more abroad: and they began to do fo immediately; for CHARLES the eighth, fon and fucceffor of LEWIS the eleventh, formed great defigns of foreign conquests, tho they were disappointed by his inability, by the levity of the nation, and by other causes. LEWIS the twelfth and FRANCIS the first, but especially FRANCIS, meddled deep in the affairs of Europe: and tho the fuperior genius of FERDINAND called the catholic, and the ftar of CHARLES the fifth prevailed against them, yet the efforts they made fhew fufficiently how the ftrength and importance of this monarchy were increafed in their time. From whence we may date likewife the rivalship of the house of France, for we may reckon that of Valois and that of Bourbon as one upon this occafion, and the house of Auftria; that continues at this day, and that has coft fo much blood and fo much treafure in the course of it.

II. In

II. In ENGLAND.

THо the power and influence of the no

bility funk in the great change that began under HENRY the feventh in England, as they did in that which began under LEWIS the eleventh in France; yet the new conftitutions that thefe changes produced were very different. In France the lords alone loft, the king alone gained; the clergy held their poffeffions and their immunities, and the people remained in a state of mitigated flavery. But in England the people gained as well as the crown. The commons had already a fhare in the legislature; fo that the power and influence of the lords being broke by HENRY the feventh, and the property of the commons increasing by the fale that his fon made of churchlands, the power of the latter increased of courfe by this change in a conftitution, the forms whereof were favorable to them. The union of the rofes put an end to the civil wars of York and Lancaster, that had fucceeded those we commonly call the barons wars, and the humor of warring in

France,

France, that had lasted near four hundred years under the Normans and Plantagenets," for plunder as well as conqueft, was spent. Our temple of JANUS was fhut by HENRY the seventh. We neither laid waste our own nor other countries any longer: and wife laws and a wife government changed. infenfibly the manners, and gave a new turn to the spirit, of our people. We were no longer the free-booters we had been. Our nation maintained her reputation in arms whenever the public intereft or the public authority required it; but war ceafed to be, what it had been, our principal and almost our fole profeffion. The arts of peace prevailed among us. We became husbandmen, manufacturers, and merchants, and we emulated neighbouring nations in literature. It is from this time that we ought to study the hiftory of our country, my lord, with the utmost application. We are not much concerned to know with critical accuracy what were the antient forms of our parliaments, concerning which, however, there is little room for difpute from the reign of HENRY the third at leaft; nor in fhort the whole fyftem of our civil conftitution before HENRY the feventh, and of our ecclefiaftical conM

ftitu

ftitution before HENRY the eighth. But he who has not studied and acquired a thorough knowledge of them both, from thefe periods down to the present time, in all the variety of events by which they have been affected, will be very unfit to judge .or to take care of either. Juft as little are we concerned to know, in any nice detail, what the conduct of our princes, relatively to their neighbours on the continent, was before this period, and at a time when the partition of power and a multitude of other circumftances rendered the whole political fyftem of Europe fo vaftly different from that which has exifted fince. But he who has not traced this conduct from the period we fix, down to the prefent age, wants a principal part of the knowledge that every English minifter of ftate fhould have. Ignorance in the respects here fpoken of is the lefs pardonable, because we have more, and more authentic, means of information concerning this, than concerning any other period. Anecdotes enow to glut the curiosity of fome perfons, and to filence all the captious cavils of others, will never be furnished by any portion of hiftory; nor indeed can they according to the nature and courfe

course of human affairs: but he who is content to read and obferve, like a fenator and a statesman, will find in our own and in foreign hiftorians as much information as he wants, concerning the affairs of our island, her fortune at home and her conduct abroad, from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth. I refer to foreign hiftorians, as well as to our own, for this feries of our own history; not only because it is reafonable to fee in what manner the hiftorians of other countries have related the tranfactions wherein we have been concerned, and what judgment they have made of our conduct, domeftic and foreign, but for another reafon likewife. Our nation has furnished as ample and as important matter, good and bad, for hiftory, as any nation under the fun: and yet we must yield the palm in writing history most certainly to the Italians and to the French, and, I fear, even to the Germans. The only two pieces of history we have, in any respect to be compared with the antient, are, the Reign of HENRY the seventh by my lord BACON, and the History of our civil wars in the last century by your noble ancestor my lord chancellor CLARENDON. But we have no general history to