Monarchs From England

"[T]he Flourishing of Trade, the Supporting of Credit, and the Quiet of Peoples Minds at home, will depend upon the Opinion they have of their Security; and to preserve to England the Weight and Influence it has at present on the Councils and Affairs Abroad, it will be requisite Europe should see you will not be wanting to your selves."

"The Owning and Setting up the Pretended Prince of Wales for King of England, is not only the highest Indignity offered to Me and the whole Nation, but does so nearly concern every Man, who has a Regard for the Protestant Religion, or the present and future Quiet and Happiness of your Country, that I need not Press you to lay it seriously to Heart, and to consider what further effectual Means may be used for securing the Succession of the Crown in the Protestant Line, and Extinguishing the Hopes of all Pretenders, and their open or Secret Abettors."

"By the French King's placing his Grandson on the Throne of Spain, he is in a Condition to oppress the rest of Europe, unless speedy and effectual Measures be taken. Under this pretence, he is become the real Master of the whole Spanish Monarchy; he has made it to be entirely depending on France, and disposes of it as of his own Dominions, and by that means he has surrounded his Neighbours in such a manner, that though the Name of Peace may be said to continue, yet they are put to the Expence and Inconveniences of War. This must affect England in the nearest and most sensible Manner, in respect to our Trade, which will soon become precarious in all the valuable Branches of it; in respect to our Peace and Safety at Home, which we cannot hope should long continue; and in respect to that part which England ought to take in the Preservation of the Liberty of Europe."

"It is fit I should tell you, the Eyes of all Europe are upon this Parliament, all Matters are at a stand till your Resolutions are known, and therefore no Time ought to be lost. You have yet an opportunity, by God's Blessing, to secure to you and your Posterity the quiet Enjoyment of your Religion and Liberties, if you are not wanting to your selves, but will exert the Ancient Vigor of the English Nation: But I tell you plainly My Opinion is, If you do not lay hold on this Occasion, you have no Reason to hope for another."

"Let Me conjure you to disappoint the only Hopes of Our Enemies, by your Unanimity. I have shewn, and will always shew, how desirous I am to be the Common Father of all My People: Do you in like manner lay aside Parties and Divisions; Let there be no other Distinction heard of among Us for the future, but of those who are for the Protestant Religion and the present Establishment, and of those who mean a Popish Prince and a French Government. I will only add this, If you do in good earnest desire to see England hold the Balance of Europe, and to be indeed at the Head of the Protestant Interest, it will appear by your right improving the present Opportunity."

"Can this last long?"

"De Witt's administration coincided with the greatest period of prosperity and the greatest cultural and artistic achievements of Dutch history. Later, looking back in less prosperous times to this golden age, men tended to blame William III for beginning the decline of the Republic. But William did not inherit a golden age. He inherited the Water Line, a defeated army, a country half occupied and more than half beaten. That William's age was less prosperous than de Witt's is at least partially the Pensionary's fault. That the Republic survived at all, that time was given for it to have a silver age if not another golden one, is due very largely to the Prince."

"By saving the Republic from the French he had become a real hero. He was still very young, not yet twenty-four. Yet no one could think of treating him as his father had been treated. For the rest of his life, no matter how bitterly he became involved in party politics, no matter what mistakes he seemed to make, his enemies had to treat him with respect. He was the Redeemer of the Fatherland. He had a claim on the gratitude of his people which could never be repaid."

"It is to William III that the Dutch Republic owed her survival, when the mistakes of de Witt had made survival extremely unlikely... Obviously enough, William III was the Deliverer of England from the tyranny and arbitrary government of the Stuarts, as he was the Deliverer of Europe from the tyranny of Louis XIV. But in England he was more than this. He repaired and improved an obsolete system of government, and left it strong enough to withstand the stresses of the next century virtually unchanged. The army of Marlborough, and that of Wellington, and to a large extent that of Raglan, was the creation of William III. So too was the independence of the judiciary."

"The steps which were taken, at that time, to compose, to reconcile, to unite, and to discipline all Europe against the growth of France, certainly furnish to a statesman the finest and most interesting part in the history of that great period. It formed the master-piece of King William's policy, dexterity, and perseverance. Full of the idea of preserving, not only a local civil liberty, united with order, to our country, but to embody it in the political liberty, the order, and the independence of nations united under a natural head, the King called upon his Parliament to put itself into a posture to preserve to England the weight and influence it at present had on the counsels and affairs ABROAD. "It will be requisite Europe should see you will not be wanting to yourselves.""

"He persevered to expel the fears of his people, by his fortitude; to steady their fickleness, by his constancy; to expand their narrow prudence, by his enlarged wisdom; to sink their factious temper in his public spirit. In spite of his people, he resolved to make them great and glorious; to make England, inclined to shrink into her narrow self, the Arbitress of Europe, the tutelary Angel of the human race. In spite of the Ministers, who staggered under the weight that his mind imposed upon theirs, unsupported as they felt themselves by the popular spirit, he infused into them his own soul; he renewed in them their ancient heart; he rallied them in the same cause."

"I considered him as a person raised up by God to resist the power of France, and the progress of tyranny and persecution: the series of the five princes of Orange, that was now ended in him, was the noblest succession of heroes that we find in any history: and the thirty years, from the year 1672 to his death, in which he acted so great a part, carry in them so many amazing steps of a glorious and distinguishing providence, that in the words of David he may be called, the man of God's right hand, whom he made strong for himself: after all the abatements that may be allowed for his errors and faults, he ought still to be reckoned among the greatest princes that our history, or indeed that any other, can afford."

"King William was a brave and warlike king: he would have been glad of more power than he ought to have; but his parliaments kept him within due bounds against his will. To the Revolution we again owe our liberties."

"James II's replacement by William III in February 1689 was one of the most decisive changes of monarch in England since the coming of the first William in 1066. Even on a personal level the change was dramatic. James II had been devotedly Catholic, blinkered and narrowly English in outlook. He was hostile to the pretensions of parliament, impatient of the restrictions that the law imposed on his powers. William, though James's nephew by blood, was anything but English in most ways. While he indulged his wife's Anglicanism, his personal sympathies lay with the starkly un-English Calvinism of the Dutch Reformed Church. His favourite friends were as foreign as his accent. His intelligence was acute and his tastes cosmopolitan. His political preoccupations were European, far removed from the average Englishman's insularity. He had no great love of representative institutions, but had learned to live with them in the United Provinces and accepted that he must do so in England."

"Despite the considerable opposition he faced, William achieved much as King. He retained the crown; guided the nation through a protracted war; established Britain as central to the anti-French alliance; committed the nation to the Hanoverian succession; oversaw the transformation of public finances; altered the relationship between Church and State; and worked with Parliament. This last point distinguished him from Charles II and James II. They preferred to use the legislature only occasionally, managing to reign without it for long periods. William had no such choice. And though he was not always able to get his way—witness his failures over triennial parliaments and Irish estates—he was able to avoid a fundamental breakdown in relations between Crown and Parliament. That was not easy, for he was a foreign invader who spent vast amounts of English tax revenues abroad. Fundamental to his success was his Protestantism and his appreciation of the need to rule through Parliament via English ministers. These were no small matters, for James had failed on both counts. Moreover, as time passed, William was able to tie more and more of the political nation to his regime."

"To have been a Sovereign, yet the champion of liberty,—a revolutionary leader, yet the supporter of social order, is the peculiar glory of William. Till his accession the British Constitution was in its Chaos. It had contained, from a very remote period, the simple elements of an harmonious government. But they were in a state not of amalgamation, but of conflict,—not of equilibrium but of alternate elevation and depression. The tyranny of Charles the first produced civil war and anarchy. Tyranny had now again produced resistance and revolution. And, but for the wisdom of the new King, it seems probable that the same cycle of misery would have been again described."

"But William knew where to pause. He outraged no national prejudice. He abolished no ancient form. He altered no venerable name. He saw that the existing institutions, possessed of the greatest capabilities of excellence, and that stronger sanctions and clearer definitions were alone required to make the practice as admirable as the theory. Thus he imparted to innovation the dignity and stability of antiquity. He transferred to a happier order of things the associations which had attached the people to their former government. As the Roman warrior, before he assaulted Veii, invoked its guardian Gods to leave its walls, and to accept the worship and patronize the cause of the besiegers; this great prince, in attacking a system of oppression, summoned to his aid the venerable principles and deeply seated feelings to which it was indebted for protection. As he avoided violent changes, he also abstained from political persecution. A powerful party had strongly and, in the house of Lords, at first successfully, opposed his elevation to the throne. Many of his ministers and generals were falsely, and some justly accused, of correspondence with his exiled competitor. The world has rarely produced a prince whom such circumstances would not have converted into a vindictive and jealous tyrant.—William did not even resort to a system of exclusion. His conduct displayed a lofty scorn of suspicion which was at once the highest magnanimity and the highest wisdom. He would see nothing.—He would believe nothing.—He fearlessly surrounded his person and his throne with pardoned enemies and calumniated friends, and thus secured the services and conciliated the affection of many whom a less generous policy would have rendered useless or treacherous. By such means was the constitution of England established."

"[T]hat great religious radical, King William...intended to raise a goodly fabric of charity, of concord, and of peace, and upon which his admirers of the present day are endeavouring to build the dungeon of their Protestant Constitution. If the views and intentions of King William had been such as are now imputed to him, instead of blessing his arrival as an epoch of glory and happiness to England, we should have had reason to curse the hour when first he printed his footstep on our strand. But he came not here a bigoted polemic, with religious tracts in one hand, and civil persecution in the other; he came to regenerate and avenge the prostrate and insulted liberties of England; he came with peace and toleration on his lips, and with civil and religious liberty in his heart."

"After Westphalia brought peace to Europe, the second half of the seventeenth century saw a further spread of resident ambassadors, with Louis XIV’s France leading the way, and French replaced Latin as the lingua franca. There was, however, still scope for summitry, for instance during Peter the Great’s tour of Western Europe in 1697–8. His meetings with William III of England helped bring Russia belatedly into the European diplomatic orbit. In due course, the czar created a “Diplomatic Chancellery” and a network of foreign embassies on the European model."

"William III. is now termed a scoundrel, but was not James II. a fool? The character of William is generally considered on too small a scale. To estimate it properly, we must remember that Louis XIV. had formed a vast scheme of conquest, which would have overthrown the liberties of all Europe, have subjected even us to the caprice of French priests and French harlots. The extirpation of the Protestant religion, the abolition of all civil privileges, would have been the infallible consequence. I speak of this scheme not as a partisan, but from the most extensive reading and information on the topic. I say that William III. was the first, if not sole cause, of the complete ruin of this plan of tyranny. The English revolution was but a secondary object, the throne a mere step towards the altar of European liberty. William had recourse to all parties merely to serve this great end, for which he often exposed his own life in the field, and was devoured by constant cares in the cabinet."

"Priest! Priest! Music! Music!"

"I will say with certain intention, that I will see my laws strictly obeyed, and those who break them shall be watched and denounced."

"I verily believe the poorest creature in al this city feared not God more than she did. She had the love, commendation, and admiration of al the world. In this church she maried herself unto this realm, and in token of faith and fidelity did put a ring with a diamond upon her finger; which I understand she never put off after, during her life, whatsoever succes things had: for that is in the hand of God only. She was never unmindful or uncareful of her promise to her realm. She used singular mercy toward offenders. She used much pity and compassion towards the poor and oppressed. She used clemency among her nobles. She restored more noble houses decayed, than ever did prince of this realm, or I pray God ever shal have the like occasion to do hereafter. She restored to the church such ornaments as in the time of schism were taken away and spoiled. She found the realm poisoned with heresy, and purged it; and remembring herself to be a member of Christ's Church, refused to write herself head thereof."

"The Queen, being born of a Spanish mother, was always inclined towards that nation, scorning to be English and boasting of her descent from Spain."

"The nobility have gone off to the country, entirely disposed to take up arms as they know the people are harbouring evil intentions. When I ask the reasons of all this, I am told that the people say the King [Philip II] will not be served by Englishmen although this point was settled by the articles... They assert that the King is sending for 10,000 Germans and 10,000 Spaniards to land in this country; that it is intended to set up the monastaries again...and the Bishop of Rome is going to command in religious matters. The foreigners, they complain, are making Englishmen feel strangers in their own homes, and have taken to managing everything since they landed... They proclaim loudly that they see they are going to be enslaved, for the Queen is a Spanish woman at heart and thinks nothing of Englishmen, but only of Spaniards and bishops. Her idea, they say, is to have the King crowned by force and deprive the Lady Elizabeth of her right, making the operation of the law subject to her own will."

"Commonwealth schoolchildren are often taught one of the key events in British history with the help of a mnemonic: "King Henry the Eighth, to six wives he was wedded: One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded." Beheaded! In 1536 Henry had his wife Anne Boleyn decapitated on trumped-up charges of adultery and treason because she gave him a son that did not survive, and he had become attracted to one of her ladies-in-waiting. Two wives later he suspected Catherine Howard of adultery and sent her to the ax as well. (Tourists visiting the Tower of London can see the chopping block for themselves.) Henry was clearly the jealous type: he also had an old boyfriend of Catherine’s drawn and quartered, which is to say hanged by the neck, taken down while still alive, disemboweled, castrated, decapitated, and cut into four. The throne passed to Henry’s son Edward, then to Henry’s daughter Mary, and then to another daughter, Elizabeth. “Bloody Mary” did not get her nickname by putting tomato juice in her vodka but by having three hundred religious dissenters burned at the stake. And both sisters kept up the family tradition for how to resolve domestic squabbles: Mary imprisoned Elizabeth and presided over the execution of their cousin, Lady Jane Grey, and Elizabeth executed another cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. Elizabeth also had 123 priests drawn and quartered, and had other enemies tortured with bone-crushing manacles, another attraction on display in the Tower. Today the British royal family is excoriated for shortcomings ranging from rudeness to infidelity. You’d think people would give them credit for not having had a single relative decapitated, nor a single rival drawn and quartered."

"Mary Tudor, queen of England and Ireland from 1553 until 1558, the first woman to rule England in her own right, was the notorious ‘Bloody Mary’ who placed her realm at the feet of the Spanish king and presided over a pitiless religious terror, burning dissidents at the stake, to enforce and restore Catholicism. Bitterly preoccupied with the past, she tried to reverse the Protestant Reformation started by her father, Henry VIII. Yet her own life was tragic, her marriage childless, her health ultimately fragile, her mind increasingly deranged; while her reign, both in her repression and foreign policy, failed utterly."

"The essence of Mary's faith lay in the sacraments, and particularly in the mass."

"Whatever the issue, her response was shaped and motivated by the dictates of her conscience. ... She was incapable of political manipulation, and of self-interest in the normal sense. Hysterically indecisive when her conscience was not engaged, she could be both obstinate and ruthless when she saw a clear path of duty before her."

"Everyone who commented upon Mary's conduct of public affairs remarked upon her diligence and her piety. She rose before dawn, heard mass every day, ate frugally and transacted business incessantly, often until after midnight. ... She was generous to petitioners, and had the reputation for never turning away anyone with a story of grievance or oppression."

"[W]e shall never find any reign of any prince in this land or any other, which did ever show in it (for the proportion of time), so many arguments of God's great wrath and displeasure, as were to be seen in the reign of this queen Mary; whether we behold the shortness of her time, or the unfortunate event of all her purposes, who seemed never to purpose any thing that came luckily to pass, neither did any thing frame to her purpose, whatsoever she took in hand, touching her own private affairs."

"Religious devotion led Queen Mary - the first woman to rule England in her own name - to commit the atrocities which have blackened her reputation and obliterated the memory of her many acts of clemency and generosity. Mary started life as a princess and heir to the throne, but fell into disgrace and saw her beloved Catholic church dismantled by her father and brother. As Queen, she was determined to restore Catholic worship, but her heavy-handed methods, combined with a bitterly unpopular marriage and her inability to produce an heir, doomed her to failure."

"Mary burned few as compared with continental practice, but for English conditions and traditions her activities were unprecedented and left an ineradicable memory. More than all the denunciations of Henry VIII, the fires of Smithfield and the like places all over southern England created an undying hatred of the pope and of Roman Catholicism which became one of the marked characteristics of the English for some 350 years. This in itself is an adequate comment on the activities of these earnest and good and rather stupid fanatics, and an answer to those who would always judge people's place in history by their personal morals rather than by the work they did."

"The reign of Mary Tudor lasted only five years, but it left an indelible impression. Positive achievements there were none: Pollard declared that sterility was its conclusive note, and this is a verdict with which the dispassionate observer must agree. ... She was personally gentle and inclined to mercy. ... She was also sensible and generous. ... But all her good qualities went for nought because she lacked the essentials. Two things dominated her mind—her religion and her Spanish descent. In the place of the Tudor secular temper, cool political sense, and firm identification with England and the English, she put a passionate devotion to the catholic religion and to Rome, absence of political guile, and pride in being Spanish. The result cannot surprise. Welcomed by the nation as a Tudor and a relief from the ambitions of selfish politicians and the extravagances of reforming divines, she died only five years later execrated by nearly all. Her life was one of almost unrelieved tragedy, but the pity which this naturally excites must not obscure the obstinate wrong-headedness of her rule."

"And yet, like her father and grandfather, Mary possessed many traits which should have fit her for a successful reign. Like all Tudors, she was intelligent, courageous, dignified, ad resilient. These qualities had ensured her survival during her father's and brother's reigns. She was well educated: in addition to her native tongue, she spoke Spanish, French, and Latin and could read Greek and Latin. Nor was she entirely serious: she danced and played the lute. Finally, Mary was not without mercy. Apart from Northumberland, few died for the plot to usurp the throne. Even Lady Jane Gray and Guildford Dudley were allowed to live, for the time being, albeit as close prisoners in the Tower. Unfortunately, she was at her accession naive in politics and inexperienced in government, having been repudiated by her father and, thus, never groomed to succeed. Without training or experience, she was forced to rely on her conscience and her faith. In the end, she had too much of the one and was too inflexible in the other for her own or the country's good. More specifically, she was half-Spanish and all Catholic and so saw it as her God-given duty to ally her country with the Spanish Empire and undo the "heresies" of the previous 20 years by restoring the Roman Catholic Church in England at any cost. Both policies would bring misery to her people."

"The English people had rallied to Mary because she was the offspring of Henry VIII and next in line for the throne, not because she was Catholic, or the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, and certainly not because she was a woman. Mary's great tragedy was that she failed to draw the obvious lessons from this. Her Tudor blood was an advantage to be exploited to the full while her Spanish lineage and gender were, at best, neutral factors in the eyes of most of her subjects. As for her Catholicism, it divided her people: some loved it, some hated it. But Mary subordinated her strong Tudor personality to the demands of her religion, her Spanish sympathies, and contemporary expectations of her gender. The result was the only Tudor reign that could truly be called tragic, even pathetic."

"It was an ancient and commonly received practice, (derived from the civil law, and which also to this day obtains in the Kingdom of France) that, as counsel was not allowed to any prisoner accused of a capital crime, so neither should he be suffered to exculpate himself by the testimony of any witnesses. And therefore it deserves to be remembered, to the honour of Mary I, (whose early sentiments, till her marriage with Philip of Spain, seem to have been humane and generous) that when she appointed sir Richard Morgan chief justice of the common-pleas, she injoined him, “that notwithstanding the old error, which did not admit any witness to speak, or any other matter to be heard, in favour of the adversary, her majesty being party; her highness' pleasure was, that whatsoever could be brought in favour of the subject should be admitted to be heard: and moreover, that the justices should not persuade themselves to sit in judgment otherwise for her highness than for her subject.""

"In greatest stormes she feared not, for God she made her shielde, And all her care she cast on him, who forst her foes to yelde. Her perfecte life in all extremes, her pacient hert dyd shoe, For in this worlde she never founde, but dolfull dayes and woe."

"She never closde her eare to heare, the rightous man distrest, Nor never sparde her hande to helpe, wher wrong or power opprest. when all was wracke, she was the porte, from peryll unto joye, when all was spoyle, she spared all, she pitied to distroye."

"And so am not I."

"When I am dead and opened, you shall find Calais lying in my head."

"Her majesty, being now in possession of her imperial crown and estate pertaining to it, cannot forsake that faith that the whole world knows her to have followed and practiced since her birth; she desires, rather, by God's grace, to preserve it till her death; and she desires greatly that her subjects may come to embrace the same faith quietly and with charity, whereby she shall receive great happiness."

"This natural life of ours is but a pilgrimage from this wandering world, and exile from our own country: that is to say, a way from all misery to thee (Lord) which art our whole felicity. And lest the pleasantness and commodity of this life should withdraw us from the going to the right and speedy way to thee, thou dost stir and provoke us forward, and as yet ward prick us with thorns, to the intent we should covet a quiet rest, and end of our journey. Therefore sickness, weepings, sorrow, mourning, and in conclusion all adversities be unto us as spurs; with the which we being dull horses, or rather very asses, are forced not to remain long in this transitory way. Wherefore Lord, give us grace to forget this wayfaring journey, and to remember our proper and true country. And if thou do add a weight of adversity, add thereunto strength, that we shall not be overcome with that burden: but having our minds continually erected and lift up to thee, we may be able to strongly bear it. Lord! all things be thine; therefore do with all things, without any exception, as shall seem convenient to thine unsearchable wisdom. And give us grace never to will but as thou wilt. So be it."

"While my father lives I shall be only the Lady Mary, the most unhappy lady in Christendom."

"I recognize no Queen but my mother. But if the King's Mistress would intercede with the King on my behalf, then I would be grateful."

"And even where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, even there shall the dogs lick thy blood also, O king! And I am that Micheas whom thou wilt hate, because I must tell thee truly that thy marriage is unlawful; and I know I shall eat the bread of affliction, and drink the water of sorrow, yet because our Lord hath put it into my mouth I must speak it. There are many other preachers, yea, too many, who preach and persuade thee otherwise, feeding thy folly and frail affections upon the hope of their own worldly promotion; and by that means they destroy thy soul, thy honor and posterity, to obtain fat benefices, to become rich abbots and get episcopal jurisdiction and other ecclesiastical dignities. There, I say, are the four hundred prophets who, in the spirit of lying, seek to deceive thee; but take good heed lest you, being seduced, find Achab's punishment, which was to have his blood 'licked up by the dogs,' saying it was the greatest miscarriage of princes to be daily abused by flatterers."

"Having learnt of the date [of his 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. Henry was also recommended by his handsome bearing, his comely and manly features (in which one could discern as much authority as good will), his outstanding physical strength, remarkable memory, aptness at all the arts of both war and peace, skill at arms and on horseback, scholarship of no mean order, thorough knowledge of music, and his humanity, benevolence and self-control."

"It is indeed a fact of the first importance that Henry VIII, the most wilful but not the least wise of our Kings, did more for Parliament than any other person in our history. His father, Henry VII, and his own first great Minister Wolsey had seldom summoned Parliament; until the breach with Rome the two Houses seemed, like other European Parliaments, to be declining, perhaps towards ultimate extinction. But Henry VIII, in the middle of his reign, decided to use Parliament as his instrument and accomplice in the destruction of the Papal power, the spoliation of the monasteries, and the subordination of the medieval liberties of the Church to the laity and above all to the Crown. He had no standing Army, and without the general acquiescence of his subjects and the support of their more influential classes Henry could not have carried through this immense revolution. He found in Parliament, particularly in the Commons, the expression of that popular support he required. To be despot himself he raised up in Parliament a force that was destined to prevent his successors from being despots."

"The Royal Navy was Henry's creation, and it saved both himself and his daughter after him when they adopted an island policy and defied the Catholic powers of Europe. Wolsey had no notion of the importance of sea power to England. He was a great medieval churchman, a civil servant of the old school, and a diplomatist of the Renaissance type. But of the future development of England at home and on the sea Wolsey had no vision at all. His master, with that curious instinct of oneness with the English people which was the secret of Tudor greatness, saw deeper. He could use Wolsey's consummate administrative powers during the years of his own apprenticeship in statecraft, and then pass over him along a path of his own which no Cardinal could be expected to tread."

"His policy was both wise and strong. While not encouraging transoceanic adventure in the face of predominant Spanish power, he made possible the future liberation of his country's energies by the only means—the foundation of a Royal Navy... It was Henry VIII who built an effective fleet of royal fighting ships, with royal dockyards at Woolwich and Deptford; he also founded the corporation of Trinity House. Henry's maritime policy had a double importance. Not only did he create ships specially manned and commissioned to fight, and to fight in the public service alone, but his architects designed many of these royal ships on an improved model. They were sailing vessels better adapted to the ocean than the rowed galleys of the Mediterranean powers, and better adapted to manoeuvring in battle than the more clumsy ‘round’ ships of the mediaeval type in which the English merchants sailed the sea, and in which the Spaniards crossed the Atlantic. The new type of English warship was three times the length of its beam or more, while the normal ‘round’ ship was only twice the length of its beam. Hitherto sea-battles had consisted of ramming, archery and boarding, very much like the battles of the old Greek and Roman navies. But a new age was at hand. From the port-holes of Henry VIII's fleet protruded the iron mouths of great cannon in a row, ready to give the shattering ‘broadside,’ the operation of war to which, more than to any other, British maritime and colonial power owe their existence. It was Henry VIII himself who had insisted that his naval architects should mount heavy cannon in the body of the ship; they had devised the expedient of piercing apertures in the very hold itself through which the great shot could be discharged."