monarchs-from-england

"Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely Tha Cnut Ching rew there by: Roweth, cnihtes, noer the lant, And here we thes muneches saeng."

"Henrico regi Angliæ natus est filius, quem ab Othone legato baptizatum, in honorem gloriosissimi confessoris et regis Edwardi, Edwardum vocavit."

"I restore to you the law of King Edward together with such emendations to it as my father made with the counsel of his barons."

"A son was born to Henry, King of England, whom the ambassador Otto baptized and named Edward in honour of the most glorious confessor and King Edward."

"Know that I have granted, and by this my present charter confirmed, to all my barons and vassals of England all the liberties and good laws which Henry, king of the English, my uncle, granted and conceded to them. I also grant them all the good laws and good customs which they enjoyed in the time of King Edward."

"A halo of tenderness spread in after-time round this last King of the old English stock; legends told of his pious simplicity, his blitheness and gentleness of mood, the holiness that gained him his name of "Confessor" and enshrined him as a saint in his abbey-church at Westminster. Gleemen sang in manlier tones of the long peace and glories of his reign, how warriors and wise councillors stood round his throne, and Welsh and Scot and Briton obeyed him. His was the one figure that stood out bright against the darkness when England lay trodden under foot by Norman conquerors; and so dear became his memory that liberty and independence itself seemed incarnate in his name. Instead of freedom, the subject of William or Henry called for the "good laws of Eadward the Confessor.""

"He was a compassionate Prince, and very tender in taxing his Subjects: He had nothing of Luxury or Excess in his Palate, but was remarkably Temperate at Table. And though he did not decline appearing like a Prince in his Habit, especially upon Collar-Days, yet he was always Bigger than his Equipage, and far from being Proud of the Pomp and Grandeur of his Station. From the Prosperity of his Reign, the Prophetick Spirit, with which he is said to be endow'd, and the Miracles he wrought, we may make this Remark, That God prefers the Heart to the Head; Piety to Parts, and Capacity; and is much better pleas'd with the right use of the Will, than the Advantage of the Understanding."

"That this Prince cur'd the King's Evil, is beyond Dispute: And since the Credit of this Miracle is unquestionable, I see no reason why we should Scruple believing the rest... King Edward the Confessor was the first that cur'd this Distemper, and from him it has descended as an Hereditary Miracle upon all his Successors. To dispute the Matter of Fact, is to go to the Excesses of Scepticism, to deny our Senses, and be incredulous even to Ridiculousness."

"The so-called laws of Eadward are said to have been drawn up from declarations made on oath by twelve men of each shire in 1070; the earliest extant version of them was perhaps compiled by Ranulf Glanvill. Probably in 1070 the Conqueror declared that all should live under Eadward's law, together with such additions as he had made to it, and a like promise was made by Henry I in his charter of 1100. These grants, which should be compared with Cnut's renewal of Eadgar's law, signified that the people should enjoy their national laws and customs, and that English and Normans should dwell together in peace and security."

"Eadward's tomb before the high altar soon became the scene of many miracles. As the last English king of the old royal line he was naturally remembered with feelings of affection, that found expression in acts of devotion and legends of his holiness. Among these legends his vision that the seven sleepers of Ephesus had turned on to their left sides is one of the most famous. Another of greater historical importance, as proving that he practised the custom of episcopal investiture, must be reserved for the life of Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester. He is said to have healed many persons, and especially those suffering from ulcers, by touching them. William of Malmesbury declares that those who knew him while he lived in Normandy said that he performed some miracles of this kind before he came to the throne, and that it was therefore a mistake to assert, as some people then did, that he had this power, not because of his holiness, but in virtue of his hereditary royalty. By the end of the twelfth century it appears to have generally been believed that the kings of England had the gift of healing in virtue of their anointing, and down to the early part of the eighteenth century the power of curing the ‘king's evil’ was held to descend as an ‘hereditary miracle’ upon all the rightful successors of the Confessor."

"Edward appeared to be merely a dissolute young soldier, caring only for fighting and, when fighting was done, for wine, women, and pageantry. Beneath this pleasure-loving exterior (which won him much popularity) was hidden the ruthlessness of a Renaissance despot and the strong-willed ability of a statesman."

"Having learnt of the date [of Henry VIII's coronation], from all directions a vast multitude of persons at once hurried to London to see their monarch in the full bloom of his youth and high birth. For everybody loved him; and their affections were not half-hearted, because the king on his father's side descended from Henry VI and on his mother's from Edward IV. For just as Edward was the most warmly thought of by the English people among all the English kings, so this successor of his, Henry, was very like him in general appearance, in greatness of mind and generosity and for that reason was the more acclaimed and approved of by all."

"On the vigil of this feast [Ascension of our Lord], king Edward entered London in state for the third time, with a retinue far greater than any of his former armies, and with standards unfurled and borne before him and the nobles of his army. Upon this occasion many were struck with surprise and astonishment, seeing that there was now no enemy left for him to encounter. This prudent prince however, fully understanding the fickle disposition of the people of Kent, had come to the resolution that he would not disarm until he had visited those ravagers with condign punishment for their misdeeds at their own doors. For this purpose, he proceeded into Kent with his horse in hostile form; having done which, he returned, a most renowned conqueror and a mighty monarch; whose praises resounded far and wide throughout the land, for having achieved such great exploits with such wondrous expedition and in so short a space of time."

"I establish a firm peace in all my kingdom, and I order that this peace shall henceforth be kept."

"He was certainly a great prince, but enjoyed no great success and, like Marius, met with both kinds of luck. He was generous and liberal to aliens but he plundered his own people. He ignored those who were rightfully his men and placed his trust in strangers. Before his end his people deserted him, and at his end few mourned for him."

"His life was moral, and he seems to have been a good deal under the influence of his clever and accomplished queen. To Dante, who placed him in the valley where they sat who had been careless of the great reward, and yet had not been unfruitful or evil, he was ‘il Re della simplice vita.’ Nevertheless he was inordinately extravagant, and squandered his subjects' money recklessly in gratifying his private tastes and ambitions, and on his foreign relatives and favourites. Utterly un-English in feeling, he loved to be surrounded by foreigners, and had no sympathy with the tendencies of the nation. His religion was rather that of a Roman than an Englishman, and he did not hesitate to injure the national church by conferring bishoprics and other benefices on foreign adventurers, ignorant of the language of the people, and unfit to be their spiritual guides. Though obstinate, he was infirm of purpose, and no dependence could be placed upon him. The union of pertinacity and weakness in his character rendered him irritable. When crossed or in difficulties he had no self-command, although in ordinary circumstances he was not devoid of wit or courtesy of manner. His nobles did not fear or respect him. Faithful service never won his gratitude; he was incapable of valuing his best and wisest counsellors, and was always ready to believe slanders against them. Physically brave, he was morally a coward, easily frightened, and quick to lean on others for support. Shifty and false, he met open opposition with evasion and secret influence, and the most solemn oaths failed to bind him. He had no talent for administration; in affairs of state he was content with a hand-to-mouth policy, and his campaigns were disgracefully mismanaged. Most of his difficulties were of his own making; some part of them, however, arose from the change which was passing over the spirit of the constitution. If he had been a capable king he might have taken advantage of this state of change, and of the party jealousies and struggles which accompanied it, to found a new despotism. As it was his long reign was a period during which the checks placed on the monarchy in his father's days had time to gather strength, so that when he was succeeded by such an able ruler as Edward I all danger that they might be broken up had passed away."

"The awful lesson of his life rests on the fact that it was no weak and indolent voluptuary, but the ablest and most ruthless of the Angevins who lost Normandy, became the vassal of the Pope, and perished in a struggle of despair against English freedom."

"The character of this prince is nothing but a complication of vices, equally mean and odious; ruinous to himself, and destructive to his people. Cowardice, inactivity, folly, levity, licentiousness, ingratitude, treachery, tyranny, and cruelty; all these qualities appear too evidently in the several incidents of his life to give us room to suspect, that the disagreeable picture has been any-wile overcharged by the prejudice of the antient historians. It is hard to say, whether his conduct to his father, his brother, his nephew, or his subjects was most culpable; or whether his crimes in these respects were not even exceeded by the baseness, which appeared in his transactions with the King of France, the Pope, and the barons. His dominions, when they devolved to him by the death of his brother, were more extensive than have, ever since his time, been ruled by any English monarch: But he first lost by his misconduct the flourishing provinces in France, the antient patrimony of his family: He subjected his kingdom to a shameful vassalage under the fee of Rome: He saw the prerogatives of his crown diminished by law, and still more reduced by faction: And he died at last, when in danger of being totally expelled by a foreign power, and of either ending his life miserably in prison, or seeking shelter as a fugitive from the pursuit of his enemies."

"Edward II sat down to the game of kingship with a remarkably poor hand, and he played it very badly."

"In person the new king was almost as striking a man as Edward I. He was tall, handsome, and of exceptional bodily strength... But though well fitted to excel in martial exercises, he never showed any real inclination for a warlike life, or even for the tournament. As soon as he was his own master he avoided fighting as much as he could, and when compelled to take the field his conduct was that of an absolute craven. Lack of earnest purpose blasted his whole character. He had been trained as a warrior, but never became one. He had been drilled in the routine of business, but had only derived from it an absolute incapacity to devote himself to any serious work. His only object in life was to gratify the whim of the moment, reckless of consequences. Much of his folly and levity may be set down to habitual deep drinking. His favourite pastimes were of a curiously unkingly nature. He disliked the society of his equals among the youthful nobility, and, save for a few attached friends, his favourite companions were men of low origin and vulgar tastes... He was also a good athlete, fond of racing and driving, and of the society of watermen and grooms. He was passionately devoted to horses and hounds and their breeding... He was not well educated, and took the coronation oath in the French form, provided for a king ignorant of Latin. He was fond of fine clothes, and with all his taste for low society liked pomp and state on occasions. He had the facile good nature of some thoroughly weak men. Without confidence in himself, and conscious probably of the contempt of his subjects, he was never without some favourite of stronger will than his own for whom he would show a weak and nauseous affection. Sometimes with childlike passion he would personally chastise those who provoked his wrath. He could never keep silence, but disclosed freely even secrets of state. He had no dignity or self-respect."

"Edward I.'s general political outlook was so conservative that his method of choosing his servants differed rather in practice than in theory from that of Henry III. There was, no doubt, all the difference in the world between an orderly mind, loving efficiency and method, and a thriftless, easy-going temperament, desiring chiefly to be surrounded by personal friends and dependents; between the king who was a good Englishman and mainly served by English-born followers, and the king who was surrounded by foreign favourites, both of high and low degree. But father and son shared the same general point of view, the same distrust of the magnates, both in church and state, and the same desire to work through the royal household staff, whose ways were familiar to them through long years of constant intercourse."

"The harshness of the king has today increased so much that no one however great and wise dares to cross his will. Thus parliaments, colloquies, and councils decide nothing these days. For the nobles of the realm, terrified by threats and the penalties inflicted on others, let the king's will have free play. Thus today will conquers reason. For whatever pleases the king, though lacking in reason, has the force of law."

"King Edward kept the following feast of the Nativity at his palace at Westminster, frequently appearing clad in a great variety of most costly garments, of quite a different cut to those which had been usually seen hitherto in our kingdom. The sleeves of the robes were very full and hanging, greatly resembling a monk's frock, and so lined within with most costly furs, and rolled over the shoulders, as to give that prince a new and distinguished air to beholders, he being a person of most elegant appearance and remarkable beyond all others for the attractions of his person. You might have seen, in those days, the royal court presenting no other appearance than such as fully befits a most mighty kingdom, filled with riches and with people of almost all nations, and (a point in which it excelled all others) boasting of those most sweet and beautiful children, the issue of his marriage, which has been previously mentioned, with queen Elizabeth."

"Edward IV was not perhaps quite so bad a man or so bad a king as his enemies have represented: but even those writers who have laboured hardest to rehabilitate him, have failed to discover any conspicuous merits. With great personal courage he may be freely credited; he was moreover eloquent, able, and fairly well educated. He had a definite plan of foreign policy, and although he was both lavish in expenditure and extortionate in procuring money, he was a skilful merchant. He had, or professed to have, some love of justice in the abstract, which led him to enforce the due execution of law where it did not interfere with the fortunes of his favourites or his own likes and dislikes. He was to some extent a favourer of learned men; he made some small benefactions to houses of religion and devotion, and he did not entirely root up the collegiate foundations of his predecessors of the house of Lancaster. But that is all: he was as a man vicious far beyond anything that England had seen since the days of John; and more cruel and bloodthirsty than any king she had ever known: he had too a conspicuous talent for extortion."

"Both these aspects of patronage, the governmental and the social, are of the very greatest importance in the Middle Ages. It would be an exaggeration to say that it was Henry I who made them so; but it was he who first controlled the whole range of government-patronage with which we are later familiar; and it is under him that we can first observe the effects of this patronage at all closely."

"No king of England was ever so unlucky as John. From the moment when France came to the strong hands of Philip II his conquest of Normandy was only a matter of time. Richard staved off its loss by a fierce concentration on its protection and by reckless expenditure on defence and allies; expedients that brought their own unfortunate consequences for John. Barons who resented both fighting and paying to keep their king's continental lands resented the loss of them only when they found to their surprise that it meant the loss of their own lands in France as well as the king's. After that, there was never confidence and trust between the king and his barons. Each felt resentment against the other."

"In considering the other side of the picture it must be remembered that for lack of evidence judgement must be reserved about the blackest charges against John. Nor should present-day standards of morality be used for judgement of only the unsuccessful kings. Nor should any chronicler be believed who is not strictly contemporary, and is not supported by record evidence when he makes extravagant statements about the king's evil deeds, but when all has been said which may lighten the picture of this most enigmatic king, there remains the mistrustful sovereign who binds his subjects to him by taking their sons as hostages for good behaviour, who charges individuals, even his best servants, with an insupportable weight of debt, who forces every debtor to find sufficient sureties to cover the whole obligation so that the sureties themselves become enmeshed, who seems as irresponsible in his occasional pardons as in his impositions; the king whose arbitrary conduct drives his subjects to rebellion."

"He was of middle stature, exceeding the diminutive, but exceeded by the very tall: his hair was black, but scanty near the forehead; his eyes mildly bright; his chest brawny; his body fleshy: he was facetious in proper season, nor did multiplicity of business cause him to be less pleasant when he mixed in society. Not prone to personal combat, he verified the saying of Scipio Africanus, "My mother bore me a commander, not a soldier;" wherefore he was inferior in wisdom to no king of modern time; and, as I may almost say, he clearly surpassed all his predecessors in England, and preferred contending by counsel, rather than by the sword. If he could, he conquered without bloodshed; if it was unavoidable, with as little as possible."

"I would maintain that in politics Henry was not a man of constitutional principle at all but an opportunist and a politique."

"King Henry the Fourth, who was the deposer of King Richard, was the first of all English kings that began the unmerciful burning of Christ’s saints for standing against the pope."

"For John even in the abject humiliation of his end we have no word of pity as we have had none of sympathy. He has deserved none. He has no policy of either aggression or defence. We do not credit him with a deliberate design on the rights of his people, simply because he never showed the consciousness of any rights they had, but took his own evil way in contempt of law, and in a wilful ignoring of dangers he dared not face. He made no plans and grasped at no opportunities. He was persistent only in petty spite and greedy of easy vengeance. He staked everything on the object of the moment and made no effort to avert his ruin until it was consummated. He looked neither before him nor behind him, drew as little from experience as he sacrificed to expediency, or as he utilised the present for the ends of the future. He had not sufficient regard for virtue to make him play the hypocrite, and lost even the little defence that such a cloak gives to kings. He had neither energy, capacity, nor honesty; he availed himself neither of the help of those who had common interests, nor of the errors of those whom he regarded as his enemies. He met honest service with contempt, and the best advice with the treatment due to dangerous conspiracy. He is an exception to the class of men who are well hated only in this, that none even pretended to love him. And as he is without wisdom for himself, he has no care for his people; on them, the weaker and more innocent the better, he wreaks the vengeance, the savage vengeance, that the stronger and less innocent have provoked, as if burning villages and slaying peasants was an enjoyment to be set against defeat in council and disgrace in the field. And now the heart that was obdurate against the sufferings of the people, that had been unmoved by the cries of the tortured as it was inexorable to the prayers of friendship, virtue, and sorrow, is broken by the loss of his treasure. And he who had defied God by word and deed all his life, sought shelter from the terrors with which superstition, not conscience, had inspired him, by being buried in the habit of a monk: a posthumous tribute to religion, which he had believed only to outrage."

""Foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence of John." The terrible verdict of the King's contemporaries has passed into the sober judgment of history. Externally John possessed all the quickness, the vivacity, the cleverness, the good-humour, the social charm which distinguished his house. He was fond of books and learned men, he was the friend of Gerald as he was the student of Pliny. He had a strange gift of attracting friends and of winning the love of women. But in his inner soul John was the worst outcome of the Angevins. He united into one mass of wickedness their insolence, their selfishness, their unbridled lust, their cruelty and tyranny, their shamelessness, their superstition, their cynical indifference to honour or truth."

"A man of tremendous energy, he greatly increased his worldly possessions, and collected a huge treasure-store of precious objects. He claimed for himself alone the hunting rights all over England, and even had the feet of dogs living in the neighbourhood of forests mutilated, only grudgingly allowing a few of his greatest nobles and closest friends the privilege of hunting in their own woods. A diligent investigator, he inquired into everything, and retained all he heard in his tenacious memory. He wished to know all the business of officials and dignitaries; and, since he was an assiduous ruler, kept an eye on the many happenings in England and Normandy. He was thoroughly familiar with all secrets and things done surreptitiously, so that their perpetrators could not imagine how the king could be aware of their most secret plots. After a thorough study of past histories, I confidently assert that no king in the English realm was ever more richly or powerfully equipped than Henry in everything that contributes to worldly glory."

"[H]e seems to us a man whose life was embittered by the knowledge that he had taken on himself a task for which he was unequal, whose conscience, ill-informed as it may have been, had soured him, and who felt that the judgments of men, at least, would deal hardly with him when he was dead."

"I restore to you the law of King Edward together with such emendations to it as my father made with the counsel of his barons."

"Kingdoms are but cares; State is devoid of stay; Riches are ready snares, And hasten to decay. Pleasure is a privy prick Which vice doth still provoke; Pomp, unprompt; and fame, a flame; Power, a smold'ring smoke. Who meaneth to remove the rock Out of the slimy mud Shall mire himself, and hardly 'scape The swelling of the flood."

"What afflicts the church and excites the murmur of the people and diminishes their esteem for you, is that, in spite of the tears and lamentations of whole provinces, you have not sent a single nuncio. Often for matters of little importance your cardinals have been sent to remote parts with sovereign powers, but in this desperate and deplorable affair, you have not sent so much as a single subdeacon or even an acolyte. The kings and princes of the earth have conspired against my son, the anointed of the Lord. One keeps him in chains while another ravages his lands; one holds him by the heels while the other flays him. And while this goes on, the sword of Saint Peter reposes in its scabbard. Three times you have promised to send legates and they have not been sent. In fact, they have rather been leashed than sent [potius ligati quam legati]. If my son were in prosperity, we should have seen them running at his call, for they well know the munificence of his recompense. Is this the meaning of your promises to me at Châteauroux, made with so many protestations of friend-ship and good faith? Alas! I know today that the promises of your cardinals are nothing but vain words. Trees are not known by their leaves, nor even by their blossoms, but by their fruits. In this wise we have known your cardinals."

"My posterity has been snatched from me...The young king and the Count of Britanny sleep in dust. Their unhappy mother is forced to live on, ceaselessly tormented by their memory...I have lost the staff of my age, the light of my eyes."

"Femina consilio prudens, pia, prole beata, Auxit amicitiis, auxit honore virum."

"Stephen (by the grace of God), king of the English, to the justices, sheriffs, barons, and all his servants and liegemen, both French and English, greeting. Know that I have granted, and by this my present charter confirmed, to all my barons and vassals of England all the liberties and good laws which Henry, king of the English, my uncle, granted and conceded to them. I also grant them all the good laws and good customs which they enjoyed in the time of King Edward. Wherefore I will and firmly command that both they and their heirs shall have and hold all these good laws and liberties from me and my heirs freely, fully and in peace. And I forbid anyone to molest or hinder them, or to cause them loss or damage in respect of these things under pain of forfeiture to me."

"King Stephen was a worthy peer; His breeches cost him but a crown; He held them sixpence all too dear, Therefore he called the tailor ‘lown.’ He was a king and wore the crown, And thou’se but of a low degree: It’s pride that puts this country down: Man, take thy old cloak about thee!"

"To the gate of the fair White City Comes the charcoal burner's wain; It brings no hart for abbot's board, It bears the royal slain."

"By the Holy Face of Lucca."

"God shall never see me a good man. I have suffered too much from him."

"Go, bid the vassals saddle The steed at Mons I rode; By the holy cross at Lucca, 'Tis the best I e'er bestrode."

"When the traitors understood that he was a mild man, and gentle and good, and did not exact the full penalties of the law, they perpetrated every enormity. They had done him homage, and sworn oaths, but they kept no pledge; all of them were perjured and their pledges nullified, for every powerful man built his castles and held them against him and they filled the country full of castles."

"He knows nothing about crimes, or else he weighs them in unjust balances."

"Although he was daily set amidst a host of faces, he never again forgot anyone whom he had once closely scrutinized. Anything he had once heard worthy of remembrance he could never obliterate from his mind. So he had at his fingers' end both a ready knowledge of nearly the whole of history and also practical experience of almost everything in daily affairs. To compress much in a few words, if he had to the very end remained a chosen vessel to the Lord and had turned himself to his obedience, he would have been beyond comparison among the princes of this world for his many natural gifts."

"He was a man easy of access and condescending, pliant and witty, second to none in politeness, whatever thoughts he might counsel within himself; a prince so remarkable for charity that as often he overcame by force of arms, he was himself vanquished through showing too great compassion. Strenuous in warfare, he was very prudent in civil life. But always he dreaded the doubtful arbitrament of war, and with supreme wisdom, in accordance with the ancient comic poet, he essayed every method before resorting to arms. For those lost in battle he grieved more than any prince, and was more humane to the dead warrior than to him who survived; the dead indeed he mourned with a grief far greater than the love he bore the living. When difficulties pressed hard upon him, none was more amicable, but none sterner once safety was regained. He was fierce towards those who remained untamed, but merciful to the vanquished, harsh to his servants, expansive towards strangers, prodigal in public, thrifty in private. Whom he had once hated he scarcely ever loved, but whom he had once loved he scarcely ever called to mind with hatred."

"He was a link in the chain of great men by whom, through good and evil, the English nation was drawn on to constitutional government. He was the man the time required. It was a critical time, and his actions and policy determined the crisis in a favourable way. He stands with Alfred, Canute, William the Conqueror, and Edward I., one of the conscious creators of English greatness. His reign was the period of amalgamation, the union of the different elements existing in the country, which, whether it be looked on as chemical or mechanical, produced the national character and the national institutions."