  HOW ENGLISHMEN LEARNED TO GOVERN THEMSELVES Heroes of the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages, like Ancient Times, are recalled by many interesting tales. Some of them, such as the stories of King Arthur and his Knights, the story of Roland, and the Song of the Niebelungs, are only tales and not history. Others tell us about great kings, Charlemagne and St. Louis of France, Frederick the Redbeard of Germany, or St. Stephen of Hungary. The hero-king for England was Alfred, who fought bravely against the pirate Danes and finally conquered and persuaded many of them to live quietly under his rule. King Alfred began to reign in 871. King Alfred was a skilful warrior, but he was also an excellent ruler in time of peace. When he was a boy he had shown his love of books. His mother once offered a beautifully written Saxon poem as a prize to the one of her sons who should be the first to learn it. Alfred could not yet read, but he had a ready memory, and with the aid of his teacher he learned the poem and won the prize. At that time almost all books were written in Latin and few even of the clergy could read. During the long wars with the Danes many books had been destroyed. Men found battle-axes more useful than books and ceased to care about reading. King Alfred feared that the Saxons would soon become ignorant barbarians, and sent for priests and monks who were learned and were able to teach his clergy. He sent even into France for such men. Early English Books. As it would be easier for people to learn to read books written in the language they spoke rather than in Latin, Alfred helped to translate several famous Latin books into English. Among these was a history written by a Roman before the Germans had overthrown the Roman Empire. This history told about the world of the Greeks and the Romans.
Alfred commanded some of his clergy to keep a record from year to year of things which happened in his kingdom. This record was called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and was the first history written in the English language. It was carefully kept for many years after Alfred's death. Another wise thing Alfred did was to collect the laws or "dooms" of the earlier kings, so that every one might know what the law required. The Beginning of a Navy. Alfred has been called the creator of the English navy. He thought that the only way to keep the Danes from plundering his shores was to fight them on the sea. He built several ships which were bigger than the Danish ships, but they were not always victorious, for they could not follow the Danish ships into shallow water. Nevertheless, the Danes could not plunder England as easily as before. The New Army. Alfred organized his fighting men in a better way. In times past the men had been called upon to fight only when the Danes were near, but now he kept a third of his men ready all the time, and another third he placed in forts, so the rest were able to work in the fields in safety. There are good reasons why Englishmen regard Alfred as a hero. William the Conqueror began to rule England in 1066. About a hundred and fifty years after Alfred died, William, duke of Normandy, crossed the Channel with an army, killed the English king in battle, and seized the throne. This was not altogether a misfortune to the English, for they came under the same ruler as the Normans and they shared in all that the men of the Continent were beginning to learn. For one thing, builders from the Continent taught the English to construct the great Norman churches or cathedrals which every traveler in England sees. Besides, William the Conqueror was a strong king and put down the chiefs or lords that were inclined to oppress the common people. Henry II. Henry II, one of William's successors, ruled over most of western France as well as over England. His officers and nobles were tired out by his endless traveling in his lands, which extended from the banks of the river Loire in France to the borders of Scotland. All Englishmen and Americans should remember him with gratitude because of the improvements he made in the ways of discovering the truth when disputes arose and were carried into courts.
Ordeals and Trials by Battle. Before Henry's reign it was the custom when a man was accused of a crime to find out the truth by arranging a wager of battle or what were called ordeals. The two most common ordeals were the ordeal by fire and the ordeal by water. In the ordeal by fire an iron was heated red-hot, and after it had been blessed by a priest it was put into the hand of the man the truth of whose word was being tested, and he had to carry it a certain number of feet. His hand was then bound up and left for three days. If at the end of that time the wound was healing, men believed he was innocent, for they thought God would keep an innocent man from being punished. In the ordeal by water the man was tied and thrown into water which had been blessed by the priest. If he was guilty, the people thought the water would not receive him. If he sank at once, he was pulled out and treated as if he had told the truth.
A wager of battle was a fight between the two men whose dispute was to be settled, or between a man and his accuser. Each was armed with a hammer or a small battle-axe, and the one who gave up lost his case. Trial by Jury. King Henry introduced a better way of finding out the truth. He called upon twelve men from a neighborhood to come before the judges, to promise solemnly to tell what they knew about a matter, and then to decide which person was in the right. They were supposed to know about the facts, and they were allowed to talk the matter over with one another before they made a decision. Later these men from the neighborhood were divided into two groups, one to tell what they knew and the other to listen and decide what was true. Those who told what they knew were called the witnesses, and those who listened and decided were called jurors. The name jurors came from a Latin word meaning to take an oath. Richard the Lionhearted. King Henry had two sons, Richard and John. Richard was the boldest and most skilful fighter of his time. When the news was brought to England that Jerusalem had been captured by the Mohammedans, he led an army to Palestine to recapture it. He failed to take the city, but he became famous throughout the East as a fearless warrior and was ever afterwards called the "Lionhearted." At his death his brother John became king. He was as cowardly and wicked as Richard was brave and generous. The Great Charter. The leaders of the people, the nobles and the clergy, soon grew tired of John's wickedness. In 1215 they raised an army and threatened to take the kingdom from John and crown another prince as king. John was soon ready to promise anything in order to obtain power once more, and the nobles and bishops met him at Runnymede on the river Thames, a few miles west of London, and compelled him to sign a list of promises. As the list contained sixty-three separate promises, it was called the Great Charter or Magna Charta. If John did not keep these promises, the lords and clergy agreed to make war on him, and he even said that this would be their duty. Promises of the Charter. Many of the articles of the Great Charter were important only to the men of King John's day, but others are as important to us as to them. In these the king promised that every one should be treated justly. He said he would not refuse to listen to the complaints of those who thought they were wronged. The king also promised that he would not decide in favor of a rich man just because the rich man might offer him money. He would put no one in prison who had not been tried and found guilty by a jury. By another important promise the king said he would not levy new taxes without the consent of the chief men of the kingdom. This opened the way for the people to have something to say about how their money should be spent. This right is a very important part of what we call self-government.
Promises of the Great Charter renewed. In after times whenever the English thought a king was doing them a wrong they reminded him of the promises made by King John in the Great Charter and demanded that the promises be solemnly renewed. In 1265 a great noble named Simon de Montfort asked many towns to send a number of their chief men to meet with the nobles and clergy to talk over the conduct of the king. Others, even kings, soon followed Simon's example by asking the townsmen for advice about matters of government. After a while this became the custom. Occasionally the king wanted the advice of the clergy, the nobles, and the townsmen at the same time and called them together. The meeting was called a parliament, that is, an assembly in which talking or discussion goes on.
The English Parliament. Only the most important nobles or lords could go in person to the assemblies, otherwise the meeting would be too large to do any business. The other lords chose certain ones from their number to go in place of all the rest. We call such men representatives. In this way, besides the men who represented the towns, there were present these nobles who represented the landowners of the counties. Gradually these nobles and the townsmen formed an assembly of their own, while the greater lords, the bishops, and abbots sat together in another assembly. The two assemblies were called the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and the two made up the parliament. An Assembly of Representatives. This parliament was a great invention. The English had discovered a better way of governing themselves than either the Greeks or the Romans. We call it the representative system. If a Roman citizen who lived far from Rome wanted to take part in the elections, he was obliged to leave his farm or his business and travel to Rome, for only the citizens who were at Rome could have a share in making the laws. It never occurred to the Romans that the citizens outside of Rome could send some of their number as representatives to Rome. The formation of the English parliament was an important step towards what we mean in America by "government of the people, for the people, and by the people."
|
|
