A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland. Mary Platt Parmele

Elizabeth—East India Company Chartered—Colonization of Virginia—Flodden Field—Birth of Mary Stuart—Mary Stuart's Death—Spanish Armada—Francis Bacon 82 CHAPTER VIII. James I.—First New England Colony—Gunpowder Plot—Translation of Bible—Charles I.—Archbishop Laud—John Hampden—Petition of Right—Massachusetts Chartered—Earl Strafford—Star Chamber 97 CHAPTER IX. Long Parliament—Death of Strafford and Laud—Oliver Cromwell—Death of Charles I.—Long Parliament Dispersed—Charles II 114 CHAPTER X. Act of Habeas Corpus—Death of Charles II.—Milton—Bunyan—James II.—William and Mary—Battle of the Boyne 122 CHAPTER XI. Anne—Marlborough—Battle of Blenheim—House of Hanover—George I.—George II.—Walpole—British Dominion in India—Battle of Quebec—John Wesley 131 CHAPTER XII. George III.—Stamp Act—Tax on Tea—American Independence Acknowledged—Impeachment of Hastings—War of 1812—First English Railway—George IV.—William IV.—Reform Bill—Emancipation of the Slaves 143 CHAPTER XIII. Victoria—Famine in Ireland—War with Russia—Sepoy Rebellion—Massacre at Cawnpore 159 CHAPTER XIV. Atlantic Cable—Daguerre's Discovery—First World's Fair—Death of Albert—Suez Canal—Victoria Empress of India—Disestablishment of Irish Branch of Church of England—Present Conditions 169 CHAPTER XV Death of Queen Victoria—Russo-Japanese War 191 HISTORY OF IRELAND Pre-Christian Ireland—From Augustine to English Conquest—From Henry II. to Elizabeth—From Elizabeth to William III. and Mary—From William III. to Act of Union—From Act of Union to death of Parnell—New Land Acts 199 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND Early Celtic Period—Period from Malcolm III. to Robert Bruce—From Bruce to James I.—From James I. to Union of Crowns—From Union of Crowns to Treaty of Union—Brief Summary of Period Since the Treaty of Union 249

ILLUSTRATIONS.

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Magna Charta, 1215: King John submits to the Barons, and signs the Great Charter of British Liberties	Frontispiece
	FACING PAGE
Queen Elizabeth going on board the "Golden Hind"	80
Cromwell dissolving the Long Parliament, 1653	116
Nelson's Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805	144
The British Squares at Quatre-Bras, 1815	150
The British in India: A native prince receiving the decoration of the order of the Star of India from Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales	170

A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

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CHAPTER I

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      The remotest fact in the history of England is written in her rocks. Geology tells us of a time when no sea flowed between Dover and Calais, while an unbroken continent extended from the Mediterranean to the Orkneys.

      Huge mounds of rough stones called Cromlechs, have yielded up still another secret. Before the coming of the Keltic-Aryans, there dwelt there two successive races, whose story is briefly told in a few human fragments found in these "Cromlechs." These remains do not bear the royal marks of Aryan origin. The men were small in stature, with inferior skulls; and it is surmised that they belonged to the same mysterious branch of the human family as the Basques and Iberians, whose presence in Southern Europe has never been explained.

      When the Aryan came and blotted out these races will perhaps always remain an unanswered question. But while Greece was clothing herself with a mantle of beauty, which the world for two thousand years has striven in vain to imitate, there was lying off the North and West coasts of the European Continent a group of mist-enshrouded islands of which she had never heard.

      Obscured by fogs, and beyond the horizon of Civilization, a branch of the Aryan race known as Britons were there leading lives as primitive as the American Indians, dwelling in huts shaped like beehives, which they covered with branches and plastered with mud. While Phidias was carving immortal statues for the Parthenon, this early Britisher was decorating his abode with the heads of his enemies; and could those shapeless blocks at Stonehenge speak, they would, perhaps, tell of cruel and hideous Druidical rites witnessed on Salisbury Plain, ages ago.

      

      Rumors of the existence of this people