Historians From England

"The atmosphere in literature and art, in novels and dramas, in newspapers and reviews is not only no longer Christian, but is largely anti-Christian, even on the ethical side. If you think of some of the names most honored of late, Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Mr. Arnold Bennett, Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. H. G. Wells, or Mr. Henry James, none of them can be called Christian ..."

"Apart from the Christian hope, we are in a state of chaos, only the more appalling that it seems to be hardly realised. The chaos is all the greater that it applies not only to fundamental doctrines, but to practical ideals."

"Perhaps not many now read Tancred. ... Yet that book is far more than mere romance. It is evidence of the dissatisfaction with modern civilisation ..."

"Physical science is indeed valued, but mainly because it is hoped to increase the chances of money-making. Take the Western world through, and what unity can you find either in religion or thought or practical ideals except the desire for riches? I think I am not exaggerating."

"How far can the new wine of modern knowledge and changed ways of thought be poured into the old bottles of traditional religion?"

"We cannot overestimate the change in men's minds required to produce the ideal of heterogeneity in religion within one State. ... In the Middle Ages politics was a branch of Theology, with whatever admixture derived from Aristotle and the Civil Law. Its basis was theocratic. Machiavelli represents the antithesis of this view, discarding ethical and rural as well as theological Criteria of State action."

"The object of Grotius was not to make men perfect or treat them as such, but to see whether there were not certain common duties generally felt as binding, if not always practised, and to set forth an ideal."

"From one point of view we might assert the the Middle Ages ended with the visit of Nogaret to Anagni, and from another it might be said to end only when the troops of Victor Emmanuel entered Rome and the Lord of the world became the prisoner of the Vatican, and of course it ended at different times in different places. Hence arises the extreme difficulty of disentangling the conflicting tendencies and complex political combination of our period."

"The test of a civilisation is in its characteristic culture and in the type of men and women who thrive best in it."

"... I do not conceive the scientific or mathematical temperament as in any way final. Large elements of life, the artistic, the social, the personal, it cannot handle, and when it tries to do so it is apt to come to grief, and this quite apart from religion."

"History is so important. It explores and tells us who we are. We should be doing more of it as a country, not less."

"We have some of the greatest photographs of all time cemented in our [the United Kingdom's] national identity, but we don't have the whole picture. Our understanding of history and the country is shaped by the images the survive."

"I've heard people say, ‘Well, history is protected at the top Russell Group universities’. But that is a really dangerous route to go down. Are we saying that if people don’t get 3As, they don’t deserve to do history? It should be a degree that is open to all, and that means it must be available to those who want to study locally. Otherwise we might as well be going back to the Victorian period when this sort of university education was only for elite men."

"In a history book, you can't imagine, you can't speculate, you can't conjure new worlds because that would ruin the history book. .... And in a novel you can't have too much fact-dumping, too much history, it just doesn't work, too much footnoting, again that ruins the story. So I love the fact that I can do speculation and imagination in one and go wild in a novel and then do proper, scrupulous research in the other. I think they compliment each other."

"Large families were really in fashion [in Victorian England], they were seen as a status symbol, they were seen as an example of how the man was very virile. The reality was that, like Victoria, people were pregnant repeatedly. Every three months or so they might fall pregnant, so the average woman was pretty much pregnant or about to be pregnant for most of her early married life."

"A country with a sense of purpose should encourage free speech and debate, but instead we have a Conservative whip on a strange mission to audit university teaching on Brexit. Pretty McCarthyite. And on the other side, confusion about who should and shouldn't be allowed to speak. We should nurture great minds of the future, not tunnel their vision."

"We are all of us accustomed to exaggerate the successes and magnify the prospects of the cause we favor. It is a habit arising mainly from a desire to convert others to our way of thinking, and since by far the largest part of mankind not only submit to the accomplished fact as soon as it is recognised, but accept it as satifactory, we are tempted to resort to this method of conversion as the most potent and expeditious. In proportion, however, as the prestige created is ill-founded, it is sure to be followed by discouragement and reaction. A cause which has solid elements of strength, is best served in the long run by unexaggerated estimates of its past, and sober forecasts of its future."

"In an English court of justice every effort is made to narrow down the discussion to a simple issue of fact. Every irrelevant allegation on either side is jealously excluded by the presiding judge. Usage and public opinion prescribe a course to the jury from which they cannot deviate; though even in England, on political trials, the animus of jurymen leads them sometimes to disregard the evidence. But at Rome, a State trial, though technically relating to a specified act, virtually dealt with the whole life of the accused. Nor was this all. The jury looked on it as their duty to take into consideration other circumstances which we should deem still more foreign to the question. Among these notoriously was the political bearing their verdict would have. A Roman jury never forgot that it was in some sort a committee of the Legislative Assembly."

"The government, worship, and doctrine of the Established Church are the most abiding works left by Elizabeth on the national life of England. Logically it might have been expected that the settlement of doctrine would precede that of government and worship. It is characteristic of a State Church that the inverse order should have been followed. For the Queen the most important question was Church government; for the people, worship."

"Art seems to differ from other manifestations of human energy in welcolming so frankly the evidences of personality. Culture and progress alike deprecate aggressive individual prominence. The cherished ideal of the religious-minded is the effacement of self. The philosophical ideal is the entire and perfect accomodation of impulses and actions to the general well-being. But art not only welcomes the evidence of personal initiative; it demands as one of its first necessities copious and consistent proofs of individuality."

"It would be hard to find a stranger instance of the irony of fate in all the history of the world. After being the idol of musical Europe when a mere child, Mozart had fulfilled in maturity all the promise of his early years. But as his powers rose to nobler heights his worldly prosperity seemed to decrease. As years went on poverty pressed harder and harder on him."

"Methods of art are the product of the patient labour of generations."

"My main job as a curator is to try to get people interested in history, to visit our palaces, to enjoy themselves, and to learn something, too. I try to do the same with my books, to entertain as well as to inform."

"Lots of historians are sniffy about re-enactors. I remember meeting someone very grand while I was making the programme who said: "Oh, I see you are going over to the dark side." I have suffered from that thinking, too, that the documents we should be using are from archives and libraries. But you can learn a lot by recreating stuff."

"[The Annales] is a work whose subtlety many modern historians would envy, and whose total picture of ‘The Elizabethan Age’, in war, trade, exploration and the arts, has fixed our concept of the reign right down to the present day; in fact, it was Camden who first viewed the later sixteenth century as a great explosion of the national genius, controlled and orchestrated by the great queen."

"Cambden the nourice of antiquitie, And lanterne unto late succeeding age"

"It is thanks to Camden that we ascribe to Queen Elizabeth a consistent policy of via media rather than an inconsequent series of unresolved conflicts and paralysed indecisions."

"The character of Queen Elizabeth as it emerged in the pages of Camden's history was that of a moderate who ruled her heart with her head, and who sought the good of her country above all other felicities. Camden admired Elizabeth's prudence, respected her judgment, and never underestimated the responsibility that she ultimately bore for the security and prosperity of England. The likeness of Camden's portrait of Elizabeth has, in general, been borne out by modern historical research. Camden never doubted Elizabeth's greatness. And although he was sympathetic, he was not adulatory; some practices he condoned as necessary, but without approving them. Many later historians have drawn on Camden's account of Elizabeth. Few have shown themselves superior to Camden in good judgment, impartiality, and respect for truth."

"[My aim is] to restore Britain to its Antiquities, and its Antiquities to Britain, to renew the memory of what was old, illustrate what was obscure, and settle what was doubtful, and to recover some certainty in our affairs."

"David Cathcart King is well known to all students of the castle: the stocky figure with a slightly aggressive manner, a regular attender for over forty years at the outings of the Cambrians and at one time its President, the lister of Welsh castle with Dr Hogg and of ringworks with Professor Alcock, and compiler of the invaluable list of castles in England and Wales, Castellarium Anglicanum"

"At this Oudee or Oujea (a citty in Bengala & felicitated by Ganges) are many Antick Monuments, especially memorable is the pretty old castle Ranichand built by a Bannyan Pagod of that name about 994500 yeares ago after their accompt, from which to this the Bannyans have repayred to offer here and to wash away their sinnes in Ganges, each of which is recorded by name by the laborious Bramyns who acquaintes this Pagod with their good progressions and charitable offerings. (p. 92) Ducerat, who begat Ram, a King so famous for piety and high attempts, that to this day his name is exceedingly honoured, so that when they say Ram Rame, 'tis as if they should say, all good betide you. (p. 47)"

"In fact, Ram, or Rãma, was the sovereign of Ayodhya, or Audh, a city in the most ancient times of wonderful extent and magnificence, as may be inferred from the present Lucnow’s having been, according to the Brahmin accounts, only a lodge for one of its gates; that he is celebrated as a conqueror of the highest renown, and the deliverer of nations from tyrants, as well as of his consort Sita, from the giant Ravan, king of Lanca; that he was commander-in-chief of a numerous and intrepid race of those large monkeys, which some of our naturalists have denominated Indian satyrs; that the name of his general was Hanumat, the prince of satyrs; and that, by the wonderful activity of such an army, a bridge of rocks was raised over the sea, a part of which the Hindoos suppose still to remain; and he thinks it is probably that series of rocks, which, by Mussulmen and Portuguese, is mistakenly called Adam’s, for it should be Rama’s, bridge. “Might not,” subjoins Sir William, “this army of satyrs have been only a race of mountaineers, whom Rama, if such a monarch ever existed, had civilized."

"Naturally, such drastic innovations were bitterly opposed by other segments of the intelligentsia. For well over a millennium, much of Europe had accepted the Old Tes- tament as an infallible testament documenting the history of the human race. Thomas Maurice, for example, complained bitterly in 1812 about "the daring assumptions of certain skeptical French philosophers with respect to the Age of the World . . . argu- ments principally founded on the high assumptions of the Brahmins . . . [which] have a direct tendency to overturn the Mosaic system, and, with it, Christianity." Such schol- ars were greatly relieved by "the fortunate arrival o f . . . the various dissertations, on the subject, of Sir William Jones" (22-23)."

""arguments principally founded on the high assumptions of the Brah- mins . . . could their extravagant claims be substantiated, have a direct tendency to over- turn the Mosaic system, and, with it, Christianity" (Maurice [1812] 1984, 22-23)."

"He was essentially Teutonic in his whole personality, physical, as well as moral and mental; in his square sturdy frame, his ruddy hair, his fair complexion, his plain and simple habits of life, no less than in his love of truth, and straightforwardness in deed and word. For the pure Celt he entertained a kind of natural antipathy, mingled with something like contempt, which often manifested itself in odd and amusing ways, suggestive of Dr. Johnson's attitude towards the Scotch."

"Freeman maintained that his practical acquaintance with various forms of local government, gave him an advantage over the mere student in understanding the practical politics of past times. It was one way in which he realized the truth of his favourite dictum that history was past politics, and that politics were present history."

"See, ladling butter from alternate tubs Stubbs butters Freeman, Freeman butters Stubbs."

"His Historical Geography has been for years the stumbling-block between us, as I had told him openly that I did not find much geography in the book, but rather a mess that had been made especially on German matters and a vague predilection for Slav and other barbarian stepchildren of his. I rather expect that William Rufus is more in his line, though radicalism and republicanism will continue to peep through the monarchical constellations of the twelfth century."

"Mr. Freeman, like the Bourbons, never learnt, and never forgot. A democrat first, an historian afterwards, History was for him, unhappily, ever "past politics." If he worshipped Harold with a blind enthusiasm, it was chiefly because he was a novus homo, "who reigned purely by the will of the people." He insisted that the English, on the hill of battle, were beaten through lack of discipline, through lack of obedience to their king; but he could not see that the system in which he gloried, a system which made the people "a co-ordinate authority" with their king, was the worst of all trainings for the hour of battle; he could not see that, like Poland, England fell, in large measure, from the want of a strong rule, and from excess of liberty. To him the voice of "a sovereign people" was "the most spirit-stirring of earthly sounds;" but it availed about as much to check the Norman Conquest as the fetish of an African savage, or the yells of Asiatic hordes."

"[I]t may be doubted whether any work of comparable importance in English historical literature has ever been more easy to criticize than Freeman's Norman Conquest. It was in Green's phrase "far too rhetorical and diffuse", and yet despite its excessive length, it concentrated too exclusively upon strictly political events. Nor was the treatment of the authorities itself comprehensive, so that a generation which has been taught to value the record sources of history, and which pays perhaps even an excessive reverence to material which has not yet been printed, is inevitably sceptical of an historian who neglected records, who misinterpreted Domesday Book, and who positively boasted his contempt for manuscripts. Freeman was, in fact, more erudite than critical, and even the narrative sources which were the sure foundation of his work were sometimes by him mishandled. Generally, as J. R. Green remarked, he tended to be unjust to the Norman writers, but otherwise he often gives the impression of giving equal credence to all his authorities and of blending together their contradictory accounts into an unreal synthesis. In this way his account of the crisis of 1051–2 is, for instance, incomprehensibly confused. It must, moreover, be added that, having made up his mind, he could show most obstinate bias towards his sources, selecting only those which could best illustrate his point of view... Freeman's Norman Conquest was, in short, magisterial without being definitive."

"What was really uncommon in Freeman was the...entire absence of any pretence of caring for things which he did not really care for. He was in this, as in all other matters, a singularly simple and truthful man, never seeking to appear other than as he was, and finding it hard to understand why other people should not be equally simple and direct. This directness made him express himself with an absence of reserve which sometimes gave offence; and the restriction of his interest to a few topics—wide ones, to be sure—seemed to increase the intensity of his devotion to those few."

"One can speak of Freeman as forming a view of English history based on his political prejudices; it would be at least equally justifiable and perhaps more accurate to speak of his forming political prejudices based on his view of English history. For The Norman Conquest was certainly not, as Round's criticism may be taken to imply, written primarily to support a political case. Freeman's Teutonic racialism, his liberal-democratic bias, and his general view of early English history were inextricably entangled to form a general view of the world. The Norman Conquest was the precipitate of the enthusiasms, obsessions, and prejudices of a lifetime... [I]t would be truer to say that Freeman admired Gladstone because he admired Harold than, as Round insinuates, vice versa."

"At Trieste I saw Burton. ... I remember him, thirty-five years ago, the wildest-looking creature; now he is shorn and looks quite respectable. He has killed more men than most people; but they were mainly Turks."

"I believe I hate the British army more than any institution in being. My loathing for it is in exact proportion to my admiration for the men who fought at Senlac and Muratovizza. Forwhy, if you have conscription or landwehr, a man simply obeys the law; if the war is unjust, it is simply like obeying or enforcing any bad law. ... The fault rests not with him, but with those who send him. But in our army every man, officer and private, is there by his own choice. He is not consulted about that particular war; but he chose the man-slaying trade, when he might have chosen some other; so he is, what the conscript or landwehr man is not, responsible for being there. I grant that this is rather ideal; and, as circumstances go I don't rate the responsibility very high, if they only keep quiet. But when they came back, strutting and swaggering, talking as if they had done something to be proud of instead of ashamed, I hold that they made themselves accomplices with the Jew in the murther of the Zulus. ... I don't value skill or bravery, any more than height, strength, or beauty, unless they are used to a good purpose."

"This would be a grand land if only every Irishman would kill a negro, and be hanged for it."

"But we are told that English interests demand it; that our dominion in India will be imperilled, that the civilized world will crumble into atoms, if a Russian ship should be seen in the Mediterranean Sea. If it be so, then I say, perish the interests of England, perish our dominion in India, rather than that we should strike a blow or speak a word on behalf of the wrong against the right."

"As far at least as our race is concerned, freedom is everywhere older than bondage; we may add that toleration is older than intolerance. Our ancient history is the possession of the Liberal, who, as being ever ready to reform, is the true Conservative, not of the self-styled Conservative who, by refusing to reform, does all he can to bring on destruction."

"Now the position for which I have always striven is this, that history is past politics, that politics are present history. The true subject of history, of any history that deserves the name, is man in his political capacity, man as the member of an organized society, governed according to law."

"That Mahometanism is essentially an obstructive, intolerant system, supplying just sufficient good to stand in the way of greater good. It has consecrated despotism; it has consecrated polygamy; it has consecrated slavery. It has declared war against every other creed; it has claimed to be at least dominant in every land. And in one sense it has rightly so claimed. So long as a Mahometan nation is dominant and conquering, so long is it great and glorious after its own standard. When it ceases to have an enemy to contend against, it sinks into sluggish stupidity and into a barbarism far viler than that of the conquerors who raised it to greatness. It must have an enemy; if cut off, like Persia, from conflict with the infidel, it finds its substitute in sectarian hatred of brother Moslems. Islam has founded mighty empires, it has reared splendid palaces, it has accumulated libraries of countless volumes. But it has done nothing for man in his highest earthly capacity, as the citizen of a free state; it has done nothing for the higher even of his purely speculative faculties. By slightly reforming, it has perpetuated and sanctified all the evils of the eastern world. It has, by its aggressive tenets, brought them into more direct antagonism with the creed and civilization of the west. A system, originally the greatest of reforms in its own age and country, has proved the curse and scourge of the world for twelve hundred years."

"It is not too much to say that Mommsen has no notion whatever of right and wrong. It is not so much that he applauds wrong actions, as that he does not seem to know that right and wrong have anything to do with the matter. No one has set forth more clearly than Mommsen the various stages of the process by which Rome gradually reduced the states round the Mediterranean to a state of dependence—what he, by one of the quasi-technicalities of which we complain, calls a state of clientship. It is, for clear insight into the matter, one of the best parts of the book. But almost every page is disfigured by the writer's unblushing idolatry of mere force. He cannot understand that a small state can have any rights against a great one, or that a patriot in such a state can be anything but a fool."