The reason that Chesterton has written a history of England is that he says no member of the public has ever done so before. This is a thing to be supremely thankful for if true; but it is entirely untrue, for the very obvious fact that history has never been written by any one who is not a member of the public. Every historian is a member of the public. Let him imagine he is not, let him carry this imagination out to a logical conclusion, and he will have a good chance of landing in a prison for failing to pay the king's taxes.

The very best people to write histories are historians, but they will never deal with history in a popular way. This Chesterton laments. He wants a history that shall be about the things that never ordinarily get into history. If he is told about the charters of the barons, he wishes to hear of the charters of the carpenters. This, he thinks, would make history popular, that word which is always used to denote something rather slight and superficial. He exclaims that the people are ignored, whereas the historian really would not be one at all if he was guilty of this charge.

The fact of the matter is, that the whole of the history of England has been so misunderstood that Chesterton has come to the rescue and has told us what really happened—in fact, all we learnt at school was waste of time; poor Green really wrote an anti-history of this country. The Romans are not of the remote past; the whole of present-day England is the remains of Rome, which is merely to say that our civilization comes down from Rome, a statement that quite able historians have hinted at now and again. No one for an instant is so foolish as to think that the chief remains of the Romans consist of the few broken-up baths and villas up and down the country, when a splendid high road stares them in the face.

Chesterton pays enormous attention to the Middle Ages. They have, he thinks, been rather badly dealt with by historians. Too much attention is, he contends, paid to the time of the Stuarts onwards. Chesterton asks us to contemplate history as we should if we had never learnt it at school. It is, of course, true that we do not learn the essentials of our country in our schooldays. It is of no real importance that William conquered Harold in 1066, but it is of vast importance to know how he behaved as a conqueror, a fact seldom taught. But if we forgot all the history we ever knew, we should not be able to appreciate Chesterton's history, which aims to reconstruct all that we had believed while pouring over Green in the fifth form.

Chesterton covers so much ground in this book, his treatment is so intricate, his method so full of various peculiar contentions, that the only possible method in a chapter is to take some of the more important points he touches upon and try and discover what he feels about them. It will be well to realize at once that however he may differ from recognized historians, his history loses all its meaning unless the standard historians are known fairly well.

There are probably two tremendous turning points in history—the one occurred at the moment that the fatal arrow entered the eye of Harold at Senlac, the other when Henry VIII set fire to the ecclesiastical faggots that ended in the Reformation. That period which lay between them may roughly be called the Middle Ages, which part of history Chesterton thinks has been badly treated. Whether this is so is a question that opens up a broader one: Has the history of England ever received the attention it deserves? Has right proportion been given to the most important events? Should history be made popular in the modern sense of this much misinterpreted word? These are questions to which no adequate answer can be given in the space of a chapter, nor is it within the scope of this book.

Chesterton is very annoyed to find that to possess Norman blood is, to many people, a hall mark of aristocracy: 'This fashionable fancy misses what is best in the Normans.' What he contends, and I think rightly, is that William was a conqueror until he had conquered. Then England passed out of his hands. He had wished it to be an autocracy; instead, it developed into a monarchy—'William the Conqueror became William the Conquered.' This is a line that the ordinary historians do not appear to take, though I fancy they imply it when they say that feudalism didn't exist in the time of the Georges.

Perhaps one of the most picturesque parts of history is that time when men looked across the sea and saw in the far distance a huge cross that seemed to beckon as the voices later called to Joan of Arc. The Crusades were a time when wars were holy because they were waged for a holy thing. Six hundred years, so Chesterton tells us, had elapsed since Christianity had arisen and covered the world like a dust-storm, when there arose 'a copy and a contrary: the creed of the Moslems'; in a sense Islam was 'like a Christian heresy.' Historians, so he thinks, have not understood the Crusades. They have taken them to be aristocratic expeditions with a Cross as the prey instead of a deer, whereas really they were 'unanimous risings.' 'The Holy Land was much nearer to a plain man's house than Westminster, and immeasurably nearer than Runnymede.' But I am not sure that Chesterton has scored over the orthodox historians who made a good deal out of the fact that Crusade had a close affinity to Crux, which word meant a cross that was not necessarily bound up with Calvary.

In dealing with the Middle Ages, he propounds the proposition that the best way to understand history is to read it backwards—that is, if we are to understand the Magna Charta we must be on speaking terms with Mary. 'If we really want to know what was strongest in the twelfth century, it is no bad way to ask what remained of it in the fourteenth.' This is a very excellent method, as it demonstrates what were the historical events and what were the mere local and temporary.

Becket was one of those queer people of history who was half a priest and half a statesman, and he had to deal with a king who was half a king and half a tyrant. Every schoolboy knows about Becket, and delights to read of the wild ride to Canterbury, which began with the spilling of Becket's brains and ended with the spilling of the King's blood by his tomb.

For Chesterton, Becket 'may have been too idealistic: he wished to protect the Church as a sort of earthly paradise, of which the rules might seem to him as paternal as those of heaven, but might well seem to the king as capricious as those of Fairyland.' The tremendously suggestive thing of the whole story of Becket is that Henry II submitted to being thrashed at Becket's tomb. It was like 'Cecil Rhodes submitting to be horsewhipped by a Boer as an apology for some indefensible death incidental to the Jameson Raid.' Undoubtedly Chesterton has got at the kernel of the story that made an Archbishop a saint (a rare occurrence) and an English king a sportsman (a rarer occurrence).

But clever as Chesterton is in regard to this particular story, the ordinary schoolboy would do better to stick to the common tale of Becket that came on the hasty words spoken by a hasty king; he will better understand the significance of the whipping of the king when he can read history back to the days when kings could not only not be whipped, but could whip whom they chose, and put men's eyes out when they used them to shoot at the king's deer.

A great part of the Middle Ages is concerned with the French wars, those wars that staggered the English exchequer and made the English kings leaders of armies. The reason of these wars was, Chesterton tells us, the fact that Christianity was a very local thing. It was more—it was a national thing that was bound up with England. 'Men began to feel that foreigners did not eat or drink like Christians,' which is to say that the Englishman began his contempt for the foreigner which has resulted in nearly all our wars, and has made the Englishman abroad a supercilious creature, and has made the English schoolboy put his tongue out at the French master.

The French wars were something more than a national hatred, they were a national dislike of foreigners, a dislike that had its probable origin in the Tower of Babel. But this was not the only reason of the incessant French wars—there was a question of policy. France began to be a nation, and 'a true patriotic applause hailed the later victory of Agincourt.' France had become something more than a nation; it had become a religion, because it had as its figure a simple girl who believed in voices, and took her part in the struggles of a defeated country.

Chesterton's chapter is a fine understanding of the French wars; it is an amplification of the mere skeletons of ordinary history, and as such is very valuable.

From being a reasonable national dislike, the French wars 'gradually grew to be almost as much a scourge to England as they were to France.' 'England was despoiled by her own victories; luxury and poverty increased at the extremes of society, and the balance of the better mediÆvalism was lost.' It resulted in the revolt connected with Wat Tyler, a revolt that 'was not only dramatic but was domestic'; it ended in the death of Tyler and the intervention of the boy king, who, in swaying the multitude that was a dangerous mob, 'gives us a fleeting and final glimpse of the crowned sacramental man of the Middle Ages.'

From this period Chesterton tells us that a rather strange thing happened—men began to fight for the crown. The Wars of the Roses was the result. The English rose was then the symbol of party, as ever since it has been the symbol of an English summer.

Chesterton makes no attempt to follow the difficult path that the Wars of the Roses travel, from the military standpoint, nor the adventures that followed the king-maker Warwick and the warlike widow of Henry V, one Margaret. There was, so he says, a moral difference in this conflict that took the name of a Rose to fight for a Crown. 'Lancaster stood, as a whole, for the new notion of a king propped by parliaments and powerful bishops; and York, on the whole, for the remains of the older idea of a king who permits nothing to come between him and his people. This is everything of permanent political interest that could be traced by counting all the bows of Barnet or all the lances of Tewkesbury.'

The time when the Middle Ages was drawing near to the Tudors is interesting, because of the riddle of Richard III. Chesterton's description of this strange king is full of fascination if also it is full of truth: 'He was not an ogre shedding rivers of blood, yet a crimson cloud cannot be dispelled from his memory. Whether or not he was a good man, he was apparently a good king, and even a popular one. He anticipated the Renaissance in an abnormal enthusiasm for art and music, and he seems to have held to the old paths of religion and charity.'

He was indeed, as Chesterton says, the last of the mediÆval kings, and he died hard; his blood flowed over an England that did not know what loyalty was, a country that had nobles who would fly from their king on the first sign of danger; the Last Post of the old kings was sounding, and Richard answered its challenge. His description of this remarkable king is perhaps the best thing in the book, and is certainly far better than the ordinary history that attempts to give the character of a king in a couple of lines.

With the end of the mediÆval kings we pass to a period that is none other than the Renaissance, one of the most important epochs in English history, 'that great dawn of a more rational daylight which for so many made mediÆvalism seem a mere darkness.'

The character of Henry VIII is one that is a veritable battleground. He is attacked because he found a variety of wives pleasing; he is condoned as a young man who promised to be a great king. There are, as Chesterton points out, two great things that intruded into his reign: the one was the difficulty of his marriages, the other was the question of the monasteries. If Henry was a Bluebeard, he was such because his wives were not a fortunate selection. 'He was almost as unlucky in his wives as they were in their husband.' But the one thing that Chesterton feels broke Henry's honour was the question of his divorce. In doing this he mistook the friendship of the Pope for something that would make him go against the position of the Church. 'Henry sought to lean upon the cushions of Leo and found he had struck his arm upon the rock of Peter.' The result was that Henry finished with the Papacy in the pious hope that it had done with him; Henry became head of the Church that was national, and soon Wolsey fell, to die in a monastery at Leicester.

But this terrible king 'struck down the noblest of the Humanists, Thomas More, who died the death of a saint, gloriously jesting.' The question of the monasteries is one that is solved by the simple statement that the King wanted money and the monasteries supplied it. Is there any justification for the crimes of Henry? For Chesterton 'it is unpractical to discuss whether Froude finds any justification for Henry's crimes in the desire to create a strong national monarchy. For whether or not it was desired, it was not created.'

Chesterton in an original way has given a very clear account of the difficulties of the reign of Henry VIII, a reign that had perhaps more influence on English history than any other, a reign that showed what the licence of an English monarchy could do and, what is of more importance, what it could not, a reign that showed that the fall of a great man could be so precipitate that the significance of it could not be felt at the time, a reign that showed that the Pope was something more than the friend of the English throne—he was in matters of Church discipline its checkmate. This was the time that England trembled at the devilry of a king and rejoiced at the sun of a new learning that was slowly dispelling the fog of the Dark Ages.

It is usually assumed that Mary was a bad woman because she burned people who were so unwise as not to be at least officially Catholics. Historians have applied the word 'bloody' to her, whereas the better word would be fanatic. 'Her enemies were wrong about her character,' says Chesterton. 'She was in a limited sense a good woman.' If Chesterton means she was a good Catholic he is right, if the burning of heretics is a good thing for a Christian Church. But the fortunate part of the whole affair was that not even burning could restore the power of the Papacy in England in Mary's time any more than the arrogance of the Roman Catholics to-day can restore the Pope to London and unfrock the Archbishop of Canterbury. Mary was a sincere fanatic, and like most fanatics was an extremely ignorant woman; consequently she could not see that the fire that burnt Cranmer also burnt the last hope of England bowing to the Pope of Rome. I cannot feel that Chesterton has in the least vindicated the character of Mary.

Historians are apt to think that the days of Queen Elizabeth were those in which England first realized that she was great. On the other hand, Chesterton is convinced that it is in this period that 'she first realized that she was small.' The business of the Armada was to her what Bannockburn was to the Scots, or Majuba to the Boers—a victory that astonished the victors. The fact of the matter was that Spain realized after the battle that the victory does not always go to the big battalions, which the present Kaiser is no doubt writing in his 'Imperial' copybook to-day.

The 'magnificance of the Elizabethan times has traces in mediÆval times and far fewer traces in modern times.' 'Her critics indeed might reasonably say that in replacing the Virgin Mary by the Virgin Queen, the English reformers merely exchanged a true virgin for a false one.' If Elizabeth was crafty it was because it was good she should be so. If she had not been so, the history of England might have found Philip of Spain on the English throne and Mary Queen of Scots a worse menace in England, a menace that by the skill of Elizabeth developed into a headless corpse. Had Elizabeth had a different historical background, she might have been a different Queen; but, as it was, she dealt with it as only a genius could who had followed a maniacal Queen who failed in everything she did.

From the times of Elizabeth, Chesterton moves on to the age of the Puritans, those rather dull people who have always been the byword for those who are more popularly known as Prigs. 'The Puritans were primarily enthusiastic for what they thought was pure religion. Their great and fundamental idea was that the mind of man can alone directly deal with the mind of God. Consequently they were anti-sacramental.' Not only in ecclesiastical matters, they were in doctrine Calvinistic—that is, they believed 'that men were created to be lost and saved,' a theological position that makes God a Person who wastes a lot of valuable time. It was to a large extent this belief in Calvin that made the Puritans dislike a sacramental principle; it was, of course, quite unnecessary to have one. If a man was either lost or saved, the need of any human meditators was not felt.

It is, of course, true, as Chesterton says, that 'England was never Puritan.' Neither was it ever entirely Catholic, neither has it ever been entirely Protestant. It is one of the things to be thankful for that men have ever held different religious opinions. It would be the greatest mistake if ever the Church was so misguided as to listen to the cries that come for unity, a unity that could only be founded on the subordinating of the opinions of the many to the opinion of the few.

I have said at the beginning of this chapter that Chesterton has said that the Middle Ages have not had the historical attention they deserve. Whether this is so is a question that cannot be answered here. What we have to say is whether this book is a valuable one. There are, of course, many opinions expressed in it that do not take the usual historical standpoint, or they have a more original way of expression. I cannot feel that this book is the best of Chesterton's works, not because it has not some very sound opinions expressed in it, but rather because to understand its import the ordinary histories must be well known. It is perhaps a matter of an unsuitable title, 'A Short History of England.' It would have been better to have called it a 'History of the Histories of England, and the Mistakes therein.' It would be no use as an historical book in the school sense, but as an original book on some of the turning-points of English history it is valuable. Mr. Chesterton tells us to read history backwards to understand it. This we may well do if we have read it as fully forward as he evidently has.