English was, by force of arms, to
establish a great empire on the Continent. The effect of the successes
of Edward III. and Henry V. was to make France for a time a province of
England. A French king was brought prisoner to London; an English king
was crowned at Paris.

The arts of peace were not neglected by our fathers during that period.
English thinkers aspired to know, or dared to doubt, where bigots had
been content to wonder and to believe. The same age which produced the
Black Prince and Derby, Chandos and Hawkwood, produced also Geoffrey
Chaucer and John Wycliffe. In so splendid and imperial a manner did the
English people, properly so called, first take place among the nations
of the world. But the spirit of the French people was at last aroused,
and after many desperate struggles and with many bitter regrets, our
ancestors gave up the contest.

_The First Civil War_

Cooped up once more within the limits of the island, the warlike people
employed in civil strife those arms which had been the terror of Europe.
Two aristocratic factions, headed by two branches of the royal family,
engaged in the long and fierce struggle known as the Wars of the White
and Red Roses. It was at length universally acknowledged that the claims
of all the contending Plantagenets were united in the House of Tudor.

It is now very long since the English people have by force subverted a
government. During the 160 years which preceded the union of the Roses,
nine kings reigned in England. Six of those kings were deposed. Five
lost their lives as well as their crowns. Yet it is certain that all
through that period the English people were far better governed than
were the Belgians under Philip the Good, or the French under that Louis
who was styled the Father of his people. The people, skilled in the use
of arms, had in reserve that check of physical force which brought the
proudest king to reason.

One wise policy was during the Middle Ages pursued by England alone.
Though to the monarch belonged the power of the sword, the nation
retained the power of the purse. The Continental nations ought to have
acted likewise; as they failed to conserve this safeguard of
representation with taxation, the consequence was that everywhere
excepting in England parliamentary institutions ceased to exist. England
owed this singular felicity to her insular situation.

The great events of the reigns of the Tudors and the Stuarts were
followed by