was always stopped; there is a shorter cut for all passengers, for there runs from the Strand a street called Catherine-street, and at the end of that street is another which runs to Drury-lane, and at the end of Drury-lane are two ways, one by St. Giles's church on the left and the other down Holborn on the right; a little below the Black Swan in Holborn you turn down Fetter-lane, which leads you directly into Fleet-street. IMPORTANCE, page 32.-" When such was our case and such is our case, men lately preferred and grown too delicate would have men of liberal education, that know the world as well as themselves, afraid, for fear of offending them in their new clothes, to speak when they think their queen and country is ill treated." REMARK. This sentence is scarcely intelligible without inquiring what a man of liberal education is. Now a man of liberal education, according to Mr. Steele's acceptation of that word, is one of mean parentage, who was bred at school till he could almost construe Latin, and has since improved himself in the knowledge of the world by riding in the guards, by conversing with porters, carmen, foot-soldiers, players, bullies, bawds, pimps, and whores of all sorts and sizes; who has been arrested for the maintenance of his bastards, and afterwards printed a proposal that the public should take care of them. One who has no invention, no judgment, no style, no politics, no gratitude, and no honesty. In short, a man of liberal education is one who, after he knows he is all this, has the impudence to say that as to his morals, if there was anything very flagrant, he has friends enough in town who would oblige the world with them. It is observable, notwithstanding Dr. Walker so often flogged our author when he was at school for false grammar, he continues to affront Lilly almost in every word, viz. "men of liberal education that knows"-" his queen and country is ill treated-;" "if there is anything very flagrant, oblige the world with them." This is also a characteristic of a man of liberal education! ENGLISHMAN, No. III.-"The king of England is no other than a very good man vested with all the opportunities, and tied down by the most solemn oath to be such, in the most eminent manner that all the power that ought to attend human nature can enable him." REMARK. Though the interpretation of this paragraph may be plain to the present age, yet lest Mr. Steele, who I am sure designs his works shall be delivered down to posterity, should hereafter be misunderstood, it may not be unnecessary to give them to understand that this phraseology is adapted to the peculiar way of thinking of the finest wits amongst us, and may sometimes be understood in quite a different acceptation from what the words import, and is sometimes of no signification at all, but intended as a bite upon the reader. I have no leisure at present to describe what a sort of creature a man is who is "vested with opportunities," or the essence of that "power which ought to attend human nature in the most eminent manner." It is sufficient that our author has a meaning in these words, but affects a mysterious way of speaking like the oracles of old, in order to preserve the majesty of his ideas from the profanation of the vulgar; and it is a thousand pities that such an admirable talent at riddles and enigmas should be thrown away to no purpose, which might prove of most prodigious emolument, could Mr. Steele reconcile himself to Dr. Partridge and obtain the liberty of publishing them as an appendix to his almanac. ENGLISHMAN, No. V.-" The earth we see is visited all around; in some parts of the world men are seized with a contagion of their bodies, in others with the infatuation of their minds. This is a plain observation, and grows into the common sense of mankind; and this seasonable querist will find to his confusion that this glorious spot of liberty will no more be imposed upon by general suggestions and insinuations against its true welfare and interest. It is come to that, that people must prove what they say if they would be believed." REMARK.-How happy is Mr. Steele in his transitions! Connection has been believed a necessary ingredient of good writing; but he has shown a new way, and how to arrive to be an author without coherence. In the beginning of the passages before us he gives us a sketch of the terrible, then he descends to consider the laws of vegetation, and shows how a plain observation "grows into the common sense of mankind;" and from both these consider. ations together very fairly concludes that a "glorious spot of liberty" can never be imposed upon by suggestions against its true interest, and after this clenches the sense of the whole by telling us of an hardship put upon the writers of this age: "It is come to that," says he, "that people must prove what they say if they would be believed." These Mr. Steele may call new conceptions very properly; every rustic can draw consequences, and make what the logicians call a natural syllogism; but none but so refined a reasoner and a critic can hit the unintelligible. Had the Examiner talked in this manner he might have been justly said to go on in a serene exuberance of something neither good nor bad. "A man," says Mr. Steele of that author, " may go on in writing such stuff as this to his life's end, without ever troubling himself for any new concep tion, or putting the imagination or judgment to the least labour. There will be no danger of his wanting store of absurdities, and I allow he can dress them up in tolerable language and with a seeming coherence." ENGLISHMAN, No. V.-" And all, as one man, will join in a common indignation against all who would perplex our obedience." REMARK.-Whatever contradiction there is, as some suppose, in all joining against all, our author has good authority for what he says, and consider ing he means well, I think myself obliged to defend him in this particular. How all "joining in a common indignation" will be construed I cannot well determine; but certainly it may be proved, in spite of Euclid or sir Isaac, that everything consists of two alls, that these alls are capable of being divided and subdivided into as many alls as you please, and so in infinitum. The following lines may serve for an illustration of this matter : Three children sliding on the ice As it fell out they all fell in, Though this polite author does not directly say there are two alls, yet he implies as much; for I would ask any reasonable man what can be understood by the rest they ran away, but the other all we have been speaking of? I have considered Mr. Steele in this view, that the world should not think I have so much malice against him but that I can exhibit the beauties as well as quarrel with the faults of his compositions; and I hope for the future, for his own sake and to avoid an uncorrect way writing, he will not value himself upon his hasty productions because he can write a paper in a pas of ABSTRACT OF THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. sion and rejoin upon the Examiner in less than a day's time; but that the admonition of his friend sir Marmaduke to his coachman will be his constant rule-John, remember I am never in haste. ADVERTISEMENT.-In a letter I have received from Mr. Longbottom, that gentleman informs me he is making a curious collection of all the rarities both of matter and language throughout the works of the ingenious captain Steele, with a true copy of Mr. Steele's letter to the collar-maker's wife of Stockbridge and her answers, the originals being both under his custody, and to be perused at his shop near Charing-cross. He has already he tells me extracted several words contributing to a smooth style, flowers of rhetoric, smart sentences, and knock-down arguments. In the latter end of his letter he makes some observations upon what he calls knock-down arguments, and gives a specimen how the repetition of divers words may be looked upon as a full answer to all the arguments contained in them; and this, that ingenious anti-demolisher of the countenance terms "perstringing the controversy," or "spitting his adversary's words into his mouth." His instances are as follow: "After having with the greatest fluency, gravity, and earnestness imaginable, spoken unintelligibly against me, uttering the words Ghent, Bruges, Transito, Insulting; he at last-" So again, "He runs on with my name among the words whig, politician, cross purposes, book slavery. shamming and bantering." As this work may be of vast improvement to the English language, Mr. Longbottom assures me he designs to print it upon the same paper and character with Mr. Steele's Crisis, and that subscriptions will be shortly taken in at Mr. Buckley's [the publisher]. ABSTRACT OF THE FROM THE INVASION OF IT BY JULIUS CÆSAR COURT AND EMPIRE OF JAPAN. TO THE COUNT DE GYLLENBORG." He married the widow of Elias Derritt, esq., deputy of the b Charles XII. king of Sweden, who was unfortunately killed by a cannon-ball at the siege of Fredericshall, Dec. 11, 1718. Immediately after his death, baron Gotz, his prime minister, was arrested, tried, and executed at Stockholm, being charged by the senate with all the oppressive measures of the late reign. Having been deeply engaged in the Swedish conspiracy against George I. in the year 1716, baron Gotz, at the desire of that prince, had been arrested at the Hague, and at the same time count Gyllenborg was seized and sent out of England. cations at all; and for my own part, when I looked greater stranger to the commonest transactions of the HISTORY OF ENGLAND. FROM THE INVASION BY JULIUS CÆSAR. TO WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. THE most ancient account we have of Britain is, that the island was full of inhabitants, divided into several petty kingdoms, as most nations of the world appear to have been at first. The bodies of the Britons were painted with a sky-coloured blue, either as an ornament or else for terror to their enemies. In their religion they were heathens, as all the world was before Christ except the Jews. Their priests were called druids: these lived in hollow trees, and committed not their mysteries to writing but delivered them down by tradition, whereby they were in time wholly lost. The author was then in his fifty-second year. The Britons had wives in common, so many to a | particular tribe or society; and the children were in common to that society. About fifty years before Christ, Julius Cæsar, first Roman emperor, having conquered Gaul or France, invaded Britain rather to increase his glory than conquests; for having overcome them in one or two battles he returned. not The next invasion of Britain by the Romans (then masters of most of the known world) was in the reign of the emperor Claudius; but it was wholly subdued till that of Nero. It was governed by lieutenants or deputies sent from Rome, as Ireland is now by deputies from England, and continued thus under the Romans for about 460 years; till that empire being invaded by the Goths and Vandals, the Romans were forced not only to recall their own armies but also to draw from hence the bravest of the Britons, for their assistance against those barbarians. titled "king of all Albion" (an old name of this island), and was the first absolute monarch. He made peace with the Danes and allowed them to live in his dominions mixed with the English. In this prince's time there were five kings in Wales who all did him homage for their country. These Danes began first to make their invasions here about the year 800; which they after renewed at several times and under several leaders, and were as often repulsed. They used to come with vast numbers of ships, burn and ravage before them, as the cities of London, Winchester, &c. Encouraged by success and prey, they often wintered in England, fortifying themselves in the northern parts, from whence they cruelly infested the Saxon kings. process of time they mixed with the English (as was said before), and lived under the Saxon government: but Ethelred, then king of England, 978. growing weary of the Danish insolence, a conspiracy is formed, and the Danes massacred in one day all over England. In Four years after, Sweyn king of Denmark, to The Roman conquests in this island reached no farther northward than to that part of Scotland where Stirling and Glasgow are seated. The re-revenge the death of his subjects, invades England; gion beyond was held not worth the conquering: and after battles fought and much cruelty exercised. it was inhabited by a barbarous people called Cale- he subdues the whole kingdom, forcing Ethelred to donians and Picts, who being a rough fierce nation fly into Normandy. daily infested the British borders. Therefore the emperor Severus built a wall from Stirling to Glasgow to prevent the invasions of the Picts: it is commonly called the Picts' Wall. These Picts and Caledonians or Scots, encouraged by the departure of the Romans, do now cruelly infest and invade the Britons by sea and land; the A. D. 455. Britons choose Vortigern for their king, who was forced to invite the Saxons (a fierce northern people) to assist him against those barbarians. The Saxons come over and beat the ! Picts in several battles; but at last pick quarrels with the Britons themselves, and after a long war drive them into the mountains of Wales and Cornwall, and establish themselves in seven kingdoms in Britain, now called England. The seven kingdoms are usually styled the Saxon Heptarchy. 460. About this time lived king Arthur (if the whole story be not a fable', who was so famous for beating the Saxons in several battles. The Britons received christianity very early, and as is reported from some of the disciples themselves; so that when the Romans left Britain the Britons! were generally christians. But the Saxons were heathens till pope Gregory the Great sent over hither Austin the monk, by whom Ethelbert 600. king of the South Saxons, and his subjects, were converted to christianity, and the whole island soon followed the example. After many various revolutions in this island among the kingdoms of the Saxons, Egbert, descended from the West-Saxon kings, became sole monarch of England. 800. The language in Britain was British (now called Welsh) or Latin; but with the Saxons English came in, although extremely different from what it is The present names of towns, shires, &e., were given by them; and the whole kingdom was called England, from the Angles, who were a branch of the Saxons. Sweyn dying, his son Canutus succeeds in the kingdom; but Ethelred returning with an army, Canutus is forced to withdraw to Denmark for suc cour. Ethelred dies, and his son Edmund Ironside succeeds; but Canutus returning with fresh forces from Denmark, after several battles the kingdom is parted between them both. Edmund dying, his sons are sent beyond sea by Canutus, who now is sole king of England. Hardicanute, the last Danish king, dying without issue, Edward son of Ethelred is chosen king. For his great holiness he was surnamed the Confessor, and sainted after his death. He was the first of our princes that attempted to cure the king's evil by touching. He first introduced what is now called the common law. In his time began the mode and humour among the English gentry of using the French tongue and fashions, in compliance with the king, who had been bred up in Normandy, The Danish government in England lasted but twenty-six years, under the three kings. Edward the Confessor married the daughter of earl Godwin, an English nobleman of great power, but of Danish extraction; but wanting issue he appointed Edgar Atheling, grandson to his brother, to succeed him, and Haroid, son of earl Godwin, to be governor of the young prince. But upon Edward's death Harold neglected Edgar Atheling and usurped the crown for himself. Edward, while he was in Normandy, met so good reception that it was said he made a promise to that duke, that in case he recovered his kingdom and died without issue he would leave it to him. Edward dying, William duke of Normandy sends to Harold to claim the crown; but Harold, now in possession, resolves to keep it. Upon which duke William, having prepared a mighty fleet and army, invades England, lands at Hastings, and sets fire to his fleet, to eat of all hope from his men of return As soon as the Saxons were settled the Danes being. To Harold be sent his messenger, demanding gan to trouble and invade them, as they (the Saxons) had before done the Britons. the kingdom and his subjection: but Harold returned him this answer, "That unless he departed These Danes came out of Germany, Denmark, his land he would make him sensible of his just and Norway; a rough, warlike people, little different, displeasure." So Hares advanced his forces into from the Saxons, to whom they were nigh neighbours. Sussex, within seven miles of his enemy. The NorAfter many invasions from the Danes, Edgarkingman Juka, to save the effusion of blood, sent these of England sets forth the first ravy. He was enoffers to Haroid: "either wholly to resign the king king's summons; Odo undertook to prevail with the obstinacy of the inhabitants; but being admitted into the town, was there detained either by a real or seeming force; however, the king, provoked at their stubbornness and fraud, soon compelled them to yield, retook his prisoner, and forcing him for ever to abjure England sent him into Normandy. By these actions performed with such great celerity and success, the preparations of duke Robert were wholly disappointed; himself, by the THE REIGN OF WILLIAM THE SECOND, necessity of his affairs, compelled to a treaty with SURNAMED RUFUS. Ar the time of the Conqueror's death his eldest son Robert, upon some discontent with his father, being absent in France, William, the second son, made use of this juncture, and without attending his father's funeral hastened to England; where, pursuant to the will of the deceased prince, the nobility, although more inclined to favour Robert, were prevailed with to admit him king; partly by his promises to abate the rigour of the late reign and restore the laws and liberties which had been then abolished, but chiefly by the credit and solicitations of Lanfranc; for that prelate had formerly a share in his education and always a great affection for his person. At Winchester he took possession of his father's treasure in obedience to whose command, as well as to ingratiate himself with the people, he distributed it among churches and religious houses, and applied it to the redeeming of prisoners and other acts of popularity. In the mean time Robert returned to Normandy, took possession of that duchy with great applause and content of his people, and spited at the indignity done him by his father, and the usurpation of his brother in consequence thereof, prepared a great fleet and army to invade England; nor did there want any occasion to promote his interest, if the slowness, the softness, and credulity of his nature, could have suffered him to make a right improvement of it. Odo bishop of Baieux, of whom frequent mention is made in the preceding reign, a prelate of incurable ambition, either on account of his age or character being restored to his liberty and possessions in England, grew into envy and discontent, upon seeing Lanfranc preferred before him by the new king in his favour and ministry. He therefore formed a conspiracy with several nobles of Norman birth to depose the king, and sent an invitation to Robert to hasten over. Meantime the conspirators, in order to distract the king's forces, seized on several parts of England at once; Bristol, Norwich, Leicester, Worcester, Shrewsbury, Bath, and Durham, were secured by several noblemen: Odo himself seized Rochester, reduced the coasts of Kent, and sent messages to Robert to make all possible speed. The king, alarmed at these many and sudden defections, thought it the best course to begin his defence by securing the good will of the people. He redressed many grievances, eased them of certain oppressive taxes and tributes, gave liberty to hunt in his forest with other marks of indulgence, which, however forced from him by the necessity of the time, he had the skill or fortune so to order as they neither lost their good grace nor effect; for immediately after he raised great forces both by land and sea, marched into Kent, where the chief body of his enemies was in arms, recovered Tunbridge and Pevensey, in the latter of which Odo himself was taken prisoner and forced to accompany the king to Rochester. This city refused to surrender at the • Which was 60,000/. in silver, beside gold, jewels, and plate. his brother upon the terms of a small pension and a mutual promise of succeeding to each other's dominions on failure of issue, forced to resign his pretensions, and return with a shattered fleet to Normandy. About this time died archbishop Lanfranc; by whose death the king, loosed from that awe and constraint he was under, soon began to discover those irregularities of his nature which till then he had suppressed and disguised, falling into those acts of oppression and extortion that have made his name and memory infamous. He kept the see of Canterbury four years vacant, and converted the revenues to his own use, together with those of several other bishoprics and abbeys, and disposed of all church preferments to the highest bidder. Nor were his exactions less upon the laity, from whom he continually extorted exorbitant fines for pretended transgression of certain penal laws, and entertained informers to observe men's actions and bring him intelligence. It is here worth observation that these corrupt proceedings of the prince have, in the opinion of several learned men, given rise to two customs, which are a long time grown to have the force of laws. For, first, the successors of this king continuing the custom of seizing on the accruing rents in the vacancy of sees and abbeys, it grew in process of time to be exacted as a right or acknowledgment to the king as founder; whence the revenues of vacant bishoprics belong at this day to the crown. The second custom had an original not unlike. Several persons, to avoid the persecutions of the king's informers and other instruments of oppression, withdrew themselves and their effects to foreign countries; upon which the king issued a proclamation forbidding all men to leave the kingdom without his licence; from whence, in the judgment of the same authors, the writ ne exeat regno had its beginning. By these and the like arbitrary methods having amassed great treasures, and finding all things quiet at home, he raised a powerful army to invade his brother in Normandy; but upon what ground or pretext the writers of that age are not very exact; whether it were from a principle frequent among unjust princes that old oppressions are best justified by new, or whether, having a talent for sudden enterprises and justly apprehending the resentment of duke Robert, he thought it the wiser course to prevent injuries than to revenge them. In this expedition he took several cities and castles from his brother, and would have proceeded further if Robert had not desired and obtained the assistance of Philip king of France, who came with an army to his relief. King William, not thinking it safe or prudent to proceed further against his enemy, sup. ported by so great an ally, yet loth to lose the fruits of his time and valour, fell upon a known and old expedient, which no prince ever practised oftener or with greater success, and that was to buy off the French king with a sum of money. This had its effect; for that prince, not able to oppose such powerful arms, immediately withdrew himself and his forces, leaving the two brothers to concert the measures of a peace. This was treated and agreed with great advantages on the side of king William; for he kept all the towns he had taken, obliged his brother to banish Edgar Atheling out of Normandy, and for a further security brought over with him to England the duke himself to attend him in his expedition against Malcolm king of Scotland, who during his absence had invaded the borders. The king, having raised great forces both by sea and land, went in person to repel the inroads of the Scots; but the enterprise was without success; for the greatest part of his fleet was destroyed by a tempest, and his army very much diminished by sickness and famine, which forced him to a peace of little honour; by which, upon the condition of homage from that prince, the king of England agreed to deliver him up those twelve towns (or manors) in England which Malcolm had held under William the Conqueror; together with a pension of 12,000 marks. At this time were sown the seeds of another quarrel between him and duke Robert, who, soliciting the king to perform some covenants of the last peace and meeting with a repulse, withdrew in great discontent to Normandy. King William in his return from Scotland fell dangerously sick at Gloucester, where, moved by the seasonable exhortations of his clergy or rather by the fears of dying, he began to discover great marks of repentance, with many promises of amendment and retribution, particularly for his injuries to the church. To give credit to which good resolutions he immediately filled several vacant sees, giving that of Canterbury to Anselm, a foreigner of great fame for piety and learning. But as it is the disposition of men who derive their vices from their complexions that their passions usually beat strong and weak with their pulses, so it fared with this prince; who upon recovery of his health soon forgot the vows he had made in his sickness, relapsing with greater violence into the same irregularities of injustice and oppression, whereof Anselm, the new archbishop, felt the first effects. This prelate, soon after his promotion, offered the king a sum of money by way of present; but took care it should be so small that none might interpret it to be a consideration of his late preferment. The king rejected it with scorn; and as he used but little ceremony in such matters insisted in plain terms for more. selm would not comply; and the king enraged sought all occasions to make him uneasy; until at length the poor archbishop, tired out with perpetual usurpations (or at least what was then understood to be such) upon his jurisdiction, privileges, and possessions, desired the king's licence for a journey to Rome, and upon a refusal went without it. soon as he was withdrawn the king seized on all his revenues, converting them to his own use, and the archbishop continued in exile until the succeeding reign. An As The particulars of this quarrel between the king and archbishop are not, in my opinion, considerable enough to deserve a place in this brief collection, being of little use to posterity and of less entertainment; neither should I have mentioned it at all but for the occasion it gives me of making a general observation, which may afford some light into the nature and disposition of those ages. Not only this king's father and himself, but the princes for several successions of the fairest character, have been severely taxed for violating the rights of the clergy, and perhaps not altogether without reason. It is true this character has made the lighter impression as proceeding altogether from the party injured, the contemporary writers being generally churchmen; and it must be confessed that the usurpations of the church and court of Rome were in those ages risen to such heights as to be altogether inconsistent either with the legislature or administration of any independent state; the inferior clergy, both secular and regular, insisting upon such immunities as wholly exempted them from the civil power; and the bishops removing all controversies with the crown by appeal to Rome; for they reduced the matter to this short issue, that God was to be obeyed rather than men; and consequently the bishop of Rome, who is Christ's representative, rather than an earthly prince. Nei ther does it seem improbable that all Christendom would have been in utter vassalage, both temporal and spiritual, to the Roman see, if the Reformation had not put a stop to those exorbitancies, and in a good measure opened the eyes of those princes and states who still adhere to the doctrines and discipline of the church. While the king continued at Gloucester, Malcolm king of Scotland came to his court, with intentions to settle and confirm the late peace between them. It happened that a controversy arose about some circumstances relating to the homage which Malcolm was to pay; in the managing whereof king William discovered so much haughtiness and disdain, both in words and gestures, that the Scottish prince provoked by such unworthy treatment returned home with indignation; but soon came back at the head of a powerful army, and entering Northumberland with fire and sword laid all waste before him. But as all enterprises have in the progress of them a tincture of those passions by which they were spirited at first, so this invasion, begun upon private revenge, which is a blind ungovernable passion, was carried on with equal precipitation and proved to be ruinous in the event; for Robert Mowbray earl of Northumberland, to prevent the destruction of his own country where he had great possessions, gathering what forces he could suddenly raise, and without waiting any directions from the king, marched against the Scots, who were then set down before Alnwick-castle: there by an ambush Malcolm and his eldest son Edward were slain, and the army, discouraged by the loss of their princes, entirely defeated. This disaster was followed in a few days by the death of queen Margaret, who not able to survive her misfortunes died for grief. Neither did the miseries of that kingdom end till, after two usurpations, the surviving son of Malcolm, who had fled to England for refuge, was restored to his crown by the assistance of king William. About this time the hidden sparks of animosity between the two brothers, buried but not extinguished in the last peace, began to flame out into new dissensions: duke Robert had often sent his complaints to the king for breach of articles, but without redress; which provoked him to expostulate in a rougher manner, till at length he charged the king in plain terms with injustice and perjury; but no men are found to endure reproaches with less temper than those who most deserve them: the king, at the same time filled with indignation and stung with guilt, invaded Normandy a second time, resolving to reduce his brother to such terms as might stop all further complaints. He had already taken several strongholds by force either of arms or of money, and intending entirely to subdue the duchy, gave orders to have 20,000 men immediately raised in England and sent over to him. The duke, to |