The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE

History of England

James Anthony Froude was born at Darlington, England, April 23, 1818, and died on Oct. 20, 1894. He was educated at Westminster, and Oriel College, Oxford. Taking Holy Orders, he was, for a time, deeply influenced by Newman and the Tractarian movement, but soon underwent the radical revolution of thought revealed by his first treatise, the "Nemesis of Faith," which appeared in 1849, and created a sensation. Its tendency to skepticism cost him his fellowship, but its profound pathos, its accent of tenderness, and its fervour excited wide admiration. Permanent fame was secured by the appearance, in 1856, of the first two instalments of his magnificent work, "The History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada," the last volume appearing in 1870. This treatise on the middle Tudor period is one of the most fascinating historical treatises in the whole range of literature. It is written in a vivid and graphic prose, and with rare command of the art of picturesque description. Froude never accepted the doctrine that history should be treated as a science; rather he claimed that the historian should concern himself with the dramatic aspect of the period about which he writes. The student may disagree with many of Froude's points of view and portraitures, yet his men and women breathe with the life he endows them, and their motives are actuated by the forces he sets in motion. Of his voluminous works perhaps the most notable, with the exception of the "History," are his "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," 1871-74, and his "Short Studies on Great Subjects," the latter aptly exhibiting Froude's gifts of masterful prose and glittering paradox.

I.--The Condition of England

In periods like the present, when knowledge is every day extending, and the habits and thoughts of mankind are perpetually changing under the influence of new discoveries, it is no easy matter to throw ourselves back into a time in which for centuries the European world grew upon a single type, in which the forms of the father's thoughts were the forms of the son's, and the late descendant was occupied in treading into paths the footprints of his ancestors.

So absolutely has change become the law of our present condition, that to cease to change is to lose place in the great race. Looking back over history, we see times of change and progress alternating with other times when life and thought have settled into permanent forms. Such was the condition of the Greeks through many ages before the Persian wars, and such, again, became the condition of Europe when the Northern nations grafted religion and the laws of the Western empire on their own hardy natures.

A condition of things differing alike both inwardly and outwardly from that into which a happier fortune has introduced ourselves, is necessarily obscure to us. In the alteration of our own characters we have lost the key which would interpret the characters of our fathers. But some broad conclusions as to what they were are, however, at least possible to us. A rough census taken at the time of the Armada shows that it was something under five millions.

The feudal system, though practically modified, was still the organising principle of the nation, and the owner of land was bound to military service at home whenever occasion required. All land was held upon a strictly military principle. The state of the working classes can best be determined by a comparison of their wages with the price of food. Both were as far as possible regulated by Act of Parliament. Wheat in the fourteenth century averaged 10d. the bushel; beef and pork were 1/2d. a pound; mutton was 3/4d. The best pig or goose could be bought for 4d.; a good capon for 3d.; a chicken for 1d.; a hen for 2d. Strong-beer, which now costs 1s. 6d. a gallon, was then a 1d. a gallon, and table beer was less than 1/2d.

A penny at the time of which we write must have been nearly equal in the reign of Henry VIII. to the present shilling. For a penny the labourer could buy as much bread, beef, beer, and wine as the labourer of to-day can for a shilling. Turning then to the question of wages, by the 3d of the 6th of Henry VIII., it was enacted that the master, carpenters, masons, bricklayers, tilers, plumbers, glaziers, joiners, and others, employers of skilled workmen should give to each of their journeymen, if no meat and drink was allowed, sixpence a day for the half year, fivepence a day for the other half; or fivepence-half penny for the yearly average. The common labourers were to receive fourpence a day for the half year; for the remaining half, threepence.