2,196 kilometres of cable were sunk, when another fault was
discovered. While the cable was being repaired it broke, and
attempts to recover it at the time were all unsuccessful; in
consequence of this the Great Eastern had to return without
having completed the task. A new company, the Anglo-American
Telegraph Company, was formed in 1866, and at once entrusted
Messrs. Glass, Elliott and Company with the construction of a
new cable of 3,000 kilometres. Different arrangements were
made for the outer envelope of the cable, and the Great
Eastern was once more equipped to give effect to the
experiments which had just been made. The new expedition was
not only to lay a new cable, but also to take up the end of
the old one, and join it to a new piece, and thus obtain a
second telegraph line. The sinking again commenced in Ireland
on the 13th of July, 1866, and it was finished on the 27th. On
the 4th of August, 1866, the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Line was
declared open."
A. R. von Urbanitzky,
Electricity in the Service of Man,
pages 767-768.
ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1876-1892.
The Telephone.
"The first and simplest of all magnetic telephones is the Bell
Telephone." In "the first form of this instrument, constructed
by Professor Graham Bell, in 1876 ... a harp of steel rods was
attached to the poles of a permanent magnet. ... When we sing
into a piano, certain of the strings of the instrument are set
in vibration sympathetically by the action of the voice with
different degrees of amplitude, and a sound, which is an
approximation to the vowel uttered, is produced from the
piano. Theory shows that, had the piano a much larger number
of strings to the octave, the vowel sounds would be perfectly
reproduced. It was upon this principle that Bell constructed
his first telephone. The expense of constructing such an
apparatus, however, deterred Bell from making the attempt, and
he sought to simplify the apparatus before proceeding further in
this direction. After many experiments with more, or less
unsatisfactory results, he constructed the instrument ...
which he exhibited at Philadelphia in 1876. In this apparatus,
the transmitter was formed by an electro-magnet, through which
a current flowed, and a membrane, made of gold-beater's skin,
on which was placed as a sort of armature, a piece of soft
iron, which thus vibrated in front of the electro-magnet when
the membrane was thrown into sonorous vibration.
{777}
... It is quite clear that when we speak into a Bell
transmitter only a small fraction of the energy of the
sonorous vibrations of the voice can be converted into
electric currents, and that these currents must be extremely
weak. Edison applied himself to discover some means by which
he could increase the strength of these currents. Elisha Gray
had proposed to use the variation of resistance of a fine
platinum wire attached to a diaphragm dipping into water, and
hoped that the variation of extent of surface in contact would
so vary the strength of current as to reproduce sonorous
vibrations; but there is no record of this experiment having
been tried. Edison proposed to utilise the fact that the
resistance of carbon varied under pressure. He had
independently discovered this peculiarity of carbon, but it
had been previously described by Du Moncel. ... The first
carbon transmitter was constructed in 1878 by Edison."
W. H. Preece, and J. Maier,
The Telephone,
chapter 3-4.
In a pamphlet distributed at the Columbian Exposition,
Chicago, 1893, entitled "Exhibit of the American Bell
Telephone Co.," the following statements are made: "At the
Centennial Exposition, in Philadelphia, in 1876, was given the
first general public exhibition of the telephone by its
inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. To-day, seventeen years
later, more than half a million instruments are in daily use
in the United States alone, six hundred million talks by
telephone are held every year, and the human voice is carried
over a distance of twelve hundred miles without loss of sound
or syllable. The first use of the telephone for business
purposes was over a single wire connecting only two
telephones. At once the need of general inter-communication
made itself felt. In the cities and larger towns exchanges
were established and all the subscribers to any one exchange
were enabled to talk to one another through a central office.
Means were then devised to connect two or more exchanges by
trunk lines, thus affording means of communication between all
the subscribers of all the exchanges so connected. This work
has been pushed forward until now have been gathered into what
may be termed one great exchange all the important cities from
Augusta on the east to Milwaukee on the west, and from
Burlington and Buffalo on the north to Washington on the
south, bringing more than one half the people of this country
and a much larger proportion of the business interests, within
talking distance of one another. ... The lines which connect
Chicago with Boston, via New York, are of copper wire of extra
size. It is about one sixth of an inch in diameter, and weighs
435 pounds to the mile. Hence each circuit contains 1,044,000
pounds of copper. ... In the United States there are over a
quarter of a million exchange subscribers, and ... these make
use of the telephone to carry on 600,000,000 conversations
annually. There is hardly a city or town of 5,000 inhabitants
that has not its Telephone Exchange, and these are so knit
together by connecting lines that intercommunication is
constant." The number of telephones in use in the United
States, on the 20th of December in each year since the first
introduction, is given as follows;
1877, 5,187;
1878, 17,567;
1879, 52,517;
1880, 123,380;
1881, 180,592;
1882, 237,728;
1883, 298,580;
1884, 325,574;
1885, 330,040;
1886, 353,518;
1887, 380,277;
1888, 411,511;
1889, 444,861;
1890, 483,790;
1891, 512,407;
1892, 552,720.
----------End: Electricity----------
ELEPHANT, Order of the.
A Danish order of knighthood instituted in 1693 by
King Christian V.
ELEPHANTINE.
See EGYPT: THE OLD EMPIRE AND THE MIDDLE EMPIRE.
ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES, The.
Among the ancient Greeks, "the mysteries were a source of
faith and hope to the initiated, as are the churches of modern
times. Secret doctrines, regarded as holy, and to be kept with
inviolable fidelity, were handed down in these brotherhoods,
and no doubt were fondly believed to contain a saving grace by
those who were admitted, amidst solemn and imposing rites,
under the veil of midnight, to hear the tenets of the ancient
faith, and the promises of blessings to come to those who,
with sincerity of heart and pious trust, took the obligations
upon them. The Eleusinian mysteries were the most imposing and
venerable. Their origin extended back into a mythical
antiquity, and they were among the few forms of Greek worship
which were under the superintendence of hereditary
priesthoods. Thirlwall thinks that 'they were the remains of a
worship which preceded the rise of the Hellenic mythology and
its attendant rites, grounded on a view of Nature less
fanciful, more earnest, and better fitted to awaken both
philosophical thought and religious feeling.' This conclusion
is still further confirmed by the moral and religious tone of
the poets,--such as Æschylus,--whose ideas on justice, sin and
retribution are as solemn and elevated as those of a Hebrew
prophet. The secrets, whatever they were, were never revealed
in express terms; but Isocrates uses some remarkable
expressions, when speaking of their importance to the
condition of man. 'Those who are initiated,' says he
'entertain sweeter hopes of eternal life'; and how could this
be the case, unless there were imparted at Eleusis the
doctrine of eternal life, and some idea of its state and
circumstances more compatible with an elevated conception of
the Deity and of the human soul than the vague and shadowy
images which haunted the popular mind. The Eleusinian
communion embraced the most eminent men from every part of
Greece,--statesmen, poets, philosophers, and generals; and
when Greece became a part of the Roman Empire, the greatest
minds of Rome drew instruction and consolation from its
doctrines. The ceremonies of initiation--which took place
every year in the early autumn, a beautiful season in
Attica--were a splendid ritual, attracting visitors from every
part of the world. The processions moving from Athens to
Eleusis over the Sacred Way, sometimes numbered twenty or
thirty thousand people, and the exciting scenes were well
calculated to leave a durable impression on susceptible minds.
... The formula of the dismissal, after the initiation was
over, consisted in the mysterious words 'konx,' 'ompax'; and
this is the only Eleusinian secret that has illuminated the
world from the recesses of the temple of Demeter and
Persephone. But it is a striking illustration of the value
attached to these rites and doctrines, that, in moments of
extremest peril--as of impending shipwreck, or massacre by a
victorious enemy,--men asked one another, 'Are you initiated?'
as if this were the anchor of their hopes for another life."
{778}
C. C. Felton,
Greece, Ancient and Modern,
chapter 2, lecture 10.
"The Eleusinian mysteries continued to be celebrated during
the whole of the second half of the fourth century, till they
were put an end to by the destruction of the temple at
Eleusis, and by the devastation of Greece in the invasion of
the Goths under Alaric in 395."
See GOTHS: A. D. 395.
W. Smith,
Note to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 25.
ALSO IN:
R. Brown,
The Great Dionysiak Myth,
chapter 6, section. 2.
J. J. I. von Dollinger,
The Gentile and the Jew,
book 3 (volume 1).
See, also, ELEUSIS.
ELEUSIS.
Eleusis was originally one of the twelve confederate townships
into which Attica was said to have been divided before the
time of Theseus. It "was advantageously situated [about
fourteen miles Northwest of Athens] on a height, at a small
distance from the shore of an extensive bay, to which there is
access only through narrow channels, at the two extremities of
the island of Salamis: its position was important, as
commanding the shortest and most level route by land from
Athens to the Isthmus by the pass which leads at the foot of
Mount Cerata along the shore to Megara. ... Eleusis was built
at the eastern end of a low rocky hill, which lies parallel to
the sea-shore. ... The eastern extremity of the hill was
levelled artificially for the reception of the Hierum of Ceres
and the other sacred buildings. Above these are the traces of an
Acropolis. A triangular space of about 500 yards each side,
lying between the hill and the shore, was occupied by the town
of Eleusis. ... To those who approached Eleusis from Athens,
the sacred buildings standing on the eastern extremity of the
height concealed the greater part of the town, and on a nearer
approach presented a succession of magnificent objects, well
calculated to heighten the solemn grandeur of the ceremonies
and the awe and reverence of the Mystæ in their initiation.
... In the plurality of enclosures, in the magnificence of the
pylæ or gateways, in the absence of any general symmetry of
plan, in the small auxiliary temples, we recognize a great
resemblance between the sacred buildings of Eleusis and the
Egyptian Hiera of Thebes and Philæ. And this resemblance is
the more remarkable, as the Demeter of Attica was the Isis of
Egypt. We cannot suppose, however, that the plan of all these
buildings was even thought of when the worship of Ceres was
established at Eleusis. They were the progressive creation of
successive ages. ... Under the Roman Empire ... it was
fashionable among the higher order of Romans to pass some time
at Athens in the study of philosophy and to be initiated in
the Eleusinian mysteries. Hence Eleusis became at that time
one of the most frequented places in Greece; and perhaps it
was never so populous as under the emperors of the first two
centuries of our æra. During the two following centuries, its
mysteries were the chief support of declining polytheism, and
almost the only remaining bond of national union among the
Greeks; but at length the destructive visit of the Goths in
the year 396, the extinction of paganism and the ruin of
maritime commerce, left Eleusis deprived of every source of
prosperity, except those which are inseparable from its
fertile plain, its noble bay, and its position on the road
from Attica to the Isthmus. ... The village still preserves
the ancient name, no further altered than is customary in
Romaic conversions."
W. M. Leake,
Topography of Athens;
volume 2: The Demi, section 5.
ELGIN, Lord.
The Indian administration of.
See INDIA: A. D. 1862-1876.
ELIS.
Elis was an ancient Greek state, occupying the country on the
western coast of Peloponnesus, adjoining Arcadia, and between
Messenia at the south and Achaia on the north. It was noted
for the fertility of its soil and the rich yield of its
fisheries. But Elis owed greater importance to the inclusion
within its territory of the sacred ground of Olympia, where
the celebration of the most famous festival of Zeus came to be
established at an early time. The Elians had acquired Olympia
by conquest of the city and territory of Pisa, to which it
originally belonged, and the presidency of the Olympic games
was always disputed with them by the latter. Elis was the
close ally of Sparta down to the year B. C. 421, when a bitter
quarrel arose between them, and Elis suffered heavily in the
wars which ensued. It was afterwards at war with the
Arcadians, and joined the Ætolian League against the Achaian
League. The city of Elis was one of the most splendid in
Greece; but little now remains, even of ruins, to indicate its
departed glories.
See, also, OLYMPIC GAMES.
ELISII, The.
See LYGIANS.
ELIZABETH,
Czarina of Russia, A. D. 1741-1761..
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and the Thirty Years War.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1620; 1620; 1621-1623;
1631-1632, and 1648.
Elizabeth, Queen of England, A. D. 1558-1603.
Elizabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain.
See ITALY: A. D. 1715-1735; and
SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725, and 1726-1731.
ELIZABETH, N. J.
The first settlement of.
See NEW JERSEY: A. D. 1664-1667.
ELK HORN, OR PEA RIDGE, Battle of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1862 (JANUARY-MARCH: MISSOURI-ARKANSAS).
ELKWATER, OR CHEAT SUMMIT, Battle of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1861 (AUGUST-DECEMBER: WEST VIRGINIA).
ELLANDUM, Battle of.
Decisive victory of Ecgberht, the West Saxon king, over the
Mercians, A. D. 823.
ELLEBRI, The.
See IRELAND, TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS.
ELLENBOROUGH, Lord, The Indian administration of.
See INDIA: A. D. 1836-1845.
ELLSWORTH, Colonel, The death of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1861 (MAY: VIRGINIA).
ELMET.
A small kingdom of the Britons which was swallowed up in the
English kingdom of Northumbria early in the seventh century.
It answered, roughly speaking, to the present West-Riding of
Yorkshire. ... Leeds "preserves the name of Loidis, by which
Elmet seems also to have been known."
J. R. Green, The Making of England, page 254.
ELMIRA, N. Y. (then Newtown).
General Sullivan's Battle with the Senecas.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1779 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).
ELSASS.
See ALSACE.
ELTEKEH, Battle of.
A victory won by the Assyrian, Sennacherib, over the
Egyptians, before the disaster befell his army which is
related in 2 Kings xix. 35. Sennacherib's own account of the
battle has been found among the Assyrian records.
{779}
A. H. Sayce,
Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments,
chapter 6.
ELUSATES, The.
See AQUITAINE, TRIBES OF ANCIENT.
ELVIRA, Battle of(1319).
See SPAIN: A. D. 1273-1460.
ELY, The Camp of Refuge at.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1069-1071.
ELYMAIS.
See ELAM.
ELYMEIA.
See MACEDONIA.
ELYMIANS, The.
See SICILY: EARLY INHABITANTS.
ELYSIAN FIELDS.
See CANARY ISLANDS.
ELZEVIRS.
See PRINTING: A. D. 1617-1680.
EMANCIPATION, Catholic.
See IRELAND: A. D. 1811-1829.
EMANCIPATION, Compensated;
Proposal of President Lincoln.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MARCH).
EMANCIPATION, Prussian Edict of.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1807-1808.
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATIONS,
President Lincoln's.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1862 (SEPTEMBER), and 1863 (JANUARY).
EMANUEL,
King of Portugal, A. D. 1495-1521.
Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, A. D. 1553-1580.
EMBARGO OF 1807, The American.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1804-1809, and 1808.
EMERICH, King of Hungary, A. D. 1196-1204.
EMERITA AUGUSTA.
A colony of Roman veterans settled in Spain, B. C. 27, by the
emperor Augustus. It is identified with modern Merida, in
Estremadura.
C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 34, note.
EMESSA.
Capture by the Arabs (A. D. 636).
See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 632-639.
ÉMIGRÉS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1791;
1791 (JULY-SEPTEMBER); and 1791-1792.
EMITES, The.
See JEWS: EARLY HEBREW HISTORY.
EMMAUS, Battle of.
Defeat of a Syrian army under Gorgias by Judas Maccabæus,
B. C. 166.
Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, book 12, chapter 7.
EMMENDINGEN, Battle of.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER). .
EMMET INSURRECTION, The.
See IRELAND: A. D. 1801-1803.
EMPEROR.
A title derived from the Roman title Imperator.
See IMPERATOR.
EMPORIA, The.
See CARTHAGE, THE DOMINION OF.
ENCOMIENDAS.
See SLAVERY, MODERN: OF THE INDIANS;
also, REPARTIMIENTOS.
ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT, The.
See IRELAND: A. D. 1843-1848.
ENCYCLICAL AND SYLLABUS OF 1864, The.
See PAPACY: A. D. 1864.
ENCYCLOPÆDISTS, The.
"French literature had never been so brilliant as in the
second half of the 18th century. Buffon, Diderot, D'Alembert,
Rousseau, Duclos, Condillac, Helvetius, Holbach, Raynal,
Condorcet, Mably, and many others adorned it, and the
'Encyclopædia,' which was begun in 1751 under the direction of
Diderot, became the focus of an intellectual influence which
has rarely been equalled. The name and idea were taken from a
work published by Ephraim Chambers in Dublin, in 1728. A noble
preliminary discourse was written by D'Alembert; and all the
best pens in France were enlisted in the enterprise, which was
constantly encouraged and largely assisted by Voltaire. Twice
it was suppressed by authority, but the interdict was again
raised. Popular favour now ran with an irresistible force in
favour of the philosophers, and the work was brought to its
conclusion in 1771."
W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century,
chapter. 20 (volume 5).
ALSO IN:
J. Morley,
Diderot and the Encyclopædists,
chapter 5 (volume 1).
E. J. Lowell,
The Eve of the French Revolution,
chapter 16.
ENDICOTT, John, and the Colony of Massachusetts Bay.
See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1623-1629, and after.
ENDIDJAN, Battle of (1876).
See RUSSIA: A. D. 1859-1876.
ENGADINE, The.
See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1396-1499.
ENGEN, Battle of (1800).
See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (MAY-FEBRUARY).
ENGERN, Duchy of.
See SAXONY: THE OLD DUCHY.
ENGHIEN, Duc d',
The abduction and execution of.
See FRANCE: 1804-1805.
ENGLAND:
Before the coming of the English.
The Celtic and Roman periods.
See BRITAIN.
ENGLAND: A. D.449-547.
The three tribes of the English conquest.
The naming of the country.
"It was by ... three tribes [from Northwestern Germany], the
Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes, that southern Britain was
conquered and colonized in the fifth and sixth centuries,
according to the most ancient testimony. ... Of the three, the
Angli almost if not altogether pass away into the migration:
the Jutes and the Saxons, although migrating in great numbers,
had yet a great part to play in their own homes and in other
regions besides Britain; the former at a later period in the
train and under the name of the Danes; the latter in German
history from the eighth century to the present day."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
volume 1, chapter 3.
"Among the Teutonic settlers in Britain some tribes stand out
conspicuously; Angles, Saxons, and Jutes stand out
conspicuously above all. The Jutes led the way; from the
Angles the land and the united nation took their name; the
Saxons gave us the name by which our Celtic neighbours have
ever known us. But there is no reason to confine the area from
which our forefathers came to the space which we should mark
on the map as the land of the continental Angles, Saxons, and
Jutes. So great a migration is always likely to be swollen by
some who are quite alien to the leading tribe; it is always
certain to be swollen by many who are of stocks akin to the
leading tribe, but who do not actually belong to it.
{780}
As we in Britain are those who stayed behind at the time of
the second great migration of our people [to America], so I
venture to look on all our Low-Dutch kinsfolk on the continent
of Europe as those who stayed behind at the time of the first
great migration of our people. Our special hearth and cradle
is doubtless to be found in the immediate marchland of Germany
and Denmark, but the great common home of our people is to be
looked on as stretching along the whole of that long coast
where various dialects of the Low-Dutch tongue are spoken. If
Angles and Saxons came, we know that Frisians came also, and
with Frisians as an element among us, it is hardly too bold to
claim the whole Netherlands as in the widest sense Old
England, as the land of one part of the kinsfolk who stayed
behind. Through that whole region, from the special Anglian
corner far into what is now northern France, the true tongue
of the people, sometimes overshadowed by other tongues, is
some dialect or other of that branch of the great Teutonic
family which is essentially the same as our own speech. From
Flanders to Sleswick the natural tongue is one which differs
from English only as the historical events of fourteen hundred
years of separation have inevitably made the two tongues--two
dialects, I should rather say, of the same tongue--to differ.
From these lands we came as a people. That was our first
historical migration. Our remote forefathers must have made
endless earlier migrations as parts of the great Aryan body,
as parts of the smaller Teutonic body. But our voyage from the
Low-Dutch mainland to the isle of Britain was our first
migration as a people. ... Among the Teutonic tribes which
settled in Britain, two, the Angles and the Saxons, stood out
foremost. These two between them occupied by far the greater
part of the land that was occupied at all. Each of these two
gave its name to the united nation, but each gave it on
different lips. The Saxons were the earlier invaders; they had
more to do with the Celtic remnant which abode in the land. On
the lips then of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain, the whole
of the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain were known from the
beginning, and are known still, as Saxons. But, as the various
Teutonic settlements drew together, as they began to have
common national feelings and to feel the need of a common
national name, the name which they chose was not the same as
that by which their Celtic neighbours called them. They did
not call themselves Saxons and their land Saxony; they called
themselves English and their land England. I used the word
Saxony in all seriousness; it is a real name for the Teutonic
part of Britain, and it is an older name than the name
England. But it is a name used only from the outside by Celtic
neighbours and enemies; it was not used from the inside by the
Teutonic people themselves. In their mouths, as soon as they
took to themselves a common name, that name was English; as
soon as they gave their land a common name, that name was
England. ... And this is the more remarkable, because the age
when English was fully established as the name of the people,
and England as the name of the land, was an age of Saxon
supremacy, an age when a Saxon state held the headship of
England and of Britain, when Saxon kings grew step by step to
be kings of the English and lords of the whole British island.
In common use then, the men of the tenth and eleventh
centuries knew themselves by no name but English."
E. A. Freeman,
The English People in its Three Homes
(Lectures to American Audiences,
pages 30-31, and 45-47).
See ANGLES AND JUTES, and SAXONS.
ENGLAND: A. D. 449-473.
The Beginning of English history.
The conquest of Kent by the Jutes.
"In the year 449 or 450 a band of warriors was drawn to the
shores of Britain by the usual pledges of land and pay. The
warriors were Jutes, men of a tribe which has left its name to
Jutland, at the extremity of the peninsula that projects from
the shores of North-Germany, but who were probably akin to the
race that was fringing the opposite coast of Scandinavia and
settling in the Danish Isles. In three 'keels'--so ran the
legend of their conquest--and with their Ealdormen, Hengest
and Horsa, at their head, these Jutes landed at Ebbsfleet in
the Isle of Thanet. With the landing of Hengest and his
war-band English history begins. ... In the first years that
followed after their landing, Jute and Briton fought side by
side; and the Picts are said to have been scattered to the
winds in a great battle on the eastern coast of Britain. But
danger from the Pict was hardly over when danger came from the
Jutes themselves. Their numbers probably grew fast as the news
of their settlement in Thanet spread among their fellow
pirates who were haunting the channel; and with the increase
of their number must have grown the difficulty of supplying
them with rations and pay. The dispute which rose over these
questions was at last closed by Hengest's men with a threat of
war." The threat was soon executed; the forces of the Jutes
were successfully transferred from their island camp to the
main shore, and the town of Durovernum (occupying the site of
modern Canterbury) was the first to experience their rage.
"The town was left in blackened and solitary ruin as the
invaders pushed along the road to London. No obstacle seems to
have checked their march from the Stour to the Medway." At
Aylesford (A. D. 455), the lowest ford crossing the Medway,
"the British leaders must have taken post for the defence of
West Kent; but the Chronicle of the conquering people tells
... only that Horsa fell in the moment of victory; and the
flint-heap of Horsted which has long preserved his name ...
was held in aftertime to mark his grave. ... The victory of
Aylesford was followed by a political change among the
assailants, whose loose organization around ealdormen was
exchanged for a stricter union. Aylesford, we are told, was no
sooner won than 'Hengest took to the kingdom, and Ælle, his
son.' ... The two kings pushed forward in 457 from the Medway
to the conquest of West Kent." Another battle at the passage
of the Cray was another victory for the invaders, and, "as the
Chronicle of their conquerors tells us, the Britons' forsook
Kent-land and fled with much fear to London.' ... If we trust
British tradition, the battle at Crayford was followed by a
political revolution in Britain itself. ... It would seem ...
that the Romanized Britons rose in revolt under Aurelius
Ambrosianus, a descendant of the last Roman general who
claimed the purple as an Emperor in Britain. ... The
revolution revived for a while the energy of the province."
The Jutes were driven back into the Isle of Thanet, and held
there, apparently, for some years, with the help of the strong
fortresses of Richborough and Reculver, guarding the two
mouths of the inlet which then parted Thanet from the
mainland.
{781}
"In 465 however the petty conflicts which had gone on along
the shores of the Wantsum made way for a decisive struggle.
... The overthrow of the Britons at Wipped'sfleet was so
terrible that all hope of preserving the bulk of Kent seems
from this moment to have been abandoned; and ... no further
struggle disturbed the Jutes in its conquest and settlement.
It was only along its southern shore that the Britons now held
their ground. ... A final victory of the Jutes in 473 may mark
the moment when they reached the rich pastures which the Roman
engineers had reclaimed from Romney Marsh. ... With this
advance to the mouth of the Weald the work of Hengest's men
came to an end; nor did the Jutes from this time play any
important part in the attack on the island, for their
after-gains were limited to the Isle of Wight and a few
districts on the Southampton Water."
J. R. Green,
The Making of England,
chapter 1.
ALSO IN:
J. M. Lappenberg,
History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings,
volume 1, pages 67-101.
-----------------------------------------------------------
A Logical Outline of English History
IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND
INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.
Physical or material (Orange).
Ethnological (Dark Blue).
Social and political (Green).
Intellectual, moral and religious (Tan).
Foreign (Black).
5th-7th centuries.
Conquest: and settlement by Saxons, Angles and Jutes.
The Island of Britain, separated from the Continent of Europe
by a narrow breadth of sea, which makes friendly commerce easy
and hostile invasion difficult;--its soil in great part
excellent; its northern climate tempered by the humid warmth
of the Gulf Stream; its conditions good for breeding a robust
population, strongly fed upon corn and meats; holding,
moreover, in store, for later times, a rare deposit of iron
and coal, of tin and potter's clay, and other minerals of like
utility; was occupied and possessed by tribes from Northern
Europe, of the strongest race in history; already schooled in
courage and trained to enterprise by generations of sea-faring
adventure; uncorrupted by any mercenary contact with the
decaying civilization of Rome, but ready for the knowledge it
could give.
7th-11th Centuries.
Fused, after much warring with one another and with their
Danish kin, into a nation of Englishmen, they lived, for five
centuries, an isolated life, until their insular and
independent character had become deeply ingrained, and the
primitive system of their social and political
organization--their Townships, their Hundreds, their Shires,
and the popular Moots, or courts, which determined and
administered law in each--was rooted fast; though their king's
power waxed and the nobles and the common people drew farther
apart.
A. D. 1066.--Norman conquest.
Then they were mastered (in the last successful invasion that
their Island ever knew) by another people, sprung from their
own stock, but whose blood had been warmed and whose wit had
been quickened by Latin and Gallic influences in the country
of the Franks.
11th-18th Centuries.
A new social and political system now formed itself in England
as the result:--Feudalism modified by the essential democracy
inherent in Old English institutions--producing a stout
commonality to daunt the lords, and a strong aristocracy to
curb the king.
A. D. 1215. Magna Oharta.
English royalty soon weakened itself yet more by ambitious
strivings to maintain and extend a wide dominion over-sea, in
Normandy and Aquitaine; and was helpless to resist when barons
and commons came together to demand the signing and sealing of
the Great Charter of Englishmen's rights.
A. D. 1265-1295--Parliament.
Out of the conditions which gave birth to Magna Charta there
followed, soon, the development of the English Parliament as a
representative legislature, from the Curia Regis of the Normans
and the Witenagemot of the older English time.
A. D. 1337-1453--The Hundred Years War.
From the woful wars of a hundred years with France, which
another century brought upon it, the nation, as a whole,
suffered detriment, no doubt, and it progress was hindered in
many ways; but politically the people took some good from
the troubled times, because their kings were more dependant on
them for money and men.
A. D. 1453-1485--War of the Roses
So likewise, they were bettered in some ways by the dreadful
civil Wars of the Roses, which distracted England for thirty
years. The nobles well-nigh perished, as an order, in these
wars, while the middle-class people at large suffered relatively
little, in numbers or estate.
A. D. 1348--The Great Plague.
But, previously, the great Plague, by diminishing the ranks of
the laboring class, had raised wages and the standard of living
among them, and had helped, with other causes, to multiply the
small landowners and tenant farmers of the country, increasing
the independent common class.
A. D. 1327-1377--Immigration of Flemish weavers.
Moreover, from the time of Edward III., who encouraged Flemish
weavers to settle in England and to teach their art to his
people, manufactures began to thrive; trade extended; towns
grew in population and wealth, and the great burgher
middle-class rose rapidly to importance and weight in the
land.
A. D. 1485-1603--Absolutism of the Tudors.
But the commons of England were not prepared to make use of
the actual power which they held. The nobles had led them in
the past; it needed time to raise leaders among themselves,
and time to organize their ranks. Hence no new checks on
royalty were ready to replace those constraints which had been
broken by the ruin of great houses in the civil wars, and the
crown made haste to improve its opportunity for grasping
power. There followed, under the Tudors, a period of
absolutism greater than England had known before.
15th-16th Centuries--Renaissance.
But this endured only for the time of the education of the
commons, who conned the lessons of the age with eagerness and
with understanding. The new learning from Greece and Rome; the
new world knowledge that had been found in the West; the new
ideas which the new art of the printer had furnished with
wings,--all these had now gained their most fertile planting
in the English mind. Their flower was the splendid literature
of the Elizabethan age; they ripened fruits more substantial
at a later day.
The intellectual development of the nation tended first toward
a religious independence, which produced two successive
revolts--from Roman Papacy and from the Anglican Episcopacy
that succeeded it.
This religious new departure of the English people gave
direction to a vast expansion of their energies in the outside
world. It led them into war with Spain, and sent forth Drake
and Hawkins and the Buccaneers, to train the sailors and pilot
the merchant adventurers who would soon make England mistress
of all the wide seas.
A. D. 1608-1688.
The Stuarts.
The Civil War.
The Commonwealth.
The Revolution.
Then, when these people, strong, prosperous and intelligent,
had come to be ripely sufficient for self-government, there
fell to them a foolish race of kings, who challenged them to a
struggle which stripped royalty of all but its fictions, and
established the sovereignty of England in its House of Commons
for all time.
18th-19th Centuries.
Science
Invention.
Material progress.
Economic enlightenment.
Unassailable in its island,--taking part in the great wars of
the 18th century by its fleets and its subsidies
chiefly,--busy with its undisturbed labors at home,--vigorous
in its conquests, its settlements and its trade, which it
pushed into the farthest parts of the earth,--creating wealth
and protecting it from spoliation and from waste,--the English
nation now became the industrial and economic school of the
age. It produced the mechanical inventions which first opened
a new era in the life of mankind on the material side; it
attained to the splendid enlightenment of freedom in trade; it
made England the workshop and mart of the world, and it spread
her Empire to every Continent, through all the seas.
--------- End: A Logical Outline of English History --------------------
ENGLAND: A. D. 477-527.
The conquests of the Saxons.
The founding of the kingdoms of Sussex, Wessex and Essex.
"Whilst the Jutes were conquering Kent, their kindred took
part in the war. Ship after ship sailed from the North Sea,
filled with eager warriors. The Saxons now arrived--Ella and
his three sons landed in the ancient territory of the Regni
(A. D. 477-491). The Britons were defeated with great
slaughter, and driven into the forest of Andreade, whose
extent is faintly indicated by the wastes and commons of the
Weald. A general confederacy of the Kings and 'Tyrants' of the
Britons was formed against the invaders, but fresh
reinforcements arrived from Germany; the city of
Andreades-Ceastre was taken by storm, all its inhabitants were
slain and the buildings razed to the ground, so that its site
is now entirely unknown. From this period the kingdom of the
South Saxons was established in the person of Ella; and though
ruling only over the narrow boundary of modern Sussex, he was
accepted as the first of the Saxon Bretwaldas, or Emperors of
the Isle of Britain. Encouraged, perhaps, by the good tidings
received from Ella, another band of Saxons, commanded by
Cerdic and his son Cynric, landed on the neighbouring shore,
in the modern Hampshire (A. D. 494). At first they made but
little progress. They were opposed by the Britons; but
Geraint, whom the Saxon Chroniclers celebrate for his
nobility, and the British Bards extol for his beauty and
valour, was slain (A. D. 501). The death of the Prince of the
'Woodlands of Dyfnaint,' or Damnonia, may have been avenged,
but the power of the Saxons overwhelmed all opposition; and
Cerdic, associating his son Cynric in the dignity, became the
King of the territory which he gained. Under Cynric and his
son Ceaulin, the Saxons slowly, yet steadily, gained ground.
The utmost extent of their dominions towards the North cannot
be ascertained; but they had conquered the town of Bedford;
and it was probably in consequence of their geographical
position (A. D. 571) with respect to the countries of the
Middle and East Saxons, that the name of the West Saxons was
given to this colony. The tract north of the Thames was soon
lost; but on the south of that river and of the Severn, the
successors of Cerdic, Kings of Wessex, continued to extend
their dominions. The Hampshire Avon, which retains its old
Celtic name, signifying 'the Water,' seems at first to have
been their boundary. Beyond this river, the British princes of
Damnonia retained their power; and it was long before the
country as far as the Exe became a Saxon March-land, or
border. About the time that the Saxons under Cerdic and Cynric
were successfully warring against the Britons, another colony
was seen to establish itself in the territory or kingdom
which, from its geographical position, obtained the name of
East Saxony; but whereof the district of the Middle Saxons,
now Middlesex, formed a part. London, as you well know, is
locally included in Middle Saxony; and the Kings of Essex, and
the other sovereigns who afterwards acquired the country,
certainly possessed many extensive rights of sovereignty in
the city. Yet, I doubt much whether London was ever
incorporated in any Anglo-Saxon kingdom; and I think we must
view it as a weak, tributary, vassal state, not very well able
to resist the usurpations of the supreme Lord or Suzerain,
Æscwin, or Ercenwine, who was the first King of the East
Saxons (A. D. 527). His son Sleda was married to Ricola,
daughter to Ethelbert of Kent, who afterwards appears as the
superior, or sovereign of the country; and though Sleda was
King, yet Ethelbert joined in all important acts of
government. This was the fate of Essex--it is styled a
kingdom, but it never enjoyed any political independence,
being always subject to the adjoining kings."
F. Palgrave,
History of the Anglo Saxons,
chapter 2.
"The descents of [the West Saxons], Cerdic and Cynric, in 495
at the mouth of the Itchen, and a fresh descent on Portchester
in 501, can have been little more than plunder raids; and
though in 508 a far more serious conflict ended in the fall of
5,000 Britons and their chief, it was not till 514 that the
tribe whose older name seems to have been that of the
Gewissas, but who were to be more widely known as the West
Saxons, actually landed with a view to definite conquest."
J. R. Green,
The Making of England,
chapter 3.
"The greatness of Sussex did not last beyond the days of its
founder Ælle, the first Bretwalda. Whatever importance Essex,
or its offshoot, Middlesex, could claim as containing the
great city of London was of no long duration. We soon find
London fluctuating between the condition of an independent
commonwealth, and that of a dependency of the Mercian Kings.
Very different was the destiny of the third Saxon Kingdom.
Wessex has grown into England, England into Great Britain,
Great Britain into the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom into
the British Empire. Every prince who has ruled England before
and since the eleventh century [the interval of the Danish
kings, Harold, son of Godwine, and William the Conqueror, who
were not of the West Saxon house] has had the blood of Cerdic
the West Saxon in his veins. At the close of the sixth century
Wessex had risen to high importance among the English
Kingdoms, though the days of its permanent supremacy were
still far distant."
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 2, section 1.
{782}
ENGLAND: A. D. 547-633.
The conquests of the Angles.
The founding of their kingdoms.
Northwards of the East Saxons was established the kingdom of
the East Angles, in which a northern and a southern people
(Northfolc and Suthfolc) were distinguished. It is probable
that, even during the last period of the Roman sway, Germans
were settled in this part of Britain; a supposition that gains
probability from several old Saxon sagas, which have reference
to East Anglia at a period anterior to the coming of Hengest
and Horsa. The land of the Gyrwas, containing 1,200 hides ...
comprised the neighbouring marsh districts of Ely and
Huntingdonshire, almost as far as Lincoln. Of the East Angles
Wehwa, or Wewa, or more commonly his son Uffa, or Wuffa, from
whom his race derived their patronymic of Uffings or Wuffings,
is recorded as the first king. The neighbouring states of
Mercia originated in the marsh districts of the Lindisware, or
inhabitants of Lindsey (Lindesig), the northern part of
Lincolnshire. With these were united the Middle Angles. This
kingdom, divided by the Trent into a northern and a southern
portion, gradually extended itself to the borders of Wales.
Among the states which it comprised was the little Kingdom of
the Hwiccas, conterminous with the later diocese of Worcester,
or the counties of Gloucester, Worcester, and a part of
Warwick. This state, together with that of the Hecanas, bore
the common Germanic appellation of the land of the Magesætas.
... The country to the north of the Humber had suffered the
most severely from the inroads of the Picts and Scots. It
became at an early period separated into two British states,
the names of which were retained for some centuries, viz.:
Deifyr (Deora rice), afterwards Latinized into Deira,
extending from the Humber to the Tyne, and Berneich (Beorna
rice), afterwards Bernicia, from the Tyne to the Clyde. Here
also the settlements of the German races appear anterior to
the date given in the common accounts of the first Anglian
kings of those territories, in the middle of the sixth
century."
J. M. Lappenberg,
History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (Thorpe),
volume 1, pages 112-117.
The three Anglian kingdoms of Northumberland, Mercia and East
Anglia, "are altogether much larger than the Saxon and Jutish
Kingdoms, so you see very well why the land was called
'England' and not 'Saxony.' ... 'Saxonia' does occur now and
then, and it was really an older name than 'Anglia,' but it
soon went quite out of use. ... But some say that there were
either Jutes or Saxons in the North of England as soon or
sooner than there were in the south. If so, there is another
reason why the Scotch Celts as well as the Welsh, call us
Saxons. It is not unlikely that there may have been some small
Saxon or Jutish settlements there very early, but the great
Kingdom of Northumberland was certainly founded by Ida the
Angle in 547. It is more likely that there were some Teutonic
settlements there before him, because the Chronicle does not
say of him, as it does of Hengest, Cissa and Cerdie, that he
came into the land by the sea, but only that he began the
Kingdom. ... You must fully understand that in the old times
Northumberland meant the whole land north of the Humber,
reaching as far as the Firth of Forth. It thus takes in part
of what is now Scotland, including the city of Edinburgh, that
is Eadwinesburh, the town of the great Northumbrian King
Eadwine, or Edwin [Edwin of Deira, A. D. 617-633]. ... You
must not forget that Lothian and all that part of Scotland was
part of Northumberland, and that the people there are really
English, and still speak a tongue which has changed less from
the Old-English than the tongue of any other part of England.
And the real Scots, the Gael in the Highlands, call the
Lowland Scots 'Saxons,' just as much as they do the people of
England itself. This Northumbrian Kingdom was one of the
greatest Kingdoms in England, but it was often divided into
two, Beornicia [or Bernicia] and Deira, the latter of which
answered pretty nearly to Yorkshire. The chief city was the
old Roman town of Eboracum, which in Old-English is Eoforwic,
and which we cut short into York. York was for a long time the
greatest town in the North of England. There are now many
others much larger, but York is still the second city in
England in rank, and it gives its chief magistrate the title
of Lord-Mayor, as London· does, while in other cities and
towns the chief magistrate is merely the Mayor, without any
Lord. ... The great Anglian Kingdom of the Mercians, that is
the Marchmen, the people on the march or frontier, seems to
have been the youngest of all, and to have grown up gradually
by joining together several smaller states, including all the
land which the West Saxons had held north of the Thames. Such
little tribes or states were the Lindesfaras and the Gainas in
Lincolnshire, the Magesætas in Herefordshire, the Hwiccas in
Gloucester, Worcester, and part of Warwick, and several
others. ... When Mercia was fully joined under one King, it
made one of the greatest states in England, and some of the
Mercian Kings were very powerful princes. It was chiefly an
Anglian Kingdom; and the Kings were of an Anglian stock, but
among the Hwiccas and in some of the other shires in southern
and western Mercia, most of the people must really have been
Saxons."
E. A. Freeman,
Old English History for Children,
chapter 5.
ENGLAND: A. D. 560.
Ethelbert becomes king of Kent.
ENGLAND: A. D. 593.
Ethelfrith becomes king of Northumbria.
ENGLAND: A. D. 597-685.
The conversion of the English.
"It happened that certain Saxon children were to be sold for
slaves at the marketplace at Rome; when Divine Providence, the
great clock-keeper of time, ordering not only hours, but even
instants (Luke ii. 38), to his own honour, so disposed it,
that Gregory, afterwards first bishop of Rome of that name,
was present to behold them. It grieved the good man to see the
disproportion betwixt the faces and fortunes, the complexions
and conditions, of these children, condemned to a servile
estate, though carrying liberal looks, so legible was
ingenuity in their faces. It added more to his sorrow, when he
conceived that those youths were twice vassals, bought by
their masters, and 'sold under sin' (Romans vii. 14), servants
in their bodies, and slaves in their souls to Satan; which
occasioned the good man to enter into further inquiry with the
merchants (which set them to sale) what they were and whence
they came, according to this ensuing dialogue:
Gregory.--'Whence come these captives?'
Merchants.--'From the isle of Britain.'
Gregory.--'Are those islanders Christians?'
Merchants.--'O no, they are Pagans.'
Gregory.--'It is sad that the author of darkness should
possess men with so bright faces. But what is the name of
their particular nation?'
Merchants.--'They are called Angli.'
Gregory.--'And well may, for their "angel like faces"; it
becometh such to be coheirs with the angels in heaven. In what
province of England did they live?'
Merchants.--'In Deira.'
Gregory.--'They are to be freed de Dei irâ, "from the anger of
God." How call ye the king of that country?'
Merchants.--'Ella.'
Gregory.--'Surely hallelujah ought to be sung in his kingdom
to the praise of that God who created all things.'