various shapes, have divided
Britain and Europe. In the historians just mentioned we might see the
types of two schools, whose opposite conceptions of universal and
especially of English history, set forth by writers of brilliant
ability, have exercised the greatest influence upon prevailing ideas.

In England these ideas certainly gained admission, but they did not
make way at that time. When Richard Hooker expresses the popular ideas
as to the primitive free development of society, this is done
principally in order to point out the extensive authority of the
legislative power even over the clergy, and to defend the
ecclesiastical supremacy of the English crown, which had been
established by the enactments of that very power. The question was
mooted how far the sovereign was above the laws. Many wished to derive
these prerogatives from the laws; others rejected them. Among those
who maintained them unconditionally Walter Ralegh appears, in whose
works we find a peculiar deduction of them in the statement that the
sovereign, according to Justinian's phrase, was the living law: he
derives the royal authority from the Divine Will, which the will of
man could only acknowledge. He says in one place that the sovereign
stands in the same relation to the law, as a living man to a dead
body.

What a remarkable work would it have been, had Walter Ralegh himself
recorded the history of his time. But the opposition between parties
was not so outspoken in England as in Scotland; it had not to justify
itself by general principles, to which men could give their adhesion;
it contained too much personal ill-feeling and hatred for any one who
was involved in the strife to have been able to find satisfaction in
expressing himself on this head. The history of the world which Walter
Ralegh had leisure to write in his prison, is an endeavour to put
together the materials of Universal History as they lay before him
from ancient times, and so make them more intelligible. He touches on
the events of his age only in allusions, which excited attention at
the time, but remain obscure to posterity.

In direct opposition to the Scots, especially to Buchanan, Camden, who
wrote in Latin like the former, composed his Annals of the Reign of
Queen Elizabeth. His contemporary, De Thou, borrowed much from
Buchanan. Camden reproaches him with this, partly because in Scotland
men preached atrocious principles with regard to the authority of the
people