An Introduction to the History of Western Europe - James Harvey Robinson

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sense of the word. The king relied for advice and aid, in the performance of his simple duties as ruler, upon a council of the great vassals, prelates, and others about his person. This council was scarcely organized into a regular assembly, and it transacted all the various kinds of governmental business without clearly distinguishing one kind from another. In the reign of Louis IX this assembly began to be divided into three bodies with different functions. There was: first, the king's council to aid him in conducting the general affairs of the kingdom; secondly, a chamber of accounts, a financial body which attended to the revenue; and lastly, the parlement, a supreme court made up of those trained in the law, which was becoming ever more complicated as time went on. Instead, as hitherto, of wandering about with the king, the parlement took up its quarters upon the little island in the Seine at Paris, where the great court-house (Palais de Justice) still stands. A regular system of appeals from the feudal courts to the royal courts was established. This served greatly to increase the king's power in distant parts of his realms. It was decreed further that the royal coins should alone be used in the domains of the king, and that his money should be accepted everywhere else within the kingdom concurrently with that of those of his vassals who had the privilege of coinage.

      Philip the Fair (1285–1314) the first absolute ruler of France.

      The grandson of St. Louis, Philip the Fair, is the first example of a French king who had both the will and the means to play the rôle of an absolute monarch. He had inherited a remarkably well organized government compared with anything that had existed since the time of Charlemagne. He was surrounded by a body of lawyers who had derived their ideas of the powers and rights of a prince from the Roman law. They naturally looked with suspicion upon everything that interfered with the supreme power of the monarch, and encouraged the king to bring the whole government into his own hands regardless of the privileges of his vassals and of the clergy.

      The commons, or third estate, summoned to the Estates General, 1302.

      Philip's attempt to force the clergy to contribute from their wealth to the support of the government led to a remarkable struggle with the pope, of which an account will be given in a later chapter. With the hope of gaining the support of the whole nation in his conflict with the head of the Church, the king summoned a great council of his realm in 1302. He included for the first time the representatives of the towns in addition to the nobles and prelates, whom the king had long been accustomed to consult. At the same period that the French Estates General,[81] or national assembly, was taking form through the addition of representatives of the commons, England was creating its Parliament. The two bodies were, however, to have a very different history, as will become clear later.

      By the sagacious measures that have been mentioned, the French monarchs rescued their realms from feudal disruption and laid the foundation for the most powerful monarchy of western Europe. However, the question of how far the neighboring king across the Channel should extend his power on the continent remained unanswered. The boundary between France and England was not yet definitely determined and became, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the cause of long and disastrous wars, from which France finally emerged victorious. We must now turn back to trace the development of her English rival.[82]

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      Importance of England in the history of western Europe.

      51. The country of western Europe whose history is of greatest interest to English-speaking peoples is, of course, England. From England the United States and the vast English colonies have inherited their language and habits of thought, much of their literature, and many peculiarities of their laws and institutions. In this volume it will not, however, be possible to study England except in so far as it has played a part in the general development of Europe. This it has greatly influenced by its commerce, industry, and colonies, as well as by the example it has set of permitting the people to participate with the king in the government.

      Overlordship of Wessex.

      Invasions of the Danes. Their defeat by Alfred the Great, 871–901.

      The conquest of the island of Britain by the German Angles and Saxons has already been spoken of, as well as the conversion of these pagans to Christianity by the representatives of the Roman Church. The several kingdoms founded by the invaders were brought under the overlordship of the southern kingdom of Wessex[83] by Egbert, a contemporary of Charlemagne. But no sooner had the long-continued invasions of the Germans come to an end and the country been partially unified, than the Northmen (or Danes, as the English called them), who were ravaging France, began to make incursions into England. Before long they had made permanent settlements and conquered a large district north of the Thames. They were defeated, however, in a great battle by Alfred the Great, the first English king of whom we have any satisfactory knowledge. He forced the Danes to accept Christianity and established, as the boundary between them and his own kingdom of Wessex, a line running from London across the island to Chester.

      Alfred fosters the development of the English language.

      Alfred was as much interested in education as Charlemagne had been. He called in learned monks from the continent and from Wales as teachers of the young men. He desired that all those born free, who had the means, should be forced to learn English thoroughly, and that those who proposed to enter the priesthood should learn Latin as well. He himself translated Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and other works from the Latin into English, and doubtless encouraged the composition of the famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the first history written in a modern language.[84]

      England from the death of Alfred the Great to the Norman Conquest, 901–1066.

      The formation of the kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway at the end of the ninth century caused many discontented Scandinavian chieftains to go in search of adventure, so that the Danish invasions continued for more than a century after Alfred's death (901), and we hear much of the Danegeld, a tax levied to buy off the invaders when necessary. Finally a Danish king (Cnut) succeeded in making himself king of England in 1017. The Danish dynasty maintained itself only for a few years. Then a last weak Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, held nominal sway for a score of years. Upon his death in 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, claimed the crown and became king of England. The Norman Conquest closes what is called the Saxon period of English history, during which the English nation may be said to have taken form. Before considering the achievements of William the Conqueror we must glance at the condition of England as he found it.

      

      Great Britain at the accession of William the Conqueror.

      The map of Great Britain at the accession of William the Conqueror has the same three great divisions which exist to-day. The little kingdoms had disappeared and England extended north to the Tweed, which separated it, as it now does, from the kingdom of Scotland. On the west was Wales, inhabited then, as it is still, by descendants of the native Britons, of whom only a small remnant had survived the German invasions. The Danes had been absorbed into the mass of the population and all England recognized a single king. The king's power had increased as time went on, although he was bound to act in important matters only with the consent of a council (Witenagemot) made up of high royal officials, bishops, and nobles. The kingdom was divided into shires,[85] as it still is, and each of these had a local assembly, a sort of parliament for the dispatch of local matters.

      After the victory of the papal party at the Council of Whitby,[86] the Church had been thoroughly organized and the intercourse of the clergy with the continent served, as we have seen, to keep England from becoming completely isolated. Although the island was much behind some other portions of Europe in civilization, the English had succeeded in laying the foundations for the development of a great nation and an admirable form of government.

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