The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Short History of England, Ireland and
Scotland, by Mary Platt Parmele

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Title: A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland

Author: Mary Platt Parmele

Release Date: September 18, 2010 [EBook #33755]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: Magna Charta, 1215: King John submits to the Barons, and
signs the Great Charter of British Liberties.]

A SHORT HISTORY OF

ENGLAND, IRELAND

AND SCOTLAND

BY

MARY PLATT PARMELE

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1907

COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY

WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON

COPYRIGHT, 1898, 1900, 1906, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

PREFACE

Will the readers of this little work please bear in mind the
difficulties which must attend the painting of a very large picture,
with multitudinous characters and details, upon a very small canvas!
This book is mainly an attempt to trace to their sources some of the
currents which enter into the life of Great Britain to-day, and to
indicate the starting-points of some among the various
threads--legislative, judicial, social, etc.--which are gathered into
the imposing strand of English civilization in this closing nineteenth
century.

The reader will please observe that there seem to have been two things
most closely interwoven with the life of England--RELIGION and MONEY
have been the great evolutionary factors in her development.

It has been, first, the resistance of the people to the extortions of
money by the ruling class, and second, the violating of their religious
instincts, which has made nearly all that is vital in English history.

The lines upon which the government has developed to its present
constitutional form are chiefly lines of resistance to oppressive
enactments in these two matters. The dynastic and military history of
England, although picturesque and interesting, is really only a
narrative of the external causes which have impeded the nation's growth
toward its ideal of "the greatest possible good to the greatest
p