IV

THE FAVOURITES. 1611-1625 183

CHAPTER V

CHARLES I. AND THE PARLIAMENT. 1625-1629 242

CHAPTER VI

THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT. 1629-1635 272

CHAPTER VII

THE RISING OF THE SCOTS. 1635-1640 315

CHAPTER VIII

THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 1640-1644 344

CHAPTER VII

THE ENGLAND OF SHAKSPERE

1593-1603

[Sidenote: English Literature.]

The defeat of the Armada, the deliverance from Catholicism and Spain,
marked the critical moment in our political developement. From that hour
England's destiny was fixed. She was to be a Protestant power. Her
sphere of action was to be upon the seas. She was to claim her part in
the New World of the West. But the moment was as critical in her
intellectual developement. As yet English literature had lagged behind
the literature of the rest of Western Christendom. It was now to take
its place among the greatest literatures of the world. The general
awakening of national life, the increase of wealth, of refinement, and
leisure that characterized the reign of Elizabeth, was accompanied by a
quickening of intelligence. The Renascence had done little for English
letters. The overpowering influence of the new models both of thought
and style which it gave to the world in the writers of Greece and Rome
was at first felt only as a fresh check to the revival of English poetry
or prose. Though England shared more than any European country in the
political and ecclesiastical results of the New Learning, its literary
results were far less than in the rest of Europe, in Italy, or Germany,
or France. More alone ranks among the great classical scholars of the
sixteenth century. Classical learning indeed all but perished at the
Universities in the storm of the Reformation, nor did it revive there
till the close of Elizabeth's reign. Insensibly however the influences
of the Renascence fertilized the intellectual soil of England for the
rich harvest that was to come. The court poetry which clustered round
Wyatt and Surrey, exotic and imitative as it was, promised a new life
for English verse. The growth of grammar-schools realized the dream of
Sir Thomas More, and brought the middle-classes, from the squire to the
petty tradesman, into contact with the masters of Greece and Rome. The
love of travel, which became so remarkable a characteristic of
Elizabeth's ag