Churchill’s sense of his nation’s history meant that he wanted A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (HESP), to bring a sense of origins to the people of the British Empire and Dominions and especially, to the one that got away, the United States. … In the latter example, Churchill believed HESP would stress the common heritage of Great Britain and the United States of America as a means of enhancing the friendship of the two nations.

I have inserted considerable numbers of footnotes, expanding and explaining Churchill’s text, whereas he felt little need for such appendage.

I had to remember why Churchill wrote this work and I was ever mindful that A History of the English-Speaking Peoples was a reflection of what Englishmen in the hey-day of their empire thought and felt about their country’s past.

The Statue of Victory fell face foremost, as if flying from the enemy. … The sea turned red.

The town was burned to ashes. … Everyone, Roman or Romanised, was massacred and everything destroyed.

It seems certain that the army, the civil services, the townsfolk, the well-to-do, and their dependants amounted to three or four hundred thousand. … In more than two centuries of peace and order the inhabitants remained at about the same numbers as in the days of Cassivellaunus.

Did the invaders exterminate the native population, or did they superimpose themselves upon them and become to some extent blended with them? … Thus serious writers contend that the Anglo-Saxon conquest was for the bulk of the British community mainly a change of masters.

The conflict ebbed and flowed. British victories were gained, which once for a whole generation brought the conquest to a halt; and in the end the mountains which even the Romans had been unable to subdue proved an invincible citadel of the British race.

Much has been written about the enervating character of Roman rule in Britain, and how people were rendered lax and ineffectual by the modest comforts which it supplied. … But justice to this vanished epoch demands recognition of the fact that the Britons fought those who are now called the English for nearly two hundred and fifty years.

Henceforth he gave his own orders in Kent. He captured its mint and inscribed his name upon the coins issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This expression rex Anglorum is rightly signalised by historians as a milestone in our history. … Here was an English king who ruled over the greatest part of the Island, whose trade was important, and whose daughters were fit consorts for the sons of Charles the Great.

In studying Offa we are like geologists who instead of finding a fossil find only the hollow shape in which a creature of unusual strength and size undoubtedly resided.

The causes which led to this racial ebullition were the spontaneous growth of their strength and population, the thirst for adventure, and the complications of dynastic quarrels.

Its picture rises before us vivid and bright: the finely carved, dragon-shaped prow; the high, curving stern; the long row of shields, black and yellow alternately, ranged along the sides; the gleam of steel, the scent of murder.

In 793, on a January morning, the wealthy monastic settlement of Lindisfarne (or Holy Island), off the Northumbrian coast was suddenly attacked by a powerful fleet from Denmark.

To an undue subservience to the Church the English at this time added military mismanagement. … Now the English were confronted with a different type of enemy. The Danes and Norsemen had not only the advantages of surprise which sea-power so long imparted, but they showed both mobility and skill on land.

But Alfred had had longer ends in view. … He wished instead to divide the land with them, and that the two races, in spite of fearful injuries given and received, should dwell together in amity.

Another and happy, if incidental, result was to promote learning and the production of splendid illuminated manuscript, which were much in demand in contemporary Europe. … Many of these, designed for the religious instruction of the laity, were written in English.

From whatever point of view we regard it, the tenth century is a decisive step forward in the destinies of England. … Despite the catastrophic decline of the monarchy which followed the death of Edgar, this organisation and English culture were so firmly rooted as to survive two foreign conquests in less than a century.

Finally, with this military and political revival marched a great re-birth of monastic life and learning and the beginning of our native English literature. … The movement was slow and English in origin, but advanced with great strides from the middle of the century as it came in contact with the religious revival on the Continent.

In the brilliant and peaceful reign of Edgar all this long building had reached its culmination. … The reconquest of England was accomplished step by step by a conscious administrative reconstruction which has governed the development of English institutions from that day to this.

Harold was driven by the winds on to the French coast. … A friendship sprang up between William and Harold. … But the Duke looked forward to his future succession to the English crown.

Though the Battle of Stamford Bridge has been overshadowed by Hastings it has a claim to be regarded as one of the decisive contests of English history. … Never again was a Scandinavian army able seriously to threaten the power of an English king or the unity of the realm.

But even in Wessex the idea still persisted that the tie of lord and man was primarily personal, so that a free man could go from one lord to another and transfer his land with him. … Thus the landed pyramid rose up tier by tier to the King, until every acre in the country could be registered as held of somebody by some form of service.

In the Norman settlement lay the germ of a constitutional Opposition, with the effect if not the design of controlling the Government, not breaking it up.

It was therefore in the business of gathering and administering the revenue that this novel feature first became apparent. … The King in feudal theory was only the greatest of the landowners in the State. … Henry’s officials created a special organ to deal with the sheriffs and the business the sheriffs transacted.

Eleanor did not waste words in coming to a decision. … But what staggered the French Court and opened the eyes of its prayerful King was the sudden marriage of Eleanor to Henry two months later. … Thus half of France passed out of royal control into the hands of Henry.

From that moment all his gifts and impulses ran in another channel. … Something like the transformation which carried Henry V from a rollicking prince to the august hero-King overnight was now witnessed in Becket. … He now championed the Church against the Crown in every aspect of their innumerable interleaving functions.

The policy was not without peril. … His plan was to stretch old principles to take on new meaning. … Cautiously and quietly Henry began to claim that the King’s Peace extended over all England, and that no matter where it was broken offenders should be tried in the King’s courts.

A bait was needed with which to draw litigants to the royal courts; the King must offer them better justice than they could have at the hands of their lords. … Henry accordingly threw open to litigants in the royal courts a new procedure for them – trial by jury.

It is a maxim of English law that legal memory begins with the accession of Richard I in 1189.

Hubert Walter was now Archbishop of Canterbury, and Richard’s Justiciar. … With determination, knowledge, and deft touch he developed the system of strong centralised government devised by Henry II.

The system of administration devised by Henry II – the Civil Service as we may call it – had stood the test, and, undisturbed by royal interventions, consolidated itself to the general convenience and advantage. … It was proved that the King, to whom all allegiance had been rendered, was no longer the sole guarantee for law and order.

After forty years’ experience of the administrative system established by Henry II the men who now confronted John had advanced beyond the magnates of King Stephen’s time. They had learned to think intelligently and constructively. In place of the King’s arbitrary despotism they proposed, not the withering anarchy of feudal separatism, but a system of checks and balances which would accord the monarchy its necessary strength, but would prevent its perversion by a tyrant or a fool.

If we set aside the rhetorical praise which has been so freely lavished upon the Charter and study the document itself we may find it rather surprising reading. It is in a form resembling a legal contract, and consists of sixty-one clauses, each dealing either with the details of feudal administration and custom or with elaborate provisions for securing the enforcement of the promises which it embodies.

Throughout the document it is implied that here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it.

Now for the first time the King himself is bound by the law. The root principle was destined to survive across the generations and rise paramount long after the feudal background of 1215 had faded in the past. The Charter became in the process of time an enduring witness that the power of the Crown was not absolute.

Stephen Langton, the great Archbishop, was the indomitable, unwearying builder of the rights of Englishmen against royal, baronial, and even ecclesiastical pretensions. … Here is a faithful servant of the Crown, but at the same time a champion of the charter, and all it meant, and still means.

De Montfort had lighted a fire never to be quenched in English history. … Not less important was his influence upon his nephew, Edward, the new King, who was to draw deeply upon the ideas of the man he had slain.

By this crisis and its manner of resolution two principles had been established from which important consequences flowed. One was that the King had no right to despatch the feudal host wherever he might choose. This limitation sounded the death-knell of the feudal levy, and inexorably led in the following century to the rise of indentured armies serving for pay. The second point of principle now recognised was that the King could not plead “urgent necessity” as reason for imposing taxation without consent.

At the same time a counter-revolution in the balance of warfare was afoot. The mailed cavalry which from the fifth century had eclipsed the ordered ranks of the legion were wearing out their long day. A new type of infantry raised from the common people began to prove its dominating quality. This infantry operated, not by club or sword or spear, or even by hand-flung missiles, but by an archery which, after a long development, concealed from Europe, was very soon to make an astonishing entrance upon the military scene and gain a dramatic ascendancy upon the battlefields of the Continent.

Since the days of Henry II the English monarchy had intermittently claimed an overlordship of Scotland, based on the still earlier acknowledgment of Saxon overlordship by Scottish kings. King Edward, whose legal abilities were renowned, had already arbitrated in the Scottish succession. Since the alternatives were the splitting of Scotland into rival kingships or a civil war to decide the matter, the Scots were induced to seek Edward’s judgment; and he, pursuing all the time a path of strict legality, consented to the task only upon the prior condition of the reaffirmation of his overlordship, betokened by the surrender of certain Scottish castles.

It has often been said that Joan of Arc first raised the standard of nationalism in the Western world. But over a century before she appeared an outlaw knight, William Wallace, arising from the recesses of South-West Scotland which had been his refuge, embodied, commanded, and led to victory the Scottish nation.

The end was a holocaust. In the furious rage which in those days led all who swayed the Government of England to a bloody fate the Despensers were seized and hanged. … His screams as his bowels were burnt out by red-hot irons passed into his body were heard outside the prison walls, and awoke grim echoes which were long unstilled.

The land was divided in race, in speech, and in culture. … The rift between Highlands and Lowlands was more than a geographical distinction.

In the fifteenth century three Scottish universities were founded, St Andrew’s, Glasgow, and Aberdeen – one more than England had until the nineteenth century.

Meanwhile a change of spirit had overtaken many of the Anglo-Norman Irish barons. … These great feudatories were constantly tempted by the independent rôle of the Gaelic clan chief that was theirs for the taking.

In 1336 Edward was moved to retaliate in a decisive manner. He decreed an embargo on all exports of English wool, thus producing a furious crisis in the Netherlands.

But it was certain that they could not gain the coast without a battle. No other resolve was open than to fight at enormous odds. The King and the Prince of Wales, afterwards famous as the Black Prince, received all the offices of religion, and Edward prayed that the impending battle should at least leave him unstripped of honour.

The clergy claimed exemption from taxation, though not always successfully, and they could often flaunt their wealth in the teeth of poverty and economic dislocation. … The powers of Church and State were soon to realise their danger.

“This honourable realm of England, the most abundant angle of riches in the whole world”, said Archbishop Arundel, “has been reduced to destruction by the counsels of children and widows. Now God has sent a man, knowing and discreet, for governance, who by the aid of God will be governed and counselled by the wise and ancient of his realm.”

During this time therefore Parliamentary power over finance was greatly strengthened. … Not only did the Estates supply the money by voting the taxes, but they began to follow its expenditure, and to require and to receive accounts from the high officers of the State.

But the clash came over foreign policy. In this sad generation England, lately the master, had become the sport of neighbouring states. Her titled refugees, from one faction or the other, beset the Courts of Western Europe. The Duke of Burgundy had been shocked to learn one morning that a Duke of Exeter and several other high English nobles were actually begging their bread at the tail of one of his progresses. Ashamed to see such a slight upon his class, he provided them with modest dwellings and allowances. Similar charities were performed by Louis XI to the unhappy descendants of the victors of Agincourt. Margaret with her retinue of shadows was welcomed in her pauper stateliness both in Burgundy and in France. At any moment either Power, now become formidable as England had waned, might support the exiled faction in good earnest and pay back the debts of fifty years before by an invasion of England. It was the policy of Warwick and his connection to make friends with France, by far the stronger Power, and thus obtain effectual security. In this mood they hoped to make a French match for the King’s sister. Edward took the opposite line. With the instinct which afterwards ruled our Island for so many centuries, he sought to base English policy upon the second strongest state in Western Europe. He could no doubt argue that to be the ally of France was to be in the power of France, but to be joined with Burgundy was to have the means of correcting if not of controlling French action. Amid his revelries and other hunting he nursed a conqueror’s spirit. Never should England become a vassal state; instead of being divided by her neighbours she would herself, by dividing them, maintain a balance. At this time these politics were new; but the stresses they wrought in the small but vehement world of English government can be readily understood nowadays.

In 1475 invaded France, but advanced only as far as Picquigny, near Amiens. There he parleyed. Louis XI shared his outlook. He too saw that kings might grow strong and safe in peace, and would be the prey and tool of their subjects in war. The two kings sought peace and found it. Louis XI offered Edward IV a lump sum of 75,000 crowns, and a yearly tribute of 50,000. This was almost enough to balance the royal budget and make him independent of Parliament. Edward closed on the bargain, and signed the Treaty of Picquigny. But Charles the Bold, his ally of Burgundy, took it amiss. At Péronne, in full assembly, with all the English captains gathered, he declared that he had been shamefully betrayed by his ally. A most painful impression was created; but the King put up with it. He went back home and drew for seven successive years this substantial payment for not harrying France, and at the same time he pocketed most of the moneys which Parliament had voted for harrying her.

Richard asked to be excused for a while; when he returned between ten and eleven his whole manner was changed. He frowned and glared upon the Council, and at the same time clusters of armed men gathered at the door. “What punishment do they deserve,” demanded the Protector, “who conspire against the life of one so nearly related to the King as myself, and entrusted with the government of the realm?” There was general consternation. Hastings said at length that they deserved the punishment of traitors. “That sorceress my brother’s wife,” cried Richard, “and others with her see how they have wasted my body with sorcery and witchcraft.” So saying, he is supposed to have bared his arm and showed it to the Council, shrunk and withered as legend says it was. In furious terms he next referred to Jane Shore, with whom Hastings had formed an intimacy on the late King’s death. Hastings, taken aback, replied, “Certainly if they have done so heinously they are worthy of a heinous punishment.” “What?” cried Crookback. “Dost thou serve me with ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’? I tell thee they have done it, and that I will make good upon thy body, traitor!” He struck the Council table with his fist, and at this signal the armed men ran in, crying “Treason!”, and Hastings, Bishop Morton, and the Archbishop of York with some others were seized.

Yet from this very moment there began that marked distrust and hostility of all classes towards King Richard III which all his arts and competence could not allay. It is contended by the defenders of King Richard that the Tudor version of these events has prevailed. But the English people who lived at the time and learned of the events day by day formed their convictions two years before the Tudors gained power, or were indeed a prominent factor. Richard III held the authority of government. He told his own story with what facilities were available and he was spontaneously and almost universally disbelieved. Indeed, no fact stands forth more unchallengeable than that the overwhelming majority of the nation was convinced that Richard had used his power as Protector to usurp the crown and that the princes had disappeared in the Tower.

So we come to the principal crime ever afterwards associated with Richard’s name. His interest is plain. His character was ruthless. It is certain that the helpless children in the Tower were not seen again after the month of July 1483. Yet we are invited by some to believe that they languished in captivity, unnoticed and unrecorded, for another two years, only to be done to death by Henry Tudor. According to Sir Thomas More’s story, Richard resolved in July to extirpate the menace to his peace and sovereignty presented by the princes. He sent a special messenger, by name John Green, to Brackenbury, the Constable of the Tower, with orders to make an end of them. Brackenbury refused to obey. “Whom should a man trust,” exclaimed the King when Green returned with this report, when those who I thought would most surely serve at my command will do nothing for me?” A page who heard this outburst reminded his master that Sir James Tyrell, one of Richard’s former companions in arms, was capable of anything. Tyrell was sent to London with a warrant authorising Brackenbury to deliver to him for one night all the keys of the Tower. Tyrell discharged his fell commission with all dispatch. One of the four gaolers in of the princes, Forest by name, was found willing, and with Dighton, Tyrell’s own groom, did the deed. When the princes were asleep these two assassins pressed the pillows hard down upon their faces till they were suffocated, and their bodies were immured in some secret corner of the Tower. There is some proof that all three murderers were suitably rewarded by the King. But it was not until Henry VII’s reign, when Tyrell was lying in the Tower under sentence of death for quite a separate crime, that he is alleged to have made a confession upon which, with much other circumstantial evidence, the story as we know it rests.

It is certain that the helpless children in the Tower were not seen again after the month of July 1483. Yet we are invited by some to believe that they languished in captivity, unnoticed and unrecorded, for another two years, only to be done to death by Henry Tudor. According to Sir Thomas More’s story, Richard resolved in July to extirpate the menace to his peace and sovereignty presented by the princes. He sent a special messenger, by name John Green, to Brackenbury, the Constable of the Tower, with orders to make an end of them. Brackenbury refused to obey. “Whom should a man trust,” exclaimed the King when Green returned with this report, when those who I thought would most surely serve at my command will do nothing for me?” A page who heard this outburst reminded his master that Sir James Tyrell, one of Richard’s former companions in arms, was capable of anything.

His skill and wisdom in transmuting medieval institutions into the organs of modern rule have not been questioned.

Henry in his maturity was a tall, red-headed man who preserved the vigour and energy of ancestors accustomed for centuries to the warfare of the Welsh marches. … His massive frame towered above the throng, and those about him felt in it a sense of concealed desperation, of latent force and passion. … Bursts of restless energy and ferocity were combined with extraordinary patience and diligence.

This was important: the man who was to carry through the ecclesiastical revolution had thus been accepted by the Pope and endowed with full authority. … This momentous Bill, the work of Thomas Cromwell, which abolished what still remained of Papal authority in England, passed through Parliament in due course, and became known as the Act of Appeals.

Nevertheless his were more solid achievements in both State and Church. … Before his day Government policy had for centuries been both made and implemented in the royal household.

In vain the Queen strove to join English interests to those of the Spanish state. … This national disgrace, this loss of the symbol of the power and glory of medieval England, bit deep into the hearts of the people and into the conscience of the Queen.

Most of the Puritans had at first been willing to conform to Elizabeth’s Church Settlement in the hope of transforming it from within, but they now strove to drive the Government into an aggressive Protestant foreign policy, and at the same time secure their own freedom of religious organisation. … Their aim and object was nothing less than the establishment of a theocratic despotism.

England had emerged from the Armada year as a first-class Power. … Her people awoke to a consciousness of their greatness, and the last years of Elizabeth’s reign saw a welling up of national energy and enthusiasm focusing upon the person of the Queen.

Throughout the reign the weight and authority of Parliament had been steadily growing. … If the Commons pushed their proposals to a division the whole basis of her constitutional authority would be under fire.

Thus ended the Tudor dynasty. … But these achievements carried no guarantee of their perpetuation.

James had had enough of the Kirk. He realised that Calvinism and monarchy would quarrel in the long run and that if men could decide for themselves about religion they could also decide for themselves on politics.

Their tactics were artful, and yet justified by their convictions and by the facts. They offered no fewer than five subsidies, amounting to £300,000, all to be paid within twelve months. Here was enough to carry on the war: but before they would confirm this in a Bill they demanded their price. The following four resolutions were passed unanimously: that no freeman ought to be restrained or imprisoned unless some lawful cause was expressed; that the writ of habeas corpus ought to be granted to every man imprisoned or restrained, even though it might be at the command of the King or of the Privy Council; that if no legal cause for imprisonment were shown the party ought to be set free or bailed; that it was the ancient and undoubted right of every freeman to have a full and absolute property in his goods and estates, and that no tax, loan, or benevolence ought to be levied by the King or his Ministers without common consent by Act of Parliament.

The refusal of the General Assembly of Scotland in November 1638 to dissolve upon the demand of the King’s commissioner has been compared to that of the French National Assembly in 1789, when for the first time they resisted the royal will. The facts and circumstances no doubt were different; but both events led by unbroken chains of causation to the same end, namely, the solemn beheading of the King.

The Triennial Bill providing for the summoning of Parliament at least once in three years, if necessary, in spite of the Crown, put a final end to the system of Personal Rule over which Charles had so far presided. … He accepted this on the same day as the Bill of Strafford’s Attainder. … The principles of the Petition of Right about personal liberty, particularly freedom from arbitrary arrest, were now finally established.

On June 14, 1645, the last trial of strength was made. … The action followed what had almost become the usual course, Rupert shattered the Parliamentary left, and though, as at Edgehill, his troopers were attracted by the Parliamentary baggage column, he returned to strike heavily at the central Roundhead infantry. … The royal foot, beset on all sides by overwhelming numbers, fought with devotion.

Having unsuccessfully summoned the garrison to surrender, he breached the ramparts with his cannon, and at the third assault, which he led himself, stormed the town. … The consequences of Cromwell’s rule in Ireland have distressed and at times distracted English politics down even to the present day.

Although a very passionate man when fully roused, he was frequently harassed by inner doubts and conflicts. … His doubts about political objectives became increasingly marked in his last years, and he grew more and more dependent on the advice and opinions of others.

Unlike Cromwell and Lambert, Monk decided to tame the Rump by diluting, not by dissolving it.

Above all, everyone now took it for granted that the Crown was the instrument of Parliament and the King the servant of his people.

Yet the fire extinguished the plague, and to later times it seems that the real calamity was not so much the destruction of the insanitary medieval city as the failure to carry through Wren’s plan for rebuilding it as a unity of quays and avenues centred on St Paul’s and the Royal Exchange.

Charles had merely to recognise Monmouth as his heir to free himself from every trouble and assure the future of his country. Nothing would induce the King to betray the succession. Sensualist, libertine, agnostic, dilettante, he had one loyalty – the royal blood, the legitimate succession. However painful it might be for himself and his realm, he conceived it his sacred duty to pass the crown to a brother whose virtues and whose vices alike rendered him of all others the man, as he knew well, least fitted to wear it.

That it ended bloodlessly was largely due to the statesman who has rendered the word “Trimmer” illustrious. George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, was the opponent alike of Popery and of France. He was one of those rare beings in whom cool moderation and width of judgment are combined with resolute action. Halifax, who had been so hot against Danby, broke the Exclusion Bill in the House of Lords. His task was rendered easier by the difficulty of advancing an alternative successor to the Crown. Of those who were against James some were for his eldest daughter, Mary, wife of the renowned Prince of Orange, in whose veins the royal blood of England also flowed. Shaftesbury had played with this idea, but in the end decided for the bastard Monmouth. He procured his admission to the Privy Council. He wove him into the texture of his party. The Whigs propagated the fiction that he was legitimate after all. But this complaisant solution, which Charles would never tolerate, did not appeal to an assembly every man of which owned lands, wealth, and power through the strictest interpretations of hereditary right. The Anglican Church refused to resist Popery by crowning bastardy. By sixty-three votes to thirty the Peers rejected the Exclusion Bill.

These executions were of lasting significance. Martyrs for religion there had been in plenty. Great Ministers of State and public men had fallen in the ruin of their policies. But here were the first martyrs for the sake of Party.

Despite the enthusiasm for his cause among the common people the unhappy Duke knew that he was doomed. … They were slaughtered where they stood, and a merciless pursuit, with wholesale executions, ended their forlorn endeavour. Monmouth escaped the field only to be hunted down a few days later.

The bishops, formerly detested, never popular, now became the idols of the nation. … As they stepped on board the barge for the Tower they were hailed by immense crowds with greetings in which reverence and political sympathy were combined.

Nevertheless this extraordinary man, who at this time played only a subordinate part, continued to hold all his offices and commands in the Army, and no doubt intended to use all his influence with the troops against James when the time came. … His sincerity of purpose and duplicity of method were equal.

The Battle of Cape La Hogue, with its consequential actions, effaced the memories of Beachy Head. … It broke decisively for the whole of the wars of William and Anne all French pretensions to naval supremacy.

The shadows of evening had fallen upon a battlefield of hedges, enclosures, villages, woods, and watercourses, in which the troops were locked in close, fierce fighting, when the Dutch, under the veteran Overkirk, at length traversed the Oudenarde bridges and swung round upon the heights to the north.

The battle was fought with extreme severity, and little quarter was asked or given.

The march was pressed with severity; only the briefest halts were allowed. … But a sense of excitement filled the troops.

Marlborough now sent his aides-de-camp and staff officers down the whole length of the marching columns with orders to explain to the officers and soldiers of every regiment what he was doing and what had happened, and to tell them that all now depended upon their marching qualities. … In the result Marlborough formed a front beyond the lines, which Villars, arriving piecemeal, was unable to attack.

When Queen Anne breathed her last at half-past seven on August 1 it was certain that there would be no Popery, no disputed succession, no French bayonets, no civil war.

The mania for speculation broke loose. … There was no limit to the credulity of the public. One promoter floated a company to manufacture an invention known as Puckle’s Machine Gun, “which was to discharge round and square cannon-balls and bullets and make a total revolution in the art of war”, the round missiles being intended for use against Christians and the square against the Turk. … This amiable swindler set up a shop in Cornhill to receive subscriptions. His office was besieged by eager investors, and after collecting £2,000 in cash he prudently absconded.

Pennsylvania received a steady flow of immigrants from Germany, soon to number over two hundred thousand souls. … Contact with primeval conditions created a new and daring outlook.

The personal activity of the sovereign after 1760 and the emergence of great issues of principle found the Whigs helpless and divided into rival clans. … He could supply the ideas, but first he had to convince the Whigs that a party could be formed and held together on a ground of common principles.

A terrible fate now overtook them. … The victors departed, having looted the Company’s possessions. “Little though he guessed it,” says Lord Elton, “the dealings of Surajah Dowlah with the British had ensured they would become the next rulers of India. For the tragedy of the Black Hole had dispelled their last wishful illusion that it might still be possible for them to remain in India as traders and no more. There was an outrage to avenge, and at last they were more than ready to fight.”

To call this process “Imperialist expansion” is nonsense, if by that is meant the deliberate acquisition of political power. … Of India it has been well said that the British Empire was acquired in a fit of absence of mind.

The most important issue was the future of the Western lands lying between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi. Shelburne was by no means hostile to the American desire for the West. The difficulty was the Canadian frontier. Franklin and others went so far as to demand the whole province of Canada, but Shelburne knew that to yield to this would bring down his Government. After months of negotiation a frontier was agreed upon which ran from the borders of Maine to the St Lawrence, up the river, and through the Great Lakes to their head. Everything south of this line, east of the Mississippi and north of the borders of Florida, became American territory.

Nevertheless the dream of founding a balanced political system on a landed society was becoming more and more unreal. In the last forty years of the eighteenth century exports and imports more than doubled in value and the population increased by over two millions. England was silently undergoing a revolution in industry and agriculture, which was to have more far-reaching effects than the political tumults of the times. Steam-engines provided a new source of power in factories and foundries, which rapidly multiplied. A network of canals was constructed which carried coal cheaply to new industry. New methods of smelting brought a tenfold increase in the output of iron. New roads, with a hard and durable surface, reached out over the country and bound it more closely together. An ever-expanding and assertive industrial community was coming into being.

Nelson’s victory of the Nile cut Napoleon’s communications with France and ended his hopes of vast Eastern conquests. He campaigned against the Turks in Syria, but was checked at Acre, where the defence was conducted by Sir Sydney Smith and a force of English seamen.

Napoleon, insatiable of power, and seeking always to break England and her intangible blockade, resolved to seize the Spanish crown. … As soon as the Spaniards realised what had happened and that their country was practically annexed to France they rose everywhere in spontaneous revolt.

By daring, skill, and luck he had ruptured Napoleon’s winter campaign and had drawn the Emperor and his finest army into the least important part of Spain, thus affording protection and time for movements to get on foot in all the rest of the Peninsula.

Ideals of liberty and nationalism, born in Paris, had been imparted to all the European peoples. … They were to play a notable part in changing the shape of government in every European country, Britain not excepted.

This made small appeal to Castlereagh. … He was opposed to any interference in the affairs of sovereign states, however small and whatever liberal complexions their Governments might assume.

Peel himself introduced the Bill for Catholic Emancipation into the House of Commons, and it was carried through Parliament in 1829 with comfortable majorities. … Revolution in Ireland was averted.

Many Whigs, too, who had expected a milder measure were at first dumbfounded by the breadth of Russell’s proposals. … They soon rallied to the Government when they saw the enthusiasm of the country, for the Whigs believed that Reform would forestall revolution. … The Tories, on the other hand, feared that it was the first step on the road to cataclysm. To them, and indeed to many Whigs, English government meant the rule, and the duty to rule, of the landed classes in the interests of the community. … A wider franchise would mean the beginning of the end of the old system of administration by influence and patronage.

His position was very difficult, for some of his followers felt he had betrayed them once already over Catholic Emancipation. But he was sure of himself. … Perhaps he believed that his personal ascendancy would carry the majority with him; but he needed time to convince his party, and time was denied him. … In August 1845 the potato crop failed in Ireland. Famine was imminent and Peel could wait no longer, but when he put his proposals to the Cabinet several of his colleagues revolted and in December he had to resign.

On June 25, 1846, with the help of Whig and Irish votes, the Corn Laws were repealed. … Disraeli immediately had his revenge. … Turmoil in Ireland destroyed Peel’s Government, and by a vote on the same night the great Ministry, one of the strongest of the century, came to an end. … Peel had been the dominating force and personality in English politics since the passing of the great Reform Bill.

Famine drove at least a million Irishmen to the United States and elsewhere.

In small parties, accompanied by their women and children and driving their cattle before them, about five thousand Boers set out into the unknown, like the Children of Israel seeking the Promised Land. … The Great Trek was one of the remarkable feats of the nineteenth century, and its purpose was to shake off British rule for ever.

Both men were at the height of their powers, and their skill and oratory in debate gripped and focused public attention on the proceedings of the House of Commons. … The political differences between them were no wider than is usual in a two-party system, but what gave the conflict its edge and produced a deep-rooted antagonism was their utter dissimilarity in character and temperament.

Disraeli’s Oriental, almost mystical, approach to Empire, his emphasis on Imperial symbols, his belief in the importance of outward display, gave his policy an imaginative colour never achieved by his successors. … His purpose was to make those colonies which he had once condemned as “millstones round our necks” sparkle like diamonds.

Ever since the end of the Civil War Anglo-American relations had been distinctly cool. … But all these disputes paled before the question of the Venezuelan boundary.

So it was in 1880. One of their first troubles sprang from South Africa. There the Boer Republic of the Transvaal had long been in difficulties, threatened by bankruptcy and disorders within and by the Zulu warrior kingdom upon its eastern border. … As soon as British arms had finally quelled the Zulus in 1879 they felt safe enough to seize their chance.

The war in South Africa meanwhile continued. … Roberts and Buller had hardly left the shores of South Africa when the war flamed into swift-moving, hard-hitting guerrilla.

Kitchener was driven to what would nowadays be called a “scorched earth” policy. … Blockhouses were built along the railway lines; fences were driven across the countryside; then more blockhouses were built along the fences.