The non-commissioned officers and privates of this valuable corps are all workmen who have learned some mechanical trade; hence their skill in all constructive operations. The Ordnance Survey has been intrusted to the corps. For many purposes, the men are lent, to attend to special and peculiar work; and at such times their emolument is always increased. They often buy their discharge, in order to go into civil employments, when the prospects are good. The period of regular service is 21 years; but they can purchase their discharge at any time. They have to pay more for their discharge than other corps in the army. The average length of service is found to be something under five years, so many are the inducements to the men to purchase their discharge.

Officers intended for the Engineers enter the Royal Military Academy as cadets, and compete from time to time for commissions. When in the corps, promotion is by seniority, the purchase system not having been introduced.

The Army Estimates for 1861-1862 provided for the following number of officers and men in the corps of Royal Engineers:

The sum set down for their cost for the year was £261,881, which, however, does not include any commissariat charges. The head-quarters are at Chatham, where there are Engineer barracks. The corps is grouped into battalions and companies.

ENGINEERS, in the Royal Navy, are the persons who attend to the machinery on board the warsteamers. When such steamers were at first adopted, men were obtained from private engineering establishments, or from merchant-steamers. In 1847 and 1848, many changes were made, to induce skilful and steady men to enter the service, and to maintain better discipline. The higher grades of them were raised from the rank of warrant officers to that of commissioned officers of a civil branch. There are now the grades of inspector of machinery, chiefengineer, and assistant-engineer, the last rank being subdivided into three classes. All these are commissioned officers, and are strictly examined before admission; their rank and promotion being by selection, and dependent on skill, character, and length of service. A chief-engineer is expected to be able to make notes in the log of every particular concerning the engines and boilers; to draw rough sketches of the machinery, with figured dimensions fit to work from; to understand and manage everything relating to engines, boilers, and furnaces; to understand practical mechanism generally, and the principles of theoretical mechanism. The assistantengineer is expected to possess, in a smaller degree, the same kinds of knowledge and skill as the chiefengineer; and to act under his orders. The pay varies from £401 for an inspector of machinery, down to £64 for a third-class assistant-engineer on harbour service; the harbour-pay varies from £143

to £55.

ENGLAND, the southern and larger section of the island of Great Britain, and the most important member of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The geography of E. will be found under the head of GREAT BRITAIN, the present article being confined to a sketch of its history previous to the union with Scotland. Of the inhabitants of E. before the Christian era, little is known. In some of the ancient geographers, there are a few scattered notices of a rude population, with whom a limited commerce in tin was carried on by the Phoenician merchants; and our informa tion scarcely extends further. What is known of E. under the Roman occupation has already been embodied in the article BRITANNIA. An account of the country during the period intervening between the withdrawal of the Romans and the Norman Conquest will be found in the article ANGLO-SAXONS.

When William of Normandy landed in E. to claim the crown which Edward the Confessor had bequeathed to him, he found that the people had raised to the throne Harold, the son of a popular nobleman. The resources of the Saxons, however, had been wasted in domestic conflicts before the attack of William; and the battle of Hastings (1066 A.D.) gave E. with comparative ease to the Normans. The next twenty years saw the conquest completed, and nearly all the large landed estates of the Saxons pass, on every pretext except the true one, into the hands of the Normans. William claimed, indeed, to rule as sovereign by hereditary right, but this made little difference to the fact of conquest. All the high offices in the state and in the church passed into the hands of a new race. The Danes alone could retain either property or dignity. For long, some of the Saxons maintained outlaws whose adventures furnished the materials an unequal resistance, retiring to the forests as the for those favourite popular legends, where, as in Robin Hood, the spoiling of the richer classes is depicted as one of the chief virtues. In the course of time, the Normans were absorbed among the Saxons, their very language disappearing, though leaving many traces. From this union arose the English people and the English language as they now exist.

The union of the Normans with the Saxons was not fully effected so long as the Normans retained their foreign possessions. In King John's reign, the whole of these were lost, excepting Guienne and Poitou. Long wars under Henry III. and Edward III., and his famous son, the Black Prince, were continued, in the endeavour to regain the lost possessions; yet great victories like those of Cressy (1346 A.D.) and Poictiers (1356 A.D.) seemed to leave no result, for no sooner were the English armies withdrawn, than the populations returned to their French allegiance. After Agincourt (1415 A. D.), Henry V., when he had forced himself to be acknowledged heir to the French throne, was virtually king of France, and held his court in Paris; yet, in a few years more, the rebellion f Joan of Arc came at a time when E. was weakened with the Wars of the Roses, and (1451 A.D.) nothing of foreign ground was left to this country excepting Calais.

To their efforts to conquer France, the Norman kings added others. Henry II. conquered Ireland (1171 A. D.), Edward I. conquered Wales (1285 A.D.), and had almost added Scotland to his dominion The bravery of Wallace and Bruce defeated tue armies of Edward II., his successor; and though the idea of the conquest of Scotland was always a

favourite one, an opportunity for attempting it on a great scale never again presented itself.

The great struggles of the successors of William were with the ecclesiastics and with the barons. Sometimes in these the popular sympathies were with, and sometimes against the crown. The conqueror himself and his immediate successors had no difficulty in maintaining the superiority of the courts of justice over the ecclesiastics; but even a sovereign so bold and skilful as Henry II. was forced, after the outcry occasioned by the murder of Thomas-à-Becket (1170 A.D.), to yield the point. The right to nominate the higher ecclesiastics was also secured by the popes. The degradation of the English monarchy was at its lowest when King John consented (1213 A.D.) to hold the crown as a gift from Rome. The weaknesses of this monarch had good as well as evil results, for from him the barons won their Great Charter (1215 A. D.). From Henry II. something similar had already been gained; but it was the Magna Charta of John which firmly established two great English principles-that no man should suffer arbitrary imprisonment, and that no tax should be imposed without the consent of the council of the nation. Under Edward I., the famous statute that no manner of tax should be imposed without the common consent of the bishops, barons, and burgesses of the realm, was passed (1296 A. D.); and before the time of Henry VII., the foundations of parliamentary government had been laid.

The union of the houses of York and Lancaster under Henry VII. begins a new period in English history. Part of his reign was disturbed by Perkin Warbeck and other pretenders to the throne, in support of whose claims the turbulent nobles found vent for their restlessness. But the greater part of his long reign was distinguished from preceding reigns as a time of peace and economy. During it, men's minds ripened for the great events of the next reign. Henry VIII. succeeded, under the most favourable auspices. He found the alliance of his now important country courted by both of his great contemporaries, Francis L. and Charles V. But the interest of the foreign complications of the reign merges in the struggle between the courts of E. and of Rome. The origin of the contest was the divorce which Henry desired to have from Catharine of Aragon, his brother's widow, to whom he had been married by papal licence. Cranmer and the English Church pronounced the marriage to be null, but a formal decree of divorce by the head of the church was then thought necessary in Catholic Europe. Pope Clement and the consistory, influenced by Spanish counsels, delayed, by every possible means, the decision of the question. E., however, was ready enough to support Henry. Wickliffe and his adherents had done not a little to shake the attachment of the nation to a foreign spiritual authority, by preaching doctrines which dispensed with the necessity for it. A parliament met, when the Commons took the significant step of presenting a long memorial of complaints against the church. The pope, still shewing no signs of yielding, bills followed, declaring the king the head of the church; rendering the inferior clergy amenable to the civil courts; abolishing the payment of the first year's fruits of ecclesiastical livings to Rome; and perhaps a more important thing than any of hese, declaring that no convocation should meet unless the king should summon it, and that no ecclesiastical canons should have force except with the king's consent. To these measures, the pope replied by refusing the divorce, and excommunicating the king (1533 A. D.). The breach thus became irre: arable.

A new act was passed giving to the magistrates the power of judging in questions of heresy. The next step was the suppression of nearly 400 of the smaller monasteries. The subsidence of an insignificant popular reaction, incited by the lower clergy, was followed by the suppression of the great abbeys. All these changes, however, touched only matters of church government. On matters of faith, Henry and his parliaments were as orthodox as the most conservative could wish. They embodied the leading doctrines of Romanism, disputed by the Protestants, in an act of parliament, known among the people as the bloody six articles,' and enforced conformity under severe penalties.

Henry was succeeded by Edward VI. His reign was marked by the general progress which the Reformation now made from questions of government to questions of doctrine. More thoroughly than ever the power of the clergy was sapped. The Book of Common Prayer (1548 A.D.) deprived them of the mysterious authority which the use of a foreign language in worship gave them in the eyes of the people, and the 42 Articles of the Church of England (1552 A. D.), the foundation of the present 39, denied, among other things, their power to work miracles in the elevation of the mass.

The next reign saw the inevitable reaction. The superstitions of the populace had been too rudely handled, and-as often happens before a crisis— there came a period of physical suffering. The conversion of cornfields into sheep-walks, induced by the high value of wool as an article of export, had thrown many out of employment; and the country was, moreover, infested with the crowd of vagrants whom the monasteries had been wont to maintain. The popular dissatisfaction coupled these things with the Reformation. Thus the opportunity was prepared for the atrocities of the reign of Mary. The queen herself was interested, by her mother's honour and her own, to uphold the Romanist faith; and her gloomy temper, aggravated by her unhappy childless marriage, believed that it did true service to God when it gave the rein to the bigotry of Pole and Bonner. In her first parliament (1553 A.D.), the whole legislation of Edward VI. was repealed, leaving the Church of England one in ceremonial and doctrine with the Church of Rome. Another parliament (1555 a.d.) repealed the legislation of Henry VIII., thus reestablishing the papal supremacy. Everything that the reformers had done was thus undone. Still the adherents of the Reformation were numerous, and when legislation failed to convert them, the fires of Smithfield were tried. Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, was one of the first to suffer. Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer, followed, and the number who perished is not less than 300 by fire, and 100 by torture and the cruelties of confinement. Nothing more was wanted to turn the popular mind at once and for ever from the Church of Rome.

The accession of the Protestant princess Elizabeth came as a relief to the whole nation. The Romanists themselves were weary of the policy which made E. the tool of Spain, and were sickened with the cruelties which had been enacted. Elizabeth began by releasing from prison all confined on charges of heresy. Parliament followed (1559 A.D.) with acts restoring the royal supremacy over the church, and returning in general to the legis lation of Edward VI. The Prayer-book and the Thirty-nine Articles were adjusted as they still exist. Fortunately for the country, the ministry of Elizabeth, guided by the able hand of Cecil, was one of peace. No opportunity was lost of aiding the Protestant cause throughout Europe; but Elizabeth had almost no open wars, and her long

found himself obliged to surrender the right of Investiture. Thus, too, Stephen's usurpation opened the way for further encroachments; and Henry II., who found the power of Rome greatly augmented, helped to extend it further, by accepting a grant of Ireland from the pope. Then followed the opposition of Thomas-à-Becket, which arose out of the question of the punishment of ecclesiastics by the civil power. For the moment, it seemed that the quarrel was healed by the Constitutions agreed on at Clarendon (q. v.), but it broke out more violently than ever. The pope discharged Becket from his oath, and condemned the Constitutions. Becket had fled from the kingdom; and his subsequent return, murder, and canonisation, all tended to strengthen the authority of the church. It was not, however, till the reign of John, when England was laid under an interdict, and the king resigned his crown to the pope, that the papal encroachments rose to their height; and the weak reign of Henry III., which followed, did nothing to abate them. Edward I. gave a check to the power of the clergy, subjected them to taxation, and passed the statute of Mortmain (1279), which prohibited the transfer of land without the king's consent. There is little to be said as to innovations in doctrine during these three centuries; but it may be noted, that about the middie of this period, viz., 1213, the council of St John Lateran declared transubstantiation, or the bodily presence of Christ in the consecrated elements, to be a tenet of the church.

It was in 1356 that a new period commenced. Wickliffe then published his first work, entitled The Last Age of the Church, directed against the covetousness of the Church of Rome. His doctrines correspond in many points with those now taught by the Church of England, but he differed from her in regard to the necessity of Episcopacy, which he rejected; he also believed in purgatory, and permitted prayers for the dead. His chief objects of attack were the papal indulgences, and the doctrine of transubstantiation. It has been observed concerning the condemnation at Oxford of Wickliffe's opinions with respect to the latter, that 'this was the first plenary determination of the Church of England in the case, so that this doctrine, which brought so many to the stake, had but with us 140 years' prescription before the times of Martin Luther.' In a limited sense, he upheld the efficacy of the seven sacraments. Wickliffe had a large body of followers. They were called Lollards, probably from a German word, lullen, to sing with a low voice. The storm of persecution which he escaped by death, fell upon them. Henry IV. thought it necessary to fortify his usurped position by assisting the bishops against the Lollards; and from this time to the Reformation, there was an uninterrupted succession of confessors and martyrs. Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was the most illustrious of these sufferers. Fox gives a detailed account of nearly twenty individuals burned for heresy between the death of Lord Cobham and 1509, when Henry VIII. ascended the throne. To some extent, the blood of these martyrs was the seed of the Reformed Church; but we must not overlook the 'hidden seed' which was growing secretly, from the time that Wickliffe gave to his countrymen a translation of the Scriptures in their own tongue. The progress of learning, and especially the study of Greek, led to a better understanding of the sacred books, whilst the invention of printing (1442) caused a wider circulation of them.

The above causes, however, would probably have proved insufficient to produce the great change which was now impending, had not Henry VIII.'s divorce from Catharine of Spain led to a quarrel

between him and the pope, which ended in the total abolition of the papal authority within the kingdom. Then began the REFORMATION in earnest. For the details of that great event, consult the article under that head, and the lives of such men as Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, Fisher, Clement, Luther, Cromwell, Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, &c. From this period may be dated the existence of the Church of England as a separate body, and her final separation from Rome. For the opinions of the church in Henry's reign, two important books which were then published should be consulted-viz., the Bishop's Book, or the Godly and Pious Institution of a Christian Man, and the King's Book, which was a republication of the same in a more perfect form in 1543, and called The Necessary Erudition for any Christian Man, and was called the King's Book because put forth by royal authority. A book of Articles devised by the Kinges Highnes Majestie to stablyshe Christen Unitie, should also be consulted. It has been stated in the article ANGLO-CATHOLIC CHURCH, that the reformation in doctrine did not make much progress in Henry's reign; from these books, it will be seen that it was rather retrograde. The monks, too, who were dispossessed at the dissolution of the monasteries, were dispersed amongst local cures, and kept alive the old opinions, and the lower orders were not as yet favourable to the new doctrines. Cranmer was the leader and presiding genius of the Reformed opinions; and the youth of Edward VI. left the king pliant in the hands of the archbishop. The Book of Homilies, put forth in 1540, the New Communion Service and Catechism in 1548, the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, and the Forty-two Articles in 1553, all bear the impress of his hand, and it was these which advanced and fixed the doctrines of the Reformation. Nor was the temporal authority idle on the same side-Bonner and Gardiner were committed to prison, and both were deprived of their bishoprics. In fact, the way in which all the institutions of the Church of England were established in Edward VI.'s reign by the help of the civil magistrate, have brought upon her the charge of Erastianism. The civil power had just delivered her from a foreign tyranny; and when the weak health of the young king, the known sentiments of his successor, Mary, the ignorance of the common people, and the interested views of the old clergy, are considered, it cannot be a matter of surprise, still less of blame, that the same arm was relied upon for the establishment of the new forms of religion.

Although Mary promised at her accession that she would put constraint on no person's religion, her promise was not kept. Bonner and Gardiner were restored; the Book of Common Prayer and Catechism were declared heretical; the kingdom was reconciled to the see of Rome; a persecution of the chief reformers commenced-Rogers was burned at Smithfield, Hooper at Gloucester, Saunders at Coventry, Taylor at Hadley. The prisons were filled with 'heretics;' many fled beyond sea; some purchased safety by an outward conformity. Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley perished in the flames at Oxford. Cardinal Pole was made primate. One benefit was conferred on the church by Mary-she surrendered all the church lands, as well as the first fruits and tenths, which had been seized by Henry. At last the death of Mary, with which that of the cardinal was all but simultaneous, delivered the church from its oppressors. The passing of the Act of Uniformity in the first year of Elizabeth's reign, restored the Common Prayer-book to general use, and enjoined the same dresses as were in ase at the time of the first Prayer-book of Edward VL