York,
the second son of King Edward the Fourth. ‘O,’ said some,
even of those ready Irish believers, ‘but surely that young Prince
was murdered by his uncle in the Tower!’—‘It is supposed so,’
said the engaging young man; ‘and my brother was killed in
that gloomy prison; but I escaped—it don’t matter how, at
present—and have been wandering about the world for seven
long years.’ This explanation being quite satisfactory to num-
bers of the Irish people, they began again to shout and to
hurrah, and to drink his health, and to make the noisy and
thirsty demonstrations all over again. And the big chieftain in
Dublin began to look out for another coronation, and an-
other young King to be carried home on his back.
Now, King Henry being then on bad terms with France,
the French King, Charles the Eighth, saw that, by pretend-
ing to believe in the handsome young man, he could trouble
his enemy sorely. So, he invited him over to the French Court,
and appointed him a body-guard, and treated him in all re- 

spects as if he really were the Duke of York. Peace, however,
being soon concluded between the two Kings, the pretended
Duke was turned adrift, and wandered for protection to the
Duchess of Burgundy. She, after feigning to inquire into the
reality of his claims, declared him to be the very picture of
her dear departed brother; gave him a body-guard at her
Court, of thirty halberdiers; and called him by the sounding
name of the White Rose of England.
The leading members of the White Rose party in England sent
over an agent, named Sir Robert Clifford, to ascertain whether
the White Rose’s claims were good: the King also sent over his
agents to inquire into the Rose’s history. The White Roses de-
clared the young man to be really the Duke of York; the King
declared him to be Perkin Warbeck, the son of a merchant of the
city of Tournay, who had acquired his knowledge of England, its
language and manners, from the English merchants who traded
in Flanders; it was also stated by the Royal agents that he had
been in the service of Lady Brompton, the wife of an exiled En-
glish nobleman, and that the Duchess of Burgundy had caused
him to be trained and taught, expressly for this deception. The
King then required the Archduke Philip—who was the sover-


Charles Dickens
273

eign of Burgundy—to banish this new Pretender, or to deliver
him up; but, as the Archduke replied that he could not control
the Duchess in her own land, the King, in revenge, took the
market of English cloth away from Antwerp, and prevented all
commercial intercourse between the two countries.
He also, by arts and bribes, prevailed on Sir Robert Clifford
to betray his employers; and he denouncing several famous
English noblemen as being secretly the friends of Perkin
Warbeck, the King had three of the foremost executed at
once. Whether he pardoned the remainder because they were
poor, I do not know; but it is only too probable that he
refused to pardon one famous nobleman against whom the
same Clifford soon afterwards informed separately, because
he was rich. This was no other than Sir William Stanley,
who had saved the King’s life at the battle of Bosworth Field.
It is very doubtful whether his treason amounted to much
more than his having said, that if he were sure the young
man was the Duke of York, he would not take arms against
him. Whatever he had done he admitted, like an honourable
spirit; and he lost his head for it, and the covetous King
gained all his wealth. 

Perkin Warbeck kept quiet for three years; but, as the
Flemings began to complain heavily of the loss of their trade
by the stoppage of the Antwerp market on his account, and
as it was not unlikely that they might even go so far as to
take his life, or give him up, he found it necessary to do
something. Accordingly he made a desperate sally, and landed,
with only a few hundred men, on the coast of Deal. But he
was soon glad to get back to the place from whence he came;
for the country people rose against his followers, killed a
great many, and took a hundred and fifty prisoners: who
were all driven to London, tied together with ropes, like a
team of cattle. Every one of them was hanged on some part
or other of the sea-shore; in order, that if any more men
should come over with Perkin Warbeck, they might see the
bodies as a warning before they landed.
Then the wary King, by making a treaty of commerce
with the Flemings, drove Perkin Warbeck out of that coun-
try; and, by completely gaining over the Irish to his side,
deprived him of that asylum too. He wandered away to Scot-
land, and told his story at that Court. King James the Fourth
of Scotland, who was no friend to King Henry, and had no


A Child’s Histroy of England
274

reason to be (for King Henry had bribed his Scotch lords to
betray him more than once; but had never succeeded in his
plots), gave him a great reception, called him his cousin, and
gave him in marriage the Lady Catherine Gordon, a beauti-
ful and charming creature related to the royal house of Stuart.
Alarmed by this successful reappearance of the Pretender,
the King still undermined, and bought, and bribed, and kept
his doings and Perkin Warbeck’s story in the dark, when he
might, one would imagine, have rendered the matter clear
to all England. But, for all this bribing of the Scotch lords at
the Scotch King’s Court, he could not procure the Pretender
to be delivered up to him. James, though not very particular
in many respects, would not betray him; and the ever-busy
Duchess of Burgundy so provided him with arms, and good
soldiers, and with money besides, that he had soon a little
army of fifteen hundred men of various nations. With these,
and aided by the Scottish King in person, he crossed the
border into England, and made a proclamation to the people,
in which he called the King ‘Henry Tudor;’ offered large
rewards to any who should take or distress him; and an-
nounced himself as King Richard the Fourth come to re- 

ceive the homage of his faithful subjects. His faithful sub-
jects, however, cared nothing for him, and hated his faithful
troops: who, being of different nations, quarrelled also among
themselves. Worse than this, if worse were possible, they
began to plunder the country; upon which the White Rose
said, that he would rather lose his rights, than gain them
through the miseries of the English people. The Scottish
King made a jest of his scruples; but they and their whole
force went back again without fighting a battle.
The worst consequence of this attempt was, that a rising
took place among the people of Cornwall, who considered
themselves too heavily taxed to meet the charges of the ex-
pected war. Stimulated by Flammock, a lawyer, and Joseph,
a blacksmith, and joined by Lord Audley and some other
country gentlemen, they marched on all the way to Deptford
Bridge, where they fought a battle with the King’s army.
They were defeated—though the Cornish men fought with
great bravery—and the lord was beheaded, and the lawyer
and the blacksmith were hanged, drawn, and quartered. The
rest were pardoned. The King, who believed every man to
be as avaricious as himself, and thought that money could


Charles Dickens
275

settle anything, allowed them to make bargains for their lib-
erty with the soldiers who had taken them.
Perkin Warbeck, doomed to wander up and down, and never
to find rest anywhere—a sad fate: almost a sufficient punish-
ment for an imposture, which he seems in time to have half
believed himself—lost his Scottish refuge through a truce be-
ing made between the two Kings; and found himself, once
more, without a country before him in which he could lay his
head. But James (always honourable and true to him, alike
when he melted down his plate, and even the great gold chain
he had been used to wear, to pay soldiers in his cause; and
now, when that cause was lost and hopeless) did not conclude
the treaty, until he had safely departed out of the Scottish
dominions. He, and his beautiful wife, who was faithful to
him under all reverses, and left her state and home to follow
his poor fortunes, were put aboard ship with everything nec-
essary for their comfort and protection, and sailed for Ireland.
But, the Irish people had had enough of counterfeit Earls
of Warwick and Dukes of York, for one while; and would
give the White Rose no aid. So, the White Rose—encircled
by thorns indeed—resolved to go with his beautiful wife to 

Cornwall as a forlorn resource, and see what might be made
of the Cornish men, who had risen so valiantly a little while
before, and who had fought so bravely at Deptford Bridge.
To Whitsand Bay, in Cornwall, accordingly, came Perkin
Warbeck and his wife; and the lovely lady he shut up for
safety in the Castle of St. Michael’s Mount, and then marched
into Devonshire at the head of three thousand Cornishmen.
These were increased to six thousand by the time of his ar-
rival in Exeter; but, there the people made a stout resistance,
and he went on to Taunton, where he came in sight of the
King’s army. The stout Cornish men, although they were
few in number, and badly armed, were so bold, that they
never thought of retreating; but bravely looked forward to a
battle on the morrow. Unhappily for them, the man who
was possessed of so many engaging qualities, and who at-
tracted so many people to his side when he had nothing else
with which to tempt them, was not as brave as they. In the
night, when the two armies lay opposite to each other, he
mounted a swift horse and fled. When morning dawned,
the poor confiding Cornish men, discovering that they had
no leader, surrendered to the King’s power. Some of them


A Child’s Histroy of England
276

were hanged, and the rest were pardoned and went miser-
ably home.
Before the King pursued Perkin Warbeck to the sanctuary
of Beaulieu in the New Forest, where it was soon known
that he had taken refuge, he sent a body of horsemen to St.
Michael’s Mount, to seize his wife. She was soon taken and
brought as a captive before the King. But she was so beauti-
ful, and so good, and so devoted to the man in whom she
believed, that the King regarded her with compassion, treated
her with great respect, and placed her at Court, near the
Queen’s person. And many years after Perkin Warbeck was
no more, and when his strange story had become like a nurs-
ery tale, She was called the White Rose, by the people, in
remembrance of her beauty.
The sanctuary at Beaulieu was soon surrounded by the
King’s men; and the King, pursuing his usual dark, artful
ways, sent pretended friends to Perkin Warbeck to persuade
him to come out and surrender himself. This he soon did;
the King having taken a good look at the man of whom he
had heard so much—from behind a screen—directed him
to be well mounted, and to ride behind him at a little dis- 

tance, guarded, but not bound in any way. So they entered
London with the King’s favourite show—a procession; and
some of the people hooted as the Pretender rode slowly
through the streets to the Tower; but the greater part were
quiet, and very curious to see him. From the Tower, he was
taken to the Palace at Westminster, and there lodged like a
gentleman, though closely watched. He was examined every
now and then as to his imposture; but the King was so secret
in all he did, that even then he gave it a consequence, which
it cannot be supposed to have in itself deserved.
At last Perkin Warbeck ran away, and took refuge in an-
other sanctuary near Richmond in Surrey. From this he was
again persuaded to deliver himself up; and, being conveyed
to London, he stood in the stocks for a whole day, outside
Westminster Hall, and there read a paper purporting to be
his full confession, and relating his history as the King’s agents
had originally described it. He was then shut up in the Tower
again, in the company of the Earl of Warwick, who had now
been there for fourteen years: ever since his removal out of
Yorkshire, except when the King had had him at Court, and
had shown him to the people, to prove the imposture of the


Charles Dickens
277

Baker’s boy. It is but too probable, when we consider the
crafty character of Henry the Seventh, that these two were
brought together for a cruel purpose. A plot was soon dis-
covered between them and the keepers, to murder the Gov-
ernor, get possession of the keys, and proclaim Perkin
Warbeck as King Richard the Fourth. That there was some
such plot, is likely; that they were tempted into it, is at least
as likely; that the unfortunate Earl of Warwick—last male of
the Plantagenet line—was too unused to the world, and too
ignorant and simple to know much about it, whatever it
was, is perfectly certain; and that it was the King’s interest to
get rid of him, is no less so. He was beheaded on Tower Hill,
and Perkin Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn.
Such was the end of the pretended Duke of York, whose
shadowy history was made more shadowy—and ever will
be—by the mystery and craft of the King. If he had turned
his great natural advantages to a more honest account, he
might have lived a happy and respected life, even in those
days. But he died upon a gallows at Tyburn, leaving the Scot-
tish lady, who had loved him so well, kindly protected at the
Queen’s Court. After some time she forgot her old loves and 

troubles, as many people do with Time’s merciful assistance,
and married a Welsh gentleman. Her second husband,  Sir
Matthew Cradoc, more honest and more happy than her first,
lies beside her in a tomb in the old church of Swansea.
The ill-blood between France and England in this reign, arose
out of the continued plotting of the Duchess of Burgundy, and
disputes respecting the affairs of Brittany. The King feigned to
be very patriotic, indignant, and warlike; but he always con-
trived so as never to make war in reality, and always to make
money. His taxation of the people, on pretence of war with
France, involved, at one time, a very dangerous insurrection,
headed by Sir John Egremont, and a common man called John
a Chambre. But it was subdued by the royal forces, under the
command of the Earl of Surrey. The knighted John escaped to
the Duchess of Burgundy, who was ever ready to receive any
one who gave the King trouble; and the plain John was hanged
at York, in the midst of a number of his men, but on a much
higher gibbet, as being a greater traitor. Hung high or hung
low, however, hanging is much the same to the person hung.
Within a year after her marriage, the Queen had given
birth to a son, who was called Prince Arthur, in remem-


A Child’s Histroy of England
278

brance of the old British prince of romance and story; and
who, when all these events had happened, being then in his
fifteenth year, was married to Catherine, the daughter of the
Spanish monarch, with great rejoicings and bright prospects;
but in a very few months he sickened and died. As soon as
the King had recovered from his grief, he thought it a pity
that the fortune of the Spanish Princess, amounting to two
hundred thousand crowns, should go out of the family; and
therefore arranged that the young widow should marry his
second son Henry, then twelve years of age, when he too
should be fifteen. There were objections to this marriage on
the part of the clergy; but, as the infallible Pope was gained
over, and, as he must be right, that settled the business for
the time. The King’s eldest daughter was provided for, and a
long course of disturbance was considered to be set at rest,
by her being married to the Scottish King.
And now the Queen died. When the King had got over
that grief too, his mind once more reverted to his darling
money for consolation, and he thought of marrying the
Dowager Queen of Naples, who was immensely rich: but, as
it turned out not to be practicable to gain the money how- 

ever practicable it might have been to gain the lady, he gave
up the idea. He was not so fond of her but that he soon
proposed to marry the Dowager Duchess of Savoy; and, soon
afterwards, the widow of the King of Castile, who was rav-
ing mad. But he made a money-bargain instead, and mar-
ried neither.
The Duchess of Burgundy, among the other discontented
people to whom she had given refuge, had sheltered Edmund
de le Pole (younger brother of that Earl of Lincoln who was
killed at Stoke), now Earl of Suffolk. The King had pre-
vailed upon him to return to the marriage of Prince Arthur;
but, he soon afterwards went away again; and then the King,
suspecting a conspiracy, resorted to his favourite plan of send-
ing him some treacherous friends, and buying of those scoun-
drels the secrets they disclosed or invented. Some arrests and
executions took place in consequence. In the end, the King,
on a promise of not taking his life, obtained possession of
the person of Edmund de la Pole, and shut him up in the
Tower.
This was his last enemy. If he had lived much longer he
would have made many more among the people, by the grind-


Charles Dickens
279

ing exaction to which he constantly exposed them, and by
the tyrannical acts of his two prime favourites in all money-
raising matters, Edmund Dudley and Richard Empson. But
Death—the enemy who is not to be bought off or deceived,
and on whom no money, and no treachery has any effect—
presented himself at this juncture, and ended the King’s reign.
He died of the gout, on the twenty-second of April, one
thousand five hundred and nine, and in the fifty-third year
of his age, after reigning twenty-four years; he was buried in
the beautiful Chapel of Westminster Abbey, which he had
himself founded, and which still bears his name.
It was in this reign that the great  Christopher Columbus,
on behalf of Spain, discovered what was then called The
New World. Great wonder, interest, and hope of wealth be-
ing awakened in England thereby, the King and the mer-
chants of London and Bristol fitted out an English expedi-
tion for further discoveries in the New World, and entrusted
it to Sebastian Cabot, of Bristol, the son of a Venetian pilot
there. He was very successful in his voyage, and gained high
reputation, both for himself and England. 

CHAPTER XXVII
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH,
CALLED BLUFF KING HAL AND BURLY
KING HARRY 

PART THE FIRST
WE  NOW  COME  TO KING HENRY  THE EIGHTH, whom it has
been too much the fashion to call ‘Bluff King Hal,’ and ‘Burly
King Harry,’ and other fine names; but whom I shall take the
liberty to call, plainly, one of the most detestable villains that
ever drew breath. You will be able to judge, long before we
come to the end of his life, whether he deserves the character.
He was just eighteen years of age when he came to the
throne. People said he was handsome then; but I don’t be-
lieve it. He was a big, burly, noisy, small-eyed, large-faced,
double-chinned, swinish-looking fellow in later life (as we
know from the likenesses of him, painted by the famous
Hans Holbein), and it is not easy to believe that so bad a
character can ever have been veiled under a prepossessing
appearance.


A Child’s Histroy of England
280

He was anxious to make himself popular; and the people,
who had long disliked the late King, were very willing to
believe that he deserved to be so. He was extremely fond of
show and display, and so were they. Therefore there was great
rejoicing when he married the Princess Catherine, and when
they were both crowned. And the King fought at tourna-
ments and always came off victorious—for the courtiers took
care of that—and there was a general outcry that he was a
wonderful man. Empson, Dudley, and their supporters were
accused of a variety of crimes they had never committed,
instead of the offences of which they really had been guilty;
and they were pilloried, and set upon horses with their faces
to the tails, and knocked about and beheaded, to the satis-
faction of the people, and the enrichment of the King.
The Pope, so indefatigable in getting the world into trouble,
had mixed himself up in a war on the continent of Europe,
occasioned by the reigning Princes of little quarrelling states
in Italy having at various times married into other Royal
families, and so led to their claiming a share in those petty
Governments. The King, who discovered that he was very
fond of the Pope, sent a herald to the King of France, to say 

that he must not make war upon that holy personage, be-
cause he was the father of all Christians. As the French King
did not mind this relationship in the least, and also refused
to admit a claim King Henry made to certain lands in France,
war was declared between the two countries. Not to perplex
this story with an account of the tricks and designs of all the
sovereigns who were engaged in it, it is enough to say that
England made a blundering alliance with Spain, and got stu-
pidly taken in by that country; which made its own terms
with France when it could and left England in the lurch. Sir
Edward Howard, a bold admiral, son of the Earl of Surrey,
distinguished himself by his bravery against the French in
this business; but, unfortunately, he was more brave than
wise, for, skimming into the French harbour of Brest with
only a few row-boats, he attempted (in revenge for the de-
feat and death of Sir Thomas Knyvett, another bold English
admiral) to take some strong French ships, well defended
with batteries of cannon. The upshot was, that he was left
on board of one of them (in consequence of its shooting
away from his own boat), with not more than about a dozen
men, and was thrown into the sea and drowned: though not


Charles Dickens
281

until he had taken from his breast his gold chain and gold
whistle, which were the signs of his office, and had cast them
into the sea to prevent their being made a boast of by the
enemy. After this defeat—which was a great one, for Sir
Edward Howard was a man of valour and fame—the King
took it into his head to invade France in person; first execut-
ing that dangerous Earl of Suffolk whom his father had left
in the Tower, and appointing Queen Catherine to the charge
of his kingdom in his absence. He sailed to Calais, where he
was joined by Maximilian, Emperor of Germany, who pre-
tended to be his soldier, and who took pay in his service:
with a good deal of nonsense of that sort, flattering enough
to the vanity of a vain blusterer. The King might be success-
ful enough in sham fights; but his idea of real battles chiefly
consisted in pitching silken tents of bright colours that were
ignominiously blown down by the wind, and in making a
vast display of gaudy flags and golden curtains. Fortune,
however, favoured him better than he deserved; for, after
much waste of time in tent pitching, flag flying, gold cur-
taining, and other such masquerading, he gave the French
battle at a place called Guinegate: where they took such an 

unaccountable panic, and fled with such swiftness, that it
was ever afterwards called by the English the Battle of Spurs.
Instead of following up his advantage, the King, finding that
he had had enough of real fighting, came home again.
The Scottish King, though nearly related to Henry by mar-
riage, had taken part against him in this war. The Earl of
Surrey, as the English general, advanced to meet him when
he came out of his own dominions and crossed the river
Tweed. The two armies came up with one another when the
Scottish King had also crossed the river Till, and was en-
camped upon the last of the Cheviot Hills, called the Hill of
Flodden. Along the plain below it, the English, when the
hour of battle came, advanced. The Scottish army, which
had been drawn up in five great bodies, then came steadily
down in perfect silence. So they, in their turn, advanced to
meet the English army, which came on in one long line; and
they attacked it with a body of spearmen, under Lord Home.
At first they had the best of it; but the English recovered
themselves so bravely, and fought with such valour, that,
when the Scottish King had almost made his way up to the
Royal Standard, he was slain, and the whole Scottish power


A Child’s Histroy of England
282

routed. Ten thousand Scottish men lay dead that day on
Flodden Field; and among them, numbers of the nobility
and gentry. For a long time afterwards, the Scottish peas-
antry used to believe that their King had not been really
killed in this battle, because no Englishman had found an
iron belt he wore about his body as a penance for having
been an unnatural and undutiful son. But, whatever became
of his belt, the English had his sword and dagger, and the
ring from his finger, and his body too, covered with wounds.
There is no doubt of it; for it was seen and recognised by
English gentlemen who had known the Scottish King well.
When King Henry was making ready to renew the war in
France, the French King was contemplating peace. His queen,
dying at this time, he proposed, though he was upwards of
fifty years old, to marry King Henry’s sister, the Princess
Mary, who, besides being only sixteen, was betrothed to the
Duke of Suffolk. As the inclinations of young Princesses were
not much considered in such matters, the marriage was con-
cluded, and the poor girl was escorted to France, where she
was immediately left as the French King’s bride, with only
one of all her English attendants. That one was a pretty young 

girl named Anne Boleyn, niece of the Earl of Surrey, who had
been made Duke of Norfolk, after the victory of Flodden
Field. Anne Boleyn’s is a name to be remembered, as you
will presently find.
And now the French King, who was very proud of his
young wife, was preparing for many years of happiness, and
she was looking forward, I dare say, to many years of misery,
when he died within three months, and left her a young
widow. The new French monarch, Francis the First, seeing
how important it was to his interests that she should take for
her second husband no one but an Englishman, advised her
first lover, the Duke of Suffolk, when King Henry sent him
over to France to fetch her home, to marry her. The Princess
being herself so fond of that Duke, as to tell him that he
must either do so then, or for ever lose her, they were wed-
ded; and Henry afterwards forgave them. In making interest
with the King, the Duke of Suffolk had addressed his most
powerful favourite and adviser, Thomas Wolsey—a name very
famous in history for its rise and downfall.
Wolsey was the son of a respectable butcher at Ipswich, in
Suffolk and received so excellent an education that he be-


Charles Dickens
283

came a tutor to the family of the Marquis of Dorset, who
afterwards got him appointed one of the late King’s chap-
lains. On the accession of Henry the Eighth, he was pro-
moted and taken into great favour. He was now Archbishop
of York; the Pope had made him a Cardinal besides; and
whoever wanted influence in England or favour with the
King—whether he were a foreign monarch or an English
nobleman—was obliged to make a friend of the great Cardi-
nal Wolsey.
He was a gay man, who could dance and jest, and sing
and drink; and those were the roads to so much, or rather so
little, of a heart as King Henry had. He was wonderfully
fond of pomp and glitter, and so was the King. He knew a
good deal of the Church learning of that time; much of which
consisted in finding artful excuses and pretences for almost
any wrong thing, and in arguing that black was white, or
any other colour. This kind of learning pleased the King too.
For many such reasons, the Cardinal was high in estimation
with the King; and, being a man of far greater ability, knew
as well how to manage him, as a clever keeper may know
how to manage a wolf or a tiger, or any other cruel and 

uncertain beast, that may turn upon him and tear him any
day. Never had there been seen in England such state as my
Lord Cardinal kept. His wealth was enormous; equal, it was
reckoned, to the riches of the Crown. His palaces were as
splendid as the King’s, and his retinue was eight hundred
strong. He held his Court, dressed out from top to toe in
flaming scarlet; and his very shoes were golden, set with pre-
cious stones. His followers rode on blood horses; while he,
with a wonderful affectation of humility in the midst of his
great splendour, ambled on a mule with a red velvet saddle
and bridle and golden stirrups.
Through the influence of this stately priest, a grand meet-
ing was arranged to take place between the French and En-
glish Kings in France; but on ground belonging to England.
A prodigious show of friendship and rejoicing was to be made
on the occasion; and heralds were sent to proclaim with bra-
zen trumpets through all the principal cities of Europe, that,
on a certain day, the Kings of France and England, as com-
panions and brothers in arms, each attended by eighteen
followers, would hold a tournament against all knights who
might choose to come.


A Child’s Histroy of England
284

Charles, the new Emperor of Germany (the old one being
dead), wanted to prevent too cordial an alliance between
these sovereigns, and came over to England before the King
could repair to the place of meeting; and, besides making an
agreeable impression upon him, secured Wolsey’s interest by
promising that his influence should make him Pope when
the next vacancy occurred. On the day when the Emperor
left England, the King and all the Court went over to Calais,
and thence to the place of meeting, between Ardres and
Guisnes, commonly called the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
Here, all manner of expense and prodigality was lavished on
the decorations of the show; many of the knights and gentle-
men being so superbly dressed that it was said they carried
their whole estates upon their shoulders.
There were sham castles, temporary chapels, fountains run-
ning wine, great cellars full of wine free as water to all com-
ers, silk tents, gold lace and foil, gilt lions, and such things
without end; and, in the midst of all, the rich Cardinal out-
shone and out-glittered all the noblemen and gentlemen as-
sembled. After a treaty made between the two Kings with as
much solemnity as if they had intended to keep it, the lists— 

nine hundred feet long, and three hundred and twenty
broad—were opened for the tournament; the Queens of
France and England looking on with great array of lords and
ladies. Then, for ten days, the two sovereigns fought five
combats every day, and always beat their polite adversaries;
though they do write that the King of England, being thrown
in a wrestle one day by the King of France, lost his kingly
temper with his brother-in-arms, and wanted to make a quar-
rel of it. Then, there is a great story belonging to this Field
of the Cloth of Gold, showing how the English were dis-
trustful of the French, and the French of the English, until
Francis rode alone one morning to Henry’s tent; and, going
in before he was out of bed, told him in joke that he was his
prisoner; and how Henry jumped out of bed and embraced
Francis; and how Francis helped Henry to dress, and warmed
his linen for him; and how Henry gave Francis a splendid
jewelled collar, and how Francis gave Henry, in return, a
costly bracelet. All this and a great deal more was so written
about, and sung about, and talked about at that time (and,
indeed, since that time too), that the world has had good
cause to be sick of it, for ever.


Charles Dickens
285

Of course, nothing came of all these fine doings but a
speedy renewal of the war between England and France, in
which the two Royal companions and brothers in arms longed
very earnestly to damage one another. But, before it broke
out again, the Duke of Buckingham was shamefully executed
on Tower Hill, on the evidence of a discharged servant—
really for nothing, except the folly of having believed in a
friar of the name of  Hopkins, who had pretended to be a
prophet, and who had mumbled and jumbled out some non-
sense about the Duke’s son being destined to be very great in
the land. It was believed that the unfortunate Duke had given
offence to the great Cardinal by expressing his mind freely
about the expense and absurdity of the whole business of
the Field of the Cloth of Gold. At any rate, he was beheaded,
as I have said, for nothing. And the people who saw it done
were very angry, and cried out that it was the work of ‘the
butcher’s son!’
The new war was a short one, though the Earl of Surrey
invaded France again, and did some injury to that country.
It ended in another treaty of peace between the two king-
doms, and in the discovery that the Emperor of Germany 

was not such a good friend to England in reality, as he pre-
tended to be. Neither did he keep his promise to Wolsey to
make him Pope, though the King urged him. Two Popes
died in pretty quick succession; but the foreign priests were
too much for the Cardinal, and kept him out of the post. So
the Cardinal and King together found out that the Emperor
of Germany was not a man to keep faith with; broke off a
projected marriage between the King’s daughter Mary, Prin-
cess of Wales, and that sovereign; and began to consider
whether it might not be well to marry the young lady, either
to Francis himself, or to his eldest son.
There now arose at Wittemberg, in Germany, the great
leader of the mighty change in England which is called The
Reformation, and which set the people free from their sla-
very to the priests. This was a learned Doctor, named Mar-
tin Luther, who knew all about them, for he had been a priest,
and even a monk, himself. The preaching and writing of
Wickliffe had set a number of men thinking on this subject;
and Luther, finding one day to his great surprise, that there
really was a book called the New Testament which the priests
did not allow to be read, and which contained truths that


A Child’s Histroy of England
286

they suppressed, began to be very vigorous against the whole
body, from the Pope downward. It happened, while he was
yet only beginning his vast work of awakening the nation,
that an impudent fellow named  Tetzel, a friar of very bad
character, came into his neighbourhood selling what were
called Indulgences, by wholesale, to raise money for beauti-
fying the great Cathedral of St. Peter’s, at Rome. Whoever
bought an Indulgence of the Pope was supposed to buy him-
self off from the punishment of Heaven for his offences.
Luther told the people that these Indulgences were worth-
less bits of paper, before God, and that Tetzel and his mas-
ters were a crew of impostors in selling them.
The King and the Cardinal were mightily indignant at this
presumption; and the King (with the help of Sir Thomas More,
a wise man, whom he afterwards repaid by striking off his
head) even wrote a book about it, with which the Pope was so
well pleased that he gave the King the title of Defender of the
Faith. The King and the Cardinal also issued flaming warn-
ings to the people not to read Luther’s books, on pain of ex-
communication. But they did read them for all that; and the
rumour of what was in them spread far and wide. 

When this great change was thus going on, the King be-
gan to show himself in his truest and worst colours. Anne
Boleyn, the pretty little girl who had gone abroad to France
with his sister, was by this time grown up to be very beauti-
ful, and was one of the ladies in attendance on Queen
Catherine. Now, Queen Catherine was no longer young or
handsome, and it is likely that she was not particularly good-
tempered; having been always rather melancholy, and hav-
ing been made more so by the deaths of four of her children
when they were very young. So, the King fell in love with
the fair Anne Boleyn, and said to himself, ‘How can I be
best rid of my own troublesome wife whom I am tired of,
and marry Anne?’
You recollect that Queen Catherine had been the wife of
Henry’s brother. What does the King do, after thinking it
over, but calls his favourite priests about him, and says, O!
his mind is in such a dreadful state, and he is so frightfully
uneasy, because he is afraid it was not lawful for him to marry
the Queen! Not one of those priests had the courage to hint
that it was rather curious he had never thought of that be-
fore, and that his mind seemed to have been in a tolerably


Charles Dickens
287

jolly condition during a great many years, in which he cer-
tainly had not fretted himself thin; but, they all said, Ah!
that was very true, and it was a serious business; and perhaps
the best way to make it right, would be for his Majesty to be
divorced! The King replied, Yes, he thought that would be
the best way, certainly; so they all went to work.
If I were to relate to you the intrigues and plots that took
place in the endeavour to get this divorce, you would think
the History of England the most tiresome book in the world.
So I shall say no more, than that after a vast deal of negotia-
tion and evasion, the Pope issued a commission to Cardinal
Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio (whom he sent over from
Italy for the purpose), to try the whole case in England. It is
supposed—and I think with reason—that Wolsey was the
Queen’s enemy, because she had reproved him for his proud
and gorgeous manner of life. But, he did not at first know
that the King wanted to marry Anne Boleyn; and when he
did know it, he even went down on his knees, in the endeav-
our to dissuade him.
The Cardinals opened their court in the Convent of the
Black Friars, near to where the bridge of that name in Lon- 

don now stands; and the King and Queen, that they might
be near it, took up their lodgings at the adjoining palace of
Bridewell, of which nothing now remains but a bad prison.
On the opening of the court, when the King and Queen
were called on to appear, that poor ill-used lady, with a dig-
nity and firmness and yet with a womanly affection worthy
to be always admired, went and kneeled at the King’s feet,
and said that she had come, a stranger, to his dominions;
that she had been a good and true wife to him for twenty
years; and that she could acknowledge no power in those
Cardinals to try whether she should be considered his wife
after all that time, or should be put away. With that, she got
up and left the court, and would never afterwards come back
to it.
The King pretended to be very much overcome, and said,
O! my lords and gentlemen, what a good woman she was to
be sure, and how delighted he would be to live with her
unto death, but for that terrible uneasiness in his mind which
was quite wearing him away! So, the case went on, and there
was nothing but talk for two months. Then Cardinal
Campeggio, who, on behalf of the Pope, wanted nothing so


A Child’s Histroy of England
288

much as delay, adjourned it for two more months; and be-
fore that time was elapsed, the Pope himself adjourned it
indefinitely, by requiring the King and Queen to come to
Rome and have it tried there. But by good luck for the King,
word was brought to him by some of his people, that they
had happened to meet at supper, Thomas Cranmer, a learned
Doctor of Cambridge, who had proposed to urge the Pope
on, by referring the case to all the learned doctors and bish-
ops, here and there and everywhere, and getting their opin-
ions that the King’s marriage was unlawful. The King, who
was now in a hurry to marry Anne Boleyn, thought this
such a good idea, that he sent for Cranmer, post haste, and
said to Lord Rochort, Anne Boleyn’s father, ‘Take this learned
Doctor down to your country-house, and there let him have
a good room for a study, and no end of books out of which
to prove that I may marry your daughter.’ Lord Rochfort,
not at all reluctant, made the learned Doctor as comfortable
as he could; and the learned Doctor went to work to prove
his case. All this time, the King and Anne Boleyn were writ-
ing letters to one another almost daily, full of impatience to
have the case settled; and Anne Boleyn was showing herself 

(as I think) very worthy of the fate which afterwards befel
her.
It was bad for Cardinal Wolsey that he had left Cranmer
to render this help. It was worse for him that he had tried to
dissuade the King from marrying Anne Boleyn. Such a ser-
vant as he, to such a master as Henry, would probably have
fallen in any case; but, between the hatred of the party of the
Queen that was, and the hatred of the party of the Queen
that was to be, he fell suddenly and heavily. Going down
one day to the Court of Chancery, where he now presided,
he was waited upon by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk,
who told him that they brought an order to him to resign
that office, and to withdraw quietly to a house he had at
Esher, in Surrey. The Cardinal refusing, they rode off to the
King; and next day came back with a letter from him, on
reading which, the Cardinal submitted. An inventory was
made out of all the riches in his palace at York Place (now
Whitehall), and he went sorrowfully up the river, in his barge,
to Putney. An abject man he was, in spite of his pride; for
being overtaken, riding out of that place towards Esher, by
one of the King’s chamberlains who brought him a kind


Charles Dickens
289

message and a ring, he alighted from his mule, took off his
cap, and kneeled down in the dirt. His poor Fool, whom in
his prosperous days he had always kept in his palace to en-
tertain him, cut a far better figure than he; for, when the
Cardinal said to the chamberlain that he had nothing to
send to his lord the King as a present, but that jester who
was a most excellent one, it took six strong yeomen to re-
move the faithful fool from his master.
The once proud Cardinal was soon further disgraced, and
wrote the most abject letters to his vile sovereign; who
humbled him one day and encouraged him the next, ac-
cording to his humour, until he was at last ordered to go and
reside in his diocese of York. He said he was too poor; but I
don’t know how he made that out, for he took a hundred
and sixty servants with him, and seventy-two cart-loads of
furniture, food, and wine. He remained in that part of the
country for the best part of a year, and showed himself so
improved by his misfortunes, and was so mild and so con-
ciliating, that he won all hearts. And indeed, even in his
proud days, he had done some magnificent things for learn-
ing and education. At last, he was arrested for high treason; 

and, coming slowly on his journey towards London, got as
far as Leicester. Arriving at Leicester Abbey after dark, and
very ill, he said—when the monks came out at the gate with
lighted torches to receive him—that he had come to lay his
bones among them. He had indeed; for he was taken to a
bed, from which he never rose again. His last words were,
‘Had I but served God as diligently as I have served the
King, He would not have given me over, in my grey hairs.
Howbeit, this is my just reward for my pains and diligence,
not regarding my service to God, but only my duty to my
prince.’ The news of his death was quickly carried to the
King, who was amusing himself with archery in the garden
of the magnificent Palace at Hampton Court, which that
very Wolsey had presented to him. The greatest emotion his
royal mind displayed at the loss of a servant so faithful and
so ruined, was a particular desire to lay hold of fifteen hun-
dred pounds which the Cardinal was reported to have hid-
den somewhere.
The opinions concerning the divorce, of the learned doc-
tors and bishops and others, being at last collected, and be-
ing generally in the King’s favour, were forwarded to the


A Child’s Histroy of England
290

Pope, with an entreaty that he would now grant it. The un-
fortunate Pope, who was a timid man, was half distracted
between his fear of his authority being set aside in England
if he did not do as he was asked, and his dread of offending
the Emperor of Germany, who was Queen Catherine’s
nephew. In this state of mind he still evaded and did noth-
ing. Then, Thomas Cromwell, who had been one of Wolsey’s
faithful attendants, and had remained so even in his decline,
advised the King to take the matter into his own hands, and
make himself the head of the whole Church. This, the King
by various artful means, began to do; but he recompensed
the clergy by allowing them to burn as many people as they
pleased, for holding Luther’s opinions. You must understand
that Sir Thomas More, the wise man who had helped the
King with his book, had been made Chancellor in Wolsey’s
place. But, as he was truly attached to the Church as it was
even in its abuses, he, in this state of things, resigned.
Being now quite resolved to get rid of Queen Catherine,
and to marry Anne Boleyn without more ado, the King made
Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, and directed Queen
Catherine to leave the Court. She obeyed; but replied that 

wherever she went, she was Queen of England still, and would
remain so, to the last. The King then married Anne Boleyn
privately; and the new Archbishop of Canterbury, within
half a year, declared his marriage with Queen Catherine void,
and crowned Anne Boleyn Queen.
She might have known that no good could ever come from
such wrong, and that the corpulent brute who had been so
faithless and so cruel to his first wife, could be more faithless
and more cruel to his second. She might have known that,
even when he was in love with her, he had been a mean and
selfish coward, running away, like a frightened cur, from her
society and her house, when a dangerous sickness broke out
in it, and when she might easily have taken it and died, as
several of the household did. But, Anne Boleyn arrived at all
this knowledge too late, and bought it at a dear price. Her
bad marriage with a worse man came to its natural end. Its
natural end was not, as we shall too soon see, a natural death
for her.


Charles Dickens
291 

CHAPTER XXVIII
ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH 

PART THE SECOND
THE POPE WAS THROWN into a very angry state of mind when
he heard of the King’s marriage, and fumed exceedingly.
Many of the English monks and friars, seeing that their or-
der was in danger, did the same; some even declaimed against
the King in church before his face, and were not to be stopped
until he himself roared out ‘Silence!’ The King, not much
the worse for this, took it pretty quietly; and was very glad
when his Queen gave birth to a daughter, who was chris-
tened Elizabeth, and declared Princess of Wales as her sister
Mary had already been.
One of the most atrocious features of this reign was that
Henry the Eighth was always trimming between the reformed
religion and the unreformed one; so that the more he quar-
relled with the Pope, the more of his own subjects he roasted
alive for not holding the Pope’s opinions. Thus, an unfortu-
nate student named John Frith, and a poor simple tailor 

named Andrew Hewet who loved him very much, and said
that whatever John Frith believed he believed, were burnt in
Smithfield—to show what a capital Christian the King was.
But, these were speedily followed by two much greater
victims, Sir Thomas More, and John Fisher, the Bishop of
Rochester. The latter, who was a good and amiable old man,
had committed no greater offence than believing in Eliza-
beth Barton, called the Maid of Kent—another of those ri-
diculous women who pretended to be inspired, and to make
all sorts of heavenly revelations, though they indeed uttered
nothing but evil nonsense. For this offence—as it was pre-
tended, but really for denying the King to be the supreme
Head of the Church—he got into trouble, and was put in
prison; but, even then, he might have been suffered to die
naturally (short work having been made of executing the
Kentish Maid and her principal followers), but that the Pope,
to spite the King, resolved to make him a cardinal. Upon
that the King made a ferocious joke to the effect that the
Pope might send Fisher a red hat—which is the way they
make a cardinal—but he should have no head on which to
wear it; and he was tried with all unfairness and injustice,


A Child’s Histroy of England
292

and sentenced to death. He died like a noble and virtuous
old man, and left a worthy name behind him. The King
supposed, I dare say, that Sir Thomas More would be fright-
ened by this example; but, as he was not to be easily terri-
fied, and, thoroughly believing in the Pope, had made up
his mind that the King was not the rightful Head of the
Church, he positively refused to say that he was. For this
crime he too was tried and sentenced, after having been in
prison a whole year. When he was doomed to death, and
came away from his trial with the edge of the executioner’s
axe turned towards him—as was always done in those times
when a state prisoner came to that hopeless pass—he bore it
quite serenely, and gave his blessing to his son, who pressed
through the crowd in Westminster Hall and kneeled down
to receive it. But, when he got to the Tower Wharf on his
way back to his prison, and his favourite daughter, Margaret
Roper, a very good woman, rushed through the guards again
and again, to kiss him and to weep upon his neck, he was
overcome at last. He soon recovered, and never more showed
any feeling but cheerfulness and courage. When he was go-
ing up the steps of the scaffold to his death, he said jokingly 

to the Lieutenant of the Tower, observing that they were
weak and shook beneath his tread, ‘I pray you, master Lieu-
tenant, see me safe up; and, for my coming down, I can shift
for myself.’ Also he said to the executioner, after he had laid
his head upon the block, ‘Let me put my beard out of the
way; for that, at least, has never committed any treason.’
Then his head was struck off at a blow. These two execu-
tions were worthy of King Henry the Eighth. Sir Thomas
More was one of the most virtuous men in his dominions,
and the Bishop was one of his oldest and truest friends. But
to be a friend of that fellow was almost as dangerous as to be
his wife.
When the news of these two murders got to Rome, the
Pope raged against the murderer more than ever Pope raged
since the world began, and prepared a Bull, ordering his
subjects to take arms against him and dethrone him. The
King took all possible precautions to keep that document
out of his dominions, and set to work in return to suppress
a great number of the English monasteries and abbeys.
This destruction was begun by a body of commissioners,
of whom Cromwell (whom the King had taken into great


Charles Dickens
293

favour) was the head; and was carried on through some few
years to its entire completion. There is no doubt that many
of these religious establishments were religious in nothing
but in name, and were crammed with lazy, indolent, and
sensual monks. There is no doubt that they imposed upon
the people in every possible way; that they had images moved
by wires, which they pretended were miraculously moved
by Heaven; that they had among them a whole tun measure
full of teeth, all purporting to have come out of the head of
one saint, who must indeed have been a very extraordinary
person with that enormous allowance of grinders; that they
had bits of coal which they said had fried Saint Lawrence,
and bits of toe-nails which they said belonged to other fa-
mous saints; penknives, and boots, and girdles, which they
said belonged to others; and that all these bits of rubbish
were called Relics, and adored by the ignorant people. But,
on the other hand, there is no doubt either, that the King’s
officers and men punished the good monks with the bad;
did great injustice; demolished many beautiful things and
many valuable libraries; destroyed numbers of paintings,
stained glass windows, fine pavements, and carvings; and 

that the whole court were ravenously greedy and rapacious
for the division of this great spoil among them. The King
seems to have grown almost mad in the ardour of this pur-
suit; for he declared Thomas a Becket a traitor, though he
had been dead so many years, and had his body dug up out
of his grave. He must have been as miraculous as the monks
pretended, if they had told the truth, for he was found with
one head on his shoulders, and they had shown another as
his undoubted and genuine head ever since his death; it had
brought them vast sums of money, too. The gold and jewels
on his shrine filled two great chests, and eight men tottered
as they carried them away. How rich the monasteries were
you may infer from the fact that, when they were all sup-
pressed, one hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year—
in those days an immense sum—came to the Crown.
These things were not done without causing great discon-
tent among the people. The monks had been good landlords
and hospitable entertainers of all travellers, and had been
accustomed to give away a great deal of corn, and fruit, and
meat, and other things. In those days it was difficult to change
goods into money, in consequence of the roads being very


A Child’s Histroy of England
294

few and very bad, and the carts, and waggons of the worst
description; and they must either have given away some of
the good things they possessed in enormous quantities, or
have suffered them to spoil and moulder. So, many of the
people missed what it was more agreeable to get idly than to
work for; and the monks who were driven out of their homes
and wandered about encouraged their discontent; and there
were, consequently, great risings in Lincolnshire and York-
shire. These were put down by terrific executions, from which
the monks themselves did not escape, and the King went on
grunting and growling in his own fat way, like a Royal pig.
I have told all this story of the religious houses at one
time, to make it plainer, and to get back to the King’s do-
mestic affairs.
The unfortunate Queen Catherine was by this time dead;
and the King was by this time as tired of his second Queen
as he had been of his first. As he had fallen in love with Anne
when she was in the service of Catherine, so he now fell in
love with another lady in the service of Anne. See how wicked
deeds are punished, and how bitterly and self-reproachfully
the Queen must now have thought of her own rise to the 

throne! The new fancy was a  Lady Jane Seymour; and the
King no sooner set his mind on her, than he resolved to have
Anne Boleyn’s head. So, he brought a number of charges
against Anne, accusing her of dreadful crimes which she had
never committed, and implicating in them her own brother
and certain gentlemen in her service: among whom one
Norris, and Mark Smeaton a musician, are best remembered.
As the lords and councillors were as afraid of the King and as
subservient to him as the meanest peasant in England was,
they brought in Anne Boleyn guilty, and the other unfortu-
nate persons accused with her, guilty too. Those gentlemen
died like men, with the exception of Smeaton, who had been
tempted by the King into telling lies, which he called con-
fessions, and who had expected to be pardoned; but who, I
am very glad to say, was not. There was then only the Queen
to dispose of. She had been surrounded in the Tower with
women spies; had been monstrously persecuted and foully
slandered; and had received no justice. But her spirit rose
with her afflictions; and, after having in vain tried to soften
the King by writing an affecting letter to him which still
exists, ‘from her doleful prison in the Tower,’ she resigned


Charles Dickens
295

herself to death. She said to those about her, very cheerfully,
that she had heard say the executioner was a good one, and
that she had a little neck (she laughed and clasped it with
her hands as she said that), and would soon be out of her
pain. And she was soon out of her pain, poor creature, on
the Green inside the Tower, and her body was flung into an
old box and put away in the ground under the chapel.
There is a story that the King sat in his palace listening
very anxiously for the sound of the cannon which was to
announce this new murder; and that, when he heard it come
booming on the air, he rose up in great spirits and ordered
out his dogs to go a-hunting. He was bad enough to do it;
but whether he did it or not, it is certain that he married
Jane Seymour the very next day.
I have not much pleasure in recording that she lived just
long enough to give birth to a son who was christened  Ed-
ward, and then to die of a fever: for, I cannot but think that
any woman who married such a ruffian, and knew what
innocent blood was on his hands, deserved the axe that would
assuredly have fallen on the neck of Jane Seymour, if she had
lived much longer. 

Cranmer had done what he could to save some of the
Church property for purposes of religion and education; but,
the great families had been so hungry to get hold of it, that
very little could be rescued for such objects. Even  Miles
Coverdale, who did the people the inestimable service of trans-
lating the Bible into English (which the unreformed religion
never permitted to be done), was left in poverty while the
great families clutched the Church lands and money. The
people had been told that when the Crown came into pos-
session of these funds, it would not be necessary to tax them;
but they were taxed afresh directly afterwards. It was fortu-
nate for them, indeed, that so many nobles were so greedy
for this wealth; since, if it had remained with the Crown,
there might have been no end to tyranny for hundreds of
years. One of the most active writers on the Church’s side
against the King was a member of his own family—a sort of
distant cousin, Reginald Pole by name—who attacked him
in the most violent manner (though he received a pension
from him all the time), and fought for the Church with his
pen, day and night. As he was beyond the King’s reach—
being in Italy—the King politely invited him over to discuss


A Child’s Histroy of England
296

the subject; but he, knowing better than to come, and wisely
staying where he was, the King’s rage fell upon his brother
Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter, and some other
gentlemen: who were tried for high treason in correspond-
ing with him and aiding him—which they probably did—
and were all executed. The Pope made Reginald Pole a cardi-
nal; but, so much against his will, that it is thought he even
aspired in his own mind to the vacant throne of England,
and had hopes of marrying the Princess Mary. His being
made a high priest, however, put an end to all that. His
mother, the venerable Countess of Salisbury—who was, un-
fortunately for herself, within the tyrant’s reach—was the
last of his relatives on whom his wrath fell. When she was
told to lay her grey head upon the block, she answered the
executioner, ‘No! My head never committed treason, and if
you want it, you shall seize it.’ So, she ran round and round
the scaffold with the executioner striking at her, and her
grey hair bedabbled with blood; and even when they held
her down upon the block she moved her head about to the
last, resolved to be no party to her own barbarous murder.
All this the people bore, as they had borne everything else. 

Indeed they bore much more; for the slow fires of
Smithfield were continually burning, and people were con-
stantly being roasted to death—still to show what a good
Christian the King was. He defied the Pope and his Bull,
which was now issued, and had come into England; but he
burned innumerable people whose only offence was that they
differed from the Pope’s religious opinions. There was a
wretched man named Lambert, among others, who was tried
for this before the King, and with whom six bishops argued
one after another. When he was quite exhausted (as well he
might be, after six bishops), he threw himself on the King’s
mercy; but the King blustered out that he had no mercy for
heretics. So, he too fed the fire.
All this the people bore, and more than all this yet. The
national spirit seems to have been banished from the king-
dom at this time. The very people who were executed for
treason, the very wives and friends of the ‘bluff’ King, spoke
of him on the scaffold as a good prince, and a gentle prince—
just as serfs in similar circumstances have been known to do,
under the Sultan and Bashaws of the East, or under the fierce
old tyrants of Russia, who poured boiling and freezing water


Charles Dickens
297

on them alternately, until they died. The Parliament were as
bad as the rest, and gave the King whatever he wanted; among
other vile accommodations, they gave him new powers of
murdering, at his will and pleasure, any one whom he might
choose to call a traitor. But the worst measure they passed
was an Act of Six Articles, commonly called at the time ‘the
whip with six strings;’ which punished offences against the
Pope’s opinions, without mercy, and enforced the very worst
parts of the monkish religion. Cranmer would have modi-
fied it, if he could; but, being overborne by the Romish
party, had not the power. As one of the articles declared that
priests should not marry, and as he was married himself, he
sent his wife and children into Germany, and began to
tremble at his danger; none the less because he was, and had
long been, the King’s friend. This whip of six strings was
made under the King’s own eye. It should never be forgot-
ten of him how cruelly he supported the worst of the Popish
doctrines when there was nothing to be got by opposing
them.
This amiable monarch now thought of taking another wife.
He proposed to the French King to have some of the ladies 

of the French Court exhibited before him, that he might
make his Royal choice; but the French King answered that
he would rather not have his ladies trotted out to be shown
like horses at a fair. He proposed to the Dowager Duchess of
Milan, who replied that she might have thought of such a
match if she had had two heads; but, that only owning one,
she must beg to keep it safe. At last Cromwell represented
that there was a Protestant Princess in Germany—those who
held the reformed religion were called Protestants, because
their leaders had Protested against the abuses and imposi-
tions of the unreformed Church—named  Anne of Cleves,
who was beautiful, and would answer the purpose admira-
bly. The King said was she a large woman, because he must
have a fat wife? ‘O yes,’ said Cromwell; ‘she was very large,
just the thing.’ On hearing this the King sent over his fa-
mous painter, Hans Holbein, to take her portrait. Hans made
her out to be so good-looking that the King was satisfied,
and the marriage was arranged. But, whether anybody had
paid Hans to touch up the picture; or whether Hans, like
one or two other painters, flattered a princess in the ordi-
nary way of business, I cannot say: all I know is, that when


A Child’s Histroy of England
298

Anne came over and the King went to Rochester to meet
her, and first saw her without her seeing him, he swore she
was ‘a great Flanders mare,’ and said he would never marry
her. Being obliged to do it now matters had gone so far, he
would not give her the presents he had prepared, and would
never notice her. He never forgave Cromwell his part in the
affair. His downfall dates from that time.
It was quickened by his enemies, in the interests of the
unreformed religion, putting in the King’s way, at a state
dinner, a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, Catherine Howard, a
young lady of fascinating manners, though small in stature
and not particularly beautiful. Falling in love with her on
the spot, the King soon divorced Anne of Cleves after mak-
ing her the subject of much brutal talk, on pretence that she
had been previously betrothed to some one else—which
would never do for one of his dignity—and married
Catherine. It is probable that on his wedding day, of all days
in the year, he sent his faithful Cromwell to the scaffold, and
had his head struck off. He further celebrated the occasion
by burning at one time, and causing to be drawn to the fire
on the same hurdles, some Protestant prisoners for denying 

the Pope’s doctrines, and some Roman Catholic prisoners
for denying his own supremacy. Still the people bore it, and
not a gentleman in England raised his hand.
But, by a just retribution, it soon came out that Catherine
Howard, before her marriage, had been really guilty of such
crimes as the King had falsely attributed to his second wife
Anne Boleyn; so, again the dreadful axe made the King a
widower, and this Queen passed away as so many in that
reign had passed away before her. As an appropriate pursuit
under the circumstances, Henry then applied himself to su-
perintending the composition of a religious book called ‘A
necessary doctrine for any Christian Man.’ He must have
been a little confused in his mind, I think, at about this
period; for he was so false to himself as to be true to some
one: that some one being Cranmer, whom the Duke of
Norfolk and others of his enemies tried to ruin; but to whom
the King was steadfast, and to whom he one night gave his
ring, charging him when he should find himself, next day,
accused of treason, to show it to the council board. This
Cranmer did to the confusion of his enemies. I suppose the
King thought he might want him a little longer.


Charles Dickens
299

He married yet once more. Yes, strange to say, he found in
England another woman who would become his wife, and
she was Catherine Parr, widow of Lord Latimer. She leaned
towards the reformed religion; and it is some comfort to
know, that she tormented the King considerably by arguing
a variety of doctrinal points with him on all possible occa-
sions. She had very nearly done this to her own destruction.
After one of these conversations the King in a very black
mood actually instructed Gardiner, one of his Bishops who
favoured the Popish opinions, to draw a bill of accusation
against her, which would have inevitably brought her to the
scaffold where her predecessors had died, but that one of
her friends picked up the paper of instructions which had
been dropped in the palace, and gave her timely notice. She
fell ill with terror; but managed the King so well when he
came to entrap her into further statements—by saying that
she had only spoken on such points to divert his mind and
to get some information from his extraordinary wisdom—
that he gave her a kiss and called her his sweetheart. And,
when the Chancellor came next day actually to take her to
the Tower, the King sent him about his business, and 

honoured him with the epithets of a beast, a knave, and a
fool. So near was Catherine Parr to the block, and so narrow
was her escape!
There was war with Scotland in this reign, and a short
clumsy war with France for favouring Scotland; but, the
events at home were so dreadful, and leave such an enduring
stain on the country, that I need say no more of what hap-
pened abroad.
A few more horrors, and this reign is over. There was a lady,
Anne Askew, in Lincolnshire, who inclined to the Protestant
opinions, and whose husband being a fierce Catholic, turned
her out of his house. She came to London, and was consid-
ered as offending against the six articles, and was taken to the
Tower, and put upon the rack—probably because it was hoped
that she might, in her agony, criminate some obnoxious per-
sons; if falsely, so much the better. She was tortured without
uttering a cry, until the Lieutenant of the Tower would suffer
his men to torture her no more; and then two priests who
were present actually pulled off their robes, and turned the
wheels of the rack with their own hands, so rending and twist-
ing and breaking her that she was afterwards carried to the


A Child’s Histroy of England
300

fire in a chair. She was burned with three others, a gentleman,
a clergyman, and a tailor; and so the world went on.
Either the King became afraid of the power of the Duke
of Norfolk, and his son the Earl of Surrey, or they gave him
some offence, but he resolved to pull them down, to follow
all the rest who were gone. The son was tried first—of course
for nothing—and defended himself bravely; but of course
he was found guilty, and of course he was executed. Then
his father was laid hold of, and left for death too.
But the King himself was left for death by a Greater King,
and the earth was to be rid of him at last. He was now a
swollen, hideous spectacle, with a great hole in his leg, and
so odious to every sense that it was dreadful to approach
him. When he was found to be dying, Cranmer was sent for
from his palace at Croydon, and came with all speed, but
found him speechless. Happily, in that hour he perished.
He was in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and the thirty-eighth
of his reign.
Henry the Eighth has been favoured by some Protestant
writers, because the Reformation was achieved in his time.
But the mighty merit of it lies with other men and not with 

him; and it can be rendered none the worse by this monster’s
crimes, and none the better by any defence of them. The
plain truth is, that he was a most intolerable ruffian, a dis-
grace to human nature, and a blot of blood and grease upon
the History of England. 

CHAPTER XXIX
ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SIXTH 

HENRY THE EIGHTH HAD MADE a will, appointing a council of
sixteen to govern the kingdom for his son while he was un-
der age (he was now only ten years old), and another council
of twelve to help them. The most powerful of the first coun-
cil was the Earl of Hertford, the young King’s uncle, who lost
no time in bringing his nephew with great state up to Enfield,
and thence to the Tower. It was considered at the time a
striking proof of virtue in the young King that he was sorry
for his father’s death; but, as common subjects have that
virtue too, sometimes, we will say no more about it.
There was a curious part of the late King’s will, requiring
his executors to fulfil whatever promises he had made. Some


Charles Dickens
301

of the court wondering what these might be, the Earl of
Hertford and the other noblemen interested, said that they
were promises to advance and enrich  them. So, the Earl of
Hertford made himself  Duke of Somerset , and made his
brother Edward Seymour a baron; and there were various
similar promotions, all very agreeable to the parties con-
cerned, and very dutiful, no doubt, to the late King’s memory.
To be more dutiful still, they made themselves rich out of
the Church lands, and were very comfortable. The new Duke
of Somerset caused himself to be declared  Protector of the
kingdom, and was, indeed, the King.
As young Edward the Sixth had been brought up in the
principles of the Protestant religion, everybody knew that
they would be maintained. But Cranmer, to whom they were
chiefly entrusted, advanced them steadily and temperately.
Many superstitious and ridiculous practices were stopped;
but practices which were harmless were not interfered with.
The Duke of Somerset, the Protector, was anxious to have
the young King engaged in marriage to the young Queen of
Scotland, in order to prevent that princess from making an
alliance with any foreign power; but, as a large party in Scot- 

land were unfavourable to this plan, he invaded that coun-
try. His excuse for doing so was, that the Border men—that
is, the Scotch who lived in that part of the country where
England and Scotland joined—troubled the English very
much. But there were two sides to this question; for the
English Border men troubled the Scotch too; and, through
many long years, there were perpetual border quarrels which
gave rise to numbers of old tales and songs. However, the
Protector invaded Scotland; and Arran, the Scottish Regent,
with an army twice as large as his, advanced to meet him.
They encountered on the banks of the river Esk, within a
few miles of Edinburgh; and there, after a little skirmish,
the Protector made such moderate proposals, in offering to
retire if the Scotch would only engage not to marry their
princess to any foreign prince, that the Regent thought the
English were afraid. But in this he made a horrible mistake;
for the English soldiers on land, and the English sailors on
the water, so set upon the Scotch, that they broke and fled,
and more than ten thousand of them were killed. It was a
dreadful battle, for the fugitives were slain without mercy.
The ground for four miles, all the way to Edinburgh, was


A Child’s Histroy of England
302

strewn with dead men, and with arms, and legs, and heads.
Some hid themselves in streams and were drowned; some
threw away their armour and were killed running, almost
naked; but in this battle of Pinkey the English lost only two
or three hundred men. They were much better clothed than
the Scotch; at the poverty of whose appearance and country
they were exceedingly astonished.
A Parliament was called when Somerset came back, and it
repealed the whip with six strings, and did one or two other
good things; though it unhappily retained the punishment
of burning for those people who did not make believe to
believe, in all religious matters, what the Government had
declared that they must and should believe. It also made a
foolish law (meant to put down beggars), that any man who
lived idly and loitered about for three days together, should
be burned with a hot iron, made a slave, and wear an iron
fetter. But this savage absurdity soon came to an end, and
went the way of a great many other foolish laws.
The Protector was now so proud that he sat in Parliament
before all the nobles, on the right hand of the throne. Many
other noblemen, who only wanted to be as proud if they 

could get a chance, became his enemies of course; and it is
supposed that he came back suddenly from Scotland because
he had received news that his brother,  Lord Seymour, was
becoming dangerous to him. This lord was now High Ad-
miral of England; a very handsome man, and a great favourite
with the Court ladies—even with the young Princess Eliza-
beth, who romped with him a little more than young prin-
cesses in these times do with any one. He had married
Catherine Parr, the late King’s widow, who was now dead;
and, to strengthen his power, he secretly supplied the young
King with money. He may even have engaged with some of
his brother’s enemies in a plot to carry the boy off. On these
and other accusations, at any rate, he was confined in the
Tower, impeached, and found guilty; his own brother’s name
being—unnatural and sad to tell—the first signed to the
warrant of his execution. He was executed on Tower Hill,
and died denying his treason. One of his last proceedings in
this world was to write two letters, one to the Princess Eliza-
beth, and one to the Princess Mary, which a servant of his
took charge of, and concealed in his shoe. These letters are
supposed to have urged them against his brother, and to


Charles Dickens
303

revenge his death. What they truly contained is not known;
but there is no doubt that he had, at one time, obtained
great influence over the Princess Elizabeth.
All this while, the Protestant religion was making progress.
The images which the people had gradually come to wor-
ship, were removed from the churches; the people were in-
formed that they need not confess themselves to priests un-
less they chose; a common prayer-book was drawn up in the
English language, which all could understand, and many
other improvements were made; still moderately. For
Cranmer was a very moderate man, and even restrained the
Protestant clergy from violently abusing the unreformed re-
ligion—as they very often did, and which was not a good
example. But the people were at this time in great distress.
The rapacious nobility who had come into possession of the
Church lands, were very bad landlords. They enclosed great
quantities of ground for the feeding of sheep, which was
then more profitable than the growing of crops; and this
increased the general distress. So the people, who still un-
derstood little of what was going on about them, and still
readily believed what the homeless monks told them—many 

of whom had been their good friends in their better days—
took it into their heads that all this was owing to the re-
formed religion, and therefore rose, in many parts of the
country.
The most powerful risings were in Devonshire and Nor-
folk. In Devonshire, the rebellion was so strong that ten thou-
sand men united within a few days, and even laid siege to
Exeter. But Lord Russell, coming to the assistance of the citi-
zens who defended that town, defeated the rebels; and, not
only hanged the Mayor of one place, but hanged the vicar of
another from his own church steeple. What with hanging and
killing by the sword, four thousand of the rebels are supposed
to have fallen in that one county. In Norfolk (where the rising
was more against the enclosure of open lands than against the
reformed religion), the popular leader was a man named Rob-
ert Ket, a tanner of Wymondham. The mob were, in the first
instance, excited against the tanner by one John Flowerdew, a
gentleman who owed him a grudge: but the tanner was more
than a match for the gentleman, since he soon got the people
on his side, and established himself near Norwich with quite
an army. There was a large oak-tree in that place, on a spot


A Child’s Histroy of England
304

called Moushold Hill, which Ket named the Tree of Reforma-
tion; and under its green boughs, he and his men sat, in the
midsummer weather, holding courts of justice, and debating
affairs of state. They were even impartial enough to allow some
rather tiresome public speakers to get up into this Tree of
Reformation, and point out their errors to them, in long dis-
courses, while they lay listening (not always without some
grumbling and growling) in the shade below. At last, one sunny
July day, a herald appeared below the tree, and proclaimed
Ket and all his men traitors, unless from that moment they
dispersed and went home: in which case they were to receive
a pardon. But, Ket and his men made light of the herald and
became stronger than ever, until the Earl of Warwick went
after them with a sufficient force, and cut them all to pieces.
A few were hanged, drawn, and quartered, as traitors, and
their limbs were sent into various country places to be a terror
to the people. Nine of them were hanged upon nine green
branches of the Oak of Reformation; and so, for the time,
that tree may be said to have withered away.
The Protector, though a haughty man, had compassion
for the real distresses of the common people, and a sincere 

desire to help them. But he was too proud and too high in
degree to hold even their favour steadily; and many of the
nobles always envied and hated him, because they were as
proud and not as high as he. He was at this time building a
great Palace in the Strand: to get the stone for which he blew
up church steeples with gunpowder, and pulled down bish-
ops’ houses: thus making himself still more disliked. At
length, his principal enemy, the Earl of Warwick—Dudley
by name, and the son of that Dudley who had made himself
so odious with Empson, in the reign of Henry the Seventh—
joined with seven other members of the Council against him,
formed a separate Council; and, becoming stronger in a few
days, sent him to the Tower under twenty-nine articles of
accusation. After being sentenced by the Council to the for-
feiture of all his offices and lands, he was liberated and par-
doned, on making a very humble submission. He was even
taken back into the Council again, after having suffered this
fall, and married his daughter,  Lady Anne Seymour , to
Warwick’s eldest son. But such a reconciliation was little likely
to last, and did not outlive a year. Warwick, having got him-
self made Duke of Northumberland, and having advanced


Charles Dickens
305

the more important of his friends, then finished the history
by causing the Duke of Somerset and his friend Lord Grey,
and others, to be arrested for treason, in having conspired to
seize and dethrone the King. They were also accused of hav-
ing intended to seize the new Duke of Northumberland,
with his friends  Lord Northampton and Lord Pembroke; to
murder them if they found need; and to raise the City to
revolt. All this the fallen Protector positively denied; except
that he confessed to having spoken of the murder of those
three noblemen, but having never designed it. He was ac-
quitted of the charge of treason, and found guilty of the
other charges; so when the people—who remembered his
having been their friend, now that he was disgraced and in
danger, saw him come out from his trial with the axe turned
from him—they thought he was altogether acquitted, and
sent up a loud shout of joy.
But the Duke of Somerset was ordered to be beheaded on
Tower Hill, at eight o’clock in the morning, and proclama-
tions were issued bidding the citizens keep at home until
after ten. They filled the streets, however, and crowded the
place of execution as soon as it was light; and, with sad faces 

and sad hearts, saw the once powerful Protector ascend the
scaffold to lay his head upon the dreadful block. While he
was yet saying his last words to them with manly courage,
and telling them, in particular, how it comforted him, at
that pass, to have assisted in reforming the national religion,
a member of the Council was seen riding up on horseback.
They again thought that the Duke was saved by his bringing
a reprieve, and again shouted for joy. But the Duke himself
told them they were mistaken, and laid down his head and
had it struck off at a blow.
Many of the bystanders rushed forward and steeped their
handkerchiefs in his blood, as a mark of their affection. He had,
indeed, been capable of many good acts, and one of them was
discovered after he was no more. The Bishop of Durham, a
very good man, had been informed against to the Council, when
the Duke was in power, as having answered a treacherous letter
proposing a rebellion against the reformed religion. As the an-
swer could not be found, he could not be declared guilty; but it
was now discovered, hidden by the Duke himself among some
private papers, in his regard for that good man. The Bishop lost
his office, and was deprived of his possessions.


A Child’s Histroy of England
306

It is not very pleasant to know that while his uncle lay in
prison under sentence of death, the young King was being
vastly entertained by plays, and dances, and sham fights: but
there is no doubt of it, for he kept a journal himself. It is
pleasanter to know that not a single Roman Catholic was
burnt in this reign for holding that religion; though two
wretched victims suffered for heresy. One, a woman named
Joan Bocher, for professing some opinions that even she could
only explain in unintelligible jargon. The other, a Dutch-
man, named Von Paris, who practised as a surgeon in Lon-
don. Edward was, to his credit, exceedingly unwilling to sign
the warrant for the woman’s execution: shedding tears be-
fore he did so, and telling Cranmer, who urged him to do it
(though Cranmer really would have spared the woman at
first, but for her own determined obstinacy), that the guilt
was not his, but that of the man who so strongly urged the
dreadful act. We shall see, too soon, whether the time ever
came when Cranmer is likely to have remembered this with
sorrow and remorse.
Cranmer and Ridley (at first Bishop of Rochester, and af-
terwards Bishop of London) were the most powerful of the 

clergy of this reign. Others were imprisoned and deprived of
their property for still adhering to the unreformed religion;
the most important among whom were Gardiner Bishop of
Winchester,  Heath Bishop of Worcester,  Day Bishop of
Chichester, and Bonner that Bishop of London who was su-
perseded by Ridley. The Princess Mary, who inherited her
mother’s gloomy temper, and hated the reformed religion as
connected with her mother’s wrongs and sorrows—she knew
nothing else about it, always refusing to read a single book in
which it was truly described—held by the unreformed reli-
gion too, and was the only person in the kingdom for whom
the old Mass was allowed to be performed; nor would the
young King have made that exception even in her favour, but
for the strong persuasions of Cranmer and Ridley. He always
viewed it with horror; and when he fell into a sickly condi-
tion, after having been very ill, first of the measles and then of
the small-pox, he was greatly troubled in mind to think that if
he died, and she, the next heir to the throne, succeeded, the
Roman Catholic religion would be set up again.
This uneasiness, the Duke of Northumberland was not
slow to encourage: for, if the Princess Mary came to the


Charles Dickens
307

throne, he, who had taken part with the Protestants, was
sure to be disgraced. Now, the Duchess of Suffolk was de-
scended from King Henry the Seventh; and, if she resigned
what little or no right she had, in favour of her daughter
Lady Jane Grey, that would be the succession to promote the
Duke’s greatness; because Lord Guilford Dudley, one of his
sons, was, at this very time, newly married to her. So, he
worked upon the King’s fears, and persuaded him to set aside
both the Princess Mary and the Princess Elizabeth, and as-
sert his right to appoint his successor. Accordingly the young
King handed to the Crown lawyers a writing signed half a
dozen times over by himself, appointing Lady Jane Grey to
succeed to the Crown, and requiring them to have his will
made out according to law. They were much against it at
first, and told the King so; but the Duke of
Northumberland—being so violent about it that the law-
yers even expected him to beat them, and hotly declaring
that, stripped to his shirt, he would fight any man in such a
quarrel—they yielded. Cranmer, also, at first hesitated; plead-
ing that he had sworn to maintain the succession of the
Crown to the Princess Mary; but, he was a weak man in his 

resolutions, and afterwards signed the document with the
rest of the council.
It was completed none too soon; for Edward was now sink-
ing in a rapid decline; and, by way of making him better,
they handed him over to a woman-doctor who pretended to
be able to cure it. He speedily got worse. On the sixth of
July, in the year one thousand five hundred and fifty-three,
he died, very peaceably and piously, praying God, with his
last breath, to protect the reformed religion.
This King died in the sixteenth year of his age, and in the
seventh of his reign. It is difficult to judge what the charac-
ter of one so young might afterwards have become among so
many bad, ambitious, quarrelling nobles. But, he was an
amiable boy, of very good abilities, and had nothing coarse
or cruel or brutal in his disposition—which in the son of
such a father is rather surprising.


A Child’s Histroy of England
308 

CHAPTER XXX
ENGLAND UNDER MARY 

THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND was very anxious to keep
the young King’s death a secret, in order that he might get
the two Princesses into his power. But, the Princess Mary,
being informed of that event as she was on her way to Lon-
don to see her sick brother, turned her horse’s head, and
rode away into Norfolk. The Earl of Arundel was her friend,
and it was he who sent her warning of what had happened.
As the secret could not be kept, the Duke of
Northumberland and the council sent for the Lord Mayor
of London and some of the aldermen, and made a merit of
telling it to them. Then, they made it known to the people,
and set off to inform Lady Jane Grey that she was to be
Queen.
She was a pretty girl of only sixteen, and was amiable,
learned, and clever. When the lords who came to her, fell on
their knees before her, and told her what tidings they brought,
she was so astonished that she fainted. On recovering, she
expressed her sorrow for the young King’s death, and said 

that she knew she was unfit to govern the kingdom; but that
if she must be Queen, she prayed God to direct her. She was
then at Sion House, near Brentford; and the lords took her
down the river in state to the Tower, that she might remain
there (as the custom was) until she was crowned. But the
people were not at all favourable to Lady Jane, considering
that the right to be Queen was Mary’s, and greatly disliking
the Duke of Northumberland. They were not put into a
better humour by the Duke’s causing a vintner’s servant,
one Gabriel Pot, to be taken up for expressing his dissatis-
faction among the crowd, and to have his ears nailed to the
pillory, and cut off. Some powerful men among the nobility
declared on Mary’s side. They raised troops to support her
cause, had her proclaimed Queen at Norwich, and gathered
around her at the castle of Framlingham, which belonged to
the Duke of Norfolk. For, she was not considered so safe as
yet, but that it was best to keep her in a castle on the sea-
coast, from whence she might be sent abroad, if necessary.
The Council would have despatched Lady Jane’s father,
the Duke of Suffolk, as the general of the army against this
force; but, as Lady Jane implored that her father might re-


Charles Dickens
309

main with her, and as he was known to be but a weak man,
they told the Duke of Northumberland that he must take
the command himself. He was not very ready to do so, as he
mistrusted the Council much; but there was no help for it,
and he set forth with a heavy heart, observing to a lord who
rode beside him through Shoreditch at the head of the troops,
that, although the people pressed in great numbers to look
at them, they were terribly silent.
And his fears for himself turned out to be well founded.
While he was waiting at Cambridge for further help from
the Council, the Council took it into their heads to turn
their backs on Lady Jane’s cause, and to take up the Princess
Mary’s. This was chiefly owing to the before-mentioned Earl
of Arundel, who represented to the Lord Mayor and alder-
men, in a second interview with those sagacious persons,
that, as for himself, he did not perceive the Reformed reli-
gion to be in much danger—which Lord Pembroke backed
by flourishing his sword as another kind of persuasion. The
Lord Mayor and aldermen, thus enlightened, said there could
be no doubt that the Princess Mary ought to be Queen. So,
she was proclaimed at the Cross by St. Paul’s, and barrels of 

wine were given to the people, and they got very drunk, and
danced round blazing bonfires - little thinking, poor wretches,
what other bonfires would soon be blazing in Queen Mary’s
name.
After a ten days’ dream of royalty, Lady Jane Grey resigned
the Crown with great willingness, saying that she had only
accepted it in obedience to her father and mother; and went
gladly back to her pleasant house by the river, and her books.
Mary then came on towards London; and at Wanstead in
Essex, was joined by her half-sister, the Princess Elizabeth.
They passed through the streets of London to the Tower,
and there the new Queen met some eminent prisoners then
confined in it, kissed them, and gave them their liberty.
Among these was that Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who
had been imprisoned in the last reign for holding to the
unreformed religion. Him she soon made chancellor.
The Duke of Northumberland had been taken prisoner,
and, together with his son and five others, was quickly
brought before the Council. He, not unnaturally, asked that
Council, in his defence, whether it was treason to obey or-
ders that had been issued under the great seal; and, if it were,


A Child’s Histroy of England
310

whether they, who had obeyed them too, ought to be his
judges? But they made light of these points; and, being re-
solved to have him out of the way, soon sentenced him to
death. He had risen into power upon the death of another
man, and made but a poor show (as might be expected) when
he himself lay low. He entreated Gardiner to let him live, if
it were only in a mouse’s hole; and, when he ascended the
scaffold to be beheaded on Tower Hill, addressed the people
in a miserable way, saying that he had been incited by oth-
ers, and exhorting them to return to the unreformed reli-
gion, which he told them was his faith. There seems reason
to suppose that he expected a pardon even then, in return
for this confession; but it matters little whether he did or
not. His head was struck off.
Mary was now crowned Queen. She was thirty-seven years
of age, short and thin, wrinkled in the face, and very un-
healthy. But she had a great liking for show and for bright
colours, and all the ladies of her Court were magnificently
dressed. She had a great liking too for old customs, without
much sense in them; and she was oiled in the oldest way,
and blessed in the oldest way, and done all manner of things 

to in the oldest way, at her coronation. I hope they did her
good.
She soon began to show her desire to put down the Re-
formed religion, and put up the unreformed one: though it
was dangerous work as yet, the people being something wiser
than they used to be. They even cast a shower of stones—and
among them a dagger—at one of the royal chaplains who at-
tacked the Reformed religion in a public sermon. But the
Queen and her priests went steadily on. Ridley, the powerful
bishop of the last reign, was seized and sent to the Tower.
Latimer, also celebrated among the Clergy of the last reign,
was likewise sent to the Tower, and Cranmer speedily followed.
Latimer was an aged man; and, as his guards took him through
Smithfield, he looked round it, and said, ‘This is a place that
hath long groaned for me.’ For he knew well, what kind of
bonfires would soon be burning. Nor was the knowledge con-
fined to him. The prisons were fast filled with the chief Prot-
estants, who were there left rotting in darkness, hunger, dirt,
and separation from their friends; many, who had time left
them for escape, fled from the kingdom; and the dullest of the
people began, now, to see what was coming.


Charles Dickens
311

It came on fast. A Parliament was got together; not with-
out strong suspicion of unfairness; and they annulled the
divorce, formerly pronounced by Cranmer between the
Queen’s mother and King Henry the Eighth, and unmade
all the laws on the subject of religion that had been made in
the last King Edward’s reign. They began their proceedings,
in violation of the law, by having the old mass said before
them in Latin, and by turning out a bishop who would not
kneel down. They also declared guilty of treason, Lady Jane
Grey for aspiring to the Crown; her husband, for being her
husband; and Cranmer, for not believing in the mass afore-
said. They then prayed the Queen graciously to choose a
husband for herself, as soon as might be.
Now, the question who should be the Queen’s husband
had given rise to a great deal of discussion, and to several
contending parties. Some said Cardinal Pole was the man—
but the Queen was of opinion that he was not the man, he
being too old and too much of a student. Others said that
the gallant young Courtenay, whom the Queen had made
Earl of Devonshire, was the man—and the Queen thought
so too, for a while; but she changed her mind. At last it 

appeared that Philip Prince of Spain, was certainly the man—
though certainly not the people’s man; for they detested the
idea of such a marriage from the beginning to the end, and
murmured that the Spaniard would establish in England, by
the aid of foreign soldiers, the worst abuses of the Popish
religion, and even the terrible Inquisition itself.
These discontents gave rise to a conspiracy for marrying young
Courtenay to the Princess Elizabeth, and setting them up, with
popular tumults all over the kingdom, against the Queen. This was
discovered in time by Gardiner; but in Kent, the old bold county,
the people rose in their old bold way. Sir Thomas Wyat, a man of
great daring, was their leader. He raised his standard at Maidstone,
marched on to Rochester, established himself in the old castle there,
and prepared to hold out against the Duke of Norfolk, who came
against him with a party of the Queen’s guards, and a body of five
hundred London men. The London men, however, were all for
Elizabeth, and not at all for Mary. They declared, under the castle
walls, for Wyat; the Duke retreated; and Wyat came on to Deptford,
at the head of fifteen thousand men.
But these, in their turn, fell away. When he came to
Southwark, there were only two thousand left. Not dismayed


A Child’s Histroy of England
312

by finding the London citizens in arms, and the guns at the
Tower ready to oppose his crossing the river there, Wyat led
them off to Kingston-upon-Thames, intending to cross the
bridge that he knew to be in that place, and so to work his way
round to Ludgate, one of the old gates of the City. He found
the bridge broken down, but mended it, came across, and
bravely fought his way up Fleet Street to Ludgate Hill. Find-
ing the gate closed against him, he fought his way back again,
sword in hand, to Temple Bar. Here, being overpowered, he
surrendered himself, and three or four hundred of his men
were taken, besides a hundred killed. Wyat, in a moment of
weakness (and perhaps of torture) was afterwards made to
accuse the Princess Elizabeth as his accomplice to some very
small extent. But his manhood soon returned to him, and he
refused to save his life by making any more false confessions.
He was quartered and distributed in the usual brutal way, and
from fifty to a hundred of his followers were hanged. The rest
were led out, with halters round their necks, to be pardoned,
and to make a parade of crying out, ‘God save Queen Mary!’
In the danger of this rebellion, the Queen showed herself
to be a woman of courage and spirit. She disdained to retreat 

to any place of safety, and went down to the Guildhall, sceptre
in hand, and made a gallant speech to the Lord Mayor and
citizens. But on the day after Wyat’s defeat, she did the most
cruel act, even of her cruel reign, in signing the warrant for
the execution of Lady Jane Grey.
They tried to persuade Lady Jane to accept the unreformed
religion; but she steadily refused. On the morning when she
was to die, she saw from her window the bleeding and head-
less body of her husband brought back in a cart from the
scaffold on Tower Hill where he had laid down his life. But,
as she had declined to see him before his execution, lest she
should be overpowered and not make a good end, so, she
even now showed a constancy and calmness that will never
be forgotten. She came up to the scaffold with a firm step
and a quiet face, and addressed the bystanders in a steady
voice. They were not numerous; for she was too young, too
innocent and fair, to be murdered before the people on Tower
Hill, as her husband had just been; so, the place of her ex-
ecution was within the Tower itself. She said that she had
done an unlawful act in taking what was Queen Mary’s right;
but that she had done so with no bad intent, and that she


Charles Dickens
313

died a humble Christian. She begged the executioner to des-
patch her quickly, and she asked him, ‘Will you take my
head off before I lay me down?’ He answered, ‘No, Madam,’
and then she was very quiet while they bandaged her eyes.
Being blinded, and unable to see the block on which she was
to lay her young head, she was seen to feel about for it with
her hands, and was heard to say, confused, ‘O what shall I
do! Where is it?’ Then they guided her to the right place,
and the executioner struck off her head. You know too well,
now, what dreadful deeds the executioner did in England,
through many, many years, and how his axe descended on
the hateful block through the necks of some of the bravest,
wisest, and best in the land. But it never struck so cruel and
so vile a blow as this.
The father of Lady Jane soon followed, but was little pit-
ied. Queen Mary’s next object was to lay hold of Elizabeth,
and this was pursued with great eagerness. Five hundred men
were sent to her retired house at Ashridge, by Berkhampstead,
with orders to bring her up, alive or dead. They got there at
ten at night, when she was sick in bed. But, their leaders
followed her lady into her bedchamber, whence she was 

brought out betimes next morning, and put into a litter to
be conveyed to London. She was so weak and ill, that she
was five days on the road; still, she was so resolved to be seen
by the people that she had the curtains of the litter opened;
and so, very pale and sickly, passed through the streets. She
wrote to her sister, saying she was innocent of any crime,
and asking why she was made a prisoner; but she got no
answer, and was ordered to the Tower. They took her in by
the Traitor’s Gate, to which she objected, but in vain. One
of the lords who conveyed her offered to cover her with his
cloak, as it was raining, but she put it away from her, proudly
and scornfully, and passed into the Tower, and sat down in a
court-yard on a stone. They besought her to come in out of
the wet; but she answered that it was better sitting there,
than in a worse place. At length she went to her apartment,
where she was kept a prisoner, though not so close a pris-
oner as at Woodstock, whither she was afterwards removed,
and where she is said to have one day envied a milkmaid
whom she heard singing in the sunshine as she went through
the green fields. Gardiner, than whom there were not many
worse men among the fierce and sullen priests, cared little to


A Child’s Histroy of England
314

keep secret his stern desire for her death: being used to say
that it was of little service to shake off the leaves, and lop the
branches of the tree of heresy, if its root, the hope of her-
etics, were left. He failed, however, in his benevolent design.
Elizabeth was, at length, released; and Hatfield House was
assigned to her as a residence, under the care of one Sir Tho-
mas Pope.
It would seem that Philip, the Prince of Spain, was a main
cause of this change in Elizabeth’s fortunes. He was not an
amiable man, being, on the contrary, proud, overbearing,
and gloomy; but he and the Spanish lords who came over
with him, assuredly did discountenance the idea of doing
any violence to the Princess. It may have been mere pru-
dence, but we will hope it was manhood and honour. The
Queen had been expecting her husband with great impa-
tience, and at length he came, to her great joy, though he
never cared much for her. They were married by Gardiner,
at Winchester, and there was more holiday-making among
the people; but they had their old distrust of this Spanish
marriage, in which even the Parliament shared. Though the
members of that Parliament were far from honest, and were 

strongly suspected to have been bought with Spanish money,
they would pass no bill to enable the Queen to set aside the
Princess Elizabeth and appoint her own successor.
Although Gardiner failed in this object, as well as in the
darker one of bringing the Princess to the scaffold, he went
on at a great pace in the revival of the unreformed religion.
A new Parliament was packed, in which there were no Prot-
estants. Preparations were made to receive Cardinal Pole in
England as the Pope’s messenger, bringing his holy declara-
tion that all the nobility who had acquired Church prop-
erty, should keep it—which was done to enlist their selfish
interest on the Pope’s side. Then a great scene was enacted,
which was the triumph of the Queen’s plans. Cardinal Pole
arrived in great splendour and dignity, and was received with
great pomp. The Parliament joined in a petition expressive
of their sorrow at the change in the national religion, and
praying him to receive the country again into the Popish
Church. With the Queen sitting on her throne, and the King
on one side of her, and the Cardinal on the other, and the
Parliament present, Gardiner read the petition aloud. The
Cardinal then made a great speech, and was so obliging as to


Charles Dickens
315

say that all was forgotten and forgiven, and that the king-
dom was solemnly made Roman Catholic again.
Everything was now ready for the lighting of the terrible
bonfires. The Queen having declared to the Council, in
writing, that she would wish none of her subjects to be burnt
without some of the Council being present, and that she
would particularly wish there to be good sermons at all
burnings, the Council knew pretty well what was to be done
next. So, after the Cardinal had blessed all the bishops as a
preface to the burnings, the Chancellor Gardiner opened a
High Court at Saint Mary Overy, on the Southwark side of
London Bridge, for the trial of heretics. Here, two of the
late Protestant clergymen, Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, and
Rogers, a Prebendary of St. Paul’s, were brought to be tried.
Hooper was tried first for being married, though a priest,
and for not believing in the mass. He admitted both of these
accusations, and said that the mass was a wicked imposition.
Then they tried Rogers, who said the same. Next morning
the two were brought up to be sentenced; and then Rogers
said that his poor wife, being a German woman and a stranger
in the land, he hoped might be allowed to come to speak to 

him before he died. To this the inhuman Gardiner replied,
that she was not his wife. ‘Yea, but she is, my lord,’ said
Rogers, ‘and she hath been my wife these eighteen years.’
His request was still refused, and they were both sent to
Newgate; all those who stood in the streets to sell things,
being ordered to put out their lights that the people might
not see them. But, the people stood at their doors with candles
in their hands, and prayed for them as they went by. Soon
afterwards, Rogers was taken out of jail to be burnt in
Smithfield; and, in the crowd as he went along, he saw his
poor wife and his ten children, of whom the youngest was a
little baby. And so he was burnt to death.
The next day, Hooper, who was to be burnt at Gloucester,
was brought out to take his last journey, and was made to
wear a hood over his face that he might not be known by the
people. But, they did know him for all that, down in his
own part of the country; and, when he came near Gloucester,
they lined the road, making prayers and lamentations. His
guards took him to a lodging, where he slept soundly all
night. At nine o’clock next morning, he was brought forth
leaning on a staff; for he had taken cold in prison, and was


A Child’s Histroy of England
316

infirm. The iron stake, and the iron chain which was to bind
him to it, were fixed up near a great elm-tree in a pleasant
open place before the cathedral, where, on peaceful Sun-
days, he had been accustomed to preach and to pray, when
he was bishop of Gloucester. This tree, which had no leaves
then, it being February, was filled with people; and the priests
of Gloucester College were looking complacently on from a
window, and there was a great concourse of spectators in
every spot from which a glimpse of the dreadful sight could
be beheld. When the old man kneeled down on the small
platform at the foot of the stake, and prayed aloud, the near-
est people were observed to be so attentive to his prayers
that they were ordered to stand farther back; for it did not
suit the Romish Church to have those Protestant words heard.
His prayers concluded, he went up to the stake and was
stripped to his shirt, and chained ready for the fire. One of
his guards had such compassion on him that, to shorten his
agonies, he tied some packets of gunpowder about him. Then
they heaped up wood and straw and reeds, and set them all
alight. But, unhappily, the wood was green and damp, and
there was a wind blowing that blew what flame there was, 

away. Thus, through three-quarters of an hour, the good old
man was scorched and roasted and smoked, as the fire rose
and sank; and all that time they saw him, as he burned,
moving his lips in prayer, and beating his breast with one
hand, even after the other was burnt away and had fallen
off.
Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, were taken to Oxford to
dispute with a commission of priests and doctors about the
mass. They were shamefully treated; and it is recorded that
the Oxford scholars hissed and howled and groaned, and
misconducted themselves in an anything but a scholarly way.
The prisoners were taken back to jail, and afterwards tried
in St. Mary’s Church. They were all found guilty. On the
sixteenth of the month of October, Ridley and Latimer were
brought out, to make another of the dreadful bonfires.
The scene of the suffering of these two good Protestant
men was in the City ditch, near Baliol College. On coming
to the dreadful spot, they kissed the stakes, and then em-
braced each other. And then a learned doctor got up into a
pulpit which was placed there, and preached a sermon from
the text, ‘Though I give my body to be burned, and have


Charles Dickens
317

not charity, it profiteth me nothing.’ When you think of the
charity of burning men alive, you may imagine that this
learned doctor had a rather brazen face. Ridley would have
answered his sermon when it came to an end, but was not
allowed. When Latimer was stripped, it appeared that he
had dressed himself under his other clothes, in a new shroud;
and, as he stood in it before all the people, it was noted of
him, and long remembered, that, whereas he had been stoop-
ing and feeble but a few minutes before, he now stood up-
right and handsome, in the knowledge that he was dying for
a just and a great cause. Ridley’s brother-in-law was there
with bags of gunpowder; and when they were both chained
up, he tied them round their bodies. Then, a light was thrown
upon the pile to fire it. ‘Be of good comfort, Master Ridley,’
said Latimer, at that awful moment, ‘and play the man! We
shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in En-
gland, as I trust shall never be put out.’ And then he was
seen to make motions with his hands as if he were washing
them in the flames, and to stroke his aged face with them,
and was heard to cry, ‘Father of Heaven, receive my soul!’
He died quickly, but the fire, after having burned the legs of 

Ridley, sunk. There he lingered, chained to the iron post,
and crying, ‘O! I cannot burn! O! for Christ’s sake let the
fire come unto me!’ And still, when his brother-in-law had
heaped on more wood, he was heard through the blinding
smoke, still dismally crying, ‘O! I cannot burn, I cannot
burn!’ At last, the gunpowder caught fire, and ended his
miseries.
Five days after this fearful scene, Gardiner went to his
tremendous account before God, for the cruelties he had so
much assisted in committing.
Cranmer remained still alive and in prison. He was brought
out again in February, for more examining and trying, by
Bonner, Bishop of London: another man of blood, who had
succeeded to Gardiner’s work, even in his lifetime, when
Gardiner was tired of it. Cranmer was now degraded as a
priest, and left for death; but, if the Queen hated any one on
earth, she hated him, and it was resolved that he should be
ruined and disgraced to the utmost. There is no doubt that
the Queen and her husband personally urged on these deeds,
because they wrote to the Council, urging them to be active
in the kindling of the fearful fires. As Cranmer was known


A Child’s Histroy of England
318

not to be a firm man, a plan was laid for surrounding him
with artful people, and inducing him to recant to the
unreformed religion. Deans and friars visited him, played at
bowls with him, showed him various attentions, talked per-
suasively with him, gave him money for his prison com-
forts, and induced him to sign, I fear, as many as six recanta-
tions. But when, after all, he was taken out to be burnt, he
was nobly true to his better self, and made a glorious end.
After prayers and a sermon, Dr. Cole, the preacher of the
day (who had been one of the artful priests about Cranmer in
prison), required him to make a public confession of his faith
before the people. This, Cole did, expecting that he would
declare himself a Roman Catholic. ‘I will make a profession of
my faith,’ said Cranmer, ‘and with a good will too.’
Then, he arose before them all, and took from the sleeve
of his robe a written prayer and read it aloud. That done, he
kneeled and said the Lord’s Prayer, all the people joining;
and then he arose again and told them that he believed in
the Bible, and that in what he had lately written, he had
written what was not the truth, and that, because his right
hand had signed those papers, he would burn his right hand 

first when he came to the fire. As for the Pope, he did refuse
him and denounce him as the enemy of Heaven. Hereupon
the pious Dr. Cole cried out to the guards to stop that heretic’s
mouth and take him away.
So they took him away, and chained him to the stake,
where he hastily took off his own clothes to make ready for
the flames. And he stood before the people with a bald head
and a white and flowing beard. He was so firm now when
the worst was come, that he again declared against his recan-
tation, and was so impressive and so undismayed, that a cer-
tain lord, who was one of the directors of the execution,
called out to the men to make haste! When the fire was
lighted, Cranmer, true to his latest word, stretched out his
right hand, and crying out, ‘This hand hath offended!’ held
it among the flames, until it blazed and burned away. His
heart was found entire among his ashes, and he left at last a
memorable name in English history. Cardinal Pole celebrated
the day by saying his first mass, and next day he was made
Archbishop of Canterbury in Cranmer’s place.
The Queen’s husband, who was now mostly abroad in his
own dominions, and generally made a coarse jest of her to his


Charles Dickens
319

more familiar courtiers, was at war with France, and came over
to seek the assistance of England. England was very unwilling
to engage in a French war for his sake; but it happened that the
King of France, at this very time, aided a descent upon the
English coast. Hence, war was declared, greatly to Philip’s satis-
faction; and the Queen raised a sum of money with which to
carry it on, by every unjustifiable means in her power. It met
with no profitable return, for the French Duke of Guise sur-
prised Calais, and the English sustained a complete defeat. The
losses they met with in France greatly mortified the national
pride, and the Queen never recovered the blow.
There was a bad fever raging in England at this time, and
I am glad to write that the Queen took it, and the hour of
her death came. ‘When I am dead and my body is opened,’
she said to those around her, ‘ye shall find Calais written on
my heart.’ I should have thought, if anything were written
on it, they would have found the words—Jane Grey, Hooper,
Robers, Ridley Latimer, Cranmer, and three hundred people
burnt alive withn four years of my wicked reign, includng sixty
women and forty little children. But it is enough that their
deaths were written in Heaven. 

The Queen died on the seventeenth of November, fifteen
hundred and fifty-eight, after reigning not quite five years
and a half, and in the forty-fourth year of her age. Cardinal
Pole died of the same fever next day.
As Bloody Queen Mary, this woman has become famous,
and as Bloody Queen Mary, she will ever be justly remem-
bered with horror and detestation in Great Britain. Her
memory has been held in such abhorrence that some writers
have arisen in later years to take her part, and to show that
she was, upon the whole, quite an amiable and cheerful sov-
ereign! ‘By their fruits ye shall know them,’ said Our Savior.
The stake and the fire were the fruits of this reign, and you
will judge this Queen by nothing else.


A Child’s Histroy of England
320 

CHAPTER XXXI
ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH 

THERE WAS GREAT REJOICING all over the land when the Lords
of the Council went down to Hatfield, to hail the Princess
Elizabeth as the new Queen of England. Weary of the bar-
barities of Mary’s reign, the people looked with hope and
gladness to the new Sovereign. The nation seemed to wake
from a horrible dream; and Heaven, so long hidden by the
smoke of the fires that roasted men and women to death,
appeared to brighten once more.
Queen Elizabeth was five-and-twenty years of age when
she rode through the streets of London, from the Tower to
Westminster Abbey, to be crowned. Her countenance was
strongly marked, but on the whole, commanding and digni-
fied; her hair was red, and her nose something too long and
sharp for a woman’s. She was not the beautiful creature her
courtiers made out; but she was well enough, and no doubt
looked all the better for coming after the dark and gloomy
Mary. She was well educated, but a roundabout writer, and
rather a hard swearer and coarse talker. She was clever, but 

cunning and deceitful, and inherited much of her father’s
violent temper. I mention this now, because she has been so
over-praised by one party, and so over-abused by another,
that it is hardly possible to understand the greater part of
her reign without first understanding what kind of woman
she really was.
She began her reign with the great advantage of having a
very wise and careful Minister, Sir William Cecil, whom she
afterwards made Lord Burleigh. Altogether, the people had
greater reason for rejoicing than they usually had, when there
were processions in the streets; and they were happy with
some reason. All kinds of shows and images were set up; Gog
and Magog were hoisted to the top of Temple Bar, and (which
was more to the purpose) the Corporation dutifully pre-
sented the young Queen with the sum of a thousand marks
in gold—so heavy a present, that she was obliged to take it
into her carriage with both hands. The coronation was a
great success; and, on the next day, one of the courtiers pre-
sented a petition to the new Queen, praying that as it was
the custom to release some prisoners on such occasions, she
would have the goodness to release the four Evangelists, Mat-


Charles Dickens
321

thew, Mark, Luke, and John, and also the Apostle Saint Paul,
who had been for some time shut up in a strange language
so that the people could not get at them.
To this, the Queen replied that it would be better first to
inquire of themselves whether they desired to be released or
not; and, as a means of finding out, a great public discus-
sion—a sort of religious tournament—was appointed to take
place between certain champions of the two religions, in
Westminster Abbey. You may suppose that it was soon made
pretty clear to common sense, that for people to benefit by
what they repeat or read, it is rather necessary they should
understand something about it. Accordingly, a Church Ser-
vice in plain English was settled, and other laws and regula-
tions were made, completely establishing the great work of
the Reformation. The Romish bishops and champions were
not harshly dealt with, all things considered; and the Queen’s
Ministers were both prudent and merciful.
The one great trouble of this reign, and the unfortunate
cause of the greater part of such turmoil and bloodshed as
occurred in it, was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. We will try
to understand, in as few words as possible, who Mary was, 

what she was, and how she came to be a thorn in the royal
pillow of Elizabeth.
She was the daughter of the Queen Regent of Scotland, Mary
of Guise. She had been married, when a mere child, to the Dau-
phin, the son and heir of the King of France. The Pope, who
pretended that no one could rightfully wear the crown of En-
gland without his gracious permission, was strongly opposed to
Elizabeth, who had not asked for the said gracious permission.
And as Mary Queen of Scots would have inherited the English
crown in right of her birth, supposing the English Parliament
not to have altered the succession, the Pope himself, and most
of the discontented who were followers of his, maintained that
Mary was the rightful Queen of England, and Elizabeth the
wrongful Queen. Mary being so closely connected with France,
and France being jealous of England, there was far greater dan-
ger in this than there would have been if she had had no alli-
ance with that great power. And when her young husband, on
the death of his father, became Francis the Second, King of France,
the matter grew very serious. For, the young couple styled them-
selves King and Queen of England, and the Pope was disposed
to help them by doing all the mischief he could.


A Child’s Histroy of England
322

Now, the reformed religion, under the guidance of a stern
and powerful preacher, named  John Knox, and other such
men, had been making fierce progress in Scotland. It was
still a half savage country, where there was a great deal of
murdering and rioting continually going on; and the Re-
formers, instead of reforming those evils as they should have
done, went to work in the ferocious old Scottish spirit, lay-
ing churches and chapels waste, pulling down pictures and
altars, and knocking about the Grey Friars, and the Black
Friars, and the White Friars, and the friars of all sorts of
colours, in all directions. This obdurate and harsh spirit of
the Scottish Reformers (the Scotch have always been rather
a sullen and frowning people in religious matters) put up
the blood of the Romish French court, and caused France to
send troops over to Scotland, with the hope of setting the
friars of all sorts of colours on their legs again; of conquering
that country first, and England afterwards; and so crushing
the Reformation all to pieces. The Scottish Reformers, who
had formed a great league which they called The Congrega-
tion of the Lord, secretly represented to Elizabeth that, if the
reformed religion got the worst of it with them, it would be 

likely to get the worst of it in England too; and thus, Eliza-
beth, though she had a high notion of the rights of Kings
and Queens to do anything they liked, sent an army to Scot-
land to support the Reformers, who were in arms against
their sovereign. All these proceedings led to a treaty of peace
at Edinburgh, under which the French consented to depart
from the kingdom. By a separate treaty, Mary and her young
husband engaged to renounce their assumed title of King
and Queen of England. But this treaty they never fulfilled.
It happened, soon after matters had got to this state, that
the young French King died, leaving Mary a young widow.
She was then invited by her Scottish subjects to return home
and reign over them; and as she was not now happy where
she was, she, after a little time, complied.
Elizabeth had been Queen three years, when Mary Queen
of Scots embarked at Calais for her own rough, quarrelling
country. As she came out of the harbour, a vessel was lost
before her eyes, and she said, ‘O! good God! what an omen
this is for such a voyage!’ She was very fond of France, and
sat on the deck, looking back at it and weeping, until it was
quite dark. When she went to bed, she directed to be called


Charles Dickens
323

at daybreak, if the French coast were still visible, that she
might behold it for the last time. As it proved to be a clear
morning, this was done, and she again wept for the country
she was leaving, and said many times,‘ Farewell, France! Fare-
well, France! I shall never see thee again!’ All this was long
remembered afterwards, as sorrowful and interesting in a
fair young princess of nineteen. Indeed, I am afraid it gradu-
ally came, together with her other distresses, to surround
her with greater sympathy than she deserved.
When she came to Scotland, and took up her abode at the
palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh, she found herself among
uncouth strangers and wild uncomfortable customs very dif-
ferent from her experiences in the court of France. The very
people who were disposed to love her, made her head ache
when she was tired out by her voyage, with a serenade of
discordant music—a fearful concert of bagpipes, I suppose—
and brought her and her train home to her palace on miser-
able little Scotch horses that appeared to be half starved.
Among the people who were not disposed to love her, she
found the powerful leaders of the Reformed Church, who
were bitter upon her amusements, however innocent, and 

denounced music and dancing as works of the devil. John
Knox himself often lectured her, violently and angrily, and
did much to make her life unhappy. All these reasons con-
firmed her old attachment to the Romish religion, and caused
her, there is no doubt, most imprudently and dangerously
both for herself and for England too, to give a solemn pledge
to the heads of the Romish Church that if she ever suc-
ceeded to the English crown, she would set up that religion
again. In reading her unhappy history, you must always re-
member this; and also that during her whole life she was
constantly put forward against the Queen, in some form or
other, by the Romish party.
That Elizabeth, on the other hand, was not inclined to
like her, is pretty certain. Elizabeth was very vain and jeal-
ous, and had an extraordinary dislike to people being mar-
ried. She treated Lady Catherine Grey, sister of the beheaded
Lady Jane, with such shameful severity, for no other reason
than her being secretly married, that she died and her hus-
band was ruined; so, when a second marriage for Mary be-
gan to be talked about, probably Elizabeth disliked her more.
Not that Elizabeth wanted suitors of her own, for they started


A Child’s Histroy of England
324

up from Spain, Austria, Sweden, and England. Her English
lover at this time, and one whom she much favoured too,
was Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester—himself secretly
married to Amy Robsart, the daughter of an English gentle-
man, whom he was strongly suspected of causing to be mur-
dered, down at his country seat, Cumnor Hall in Berkshire,
that he might be free to marry the Queen. Upon this story,
the great writer, Sir Walter Scott, has founded one of his best
romances. But if Elizabeth knew how to lead her handsome
favourite on, for her own vanity and pleasure, she knew how
to stop him for her own pride; and his love, and all the other
proposals, came to nothing. The Queen always declared in
good set speeches, that she would never be married at all,
but would live and die a Maiden Queen. It was a very pleas-
ant and meritorious declaration, I suppose; but it has been
puffed and trumpeted so much, that I am rather tired of it
myself.
Divers princes proposed to marry Mary, but the English
court had reasons for being jealous of them all, and even
proposed as a matter of policy that she should marry that
very Earl of Leicester who had aspired to be the husband of 

Elizabeth. At last, Lord Darnley, son of the Earl of Lennox,
and himself descended from the Royal Family of Scotland,
went over with Elizabeth’s consent to try his fortune at
Holyrood. He was a tall simpleton; and could dance and
play the guitar; but I know of nothing else he could do,
unless it were to get very drunk, and eat gluttonously, and
make a contemptible spectacle of himself in many mean and
vain ways. However, he gained Mary’s heart, not disdaining
in the pursuit of his object to ally himself with one of her
secretaries, David Rizzio, who had great influence with her.
He soon married the Queen. This marriage does not say
much for her, but what followed will presently say less.
Mary’s brother, the Earl of Murray, and head of the Prot-
estant party in Scotland, had opposed this marriage, partly
on religious grounds, and partly perhaps from personal dis-
like of the very contemptible bridegroom. When it had taken
place, through Mary’s gaining over to it the more powerful
of the lords about her, she banished Murray for his pains;
and, when he and some other nobles rose in arms to support
the reformed religion, she herself, within a month of her
wedding day, rode against them in armour with loaded pis-


Charles Dickens
325

tols in her saddle. Driven out of Scotland, they presented
themselves before Elizabeth—who called them traitors in
public, and assisted them in private, according to her crafty
nature.
Mary had been married but a little while, when she began
to hate her husband, who, in his turn, began to hate that
David Rizzio, with whom he had leagued to gain her favour,
and whom he now believed to be her lover. He hated Rizzio
to that extent, that he made a compact with  Lord Ruthven
and three other lords to get rid of him by murder. This wicked
agreement they made in solemn secrecy upon the first of
March, fifteen hundred and sixty-six, and on the night of
Saturday the ninth, the conspirators were brought by Darnley
up a private staircase, dark and steep, into a range of rooms
where they knew that Mary was sitting at supper with her
sister, Lady Argyle, and this doomed man. When they went
into the room, Darnley took the Queen round the waist,
and Lord Ruthven, who had risen from a bed of sickness to
do this murder, came in, gaunt and ghastly, leaning on two
men. Rizzio ran behind the Queen for shelter and protec-
tion. ‘Let him come out of the room,’ said Ruthven. ‘He 

shall not leave the room,’ replied the Queen; ‘I read his dan-
ger in your face, and it is my will that he remain here.’ They
then set upon him, struggled with him, overturned the table,
dragged him out, and killed him with fifty-six stabs. When
the Queen heard that he was dead, she said, ‘No more tears.
I will think now of revenge!’
Within a day or two, she gained her husband over, and
prevailed on the tall idiot to abandon the conspirators and
fly with her to Dunbar. There, he issued a proclamation,
audaciously and falsely denying that he had any knowledge
of the late bloody business; and there they were joined by
the Earl Bothwell and some other nobles. With their help,
they raised eight thousand men; returned to Edinburgh, and
drove the assassins into England. Mary soon afterwards gave
birth to a son—still thinking of revenge.
That she should have had a greater scorn for her husband
after his late cowardice and treachery than she had had be-
fore, was natural enough. There is little doubt that she now
began to love Bothwell instead, and to plan with him means
of getting rid of Darnley. Bothwell had such power over her
that he induced her even to pardon the assassins of Rizzio.


A Child’s Histroy of England
326

The arrangements for the Christening of the young Prince
were entrusted to him, and he was one of the most impor-
tant people at the ceremony, where the child was named
James: Elizabeth being his godmother, though not present
on the occasion. A week afterwards, Darnley, who had left
Mary and gone to his father’s house at Glasgow, being taken
ill with the small-pox, she sent her own physician to attend
him. But there is reason to apprehend that this was merely a
show and a pretence, and that she knew what was doing,
when Bothwell within another month proposed to one of
the late conspirators against Rizzio, to murder Darnley, ‘for
that it was the Queen’s mind that he should be taken away.’
It is certain that on that very day she wrote to her ambassa-
dor in France, complaining of him, and yet went immedi-
ately to Glasgow, feigning to be very anxious about him,
and to love him very much. If she wanted to get him in her
power, she succeeded to her heart’s content; for she induced
him to go back with her to Edinburgh, and to occupy, in-
stead of the palace, a lone house outside the city called the
Kirk of Field. Here, he lived for about a week. One Sunday
night, she remained with him until ten o’clock, and then left 

him, to go to Holyrood to be present at an entertainment given
in celebration of the marriage of one of her favourite servants.
At two o’clock in the morning the city was shaken by a great
explosion, and the Kirk of Field was blown to atoms.
Darnley’s body was found next day lying under a tree at
some distance. How it came there, undisfigured and
unscorched by gunpowder, and how this crime came to be
so clumsily and strangely committed, it is impossible to dis-
cover. The deceitful character of Mary, and the deceitful
character of Elizabeth, have rendered almost every part of
their joint history uncertain and obscure. But, I fear that
Mary was unquestionably a party to her husband’s murder,
and that this was the revenge she had threatened. The Scotch
people universally believed it. Voices cried out in the streets
of Edinburgh in the dead of the night, for justice on the
murderess. Placards were posted by unknown hands in the
public places denouncing Bothwell as the murderer, and the
Queen as his accomplice; and, when he afterwards married
her (though himself already married), previously making a
show of taking her prisoner by force, the indignation of the
people knew no bounds. The women particularly are de-


Charles Dickens
327

scribed as having been quite frantic against the Queen, and
to have hooted and cried after her in the streets with terrific
vehemence.
Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This husband and wife
had lived together but a month, when they were separated
for ever by the successes of a band of Scotch nobles who
associated against them for the protection of the young Prince:
whom Bothwell had vainly endeavoured to lay hold of, and
whom he would certainly have murdered, if the Earl of Mar,
in whose hands the boy was, had not been firmly and
honourably faithful to his trust. Before this angry power,
Bothwell fled abroad, where he died, a prisoner and mad,
nine miserable years afterwards. Mary being found by the
associated lords to deceive them at every turn, was sent a
prisoner to Lochleven Castle; which, as it stood in the midst
of a lake, could only be approached by boat. Here, one Lord
Lindsy, who was so much of a brute that the nobles would
have done better if they had chosen a mere gentleman for
their messenger, made her sign her abdication, and appoint
Murray, Regent of Scotland. Here, too, Murray saw her in a
sorrowing and humbled state. 

She had better have remained in the castle of Lochleven,
dull prison as it was, with the rippling of the lake against it,
and the moving shadows of the water on the room walls; but
she could not rest there, and more than once tried to escape.
The first time she had nearly succeeded, dressed in the clothes
of her own washer-woman, but, putting up her hand to pre-
vent one of the boatmen from lifting her veil, the men sus-
pected her, seeing how white it was, and rowed her back
again. A short time afterwards, her fascinating manners en-
listed in her cause a boy in the Castle, called the little Dou-
glas, who, while the family were at supper, stole the keys of
the great gate, went softly out with the Queen, locked the
gate on the outside, and rowed her away across the lake,
sinking the keys as they went along. On the opposite shore
she was met by another Douglas, and some few lords; and,
so accompanied, rode away on horseback to Hamilton, where
they raised three thousand men. Here, she issued a procla-
mation declaring that the abdication she had signed in her
prison was illegal, and requiring the Regent to yield to his
lawful Queen. Being a steady soldier, and in no way discom-
posed although he was without an army, Murray pretended


A Child’s Histroy of England
328

to treat with her, until he had collected a force about half
equal to her own, and then he gave her battle. In one quar-
ter of an hour he cut down all her hopes. She had another
weary ride on horse-back of sixty long Scotch miles, and
took shelter at Dundrennan Abbey, whence she fled for safety
to Elizabeth’s dominions.
Mary Queen of Scots came to England—to her own ruin,
the trouble of the kingdom, and the misery and death of
many—in the year one thousand five hundred and sixty-
eight. How she left it and the world, nineteen years after-
wards, we have now to see.
SECOND PART
WHEN MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS arrived in England, without
money and even without any other clothes than those she
wore, she wrote to Elizabeth, representing herself as an in-
nocent and injured piece of Royalty, and entreating her as-
sistance to oblige her Scottish subjects to take her back again
and obey her. But, as her character was already known in
England to be a very different one from what she made it 

out to be, she was told in answer that she must first clear
herself. Made uneasy by this condition, Mary, rather than
stay in England, would have gone to Spain, or to France, or
would even have gone back to Scotland. But, as her doing
either would have been likely to trouble England afresh, it
was decided that she should be detained here. She first came
to Carlisle, and, after that, was moved about from castle to
castle, as was considered necessary; but England she never
left again.
After trying very hard to get rid of the necessity of clear-
ing herself, Mary, advised by Lord Herries, her best friend in
England, agreed to answer the charges against her, if the
Scottish noblemen who made them would attend to main-
tain them before such English noblemen as Elizabeth might
appoint for that purpose. Accordingly, such an assembly,
under the name of a conference, met, first at York, and af-
terwards at Hampton Court. In its presence Lord Lennox,
Darnley’s father, openly charged Mary with the murder of
his son; and whatever Mary’s friends may now say or write
in her behalf, there is no doubt that, when her brother Murray
produced against her a casket containing certain guilty let-


Charles Dickens
329

ters and verses which he stated to have passed between her
and Bothwell, she withdrew from the inquiry. Consequently,
it is to be supposed that she was then considered guilty by
those who had the best opportunities of judging of the truth,
and that the feeling which afterwards arose in her behalf was
a very generous but not a very reasonable one.
However, the Duke of Norfolk, an honourable but rather
weak nobleman, partly because Mary was captivating, partly
because he was ambitious, partly because he was over-per-
suaded by artful plotters against Elizabeth, conceived a strong
idea that he would like to marry the Queen of Scots—though
he was a little frightened, too, by the letters in the casket.
This idea being secretly encouraged by some of the noble-
men of Elizabeth’s court, and even by the favourite Earl of
Leicester (because it was objected to by other favourites who
were his rivals), Mary expressed her approval of it, and the
King of France and the King of Spain are supposed to have
done the same. It was not so quietly planned, though, but
that it came to Elizabeth’s ears, who warned the Duke ‘to be
careful what sort of pillow he was going to lay his head upon.’
He made a humble reply at the time; but turned sulky soon 

afterwards, and, being considered dangerous, was sent to the
Tower.
Thus, from the moment of Mary’s coming to England she
began to be the centre of plots and miseries.
A rise of the Catholics in the north was the next of these,
and it was only checked by many executions and much blood-
shed. It was followed by a great conspiracy of the Pope and
some of the Catholic sovereigns of Europe to depose Eliza-
beth, place Mary on the throne, and restore the unreformed
religion. It is almost impossible to doubt that Mary knew and
approved of this; and the Pope himself was so hot in the mat-
ter that he issued a bull, in which he openly called Elizabeth
the ‘pretended Queen’ of England, excommunicated her, and
excommunicated all her subjects who should continue to obey
her. A copy of this miserable paper got into London, and was
found one morning publicly posted on the Bishop of London’s
gate. A great hue and cry being raised, another copy was found
in the chamber of a student of Lincoln’s Inn, who confessed,
being put upon the rack, that he had received it from one
John Felton, a rich gentleman who lived across the Thames,
near Southwark. This John Felton, being put upon the rack


A Child’s Histroy of England
330

too, confessed that he had posted the placard on the Bishop’s
gate. For this offence he was, within four days, taken to St.
Paul’s Churchyard, and there hanged and quartered. As to the
Pope’s bull, the people by the reformation having thrown off
the Pope, did not care much, you may suppose, for the Pope’s
throwing off them. It was a mere dirty piece of paper, and not
half so powerful as a street ballad.
On the very day when Felton was brought to his trial, the
poor Duke of Norfolk was released. It would have been well
for him if he had kept away from the Tower evermore, and
from the snares that had taken him there. But, even while
he was in that dismal place he corresponded with Mary, and
as soon as he was out of it, he began to plot again. Being
discovered in correspondence with the Pope, with a view to
a rising in England which should force Elizabeth to consent
to his marriage with Mary and to repeal the laws against the
Catholics, he was re-committed to the Tower and brought
to trial. He was found guilty by the unanimous verdict of
the Lords who tried him, and was sentenced to the block.
It is very difficult to make out, at this distance of time,
and between opposite accounts, whether Elizabeth really was 

a humane woman, or desired to appear so, or was fearful of
shedding the blood of people of great name who were popu-
lar in the country. Twice she commanded and countermanded
the execution of this Duke, and it did not take place until
five months after his trial. The scaffold was erected on Tower
Hill, and there he died like a brave man. He refused to have
his eyes bandaged, saying that he was not at all afraid of
death; and he admitted the justice of his sentence, and was
much regretted by the people.
Although Mary had shrunk at the most important time
from disproving her guilt, she was very careful never to do
anything that would admit it. All such proposals as were
made to her by Elizabeth for her release, required that ad-
mission in some form or other, and therefore came to noth-
ing. Moreover, both women being artful and treacherous,
and neither ever trusting the other, it was not likely that
they could ever make an agreement. So, the Parliament, ag-
gravated by what the Pope had done, made new and strong
laws against the spreading of the Catholic religion in En-
gland, and declared it treason in any one to say that the
Queen and her successors were not the lawful sovereigns of


Charles Dickens
331

England. It would have done more than this, but for
Elizabeth’s moderation.
Since the Reformation, there had come to be three great
sects of religious people—or people who called themselves
so—in England; that is to say, those who belonged to the
Reformed Church, those who belonged to the Unreformed
Church, and those who were called the Puritans, because
they said that they wanted to have everything very pure and
plain in all the Church service. These last were for the most
part an uncomfortable people, who thought it highly meri-
torious to dress in a hideous manner, talk through their noses,
and oppose all harmless enjoyments. But they were power-
ful too, and very much in earnest, and they were one and all
the determined enemies of the Queen of Scots. The Protes-
tant feeling in England was further strengthened by the tre-
mendous cruelties to which Protestants were exposed in
France and in the Netherlands. Scores of thousands of them
were put to death in those countries with every cruelty that
can be imagined, and at last, in the autumn of the year one
thousand five hundred and seventy-two, one of the greatest
barbarities ever committed in the world took place at Paris. 

It is called in history, The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew,
because it took place on Saint Bartholomew’s Eve. The day
fell on Saturday the twenty-third of August. On that day all
the great leaders of the Protestants (who were there called
Huguenots) were assembled together, for the purpose, as was
represented to them, of doing honour to the marriage of
their chief, the young King of Navarre, with the sister of
Charles the Ninth: a miserable young King who then occu-
pied the French throne. This dull creature was made to be-
lieve by his mother and other fierce Catholics about him
that the Huguenots meant to take his life; and he was per-
suaded to give secret orders that, on the tolling of a great
bell, they should be fallen upon by an overpowering force of
armed men, and slaughtered wherever they could be found.
When the appointed hour was close at hand, the stupid
wretch, trembling from head to foot, was taken into a bal-
cony by his mother to see the atrocious work begun. The
moment the bell tolled, the murderers broke forth. During
all that night and the two next days, they broke into the
houses, fired the houses, shot and stabbed the Protestants,
men, women, and children, and flung their bodies into the


A Child’s Histroy of England
332

streets. They were shot at in the streets as they passed along,
and their blood ran down the gutters. Upwards of ten thou-
sand Protestants were killed in Paris alone; in all France four
or five times that number. To return thanks to Heaven for
these diabolical murders, the Pope and his train actually went
in public procession at Rome, and as if this were not shame
enough for them, they had a medal struck to commemorate
the event. But, however comfortable the wholesale murders
were to these high authorities, they had not that soothing
effect upon the doll-King. I am happy to state that he never
knew a moment’s peace afterwards; that he was continually
crying out that he saw the Huguenots covered with blood
and wounds falling dead before him; and that he died within
a year, shrieking and yelling and raving to that degree, that if
all the Popes who had ever lived had been rolled into one,
they would not have afforded His guilty Majesty the slight-
est consolation.
When the terrible news of the massacre arrived in En-
gland, it made a powerful impression indeed upon the people.
If they began to run a little wild against the Catholics at
about this time, this fearful reason for it, coming so soon 

after the days of bloody Queen Mary, must be remembered
in their excuse. The Court was not quite so honest as the
people—but perhaps it sometimes is not. It received the
French ambassador, with all the lords and ladies dressed in
deep mourning, and keeping a profound silence. Neverthe-
less, a proposal of marriage which he had made to Elizabeth
only two days before the eve of Saint Bartholomew, on be-
half of the Duke of Alen‡on, the French King’s brother, a
boy of seventeen, still went on; while on the other hand, in
her usual crafty way, the Queen secretly supplied the Hu-
guenots with money and weapons.
I must say that for a Queen who made all those fine
speeches, of which I have confessed myself to be rather tired,
about living and dying a Maiden Queen, Elizabeth was ‘go-
ing’ to be married pretty often. Besides always having some
English favourite or other whom she by turns encouraged
and swore at and knocked about—for the maiden Queen
was very free with her fists—she held this French Duke off
and on through several years. When he at last came over to
England, the marriage articles were actually drawn up, and
it was settled that the wedding should take place in six weeks.


Charles Dickens
333

The Queen was then so bent upon it, that she prosecuted a
poor Puritan named Stubbs, and a poor bookseller named
Page, for writing and publishing a pamphlet against it. Their
right hands were chopped off for this crime; and poor
Stubbs—more loyal than I should have been myself under
the circumstances—immediately pulled off his hat with his
left hand, and cried, ‘God save the Queen!’ Stubbs was cru-
elly treated; for the marriage never took place after all, though
the Queen pledged herself to the Duke with a ring from her
own finger. He went away, no better than he came, when
the courtship had lasted some ten years altogether; and he
died a couple of years afterwards, mourned by Elizabeth,
who appears to have been really fond of him. It is not much
to her credit, for he was a bad enough member of a bad
family.
To return to the Catholics. There arose two orders of
priests, who were very busy in England, and who were much
dreaded. These were the Jesuits (who were everywhere in all
sorts of disguises), and the Seminary Priests. The people had
a great horror of the first, because they were known to have
taught that murder was lawful if it were done with an object 

of which they approved; and they had a great horror of the
second, because they came to teach the old religion, and to
be the successors of ‘Queen Mary’s priests,’ as those yet lin-
gering in England were called, when they should die out.
The severest laws were made against them, and were most
unmercifully executed. Those who sheltered them in their
houses often suffered heavily for what was an act of human-
ity; and the rack, that cruel torture which tore men’s limbs
asunder, was constantly kept going. What these unhappy
men confessed, or what was ever confessed by any one un-
der that agony, must always be received with great doubt, as
it is certain that people have frequently owned to the most
absurd and impossible crimes to escape such dreadful suffer-
ing. But I cannot doubt it to have been proved by papers,
that there were many plots, both among the Jesuits, and with
France, and with Scotland, and with Spain, for the destruc-
tion of Queen Elizabeth, for the placing of Mary on the
throne, and for the revival of the old religion.
If the English people were too ready to believe in plots,
there were, as I have said, good reasons for it. When the
massacre of Saint Bartholomew was yet fresh in their recol-


A Child’s Histroy of England
334

lection, a great Protestant Dutch hero, the Prince of Orange,
was shot by an assassin, who confessed that he had been kept
and trained for the purpose in a college of Jesuits. The Dutch,
in this surprise and distress, offered to make Elizabeth their
sovereign, but she declined the honour, and sent them a
small army instead, under the command of the Earl of Le-
icester, who, although a capital Court favourite, was not much
of a general. He did so little in Holland, that his campaign
there would probably have been forgotten, but for its
occasioning the death of one of the best writers, the best
knights, and the best gentlemen, of that or any age. This was
Sir Philip Sidney, who was wounded by a musket ball in the
thigh as he mounted a fresh horse, after having had his own
killed under him. He had to ride back wounded, a long dis-
tance, and was very faint with fatigue and loss of blood,
when some water, for which he had eagerly asked, was handed
to him. But he was so good and gentle even then, that seeing
a poor badly wounded common soldier lying on the ground,
looking at the water with longing eyes, he said, ‘Thy neces-
sity is greater than mine,’ and gave it up to him. This touch-
ing action of a noble heart is perhaps as well known as any 

incident in history—is as famous far and wide as the blood-
stained Tower of London, with its axe, and block, and mur-
ders out of number. So delightful is an act of true humanity,
and so glad are mankind to remember it.
At home, intelligence of plots began to thicken every day.
I suppose the people never did live under such continual
terrors as those by which they were possessed now, of Catholic
risings, and burnings, and poisonings, and I don’t know what.
Still, we must always remember that they lived near and close
to awful realities of that kind, and that with their experience
it was not difficult to believe in any enormity. The govern-
ment had the same fear, and did not take the best means of
discovering the truth—for, besides torturing the suspected,
it employed paid spies, who will always lie for their own
profit. It even made some of the conspiracies it brought to
light, by sending false letters to disaffected people, inviting
them to join in pretended plots, which they too readily did.
But, one great real plot was at length discovered, and it
ended the career of Mary, Queen of Scots. A seminary priest
named Ballard, and a Spanish soldier named Savage, set on
and encouraged by certain French priests, imparted a design


Charles Dickens
335

to one  Antony Babington —a gentleman of fortune in
Derbyshire, who had been for some time a secret agent of
Mary’s—for murdering the Queen. Babington then confided
the scheme to some other Catholic gentlemen who were his
friends, and they joined in it heartily. They were vain, weak-
headed young men, ridiculously confident, and preposter-
ously proud of their plan; for they got a gimcrack painting
made, of the six choice spirits who were to murder Eliza-
beth, with Babington in an attitude for the centre figure.
Two of their number, however, one of whom was a priest,
kept Elizabeth’s wisest minister, Sir Francis Walsingham, ac-
quainted with the whole project from the first. The con-
spirators were completely deceived to the final point, when
Babington gave Savage, because he was shabby, a ring from
his finger, and some money from his purse, wherewith to
buy himself new clothes in which to kill the Queen.
Walsingham, having then full evidence against the whole
band, and two letters of Mary’s besides, resolved to seize
them. Suspecting something wrong, they stole out of the
city, one by one, and hid themselves in St. John’s Wood, and
other places which really were hiding places then; but they 

were all taken, and all executed. When they were seized, a
gentleman was sent from Court to inform Mary of the fact,
and of her being involved in the discovery. Her friends have
complained that she was kept in very hard and severe cus-
tody. It does not appear very likely, for she was going out a
hunting that very morning.
Queen Elizabeth had been warned long ago, by one in
France who had good information of what was secretly do-
ing, that in holding Mary alive, she held ‘the wolf who would
devour her.’ The Bishop of London had, more lately, given
the Queen’s favourite minister the advice in writing, ‘forth-
with to cut off the Scottish Queen’s head.’ The question
now was, what to do with her? The Earl of Leicester wrote a
little note home from Holland, recommending that she
should be quietly poisoned; that noble favourite having ac-
customed his mind, it is possible, to remedies of that nature.
His black advice, however, was disregarded, and she was
brought to trial at Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire,
before a tribunal of forty, composed of both religions. There,
and in the Star Chamber at Westminster, the trial lasted a
fortnight. She defended herself with great ability, but could


A Child’s Histroy of England
336

only deny the confessions that had been made by Babington
and others; could only call her own letters, produced against
her by her own secretaries, forgeries; and, in short, could
only deny everything. She was found guilty, and declared to
have incurred the penalty of death. The Parliament met,
approved the sentence, and prayed the Queen to have it ex-
ecuted. The Queen replied that she requested them to con-
sider whether no means could be found of saving Mary’s life
without endangering her own. The Parliament rejoined, No;
and the citizens illuminated their houses and lighted bon-
fires, in token of their joy that all these plots and troubles
were to be ended by the death of the Queen of Scots.
She, feeling sure that her time was now come, wrote a
letter to the Queen of England, making three entreaties; first,
that she might be buried in France; secondly, that she might
not be executed in secret, but before her servants and some
others; thirdly, that after her death, her servants should not
be molested, but should be suffered to go home with the
legacies she left them. It was an affecting letter, and Eliza-
beth shed tears over it, but sent no answer. Then came a
special ambassador from France, and another from Scotland, 

to intercede for Mary’s life; and then the nation began to
clamour, more and more, for her death.
What the real feelings or intentions of Elizabeth were, can
never be known now; but I strongly suspect her of only wish-
ing one thing more than Mary’s death, and that was to keep
free of the blame of it. On the first of February, one thou-
sand five hundred and eighty-seven, Lord Burleigh having
drawn out the warrant for the execution, the Queen sent to
the secretary Davison to bring it to her, that she might sign
it: which she did. Next day, when Davison told her it was
sealed, she angrily asked him why such haste was necessary?
Next day but one, she joked about it, and swore a little.
Again, next day but one, she seemed to complain that it was
not yet done, but still she would not be plain with those
about her. So, on the seventh, the Earls of Kent and
Shrewsbury, with the Sheriff of Northamptonshire, came
with the warrant to Fotheringay, to tell the Queen of Scots
to prepare for death.
When those messengers of ill omen were gone, Mary made
a frugal supper, drank to her servants, read over her will,
went to bed, slept for some hours, and then arose and passed


Charles Dickens
337

the remainder of the night saying prayers. In the morning
she dressed herself in her best clothes; and, at eight o’clock
when the sheriff came for her to her chapel, took leave of
her servants who were there assembled praying with her,
and went down-stairs, carrying a Bible in one hand and a
crucifix in the other. Two of her women and four of her
men were allowed to be present in the hall; where a low
scaffold, only two feet from the ground, was erected and
covered with black; and where the executioner from the
Tower, and his assistant, stood, dressed in black velvet. The
hall was full of people. While the sentence was being read
she sat upon a stool; and, when it was finished, she again
denied her guilt, as she had done before. The Earl of Kent
and the Dean of Peterborough, in their Protestant zeal, made
some very unnecessary speeches to her; to which she replied
that she died in the Catholic religion, and they need not
trouble themselves about that matter. When her head and
neck were uncovered by the executioners, she said that she
had not been used to be undressed by such hands, or before
so much company. Finally, one of her women fastened a
cloth over her face, and she laid her neck upon the block, 

and repeated more than once in Latin, ‘Into thy hands, O
Lord, I commend my spirit!’ Some say her head was struck
off in two blows, some say in three. However that be, when
it was held up, streaming with blood, the real hair beneath
the false hair she had long worn was seen to be as grey as that
of a woman of seventy, though she was at that time only in
her forty-sixth year. All her beauty was gone.
But she was beautiful enough to her little dog, who cow-
ered under her dress, frightened, when she went upon the
scaffold, and who lay down beside her headless body when
all her earthly sorrows were over.
THIRD PART
ON ITS BEING FORMALLY MADE known to Elizabeth that the
sentence had been executed on the Queen of Scots, she
showed the utmost grief and rage, drove her favourites from
her with violent indignation, and sent Davison to the Tower;
from which place he was only released in the end by paying
an immense fine which completely ruined him. Elizabeth
not only over-acted her part in making these pretences, but


A Child’s Histroy of England
338

most basely reduced to poverty one of her faithful servants
for no other fault than obeying her commands.
James, King of Scotland, Mary’s son, made a show like-
wise of being very angry on the occasion; but he was a pen-
sioner of England to the amount of five thousand pounds a
year, and he had known very little of his mother, and he
possibly regarded her as the murderer of his father, and he
soon took it quietly.
Philip, King of Spain, however, threatened to do greater
things than ever had been done yet, to set up the Catholic
religion and punish Protestant England. Elizabeth, hearing
that he and the Prince of Parma were making great prepara-
tions for this purpose, in order to be beforehand with them
sent out Admiral Drake (a famous navigator, who had sailed
about the world, and had already brought great plunder from
Spain) to the port of Cadiz, where he burnt a hundred ves-
sels full of stores. This great loss obliged the Spaniards to put
off the invasion for a year; but it was none the less formi-
dable for that, amounting to one hundred and thirty ships,
nineteen thousand soldiers, eight thousand sailors, two thou-
sand slaves, and between two and three thousand great guns. 

England was not idle in making ready to resist this great
force. All the men between sixteen years old and sixty, were
trained and drilled; the national fleet of ships (in number
only thirty-four at first) was enlarged by public contribu-
tions and by private ships, fitted out by noblemen; the city
of London, of its own accord, furnished double the number
of ships and men that it was required to provide; and, if ever
the national spirit was up in England, it was up all through
the country to resist the Spaniards. Some of the Queen’s
advisers were for seizing the principal English Catholics, and
putting them to death; but the Queen—who, to her honour,
used to say, that she would never believe any ill of her sub-
jects, which a parent would not believe of her own chil-
dren—rejected the advice, and only confined a few of those
who were the most suspected, in the fens in Lincolnshire.
The great body of Catholics deserved this confidence; for
they behaved most loyally, nobly, and bravely.
So, with all England firing up like one strong, angry man,
and with both sides of the Thames fortified, and with the
soldiers under arms, and with the sailors in their ships, the
country waited for the coming of the proud Spanish fleet,


Charles Dickens
339

which was called The Invincible Armada. The Queen her-
self, riding in armour on a white horse, and the Earl of Essex
and the Earl of Leicester holding her bridal rein, made a
brave speech to the troops at Tilbury Fort opposite Gravesend,
which was received with such enthusiasm as is seldom known.
Then came the Spanish Armada into the English Channel,
sailing along in the form of a half moon, of such great size
that it was seven miles broad. But the English were quickly
upon it, and woe then to all the Spanish ships that dropped
a little out of the half moon, for the English took them in-
stantly! And it soon appeared that the great Armada was any-
thing but invincible, for on a summer night, bold Drake
sent eight blazing fire-ships right into the midst of it. In
terrible consternation the Spaniards tried to get out to sea,
and so became dispersed; the English pursued them at a great
advantage; a storm came on, and drove the Spaniards among
rocks and shoals; and the swift end of the Invincible fleet
was, that it lost thirty great ships and ten thousand men,
and, defeated and disgraced, sailed home again. Being afraid
to go by the English Channel, it sailed all round Scotland
and Ireland; some of the ships getting cast away on the latter 

coast in bad weather, the Irish, who were a kind of savages,
plundered those vessels and killed their crews. So ended this
great attempt to invade and conquer England. And I think it
will be a long time before any other invincible fleet coming
to England with the same object, will fare much better than
the Spanish Armada.
Though the Spanish king had had this bitter taste of En-
glish bravery, he was so little the wiser for it, as still to enter-
tain his old designs, and even to conceive the absurd idea of
placing his daughter on the English throne. But the Earl of
Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas Howard, and some other
distinguished leaders, put to sea from Plymouth, entered the
port of Cadiz once more, obtained a complete victory over
the shipping assembled there, and got possession of the town.
In obedience to the Queen’s express instructions, they behaved
with great humanity; and the principal loss of the Spaniards
was a vast sum of money which they had to pay for ransom.
This was one of many gallant achievements on the sea, ef-
fected in this reign. Sir Walter Raleigh himself, after marrying
a maid of honour and giving offence to the Maiden Queen
thereby, had already sailed to South America in search of gold.


A Child’s Histroy of England
340

The Earl of Leicester was now dead, and so was Sir Tho-
mas Walsingham, whom Lord Burleigh was soon to follow.
The principal favourite was the Earl of Essex, a spirited and
handsome man, a favourite with the people too as well as
with the Queen, and possessed of many admirable qualities.
It was much debated at Court whether there should be peace
with Spain or no, and he was very urgent for war. He also
tried hard to have his own way in the appointment of a deputy
to govern in Ireland. One day, while this question was in
dispute, he hastily took offence, and turned his back upon
the Queen; as a gentle reminder of which impropriety, the
Queen gave him a tremendous box on the ear, and told him
to go to the devil. He went home instead, and did not reap-
pear at Court for half a year or so, when he and the Queen
were reconciled, though never (as some suppose) thoroughly.
From this time the fate of the Earl of Essex and that of the
Queen seemed to be blended together. The Irish were still
perpetually quarrelling and fighting among themselves, and
he went over to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, to the great joy
of his enemies (Sir Walter Raleigh among the rest), who were
glad to have so dangerous a rival far off. Not being by any 

means successful there, and knowing that his enemies would
take advantage of that circumstance to injure him with the
Queen, he came home again, though against her orders. The
Queen being taken by surprise when he appeared before
her, gave him her hand to kiss, and he was overjoyed—though
it was not a very lovely hand by this time—but in the course
of the same day she ordered him to confine himself to his
room, and two or three days afterwards had him taken into
custody. With the same sort of caprice—and as capricious
an old woman she now was, as ever wore a crown or a head
either—she sent him broth from her own table on his fall-
ing ill from anxiety, and cried about him.
He was a man who could find comfort and occupation in
his books, and he did so for a time; not the least happy time,
I dare say, of his life. But it happened unfortunately for him,
that he held a monopoly in sweet wines: which means that
nobody could sell them without purchasing his permission.
This right, which was only for a term, expiring, he applied to
have it renewed. The Queen refused, with the rather strong
observation—but she did make strong observations—that an
unruly beast must be stinted in his food. Upon this, the angry


Charles Dickens
341

Earl, who had been already deprived of many offices, thought
himself in danger of complete ruin, and turned against the
Queen, whom he called a vain old woman who had grown as
crooked in her mind as she had in her figure. These uncom-
plimentary expressions the ladies of the Court immediately
snapped up and carried to the Queen, whom they did not put
in a better tempter, you may believe. The same Court ladies,
when they had beautiful dark hair of their own, used to wear
false red hair, to be like the Queen. So they were not very
high-spirited ladies, however high in rank.
The worst object of the Earl of Essex, and some friends of
his who used to meet at  Lord Southampton’s house, was to
obtain possession of the Queen, and oblige her by force to
dismiss her ministers and change her favourites. On Satur-
day the seventh of February, one thousand six hundred and
one, the council suspecting this, summoned the Earl to come
before them. He, pretending to be ill, declined; it was then
settled among his friends, that as the next day would be Sun-
day, when many of the citizens usually assembled at the Cross
by St. Paul’s Cathedral, he should make one bold effort to
induce them to rise and follow him to the Palace. 

So, on the Sunday morning, he and a small body of ad-
herents started out of his house—Essex House by the Strand,
with steps to the river—having first shut up in it, as prison-
ers, some members of the council who came to examine
him—and hurried into the City with the Earl at their head
crying out ‘For the Queen! For the Queen! A plot is laid for
my life!’ No one heeded them, however, and when they came
to St. Paul’s there were no citizens there. In the meantime
the prisoners at Essex House had been released by one of the
Earl’s own friends; he had been promptly proclaimed a trai-
tor in the City itself; and the streets were barricaded with
carts and guarded by soldiers. The Earl got back to his house
by water, with difficulty, and after an attempt to defend his
house against the troops and cannon by which it was soon
surrounded, gave himself up that night. He was brought to
trial on the nineteenth, and found guilty; on the twenty-
fifth, he was executed on Tower Hill, where he died, at thirty-
four years old, both courageously and penitently. His step-
father suffered with him. His enemy, Sir Walter Raleigh,
stood near the scaffold all the time—but not so near it as we
shall see him stand, before we finish his history.


A Child’s Histroy of England
342

In this case, as in the cases of the Duke of Norfolk and
Mary Queen of Scots, the Queen had commanded, and coun-
termanded, and again commanded, the execution. It is prob-
able that the death of her young and gallant favourite in the
prime of his good qualities, was never off her mind after-
wards, but she held out, the same vain, obstinate and capri-
cious woman, for another year. Then she danced before her
Court on a state occasion—and cut, I should think, a mighty
ridiculous figure, doing so in an immense ruff, stomacher
and wig, at seventy years old. For another year still, she held
out, but, without any more dancing, and as a moody, sor-
rowful, broken creature. At last, on the tenth of March, one
thousand six hundred and three, having been ill of a very
bad cold, and made worse by the death of the Countess of
Nottingham who was her intimate friend, she fell into a stu-
por and was supposed to be dead. She recovered her con-
sciousness, however, and then nothing would induce her to
go to bed; for she said that she knew that if she did, she
should never get up again. There she lay for ten days, on
cushions on the floor, without any food, until the Lord Ad-
miral got her into bed at last, partly by persuasions and partly 

by main force. When they asked her who should succeed
her, she replied that her seat had been the seat of Kings, and
that she would have for her successor, ‘No rascal’s son, but a
King’s.’ Upon this, the lords present stared at one another,
and took the liberty of asking whom she meant; to which
she replied, ‘Whom should I mean, but our cousin of Scot-
land!’ This was on the twenty-third of March. They asked
her once again that day, after she was speechless, whether
she was still in the same mind? She struggled up in bed, and
joined her hands over her head in the form of a crown, as
the only reply she could make. At three o’clock next morn-
ing, she very quietly died, in the forty-fifth year of her reign.
That reign had been a glorious one, and is made for ever
memorable by the distinguished men who flourished in it.
Apart from the great voyagers, statesmen, and scholars, whom
it produced, the names of Bacon, Spenser,, and Shakespeare,
will always be remembered with pride and veneration by the
civilised world, and will always impart (though with no great
reason, perhaps) some portion of their lustre to the name of
Elizabeth herself. It was a great reign for discovery, for com-
merce, and for English enterprise and spirit in general. It


Charles Dickens
343

was a great reign for the Protestant religion and for the Ref-
ormation which made England free. The Queen was very
popular, and in her progresses, or journeys about her do-
minions, was everywhere received with the liveliest joy. I
think the truth is, that she was not half so good as she has
been made out, and not half so bad as she has been made
out. She had her fine qualities, but she was coarse, capri-
cious, and treacherous, and had all the faults of an exces-
sively vain young woman long after she was an old one. On
the whole, she had a great deal too much of her father in
her, to please me.
Many improvements and luxuries were introduced in the
course of these five-and-forty years in the general manner of
living; but cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting, were
still the national amusements; and a coach was so rarely seen,
and was such an ugly and cumbersome affair when it was
seen, that even the Queen herself, on many high occasions,
rode on horseback on a pillion behind the Lord Chancellor. 

CHAPTER XXXII
ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE FIRST 

‘OUR  COUSIN  OF SCOTLAND’ was ugly, awkward, and shuf-
fling both in mind and person. His tongue was much too
large for his mouth, his legs were much too weak for his
body, and his dull goggle-eyes stared and rolled like an idiot’s.
He was cunning, covetous, wasteful, idle, drunken, greedy,
dirty, cowardly, a great swearer, and the most conceited man
on earth. His figure—what is commonly called rickety from
his birth—presented a most ridiculous appearance, dressed
in thick padded clothes, as a safeguard against being stabbed
(of which he lived in continual fear), of a grass-green colour
from head to foot, with a hunting-horn dangling at his side
instead of a sword, and his hat and feather sticking over one
eye, or hanging on the back of his head, as he happened to
toss it on. He used to loll on the necks of his favourite court-
iers, and slobber their faces, and kiss and pinch their cheeks;
and the greatest favourite he ever had, used to sign himself
in his letters to his royal master, His Majesty’s ‘dog and slave,’
and used to address his majesty as ‘his Sowship.’ His majesty


A Child’s Histroy of England
344

was the worst rider ever seen, and thought himself the best.
He was one of the most impertinent talkers (in the broadest
Scotch) ever heard, and boasted of being unanswerable in all
manner of argument. He wrote some of the most wearisome
treatises ever read—among others, a book upon witchcraft,
in which he was a devout believer—and thought himself a
prodigy of authorship. He thought, and wrote, and said,
that a king had a right to make and unmake what laws he
pleased, and ought to be accountable to nobody on earth.
This is the plain, true character of the personage whom the
greatest men about the court praised and flattered to that
degree, that I doubt if there be anything much more shame-
ful in the annals of human nature.
He came to the English throne with great ease. The mis-
eries of a disputed succession had been felt so long, and so
dreadfully, that he was proclaimed within a few hours of
Elizabeth’s death, and was accepted by the nation, even with-
out being asked to give any pledge that he would govern
well, or that he would redress crying grievances. He took a
month to come from Edinburgh to London; and, by way of
exercising his new power, hanged a pickpocket on the jour- 

ney without any trial, and knighted everybody he could lay
hold of. He made two hundred knights before he got to his
palace in London, and seven hundred before he had been in
it three months. He also shovelled sixty-two new peers into
the House of Lords—and there was a pretty large sprinkling
of Scotchmen among them, you may believe.
His Sowship’s prime Minister, Cecil (for I cannot do bet-
ter than call his majesty what his favourite called him), was
the enemy of Sir Walter Raleigh, and also of Sir Walter’s
political friend, Lord Cobham; and his Sowship’s first trouble
was a plot originated by these two, and entered into by some
others, with the old object of seizing the King and keeping
him in imprisonment until he should change his ministers.
There were Catholic priests in the plot, and there were Puri-
tan noblemen too; for, although the Catholics and Puritans
were strongly opposed to each other, they united at this time
against his Sowship, because they knew that he had a design
against both, after pretending to be friendly to each; this
design being to have only one high and convenient form of
the Protestant religion, which everybody should be bound
to belong to, whether they liked it or not. This plot was


Charles Dickens
345

mixed up with another, which may or may not have had
some reference to placing on the throne, at some time, the
Lady Arabella Stuart ; whose misfortune it was, to be the
daughter of the younger brother of his Sowship’s father, but
who was quite innocent of any part in the scheme. Sir Walter
Raleigh was accused on the confession of Lord Cobham—a
miserable creature, who said one thing at one time, and an-
other thing at another time, and could be relied upon in
nothing. The trial of Sir Walter Raleigh lasted from eight in
the morning until nearly midnight; he defended himself with
such eloquence, genius, and spirit against all accusations,
and against the insults of Coke, the Attorney-General—who,
according to the custom of the time, foully abused him—
that those who went there detesting the prisoner, came away
admiring him, and declaring that anything so wonderful and
so captivating was never heard. He was found guilty, never-
theless, and sentenced to death. Execution was deferred, and
he was taken to the Tower. The two Catholic priests, less
fortunate, were executed with the usual atrocity; and Lord
Cobham and two others were pardoned on the scaffold. His
Sowship thought it wonderfully knowing in him to surprise 

the people by pardoning these three at the very block; but,
blundering, and bungling, as usual, he had very nearly over-
reached himself. For, the messenger on horseback who
brought the pardon, came so late, that he was pushed to the
outside of the crowd, and was obliged to shout and roar out
what he came for. The miserable Cobham did not gain much
by being spared that day. He lived, both as a prisoner and a
beggar, utterly despised, and miserably poor, for thirteen
years, and then died in an old outhouse belonging to one of
his former servants.
This plot got rid of, and Sir Walter Raleigh safely shut up
in the Tower, his Sowship held a great dispute with the Puri-
tans on their presenting a petition to him, and had it all his
own way—not so very wonderful, as he would talk continu-
ally, and would not hear anybody else—and filled the Bish-
ops with admiration. It was comfortably settled that there
was to be only one form of religion, and that all men were to
think exactly alike. But, although this was arranged two cen-
turies and a half ago, and although the arrangement was
supported by much fining and imprisonment, I do not find
that it is quite successful, even yet.


A Child’s Histroy of England
346

His Sowship, having that uncommonly high opinion of
himself as a king, had a very low opinion of Parliament as a
power that audaciously wanted to control him. When he
called his first Parliament after he had been king a year, he
accordingly thought he would take pretty high ground with
them, and told them that he commanded them ‘as an abso-
lute king.’ The Parliament thought those strong words, and
saw the necessity of upholding their authority. His Sowship
had three children: Prince Henry, Prince Charles, and the
Princess Elizabeth. It would have been well for one of these,
and we shall too soon see which, if he had learnt a little
wisdom concerning Parliaments from his father’s obstinacy.
Now, the people still labouring under their old dread of
the Catholic religion, this Parliament revived and strength-
ened the severe laws against it. And this so angered  Robert
Catesby, a restless Catholic gentleman of an old family, that
he formed one of the most desperate and terrible designs
ever conceived in the mind of man; no less a scheme than
the Gunpowder Plot.
His object was, when the King, lords, and commons,
should be assembled at the next opening of Parliament, to 

blow them up, one and all, with a great mine of gunpowder.
The first person to whom he confided this horrible idea was
Thomas Winter, a Worcestershire gentleman who had served
in the army abroad, and had been secretly employed in Catho-
lic projects. While Winter was yet undecided, and when he
had gone over to the Netherlands, to learn from the Spanish
Ambassador there whether there was any hope of Catholics
being relieved through the intercession of the King of Spain
with his Sowship, he found at Ostend a tall, dark, daring
man, whom he had known when they were both soldiers
abroad, and whose name was Guido—or Guy—Fawkes. Re-
solved to join the plot, he proposed it to this man, knowing
him to be the man for any desperate deed, and they two
came back to England together. Here, they admitted two
other conspirators;  Thomas Percy , related to the Earl of
Northumberland, and John Wright, his brother-in-law. All
these met together in a solitary house in the open fields which
were then near Clement’s Inn, now a closely blocked-up part
of London; and when they had all taken a great oath of se-
crecy, Catesby told the rest what his plan was. They then
went up-stairs into a garret, and received the Sacrament from


Charles Dickens
347

Father Gerard, a Jesuit, who is said not to have known actu-
ally of the Gunpowder Plot, but who, I think, must have
had his suspicions that there was something desperate afoot.
Percy was a Gentleman Pensioner, and as he had occa-
sional duties to perform about the Court, then kept at
Whitehall, there would be nothing suspicious in his living
at Westminster. So, having looked well about him, and hav-
ing found a house to let, the back of which joined the Parlia-
ment House, he hired it of a person named  Ferris, for the
purpose of undermining the wall. Having got possession of
this house, the conspirators hired another on the Lambeth
side of the Thames, which they used as a storehouse for wood,
gunpowder, and other combustible matters. These were to
be removed at night (and afterwards were removed), bit by
bit, to the house at Westminster; and, that there might be
some trusty person to keep watch over the Lambeth stores,
they admitted another conspirator, by name  Robert Kay, a
very poor Catholic gentleman.
All these arrangements had been made some months, and
it was a dark, wintry, December night, when the conspira-
tors, who had been in the meantime dispersed to avoid ob- 

servation, met in the house at Westminster, and began to
dig. They had laid in a good stock of eatables, to avoid going
in and out, and they dug and dug with great ardour. But,
the wall being tremendously thick, and the work very se-
vere, they took into their plot Christopher Wright, a younger
brother of John Wright, that they might have a new pair of
hands to help. And Christopher Wright fell to like a fresh
man, and they dug and dug by night and by day, and Fawkes
stood sentinel all the time. And if any man’s heart seemed to
fail him at all, Fawkes said, ‘Gentlemen, we have abundance
of powder and shot here, and there is no fear of our being
taken alive, even if discovered.’ The same Fawkes, who, in
the capacity of sentinel, was always prowling about, soon
picked up the intelligence that the King had prorogued the
Parliament again, from the seventh of February, the day first
fixed upon, until the third of October. When the conspira-
tors knew this, they agreed to separate until after the Christ-
mas holidays, and to take no notice of each other in the
meanwhile, and never to write letters to one another on any
account. So, the house in Westminster was shut up again,
and I suppose the neighbours thought that those strange-


A Child’s Histroy of England
348

looking men who lived there so gloomily, and went out so
seldom, were gone away to have a merry Christmas some-
where.
It was the beginning of February, sixteen hundred and
five, when Catesby met his fellow-conspirators again at this
Westminster house. He had now admitted three more; John
Grant, a Warwickshire gentleman of a melancholy temper,
who lived in a doleful house near Stratford-upon-Avon, with
a frowning wall all round it, and a deep moat; Robert Winter,
eldest brother of Thomas; and Catesby’s own servant,Thomas
Bates, who, Catesby thought, had had some suspicion of
what his master was about. These three had all suffered more
or less for their religion in Elizabeth’s time. And now, they
all began to dig again, and they dug and dug by night and by
day.
They found it dismal work alone there, underground, with
such a fearful secret on their minds, and so many murders
before them. They were filled with wild fancies. Sometimes,
they thought they heard a great bell tolling, deep down in
the earth under the Parliament House; sometimes, they
thought they heard low voices muttering about the Gun- 

powder Plot; once in the morning, they really did hear a
great rumbling noise over their heads, as they dug and sweated
in their mine. Every man stopped and looked aghast at his
neighbour, wondering what had happened, when that bold
prowler, Fawkes, who had been out to look, came in and
told them that it was only a dealer in coals who had occu-
pied a cellar under the Parliament House, removing his stock
in trade to some other place. Upon this, the conspirators,
who with all their digging and digging had not yet dug
through the tremendously thick wall, changed their plan;
hired that cellar, which was directly under the House of Lords;
put six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder in it, and covered
them over with fagots and coals. Then they all dispersed
again till September, when the following new conspirators
were admitted; Sir Edward Baynham, of Gloucestershire; Sir
Everard Digby, of Rutlandshire; Ambrose Rookwood, of Suf-
folk; Francis Tresham, of Northamptonshire. Most of these
were rich, and were to assist the plot, some with money and
some with horses on which the conspirators were to ride
through the country and rouse the Catholics after the Par-
liament should be blown into air.


Charles Dickens
349

Parliament being again prorogued from the third of Oc-
tober to the fifth of November, and the conspirators being
uneasy lest their design should have been found out, Tho-
mas Winter said he would go up into the House of Lords on
the day of the prorogation, and see how matters looked.
Nothing could be better. The unconscious Commissioners
were walking about and talking to one another, just over the
six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder. He came back and told
the rest so, and they went on with their preparations. They
hired a ship, and kept it ready in the Thames, in which Fawkes
was to sail for Flanders after firing with a slow match the
train that was to explode the powder. A number of Catholic
gentlemen not in the secret, were invited, on pretence of a
hunting party, to meet Sir Everard Digby at Dunchurch on
the fatal day, that they might be ready to act together. And
now all was ready.
But, now, the great wickedness and danger which had been
all along at the bottom of this wicked plot, began to show
itself. As the fifth of November drew near, most of the con-
spirators, remembering that they had friends and relations
who would be in the House of Lords that day, felt some 

natural relenting, and a wish to warn them to keep away.
They were not much comforted by Catesby’s declaring that
in such a cause he would blow up his own son.  Lord
Mounteagle, Tresham’s brother-in-law, was certain to be in
the house; and when Tresham found that he could not pre-
vail upon the rest to devise any means of sparing their friends,
he wrote a mysterious letter to this lord and left it at his
lodging in the dusk, urging him to keep away from the open-
ing of Parliament, ‘since God and man had concurred to
punish the wickedness of the times.’ It contained the words
‘that the Parliament should receive a terrible blow, and yet
should not see who hurt them.’ And it added, ‘the danger is
past, as soon as you have burnt the letter.’
The ministers and courtiers made out that his Sowship,
by a direct miracle from Heaven, found out what this letter
meant. The truth is, that they were not long (as few men
would be) in finding out for themselves; and it was decided
to let the conspirators alone, until the very day before the
opening of Parliament. That the conspirators had their fears,
is certain; for, Tresham himself said before them all, that
they were every one dead men; and, although even he did


A Child’s Histroy of England
350

not take flight, there is reason to suppose that he had warned
other persons besides Lord Mounteagle. However, they were
all firm; and Fawkes, who was a man of iron, went down
every day and night to keep watch in the cellar as usual. He
was there about two in the afternoon of the fourth, when
the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Mounteagle threw open
the door and looked in. ‘Who are you, friend?’ said they.
‘Why,’ said Fawkes, ‘I am Mr. Percy’s servant, and am look-
ing after his store of fuel here.’ ‘Your master has laid in a
pretty good store,’ they returned, and shut the door, and
went away. Fawkes, upon this, posted off to the other con-
spirators to tell them all was quiet, and went back and shut
himself up in the dark, black cellar again, where he heard
the bell go twelve o’clock and usher in the fifth of Novem-
ber. About two hours afterwards, he slowly opened the door,
and came out to look about him, in his old prowling way.
He was instantly seized and bound, by a party of soldiers
under Sir Thomas Knevett. He had a watch upon him, some
touchwood, some tinder, some slow matches; and there was
a dark lantern with a candle in it, lighted, behind the door.
He had his boots and spurs on—to ride to the ship, I sup- 

pose—and it was well for the soldiers that they took him so
suddenly. If they had left him but a moment’s time to light a
match, he certainly would have tossed it in among the pow-
der, and blown up himself and them.
They took him to the King’s bed-chamber first of all, and
there the King (causing him to be held very tight, and keep-
ing a good way off), asked him how he could have the heart
to intend to destroy so many innocent people? ‘Because,’
said Guy Fawkes, ‘desperate diseases need desperate rem-
edies.’ To a little Scotch favourite, with a face like a terrier,
who asked him (with no particular wisdom) why he had
collected so much gunpowder, he replied, because he had
meant to blow Scotchmen back to Scotland, and it would
take a deal of powder to do that. Next day he was carried to
the Tower, but would make no confession. Even after being
horribly tortured, he confessed nothing that the Govern-
ment did not already know; though he must have been in a
fearful state—as his signature, still preserved, in contrast with
his natural hand-writing before he was put upon the dread-
ful rack, most frightfully shows. Bates, a very different man,
soon said the Jesuits had had to do with the plot, and prob-


Charles Dickens
351

ably, under the torture, would as readily have said anything.
Tresham, taken and put in the Tower too, made confessions
and unmade them, and died of an illness that was heavy
upon him. Rookwood, who had stationed relays of his own
horses all the way to Dunchurch, did not mount to escape
until the middle of the day, when the news of the plot was
all over London. On the road, he came up with the two
Wrights, Catesby, and Percy; and they all galloped together
into Northamptonshire. Thence to Dunchurch, where they
found the proposed party assembled. Finding, however, that
there had been a plot, and that it had been discovered, the
party disappeared in the course of the night, and left them
alone with Sir Everard Digby. Away they all rode again,
through Warwickshire and Worcestershire, to a house called
Holbeach, on the borders of Staffordshire. They tried to raise
the Catholics on their way, but were indignantly driven off
by them. All this time they were hotly pursued by the sheriff
of Worcester, and a fast increasing concourse of riders. At
last, resolving to defend themselves at Holbeach, they shut
themselves up in the house, and put some wet powder be-
fore the fire to dry. But it blew up, and Catesby was singed 

and blackened, and almost killed, and some of the others
were sadly hurt. Still, knowing that they must die, they re-
solved to die there, and with only their swords in their hands
appeared at the windows to be shot at by the sheriff and his
assistants. Catesby said to Thomas Winter, after Thomas had
been hit in the right arm which dropped powerless by his
side, ‘Stand by me, Tom, and we will die together!’—which
they did, being shot through the body by two bullets from
one gun. John Wright, and Christopher Wright, and Percy,
were also shot. Rookwood and Digby were taken: the former
with a broken arm and a wound in his body too.
It was the fifteenth of January, before the trial of Guy
Fawkes, and such of the other conspirators as were left alive,
came on. They were all found guilty, all hanged, drawn, and
quartered: some, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, on the top of
Ludgate-hill; some, before the Parliament House. A Jesuit
priest, named Henry Garnet, to whom the dreadful design
was said to have been communicated, was taken and tried;
and two of his servants, as well as a poor priest who was
taken with him, were tortured without mercy. He himself
was not tortured, but was surrounded in the Tower by tam-


A Child’s Histroy of England
352

perers and traitors, and so was made unfairly to convict him-
self out of his own mouth. He said, upon his trial, that he
had done all he could to prevent the deed, and that he could
not make public what had been told him in confession—
though I am afraid he knew of the plot in other ways. He
was found guilty and executed, after a manful defence, and
the Catholic Church made a saint of him; some rich and
powerful persons, who had had nothing to do with the
project, were fined and imprisoned for it by the Star Cham-
ber; the Catholics, in general, who had recoiled with horror
from the idea of the infernal contrivance, were unjustly put
under more severe laws than before; and this was the end of
the Gunpowder Plot.
SECOND PART
HIS SOWSHIP WOULD PRETTY WILLINGLY, I think, have blown
the House of Commons into the air himself; for, his dread
and jealousy of it knew no bounds all through his reign.
When he was hard pressed for money he was obliged to or-
der it to meet, as he could get no money without it; and 

when it asked him first to abolish some of the monopolies in
necessaries of life which were a great grievance to the people,
and to redress other public wrongs, he flew into a rage and
got rid of it again. At one time he wanted it to consent to the
Union of England with Scotland, and quarrelled about that.
At another time it wanted him to put down a most infamous
Church abuse, called the High Commission Court, and he
quarrelled with it about that. At another time it entreated
him not to be quite so fond of his archbishops and bishops
who made speeches in his praise too awful to be related, but
to have some little consideration for the poor Puritan clergy
who were persecuted for preaching in their own way, and
not according to the archbishops and bishops; and they quar-
relled about that. In short, what with hating the House of
Commons, and pretending not to hate it; and what with
now sending some of its members who opposed him, to
Newgate or to the Tower, and now telling the rest that they
must not presume to make speeches about the public affairs
which could not possibly concern them; and what with ca-
joling, and bullying, and fighting, and being frightened; the
House of Commons was the plague of his Sowship’s exist-


Charles Dickens
353

ence. It was pretty firm, however, in maintaining its rights,
and insisting that the Parliament should make the laws, and
not the King by his own single proclamations (which he
tried hard to do); and his Sowship was so often distressed for
money, in consequence, that he sold every sort of title and
public office as if they were merchandise, and even invented
a new dignity called a Baronetcy, which anybody could buy
for a thousand pounds.
These disputes with his Parliaments, and his hunting, and
his drinking, and his lying in bed—for he was a great slug-
gard—occupied his Sowship pretty well. The rest of his time
he chiefly passed in hugging and slobbering his favourites.
The first of these was Sir Philip Herbert, who had no knowl-
edge whatever, except of dogs, and horses, and hunting, but
whom he soon made Earl of Montgomery. The next, and a
much more famous one, was Robert Carr, or Ker (for it is not
certain which was his right name), who came from the Bor-
der country, and whom he soon made  Vixcount Rochester,
and afterwards,  Earl of Somerset . The way in which his
Sowship doted on this handsome young man, is even more
odious to think of, than the way in which the really great 

men of England condescended to bow down before him.
The favourite’s great friend was a certain Sir Thomas Overbury,
who wrote his love-letters for him, and assisted him in the
duties of his many high places, which his own ignorance
prevented him from discharging. But this same Sir Thomas
having just manhood enough to dissuade the favourite from
a wicked marriage with the beautiful Countess of Essex, who
was to get a divorce from her husband for the purpose, the
said Countess, in her rage, got Sir Thomas put into the Tower,
and there poisoned him. Then the favourite and this bad
woman were publicly married by the King’s pet bishop, with
as much to-do and rejoicing, as if he had been the best man,
and she the best woman, upon the face of the earth.
But, after a longer sunshine than might have been ex-
pected—of seven years or so, that is to say—another hand-
some young man started up and eclipsed the Earl of Somerset.
This was George Villiers, the youngest son of a Leicestershire
gentleman: who came to Court with all the Paris fashions on
him, and could dance as well as the best mountebank that
ever was seen. He soon danced himself into the good graces
of his Sowship, and danced the other favourite out of favour.


A Child’s Histroy of England
354

Then, it was all at once discovered that the Earl and Countess
of Somerset had not deserved all those great promotions and
mighty rejoicings, and they were separately tried for the mur-
der of Sir Thomas Overbury, and for other crimes. But, the
King was so afraid of his late favourite’s publicly telling some
disgraceful things he knew of him—which he darkly threat-
ened to do—that he was even examined with two men stand-
ing, one on either side of him, each with a cloak in his hand,
ready to throw it over his head and stop his mouth if he should
break out with what he had it in his power to tell. So, a very
lame affair was purposely made of the trial, and his punish-
ment was an allowance of four thousand pounds a year in
retirement, while the Countess was pardoned, and allowed to
pass into retirement too. They hated one another by this time,
and lived to revile and torment each other some years.
While these events were in progress, and while his Sowship
was making such an exhibition of himself, from day to day
and from year to year, as is not often seen in any sty, three
remarkable deaths took place in England. The first was that
of the Minister, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, who was
past sixty, and had never been strong, being deformed from 

his birth. He said at last that he had no wish to live; and no
Minister need have had, with his experience of the mean-
ness and wickedness of those disgraceful times. The second
was that of the Lady Arabella Stuart, who alarmed his Sowship
mightily, by privately marrying William Seymour, son of Lord
Beauchamp, who was a descendant of King Henry the Sev-
enth, and who, his Sowship thought, might consequently
increase and strengthen any claim she might one day set up
to the throne. She was separated from her husband (who
was put in the Tower) and thrust into a boat to be confined
at Durham. She escaped in a man’s dress to get away in a
French ship from Gravesend to France, but unhappily missed
her husband, who had escaped too, and was soon taken. She
went raving mad in the miserable Tower, and died there af-
ter four years. The last, and the most important of these
three deaths, was that of Prince Henry, the heir to the throne,
in the nineteenth year of his age. He was a promising young
prince, and greatly liked; a quiet, well-conducted youth, of
whom two very good things are known: first, that his father
was jealous of him; secondly, that he was the friend of Sir
Walter Raleigh, languishing through all those years in the


Charles Dickens
355

Tower, and often said that no man but his father would keep
such a bird in such a cage. On the occasion of the prepara-
tions for the marriage of his sister the Princess Elizabeth
with a foreign prince (and an unhappy marriage it turned
out), he came from Richmond, where he had been very ill,
to greet his new brother-in-law, at the palace at Whitehall.
There he played a great game at tennis, in his shirt, though
it was very cold weather, and was seized with an alarming
illness, and died within a fortnight of a putrid fever. For this
young prince Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, in his prison in the
Tower, the beginning of a History of the World: a wonder-
ful instance how little his Sowship could do to confine a
great man’s mind, however long he might imprison his body.
And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had many
faults, but who never showed so many merits as in trouble
and adversity, may bring me at once to the end of his sad
story. After an imprisonment in the Tower of twelve long
years, he proposed to resume those old sea voyages of his,
and to go to South America in search of gold. His Sowship,
divided between his wish to be on good terms with the Span-
iards through whose territory Sir Walter must pass (he had 

long had an idea of marrying Prince Henry to a Spanish
Princess), and his avaricious eagerness to get hold of the gold,
did not know what to do. But, in the end, he set Sir Walter
free, taking securities for his return; and Sir Walter fitted
out an expedition at his own coast and, on the twenty-eighth
of March, one thousand six hundred and seventeen, sailed
away in command of one of its ships, which he ominously
called the Destiny. The expedition failed; the common men,
not finding the gold they had expected, mutinied; a quarrel
broke out between Sir Walter and the Spaniards, who hated
him for old successes of his against them; and he took and
burnt a little town called Saint Thomas. For this he was de-
nounced to his Sowship by the Spanish Ambassador as a
pirate; and returning almost broken-hearted, with his hopes
and fortunes shattered, his company of friends dispersed,
and his brave son (who had been one of them) killed, he was
taken—through the treachery of Sir Lewis Stukely, his near
relation, a scoundrel and a Vice-Admiral—and was once again
immured in his prison-home of so many years.
His Sowship being mightily disappointed in not getting
any gold, Sir Walter Raleigh was tried as unfairly, and with


A Child’s Histroy of England
356

as many lies and evasions as the judges and law officers and
every other authority in Church and State habitually prac-
tised under such a King. After a great deal of prevarication
on all parts but his own, it was declared that he must die
under his former sentence, now fifteen years old. So, on the
twenty-eighth of October, one thousand six hundred and
eighteen, he was shut up in the Gate House at Westminster
to pass his late night on earth, and there he took leave of his
good and faithful lady who was worthy to have lived in bet-
ter days. At eight o’clock next morning, after a cheerful break-
fast, and a pipe, and a cup of good wine, he was taken to Old
Palace Yard in Westminster, where the scaffold was set up,
and where so many people of high degree were assembled to
see him die, that it was a matter of some difficulty to get him
through the crowd. He behaved most nobly, but if anything
lay heavy on his mind, it was that Earl of Essex, whose head
he had seen roll off; and he solemnly said that he had had no
hand in bringing him to the block, and that he had shed
tears for him when he died. As the morning was very cold,
the Sheriff said, would he come down to a fire for a little
space, and warm himself? But Sir Walter thanked him, and 

said no, he would rather it were done at once, for he was ill
of fever and ague, and in another quarter of an hour his
shaking fit would come upon him if he were still alive, and
his enemies might then suppose that he trembled for fear.
With that, he kneeled and made a very beautiful and Chris-
tian prayer. Before he laid his head upon the block he felt
the edge of the axe, and said, with a smile upon his face, that
it was a sharp medicine, but would cure the worst disease.
When he was bent down ready for death, he said to the
executioner, finding that he hesitated, ‘What dost thou fear?
Strike, man!’ So, the axe came down and struck his head off,
in the sixty-sixth year of his age.
The new favourite got on fast. He was made a viscount,
he was made Duke of Buckingham, he was made a marquis,
he was made Master of the Horse, he was made Lord High
Admiral—and the Chief Commander of the gallant English
forces that had dispersed the Spanish Armada, was displaced
to make room for him. He had the whole kingdom at his
disposal, and his mother sold all the profits and honours of
the State, as if she had kept a shop. He blazed all over with
diamonds and other precious stones, from his hatband and


Charles Dickens
357

his earrings to his shoes. Yet he was an ignorant presumptu-
ous, swaggering compound of knave and fool, with nothing
but his beauty and his dancing to recommend him. This is
the gentleman who called himself his Majesty’s dog and slave,
and called his Majesty Your Sowship. His Sowship called
him Steenie; it is supposed, because that was a nickname for
Stephen, and because St. Stephen was generally represented
in pictures as a handsome saint.
His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits’-end by his
trimming between the general dislike of the Catholic reli-
gion at home, and his desire to wheedle and flatter it abroad,
as his only means of getting a rich princess for his son’s wife:
a part of whose fortune he might cram into his greasy pock-
ets. Prince Charles—or as his Sowship called him, Baby
Charles—being now  Prince of Wales , the old project of a
marriage with the Spanish King’s daughter had been revived
for him; and as she could not marry a Protestant without
leave from the Pope, his Sowship himself secretly and meanly
wrote to his Infallibility, asking for it. The negotiation for
this Spanish marriage takes up a larger space in great books,
than you can imagine, but the upshot of it all is, that when 

it had been held off by the Spanish Court for a long time,
Baby Charles and Steenie set off in disguise as Mr. Thomas
Smith and Mr. John Smith, to see the Spanish Princess; that
Baby Charles pretended to be desperately in love with her,
and jumped off walls to look at her, and made a considerable
fool of himself in a good many ways; that she was called
Princess of Wales and that the whole Spanish Court believed
Baby Charles to be all but dying for her sake, as he expressly
told them he was; that Baby Charles and Steenie came back
to England, and were received with as much rapture as if
they had been a blessing to it; that Baby Charles had actually
fallen in love with Henrietta Maria, the French King’s sister,
whom he had seen in Paris; that he thought it a wonderfully
fine and princely thing to have deceived the Spaniards, all
through; and that he openly said, with a chuckle, as soon as
he was safe and sound at home again, that the Spaniards
were great fools to have believed him.
Like most dishonest men, the Prince and the favourite
complained that the people whom they had deluded were
dishonest. They made such misrepresentations of the treach-
ery of the Spaniards in this business of the Spanish match,


A Child’s Histroy of England
358

that the English nation became eager for a war with them.
Although the gravest Spaniards laughed at the idea of his
Sowship in a warlike attitude, the Parliament granted money
for the beginning of hostilities, and the treaties with Spain
were publicly declared to be at an end. The Spanish ambas-
sador in London—probably with the help of the fallen
favourite, the Earl of Somerset—being unable to obtain
speech with his Sowship, slipped a paper into his hand, de-
claring that he was a prisoner in his own house, and was
entirely governed by Buckingham and his creatures. The first
effect of this letter was that his Sowship began to cry and
whine, and took Baby Charles away from Steenie, and went
down to Windsor, gabbling all sorts of nonsense. The end of
it was that his Sowship hugged his dog and slave, and said he
was quite satisfied.
He had given the Prince and the favourite almost unlim-
ited power to settle anything with the Pope as to the Spanish
marriage; and he now, with a view to the French one, signed
a treaty that all Roman Catholics in England should exercise
their religion freely, and should never be required to take
any oath contrary thereto. In return for this, and for other 

concessions much less to be defended, Henrietta Maria was
to become the Prince’s wife, and was to bring him a fortune
of eight hundred thousand crowns.
His Sowship’s eyes were getting red with eagerly looking
for the money, when the end of a gluttonous life came upon
him; and, after a fortnight’s illness, on Sunday the twenty-
seventh of March, one thousand six hundred and twenty-
five, he died. He had reigned twenty-two years, and was
fifty-nine years old. I know of nothing more abominable in
history than the adulation that was lavished on this King,
and the vice and corruption that such a barefaced habit of
lying produced in his court. It is much to be doubted whether
one man of honour, and not utterly self-disgraced, kept his
place near James the First. Lord Bacon, that able and wise
philosopher, as the First Judge in the Kingdom in this reign,
became a public spectacle of dishonesty and corruption; and
in his base flattery of his Sowship, and in his crawling servil-
ity to his dog and slave, disgraced himself even more. But, a
creature like his Sowship set upon a throne is like the Plague,
and everybody receives infection from him.


Charles Dickens
359 

CHAPTER XXXIII
ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST 

BABY CHARLES BECAME King Charles the First, in the twenty-
fifth year of his age. Unlike his father, he was usually ami-
able in his private character, and grave and dignified in his
bearing; but, like his father, he had monstrously exaggerated
notions of the rights of a king, and was evasive, and not to
be trusted. If his word could have been relied upon, his his-
tory might have had a different end.
His first care was to send over that insolent upstart,
Buckingham, to bring Henrietta Maria from Paris to be his
Queen; upon which occasion Buckingham—with his usual
audacity—made love to the young Queen of Austria, and
was very indignant indeed with Cardinal Richelieu, the French
Minister, for thwarting his intentions. The English people
were very well disposed to like their new Queen, and to
receive her with great favour when she came among them as
a stranger. But, she held the Protestant religion in great dis-
like, and brought over a crowd of unpleasant priests, who
made her do some very ridiculous things, and forced them- 

selves upon the public notice in many disagreeable ways.
Hence, the people soon came to dislike her, and she soon
came to dislike them; and she did so much all through this
reign in setting the King (who was dotingly fond of her)
against his subjects, that it would have been better for him if
she had never been born.
Now, you are to understand that King Charles the First—
of his own determination to be a high and mighty King not
to be called to account by anybody, and urged on by his
Queen besides—deliberately set himself to put his Parlia-
ment down and to put himself up. You are also to under-
stand, that even in pursuit of this wrong idea (enough in
itself to have ruined any king) he never took a straight course,
but always took a crooked one.
He was bent upon war with Spain, though neither the
House of Commons nor the people were quite clear as to
the justice of that war, now that they began to think a little
more about the story of the Spanish match. But the King
rushed into it hotly, raised money by illegal means to meet
its expenses, and encountered a miserable failure at Cadiz,
in the very first year of his reign. An expedition to Cadiz


A Child’s Histroy of England
360

had been made in the hope of plunder, but as it was not
successful, it was necessary to get a grant of money from the
Parliament; and when they met, in no very complying
humour, the, King told them, ‘to make haste to let him have
it, or it would be the worse for themselves.’ Not put in a
more complying humour by this, they impeached the King’s
favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, as the cause (which he
undoubtedly was) of many great public grievances and
wrongs. The King, to save him, dissolved the Parliament
without getting the money he wanted; and when the Lords
implored him to consider and grant a little delay, he replied,
‘No, not one minute.’ He then began to raise money for
himself by the following means among others.
He levied certain duties called tonnage and poundage
which had not been granted by the Parliament, and could
lawfully be levied by no other power; he called upon the
seaport towns to furnish, and to pay all the cost for three
months of, a fleet of armed ships; and he required the people
to unite in lending him large sums of money, the repayment
of which was very doubtful. If the poor people refused, they
were pressed as soldiers or sailors; if the gentry refused, they 

were sent to prison. Five gentlemen, named Sir Thomas Dar-
nel, John Corbet, Walter Earl, John Haveningham, and Everard
Hampden, for refusing were taken up by a warrant of the
King’s privy council, and were sent to prison without any
cause but the King’s pleasure being stated for their impris-
onment. Then the question came to be solemnly tried,
whether this was not a violation of Magna Charta, and an
encroachment by the King on the highest rights of the En-
glish people. His lawyers contended No, because to encroach
upon the rights of the English people would be to do wrong,
and the King could do no wrong. The accommodating judges
decided in favour of this wicked nonsense; and here was a
fatal division between the King and the people.
For all this, it became necessary to call another Parliament.
The people, sensible of the danger in which their liberties
were, chose for it those who were best known for their deter-
mined opposition to the King; but still the King, quite blinded
by his determination to carry everything before him, addressed
them when they met, in a contemptuous manner, and just
told them in so many words that he had only called them
together because he wanted money. The Parliament, strong


Charles Dickens
361

enough and resolute enough to know that they would lower
his tone, cared little for what he said, and laid before him one
of the great documents of history, which is called the Petition
of Right, requiring that the free men of England should no
longer be called upon to lend the King money, and should no
longer be pressed or imprisoned for refusing to do so; further,
that the free men of England should no longer be seized by
the King’s special mandate or warrant, it being contrary to
their rights and liberties and the laws of their country. At first
the King returned an answer to this petition, in which he
tried to shirk it altogether; but, the House of Commons then
showing their determination to go on with the impeachment
of Buckingham, the King in alarm returned an answer, giving
his consent to all that was required of him. He not only after-
wards departed from his word and honour on these points,
over and over again, but, at this very time, he did the mean
and dissembling act of publishing his first answer and not his
second—merely that the people might suppose that the Par-
liament had not got the better of him.
That pestilent Buckingham, to gratify his own wounded
vanity, had by this time involved the country in war with 

France, as well as with Spain. For such miserable causes and
such miserable creatures are wars sometimes made! But he
was destined to do little more mischief in this world. One
morning, as he was going out of his house to his carriage, he
turned to speak to a certain Colonel  Fryer who was with
him; and he was violently stabbed with a knife, which the
murderer left sticking in his heart. This happened in his
hall. He had had angry words up-stairs, just before, with
some French gentlemen, who were immediately suspected
by his servants, and had a close escape from being set upon
and killed. In the midst of the noise, the real murderer, who
had gone to the kitchen and might easily have got away,
drew his sword and cried out, ‘I am the man!’ His name was
John Felton, a Protestant and a retired officer in the army. He
said he had had no personal ill-will to the Duke, but had
killed him as a curse to the country. He had aimed his blow
well, for Buckingham had only had time to cry out, ‘Vil-
lain!’ and then he drew out the knife, fell against a table, and
died.
The council made a mighty business of examining John
Felton about this murder, though it was a plain case enough,


A Child’s Histroy of England
362

one would think. He had come seventy miles to do it, he
told them, and he did it for the reason he had declared; if
they put him upon the rack, as that noble Marquis of Dorset
whom he saw before him, had the goodness to threaten, he
gave that marquis warning, that he would accuse him as his
accomplice! The King was unpleasantly anxious to have him
racked, nevertheless; but as the judges now found out that
torture was contrary to the law of England—it is a pity they
did not make the discovery a little sooner—John Felton was
simply executed for the murder he had done. A murder it
undoubtedly was, and not in the least to be defended: though
he had freed England from one of the most profligate, con-
temptible, and base court favourites to whom it has ever
yielded.
A very different man now arose. This was  Sir Thomas
Wentworth, a Yorkshire gentleman, who had sat in Parlia-
ment for a long time, and who had favoured arbitrary and
haughty principles, but who had gone over to the people’s
side on receiving offence from Buckingham. The King, much
wanting such a man—for, besides being naturally favourable
to the King’s cause, he had great abilities—made him first a 

Baron, and then a Viscount, and gave him high employ-
ment, and won him most completely.
A Parliament, however, was still in existence, and was not
to be won. On the twentieth of January, one thousand six
hundred and twenty-nine, Sir John Eliot, a great man who
had been active in the Petition of Right, brought forward
other strong resolutions against the King’s chief instruments,
and called upon the Speaker to put them to the vote. To this
the Speaker answered, ‘he was commanded otherwise by the
King,’ and got up to leave the chair—which, according to
the rules of the House of Commons would have obliged it
to adjourn without doing anything more—when two mem-
bers, named Mr. Hollis and Mr. Valentine, held him down.
A scene of great confusion arose among the members; and
while many swords were drawn and flashing about, the King,
who was kept informed of all that was going on, told the
captain of his guard to go down to the House and force the
doors. The resolutions were by that time, however, voted,
and the House adjourned. Sir John Eliot and those two mem-
bers who had held the Speaker down, were quickly sum-
moned before the council. As they claimed it to be their


Charles Dickens
363

privilege not to answer out of Parliament for anything they
had said in it, they were committed to the Tower. The King
then went down and dissolved the Parliament, in a speech
wherein he made mention of these gentlemen as ‘Vipers’—
which did not do him much good that ever I have heard of.
As they refused to gain their liberty by saying they were
sorry for what they had done, the King, always remarkably
unforgiving, never overlooked their offence. When they de-
manded to be brought up before the court of King’s Bench,
he even resorted to the meanness of having them moved
about from prison to prison, so that the writs issued for that
purpose should not legally find them. At last they came be-
fore the court and were sentenced to heavy fines, and to be
imprisoned during the King’s pleasure. When Sir John Eliot’s
health had quite given way, and he so longed for change of
air and scene as to petition for his release, the King sent back
the answer (worthy of his Sowship himself) that the petition
was not humble enough. When he sent another petition by
his young son, in which he pathetically offered to go back to
prison when his health was restored, if he might be released
for its recovery, the King still disregarded it. When he died 

in the Tower, and his children petitioned to be allowed to
take his body down to Cornwall, there to lay it among the
ashes of his forefathers, the King returned for answer, ‘Let
Sir John Eliot’s body be buried in the church of that parish
where he died.’ All this was like a very little King indeed, I
think.
And now, for twelve long years, steadily pursuing his de-
sign of setting himself up and putting the people down, the
King called no Parliament; but ruled without one. If twelve
thousand volumes were written in his praise (as a good many
have been) it would still remain a fact, impossible to be de-
nied, that for twelve years King Charles the First reigned in
England unlawfully and despotically, seized upon his sub-
jects’ goods and money at his pleasure, and punished ac-
cording to his unbridled will all who ventured to oppose
him. It is a fashion with some people to think that this King’s
career was cut short; but I must say myself that I think he
ran a pretty long one.
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the King’s
right-hand man in the religious part of the putting down of
the people’s liberties. Laud, who was a sincere man, of large


A Child’s Histroy of England
364

learning but small sense—for the two things sometimes go
together in very different quantities—though a Protestant,
held opinions so near those of the Catholics, that the Pope
wanted to make a Cardinal of him, if he would have ac-
cepted that favour. He looked upon vows, robes, lighted
candles, images, and so forth, as amazingly important in re-
ligious ceremonies; and he brought in an immensity of bow-
ing and candle-snuffing. He also regarded archbishops and
bishops as a sort of miraculous persons, and was inveterate
in the last degree against any who thought otherwise. Ac-
cordingly, he offered up thanks to Heaven, and was in a
state of much pious pleasure, when a Scotch clergyman,
named Leighton, was pilloried, whipped, branded in the
cheek, and had one of his ears cut off and one of his nostrils
slit, for calling bishops trumpery and the inventions of men.
He originated on a Sunday morning the prosecution of Wil-
liam Prynne, a barrister who was of similar opinions, and
who was fined a thousand pounds; who was pilloried; who
had his ears cut off on two occasions—one ear at a time—
and who was imprisoned for life. He highly approved of the
punishment of Doctor Bastwick, a physician; who was also 

fined a thousand pounds; and who afterwards had  his ears
cut off, and was imprisoned for life. These were gentle meth-
ods of persuasion, some will tell you: I think, they were rather
calculated to be alarming to the people.
In the money part of the putting down of the people’s
liberties, the King was equally gentle, as some will tell you:
as I think, equally alarming. He levied those duties of ton-
nage and poundage, and increased them as he thought fit.
He granted monopolies to companies of merchants on their
paying him for them, notwithstanding the great complaints
that had, for years and years, been made on the subject of
monopolies. He fined the people for disobeying proclama-
tions issued by his Sowship in direct violation of law. He
revived the detested Forest laws, and took private property
to himself as his forest right. Above all, he determined to
have what was called Ship Money; that is to say, money for
the support of the fleet—not only from the seaports, but
from all the counties of England: having found out that, in
some ancient time or other, all the counties paid it. The
grievance of this ship money being somewhat too strong,
John Chambers, a citizen of London, refused to pay his part


Charles Dickens
365

of it. For this the Lord Mayor ordered John Chambers to
prison, and for that John Chambers brought a suit against
the Lord Mayor. Lord Say, also, behaved like a real noble-
man, and declared he would not pay. But, the sturdiest and
best opponent of the ship money was John Hampden, a gentle-
man of Buckinghamshire, who had sat among the ‘vipers’ in
the House of Commons when there was such a thing, and
who had been the bosom friend of Sir John Eliot. This case
was tried before the twelve judges in the Court of Exche-
quer, and again the King’s lawyers said it was impossible that
ship money could be wrong, because the King could do no
wrong, however hard he tried—and he really did try very
hard during these twelve years. Seven of the judges said that
was quite true, and Mr. Hampden was bound to pay: five of
the judges said that was quite false, and Mr. Hampden was
not bound to pay. So, the King triumphed (as he thought),
by making Hampden the most popular man in England;
where matters were getting to that height now, that many
honest Englishmen could not endure their country, and sailed
away across the seas to found a colony in Massachusetts Bay
in America. It is said that Hampden himself and his relation 

Oliver Cromwell were going with a company of such voyag-
ers, and were actually on board ship, when they were stopped
by a proclamation, prohibiting sea captains to carry out such
passengers without the royal license. But O! it would have
been well for the King if he had let them go! This was the
state of England. If Laud had been a madman just broke
loose, he could not have done more mischief than he did in
Scotland. In his endeavours (in which he was seconded by
the King, then in person in that part of his dominions) to
force his own ideas of bishops, and his own religious forms
and ceremonies upon the Scotch, he roused that nation to a
perfect frenzy. They formed a solemn league, which they
called The Covenant, for the preservation of their own reli-
gious forms; they rose in arms throughout the whole coun-
try; they summoned all their men to prayers and sermons
twice a day by beat of drum; they sang psalms, in which they
compared their enemies to all the evil spirits that ever were
heard of; and they solemnly vowed to smite them with the
sword. At first the King tried force, then treaty, then a Scot-
tish Parliament which did not answer at all. Then he tried
the Earl of Strafford, formerly Sir Thomas Wentworth; who,


A Child’s Histroy of England
366

as Lord Wentworth, had been governing Ireland. He, too,
had carried it with a very high hand there, though to the
benefit and prosperity of that country.
Strafford and Laud were for conquering the Scottish people
by force of arms. Other lords who were taken into council,
recommended that a Parliament should at last be called; to
which the King unwillingly consented. So, on the thirteenth
of April, one thousand six hundred and forty, that then
strange sight, a Parliament, was seen at Westminster. It is
called the Short Parliament, for it lasted a very little while.
While the members were all looking at one another, doubt-
ful who would dare to speak, Mr. Pym arose and set forth all
that the King had done unlawfully during the past twelve
years, and what was the position to which England was re-
duced. This great example set, other members took courage
and spoke the truth freely, though with great patience and
moderation. The King, a little frightened, sent to say that if
they would grant him a certain sum on certain terms, no
more ship money should be raised. They debated the matter
for two days; and then, as they would not give him all he
asked without promise or inquiry, he dissolved them. 

But they knew very well that he must have a Parliament
now; and he began to make that discovery too, though rather
late in the day. Wherefore, on the twenty-fourth of Septem-
ber, being then at York with an army collected against the
Scottish people, but his own men sullen and discontented
like the rest of the nation, the King told the great council of
the Lords, whom he had called to meet him there, that he
would summon another Parliament to assemble on the third
of November. The soldiers of the Covenant had now forced
their way into England and had taken possession of the north-
ern counties, where the coals are got. As it would never do
to be without coals, and as the King’s troops could make no
head against the Covenanters so full of gloomy zeal, a truce
was made, and a treaty with Scotland was taken into consid-
eration. Meanwhile the northern counties paid the Covenant-
ers to leave the coals alone, and keep quiet.
We have now disposed of the Short Parliament. We have
next to see what memorable things were done by the Long
one.


Charles Dickens
367

SECOND PART
THE LONG PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED on the third of Novem-
ber, one thousand six hundred and forty-one. That day week
the Earl of Strafford arrived from York, very sensible that
the spirited and determined men who formed that Parlia-
ment were no friends towards him, who had not only de-
serted the cause of the people, but who had on all occasions
opposed himself to their liberties. The King told him, for
his comfort, that the Parliament ‘should not hurt one hair of
his head.’ But, on the very next day Mr. Pym, in the House
of Commons, and with great solemnity, impeached the Earl
of Strafford as a traitor. He was immediately taken into cus-
tody and fell from his proud height.
It was the twenty-second of March before he was brought
to trial in Westminster Hall; where, although he was very ill
and suffered great pain, he defended himself with such abil-
ity and majesty, that it was doubtful whether he would not
get the best of it. But on the thirteenth day of the trial, Pym
produced in the House of Commons a copy of some notes
of a council, found by young Sir Harry Vane in a red velvet 

cabinet belonging to his father (Secretary Vane, who sat at
the council-table with the Earl), in which Strafford had dis-
tinctly told the King that he was free from all rules and ob-
ligations of government, and might do with his people what-
ever he liked; and in which he had added—‘You have an
army in Ireland that you may employ to reduce this king-
dom to obedience.’ It was not clear whether by the words
‘this kingdom,’ he had really meant England or Scotland;
but the Parliament contended that he meant England, and
this was treason. At the same sitting of the House of Com-
mons it was resolved to bring in a bill of attainder declaring
the treason to have been committed: in preference to pro-
ceeding with the trial by impeachment, which would have
required the treason to be proved.
So, a bill was brought in at once, was carried through the
House of Commons by a large majority, and was sent up to
the House of Lords. While it was still uncertain whether the
House of Lords would pass it and the King consent to it,
Pym disclosed to the House of Commons that the King and
Queen had both been plotting with the officers of the army
to bring up the soldiers and control the Parliament, and also


A Child’s Histroy of England
368

to introduce two hundred soldiers into the Tower of Lon-
don to effect the Earl’s escape. The plotting with the army
was revealed by one George Goring, the son of a lord of that
name: a bad fellow who was one of the original plotters, and
turned traitor. The King had actually given his warrant for
the admission of the two hundred men into the Tower, and
they would have got in too, but for the refusal of the gover-
nor—a sturdy Scotchman of the name of Balfour—to admit
them. These matters being made public, great numbers of
people began to riot outside the Houses of Parliament, and
to cry out for the execution of the Earl of Strafford, as one of
the King’s chief instruments against them. The bill passed
the House of Lords while the people were in this state of
agitation, and was laid before the King for his assent, to-
gether with another bill declaring that the Parliament then
assembled should not be dissolved or adjourned without their
own consent. The King—not unwilling to save a faithful
servant, though he had no great attachment for him—was
in some doubt what to do; but he gave his consent to both
bills, although he in his heart believed that the bill against
the Earl of Strafford was unlawful and unjust. The Earl had 

written to him, telling him that he was willing to die for his
sake. But he had not expected that his royal master would
take him at his word quite so readily; for, when he heard his
doom, he laid his hand upon his heart, and said, ‘Put not
your trust in Princes!’
The King, who never could be straightforward and plain,
through one single day or through one single sheet of paper,
wrote a letter to the Lords, and sent it by the young Prince
of Wales, entreating them to prevail with the Commons that
‘that unfortunate man should fulfil the natural course of his
life in a close imprisonment.’ In a postscript to the very same
letter, he added, ‘If he must die, it were charity to reprieve
him till Saturday.’ If there had been any doubt of his fate,
this weakness and meanness would have settled it. The very
next day, which was the twelfth of May, he was brought out
to be beheaded on Tower Hill.
Archbishop Laud, who had been so fond of having people’s
ears cropped off and their noses slit, was now confined in
the Tower too; and when the Earl went by his window to his
death, he was there, at his request, to give him his blessing.
They had been great friends in the King’s cause, and the


Charles Dickens
369

Earl had written to him in the days of their power that he
thought it would be an admirable thing to have Mr.
Hampden publicly whipped for refusing to pay the ship
money. However, those high and mighty doings were over
now, and the Earl went his way to death with dignity and
heroism. The governor wished him to get into a coach at the
Tower gate, for fear the people should tear him to pieces;
but he said it was all one to him whether he died by the axe
or by the people’s hands. So, he walked, with a firm tread
and a stately look, and sometimes pulled off his hat to them
as he passed along. They were profoundly quiet. He made a
speech on the scaffold from some notes he had prepared
(the paper was found lying there after his head was struck
off), and one blow of the axe killed him, in the forty-ninth
year of his age.
This bold and daring act, the Parliament accompanied by
other famous measures, all originating (as even this did) in
the King’s having so grossly and so long abused his power.
The name of Delinquents was applied to all sheriffs and other
officers who had been concerned in raising the ship money,
or any other money, from the people, in an unlawful man- 

ner; the Hampden judgment was reversed; the judges who
had decided against Hampden were called upon to give large
securities that they would take such consequences as Parlia-
ment might impose upon them; and one was arrested as he
sat in High Court, and carried off to prison. Laud was im-
peached; the unfortunate victims whose ears had been
cropped and whose noses had been slit, were brought out of
prison in triumph; and a bill was passed declaring that a
Parliament should be called every third year, and that if the
King and the King’s officers did not call it, the people should
assemble of themselves and summon it, as of their own right
and power. Great illuminations and rejoicings took place over
all these things, and the country was wildly excited. That the
Parliament took advantage of this excitement and stirred them
up by every means, there is no doubt; but you are always to
remember those twelve long years, during which the King
had tried so hard whether he really could do any wrong or
not.
All this time there was a great religious outcry against the
right of the Bishops to sit in Parliament; to which the Scot-
tish people particularly objected. The English were divided


A Child’s Histroy of England
370

on this subject, and, partly on this account and partly be-
cause they had had foolish expectations that the Parliament
would be able to take off nearly all the taxes, numbers of
them sometimes wavered and inclined towards the King.
I believe myself, that if, at this or almost any other period
of his life, the King could have been trusted by any man not
out of his senses, he might have saved himself and kept his
throne. But, on the English army being disbanded, he plot-
ted with the officers again, as he had done before, and estab-
lished the fact beyond all doubt by putting his signature of
approval to a petition against the Parliamentary leaders, which
was drawn up by certain officers. When the Scottish army
was disbanded, he went to Edinburgh in four days—which
was going very fast at that time—to plot again, and so darkly
too, that it is difficult to decide what his whole object was.
Some suppose that he wanted to gain over the Scottish Par-
liament, as he did in fact gain over, by presents and favours,
many Scottish lords and men of power. Some think that he
went to get proofs against the Parliamentary leaders in En-
gland of their having treasonably invited the Scottish people
to come and help them. With whatever object he went to 

Scotland, he did little good by going. At the instigation of
the Earl of Montrose, a desperate man who was then in prison
for plotting, he tried to kidnap three Scottish lords who es-
caped. A committee of the Parliament at home, who had
followed to watch him, writing an account of this incident,
as it was called, to the Parliament, the Parliament made a
fresh stir about it; were, or feigned to be, much alarmed for
themselves; and wrote to the Earl of Essex, the commander-
in-chief, for a guard to protect them.
It is not absolutely proved that the King plotted in Ireland
besides, but it is very probable that he did, and that the Queen
did, and that he had some wild hope of gaining the Irish people
over to his side by favouring a rise among them. Whether or
no, they did rise in a most brutal and savage rebellion; in
which, encouraged by their priests, they committed such atroci-
ties upon numbers of the English, of both sexes and of all
ages, as nobody could believe, but for their being related on
oath by eye-witnesses. Whether one hundred thousand or two
hundred thousand Protestants were murdered in this outbreak,
is uncertain; but, that it was as ruthless and barbarous an out-
break as ever was known among any savage people, is certain.


Charles Dickens
371

The King came home from Scotland, determined to make
a great struggle for his lost power. He believed that, through
his presents and favours, Scotland would take no part against
him; and the Lord Mayor of London received him with such
a magnificent dinner that he thought he must have become
popular again in England. It would take a good many Lord
Mayors, however, to make a people, and the King soon found
himself mistaken.
Not so soon, though, but that there was a great opposi-
tion in the Parliament to a celebrated paper put forth by
Pym and Hampden and the rest, called ‘The Remonstrance,’
which set forth all the illegal acts that the King had ever
done, but politely laid the blame of them on his bad advis-
ers. Even when it was passed and presented to him, the King
still thought himself strong enough to discharge Balfour from
his command in the Tower, and to put in his place a man of
bad character; to whom the Commons instantly objected,
and whom he was obliged to abandon. At this time, the old
outcry about the Bishops became louder than ever, and the
old Archbishop of York was so near being murdered as he
went down to the House of Lords—being laid hold of by 

the mob and violently knocked about, in return for very
foolishly scolding a shrill boy who was yelping out ‘No Bish-
ops!’—that he sent for all the Bishops who were in town,
and proposed to them to sign a declaration that, as they could
no longer without danger to their lives attend their duty in
Parliament, they protested against the lawfulness of every-
thing done in their absence. This they asked the King to
send to the House of Lords, which he did. Then the House
of Commons impeached the whole party of Bishops and
sent them off to the Tower:
Taking no warning from this; but encouraged by there
being a moderate party in the Parliament who objected to
these strong measures, the King, on the third of January,
one thousand six hundred and forty-two, took the rashest
step that ever was taken by mortal man.
Of his own accord and without advice, he sent the Attor-
ney-General to the House of Lords, to accuse of treason cer-
tain members of Parliament who as popular leaders were the
most obnoxious to him; Lord Kimbolton, Sir Arthur Haselrig,
Denzil Hollis, John Pym (they used to call him King Pym, he
possessed such power and looked so big),  John Hampden,


A Child’s Histroy of England
372

and William Strode. The houses of those members he caused
to be entered, and their papers to be sealed up. At the same
time, he sent a messenger to the House of Commons de-
manding to have the five gentlemen who were members of
that House immediately produced. To this the House re-
plied that they should appear as soon as there was any legal
charge against them, and immediately adjourned.
Next day, the House of Commons send into the City to
let the Lord Mayor know that their privileges are invaded by
the King, and that there is no safety for anybody or any-
thing. Then, when the five members are gone out of the
way, down comes the King himself, with all his guard and
from two to three hundred gentlemen and soldiers, of whom
the greater part were armed. These he leaves in the hall; and
then, with his nephew at his side, goes into the House, takes
off his hat, and walks up to the Speaker’s chair. The Speaker
leaves it, the King stands in front of it, looks about him
steadily for a little while, and says he has come for those five
members. No one speaks, and then he calls John Pym by
name. No one speaks, and then he calls Denzil Hollis by
name. No one speaks, and then he asks the Speaker of the 

House where those five members are? The Speaker, answer-
ing on his knee, nobly replies that he is the servant of that
House, and that he has neither eyes to see, nor tongue to
speak, anything but what the House commands him. Upon
this, the King, beaten from that time evermore, replies that
he will seek them himself, for they have committed treason;
and goes out, with his hat in his hand, amid some audible
murmurs from the members.
No words can describe the hurry that arose out of doors
when all this was known. The five members had gone for
safety to a house in Coleman-street, in the City, where they
were guarded all night; and indeed the whole city watched
in arms like an army. At ten o’clock in the morning, the
King, already frightened at what he had done, came to the
Guildhall, with only half a dozen lords, and made a speech
to the people, hoping they would not shelter those whom he
accused of treason. Next day, he issued a proclamation for
the apprehension of the five members; but the Parliament
minded it so little that they made great arrangements for
having them brought down to Westminster in great state,
five days afterwards. The King was so alarmed now at his


Charles Dickens
373

own imprudence, if not for his own safety, that he left his
palace at Whitehall, and went away with his Queen and chil-
dren to Hampton Court.
It was the eleventh of May, when the five members were
carried in state and triumph to Westminster. They were taken
by water. The river could not be seen for the boats on it; and
the five members were hemmed in by barges full of men and
great guns, ready to protect them, at any cost. Along the
Strand a large body of the train-bands of London, under
their commander, Skippon, marched to be ready to assist the
little fleet. Beyond them, came a crowd who choked the
streets, roaring incessantly about the Bishops and the Pa-
pists, and crying out contemptuously as they passed
Whitehall, ‘What has become of the King?’ With this great
noise outside the House of Commons, and with great si-
lence within, Mr. Pym rose and informed the House of the
great kindness with which they had been received in the
City. Upon that, the House called the sheriffs in and thanked
them, and requested the train-bands, under their commander
Skippon, to guard the House of Commons every day. Then,
came four thousand men on horseback out of 

Buckinghamshire, offering their services as a guard too, and
bearing a petition to the King, complaining of the injury
that had been done to Mr. Hampden, who was their county
man and much beloved and honoured.
When the King set off for Hampton Court, the gentle-
men and soldiers who had been with him followed him out
of town as far as Kingston-upon-Thames; next day, Lord
Digby came to them from the King at Hampton Court, in
his coach and six, to inform them that the King accepted
their protection. This, the Parliament said, was making war
against the kingdom, and Lord Digby fled abroad. The Par-
liament then immediately applied themselves to getting hold
of the military power of the country, well knowing that the
King was already trying hard to use it against them, and that
he had secretly sent the Earl of Newcastle to Hull, to secure
a valuable magazine of arms and gunpowder that was there.
In those times, every county had its own magazines of arms
and powder, for its own train-bands or militia; so, the Parlia-
ment brought in a bill claiming the right (which up to this
time had belonged to the King) of appointing the Lord Lieu-
tenants of counties, who commanded these train-bands; also,


A Child’s Histroy of England
374

of having all the forts, castles, and garrisons in the kingdom,
put into the hands of such governors as they, the Parliament,
could confide in. It also passed a law depriving the Bishops
of their votes. The King gave his assent to that bill, but would
not abandon the right of appointing the Lord Lieutenants,
though he said he was willing to appoint such as might be
suggested to him by the Parliament. When the Earl of Pem-
broke asked him whether he would not give way on that
question for a time, he said, ‘By God! not for one hour!’ and
upon this he and the Parliament went to war.
His young daughter was betrothed to the Prince of Or-
ange. On pretence of taking her to the country of her future
husband, the Queen was already got safely away to Holland,
there to pawn the Crown jewels for money to raise an army
on the King’s side. The Lord Admiral being sick, the House
of Commons now named the Earl of Warwick to hold his
place for a year. The King named another gentleman; the
House of Commons took its own way, and the Earl of
Warwick became Lord Admiral without the King’s consent.
The Parliament sent orders down to Hull to have that maga-
zine removed to London; the King went down to Hull to 

take it himself. The citizens would not admit him into the
town, and the governor would not admit him into the castle.
The Parliament resolved that whatever the two Houses
passed, and the King would not consent to, should be called
an Ordinance, and should be as much a law as if he did
consent to it. The King protested against this, and gave no-
tice that these ordinances were not to be obeyed. The King,
attended by the majority of the House of Peers, and by many
members of the House of Commons, established himself at
York. The Chancellor went to him with the Great Seal, and
the Parliament made a new Great Seal. The Queen sent over
a ship full of arms and ammunition, and the King issued
letters to borrow money at high interest. The Parliament
raised twenty regiments of foot and seventy-five troops of
horse; and the people willingly aided them with their money,
plate, jewellery, and trinkets—the married women even with
their wedding-rings. Every member of Parliament who could
raise a troop or a regiment in his own part of the country,
dressed it according to his taste and in his own colours, and
commanded it. Foremost among them all, Oliver Cromwell
raised a troop of horse—thoroughly in earnest and thor-


Charles Dickens
375

oughly well armed—who were, perhaps, the best soldiers
that ever were seen.
In some of their proceedings, this famous Parliament passed
the bounds of previous law and custom, yielded to and
favoured riotous assemblages of the people, and acted tyran-
nically in imprisoning some who differed from the popular
leaders. But again, you are always to remember that the twelve
years during which the King had had his own wilful way,
had gone before; and that nothing could make the times
what they might, could, would, or should have been, if those
twelve years had never rolled away.
THIRD PART
I SHALL NOT TRY TO RELATE the particulars of the great civil
war between King Charles the First and the Long Parlia-
ment, which lasted nearly four years, and a full account of
which would fill many large books. It was a sad thing that
Englishmen should once more be fighting against English-
men on English ground; but, it is some consolation to know
that on both sides there was great humanity, forbearance, 

and honour. The soldiers of the Parliament were far more
remarkable for these good qualities than the soldiers of the
King (many of whom fought for mere pay without much
caring for the cause); but those of the nobility and gentry
who were on the King’s side were so brave, and so faithful to
him, that their conduct cannot but command our highest
admiration. Among them were great numbers of Catholics,
who took the royal side because the Queen was so strongly
of their persuasion.
The King might have distinguished some of these gallant
spirits, if he had been as generous a spirit himself, by giving
them the command of his army. Instead of that, however,
true to his old high notions of royalty, he entrusted it to his
two nephews, Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice, who were
of royal blood and came over from abroad to help him. It
might have been better for him if they had stayed away;
since Prince Rupert was an impetuous, hot-headed fellow,
whose only idea was to dash into battle at all times and sea-
sons, and lay about him.
The general-in-chief of the Parliamentary army was the
Earl of Essex, a gentleman of honour and an excellent sol-


A Child’s Histroy of England
376

dier. A little while before the war broke out, there had been
some rioting at Westminster between certain officious law
students and noisy soldiers, and the shopkeepers and their
apprentices, and the general people in the streets. At that
time the King’s friends called the crowd, Roundheads, be-
cause the apprentices wore short hair; the crowd, in return,
called their opponents Cavaliers, meaning that they were a
blustering set, who pretended to be very military. These two
words now began to be used to distinguish the two sides in
the civil war. The Royalists also called the Parliamentary men
Rebels and Rogues, while the Parliamentary men called them
Malignants, and spoke of themselves as the Godly, the Hon-
est, and so forth.
The war broke out at Portsmouth, where that double trai-
tor Goring had again gone over to the King and was be-
sieged by the Parliamentary troops. Upon this, the King pro-
claimed the Earl of Essex and the officers serving under him,
traitors, and called upon his loyal subjects to meet him in
arms at Nottingham on the twenty-fifth of August. But his
loyal subjects came about him in scanty numbers, and it was
a windy, gloomy day, and the Royal Standard got blown down,

and the whole affair was very melancholy. The chief engage-
ments after this, took place in the vale of the Red Horse near
Banbury, at Brentford, at Devizes, at Chalgrave Field (where
Mr. Hampden was so sorely wounded while fighting at the
head of his men, that he died within a week), at Newbury
(in which battle Lord Falkland, one of the best noblemen on
the King’s side, was killed), at Leicester, at Naseby, at Win-
chester, at Marston Moor near York, at Newcastle, and in
many other parts of England and Scotland. These battles
were attended with various successes. At one time, the King
was victorious; at another time, the Parliament. But almost
all the great and busy towns were against the King; and when
it was considered necessary to fortify London, all ranks of
people, from labouring men and women, up to lords and
ladies, worked hard together with heartiness and good will.
The most distinguished leaders on the Parliamentary side
were Hampden, Sir Thomas Fairfax , and, above all,  Oliver
Cromwell, and his son-in-law Ireton.
During the whole of this war, the people, to whom it was
very expensive and irksome, and to whom it was made the
more distressing by almost every family being divided—some


Charles Dickens
377

of its members attaching themselves to one side and some to
the other—were over and over again most anxious for peace.
So were some of the best men in each cause. Accordingly,
treaties of peace were discussed between commissioners from
the Parliament and the King; at York, at Oxford (where the
King held a little Parliament of his own), and at Uxbridge.
But they came to nothing. In all these negotiations, and in
all his difficulties, the King showed himself at his best. He
was courageous, cool, self-possessed, and clever; but, the old
taint of his character was always in him, and he was never
for one single moment to be trusted. Lord Clarendon, the
historian, one of his highest admirers, supposes that he had
unhappily promised the Queen never to make peace with-
out her consent, and that this must often be taken as his
excuse. He never kept his word from night to morning. He
signed a cessation of hostilities with the blood-stained Irish
rebels for a sum of money, and invited the Irish regiments
over, to help him against the Parliament. In the battle of
Naseby, his cabinet was seized and was found to contain a
correspondence with the Queen, in which he expressly told
her that he had deceived the Parliament—a mongrel Parlia- 

ment, he called it now, as an improvement on his old term
of vipers—in pretending to recognise it and to treat with it;
and from which it further appeared that he had long been in
secret treaty with the Duke of Lorraine for a foreign army of
ten thousand men. Disappointed in this, he sent a most de-
voted friend of his, the  Earl of Glamorgan , to Ireland, to
conclude a secret treaty with the Catholic powers, to send
him an Irish army of ten thousand men; in return for which
he was to bestow great favours on the Catholic religion. And,
when this treaty was discovered in the carriage of a fighting
Irish Archbishop who was killed in one of the many skir-
mishes of those days, he basely denied and deserted his at-
tached friend, the Earl, on his being charged with high trea-
son; and—even worse than this—had left blanks in the se-
cret instructions he gave him with his own kingly hand, ex-
pressly that he might thus save himself.
At last, on the twenty-seventh day of April, one thousand
six hundred and forty-six, the King found himself in the
city of Oxford, so surrounded by the Parliamentary army
who were closing in upon him on all sides that he felt that if
he would escape he must delay no longer. So, that night,


A Child’s Histroy of England
378

having altered the cut of his hair and beard, he was dressed
up as a servant and put upon a horse with a cloak strapped
behind him, and rode out of the town behind one of his
own faithful followers, with a clergyman of that country who
knew the road well, for a guide. He rode towards London as
far as Harrow, and then altered his plans and resolved, it
would seem, to go to the Scottish camp. The Scottish men
had been invited over to help the Parliamentary army, and
had a large force then in England. The King was so desper-
ately intriguing in everything he did, that it is doubtful what
he exactly meant by this step. He took it, anyhow, and deliv-
ered himself up to the Earl of Leven, the Scottish general-in-
chief, who treated him as an honourable prisoner. Negotia-
tions between the Parliament on the one hand and the Scot-
tish authorities on the other, as to what should be done with
him, lasted until the following February. Then, when the
King had refused to the Parliament the concession of that
old militia point for twenty years, and had refused to Scot-
land the recognition of its Solemn League and Covenant,
Scotland got a handsome sum for its army and its help, and
the King into the bargain. He was taken, by certain Parlia- 

mentary commissioners appointed to receive him, to one of
his own houses, called Holmby House, near Althorpe, in
Northamptonshire.
While the Civil War was still in progress, John Pym died,
and was buried with great honour in Westminster Abbey—
not with greater honour than he deserved, for the liberties
of Englishmen owe a mighty debt to Pym and Hampden.
The war was but newly over when the Earl of Essex died, of
an illness brought on by his having overheated himself in a
stag hunt in Windsor Forest. He, too, was buried in
Westminster Abbey, with great state. I wish it were not nec-
essary to add that Archbishop Laud died upon the scaffold
when the war was not yet done. His trial lasted in all nearly
a year, and, it being doubtful even then whether the charges
brought against him amounted to treason, the odious old
contrivance of the worst kings was resorted to, and a bill of
attainder was brought in against him. He was a violently
prejudiced and mischievous person; had had strong ear-crop-
ping and nose-splitting propensities, as you know; and had
done a world of harm. But he died peaceably, and like a
brave old man.


Charles Dickens
379

FOURTH PART
WHEN THE PARLIAMENT had got the King into their hands,
they became very anxious to get rid of their army, in which
Oliver Cromwell had begun to acquire great power; not only
because of his courage and high abilities, but because he
professed to be very sincere in the Scottish sort of Puritan
religion that was then exceedingly popular among the sol-
diers. They were as much opposed to the Bishops as to the
Pope himself; and the very privates, drummers, and trum-
peters, had such an inconvenient habit of starting up and
preaching long-winded discourses, that I would not have
belonged to that army on any account.
So, the Parliament, being far from sure but that the army
might begin to preach and fight against them now it had
nothing else to do, proposed to disband the greater part of
it, to send another part to serve in Ireland against the rebels,
and to keep only a small force in England. But, the army
would not consent to be broken up, except upon its own
conditions; and, when the Parliament showed an intention
of compelling it, it acted for itself in an unexpected manner. 

A certain cornet, of the name of  Joice, arrived at Holmby
House one night, attended by four hundred horsemen, went
into the King’s room with his hat in one hand and a pistol in
the other, and told the King that he had come to take him
away. The King was willing enough to go, and only stipu-
lated that he should be publicly required to do so next morn-
ing. Next morning, accordingly, he appeared on the top of
the steps of the house, and asked Comet Joice before his
men and the guard set there by the Parliament, what author-
ity he had for taking him away? To this Cornet Joice replied,
‘The authority of the army.’ ‘Have you a written commis-
sion?’ said the King. Joice, pointing to his four hundred men
on horseback, replied, ‘That is my commission.’ ‘Well,’ said
the King, smiling, as if he were pleased, ‘I never before read
such a commission; but it is written in fair and legible char-
acters. This is a company of as handsome proper gentlemen
as I have seen a long while.’ He was asked where he would
like to live, and he said at Newmarket. So, to Newmarket he
and Cornet Joice and the four hundred horsemen rode; the
King remarking, in the same smiling way, that he could ride
as far at a spell as Cornet Joice, or any man there.


A Child’s Histroy of England
380

The King quite believed, I think, that the army were his
friends. He said as much to Fairfax when that general, Oliver
Cromwell, and Ireton, went to persuade him to return to
the custody of the Parliament. He preferred to remain as he
was, and resolved to remain as he was. And when the army
moved nearer and nearer London to frighten the Parliament
into yielding to their demands, they took the King with them.
It was a deplorable thing that England should be at the mercy
of a great body of soldiers with arms in their hands; but the
King certainly favoured them at this important time of his
life, as compared with the more lawful power that tried to
control him. It must be added, however, that they treated
him, as yet, more respectfully and kindly than the Parlia-
ment had done. They allowed him to be attended by his
own servants, to be splendidly entertained at various houses,
and to see his children—at Cavesham House, near Read-
ing—for two days. Whereas, the Parliament had been rather
hard with him, and had only allowed him to ride out and
play at bowls.
It is much to be believed that if the King could have been
trusted, even at this time, he might have been saved. Even 

Oliver Cromwell expressly said that he did believe that no
man could enjoy his possessions in peace, unless the King
had his rights. He was not unfriendly towards the King; he
had been present when he received his children, and had
been much affected by the pitiable nature of the scene; he
saw the King often; he frequently walked and talked with
him in the long galleries and pleasant gardens of the Palace
at Hampton Court, whither he was now removed; and in all
this risked something of his influence with the army. But,
the King was in secret hopes of help from the Scottish people;
and the moment he was encouraged to join them he began
to be cool to his new friends, the army, and to tell the offic-
ers that they could not possibly do without him. At the very
time, too, when he was promising to make Cromwell and
Ireton noblemen, if they would help him up to his old height,
he was writing to the Queen that he meant to hang them.
They both afterwards declared that they had been privately
informed that such a letter would be found, on a certain
evening, sewed up in a saddle which would be taken to the
Blue Boar in Holborn to be sent to Dover; and that they
went there, disguised as common soldiers, and sat drinking


Charles Dickens
381

in the inn-yard until a man came with the saddle, which
they ripped up with their knives, and therein found the let-
ter. I see little reason to doubt the story. It is certain that
Oliver Cromwell told one of the King’s most faithful follow-
ers that the King could not be trusted, and that he would
not be answerable if anything amiss were to happen to him.
Still, even after that, he kept a promise he had made to the
King, by letting him know that there was a plot with a cer-
tain portion of the army to seize him. I believe that, in fact,
he sincerely wanted the King to escape abroad, and so to be
got rid of without more trouble or danger. That Oliver him-
self had work enough with the army is pretty plain; for some
of the troops were so mutinous against him, and against those
who acted with him at this time, that he found it necessary
to have one man shot at the head of his regiment to overawe
the rest.
The King, when he received Oliver’s warning, made his
escape from Hampton Court; after some indecision and un-
certainty, he went to Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight.
At first, he was pretty free there; but, even there, he carried
on a pretended treaty with the Parliament, while he was re- 

ally treating with commissioners from Scotland to send an
army into England to take his part. When he broke off this
treaty with the Parliament (having settled with Scotland) and
was treated as a prisoner, his treatment was not changed too
soon, for he had plotted to escape that very night to a ship
sent by the Queen, which was lying off the island.
He was doomed to be disappointed in his hopes from Scot-
land. The agreement he had made with the Scottish Com-
missioners was not favourable enough to the religion of that
country to please the Scottish clergy; and they preached
against it. The consequence was, that the army raised in Scot-
land and sent over, was too small to do much; and that,
although it was helped by a rising of the Royalists in En-
gland and by good soldiers from Ireland, it could make no
head against the Parliamentary army under such men as
Cromwell and Fairfax. The King’s eldest son, the Prince of
Wales, came over from Holland with nineteen ships (a part
of the English fleet having gone over to him) to help his
father; but nothing came of his voyage, and he was fain to
return. The most remarkable event of this second civil war
was the cruel execution by the Parliamentary General, of Sir


A Child’s Histroy of England
382

Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, two grand Royalist gener-
als, who had bravely defended Colchester under every dis-
advantage of famine and distress for nearly three months.
When Sir Charles Lucas was shot, Sir George Lisle kissed
his body, and said to the soldiers who were to shoot him,
‘Come nearer, and make sure of me.’ ‘I warrant you, Sir
George,’ said one of the soldiers, ‘we shall hit you.’ ‘AY?’ he
returned with a smile, ‘but I have been nearer to you, my
friends, many a time, and you have missed me.’
The Parliament, after being fearfully bullied by the army—
who demanded to have seven members whom they disliked
given up to them—had voted that they would have nothing
more to do with the King. On the conclusion, however, of
this second civil war (which did not last more than six months),
they appointed commissioners to treat with him. The King,
then so far released again as to be allowed to live in a private
house at Newport in the Isle of Wight, managed his own part
of the negotiation with a sense that was admired by all who
saw him, and gave up, in the end, all that was asked of him—
even yielding (which he had steadily refused, so far) to the
temporary abolition of the bishops, and the transfer of their 

church land to the Crown. Still, with his old fatal vice upon
him, when his best friends joined the commissioners in be-
seeching him to yield all those points as the only means of
saving himself from the army, he was plotting to escape from
the island; he was holding correspondence with his friends
and the Catholics in Ireland, though declaring that he was
not; and he was writing, with his own hand, that in what he
yielded he meant nothing but to get time to escape.
Matters were at this pass when the army, resolved to defy the
Parliament, marched up to London. The Parliament, not afraid
of them now, and boldly led by Hollis, voted that the King’s
concessions were sufficient ground for settling the peace of the
kingdom. Upon that, Colonel Rich and Colonel Pride went down
to the House of Commons with a regiment of horse soldiers
and a regiment of foot; and Colonel Pride, standing in the lobby
with a list of the members who were obnoxious to the army in
his hand, had them pointed out to him as they came through,
and took them all into custody. This proceeding was afterwards
called by the people, for a joke, Pride’s Purge. Cromwell was in
the North, at the head of his men, at the time, but when he
came home, approved of what had been done.


Charles Dickens
383

What with imprisoning some members and causing oth-
ers to stay away, the army had now reduced the House of
Commons to some fifty or so. These soon voted that it was
treason in a king to make war against his parliament and his
people, and sent an ordinance up to the House of Lords for
the King’s being tried as a traitor. The House of Lords, then
sixteen in number, to a man rejected it. Thereupon, the
Commons made an ordinance of their own, that they were
the supreme government of the country, and would bring
the King to trial.
The King had been taken for security to a place called
Hurst Castle: a lonely house on a rock in the sea, connected
with the coast of Hampshire by a rough road two miles long
at low water. Thence, he was ordered to be removed to
Windsor; thence, after being but rudely used there, and hav-
ing none but soldiers to wait upon him at table, he was
brought up to St. James’s Palace in London, and told that his
trial was appointed for next day.
On Saturday, the twentieth of January, one thousand six
hundred and forty-nine, this memorable trial began. The
House of Commons had settled that one hundred and thirty- 

five persons should form the Court, and these were taken
from the House itself, from among the officers of the army,
and from among the lawyers and citizens.  John Bradshaw,
serjeant-at-law, was appointed president. The place was
Westminster Hall. At the upper end, in a red velvet chair, sat
the president, with his hat (lined with plates of iron for his
protection) on his head. The rest of the Court sat on side
benches, also wearing their hats. The King’s seat was cov-
ered with velvet, like that of the president, and was opposite
to it. He was brought from St. James’s to Whitehall, and
from Whitehall he came by water to his trial.
When he came in, he looked round very steadily on the
Court, and on the great number of spectators, and then sat
down: presently he got up and looked round again. On the
indictment ‘against Charles Stuart, for high treason,’ being
read, he smiled several times, and he denied the authority of
the Court, saying that there could be no parliament without
a House of Lords, and that he saw no House of Lords there.
Also, that the King ought to be there, and that he saw no
King in the King’s right place. Bradshaw replied, that the
Court was satisfied with its authority, and that its authority


A Child’s Histroy of England
384

was God’s authority and the kingdom’s. He then adjourned
the Court to the following Monday. On that day, the trial
was resumed, and went on all the week. When the Saturday
came, as the King passed forward to his place in the Hall,
some soldiers and others cried for ‘justice!’ and execution on
him. That day, too, Bradshaw, like an angry Sultan, wore a
red robe, instead of the black robe he had worn before. The
King was sentenced to death that day. As he went out, one
solitary soldier said, ‘God bless you, Sir!’ For this, his officer
struck him. The King said he thought the punishment ex-
ceeded the offence. The silver head of his walking-stick had
fallen off while he leaned upon it, at one time of the trial.
The accident seemed to disturb him, as if he thought it
ominous of the falling of his own head; and he admitted as
much, now it was all over.
Being taken back to Whitehall, he sent to the House of
Commons, saying that as the time of his execution might be
nigh, he wished he might be allowed to see his darling chil-
dren. It was granted. On the Monday he was taken back to
St. James’s; and his two children then in England, the Prin-
cess Elizabeth thirteen years old, and the Duke of Gloucester 

nine years old, were brought to take leave of him, from Sion
House, near Brentford. It was a sad and touching scene, when
he kissed and fondled those poor children, and made a little
present of two diamond seals to the Princess, and gave them
tender messages to their mother (who little deserved them,
for she had a lover of her own whom she married soon after-
wards), and told them that he died ‘for the laws and liberties
of the land.’ I am bound to say that I don’t think he did, but
I dare say he believed so.
There were ambassadors from Holland that day, to inter-
cede for the unhappy King, whom you and I both wish the
Parliament had spared; but they got no answer. The Scottish
Commissioners interceded too; so did the Prince of Wales,
by a letter in which he offered as the next heir to the throne,
to accept any conditions from the Parliament; so did the
Queen, by letter likewise.
Notwithstanding all, the warrant for the execution was
this day signed. There is a story that as Oliver Cromwell
went to the table with the pen in his hand to put his signa-
ture to it, he drew his pen across the face of one of the com-
missioners, who was standing near, and marked it with ink.


Charles Dickens
385

That commissioner had not signed his own name yet, and
the story adds that when he came to do it he marked
Cromwell’s face with ink in the same way.
The King slept well, untroubled by the knowledge that it
was his last night on earth, and rose on the thirtieth of Janu-
ary, two hours before day, and dressed himself carefully. He
put on two shirts lest he should tremble with the cold, and
had his hair very carefully combed. The warrant had been
directed to three officers of the army, Colonel Hacker, Colo-
nel Hunks, and Colonel Phayer. At ten o’clock, the first of
these came to the door and said it was time to go to Whitehall.
The King, who had always been a quick walker, walked at
his usual speed through the Park, and called out to the guard,
with his accustomed voice of command, ‘March on apace!’
When he came to Whitehall, he was taken to his own bed-
room, where a breakfast was set forth. As he had taken the
Sacrament, he would eat nothing more; but, at about the
time when the church bells struck twelve at noon (for he
had to wait, through the scaffold not being ready), he took
the advice of the good Bishop Juxon who was with him, and
ate a little bread and drank a glass of claret. Soon after he 

had taken this refreshment, Colonel Hacker came to the cham-
ber with the warrant in his hand, and called for Charles Stuart.
And then, through the long gallery of Whitehall Palace,
which he had often seen light and gay and merry and
crowded, in very different times, the fallen King passed along,
until he came to the centre window of the Banqueting House,
through which he emerged upon the scaffold, which was
hung with black. He looked at the two executioners, who
were dressed in black and masked; he looked at the troops of
soldiers on horseback and on foot, and all looked up at him
in silence; he looked at the vast array of spectators, filling up
the view beyond, and turning all their faces upon him; he
looked at his old Palace of St. James’s; and he looked at the
block. He seemed a little troubled to find that it was so low,
and asked, ‘if there were no place higher?’ Then, to those
upon the scaffold, he said, ‘that it was the Parliament who
had begun the war, and not he; but he hoped they might be
guiltless too, as ill instruments had gone between them. In
one respect,’ he said, ‘he suffered justly; and that was be-
cause he had permitted an unjust sentence to be executed on
another.’ In this he referred to the Earl of Strafford.


A Child’s Histroy of England
386

He was not at all afraid to die; but he was anxious to die
easily. When some one touched the axe while he was speak-
ing, he broke off and called out, ‘Take heed of the axe! take
heed of the axe!’ He also said to Colonel Hacker, ‘Take care
that they do not put me to pain.’ He told the executioner, ‘I
shall say but very short prayers, and then thrust out my
hands’—as the sign to strike.
He put his hair up, under a white satin cap which the
bishop had carried, and said, ‘I have a good cause and a
gracious God on my side.’ The bishop told him that he had
but one stage more to travel in this weary world, and that,
though it was a turbulent and troublesome stage, it was a
short one, and would carry him a great way—all the way
from earth to Heaven. The King’s last word, as he gave his
cloak and the George—the decoration from his breast—to
the bishop, was, ‘Remember!’ He then kneeled down, laid
his head on the block, spread out his hands, and was in-
stantly killed. One universal groan broke from the crowd;
and the soldiers, who had sat on their horses and stood in
their ranks immovable as statues, were of a sudden all in
motion, clearing the streets. 

Thus, in the forty-ninth year of his age, falling at the same
time of his career as Strafford had fallen in his, perished
Charles the First. With all my sorrow for him, I cannot agree
with him that he died ‘the martyr of the people;’ for the
people had been martyrs to him, and to his ideas of a King’s
rights, long before. Indeed, I am afraid that he was but a bad
judge of martyrs; for he had called that infamous Duke of
Buckingham ‘the Martyr of his Sovereign.’ 

CHAPTER XXXIV
ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL 

BEFORE  SUNSET  ON  THE  MEMORABLE   DAY on which King
Charles the First was executed, the House of Commons
passed an act declaring it treason in any one to proclaim the
Prince of Wales—or anybody else—King of England. Soon
afterwards, it declared that the House of Lords was useless
and dangerous, and ought to be abolished; and directed that
the late King’s statue should be taken down from the Royal
Exchange in the City and other public places. Having laid
hold of some famous Royalists who had escaped from prison,


Charles Dickens
387

and having beheaded the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Holland,
and Lord Capel, in Palace Yard (all of whom died very coura-
geously), they then appointed a Council of State to govern
the country. It consisted of forty-one members, of whom
five were peers. Bradshaw was made president. The House
of Commons also re-admitted members who had opposed
the King’s death, and made up its numbers to about a hun-
dred and fifty.
But, it still had an army of more than forty thousand men
to deal with, and a very hard task it was to manage them.
Before the King’s execution, the army had appointed some
of its officers to remonstrate between them and the Parlia-
ment; and now the common soldiers began to take that of-
fice upon themselves. The regiments under orders for Ire-
land mutinied; one troop of horse in the city of London
seized their own flag, and refused to obey orders. For this,
the ringleader was shot: which did not mend the matter, for,
both his comrades and the people made a public funeral for
him, and accompanied the body to the grave with sound of
trumpets and with a gloomy procession of persons carrying
bundles of rosemary steeped in blood. Oliver was the only 

man to deal with such difficulties as these, and he soon cut
them short by bursting at midnight into the town of Burford,
near Salisbury, where the mutineers were sheltered, taking
four hundred of them prisoners, and shooting a number of
them by sentence of court-martial. The soldiers soon found,
as all men did, that Oliver was not a man to be trifled with.
And there was an end of the mutiny.
The Scottish Parliament did not know Oliver yet; so, on
hearing of the King’s execution, it proclaimed the Prince of
Wales King Charles the Second, on condition of his respect-
ing the Solemn League and Covenant. Charles was abroad
at that time, and so was Montrose, from whose help he had
hopes enough to keep him holding on and off with commis-
sioners from Scotland, just as his father might have done.
These hopes were soon at an end; for, Montrose, having
raised a few hundred exiles in Germany, and landed with
them in Scotland, found that the people there, instead of
joining him, deserted the country at his approach. He was
soon taken prisoner and carried to Edinburgh. There he was
received with every possible insult, and carried to prison in a
cart, his officers going two and two before him. He was sen-


A Child’s Histroy of England
388

tenced by the Parliament to be hanged on a gallows thirty
feet high, to have his head set on a spike in Edinburgh, and
his limbs distributed in other places, according to the old
barbarous manner. He said he had always acted under the
Royal orders, and only wished he had limbs enough to be
distributed through Christendom, that it might be the more
widely known how loyal he had been. He went to the scaf-
fold in a bright and brilliant dress, and made a bold end at
thirty-eight years of age. The breath was scarcely out of his
body when Charles abandoned his memory, and denied that
he had ever given him orders to rise in his behalf. O the
family failing was strong in that Charles then!
Oliver had been appointed by the Parliament to command the
army in Ireland, where he took a terrible vengeance for the san-
guinary rebellion, and made tremendous havoc, particularly in
the siege of Drogheda, where no quarter was given, and where he
found at least a thousand of the inhabitants shut up together in
the great church: every one of whom was killed by his soldiers,
usually known as Oliver’s Ironsides. There were numbers of friars
and priests among them, and Oliver gruffly wrote home in his
despatch that these were ‘knocked on the head’ like the rest. 

But, Charles having got over to Scotland where the men
of the Solemn League and Covenant led him a prodigiously
dull life and made him very weary with long sermons and
grim Sundays, the Parliament called the redoubtable Oliver
home to knock the Scottish men on the head for setting up
that Prince. Oliver left his son-in-law, Ireton, as general in
Ireland in his stead (he died there afterwards), and he imi-
tated the example of his father-in-law with such good will
that he brought the country to subjection, and laid it at the
feet of the Parliament. In the end, they passed an act for the
settlement of Ireland, generally pardoning all the common
people, but exempting from this grace such of the wealthier
sort as had been concerned in the rebellion, or in any killing
of Protestants, or who refused to lay down their arms. Great
numbers of Irish were got out of the country to serve under
Catholic powers abroad, and a quantity of land was declared
to have been forfeited by past offences, and was given to
people who had lent money to the Parliament early in the
war. These were sweeping measures; but, if Oliver Cromwell
had had his own way fully, and had stayed in Ireland, he
would have done more yet.


Charles Dickens
389

However, as I have said, the Parliament wanted Oliver for
Scotland; so, home Oliver came, and was made Commander
of all the Forces of the Commonwealth of England, and in
three days away he went with sixteen thousand soldiers to
fight the Scottish men. Now, the Scottish men, being then—
as you will generally find them now—mighty cautious, re-
flected that the troops they had were not used to war like the
Ironsides, and would be beaten in an open fight. Therefore
they said, ‘If we live quiet in our trenches in Edinburgh here,
and if all the farmers come into the town and desert the coun-
try, the Ironsides will be driven out by iron hunger and be
forced to go away.’ This was, no doubt, the wisest plan; but as
the Scottish clergy would interfere with what they knew noth-
ing about, and would perpetually preach long sermons ex-
horting the soldiers to come out and fight, the soldiers got it
in their heads that they absolutely must come out and fight.
Accordingly, in an evil hour for themselves, they came out of
their safe position. Oliver fell upon them instantly, and killed
three thousand, and took ten thousand prisoners.
To gratify the Scottish Parliament, and preserve their
favour, Charles had signed a declaration they laid before him, 

reproaching the memory of his father and mother, and rep-
resenting himself as a most religious Prince, to whom the
Solemn League and Covenant was as dear as life. He meant
no sort of truth in this, and soon afterwards galloped away
on horseback to join some tiresome Highland friends, who
were always flourishing dirks and broadswords. He was over-
taken and induced to return; but this attempt, which was
called ‘The Start,’ did him just so much service, that they
did not preach quite such long sermons at him afterwards as
they had done before.
On the first of January, one thousand six hundred and
fifty-one, the Scottish people crowned him at Scone. He
immediately took the chief command of an army of twenty
thousand men, and marched to Stirling. His hopes were
heightened, I dare say, by the redoubtable Oliver being ill of
an ague; but Oliver scrambled out of bed in no time, and
went to work with such energy that he got behind the Roy-
alist army and cut it off from all communication with Scot-
land. There was nothing for it then, but to go on to En-
gland; so it went on as far as Worcester, where the mayor
and some of the gentry proclaimed King Charles the Second


A Child’s Histroy of England
390

straightway. His proclamation, however, was of little use to
him, for very few Royalists appeared; and, on the very same
day, two people were publicly beheaded on Tower Hill for
espousing his cause. Up came Oliver to Worcester too, at
double quick speed, and he and his Ironsides so laid about
them in the great battle which was fought there, that they
completely beat the Scottish men, and destroyed the Royal-
ist army; though the Scottish men fought so gallantly that it
took five hours to do.
The escape of Charles after this battle of Worcester did
him good service long afterwards, for it induced many of
the generous English people to take a romantic interest in
him, and to think much better of him than he ever deserved.
He fled in the night, with not more than sixty followers, to
the house of a Catholic lady in Staffordshire. There, for his
greater safety, the whole sixty left him. He cropped his hair,
stained his face and hands brown as if they were sunburnt,
put on the clothes of a labouring countryman, and went out
in the morning with his axe in his hand, accompanied by
four wood-cutters who were brothers, and another man who
was their brother-in-law. These good fellows made a bed for 

him under a tree, as the weather was very bad; and the wife
of one of them brought him food to eat; and the old mother
of the four brothers came and fell down on her knees before
him in the wood, and thanked God that her sons were en-
gaged in saving his life. At night, he came out of the forest
and went on to another house which was near the river
Severn, with the intention of passing into Wales; but the
place swarmed with soldiers, and the bridges were guarded,
and all the boats were made fast. So, after lying in a hayloft
covered over with hay, for some time, he came out of his
place, attended by Colonel Careless, a Catholic gentleman who
had met him there, and with whom he lay hid, all next day,
up in the shady branches of a fine old oak. It was lucky for
the King that it was September-time, and that the leaves had
not begun to fall, since he and the Colonel, perched up in
this tree, could catch glimpses of the soldiers riding about
below, and could hear the crash in the wood as they went
about beating the boughs.
After this, he walked and walked until his feet were all
blistered; and, having been concealed all one day in a house
which was searched by the troopers while he was there, went


Charles Dickens
391

with Lord Wilmot, another of his good friends, to a place
called Bentley, where one Miss Lane, a Protestant lady, had
obtained a pass to be allowed to ride through the guards to
see a relation of hers near Bristol. Disguised as a servant, he
rode in the saddle before this young lady to the house of Sir
John Winter, while Lord Wilmot rode there boldly, like a
plain country gentleman, with dogs at his heels. It happened
that Sir John Winter’s butler had been servant in Richmond
Palace, and knew Charles the moment he set eyes upon him;
but, the butler was faithful and kept the secret. As no ship
could be found to carry him abroad, it was planned that he
should go—still travelling with Miss Lane as her servant—
to another house, at Trent near Sherborne in Dorsetshire;
and then Miss Lane and her cousin, Mr. Lascelles, who had
gone on horseback beside her all the way, went home. I hope
Miss Lane was going to marry that cousin, for I am sure she
must have been a brave, kind girl. If I had been that cousin,
I should certainly have loved Miss Lane.
When Charles, lonely for the loss of Miss Lane, was safe
at Trent, a ship was hired at Lyme, the master of which en-
gaged to take two gentlemen to France. In the evening of the 

same day, the King—now riding as servant before another
young lady—set off for a public-house at a place called
Charmouth, where the captain of the vessel was to take him
on board. But, the captain’s wife, being afraid of her hus-
band getting into trouble, locked him up and would not let
him sail. Then they went away to Bridport; and, coming to
the inn there, found the stable-yard full of soldiers who were
on the look-out for Charles, and who talked about him while
they drank. He had such presence of mind, that he led the
horses of his party through the yard as any other servant
might have done, and said, ‘Come out of the way, you sol-
diers; let us have room to pass here!’ As he went along, he
met a half-tipsy ostler, who rubbed his eyes and said to him,
‘Why, I was formerly servant to Mr. Potter at Exeter, and
surely I have sometimes seen you there, young man?’ He
certainly had, for Charles had lodged there. His ready an-
swer was, ‘Ah, I did live with him once; but I have no time
to talk now. We’ll have a pot of beer together when I come
back.’
From this dangerous place he returned to Trent, and lay
there concealed several days. Then he escaped to Heale, near


A Child’s Histroy of England
392

Salisbury; where, in the house of a widow lady, he was hid-
den five days, until the master of a collier lying off Shoreham
in Sussex, undertook to convey a ‘gentleman’ to France. On
the night of the fifteenth of October, accompanied by two
colonels and a merchant, the King rode to Brighton, then a
little fishing village, to give the captain of the ship a supper
before going on board; but, so many people knew him, that
this captain knew him too, and not only he, but the land-
lord and landlady also. Before he went away, the landlord
came behind his chair, kissed his hand, and said he hoped to
live to be a lord and to see his wife a lady; at which Charles
laughed. They had had a good supper by this time, and plenty
of smoking and drinking, at which the King was a first-rate
hand; so, the captain assured him that he would stand by
him, and he did. It was agreed that the captain should pre-
tend to sail to Deal, and that Charles should address the
sailors and say he was a gentleman in debt who was running
away from his creditors, and that he hoped they would join
him in persuading the captain to put him ashore in France.
As the King acted his part very well indeed, and gave the
sailors twenty shillings to drink, they begged the captain to 

do what such a worthy gentleman asked. He pretended to
yield to their entreaties, and the King got safe to Normandy.
Ireland being now subdued, and Scotland kept quiet by
plenty of forts and soldiers put there by Oliver, the Parlia-
ment would have gone on quietly enough, as far as fighting
with any foreign enemy went, but for getting into trouble
with the Dutch, who in the spring of the year one thousand
six hundred and fifty-one sent a fleet into the Downs under
their Admiral Van Tromp, to call upon the bold English Ad-
miral Blake (who was there with half as many ships as the
Dutch) to strike his flag. Blake fired a raging broadside in-
stead, and beat off Van Tromp; who, in the autumn, came
back again with seventy ships, and challenged the bold
Blake—who still was only half as strong—to fight him. Blake
fought him all day; but, finding that the Dutch were too
many for him, got quietly off at night. What does Van Tromp
upon this, but goes cruising and boasting about the Chan-
nel, between the North Foreland and the Isle of Wight, with
a great Dutch broom tied to his masthead, as a sign that he
could and would sweep the English of the sea! Within three
months, Blake lowered his tone though, and his broom too;


Charles Dickens
393

for, he and two other bold commanders,  Dean and Monk,
fought him three whole days, took twenty-three of his ships,
shivered his broom to pieces, and settled his business.
Things were no sooner quiet again, than the army began
to complain to the Parliament that they were not governing
the nation properly, and to hint that they thought they could
do it better themselves. Oliver, who had now made up his
mind to be the head of the state, or nothing at all, supported
them in this, and called a meeting of officers and his own
Parliamentary friends, at his lodgings in Whitehall, to con-
sider the best way of getting rid of the Parliament. It had
now lasted just as many years as the King’s unbridled power
had lasted, before it came into existence. The end of the
deliberation was, that Oliver went down to the House in his
usual plain black dress, with his usual grey worsted stock-
ings, but with an unusual party of soldiers behind him. These
last he left in the lobby, and then went in and sat down.
Presently he got up, made the Parliament a speech, told them
that the Lord had done with them, stamped his foot and
said, ‘You are no Parliament. Bring them in! Bring them in!’
At this signal the door flew open, and the soldiers appeared. 

‘This is not honest,’ said Sir Harry Vane, one of the mem-
bers. ‘Sir Harry Vane!’ cried Cromwell; ‘O, Sir Harry Vane!
The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!’ Then he pointed
out members one by one, and said this man was a drunkard,
and that man a dissipated fellow, and that man a liar, and so
on. Then he caused the Speaker to be walked out of his
chair, told the guard to clear the House, called the mace
upon the table—which is a sign that the House is sitting—
‘a fool’s bauble,’ and said, ‘here, carry it away!’ Being obeyed
in all these orders, he quietly locked the door, put the key in
his pocket, walked back to Whitehall again, and told his
friends, who were still assembled there, what he had done.
They formed a new Council of State after this extraordi-
nary proceeding, and got a new Parliament together in their
own way: which Oliver himself opened in a sort of sermon,
and which he said was the beginning of a perfect heaven
upon earth. In this Parliament there sat a well-known leather-
seller, who had taken the singular name of Praise God
Barebones, and from whom it was called, for a joke,
Barebones’s Parliament, though its general name was the Little
Parliament. As it soon appeared that it was not going to put


A Child’s Histroy of England
394

Oliver in the first place, it turned out to be not at all like the
beginning of heaven upon earth, and Oliver said it really
was not to be borne with. So he cleared off that Parliament
in much the same way as he had disposed of the other; and
then the council of officers decided that he must be made
the supreme authority of the kingdom, under the title of the
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth.
So, on the sixteenth of December, one thousand six hun-
dred and fifty-three, a great procession was formed at Oliver’s
door, and he came out in a black velvet suit and a big pair of
boots, and got into his coach and went down to Westminster,
attended by the judges, and the lord mayor, and the alder-
men, and all the other great and wonderful personages of the
country. There, in the Court of Chancery, he publicly ac-
cepted the office of Lord Protector. Then he was sworn, and
the City sword was handed to him, and the seal was handed to
him, and all the other things were handed to him which are
usually handed to Kings and Queens on state occasions. When
Oliver had handed them all back, he was quite made and
completely finished off as Lord Protector; and several of the
Ironsides preached about it at great length, all the evening. 

SECOND PART
OLIVER CROMWELL—whom the people long called Old Noll—
in accepting the office of Protector, had bound himself by a
certain paper which was handed to him, called ‘the Instru-
ment,’ to summon a Parliament, consisting of between four
and five hundred members, in the election of which neither
the Royalists nor the Catholics were to have any share. He
had also pledged himself that this Parliament should not be
dissolved without its own consent until it had sat five months.
When this Parliament met, Oliver made a speech to them of
three hours long, very wisely advising them what to do for the
credit and happiness of the country. To keep down the more
violent members, he required them to sign a recognition of what
they were forbidden by ‘the Instrument’ to do; which was, chiefly,
to take the power from one single person at the head of the state
or to command the army. Then he dismissed them to go to work.
With his usual vigour and resolution he went to work himself
with some frantic preachers—who were rather overdoing their
sermons in calling him a villain and a tyrant—by shutting up
their chapels, and sending a few of them off to prison.


Charles Dickens
395

There was not at that time, in England or anywhere else,
a man so able to govern the country as Oliver Cromwell.
Although he ruled with a strong hand, and levied a very
heavy tax on the Royalists (but not until they had plotted
against his life), he ruled wisely, and as the times required.
He caused England to be so respected abroad, that I wish
some lords and gentlemen who have governed it under kings
and queens in later days would have taken a leaf out of Oliver
Cromwell’s book. He sent bold Admiral Blake to the Medi-
terranean Sea, to make the Duke of Tuscany pay sixty thou-
sand pounds for injuries he had done to British subjects,
and spoliation he had committed on English merchants. He
further despatched him and his fleet to Algiers, Tunis, and
Tripoli, to have every English ship and every English man
delivered up to him that had been taken by pirates in those
parts. All this was gloriously done; and it began to be thor-
oughly well known, all over the world, that England was
governed by a man in earnest, who would not allow the
English name to be insulted or slighted anywhere.
These were not all his foreign triumphs. He sent a fleet to
sea against the Dutch; and the two powers, each with one 

hundred ships upon its side, met in the English Channel off
the North Foreland, where the fight lasted all day long. Dean
was killed in this fight; but Monk, who commanded in the
same ship with him, threw his cloak over his body, that the
sailors might not know of his death, and be disheartened.
Nor were they. The English broadsides so exceedingly aston-
ished the Dutch that they sheered off at last, though the
redoubtable Van Tromp fired upon them with his own guns
for deserting their flag. Soon afterwards, the two fleets en-
gaged again, off the coast of Holland. There, the valiant Van
Tromp was shot through the heart, and the Dutch gave in,
and peace was made.
Further than this, Oliver resolved not to bear the domi-
neering and bigoted conduct of Spain, which country not
only claimed a right to all the gold and silver that could be
found in South America, and treated the ships of all other
countries who visited those regions, as pirates, but put En-
glish subjects into the horrible Spanish prisons of the Inqui-
sition. So, Oliver told the Spanish ambassador that English
ships must be free to go wherever they would, and that En-
glish merchants must not be thrown into those same dun-


A Child’s Histroy of England
396

geons, no, not for the pleasure of all the priests in Spain. To
this, the Spanish ambassador replied that the gold and silver
country, and the Holy Inquisition, were his King’s two eyes,
neither of which he could submit to have put out. Very well,
said Oliver, then he was afraid he (Oliver) must damage those
two eyes directly.
So, another fleet was despatched under two commanders,
Penn and Venables, for Hispaniola; where, however, the Span-
iards got the better of the fight. Consequently, the fleet came
home again, after taking Jamaica on the way. Oliver, indig-
nant with the two commanders who had not done what bold
Admiral Blake would have done, clapped them both into
prison, declared war against Spain, and made a treaty with
France, in virtue of which it was to shelter the King and his
brother the Duke of York no longer. Then, he sent a fleet
abroad under bold Admiral Blake, which brought the King
of Portugal to his senses—just to keep its hand in—and then
engaged a Spanish fleet, sunk four great ships, and took two
more, laden with silver to the value of two millions of pounds:
which dazzling prize was brought from Portsmouth to Lon-
don in waggons, with the populace of all the towns and vil- 

lages through which the waggons passed, shouting with all
their might. After this victory, bold Admiral Blake sailed
away to the port of Santa Cruz to cut off the Spanish trea-
sure-ships coming from Mexico. There, he found them, ten
in number, with seven others to take care of them, and a big
castle, and seven batteries, all roaring and blazing away at
him with great guns. Blake cared no more for great guns
than for pop-guns—no more for their hot iron balls than
for snow-balls. He dashed into the harbour, captured and
burnt every one of the ships, and came sailing out again
triumphantly, with the victorious English flag flying at his
masthead. This was the last triumph of this great commander,
who had sailed and fought until he was quite worn out. He
died, as his successful ship was coming into Plymouth
Harbour amidst the joyful acclamations of the people, and
was buried in state in Westminster Abbey. Not to lie there,
long.
Over and above all this, Oliver found that the Vaudois, or
Protestant people of the valleys of Lucerne, were insolently
treated by the Catholic powers, and were even put to death
for their religion, in an audacious and bloody manner. In-


Charles Dickens
397

stantly, he informed those powers that this was a thing which
Protestant England would not allow; and he speedily carried
his point, through the might of his great name, and estab-
lished their right to worship God in peace after their own
harmless manner.
Lastly, his English army won such admiration in fighting
with the French against the Spaniards, that, after they had
assaulted the town of Dunkirk together, the French King in
person gave it up to the English, that it might be a token to
them of their might and valour.
There were plots enough against Oliver among the frantic
religionists (who called themselves Fifth Monarchy Men),
and among the disappointed Republicans. He had a diffi-
cult game to play, for the Royalists were always ready to side
with either party against him. The ‘King over the water,’
too, as Charles was called, had no scruples about plotting
with any one against his life; although there is reason to
suppose that he would willingly have married one of his
daughters, if Oliver would have had such a son-in-law. There
was a certain Colonel Saxby of the army, once a great sup-
porter of Oliver’s but now turned against him, who was a 

grievous trouble to him through all this part of his career; and
who came and went between the discontented in England and
Spain, and Charles who put himself in alliance with Spain on
being thrown off by France. This man died in prison at last; but
not until there had been very serious plots between the Royal-
ists and Republicans, and an actual rising of them in England,
when they burst into the city of Salisbury, on a Sunday night,
seized the judges who were going to hold the assizes there next
day, and would have hanged them but for the merciful objec-
tions of the more temperate of their number. Oliver was so
vigorous and shrewd that he soon put this revolt down, as he
did most other conspiracies; and it was well for one of its chief
managers—that same Lord Wilmot who had assisted in Charles’s
flight, and was now Earl of Rochester—that he made his escape.
Oliver seemed to have eyes and ears everywhere, and secured
such sources of information as his enemies little dreamed of.
There was a chosen body of six persons, called the Sealed Knot,
who were in the closest and most secret confidence of Charles.
One of the foremost of these very men, a Sir Richard Willis,
reported to Oliver everything that passed among them, and
had two hundred a year for it.


A Child’s Histroy of England
398

Miles Syndarcomb, also of the old army, was another con-
spirator against the Protector. He and a man named  Cecil,
bribed one of his Life Guards to let them have good notice
when he was going out—intending to shoot him from a
window. But, owing either to his caution or his good for-
tune, they could never get an aim at him. Disappointed in
this design, they got into the chapel in Whitehall, with a
basketful of combustibles, which were to explode by means
of a slow match in six hours; then, in the noise and confu-
sion of the fire, they hoped to kill Oliver. But, the Life
Guardsman himself disclosed this plot; and they were seized,
and Miles died (or killed himself in prison) a little while
before he was ordered for execution. A few such plotters
Oliver caused to be beheaded, a few more to be hanged, and
many more, including those who rose in arms against him,
to be sent as slaves to the West Indies. If he were rigid, he
was impartial too, in asserting the laws of England.
When a Portuguese nobleman, the brother of the Portu-
guese ambassador, killed a London citizen in mistake for
another man with whom he had had a quarrel, Oliver caused
him to be tried before a jury of Englishmen and foreigners, 

and had him executed in spite of the entreaties of all the
ambassadors in London.
One of Oliver’s own friends, the Duke of Oldenburgh, in
sending him a present of six fine coach-horses, was very near
doing more to please the Royalists than all the plotters put
together. One day, Oliver went with his coach, drawn by
these six horses, into Hyde Park, to dine with his secretary
and some of his other gentlemen under the trees there. After
dinner, being merry, he took it into his head to put his friends
inside and to drive them home: a postillion riding one of the
foremost horses, as the custom was. On account of Oliver’s
being too free with the whip, the six fine horses went off at
a gallop, the postillion got thrown, and Oliver fell upon the
coach-pole and narrowly escaped being shot by his own pis-
tol, which got entangled with his clothes in the harness, and
went off. He was dragged some distance by the foot, until
his foot came out of the shoe, and then he came safely to the
ground under the broad body of the coach, and was very
little the worse. The gentlemen inside were only bruised,
and the discontented people of all parties were much disap-
pointed.


Charles Dickens
399

The rest of the history of the Protectorate of Oliver
Cromwell is a history of his Parliaments. His first one not
pleasing him at all, he waited until the five months were
out, and then dissolved it. The next was better suited to his
views; and from that he desired to get—if he could with
safety to himself—the title of King. He had had this in his
mind some time: whether because he thought that the En-
glish people, being more used to the title, were more likely
to obey it; or whether because he really wished to be a king
himself, and to leave the succession to that title in his family,
is far from clear. He was already as high, in England and in
all the world, as he would ever be, and I doubt if he cared for
the mere name. However, a paper, called the ‘Humble Peti-
tion and Advice,’ was presented to him by the House of
Commons, praying him to take a high title and to appoint
his successor. That he would have taken the title of King
there is no doubt, but for the strong opposition of the army.
This induced him to forbear, and to assent only to the other
points of the petition. Upon which occasion there was an-
other grand show in Westminster Hall, when the Speaker of
the House of Commons formally invested him with a purple 

robe lined with ermine, and presented him with a splen-
didly bound Bible, and put a golden sceptre in his hand.
The next time the Parliament met, he called a House of Lords
of sixty members, as the petition gave him power to do; but
as that Parliament did not please him either, and would not
proceed to the business of the country, he jumped into a
coach one morning, took six Guards with him, and sent
them to the right-about. I wish this had been a warning to
Parliaments to avoid long speeches, and do more work.
It was the month of August, one thousand six hundred
and fifty-eight, when Oliver Cromwell’s favourite daughter,
Elizabeth Claypole (who had lately lost her youngest son), lay
very ill, and his mind was greatly troubled, because he loved
her dearly. Another of his daughters was married to  Lord
Falconberg, another to the grandson of the Earl of Warwick,
and he had made his son Richard one of the Members of the
Upper House. He was very kind and loving to them all,
being a good father and a good husband; but he loved this
daughter the best of the family, and went down to Hampton
Court to see her, and could hardly be induced to stir from
her sick room until she died. Although his religion had been


A Child’s Histroy of England
400

of a gloomy kind, his disposition had been always cheerful.
He had been fond of music in his home, and had kept open
table once a week for all officers of the army not below the
rank of captain, and had always preserved in his house a
quiet, sensible dignity. He encouraged men of genius and
learning, and loved to have them about him. Milton was one
of his great friends. He was good humoured too, with the
nobility, whose dresses and manners were very different from
his; and to show them what good information he had, he
would sometimes jokingly tell them when they were his
guests, where they had last drunk the health of the ‘King
over the water,’ and would recommend them to be more
private (if they could) another time. But he had lived in
busy times, had borne the weight of heavy State affairs, and
had often gone in fear of his life. He was ill of the gout and
ague; and when the death of his beloved child came upon
him in addition, he sank, never to raise his head again. He
told his physicians on the twenty-fourth of August that the
Lord had assured him that he was not to die in that illness,
and that he would certainly get better. This was only his sick
fancy, for on the third of September, which was the anniver- 

sary of the great battle of Worcester, and the day of the year
which he called his fortunate day, he died, in the sixtieth
year of his age. He had been delirious, and had lain insen-
sible some hours, but he had been overheard to murmur a
very good prayer the day before. The whole country lamented
his death. If you want to know the real worth of Oliver
Cromwell, and his real services to his country, you can hardly
do better than compare England under him, with England
under Charles the Second.
He had appointed his son Richard to succeed him, and after
there had been, at Somerset House in the Strand, a lying in state
more splendid than sensible—as all such vanities after death
are, I think—Richard became Lord Protector. He was an ami-
able country gentleman, but had none of his father’s great ge-
nius, and was quite unfit for such a post in such a storm of
parties. Richard’s Protectorate, which only lasted a year and a
half, is a history of quarrels between the officers of the army
and the Parliament, and between the officers among themselves;
and of a growing discontent among the people, who had far too
many long sermons and far too few amusements, and wanted a
change. At last, General Monk got the army well into his own


Charles Dickens
401

hands, and then in pursuance of a secret plan he seems to have
entertained from the time of Oliver’s death, declared for the
King’s cause. He did not do this openly; but, in his place in the
House of Commons, as one of the members for Devonshire,
strongly advocated the proposals of one Sir John Greenville, who
came to the House with a letter from Charles, dated from Breda,
and with whom he had previously been in secret communica-
tion. There had been plots and counterplots, and a recall of the
last members of the Long Parliament, and an end of the Long
Parliament, and risings of the Royalists that were made too soon;
and most men being tired out, and there being no one to head
the country now great Oliver was dead, it was readily agreed to
welcome Charles Stuart. Some of the wiser and better members
said—what was most true—that in the letter from Breda, he
gave no real promise to govern well, and that it would be best to
make him pledge himself beforehand as to what he should be
bound to do for the benefit of the kingdom. Monk said, how-
ever, it would be all right when he came, and he could not come
too soon.
So, everybody found out all in a moment that the country
must be prosperous and happy, having another Stuart to con- 

descend to reign over it; and there was a prodigious firing
off of guns, lighting of bonfires, ringing of bells, and throw-
ing up of caps. The people drank the King’s health by thou-
sands in the open streets, and everybody rejoiced. Down
came the Arms of the Commonwealth, up went the Royal
Arms instead, and out came the public money. Fifty thou-
sand pounds for the King, ten thousand pounds for his
brother the Duke of York, five thousand pounds for his
brother the Duke of Gloucester. Prayers for these gracious
Stuarts were put up in all the churches; commissioners were
sent to Holland (which suddenly found out that Charles
was a great man, and that it loved him) to invite the King
home; Monk and the Kentish grandees went to Dover, to
kneel down before him as he landed. He kissed and em-
braced Monk, made him ride in the coach with himself and
his brothers, came on to London amid wonderful shoutings,
and passed through the army at Blackheath on the twenty-
ninth of May (his birthday), in the year one thousand six
hundred and sixty. Greeted by splendid dinners under tents,
by flags and tapestry streaming from all the houses, by de-
lighted crowds in all the streets, by troops of noblemen and


A Child’s Histroy of England
402

gentlemen in rich dresses, by City companies, train-bands,
drummers, trumpeters, the great Lord Mayor, and the ma-
jestic Aldermen, the King went on to Whitehall. On enter-
ing it, he commemorated his Restoration with the joke that
it really would seem to have been his own fault that he had
not come long ago, since everybody told him that he had
always wished for him with all his heart. 

CHAPTER XXXV
ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND,
CALLED THE MERRY MONARCH 

THERE NEVER WERE such profligate times in England as un-
der Charles the Second. Whenever you see his portrait, with
his swarthy, ill-looking face and great nose, you may fancy
him in his Court at Whitehall, surrounded by some of the
very worst vagabonds in the kingdom (though they were
lords and ladies), drinking, gambling, indulging in vicious
conversation, and committing every kind of profligate ex-
cess. It has been a fashion to call Charles the Second ‘The
Merry Monarch.’ Let me try to give you a general idea of 

some of the merry things that were done, in the merry days
when this merry gentleman sat upon his merry throne, in
merry England.
The first merry proceeding was—of course—to declare
that he was one of the greatest, the wisest, and the noblest
kings that ever shone, like the blessed sun itself, on this be-
nighted earth. The next merry and pleasant piece of busi-
ness was, for the Parliament, in the humblest manner, to
give him one million two hundred thousand pounds a year,
and to settle upon him for life that old disputed tonnage and
poundage which had been so bravely fought for. Then, Gen-
eral Monk being made Earl of Albermarle, and a few other
Royalists similarly rewarded, the law went to work to see
what was to be done to those persons (they were called Regi-
cides) who had been concerned in making a martyr of the
late King. Ten of these were merrily executed; that is to say,
six of the judges, one of the council, Colonel Hacker and
another officer who had commanded the Guards, and Hugh
Peters, a preacher who had preached against the martyr with
all his heart. These executions were so extremely merry, that
every horrible circumstance which Cromwell had abandoned


Charles Dickens
403

was revived with appalling cruelty. The hearts of the suffer-
ers were torn out of their living bodies; their bowels were
burned before their faces; the executioner cut jokes to the
next victim, as he rubbed his filthy hands together, that were
reeking with the blood of the last; and the heads of the dead
were drawn on sledges with the living to the place of suffer-
ing. Still, even so merry a monarch could not force one of
these dying men to say that he was sorry for what he had
done. Nay, the most memorable thing said among them was,
that if the thing were to do again they would do it.
Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished the evidence against
Strafford, and was one of the most staunch of the Republi-
cans, was also tried, found guilty, and ordered for execution.
When he came upon the scaffold on Tower Hill, after con-
ducting his own defence with great power, his notes of what
he had meant to say to the people were torn away from him,
and the drums and trumpets were ordered to sound lustily
and drown his voice; for, the people had been so much im-
pressed by what the Regicides had calmly said with their last
breath, that it was the custom now, to have the drums and
trumpets always under the scaffold, ready to strike up. Vane 

said no more than this: ‘It is a bad cause which cannot bear
the words of a dying man:’ and bravely died.
These merry scenes were succeeded by another, perhaps
even merrier. On the anniversary of the late King’s death,
the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, were
torn out of their graves in Westminster Abbey, dragged to
Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows all day long, and then
beheaded. Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwell set upon a
pole to be stared at by a brutal crowd, not one of whom
would have dared to look the living Oliver in the face for
half a moment! Think, after you have read this reign, what
England was under Oliver Cromwell who was torn out of
his grave, and what it was under this merry monarch who
sold it, like a merry Judas, over and over again.
Of course, the remains of Oliver’s wife and daughter were
not to be spared either, though they had been most excellent
women. The base clergy of that time gave up their bodies,
which had been buried in the Abbey, and—to the eternal
disgrace of England—they were thrown into a pit, together
with the mouldering bones of Pym and of the brave and
bold old Admiral Blake.


A Child’s Histroy of England
404

The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they hoped
to get the nonconformists, or dissenters, thoroughly put down
in this reign, and to have but one prayer-book and one ser-
vice for all kinds of people, no matter what their private
opinions were. This was pretty well, I think, for a Protestant
Church, which had displaced the Romish Church because
people had a right to their own opinions in religious mat-
ters. However, they carried it with a high hand, and a prayer-
book was agreed upon, in which the extremest opinions of
Archbishop Laud were not forgotten. An Act was passed,
too, preventing any dissenter from holding any office under
any corporation. So, the regular clergy in their triumph were
soon as merry as the King. The army being by this time
disbanded, and the King crowned, everything was to go on
easily for evermore.
I must say a word here about the King’s family. He had
not been long upon the throne when his brother the Duke
of Gloucester, and his sister the Princess of Orange, died within
a few months of each other, of small-pox. His remaining
sister, the Princess Henrietta, married the  Duke of Orleans,
the brother of  Louis the Fourteenth , King of France. His 

brother James, Duke of York, was made High Admiral, and
by-and-by became a Catholic. He was a gloomy, sullen, bil-
ious sort of man, with a remarkable partiality for the ugliest
women in the country. He married, under very discredit-
able circumstances,  Anne Hyde , the daughter of  Lord
Clarendon, then the King’s principal Minister—not at all a
delicate minister either, but doing much of the dirty work of
a very dirty palace. It became important now that the King
himself should be married; and divers foreign Monarchs,
not very particular about the character of their son-in-law,
proposed their daughters to him. The  King of Portugal of-
fered his daughter,  Catherine of Braganza, and fifty thou-
sand pounds: in addition to which, the French King, who
was favourable to that match, offered a loan of another fifty
thousand. The King of Spain, on the other hand, offered
any one out of a dozen of Princesses, and other hopes of
gain. But the ready money carried the day, and Catherine
came over in state to her merry marriage.
The whole Court was a great flaunting crowd of debauched
men and shameless women; and Catherine’s merry husband
insulted and outraged her in every possible way, until she


Charles Dickens
405

consented to receive those worthless creatures as her very
good friends, and to degrade herself by their companion-
ship. A Mrs. Palmer, whom the King made Lady Castlemaine,
and afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, was one of the most
powerful of the bad women about the Court, and had great
influence with the King nearly all through his reign. An-
other merry lady named Moll Davies, a dancer at the theatre,
was afterwards her rival. So was Nell Gwyn, first an orange
girl and then an actress, who really had good in her, and of
whom one of the worst things I know is, that actually she
does seem to have been fond of the King. The first Duke of
St. Albans was this orange girl’s child. In like manner the son
of a merry waiting-lady, whom the King created Duchess of
Portsmouth, became the Duke of Rich,pmd. Upon the whole
it is not so bad a thing to be a commoner.
The Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry among
these merry ladies, and some equally merry (and equally in-
famous) lords and gentlemen, that he soon got through his
hundred thousand pounds, and then, by way of raising a
little pocket-money, made a merry bargain. He sold Dunkirk
to the French King for five millions of livres. When I think 

of the dignity to which Oliver Cromwell raised England in
the eyes of foreign powers, and when I think of the manner
in which he gained for England this very Dunkirk, I am
much inclined to consider that if the Merry Monarch had
been made to follow his father for this action, he would
have received his just deserts.
Though he was like his father in none of that father’s greater
qualities, he was like him in being worthy of no trust. When
he sent that letter to the Parliament, from Breda, he did ex-
pressly promise that all sincere religious opinions should be
respected. Yet he was no sooner firm in his power than he
consented to one of the worst Acts of Parliament ever passed.
Under this law, every minister who should not give his sol-
emn assent to the Prayer-Book by a certain day, was declared
to be a minister no longer, and to be deprived of his church.
The consequence of this was that some two thousand honest
men were taken from their congregations, and reduced to dire
poverty and distress. It was followed by another outrageous
law, called the Conventicle Act, by which any person above
the age of sixteen who was present at any religious service not
according to the Prayer-Book, was to be imprisoned three


A Child’s Histroy of England
406

months for the first offence, six for the second, and to be
transported for the third. This Act alone filled the prisons,
which were then most dreadful dungeons, to overflowing.
The Covenanters in Scotland had already fared no better.
A base Parliament, usually known as the Drunken Parlia-
ment, in consequence of its principal members being sel-
dom sober, had been got together to make laws against the
Covenanters, and to force all men to be of one mind in reli-
gious matters. The Marquis of Argyle, relying on the King’s
honour, had given himself up to him; but, he was wealthy,
and his enemies wanted his wealth. He was tried for treason,
on the evidence of some private letters in which he had ex-
pressed opinions—as well he might—more favourable to the
government of the late Lord Protector than of the present
merry and religious King. He was executed, as were two
men of mark among the Covenanters; and  Sharp, a traitor
who had once been the friend of the Presbyterians and be-
trayed them, was made Archbishop of St. Andrew’s, to teach
the Scotch how to like bishops.
Things being in this merry state at home, the Merry Mon-
arch undertook a war with the Dutch; principally because 

they interfered with an African company, established with
the two objects of buying gold-dust and slaves, of which the
Duke of York was a leading member. After some prelimi-
nary hostilities, the said Duke sailed to the coast of Holland
with a fleet of ninety-eight vessels of war, and four fire-ships.
This engaged with the Dutch fleet, of no fewer than one
hundred and thirteen ships. In the great battle between the
two forces, the Dutch lost eighteen ships, four admirals, and
seven thousand men. But, the English on shore were in no
mood of exultation when they heard the news.
For, this was the year and the time of the Great Plague in
London. During the winter of one thousand six hundred and
sixty-four it had been whispered about, that some few people
had died here and there of the disease called the Plague, in
some of the unwholesome suburbs around London. News was
not published at that time as it is now, and some people be-
lieved these rumours, and some disbelieved them, and they
were soon forgotten. But, in the month of May, one thousand
six hundred and sixty-five, it began to be said all over the
town that the disease had burst out with great violence in St.
Giles’s, and that the people were dying in great numbers. This


Charles Dickens
407

soon turned out to be awfully true. The roads out of London
were choked up by people endeavouring to escape from the
infected city, and large sums were paid for any kind of con-
veyance. The disease soon spread so fast, that it was necessary
to shut up the houses in which sick people were, and to cut
them off from communication with the living. Every one of
these houses was marked on the outside of the door with a red
cross, and the words, Lord, have mercy upon us! The streets
were all deserted, grass grew in the public ways, and there was
a dreadful silence in the air. When night came on, dismal
rumblings used to be heard, and these were the wheels of the
death-carts, attended by men with veiled faces and holding
cloths to their mouths, who rang doleful bells and cried in a
loud and solemn voice, ‘Bring out your dead!’ The corpses
put into these carts were buried by torchlight in great pits; no
service being performed over them; all men being afraid to
stay for a moment on the brink of the ghastly graves. In the
general fear, children ran away from their parents, and par-
ents from their children. Some who were taken ill, died alone,
and without any help. Some were stabbed or strangled by hired
nurses who robbed them of all their money, and stole the very 

beds on which they lay. Some went mad, dropped from the
windows, ran through the streets, and in their pain and frenzy
flung themselves into the river.
These were not all the horrors of the time. The wicked
and dissolute, in wild desperation, sat in the taverns singing
roaring songs, and were stricken as they drank, and went out
and died. The fearful and superstitious persuaded themselves
that they saw supernatural sights—burning swords in the
sky, gigantic arms and darts. Others pretended that at nights
vast crowds of ghosts walked round and round the dismal
pits. One madman, naked, and carrying a brazier full of
burning coals upon his head, stalked through the streets,
crying out that he was a Prophet, commissioned to denounce
the vengeance of the Lord on wicked London. Another al-
ways went to and fro, exclaiming, ‘Yet forty days, and Lon-
don shall be destroyed!’ A third awoke the echoes in the
dismal streets, by night and by day, and made the blood of
the sick run cold, by calling out incessantly, in a deep hoarse
voice, ‘O, the great and dreadful God!’
Through the months of July and August and September,
the Great Plague raged more and more. Great fires were lighted


A Child’s Histroy of England
408

in the streets, in the hope of stopping the infection; but there
was a plague of rain too, and it beat the fires out. At last, the
winds which usually arise at that time of the year which is
called the equinox, when day and night are of equal length all
over the world, began to blow, and to purify the wretched
town. The deaths began to decrease, the red crosses slowly to
disappear, the fugitives to return, the shops to open, pale fright-
ened faces to be seen in the streets. The Plague had been in
every part of England, but in close and unwholesome London
it had killed one hundred thousand people.
All this time, the Merry Monarch was as merry as ever,
and as worthless as ever. All this time, the debauched lords
and gentlemen and the shameless ladies danced and gamed
and drank, and loved and hated one another, according to
their merry ways.
So little humanity did the government learn from the late
affliction, that one of the first things the Parliament did when
it met at Oxford (being as yet afraid to come to London),
was to make a law, called the Five Mile Act, expressly di-
rected against those poor ministers who, in the time of the
Plague, had manfully come back to comfort the unhappy 

people. This infamous law, by forbidding them to teach in
any school, or to come within five miles of any city, town, or
village, doomed them to starvation and death.
The fleet had been at sea, and healthy. The King of France
was now in alliance with the Dutch, though his navy was
chiefly employed in looking on while the English and Dutch
fought. The Dutch gained one victory; and the English gained
another and a greater; and Prince Rupert, one of the English
admirals, was out in the Channel one windy night, looking
for the French Admiral, with the intention of giving him some-
thing more to do than he had had yet, when the gale increased
to a storm, and blew him into Saint Helen’s. That night was
the third of September, one thousand six hundred and sixty-
six, and that wind fanned the Great Fire of London.
It broke out at a baker’s shop near London Bridge, on the
spot on which the Monument now stands as a remembrance
of those raging flames. It spread and spread, and burned and
burned, for three days. The nights were lighter than the days;
in the daytime there was an immense cloud of smoke, and in
the night-time there was a great tower of fire mounting up
into the sky, which lighted the whole country landscape for


Charles Dickens
409

ten miles round. Showers of hot ashes rose into the air and
fell on distant places; flying sparks carried the conflagration
to great distances, and kindled it in twenty new spots at a
time; church steeples fell down with tremendous crashes;
houses crumbled into cinders by the hundred and the thou-
sand. The summer had been intensely hot and dry, the streets
were very narrow, and the houses mostly built of wood and
plaster. Nothing could stop the tremendous fire, but the want
of more houses to burn; nor did it stop until the whole way
from the Tower to Temple Bar was a desert, composed of the
ashes of thirteen thousand houses and eighty-nine churches.
This was a terrible visitation at the time, and occasioned
great loss and suffering to the two hundred thousand burnt-
out people, who were obliged to lie in the fields under the
open night sky, or in hastily-made huts of mud and straw,
while the lanes and roads were rendered impassable by carts
which had broken down as they tried to save their goods.
But the Fire was a great blessing to the City afterwards, for it
arose from its ruins very much improved—built more regu-
larly, more widely, more cleanly and carefully, and therefore
much more healthily. It might be far more healthy than it is, 

but there are some people in it still—even now, at this time,
nearly two hundred years later—so selfish, so pig-headed,
and so ignorant, that I doubt if even another Great Fire would
warm them up to do their duty.
The Catholics were accused of having wilfully set London
in flames; one poor Frenchman, who had been mad for years,
even accused himself of having with his own hand fired the
first house. There is no reasonable doubt, however, that the
fire was accidental. An inscription on the Monument long
attributed it to the Catholics; but it is removed now, and
was always a malicious and stupid untruth.
SECOND PART
THAT THE MERRY MONARCH might be very merry indeed, in
the merry times when his people were suffering under pesti-
lence and fire, he drank and gambled and flung away among
his favourites the money which the Parliament had voted
for the war. The consequence of this was that the stout-
hearted English sailors were merrily starving of want, and
dying in the streets; while the Dutch, under their admirals


A Child’s Histroy of England
410

de Witt and de Ruyter, came into the River Thames, and up
the River Medway as far as Upnor, burned the guard-ships,
silenced the weak batteries, and did what they would to the
English coast for six whole weeks. Most of the English ships
that could have prevented them had neither powder nor shot
on board; in this merry reign, public officers made them-
selves as merry as the King did with the public money; and
when it was entrusted to them to spend in national defences
or preparations, they put it into their own pockets with the
merriest grace in the world.
Lord Clarendon had, by this time, run as long a course as
is usually allotted to the unscrupulous ministers of bad kings.
He was impeached by his political opponents, but unsuc-
cessfully. The King then commanded him to withdraw from
England and retire to France, which he did, after defending
himself in writing. He was no great loss at home, and died
abroad some seven years afterwards.
There then came into power a ministry called the Cabal
Ministry, because it was composed of Lord Clifford, the Earl
of Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham (a great rascal, and the
King’s most powerful favourite), Lord Ashley, and the Duke 

of Lauderdale, C. A. B. A. L. As the French were making
conquests in Flanders, the first Cabal proceeding was to make
a treaty with the Dutch, for uniting with Spain to oppose
the French. It was no sooner made than the Merry Mon-
arch, who always wanted to get money without being ac-
countable to a Parliament for his expenditure, apologised to
the King of France for having had anything to do with it,
and concluded a secret treaty with him, making himself his
infamous pensioner to the amount of two millions of livres
down, and three millions more a year; and engaging to desert
that very Spain, to make war against those very Dutch, and
to declare himself a Catholic when a convenient time should
arrive. This religious king had lately been crying to his Catho-
lic brother on the subject of his strong desire to be a Catho-
lic; and now he merrily concluded this treasonable conspiracy
against the country he governed, by undertaking to become
one as soon as he safely could. For all of which, though he
had had ten merry heads instead of one, he richly deserved
to lose them by the headsman’s axe.
As his one merry head might have been far from safe, if
these things had been known, they were kept very quiet,


Charles Dickens
411

and war was declared by France and England against the
Dutch. But, a very uncommon man, afterwards most im-
portant to English history and to the religion and liberty of
this land, arose among them, and for many long years de-
feated the whole projects of France. This was  William of
Nassau, Prince of Orange, son of the last Prince of Orange of
the same name, who married the daughter of Charles the
First of England. He was a young man at this time, only just
of age; but he was brave, cool, intrepid, and wise. His father
had been so detested that, upon his death, the Dutch had
abolished the authority to which this son would have other-
wise succeeded (Stadtholder it was called), and placed the
chief power in the hands of John de Witt, who educated this
young prince. Now, the Prince became very popular, and
John de Witt’s brother  Cornelius was sentenced to banish-
ment on a false accusation of conspiring to kill him. John
went to the prison where he was, to take him away to exile,
in his coach; and a great mob who collected on the occasion,
then and there cruelly murdered both the brothers. This left
the government in the hands of the Prince, who was really
the choice of the nation; and from this time he exercised it 

with the greatest vigour, against the whole power of France,
under its famous generals Conde and Turenne, and in sup-
port of the Protestant religion. It was full seven years before
this war ended in a treaty of peace made at Nimeguen, and
its details would occupy a very considerable space. It is enough
to say that William of Orange established a famous charac-
ter with the whole world; and that the Merry Monarch, add-
ing to and improving on his former baseness, bound himself
to do everything the King of France liked, and nothing the
King of France did not like, for a pension of one hundred
thousand pounds a year, which was afterwards doubled. Be-
sides this, the King of France, by means of his corrupt am-
bassador—who wrote accounts of his proceedings in En-
gland, which are not always to be believed, I think—bought
our English members of Parliament, as he wanted them. So,
in point of fact, during a considerable portion of this merry
reign, the King of France was the real King of this country.
But there was a better time to come, and it was to come
(though his royal uncle little thought so) through that very
William, Prince of Orange. He came over to England, saw
Mary, the elder daughter of the Duke of York, and married


A Child’s Histroy of England
412

her. We shall see by-and-by what came of that marriage, and
why it is never to be forgotten.
This daughter was a Protestant, but her mother died a Catho-
lic. She and her sister Anne, also a Protestant, were the only
survivors of eight children. Anne afterwards married George,
Prince of Denmark, brother to the King of that country.
Lest you should do the Merry Monarch the injustice of
supposing that he was even good humoured (except when
he had everything his own way), or that he was high spirited
and honourable, I will mention here what was done to a
member of the House of Commons, Sir John Coventry. He
made a remark in a debate about taxing the theatres, which
gave the King offence. The King agreed with his illegitimate
son, who had been born abroad, and whom he had made
Duke of Monmouth, to take the following merry vengeance.
To waylay him at night, fifteen armed men to one, and to
slit his nose with a penknife. Like master, like man. The
King’s favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, was strongly
suspected of setting on an assassin to murder the  Duke of
Ormond as he was returning home from a dinner; and that
Duke’s spirited son,  Lord Ossory, was so persuaded of his 

guilt, that he said to him at Court, even as he stood beside
the King, ‘My lord, I know very well that you are at the
bottom of this late attempt upon my father. But I give you
warning, if he ever come to a violent end, his blood shall be
upon you, and wherever I meet you I will pistol you! I will
do so, though I find you standing behind the King’s chair;
and I tell you this in his Majesty’s presence, that you may be
quite sure of my doing what I threaten.’ Those were merry
times indeed.
There was a fellow named blood, who was seized for mak-
ing, with two companions, an audacious attempt to steal the
crown, the globe, and sceptre, from the place where the jew-
els were kept in the Tower. This robber, who was a swagger-
ing ruffian, being taken, declared that he was the man who
had endeavoured to kill the Duke of Ormond, and that he
had meant to kill the King too, but was overawed by the
majesty of his appearance, when he might otherwise have
done it, as he was bathing at Battersea. The King being but
an ill-looking fellow, I don’t believe a word of this. Whether
he was flattered, or whether he knew that Buckingham had
really set Blood on to murder the Duke, is uncertain. But it


Charles Dickens
413

is quite certain that he pardoned this thief, gave him an es-
tate of five hundred a year in Ireland (which had had the
honour of giving him birth), and presented him at Court to
the debauched lords and the shameless ladies, who made a
great deal of him—as I have no doubt they would have made
of the Devil himself, if the King had introduced him.
Infamously pensioned as he was, the King still wanted
money, and consequently was obliged to call Parliaments. In
these, the great object of the Protestants was to thwart the
Catholic Duke of York, who married a second time; his new
wife being a young lady only fifteen years old, the Catholic
sister of the Duke of Mondena. In this they were seconded by
the Protestant Dissenters, though to their own disadvantage:
since, to exclude Catholics from power, they were even will-
ing to exclude themselves. The King’s object was to pretend
to be a Protestant, while he was really a Catholic; to swear to
the bishops that he was devoutly attached to the English
Church, while he knew he had bargained it away to the
King of France; and by cheating and deceiving them, and all
who were attached to royalty, to become despotic and be
powerful enough to confess what a rascal he was. Meantime, 

the King of France, knowing his merry pensioner well, in-
trigued with the King’s opponents in Parliament, as well as
with the King and his friends.
The fears that the country had of the Catholic religion
being restored, if the Duke of York should come to the throne,
and the low cunning of the King in pretending to share their
alarms, led to some very terrible results. A certain Dr. Tonge,
a dull clergyman in the City, fell into the hands of a certain
Titus Oates, a most infamous character, who pretended to
have acquired among the Jesuits abroad a knowledge of a
great plot for the murder of the King, and the re-establish-
ment if the Catholic religion. Titus Oates, being produced
by this unlucky Dr. Tonge and solemnly examined before
the council, contradicted himself in a thousand ways, told
the most ridiculous and improbable stories, and implicated
Coleman, the Secretary of the Duchess of York. Now, al-
though what he charged against Coleman was not true, and
although you and I know very well that the real dangerous
Catholic plot was that one with the King of France of which
the Merry Monarch was himself the head, there happened
to be found among Coleman’s papers, some letters, in which


A Child’s Histroy of England
414

he did praise the days of Bloody Queen Mary, and abuse the
Protestant religion. This was great good fortune for Titus, as
it seemed to confirm him; but better still was in store.  Sir
Edmundbury Godfrey, the magistrate who had first examined
him, being unexpectedly found dead near Primrose Hill, was
confidently believed to have been killed by the Catholics. I
think there is no doubt that he had been melancholy mad,
and that he killed himself; but he had a great Protestant fu-
neral, and Titus was called the Saver of the Nation, and re-
ceived a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year.
As soon as Oates’s wickedness had met with this success, up
started another villain, named William Bedloe, who, attracted
by a reward of five hundred pounds offered for the apprehen-
sion of the murderers of Godfrey, came forward and charged
two Jesuits and some other persons with having committed it
at the Queen’s desire. Oates, going into partnership with this
new informer, had the audacity to accuse the poor Queen
herself of high treason. Then appeared a third informer, as
bad as either of the two, and accused a Catholic banker named
Stayley of having said that the King was the greatest rogue in
the world (which would not have been far from the truth), 

and that he would kill him with his own hand. This banker,
being at once tried and executed, Coleman and two others
were tried and executed. Then, a miserable wretch named
Prance, a Catholic silversmith, being accused by Bedloe, was
tortured into confessing that he had taken part in Godfrey’s
murder, and into accusing three other men of having com-
mitted it. Then, five Jesuits were accused by Oates, Bedloe,
and Prance together, and were all found guilty, and executed
on the same kind of contradictory and absurd evidence. The
Queen’s physician and three monks were next put on their
trial; but Oates and Bedloe had for the time gone far enough
and these four were acquitted. The public mind, however,
was so full of a Catholic plot, and so strong against the Duke
of York, that James consented to obey a written order from his
brother, and to go with his family to Brussels, provided that
his rights should never be sacrificed in his absence to the Duke
of Monmouth. The House of Commons, not satisfied with
this as the King hoped, passed a bill to exclude the Duke from
ever succeeding to the throne. In return, the King dissolved
the Parliament. He had deserted his old favourite, the Duke
of Buckingham, who was now in the opposition.


Charles Dickens
415

To give any sufficient idea of the miseries of Scotland in
this merry reign, would occupy a hundred pages. Because
the people would not have bishops, and were resolved to
stand by their solemn League and Covenant, such cruelties
were inflicted upon them as make the blood run cold. Fero-
cious dragoons galloped through the country to punish the
peasants for deserting the churches; sons were hanged up at
their fathers’ doors for refusing to disclose where their fa-
thers were concealed; wives were tortured to death for not
betraying their husbands; people were taken out of their fields
and gardens, and shot on the public roads without trial;
lighted matches were tied to the fingers of prisoners, and a
most horrible torment called the Boot was invented, and
constantly applied, which ground and mashed the victims’
legs with iron wedges. Witnesses were tortured as well as
prisoners. All the prisons were full; all the gibbets were heavy
with bodies; murder and plunder devastated the whole coun-
try. In spite of all, the Covenanters were by no means to be
dragged into the churches, and persisted in worshipping God
as they thought right. A body of ferocious Highlanders,
turned upon them from the mountains of their own coun- 

try, had no greater effect than the English dragoons under
Grahame of Claverhouse, the most cruel and rapacious of all
their enemies, whose name will ever be cursed through the
length and breadth of Scotland. Archbishop Sharp had ever
aided and abetted all these outrages. But he fell at last; for,
when the injuries of the Scottish people were at their height,
he was seen, in his coach-and-six coming across a moor, by a
body of men, headed by one John Balfour, who were waiting
for another of their oppressors. Upon this they cried out
that Heaven had delivered him into their hands, and killed
him with many wounds. If ever a man deserved such a death,
I think Archbishop Sharp did.
It made a great noise directly, and the Merry Monarch—
strongly suspected of having goaded the Scottish people on,
that he might have an excuse for a greater army than the
Parliament were willing to give him—sent down his son, the
Duke of Monmouth, as commander-in-chief, with instruc-
tions to attack the Scottish rebels, or Whigs as they were
called, whenever he came up with them. Marching with ten
thousand men from Edinburgh, he found them, in number
four or five thousand, drawn up at Bothwell Bridge, by the


A Child’s Histroy of England
416

Clyde. They were soon dispersed; and Monmouth showed a
more humane character towards them, than he had shown
towards that Member of Parliament whose nose he had caused
to be slit with a penknife. But the Duke of Lauderdale was
their bitter foe, and sent Claverhouse to finish them.
As the Duke of York became more and more unpopular,
the Duke of Monmouth became more and more popular. It
would have been decent in the latter not to have voted in
favour of the renewed bill for the exclusion of James from
the throne; but he did so, much to the King’s amusement,
who used to sit in the House of Lords by the fire, hearing
the debates, which he said were as good as a play. The House
of Commons passed the bill by a large majority, and it was
carried up to the House of Lords by Lord Russell, one of the
best of the leaders on the Protestant side. It was rejected
there, chiefly because the bishops helped the King to get rid
of it; and the fear of Catholic plots revived again. There had
been another got up, by a fellow out of Newgate, named
Dangerfield, which is more famous than it deserves to be,
under the name of the Meal-tub Plot. This jail-bird having
been got out of Newgate by a Mrs. Celier, a Catholic nurse, 

had turned Catholic himself, and pretended that he knew of
a plot among the Presbyterians against the King’s life. This
was very pleasant to the Duke of York, who hated the Pres-
byterians, who returned the compliment. He gave
Dangerfield twenty guineas, and sent him to the King his
brother. But Dangerfield, breaking down altogether in his
charge, and being sent back to Newgate, almost astonished
the Duke out of his five senses by suddenly swearing that
the Catholic nurse had put that false design into his head,
and that what he really knew about, was, a Catholic plot
against the King; the evidence of which would be found in
some papers, concealed in a meal-tub in Mrs. Cellier’s house.
There they were, of course—for he had put them there him-
self—and so the tub gave the name to the plot. But, the
nurse was acquitted on her trial, and it came to nothing.
Lord Ashley, of the Cabal, was now Lord Shaftesbury, and
was strong against the succession of the Duke of York. The
House of Commons, aggravated to the utmost extent, as we
may well suppose, by suspicions of the King’s conspiracy
with the King of France, made a desperate point of the ex-
clusion, still, and were bitter against the Catholics generally.


Charles Dickens
417

So unjustly bitter were they, I grieve to say, that they im-
peached the venerable Lord Stafford, a Catholic nobleman
seventy years old, of a design to kill the King. The witnesses
were that atrocious Oates and two other birds of the same
feather. He was found guilty, on evidence quite as foolish as
it was false, and was beheaded on Tower Hill. The people
were opposed to him when he first appeared upon the scaf-
fold; but, when he had addressed them and shown them
how innocent he was and how wickedly he was sent there,
their better nature was aroused, and they said, ‘We believe
you, my Lord. God bless you, my Lord!’
The House of Commons refused to let the King have any
money until he should consent to the Exclusion Bill; but, as
he could get it and did get it from his master the King of
France, he could afford to hold them very cheap. He called
a Parliament at Oxford, to which he went down with a great
show of being armed and protected as if he were in danger
of his life, and to which the opposition members also went
armed and protected, alleging that they were in fear of the
Papists, who were numerous among the King’s guards. How-
ever, they went on with the Exclusion Bill, and were so ear- 

nest upon it that they would have carried it again, if the
King had not popped his crown and state robes into a sedan-
chair, bundled himself into it along with them, hurried down
to the chamber where the House of Lords met, and dis-
solved the Parliament. After which he scampered home, and
the members of Parliament scampered home too, as fast as
their legs could carry them.
The Duke of York, then residing in Scotland, had, under
the law which excluded Catholics from public trust, no right
whatever to public employment. Nevertheless, he was openly
employed as the King’s representative in Scotland, and there
gratified his sullen and cruel nature to his heart’s content by
directing the dreadful cruelties against the Covenanters. There
were two ministers named  Cargill and Cameron who had
escaped from the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and who re-
turned to Scotland, and raised the miserable but still brave
and unsubdued Covenanters afresh, under the name of
Cameronians. As Cameron publicly posted a declaration that
the King was a forsworn tyrant, no mercy was shown to his
unhappy followers after he was slain in battle. The Duke of
York, who was particularly fond of the Boot and derived


A Child’s Histroy of England
418

great pleasure from having it applied, offered their lives to
some of these people, if they would cry on the scaffold ‘God
save the King!’ But their relations, friends, and countrymen,
had been so barbarously tortured and murdered in this merry
reign, that they preferred to die, and did die. The Duke then
obtained his merry brother’s permission to hold a Parlia-
ment in Scotland, which first, with most shameless deceit,
confirmed the laws for securing the Protestant religion against
Popery, and then declared that nothing must or should pre-
vent the succession of the Popish Duke. After this double-
faced beginning, it established an oath which no human being
could understand, but which everybody was to take, as a
proof that his religion was the lawful religion. The Earl of
Argyle, taking it with the explanation that he did not con-
sider it to prevent him from favouring any alteration either
in the Church or State which was not inconsistent with the
Protestant religion or with his loyalty, was tried for high trea-
son before a Scottish jury of which the Marquis of Montrose
was foreman, and was found guilty. He escaped the scaffold,
for that time, by getting away, in the disguise of a page, in
the train of his daughter, Lady Sophia Lindsay. It was abso- 

lutely proposed, by certain members of the Scottish Coun-
cil, that this lady should be whipped through the streets of
Edinburgh. But this was too much even for the Duke, who
had the manliness then (he had very little at most times) to
remark that Englishmen were not accustomed to treat ladies
in that manner. In those merry times nothing could equal
the brutal servility of the Scottish fawners, but the conduct
of similar degraded beings in England.
After the settlement of these little affairs, the Duke re-
turned to England, and soon resumed his place at the Coun-
cil, and his office of High Admiral—all this by his brother’s
favour, and in open defiance of the law. It would have been
no loss to the country, if he had been drowned when his
ship, in going to Scotland to fetch his family, struck on a
sand-bank, and was lost with two hundred souls on board.
But he escaped in a boat with some friends; and the sailors
were so brave and unselfish, that, when they saw him row-
ing away, they gave three cheers, while they themselves were
going down for ever.
The Merry Monarch, having got rid of his Parliament,
went to work to make himself despotic, with all speed. Hav-


Charles Dickens
419

ing had the villainy to order the execution of Oliver Plunket,
Bishop of Armagh, falsely accused of a plot to establish Pop-
ery in that country by means of a French army—the very
thing this royal traitor was himself trying to do at home—
and having tried to ruin Lord Shaftesbury, and failed—he
turned his hand to controlling the corporations all over the
country; because, if he could only do that, he could get what
juries he chose, to bring in perjured verdicts, and could get
what members he chose returned to Parliament. These merry
times produced, and made Chief Justice of the Court of
King’s Bench, a drunken ruffian of the name of  Jeffreys; a
red-faced, swollen, bloated, horrible creature, with a bully-
ing, roaring voice, and a more savage nature perhaps than
was ever lodged in any human breast. This monster was the
Merry Monarch’s especial favourite, and he testified his ad-
miration of him by giving him a ring from his own finger,
which the people used to call Judge Jeffreys’s Bloodstone.
Him the King employed to go about and bully the corpora-
tions, beginning with London; or, as Jeffreys himself elegantly
called it, ‘to give them a lick with the rough side of his tongue.’
And he did it so thoroughly, that they soon became the bas- 

est and most sycophantic bodies in the kingdom—except
the University of Oxford, which, in that respect, was quite
pre-eminent and unapproachable.
Lord Shaftesbury (who died soon after the King’s failure
against him), Lord William Russell, the Duke of Monmouth,
Lord Howard, Lord Jersey, Algernon Sidney, John Hampden
(grandson of the great Hampden), and some others, used to
hold a council together after the dissolution of the Parlia-
ment, arranging what it might be necessary to do, if the
King carried his Popish plot to the utmost height. Lord
Shaftesbury having been much the most violent of this party,
brought two violent men into their secrets— Rumsey, who
had been a soldier in the Republican army; and West, a law-
yer. These two knew an old officer of  Cromwell’s, called
Rumbold, who had married a maltster’s widow, and so had
come into possession of a solitary dwelling called the Rye
House, near Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire. Rumbold said to
them what a capital place this house of his would be from
which to shoot at the King, who often passed there going to
and fro from Newmarket. They liked the idea, and enter-
tained it. But, one of their body gave information; and they,


A Child’s Histroy of England
420

together with  Shepherd a wine merchant, Lord Russell,
Algernon Sidney, Lord Essex, Lord Howard, and Hampden,
were all arrested.
Lord Russell might have easily escaped, but scorned to do
so, being innocent of any wrong; Lord Essex might have
easily escaped, but scorned to do so, lest his flight should
prejudice Lord Russell. But it weighed upon his mind that
he had brought into their council, Lord Howard—who now
turned a miserable traitor—against a great dislike Lord Russell
had always had of him. He could not bear the reflection,
and destroyed himself before Lord Russell was brought to
trial at the Old Bailey.
He knew very well that he had nothing to hope, having
always been manful in the Protestant cause against the two
false brothers, the one on the throne, and the other standing
next to it. He had a wife, one of the noblest and best of
women, who acted as his secretary on his trial, who com-
forted him in his prison, who supped with him on the night
before he died, and whose love and virtue and devotion have
made her name imperishable. Of course, he was found guilty,
and was sentenced to be beheaded in Lincoln’s Inn-fields, 

not many yards from his own house. When he had parted
from his children on the evening before his death, his wife
still stayed with him until ten o’clock at night; and when
their final separation in this world was over, and he had kissed
her many times, he still sat for a long while in his prison,
talking of her goodness. Hearing the rain fall fast at that
time, he calmly said, ‘Such a rain to-morrow will spoil a
great show, which is a dull thing on a rainy day.’ At mid-
night he went to bed, and slept till four; even when his ser-
vant called him, he fell asleep again while his clothes were
being made ready. He rode to the scaffold in his own car-
riage, attended by two famous clergymen, Tillotson and Bur-
net, and sang a psalm to himself very softly, as he went along.
He was as quiet and as steady as if he had been going out for
an ordinary ride. After saying that he was surprised to see so
great a crowd, he laid down his head upon the block, as if
upon the pillow of his bed, and had it struck off at the sec-
ond blow. His noble wife was busy for him even then; for
that true-hearted lady printed and widely circulated his last
words, of which he had given her a copy. They made the
blood of all the honest men in England boil.


Charles Dickens
421

The University of Oxford distinguished itself on the very
same day by pretending to believe that the accusation against
Lord Russell was true, and by calling the King, in a written
paper, the Breath of their Nostrils and the Anointed of the
Lord. This paper the Parliament afterwards caused to be burned
by the common hangman; which I am sorry for, as I wish it
had been framed and glazed and hung up in some public place,
as a monument of baseness for the scorn of mankind.
Next, came the trial of Algernon Sidney, at which Jeffreys
presided, like a great crimson toad, sweltering and swelling
with rage. ‘I pray God, Mr. Sidney,’ said this Chief Justice of
a merry reign, after passing sentence, ‘to work in you a tem-
per fit to go to the other world, for I see you are not fit for
this.’ ‘My lord,’ said the prisoner, composedly holding out
his arm, ‘feel my pulse, and see if I be disordered. I thank
Heaven I never was in better temper than I am now.’ Algernon
Sidney was executed on Tower Hill, on the seventh of De-
cember, one thousand six hundred and eighty-three. He died
a hero, and died, in his own words, ‘For that good old cause
in which he had been engaged from his youth, and for which
God had so often and so wonderfully declared himself.’ 

The Duke of Monmouth had been making his uncle, the
Duke of York, very jealous, by going about the country in a
royal sort of way, playing at the people’s games, becoming
godfather to their children, and even touching for the King’s
evil, or stroking the faces of the sick to cure them—though,
for the matter of that, I should say he did them about as
much good as any crowned king could have done. His fa-
ther had got him to write a letter, confessing his having had
a part in the conspiracy, for which Lord Russell had been
beheaded; but he was ever a weak man, and as soon as he
had written it, he was ashamed of it and got it back again.
For this, he was banished to the Netherlands; but he soon
returned and had an interview with his father, unknown to
his uncle. It would seem that he was coming into the Merry
Monarch’s favour again, and that the Duke of York was slid-
ing out of it, when Death appeared to the merry galleries at
Whitehall, and astonished the debauched lords and gentle-
men, and the shameless ladies, very considerably.
On Monday, the second of February, one thousand six hun-
dred and eighty-five, the merry pensioner and servant of the
King of France fell down in a fit of apoplexy. By the Wednes-


A Child’s Histroy of England
422

day his case was hopeless, and on the Thursday he was told so.
As he made a difficulty about taking the sacrament from the
Protestant Bishop of Bath, the Duke of York got all who were
present away from the bed, and asked his brother, in a whis-
per, if he should send for a Catholic priest? The King replied,
‘For God’s sake, brother, do!’ The Duke smuggled in, up the
back stairs, disguised in a wig and gown, a priest named
Huddleston, who had saved the King’s life after the battle of
Worcester: telling him that this worthy man in the wig had
once saved his body, and was now come to save his soul.
The Merry Monarch lived through that night, and died
before noon on the next day, which was Friday, the sixth.
Two of the last things he said were of a human sort, and
your remembrance will give him the full benefit of them.
When the Queen sent to say she was too unwell to attend
him and to ask his pardon, he said, ‘Alas! poor woman,  she
beg my pardon! I beg hers with all my heart. Take back that
answer to her.’ And he also said, in reference to Nell Gwyn,
‘Do not let poor Nelly starve.’
He died in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty-
fifth of his reign. 

CHAPTER XXXVI
ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND 

KING JAMES THE SECOND WAS A MAN so very disagreeable, that
even the best of historians has favoured his brother Charles,
as becoming, by comparison, quite a pleasant character. The
one object of his short reign was to re-establish the Catholic
religion in England; and this he doggedly pursued with such
a stupid obstinacy, that his career very soon came to a close.
The first thing he did, was, to assure his council that he
would make it his endeavour to preserve the Government,
both in Church and State, as it was by law established; and
that he would always take care to defend and support the
Church. Great public acclamations were raised over this fair
speech, and a great deal was said, from the pulpits and else-
where, about the word of a King which was never broken,
by credulous people who little supposed that he had formed
a secret council for Catholic affairs, of which a mischievous
Jesuit, called Father Petre, was one of the chief members.
With tears of joy in his eyes, he received, as the beginning of
his pension from the King of France, five hundred thousand


Charles Dickens
423

livres; yet, with a mixture of meanness and arrogance that
belonged to his contemptible character, he was always jeal-
ous of making some show of being independent of the King
of France, while he pocketed his money. As—notwithstand-
ing his publishing two papers in favour of Popery (and not
likely to do it much service, I should think) written by the
King, his brother, and found in his strong-box; and his open
display of himself attending mass—the Parliament was very
obsequious, and granted him a large sum of money, he be-
gan his reign with a belief that he could do what he pleased,
and with a determination to do it.
Before we proceed to its principal events, let us dispose of
Titus Oates. He was tried for perjury, a fortnight after the
coronation, and besides being very heavily fined, was sen-
tenced to stand twice in the pillory, to be whipped from
Aldgate to Newgate one day, and from Newgate to Tyburn
two days afterwards, and to stand in the pillory five times a
year as long as he lived. This fearful sentence was actually
inflicted on the rascal. Being unable to stand after his first
flogging, he was dragged on a sledge from Newgate to Tyburn,
and flogged as he was drawn along. He was so strong a vil- 

lain that he did not die under the torture, but lived to be
afterwards pardoned and rewarded, though not to be ever
believed in any more. Dangerfield, the only other one of
that crew left alive, was not so fortunate. He was almost
killed by a whipping from Newgate to Tyburn, and, as if
that were not punishment enough, a ferocious barrister of
Gray’s Inn gave him a poke in the eye with his cane, which
caused his death; for which the ferocious barrister was de-
servedly tried and executed.
As soon as James was on the throne, Argyle and Monmouth
went from Brussels to Rotterdam, and attended a meeting of
Scottish exiles held there, to concert measures for a rising in
England. It was agreed that Argyle should effect a landing in
Scotland, and Monmouth in England; and that two English-
men should be sent with Argyle to be in his confidence, and
two Scotchmen with the Duke of Monmouth.
Argyle was the first to act upon this contract. But, two of
his men being taken prisoners at the Orkney Islands, the Gov-
ernment became aware of his intention, and was able to act
against him with such vigour as to prevent his raising more
than two or three thousand Highlanders, although he sent a


A Child’s Histroy of England
424

fiery cross, by trusty messengers, from clan to clan and from
glen to glen, as the custom then was when those wild people
were to be excited by their chiefs. As he was moving towards
Glasgow with his small force, he was betrayed by some of his
followers, taken, and carried, with his hands tied behind his
back, to his old prison in Edinburgh Castle. James ordered
him to be executed, on his old shamefully unjust sentence,
within three days; and he appears to have been anxious that
his legs should have been pounded with his old favourite the
boot. However, the boot was not applied; he was simply be-
headed, and his head was set upon the top of Edinburgh Jail.
One of those Englishmen who had been assigned to him was
that old soldier Rumbold, the master of the Rye House. He
was sorely wounded, and within a week after Argyle had suf-
fered with great courage, was brought up for trial, lest he should
die and disappoint the King. He, too, was executed, after de-
fending himself with great spirit, and saying that he did not
believe that God had made the greater part of mankind to
carry saddles on their backs and bridles in their mouths, and
to be ridden by a few, booted and spurred for the purpose—
in which I thoroughly agree with Rumbold. 

The Duke of Monmouth, partly through being detained
and partly through idling his time away, was five or six weeks
behind his friend when he landed at Lyme, in Dorset: having
at his right hand an unlucky nobleman called  Lord Grey of
Werk, who of himself would have ruined a far more promis-
ing expedition. He immediately set up his standard in the
market-place, and proclaimed the King a tyrant, and a Popish
usurper, and I know not what else; charging him, not only
with what he had done, which was bad enough, but with
what neither he nor anybody else had done, such as setting
fire to London, and poisoning the late King. Raising some
four thousand men by these means, he marched on to Taunton,
where there were many Protestant dissenters who were strongly
opposed to the Catholics. Here, both the rich and poor turned
out to receive him, ladies waved a welcome to him from all
the windows as he passed along the streets, flowers were strewn
in his way, and every compliment and honour that could be
devised was showered upon him. Among the rest, twenty young
ladies came forward, in their best clothes, and in their bright-
est beauty, and gave him a Bible ornamented with their own
fair hands, together with other presents.


Charles Dickens
425

Encouraged by this homage, he proclaimed himself King,
and went on to Bridgewater. But, here the Government
troops, under the Earl of Feversham, were close at hand; and
he was so dispirited at finding that he made but few power-
ful friends after all, that it was a question whether he should
disband his army and endeavour to escape. It was resolved,
at the instance of that unlucky Lord Grey, to make a night
attack on the King’s army, as it lay encamped on the edge of
a morass called Sedgemoor. The horsemen were commanded
by the same unlucky lord, who was not a brave man. He
gave up the battle almost at the first obstacle—which was a
deep drain; and although the poor countrymen, who had
turned out for Monmouth, fought bravely with scythes,
poles, pitchforks, and such poor weapons as they had, they
were soon dispersed by the trained soldiers, and fled in all
directions. When the Duke of Monmouth himself fled, was
not known in the confusion; but the unlucky Lord Grey was
taken early next day, and then another of the party was taken,
who confessed that he had parted from the Duke only four
hours before. Strict search being made, he was found dis-
guised as a peasant, hidden in a ditch under fern and nettles, 

with a few peas in his pocket which he had gathered in the
fields to eat. The only other articles he had upon him were a
few papers and little books: one of the latter being a strange
jumble, in his own writing, of charms, songs, recipes, and
prayers. He was completely broken. He wrote a miserable
letter to the King, beseeching and entreating to be allowed
to see him. When he was taken to London, and conveyed
bound into the King’s presence, he crawled to him on his
knees, and made a most degrading exhibition. As James never
forgave or relented towards anybody, he was not likely to
soften towards the issuer of the Lyme proclamation, so he
told the suppliant to prepare for death.
On the fifteenth of July, one thousand six hundred and
eighty-five, this unfortunate favourite of the people was
brought out to die on Tower Hill. The crowd was immense,
and the tops of all the houses were covered with gazers. He
had seen his wife, the daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch,
in the Tower, and had talked much of a lady whom he loved
far better—the Lady Harriet Wentworth—who was one of
the last persons he remembered in this life. Before laying
down his head upon the block he felt the edge of the axe,


A Child’s Histroy of England
426

and told the executioner that he feared it was not sharp
enough, and that the axe was not heavy enough. On the
executioner replying that it was of the proper kind, the Duke
said, ‘I pray you have a care, and do not use me so awk-
wardly as you used my Lord Russell.’ The executioner, made
nervous by this, and trembling, struck once and merely
gashed him in the neck. Upon this, the Duke of Monmouth
raised his head and looked the man reproachfully in the face.
Then he struck twice, and then thrice, and then threw down
the axe, and cried out in a voice of horror that he could not
finish that work. The sheriffs, however, threatening him with
what should be done to himself if he did not, he took it up
again and struck a fourth time and a fifth time. Then the
wretched head at last fell off, and James, Duke of Monmouth,
was dead, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. He was a showy,
graceful man, with many popular qualities, and had found
much favour in the open hearts of the English.
The atrocities, committed by the Government, which fol-
lowed this Monmouth rebellion, form the blackest and most
lamentable page in English history. The poor peasants, hav-
ing been dispersed with great loss, and their leaders having 

been taken, one would think that the implacable King might
have been satisfied. But no; he let loose upon them, among
other intolerable monsters, a Colonel Kirk, who had served
against the Moors, and whose soldiers—called by the people
Kirk’s lambs, because they bore a lamb upon their flag, as
the emblem of Christianity—were worthy of their leader.
The atrocities committed by these demons in human shape
are far too horrible to be related here. It is enough to say,
that besides most ruthlessly murdering and robbing them,
and ruining them by making them buy their pardons at the
price of all they possessed, it was one of Kirk’s favourite
amusements, as he and his officers sat drinking after dinner,
and toasting the King, to have batches of prisoners hanged
outside the windows for the company’s diversion; and that
when their feet quivered in the convulsions of death, he used
to swear that they should have music to their dancing, and
would order the drums to beat and the trumpets to play.
The detestable King informed him, as an acknowledgment
of these services, that he was ‘very well satisfied with his
proceedings.’ But the King’s great delight was in the pro-
ceedings of Jeffreys, now a peer, who went down into the


Charles Dickens
427

west, with four other judges, to try persons accused of hav-
ing had any share in the rebellion. The King pleasantly called
this ‘Jeffreys’s campaign.’ The people down in that part of
the country remember it to this day as The Bloody Assize.
It began at Winchester, where a poor deaf old lady,  Mrs
Alicia Lisle, the widow of one of the judges of Charles the
First (who had been murdered abroad by some Royalist as-
sassins), was charged with having given shelter in her house
to two fugitives from Sedgemoor. Three times the jury re-
fused to find her guilty, until Jeffreys bullied and frightened
them into that false verdict. When he had extorted it from
them, he said, ‘Gentlemen, if I had been one of you, and she
had been my own mother, I would have found her guilty;’—
as I dare say he would. He sentenced her to be burned alive,
that very afternoon. The clergy of the cathedral and some
others interfered in her favour, and she was beheaded within
a week. As a high mark of his approbation, the King made
Jeffreys Lord Chancellor; and he then went on to Dorchester,
to Exeter, to Taunton, and to Wells. It is astonishing, when
we read of the enormous injustice and barbarity of this beast,
to know that no one struck him dead on the judgment-seat. 

It was enough for any man or woman to be accused by an
enemy, before Jeffreys, to be found guilty of high treason.
One man who pleaded not guilty, he ordered to be taken out
of court upon the instant, and hanged; and this so terrified
the prisoners in general that they mostly pleaded guilty at
once. At Dorchester alone, in the course of a few days, Jeffreys
hanged eighty people; besides whipping, transporting, im-
prisoning, and selling as slaves, great numbers. He executed,
in all, two hundred and fifty, or three hundred.
These executions took place, among the neighbours and
friends of the sentenced, in thirty-six towns and villages. Their
bodies were mangled, steeped in caldrons of boiling pitch
and tar, and hung up by the roadsides, in the streets, over
the very churches. The sight and smell of heads and limbs,
the hissing and bubbling of the infernal caldrons, and the
tears and terrors of the people, were dreadful beyond all de-
scription. One rustic, who was forced to steep the remains
in the black pot, was ever afterwards called ‘Tom Boilman.’
The hangman has ever since been called Jack Ketch, because
a man of that name went hanging and hanging, all day long,
in the train of Jeffreys. You will hear much of the horrors of


A Child’s Histroy of England
428

the great French Revolution. Many and terrible they were,
there is no doubt; but I know of nothing worse, done by the
maddened people of France in that awful time, than was
done by the highest judge in England, with the express ap-
proval of the King of England, in The Bloody Assize.
Nor was even this all. Jeffreys was as fond of money for
himself as of misery for others, and he sold pardons whole-
sale to fill his pockets. The King ordered, at one time, a
thousand prisoners to be given to certain of his favourites,
in order that they might bargain with them for their par-
dons. The young ladies of Taunton who had presented the
Bible, were bestowed upon the maids of honour at court;
and those precious ladies made very hard bargains with them
indeed. When The Bloody Assize was at its most dismal
height, the King was diverting himself with horse-races in
the very place where Mrs. Lisle had been executed. When
Jeffreys had done his worst, and came home again, he was
particularly complimented in the Royal Gazette; and when
the King heard that through drunkenness and raging he was
very ill, his odious Majesty remarked that such another man
could not easily be found in England. Besides all this, a former

sheriff of London, named Cornish, was hanged within sight
of his own house, after an abominably conducted trial, for
having had a share in the Rye House Plot, on evidence given
by Rumsey, which that villain was obliged to confess was
directly opposed to the evidence he had given on the trial of
Lord Russell. And on the very same day, a worthy widow,
named Elizabeth Gaunt, was burned alive at Tyburn, for
having sheltered a wretch who himself gave evidence against
her. She settled the fuel about herself with her own hands,
so that the flames should reach her quickly: and nobly said,
with her last breath, that she had obeyed the sacred com-
mand of God, to give refuge to the outcast, and not to be-
tray the wanderer.
After all this hanging, beheading, burning, boiling, muti-
lating, exposing, robbing, transporting, and selling into sla-
very, of his unhappy subjects, the King not unnaturally
thought that he could do whatever he would. So, he went to
work to change the religion of the country with all possible
speed; and what he did was this.
He first of all tried to get rid of what was called the Test
Act—which prevented the Catholics from holding public


Charles Dickens
429

employments—by his own power of dispensing with the pen-
alties. He tried it in one case, and, eleven of the twelve judges
deciding in his favour, he exercised it in three others, being
those of three dignitaries of University College, Oxford, who
had become Papists, and whom he kept in their places and
sanctioned. He revived the hated Ecclesiastical Commission,
to get rid of  Compton, Bishop of London, who manfully
opposed him. He solicited the Pope to favour England with
an ambassador, which the Pope (who was a sensible man
then) rather unwillingly did. He flourished Father Petre be-
fore the eyes of the people on all possible occasions. He
favoured the establishment of convents in several parts of
London. He was delighted to have the streets, and even the
court itself, filled with Monks and Friars in the habits of
their orders. He constantly endeavoured to make Catholics
of the Protestants about him. He held private interviews,
which he called ‘closetings,’ with those Members of Parlia-
ment who held offices, to persuade them to consent to the
design he had in view. When they did not consent, they
were removed, or resigned of themselves, and their places
were given to Catholics. He displaced Protestant officers from 

the army, by every means in his power, and got Catholics
into their places too. He tried the same thing with the cor-
porations, and also (though not so successfully) with the Lord
Lieutenants of counties. To terrify the people into the en-
durance of all these measures, he kept an army of fifteen
thousand men encamped on Hounslow Heath, where mass
was openly performed in the General’s tent, and where priests
went among the soldiers endeavouring to persuade them to
become Catholics. For circulating a paper among those men
advising them to be true to their religion, a Protestant cler-
gyman, named Johnson, the chaplain of the late Lord Russell,
was actually sentenced to stand three times in the pillory,
and was actually whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. He dis-
missed his own brother-in-law from his Council because he
was a Protestant, and made a Privy Councillor of the before-
mentioned Father Petre. He handed Ireland over to Richard
Talboth, Earl of Tyronnell, a worthless, dissolute knave, who
played the same game there for his master, and who played
the deeper game for himself of one day putting it under the
protection of the French King. In going to these extremities,
every man of sense and judgment among the Catholics, from


A Child’s Histroy of England
430

the Pope to a porter, knew that the King was a mere bigoted
fool, who would undo himself and the cause he sought to
advance; but he was deaf to all reason, and, happily for En-
gland ever afterwards, went tumbling off his throne in his
own blind way.
A spirit began to arise in the country, which the besotted
blunderer little expected. He first found it out in the Uni-
versity of Cambridge. Having made a Catholic a dean at
Oxford without any opposition, he tried to make a monk a
master of arts at Cambridge: which attempt the University
resisted, and defeated him. He then went back to his favourite
Oxford. On the death of the President of Magdalen Col-
lege, he commanded that there should be elected to succeed
him, one Mr. Anthony Farmer, whose only recommendation
was, that he was of the King’s religion. The University plucked
up courage at last, and refused. The King substituted an-
other man, and it still refused, resolving to stand by its own
election of a Mr. Hough. The dull tyrant, upon this, pun-
ished Mr. Hough, and five-and-twenty more, by causing
them to be expelled and declared incapable of holding any
church preferment; then he proceeded to what he supposed 

to be his highest step, but to what was, in fact, his last plunge
head-foremost in his tumble off his throne.
He had issued a declaration that there should be no reli-
gious tests or penal laws, in order to let in the Catholics
more easily; but the Protestant dissenters, unmindful of them-
selves, had gallantly joined the regular church in opposing it
tooth and nail. The King and Father Petre now resolved to
have this read, on a certain Sunday, in all the churches, and
to order it to be circulated for that purpose by the bishops.
The latter took counsel with the Archbishop of Canterbury,
who was in disgrace; and they resolved that the declaration
should not be read, and that they would petition the King
against it. The Archbishop himself wrote out the petition,
and six bishops went into the King’s bedchamber the same
night to present it, to his infinite astonishment. Next day
was the Sunday fixed for the reading, and it was only read by
two hundred clergymen out of ten thousand. The King re-
solved against all advice to prosecute the bishops in the Court
of King’s Bench, and within three weeks they were sum-
moned before the Privy Council, and committed to the
Tower. As the six bishops were taken to that dismal place, by


Charles Dickens
431

water, the people who were assembled in immense numbers
fell upon their knees, and wept for them, and prayed for
them. When they got to the Tower, the officers and soldiers
on guard besought them for their blessing. While they were
confined there, the soldiers every day drank to their release
with loud shouts. When they were brought up to the Court
of King’s Bench for their trial, which the Attorney-General
said was for the high offence of censuring the Government,
and giving their opinion about affairs of state, they were
attended by similar multitudes, and surrounded by a throng
of noblemen and gentlemen. When the jury went out at
seven o’clock at night to consider of their verdict, everybody
(except the King) knew that they would rather starve than
yield to the King’s brewer, who was one of them, and wanted
a verdict for his customer. When they came into court next
morning, after resisting the brewer all night, and gave a ver-
dict of not guilty, such a shout rose up in Westminster Hall
as it had never heard before; and it was passed on among the
people away to Temple Bar, and away again to the Tower. It
did not pass only to the east, but passed to the west too, until
it reached the camp at Hounslow, where the fifteen thou- 

sand soldiers took it up and echoed it. And still, when the dull
King, who was then with Lord Feversham, heard the mighty
roar, asked in alarm what it was, and was told that it was ‘noth-
ing but the acquittal of the bishops,’ he said, in his dogged
way, ‘Call you that nothing? It is so much the worse for them.’
Between the petition and the trial, the Queen had given
birth to a son, which Father Petre rather thought was owing
to Saint Winifred. But I doubt if Saint Winifred had much
to do with it as the King’s friend, inasmuch as the entirely
new prospect of a Catholic successor (for both the King’s
daughters were Protestants) determined the  Earls of
Shrewsbury, Danby, and Devonshire, Lord Lumley, the Bishop
of London, Admiral Russell, and Colonel Sidney, to invite the
Prince of Orange over to England. The Royal Mole, seeing
his danger at last, made, in his fright, many great conces-
sions, besides raising an army of forty thousand men; but
the Prince of Orange was not a man for James the Second to
cope with. His preparations were extraordinarily vigorous,
and his mind was resolved.
For a fortnight after the Prince was ready to sail for En-
gland, a great wind from the west prevented the departure


A Child’s Histroy of England
432

of his fleet. Even when the wind lulled, and it did sail, it was
dispersed by a storm, and was obliged to put back to refit. At
last, on the first of November, one thousand six hundred
and eighty-eight, the Protestant east wind, as it was long
called, began to blow; and on the third, the people of Dover
and the people of Calais saw a fleet twenty miles long sailing
gallantly by, between the two places. On Monday, the fifth,
it anchored at Torbay in Devonshire, and the Prince, with a
splendid retinue of officers and men, marched into Exeter.
But the people in that western part of the country had suf-
fered so much in The Bloody Assize, that they had lost heart.
Few people joined him; and he began to think of returning,
and publishing the invitation he had received from those
lords, as his justification for having come at all. At this crisis,
some of the gentry joined him; the Royal army began to
falter; an engagement was signed, by which all who set their
hand to it declared that they would support one another in
defence of the laws and liberties of the three Kingdoms, of
the Protestant religion, and of the Prince of Orange. From
that time, the cause received no check; the greatest towns in
England began, one after another, to declare for the Prince; 

and he knew that it was all safe with him when the Univer-
sity of Oxford offered to melt down its plate, if he wanted
any money.
By this time the King was running about in a pitiable way,
touching people for the King’s evil in one place, reviewing
his troops in another, and bleeding from the nose in a third.
The young Prince was sent to Portsmouth, Father Petre went
off like a shot to France, and there was a general and swift
dispersal of all the priests and friars. One after another, the
King’s most important officers and friends deserted him and
went over to the Prince. In the night, his daughter Anne fled
from Whitehall Palace; and the Bishop of London, who had
once been a soldier, rode before her with a drawn sword in
his hand, and pistols at his saddle. ‘God help me,’ cried the
miserable King: ‘my very children have forsaken me!’ In his
wildness, after debating with such lords as were in London,
whether he should or should not call a Parliament, and after
naming three of them to negotiate with the Prince, he re-
solved to fly to France. He had the little Prince of Wales
brought back from Portsmouth; and the child and the Queen
crossed the river to Lambeth in an open boat, on a miserable


Charles Dickens
433

wet night, and got safely away. This was on the night of the
ninth of December.
At one o’clock on the morning of the eleventh, the King,
who had, in the meantime, received a letter from the Prince
of Orange, stating his objects, got out of bed, told  Lord
Northumberland who lay in his room not to open the door
until the usual hour in the morning, and went down the
back stairs (the same, I suppose, by which the priest in the
wig and gown had come up to his brother) and crossed the
river in a small boat: sinking the great seal of England by the
way. Horses having been provided, he rode, accompanied
by Sir Edward Hales, to Feversham, where he embarked in a
Custom House Hoy. The master of this Hoy, wanting more
ballast, ran into the Isle of Sheppy to get it, where the fisher-
men and smugglers crowded about the boat, and informed
the King of their suspicions that he was a ‘hatchet-faced Je-
suit.’ As they took his money and would not let him go, he
told them who he was, and that the Prince of Orange wanted
to take his life; and he began to scream for a boat—and then
to cry, because he had lost a piece of wood on his ride which
he called a fragment of Our Saviour’s cross. He put himself 

into the hands of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, and his
detention was made known to the Prince of Orange at
Windsor—who, only wanting to get rid of him, and not
caring where he went, so that he went away, was very much
disconcerted that they did not let him go. However, there
was nothing for it but to have him brought back, with some
state in the way of Life Guards, to Whitehall. And as soon as
he got there, in his infatuation, he heard mass, and set a
Jesuit to say grace at his public dinner.
The people had been thrown into the strangest state of
confusion by his flight, and had taken it into their heads
that the Irish part of the army were going to murder the
Protestants. Therefore, they set the bells a ringing, and lighted
watch-fires, and burned Catholic Chapels, and looked about
in all directions for Father Petre and the Jesuits, while the
Pope’s ambassador was running away in the dress of a foot-
man. They found no Jesuits; but a man, who had once been
a frightened witness before Jeffreys in court, saw a swollen,
drunken face looking through a window down at Wapping,
which he well remembered. The face was in a sailor’s dress,
but he knew it to be the face of that accursed judge, and he


A Child’s Histroy of England
434

seized him. The people, to their lasting honour, did not tear
him to pieces. After knocking him about a little, they took
him, in the basest agonies of terror, to the Lord Mayor, who
sent him, at his own shrieking petition, to the Tower for
safety. There, he died.
Their bewilderment continuing, the people now lighted
bonfires and made rejoicings, as if they had any reason to be
glad to have the King back again. But, his stay was very
short, for the English guards were removed from Whitehall,
Dutch guards were marched up to it, and he was told by one
of his late ministers that the Prince would enter London,
next day, and he had better go to Ham. He said, Ham was a
cold, damp place, and he would rather go to Rochester. He
thought himself very cunning in this, as he meant to escape
from Rochester to France. The Prince of Orange and his
friends knew that, perfectly well, and desired nothing more.
So, he went to Gravesend, in his royal barge, attended by
certain lords, and watched by Dutch troops, and pitied by
the generous people, who were far more forgiving than he
had ever been, when they saw him in his humiliation. On
the night of the twenty-third of December, not even then 

understanding that everybody wanted to get rid of him, he
went out, absurdly, through his Rochester garden, down to
the Medway, and got away to France, where he rejoined the
Queen.
There had been a council in his absence, of the lords, and
the authorities of London. When the Prince came, on the
day after the King’s departure, he summoned the Lords to
meet him, and soon afterwards, all those who had served in
any of the Parliaments of King Charles the Second. It was
finally resolved by these authorities that the throne was va-
cant by the conduct of King James the Second; that it was
inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant
kingdom, to be governed by a Popish prince; that the Prince
and Princess of Orange should be King and Queen during
their lives and the life of the survivor of them; and that their
children should succeed them, if they had any. That if they
had none, the Princess Anne and her children should suc-
ceed; that if she had none, the heirs of the Prince of Orange
should succeed.
On the thirteenth of January, one thousand six hundred
and eighty-nine, the Prince and Princess, sitting on a throne


Charles Dickens
435

in Whitehall, bound themselves to these conditions. The
Protestant religion was established in England, and England’s
great and glorious Revolution was complete. 

CHAPTER XXXVII 

I  HAVE  NOW  ARRIVED at the close of my little history. The
events which succeeded the famous Revolution of one thou-
sand six hundred and eighty-eight, would neither be easily
related nor easily understood in such a book as this.
William and Mary reigned together, five years. After the
death of his good wife, William occupied the throne, alone,
for seven years longer. During his reign, on the sixteenth of
September, one thousand seven hundred and one, the poor
weak creature who had once been James the Second of En-
gland, died in France. In the meantime he had done his
utmost (which was not much) to cause William to be assas-
sinated, and to regain his lost dominions. James’s son was
declared, by the French King, the rightful King of England;
and was called in France The Chevalier Saint George, and in
England The Pretender. Some infatuated people in England, 

and particularly in Scotland, took up the Pretender’s cause
from time to time—as if the country had not had Stuarts
enough!—and many lives were sacrificed, and much misery
was occasioned. King William died on Sunday, the seventh
of March, one thousand seven hundred and two, of the con-
sequences of an accident occasioned by his horse stumbling
with him. He was always a brave, patriotic Prince, and a
man of remarkable abilities. His manner was cold, and he
made but few friends; but he had truly loved his queen.
When he was dead, a lock of her hair, in a ring, was found
tied with a black ribbon round his left arm.
He was succeeded by the Princess Anne, a popular Queen,
who reigned twelve years. In her reign, in the month of May,
one thousand seven hundred and seven, the Union between
England and Scotland was effected, and the two countries
were incorporated under the name of Great Britain. Then,
from the year one thousand seven hundred and fourteen to
the year one thousand, eight hundred and thirty, reigned
the four Georges.
It was in the reign of George the Second, one thousand
seven hundred and forty-five, that the Pretender did his last


A Child’s Histroy of England
436

mischief, and made his last appearance. Being an old man
by that time, he and the Jacobites—as his friends were
called—put forward his son, Charles Edward, known as the
young Chevalier. The Highlanders of Scotland, an extremely
troublesome and wrong-headed race on the subject of the
Stuarts, espoused his cause, and he joined them, and there
was a Scottish rebellion to make him king, in which many
gallant and devoted gentlemen lost their lives. It was a hard
matter for Charles Edward to escape abroad again, with a
high price on his head; but the Scottish people were extraor-
dinarily faithful to him, and, after undergoing many romantic
adventures, not unlike those of Charles the Second, he es-
caped to France. A number of charming stories and delight-
ful songs arose out of the Jacobite feelings, and belong to the
Jacobite times. Otherwise I think the Stuarts were a public
nuisance altogether.
It was in the reign of George the Third that England lost
North America, by persisting in taxing her without her own
consent. That immense country, made independent under
Washington, and left to itself, became the United States; one
of the greatest nations of the earth. In these times in which 

I write, it is honourably remarkable for protecting its sub-
jects, wherever they may travel, with a dignity and a deter-
mination which is a model for England. Between you and
me, England has rather lost ground in this respect since the
days of Oliver Cromwell.
The Union of Great Britain with Ireland—which had been
getting on very ill by itself—took place in the reign of George
the Third, on the second of July, one thousand seven hun-
dred and ninety-eight.
William the Fourth succeeded George the Fourth, in the
year one thousand eight hundred and thirty, and reigned
seven years. Queen Victoria, his niece, the only child of the
Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George the Third, came to
the throne on the twentieth of June, one thousand eight
hundred and thirty-seven. She was married to Prince Albert
of Saxe Gotha on the tenth of February, one thousand eight
hundred and forty. She is very good, and much beloved. So
I end, like the crier, with
God Save the Queen!


Charles Dickens
437 

Index 

A 

Adela  88
Adelais  87
Adele  54
Admiral Blake  392
Admiral Drake  338
Admiral Russell  431
Admiral Van Tromp  392
Agricola  15, 16
Alfred  24, 44
Alfred the Great  24
Algernon Sidney  419
Alicia Lisle  427
Ambrose Rookwood  348
Amy Robsart  324
Anlaf  31
Anne Askew  299
Anne Boleyn  282
Anne Hyde  404
Anne of Bohemia  206
Anne of Cleves  297
Antony Babington  335
Arthur  126
Athelwold  36
Augustine  21
Aulus Plautius  13 

B 

Bacon  342
Balfour  368
Ballard  334
Bannockburn  180
Beauclerc  64
Beortric  22, 23
Bertrand de Gourdon  124
Bishop Juxon  385
Bishop of Armagh  419
Bishop of London  431
Blanche of Castile  142
Blondel  125
Bloody Queen Mary  319
Boadicea  15
Bonner  306
Burnet  420 

C 

Calais  319
Cameron  417
Caractacus  13
Caradoc  13
Carausius  16
Cardinal Campeggio  287
Cardinal Richelieu  359
Cargill  417
Cassivellaunus  13
Catesby  268
Catherine  278
Catherine Howard  298


A Child’s Histroy of England
438 

Catherine of Braganza  404
Catherine Parr  299
Catus  14
Cecil  344
Charlemagne  23
Charles le Bel  183
Charles Lucas  382
Charles the Ninth  331
Charles the Second  400
Charles the Seventh  233
Christopher Columbus  279
Christopher Wright  347
Coifi  21
Coke  345
Coleman  413
Colonel Careless  390
Colonel Hacker  385
Colonel Hunks  385
Colonel Kirk  426
Colonel Phayer  385
Colonel Pride  384
Colonel Rich  384
Colonel Saxby  397
Colonel Sidney  431
Connaught  107
Constantine  31
Cornelius  411
Courtenay  311
Cressingham  169 

D 

Danby  431 

Dangerfield  416
David Rizzio  324
Delinquents  369
Denzil Hollis  371
Dermond Mac Murrough  107
Desmond  107
Devonshire  431
Douglas  328
Dr. Tonge  413
Duchess of Cleveland  405
Duchess of Portsmouth  405
Duke of Buckingham  413
Duke of Gloucester  384
Duke of Hamilton  387
Duke of Lancaster  203
Duke of Lauderdale, C. A. B. A. L.  413
Duke of Mondena  413
Duke of Monmouth  412
Duke of Norfolk  329
Duke of Oldenburgh  398
Duke of Orleans  404
Duke of Rich,pmd  405
Duke of Somerset  301
Duke of York  211 

E 

Earl Bothwell  325
Earl of Albermarle  402
Earl of Arlington  413
Earl of Arundel  90
Earl of Douglas  218
Earl of Essex  370


Charles Dickens
439 

Earl of Feversham  425
Earl of Glamorgan  377
Earl of Hertford  300
Earl of Leven  378
Earl of Mar  327
Earl of Montgomery  353
Earl of Montrose  370
Earl of Murray  324
Earl of Rochester  397
Earl of Salisbury  211
Earl of Somerset  353
Earl of Strafford  365
Earl Richard de Clare  107
Edburga  22
Edgar  60
Edgarr  35
Edgitha  38
Edmund  23, 31, 43, 62, 163
Edmund de le Pole  278
Edmund Dudley  279
Edred  32
Edric the Wild  61
Edward  28, 37, 44, 48
Edward Gryme  105
Edward Howard  280
Edward Seymour  301
Edward the Black Prince  187
Edward the Confessor  51
Edward the Outlaw  53
Edwin  21
Edwy  32
Egbert  22, 23 

Eleanor  90, 146
Eleanor de Montfort  159
Elfrida  36
Elgiva  34
Elizabeth  291
Elizabeth Claypole  399
Emeric  159
England  23
Ethelbald  23
Ethelbert  21, 23
Ethelred  23, 37, 38
Ethelwulf  23
Eustace  90
Everard Digby  348
Everard Hampden  360 

F 

Fair Rosamond  114
Father Gerard  347
Father Petre  422
Fawkes  346
Francis the First  282
Francis the Second, King of France  321
Francis Tresham  348 

G 

Gardiner  306
Gascoigne  220
Geoffrey  87, 93, 109
George Goring  368
George, Prince of Denmark  412


A Child’s Histroy of England
440 

George Villiers  353
Gilbert  94
Gilbert a Becket  94
Gilbert de L’aigle  86
Godfrey  86
Godwin  46, 62
Gog  320
good Queen Anne  206
Grahame of Claverhouse  415
Great Alfred  29
Griffith  53
Guilbert  64
Guthrum  26, 27 

H 

Hadrian  15, 17
Hampden  376
Hans Holbein  279
Hardicanute  46
Harold  46
Harold Hardrada  55
Hengist  19
Henrietta Maria  357
Henry  64, 88, 109, 140
Henry de Bohun  179
Henry Earl of Richmond  267
Henry Garnet  351
Henry Percy  218
Henry the Eighth  300
Hereward  63
Herluin  67
Hollis  362 

Honorius  16
Hooper  315
Hopkins  285
Horsa  19
Hotspur  218
Hubert de Burgh  143
Huddleston  422
Hugh de Morville  103
Hugh le Despenser  181
Huguenots  331
Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford  164 

I 

Ireton  376
Ironside  45
Isabella  147, 164, 175 

J 

Jack Cade  247
Jack Straw  203
Jacques d’Arc  235
James, Duke of York  404
Jeffreys  419
Joan Bocher  306
Joan of Arc  235
John  109, 126
John Balfour  415
John Baliol  151, 166
John Ball  203
John Ball;  203
John Bradshaw  383


Charles Dickens
441 

John Chambers  364
John Comyn  151, 170
John Corbet  360
John de Mowbray  181
John de Witt  411
John Dighton  266
John Felton  361
John Flowerdew  303
John Hampden  365, 371, 419
John Haveningham  360
John Knox  322
John Pym  371
John Wright  346
Joice  379 

K 

Ker  353
King Alfred  25, 26, 27
King Alfred the Great  27, 30
King Alfred’s reign  24
King Arhtur’s Castle  21
King Arthur  20
King Charles the First  359
King Edmund the Magnificent  32
King Ethelbert,  21
King Ethelred  23
King Ethelwulf  24
King Henry the Eighth  279
King Henry the First  77
King Henry the Seventh  269
King Henry the Sixth  233
King James the Second  422 

King of Portugal  404
King Richard the Third  265 

L 

Lackland  109
Lady Anne Seymour  304
Lady Arabella Stuart  345
Lady Castlemaine  405
Lady Harriet Wentworth  425
Lady Jane Grey  307
Lady Sophia Lindsay  418
Latimer  310
Leighton  364
Leinster  107
Leof  31
Llewellyn  159
London  94
Longbeard  123
Longchamp  123
Longshanks  155
Lord Ashley  413
Lord Beauchamp  354
Lord Burleigh  320
Lord Capel  387
Lord Clarendon  404
Lord Clifford  410
Lord Cobham  344
Lord Darnley  324
Lord Essex  420
Lord Falconberg  399
Lord Falkland  376
Lord Grey of Werk  424


A Child’s Histroy of England
442 

Lord Guilford Dudley  307
Lord Herries  328
Lord Holland  387
Lord Home  281
Lord Howard  419, 420
Lord Jersey  419
Lord Kimbolton  371
Lord Lindsy  327
Lord Lumley  431
Lord Northampton  305
Lord Pembroke  305
Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester  324
Lord Russell  303, 416
Lord Ruthven  325
Lord Say  365
Lord Seymour  302
Lord Warrenne  167
Lord Wentworth  366
Lord William Russell  419
Louis the Fourteenth  404 

M 

Magna Charta  137
Magog  320
Margaret  109, 164, 246
Marquis of Argyle,  406
Marquis of Dorset  362
Marquis of Montrose  418
Martin Luther  285
Mary of Guise  321
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots  321
Matilda  64 

Maud the Good  78
Maurice Fitz-Gerald  108
Maximilian  281
Meal-tub Plot  416
Miles Forest  266
Miles Syndarcomb  398
Milton  400
Miss Lane  391
Moll Davies  405
Mr. Anthony Farmer  430
Mr. Lascelles  391
Mr. Pym  366
Mrs. Celier  416
Mrs. Palmer  405 

N 

Nell Gwyn  405
Nichola de Camville  141 

O 

Odo  61
Offa  22
Old Noll  394
Oliver Cromwell  374
Oliver Plunket  419
Oliver’s Ironsides  388
Osburga  24
Our cousin of Scotland  343
Owen Glendower  217


Charles Dickens
443

P 

Pedro the Cruel  199
Penn  396
Perkin Warbeck  272
Peter de Roches  143
Peter the Hermit  73
Petition of Right  361
Philip Le Bel  175
Philip Prince of Spain  311
Philip the Second  112
Piers Gaveston  175
Plantagenet  87
Pride’s Purge  384
Prince Albert  436
Prince David  160
Prince Edmund  148
Prince Edward  151
Prince Maurice  375
Prince Rupert  375
Princess Anne  436
Princess Elizabeth  320, 384
Princess Henrietta  404
Princess of Orange  404 

Q 

Queen Edburga  22
Queen Elizabeth  320
Queen Victoria  436 

R 

Randolph  180 

Ranulf de Broc  102
Rat Cliffe  268
Red Roses  254
Reginald  132
Reginald Fitzurse  103
Reginald Pole  295
Richard  109, 399
Richard Brito  103
Richard Empson  279
Richard Talboth, Earl of Tyronnell  429
Ridley  306
Robert Bruce  151, 166
Robert, called Curthose  64
Robert Carr  353
Robert Catesby  346
Robert, Earl of Gloucester  89
Robert Fitz-Stephen  108
Robert Fitz-Walter  137
Robert Kay  347
Robert Ket  303
Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice  207
Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk  164
Roger Mortimer  182, 186
Rowena  19, 20
Rumbold  419
Rumsey  419 

S 

Savage  334
Sebastian Cabot  279
Sebert  21
Seminary Priests  333


A Child’s Histroy of England
444 

Severus  15, 17, 18
Shakespeare  342
Sharp  406
Shepherd  420
Simon Burley  207
Simon de Montfort  149
Sir Arthur Haselrig  371
Sir Edmundbury Godfrey  414
Sir Edward Baynham  348
Sir Edward Hales  433
Sir Francis Walsingham  335
Sir George Lisle  383
Sir Godfrey de Crancumb  144
Sir Harry Vane  367
Sir Hon Segrave  170
Sir James Tyrrel  266
Sir John Coventry  412
Sir John Eliot  362
Sir John Falstaff  234
Sir John Greenville  401
Sir John Menteith  172
Sir Matthew Cradoc  277
Sir Philip Herbert  353
Sir Philip Sidney  334
Sir Richard Willis  397
Sir Thomas Blount  185
Sir Thomas Darnel  360
Sir Thomas Fairfax  376
Sir Thomas Howard  339
Sir Thomas Knevett  350
Sir Thomas More  286
Sir Thomas Overbury  353 

Sir Thomas Pope  314
Sir Thomas Wentworth  362
Sir Thomas Wyat  311
Sir Walter Raleigh  339
Sir Walter Scott  324
Sir Walter Tyrrel  75
Sir William Cecil  320
Sir William Douglas  168
Skippon  373
Spenser  342
Stephen  91
Stephen Langton  132
Stigand  60
Strongbow  107
Stubbs  333
Suetonius  14, 15
Sweyn  46 

T 

Tancred  118
Tetzel  286
The Chevalier Saint George  435
The Confessor  48
The Invincible Armada  339
The Maid of Orleans  239
The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew  331
The Pretender  436
The Remonstrance  371
The Unready  38
Thomas a Becket  95
Thomas Cranmer  288
Thomas Cromwell  290


Charles Dickens
445 

Thomas Gournay  185
Thomas Percy  346
Thomas Winter  346
Thomas Wolsey  282
Thomond  107
Tillotson  420
Titus Oates  413
Towed the Proud  48 

U 

Ulster  107 

V 

Valentine  362
Vaudois  396
Venables  396
Vidomar  124
Vixcount Rochester  353
Von Paris  306
Vortigern  19, 20 

W 

Walter Earl  360
Walworth  205
Wat  202
West,  419
White Rose party  250
Wickliffe  200
William  83, 91
William Bedloe  414
William, called Rufus  64 

William, Duke of Normandy  51
William Fitz-Osbert  123
William Fitz-Robert  82
William Laud  363
William of Nassau, Prince of Orange  411
William Ogle  185
William Seymour  354
William Shakespeare  179
William Strode  372
William the Conqueror  60
William the First  60
William the Fourth  436
William Tracy  103
William Wallace  168
William Walworth  203









Home - About - Copyright - Contact - Links


www.ourfavouritebooks.com --- Your favourite books + my favourite books = Our Favourite Books