ctually has been by those of Grote and Thirlwall. For it is not more
prejudiced and much better written than Grote's, while it has greater
liveliness and zest than the Bishop's. It occupied more than thirty
years in publication, the first volume appearing in 1784, the last in
1818.

While Roscoe and Mitford were thus dealing with foreign and ancient
subjects, English history became the theme of a somewhat younger pair of
historians, one of whom, Sharon Turner, was born in 1768 and died in
1847; while John Lingard, born three years later, outlived Turner by
four. Lingard was a Roman Catholic priest, and after being educated at
Douai, divided most of his time between pastoral work and teaching at
the newly founded Roman Catholic school of Ushaw. He was the author of
what still retains the credit of being the best history of England on
the great scale, in point of the union of accuracy, skilful arrangement,
fairness (despite his inevitable prepossessions), and competent literary
form,--no mean credit for a member of an unpopular minority to have
attained in a century of the most active historical investigation.
Turner was more of a specialist and particularist, and his style is not
very estimable. He wrote many books on English history, those on the
later periods being of little value. But his _History of the
Anglo-Saxons_, first issued in 1799, was based on thorough research, and
may be said to have for the first time rescued the period of origins of
English history from the discreditable condition of perfunctory,
traditional, and second- or third-hand treatment in which most, if not
all, previous historians of England had been content to leave it.

Sir Francis Palgrave, another historian to whom the student of early
English history is deeply indebted, was born in London in 1788, his
paternal name being Cohen. He took to the law, and early devoted himself
both within and outside his profession to genealogical and antiquarian
research. Before much attention had been paid in France itself to Old
French, he published a collection of Anglo-Norman poems in 1818, and
from these studies he passed to that of English history as such. He was
knighted in 1832, and made Deputy-Keeper of the Records in 1838; his
tenure of this post being only terminated by his death in 1861. Palgrave
edited many State documents (writs, calendars, rolls, and so forth), and
in his last years executed a _History of Normandy and England_ of great
value.