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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
David Hume's monumental work, "The History of England," spans six volumes, presenting a sweeping narrative that chronicles the evolution of England from the Roman invasion to the Glorious Revolution. Hume's literary style is characterized by clarity and eloquence, combining rigorous historical analysis with a philosophical approach that interrogates the nature of politics, power, and morality. Set against the backdrop of Enlightenment thought, Hume's work reflects the tension between empirical observation and speculative reasoning, as he integrates sociopolitical context with a critique of historical narratives prevalent during his time. As a prominent philosopher, historian, and essayist, David Hume's intellectual pursuits were deeply shaped by his Scottish Enlightenment contemporaries. Hume's exposure to diverse philosophical currents, coupled with his experiences of the political turbulence in Britain, inspired him to explore the complexities of historical change and character. His objective lens, combined with an analytical yet engaging narrative voice, invites readers to consider the interplay between events and human nature across the ages. Hume's "The History of England" is essential for anyone seeking to understand the intricate tapestry of English history and the philosophical underpinnings of historical interpretation. It is a profound exploration that enriches not only the historian's understanding but also the general reader's appreciation of the past, making it a valuable addition to any library. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The History of England (Vol. 1-6)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Between crown and people, a long argument becomes the heartbeat of a nation. David Hume’s The History of England invites readers into that argument, charting how power, belief, and custom shape a political community over centuries. Rather than chasing spectacle, Hume traces patterns: how institutions harden, how tempers cool or ignite, how ideas move from pulpit and court into daily life. In these pages, the struggles of parliaments and monarchs appear alongside the slower tides of law and commerce. The result is a portrait of England not as a static realm, but as a restless conversation about authority, liberty, and order, told with deliberate poise and intellectual curiosity.
Composed in the middle decades of the eighteenth century by the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711–1776), The History of England appeared in six volumes between 1754 and 1762. The work spans from ancient Roman encroachment on Britain to the threshold of the modern constitutional settlement in 1688. Its central premise is straightforward yet rich: to recount the political, religious, and social development of England and to weigh events with attention to causes and consequences. Hume writes as an analyst as well as a narrator, joining careful evaluation of sources with a clear, sustained narrative of national change.
From its first installments, the History was widely read and debated, and it soon secured Hume’s reputation beyond philosophy. Its classic status rests on more than mere popularity. The prose is composed and unhurried, yet pointed; episodes are arranged to clarify motives rather than to flatter prejudices. Hume’s pages helped set a standard for literary history in English, influencing how later writers combined narrative with reflection. He refused to reduce past actors to caricature, insisting that principle, interest, and circumstance collide in complex ways. That manner of explanation, and the elegance that carries it, ensure the book’s enduring presence.
The publication history itself speaks to Hume’s ambition. He began with the seventeenth century, publishing the Stuart volumes first and then extending the story backward to earlier centuries, ultimately forming a continuous arc. Across his lifetime he revised the text, refining judgments, clarifying references, and responding to critics. Such procedures underscore a commitment to measured reconsideration rather than polemic. The completed work presents a long view: not a chronicle of disconnected reigns, but a study of continuities and ruptures as England moves from medieval inheritances toward a recognizably modern political order without sacrificing the texture of particular events.
At the level of craft, Hume’s History marries narrative momentum with analysis. Battles, parliaments, and councils are described briskly, but pauses for reflection mark turning points, weighing the motives of rulers and the temper of the people. Character sketches serve the argument, not the other way around. Causation is framed as a web rather than a single thread, and the historian’s distance is maintained by a restrained, economical diction. Readers thus encounter not only what happened, but why events mattered and how their implications unfolded through institutions, habits, and ideas that outlast any individual reign or political faction.
The great themes are enduring ones: the reach of royal authority, the claims of conscience, the jurisdiction of the law, and the conditions under which liberty can be preserved without descending into disorder. Hume attends closely to the ways religion, commerce, and constitutional practice interact, tracking how innovations provoke resistance and how settlements emerge from conflict. He does not treat progress as inevitable; advancement is contingent, and reversals are instructive. By pressing these themes across centuries, the History avoids parochialism. It presents England as a case study in the management of power amid plural beliefs and shifting economic realities.
The book’s influence radiated widely through subsequent historical writing. Later historians, including Edward Gibbon and Thomas Babington Macaulay, engaged Hume’s example—sometimes adopting his composure and attention to causes, sometimes disputing his judgments and political coloring. The very intensity of those debates kept the History at the center of English-language historiography for generations. In addition to historians, political thinkers and moralists found in Hume’s pages a disciplined method for connecting public events to human motives. The work thus bridged literature and scholarship, shaping expectations about how history should be argued, paced, and written for an educated, general readership.
One reason the History endures is that it refuses easy partisanship. Hume was keenly aware of the temptations of legend, whether celebratory or accusatory, and he tried to balance competing claims with cool scrutiny. This stance earned both praise and objection, a sign that he challenged prevailing certainties. By offering a counterweight to triumphal narratives, he pushed readers to separate affection for outcomes from judgment about means. That aspiration to fairness, even when contested, marks the work as a model of Enlightenment inquiry: empirical in spirit, skeptical of simplifications, and attentive to the unforeseen consequences that attend political action.
Equally important is the History’s engagement with evidence. Hume drew on chronicles, state papers, pamphlets, and prior histories, weighing testimony and tracing contradictions before rendering conclusions. He acknowledged the limits of the record and the distortions of partisanship, modeling the humility that a vast subject demands. The texture of citation and note, together with periodic revisions, reflects a living conversation with sources rather than a closed system. For modern readers, this method signals both the durability and the tentativeness of historical knowledge: firm enough to guide understanding, provisional enough to invite reconsideration as archives and interpretations evolve.
Readers who know Hume primarily as a philosopher will recognize familiar habits of mind. The History examines custom, passion, interest, and opinion as engines of action, and it traces institutional change as the slow accumulation of many small causes rather than a single decisive idea. Skepticism informs the tone, but not to paralyze judgment; it disciplines enthusiasm and makes room for complexity. The result is a study of politics as a field of human nature at work, where intentions meet incentives and where norms, once established, exert their own quiet force across generations and through unforeseen circumstances.
Approached today, the six volumes reward patient, sequential reading, though each period retains its own distinct flavor. Hume’s eighteenth‑century vantage is part of the work’s value: it records how a leading Enlightenment mind understood the English past and invites readers to test his analysis against later scholarship. To read him is to practice a double vision—entering the periods he describes while noticing the author’s context and commitments. That reflective posture, supported by measured prose and careful structure, makes the History not merely a repository of events, but a training ground for informed judgment about evidence, motive, and consequence.
The questions that animate these volumes remain urgent: how to balance authority and freedom, how to accommodate diverse convictions in a shared polity, and how to reform institutions without tearing them apart. Hume’s narrative illuminates the patient labor by which settlements are fashioned and the fragility that always attends them. In an age of quick certainties and accelerated debate, the History’s calm intelligence and long perspective offer a steadying resource. It endures as a classic because it clarifies without simplifying, teaching readers to look past slogans toward the durable structures—and the human compromises—on which constitutional life depends.
Synopsis
David Hume’s The History of England (Vol. 1–6), published between 1754 and 1762, offers a continuous narrative from the Roman invasion to the Revolution of 1688. Writing as a philosopher-historian, Hume blends political narrative with reflections on law, religion, manners, and commerce, aiming to explain how institutions and opinions shape events. He relies on chronicles, state papers, and earlier scholarship, acknowledging the limits of evidence for early periods and weighing conflicting testimonies. The work proceeds chronologically, yet carries a consistent inquiry into the balance between authority and liberty, the effects of superstition and enthusiasm, and the gradual refinement of civil society.
The opening volumes survey Roman Britain’s conquest and administration, then the empire’s withdrawal and the formation of early English kingdoms. Hume sketches the social fabric of these centuries with caution, noting sparse sources and the fragmentary nature of law and custom. He traces the introduction of Christianity and considers how ecclesiastical structures interact with warlike aristocracies and local assemblies. The portrait emphasizes subsistence economies, personal allegiances, and the slow transition from tribal dominion to more stable kingship. Rather than dwelling on legend, Hume tests traditions against plausibility, preparing readers for the later emergence of institutions that can be more clearly observed.
With the Norman Conquest, Hume marks a decisive reconfiguration of landholding, justice, and royal power. Feudal relations, castle-building, and administrative surveys strengthen the crown while generating new tensions between king, baronage, and clergy. Subsequent reigns confront the problem of ordering a mixed society: continental legal forms meet older customs, and disputes over ecclesiastical privilege sharpen. Hume highlights legal and institutional change under capable rulers, the assertion of limits to prerogative in charters, and the early appearance of representative practices. The narrative stresses a persistent negotiation between centralized authority and local rights, as England moves toward more regularized governance.
Later medieval chapters follow the extension of royal justice, fiscal innovation, and the maturing of councils and assemblies. Foreign wars and dynastic contests frame this development: campaigns in Scotland and France demand resources and produce both victories and strains. The demographic shock of plague transforms labor relations and social expectations, while intermittent baronial turbulence exposes the fragility of order. Hume attends to the gradual differentiation of estates and the growing voice of the commons without claiming a simple, linear progress. He treats literary and commercial stirrings as significant, yet bounded by recurrent instability that culminates in prolonged conflict over succession.
Under the Tudors, Hume depicts consolidation after civil disorder and the strengthening of a more impersonal state. Henry VII’s cautious governance illustrates the uses of law and finance in reasserting authority. The reign of Henry VIII brings a decisive religious and institutional rupture, with lasting consequences for property, jurisdiction, and allegiance. Subsequent oscillations under Edward VI and Mary I display the hazards of confessional change managed by statute. Elizabeth I’s long rule stabilizes settlement and administration, encourages maritime enterprise, and fosters cultural confidence. Throughout, Hume measures statecraft by its capacity to restrain faction while accommodating the energies of commerce and learning.
The accession of James VI and I joins two crowns while leaving distinct legal orders intact, and Hume examines the difficulties this creates for revenue, policy, and church governance. Debates over prerogative and privilege sharpen, as do disputes about conformity and conscience. With Charles I, the relationship between taxation, law, and counsel deteriorates, and Scottish resistance changes the political calculus. Hume treats the constitutional argument in detail, noting ambiguities in precedent and the dangers of doctrinal certainty. The narrative underscores mutual misapprehension and hardening positions, which transform complaints into a contest over sovereignty and the instruments by which it is exercised.
War brings institutional improvisation and unexpected actors to the fore. Hume narrates the military and political realignments that follow, culminating in the collapse of monarchy and the establishment of a commonwealth. He studies the rise of a professional army, the concentration of power under a protector, and experiments in administration and church policy. The account weighs the benefits of order and martial discipline against the costs to settled law and civic freedom. Competing visions of religious liberty, social reform, and national greatness contend, while fiscal pressures and faction test the capacity of novel constitutions to secure legitimacy.
The restoration of the crown reinstates familiar forms but not the former balance among court, parliament, and church. Hume traces a politics increasingly structured by parties and by disputes over toleration, succession, and security. Foreign entanglements and financial needs press upon domestic debate, while accusations and plots intensify suspicion. Under James II, questions of authority, conscience, and the standing army reach a crisis. Hume’s narrative emphasizes the practical resolution of constitutional uncertainty through events in 1688, avoiding triumphalism while indicating the scale of the adjustment. The settlement reframes obligations and rights without erasing the tensions that produced it.
Across the six volumes, Hume presents England’s past as the interplay of power, opinion, and material improvement. He proposes that durable liberty depends less on sudden ruptures than on habituated respect for law, moderation in zeal, and the diffusion of property and knowledge. His portraits of rulers and factions are instruments for assessing institutions, not ends in themselves. The work’s enduring significance lies in its union of narrative with analysis, skepticism about partisan certitudes, and attention to manners and commerce alongside constitutions. Without insisting on a final doctrine, it invites readers to consider how civil order evolves amid contention.
Historical Context
David Hume’s The History of England (Vol. 1–6), issued between 1754 and 1762, was composed in a mid-eighteenth-century British world shaped by constitutional monarchy, a Protestant establishment, a commercially expanding economy, and a vigorous print culture. The narrative itself stretches from the Roman invasion to the Revolution of 1688, but the work’s perspective is firmly Enlightenment: skeptical, comparative, and attentive to causes rather than providences. London booksellers, Edinburgh libraries, and an increasingly literate public supplied the means and audience. Parliament, the crown, and the Church of England—dominant institutions across the later sections of the story—frame Hume’s account of how authority, law, and religion interacted across centuries.
Hume, a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, brought to history the same empirical temper evident in his philosophy. His reputation for religious skepticism, evident since the 1730s, drew clerical opposition and thwarted academic ambitions, yet his appointment as Keeper of the Advocates Library in Edinburgh (1752–1757) gave him unparalleled access to sources. The History became an immediate commercial success but also a lightning rod. Whig critics charged him with favoring royal authority and underrating ancient liberties; high-church readers accused him of irreligion. The debates it sparked unfolded against the background of post-1745 politics, continuing Jacobite memories, and a British state consolidating empire and finance.
Hume wrote against a prevailing Whig narrative that imagined a steady ascent of English liberty from time immemorial. He questioned the doctrine of an “ancient constitution” untouched by conquest or prerogative and instead reconstructed change as contingent, uneven, and often driven by manners and economic life. His authorities ranged from medieval chroniclers to state papers, parliamentary journals, and modern histories such as Clarendon’s and Rapin’s. He aimed at impartiality but foregrounded the dangers of faction and religious enthusiasm. The work’s polished narrative, character sketches, and attention to legal practice and taxation exemplify Enlightenment historiography: a political history informed by social explanation.
Hume’s opening volumes consider Roman occupation, Anglo-Saxon settlement, and the Norman Conquest, periods often mythologized in eighteenth-century debate. He treats the Saxon polity not as a settled model of mixed government but as a patchwork of local freedoms and inequalities. The Norman regime, he argues, imposed feudal tenures and centralized justice, thereby recasting landholding, military service, and lordship. By stressing the institutional consequences of conquest—rather than celebrating resistance alone—Hume reframes early English history as a long negotiation between personal authority and emergent law, a perspective that resists easy claims about timeless liberties.
Magna Carta (1215) occupies a central place in legal memory, and Hume acknowledges its importance as a check on royal excess. Yet he emphasizes its baronial character and the narrow corporate interests it first served, noting the repeated confirmations required before its provisions gained broader effect. In doing so, he tempers triumphal interpretations that see the charter as an immediate guarantee of popular rights. This skepticism aligns with his larger critique of retrospective constitutional myths. For Hume, durable liberty emerges slowly, through practice, adjudication, and financial constraint, rather than from a single foundational moment sanctified by later political needs.
Late medieval England was transformed by plague, war, and market change. The Black Death (c. 1348–1350) devastated population levels, altered labor relations, and prompted statutes attempting to fix wages. The Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) mobilized taxation, administration, and propaganda, even as victories like Crécy and Agincourt yielded no lasting French dominion. The Peasants’ Revolt (1381) exposed tensions around serfdom and fiscal burdens. Hume integrates such facts to show how shifts in property, wages, and military organization reshaped authority. He views social conflict as consequential but resists reading it as linear democratization, highlighting instead how fiscal systems and law evolved through stress.
Civil strife culminated in the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), a dynastic struggle that decimated magnate houses and left the crown comparatively stronger. Hume treats this as the crucible from which Tudor monarchy emerged, able to curb private armies and enforce order. The upheaval’s practical effects—reliance on royal courts, the strengthening of central councils, and a turn toward bureaucratic governance—matter more to him than the personalities of rival claimants. By emphasizing institutional consolidation, he situates the Tudors’ authority within longer processes that reduced baronial independence and knit provincial life more tightly to Westminster.
Under the Tudors, especially Henry VII (r. 1485–1509) and Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547), governance and religion underwent decisive change. Hume credits Henry VII’s prudence in finance and justice for stabilizing the realm after civil war, while judging Henry VIII’s policies—above all the break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries (1536–1541)—as politically effective but often arbitrary. He notes how ecclesiastical wealth transfer, changes in poor relief, and the assertion of royal supremacy altered everyday institutions. The spread of print and vernacular scripture intensified debate, linking theology to property and obedience, and providing a prelude to later conflicts over conscience and sovereignty.
The mid-Tudor oscillations under Edward VI (1547–1553) and Mary I (1553–1558) underscored the fragility of a settlement. Hume observes how doctrinal swings and persecution destabilized trust, while administrative continuities persisted beneath. With Elizabeth I (1558–1603), a more durable religious compromise emerged: the 1559 settlement retained episcopacy and defined conformity, yet punished recusancy. Hume praises Elizabeth’s prudence in finance and diplomacy, while noting the regime’s coercive edge. The defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) fortified national identity and maritime ambition. Commerce, privateering, and modest colonial ventures expanded, illustrating how trade and war together shaped policy and public revenue.
The Stuart accession (1603) united the crowns of Scotland and England under James VI and I. Hume interprets James’s reign as a test of how inherited Tudor authority met a more assertive House of Commons. Fiscal expedients, debates over impositions, and ecclesiastical policy strained relations, while the Gunpowder Plot (1605) hardened anti-Catholic legislation. Hume, skeptical of Puritan militancy yet wary of irresponsible prerogative, frames these frictions as structural: revenue needs outpaced inherited institutions. His Scottish perspective also registers the unachieved political union, reminding readers that multiple kingdoms, with different churches and laws, complicated the pursuit of uniform authority.
Under Charles I (r. 1625–1649), contest intensified. The Petition of Right (1628) sought limits on taxation and imprisonment; Charles’s Personal Rule (1629–1640) relied on non-parliamentary revenues such as ship money. Hume acknowledges illegality and misjudgment while stressing that the crown’s fiscal desperation reflected outdated revenue bases. Attempts to impose the English liturgy in Scotland provoked the Covenanter movement (1638) and Bishops’ Wars, forcing the summoning of the Long Parliament (1640). Hume’s narrative resists simple blame: he criticizes ministers’ policies and popular zeal alike, situating the crisis in the collision of conscience, taxation, and multi-kingdom governance.
Civil war (1642–1646, renewed 1648) brought military innovation and ideological polarization. Parliament’s New Model Army professionalized command; royalist defeat led to the unprecedented trial and execution of a king (1649). Hume views the period as a cautionary tableau: virtue and fanaticism intermingled, and constitutional experiments unfolded under the pressure of arms. He grants the courage and discipline of parliamentary forces while lamenting the escalation that made settlement elusive. For Hume, the wars demonstrate how competing claims to sovereignty—crown, parliament, army, and congregations—destabilized law, and how rhetoric of liberty could sanction new forms of domination.
The Commonwealth and Cromwellian Protectorate (1653–1658) receive a nuanced appraisal. Hume respects Oliver Cromwell’s capacity and certain policies—naval vigor under the Navigation Act (1651), relative religious latitude among Protestants—while condemning usurpation and the rule of the sword. He records Anglo-Dutch rivalry, fiscal reorganization, and continuing sectarian ferment. Yet he emphasizes how government without settled legitimacy bred suspicion and surveillance. Everyday life was affected by martial taxation, moral regulation, and trade disruptions. Hume’s broader thesis holds: durable liberty depends on balanced institutions and consent, not mere abolition of monarchy or exaltation of a single assembly.
The Restoration (1660) restored monarchy and episcopacy while leaving intact a more professional navy, a larger public debt, and a sharpened confessional politics. Hume treats the era’s calamities—the Great Plague (1665) and Great Fire of London (1666)—as tests of civic resilience. The Clarendon Code (c. 1661–1665) enforced Anglican conformity; the Declaration of Indulgence (1672) and Test Act (1673) illustrate oscillation between toleration and exclusion. The Popish Plot scare (1678) and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679) arose amid Exclusion Crisis struggles (1679–1681), when Whig and Tory party identities crystallized. Hume deprecates factional excess while acknowledging pressing fears about succession and arbitrary power.
James II (r. 1685–1688) intensified the confessional issue. Early repression of Monmouth’s Rebellion (1685) was followed by efforts to dispense with penal laws and promote Catholics to office, culminating in the Declaration of Indulgence (1687–1688). The trial and acquittal of the Seven Bishops (June 1688) damaged royal authority; the birth of a Catholic heir alarmed elites. William of Orange landed in November 1688; James fled. Hume presents the Revolution as a pragmatic settlement to prevent renewed civil war, not as vindication of a timeless constitution. He accepts its necessity while questioning triumphalist narratives that project later liberties backward without regard to contingency.
Although Hume ends with 1688, his readers lived under the post-Revolution settlement: the Bill of Rights (1689), the Toleration Act (1689), party competition, and the rise of public credit. Eighteenth-century Britain’s fiscal-military state and commercial empire shaped their expectations about history’s purpose. Hume’s own essays on commerce and money reveal his interest in how trade, taxation, and manners interact with politics. His History implicitly traces the roots of these capacities—regular taxation, naval organization, legal predictability—while warning that such achievements can be undone by zealotry or corruption. He thus links constitutional moments to broader social and economic transformations.
The book’s composition coincided with heightened European conflict and media expansion. The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) fostered British patriotism and scrutiny of earlier strategic choices. Coffeehouses, newspapers, and circulating libraries nurtured a vast audience for historical polemic. Hume revised his volumes repeatedly in response to critics, adjusting judgments and notes. Whig historians and dissenting writers challenged his interpretations; later figures such as Catherine Macaulay mounted direct rejoinders. Yet his stylistic clarity, command of sources, and insistence on causes rather than sanctified legends secured his History a place in public debate and in the education of lawyers, politicians, and clergy alike. Hume’s narrative thus mirrored and shaped the concerns of his era.
Author Biography
David Hume (1711–1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist whose work helped shape the Enlightenment. Best known for his rigorous empiricism and refined skepticism, he examined how human understanding arises from experience and habit rather than innate ideas or pure reason. His inquiries into causation, personal identity, morality, politics, religion, and taste set enduring terms for debate in philosophy and the human sciences. Alongside major philosophical treatises, Hume wrote a multivolume history that made him one of the most widely read authors of his age. His prose style—clear, economical, and urbane—became a model for philosophical writing in English.
Hume studied at the University of Edinburgh, where he encountered classical literature, mathematics, and the Newtonian sciences. He was strongly influenced by earlier British empiricists, particularly John Locke and George Berkeley, and by ancient skepticism, which he reinterpreted for modern science and everyday life. He left formal study without taking a degree and pursued an independent program of reading and composition. Early reflections on the limits of reason and the power of the passions shaped his later arguments. From the outset, Hume sought to apply the experimental method of reasoning to the study of human nature, anchoring philosophy in observation rather than metaphysics.
In his twenties Hume composed A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740), a bold attempt to found a comprehensive “science of man.” The Treatise analyzed ideas, causation, belief, personal identity, moral sentiments, and the sources of justice. On publication it met a cool reception, a disappointment Hume wryly summarized as having “fallen dead-born from the press.” He turned to the essay form to reach a broader public, publishing Essays, Moral and Political (1741–1742), which displayed his range on topics from commerce to criticism. Religious controversy surrounding his skepticism complicated prospects for an academic career, but his reputation among readers steadily grew.
Hume recast the most accessible parts of the Treatise in two works: An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748) and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). The first sharpened his account of causation, habit, and the problem of induction, and included the famous critique of testimony about miracles. The second advanced a sophisticated moral sentimentalism, arguing that virtue is grounded in human feelings and social utility. Political Discourses (1752) made lasting contributions to economic thought, discussing commerce, money, and international trade. The Natural History of Religion (1757) offered a naturalistic genealogy of religious belief, while “Of the Standard of Taste” probed aesthetic judgment and criticism.
Appointed librarian to the Advocates Library in Edinburgh in the early 1750s, Hume gained access to extensive resources that supported his ambitious History of England. Published in multiple volumes from the mid-1750s to the early 1760s, the History became a bestseller and secured his financial independence. Though some readers charged him with political bias, the work’s narrative vigor and archival breadth made it a fixture of eighteenth-century reading. Hume’s standing as a man of letters now surpassed his philosophical notoriety; he was widely admired for turning complex political events into lucid, balanced prose accessible to a broad audience.
Public service further broadened Hume’s circle and influence. He served as secretary at the British embassy in Paris, where he was welcomed in leading salons and engaged with Enlightenment thinkers. A brief, highly public dispute with Jean-Jacques Rousseau followed their short-lived friendship. Back in Britain, Hume worked as an under-secretary of state, bringing administrative experience to his intellectual authority. While continuing to revise his essays and philosophical works, he cultivated a reputation for moderation and clarity. His writings were repeatedly re-edited to sharpen arguments and improve style, reinforcing his commitment to accessible philosophical exposition.
Hume spent his final years in Edinburgh, revising his works and composing the brief memoir My Own Life. He died in 1776. His Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion appeared posthumously, deepening debates about the limits of natural theology. Hume’s legacy ranges across philosophy, economics, historiography, and the social sciences. Kant famously credited Hume with awakening him “from dogmatic slumber,” and later movements—from utilitarian moral theory to logical empiricism and cognitive science—extended Humean insights. His analyses of induction, motivation, and the is–ought distinction continue to frame contemporary inquiry, ensuring his place as a defining voice of modern thought.
The History of England (Vol. 1-6)
VOLUME I.
Chapter I.
THE BRITONS.
The curiosity entertained by all civilized nations, of inquiring into the exploits and adventures of their ancestors, commonly excites a regret that the history of remote ages should always be so much involved in obscurity, uncertainty, and contradiction. Ingenious men, possessed of leisure, are apt to push their researches beyond the period in which literary monuments are framed or preserved; without reflecting, that the history of past events is immediately lost or disfigured when intrusted to memory and oral tradition, and that the adventures of barbarous nations, even if they were recorded, could afford little or no entertainment to men born in a more cultivated age. The convulsions of a civilized state usually compose the most instructive and most interesting part of its history; but the sudden, violent, and unprepared revolutions incident to barbarians, are so much guided by caprice, and terminate so often in cruelty, that they disgust us by the uniformity of their appearance; and it is rather fortunate for letters that they are buried in silence and oblivion. The only certain means by which nations can indulge their curiosity in researches concerning their remote origin, is to consider the language, manners, and customs of their ancestors, and to compare them with those of the neighboring nations. The fables, which are commonly employed to supply the place of true history, ought entirely to be disregarded; or if any exception be admitted to this general rule, it can only be in favor of the ancient Grecian fictions, which are so celebrated and so agreeable, that they will ever be the objects of the attention of mankind. Neglecting, therefore, all traditions, or rather tales, concerning the more early history of Britain, we shall only consider the state of the inhabitants as it appeared to the Romans on their invasion of this country: we shall briefly run over the events which attended the conquest made by that empire, as belonging more to Roman than British story: we shall hasten through the obscure and uninteresting period of Saxon annals; and shall reserve a more full narration for those times, when the truth is both so well ascertained, and so complete, as to promise entertainment and instruction to the reader.
All ancient writers agree in representing the first inhabitants of Britain as a tribe of the Gauls or Celtæ, who peopled that island from the neighboring continent. Their language was the same, their manners, their government, their superstition; varied only by those small differences which time or a communication with the bordering nations must necessarily introduce. The inhabitants of Gaul, especially in those parts which lie contiguous to Italy, had acquired, from a commerce with their southern neighbors, some refinement in the arts, which gradually diffused themselves northwards, and spread but a very faint light over this island. The Greek and Roman navigators or merchants (for there were scarcely any other travellers in those ages) brought back the most shocking accounts of the ferocity of the people, which they magnified, as usual, in order to excite the admiration of their countrymen. The south-east parts, however, of Britain had already, before the age of Cæsar, made the first and most requisite step towards a civil settlement; and the Britons, by tillage and agriculture, had there increased to a great multitude.
The other inhabitants of the island still maintained themselves by pasture: they were clothed with skins of beasts: they dwelt in huts, which they reared in the forests and marshes, with which the country was covered: they shifted easily their habitation, when actuated either by the hopes of plunder or the fear of an enemy: the convenience of feeding their cattle was even a sufficient motive for removing their seats and as they were ignorant of all the refinements of life, their wants and their possessions were equally scanty and limited.
The Britons were divided into many small nations or tribes and being a military people, whose sole property was then arms and their cattle, It was impossible, after they had acquired a relish of liberty for their princes or chieftains to establish any despotic authority over them. Their governments, though monarchical, were free, as well as those of all the Celtic nations; and the common people seem even to have enjoyed more liberty among them, than among the nations of Gaul, from whom they were descended. Each state was divided into factions within itself: it was agitated with jealousy or animosity against the neighboring states: and while the arts of peace were yet unknown, wars were the chief occupation, and formed the chief object of ambition, among the people.
The religion of the Britons was one of the most considerable parts of their government; and the druids[1], who were their priests, possessed great authority among them. Besides ministering at the altar, and directing all religious duties, they presided over the education of youth; they enjoyed an immunity from wars and taxes; they possessed both the civil and criminal jurisdiction; they decided all controversies among states as well as among private persons, and whoever refused to submit to their decree was exposed to the most severe penalties. The sentence of excommunication was pronounced against him: he was forbidden access to the sacrifices or public worship: he was debarred all intercourse with his fellow-citizens, even in the common affairs of life: his company was universally shunned, as profane and dangerous: he was refused the protection of law: and death itself became an acceptable relief from the misery and infamy to which he was exposed. Thus the bands of government, which were naturally loose among that rude and turbulent people, were happily corroborated by the terrors of their superstition.
No species of superstition was ever more terrible than that of the druids[1q]. Besides the severe penalties, which it was in the power of the ecclesiastics to inflict in this world, they inculcated the eternal transmigration of souls; and thereby extended their authority as far as the fears of their timorous votaries. They practised their rites in dark groves or other secret recesses; and in order to throw a greater mystery over their religion, they communicated their doctrines only to the initiated, and strictly forbade the committing of them to writing, lest they should at any time be exposed to the examination of the profane vulgar.
Human sacrifices were practised among them: the spoils of war were often devoted to their divinities; and they punished with the severest tortures whoever dared to secrete any part of the consecrated offering: these treasures they kept in woods and forests, secured by no other guard than the terrors of their religion; and this steady conquest over human avidity may be regarded as more signal than their prompting men to the most extraordinary and most violent efforts. No idolatrous worship ever attained such an ascendant over mankind as that of the ancient Gauls and Britons; and the Romans, after their conquest, finding it impossible to reconcile those nations to the laws and institutions of their masters, while it maintained its authority, were at last obliged to abolish it by penal statutes; a violence which had never, in any other instance, been practised by those tolerating conquerors.
THE ROMANS.
The Britons had long remained in this rude but independent state, when Cæsar, having overrun all Gaul by his victories, first cast his eye on their island. He was not allured either by its riches or its renown; but being ambitious of carrying the Roman arms into a new world, then mostly unknown, he took advantage of a short interval in his Gaulic wars, and made an invasion on Britain. The natives, informed of his intention, were sensible of the unequal contest, and endeavored to appease him by submissions, which, however, retarded not the execution of his design. After some resistance, he landed, as is supposed, at Deal, [Anno ante, C. 55;] and having obtained several advantages over the Britons, and obliged them to promise hostages for their future obedience, he was constrained, by the necessity of his affairs, and the approach of winter, to withdraw his forces into Gaul. The Britons relieved, from the terror of his arms, neglected the performance of their stipulations; and that haughty conqueror resolved next summer to chastise them for this breach of treaty. He landed with a greater force; and though he found a more regular resistance from the Britons, who had united under Cassivelaunus[2], one of their petty princes, he discomfited them in every action. He advanced into the country; passed the Thames in the face of the enemy; took and burned the capital of Cassivelaunus; established his ally, Mandubratius[3], in the sovereignty of the Trinobantes; and having obliged the inhabitants to make him new submissions, he again returned with his army into Gaul, and left the authority of the Romans more nominal than real in this island.
The civil wars which ensued, and which prepared the way for the establishment of monarchy in Rome, saved the Britons from that yoke which was ready to be imposed upon them. Augustus, the successor of Cæsar, content with the victory obtained over the liberties of his own country, was little ambitious of acquiring fame by foreign wars; and being apprehensive lest the same unlimited extent of dominion, which had subverted the republic, might also overwhelm the empire, he recommended it to his successors never to enlarge the territories of the Romans. Tiberius, jealous of the fame which might be acquired by his generals, made this advice of Augustus a pretence for his inactivity.
The mad sallies of Caligula, in which he menaced Britain with an invasion, served only to expose himself and the empire to ridicule; and the Britons had now, during almost a century, enjoyed their liberty unmolested, when the Romans, in the reign of Claudius, began to think seriously of reducing them under their dominion. Without seeking any more justifiable reasons of hostility than were employed by the late Europeans in subjecting the Africans and Americans, they sent over an army, [A. D. 43,] under the command of Plautius, an able general, who gained some victories, and made a considerable progress in subduing the inhabitants. Claudius himself, finding matters sufficiently prepared for his reception, made a journey into Britain, and received the submission of several British states, the Cantii, Atrebates, Regni, and Trinobantes, who inhabited the south-east parts of the island, and whom their possessions and more cultivated manner of life rendered willing to purchase peace at the expense of their liberty. The other Britons, under the command of Caractacus, still maintained an obstinate resistance, and the Romans made little progress against them; till Ostorius Scapula was sent over to command their armies. [A. D. 50.] This general advanced the Roman conquests over the Britons; pierced into the country of the Silures, a warlike nation, who inhabited the banks of the Severn; defeated Caractacus in a great battle; took him prisoner, and sent him to Rome, where his magnanimous behavior procured him better treatment than those conquerors usually bestowed on captive princes.
Notwithstanding these misfortunes, the Britons were not subdued; and this island was regarded by the ambitious Romans as a field in which military honor might still be acquired. [A. D. 59.] Under the reign of Nero, Suetonius Paulinus was invested with the command, and prepared to signalize his name by victories over those barbarians. Finding that the island of Mona, now Anglesey[5], was the chief seat of the druids, he resolved to attack it, and to subject a place which was the centre of their superstition, and which afforded protection to all their baffled forces. The Britons endeavored to obstruct his landing on this sacred island, both by the force of their arms and the terrors of their religion. The women and priests were intermingled with the soldiers upon the shore; and running about with flaming torches in their hands, and tossing their dishevelled hair, they struck greater terror into the astonished Romans by their bowlings, cries, and execrations, than the real danger from the armed forces was able to inspire. But Suetonius, exhorting his troops to despise the menaces of a superstition which they despised, impelled them to the attack, drove the Britons off the field, burned the druids in the same fires which those priests had prepared for their captive enemies, destroyed all the consecrated groves and altars; and having thus triumphed over the religion of the Britons, he thought his future progress would be easy in reducing the people to subjection. But he was disappointed in his expectations. The Britons, taking advantage of his absence, were all in arms; and headed by Boadicea[4], queen of the Iceni, who had been treated in the most ignominious manner by the Roman tribunes, had already attacked, with success, several settlements of their insulting conquerors. Suetonius hastened to the protection of London, which was already a flourishing Roman colony; but found, on his arrival, that it would be requisite for the general safety, to abandon that place to the merciless fury of the enemy. London was reduced to ashes; such of the inhabitants as remained in it were cruelly massacred; the Romans and all strangers, to the number of seventy thousand, were every where put to the sword without distinction; and the Britons, by rendering the war thus bloody, seemed determined to cut off all hopes of peace or composition with the enemy. But this cruelty was revenged by Suetonius in a great and decisive battle, where eighty thousand of the Britons are said to have perished, and Boadicea herself, rather than fall into the hands of the enraged victor, put an end to her own life by poison. Nero soon after recalled Suetonius from a government, where, by suffering and inflicting so many severities, he was judged improper for composing the angry and alarmed minds of the inhabitants. After some interval, Cerealis received the command from Vespasian, and by his bravery propagated the terror of the Roman arms, Julius Frontinus succeeded Cerealis both in authority and in reputation: but the general who finally established the dominion of the Romans in this island, was Julius Agricola, who governed it in the reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, and distinguished himself in that scene of action.
This great commander formed a regular plan for subduing Britain, and rendering the acquisition useful to the conquerors. He carried his victorious arms northwards, defeated the Britons in every encounter, pierced into the inaccessible forests and mountains of Caledonia, reduced every state to subjection in the southern parts of the island, and chased before him all the men of fiercer and more intractable spirits, who deemed war and death itself less intolerable than servitude under the victors. He even defeated them in a decisive action, which they fought under Galgacus, their leader; and having fixed a chain of garrisons between the Friths of Clyde and Forth, he thereby cut off the ruder and more barren parts of the island, and secured the Roman province from the incursions of the barbarous inhabitants.
During these military enterprises, he neglected not the arts of peace. He introduced laws and civility among the Britons, taught them to desire and raise all the conveniences of life, reconciled them to the Roman language and manners, instructed them in letters and science, and employed every expedient to render those chains which he had forged both easy and agreeable to them.
The inhabitants, having experienced how unequal their own force was to resist that of the Romans, acquiesced in the dominion of their masters, and were gradually incorporated as a part of that mighty empire.
This was the last durable conquest made by the Romans, and Britain, once subdued, gave no further inquietude to the victor. Caledonia alone, defended by its barren mountains, and by the contempt which the Romans entertained for it, sometimes infested the more cultivated parts of the island by the incursions of its inhabitants. The better to secure the frontiers of the empire, Adrian[6], who visited this island, built a rampart between the River Tyne and the Frith of Solway; Lollius Urbicus, under Antoninus Pius, erected one in the place where Agricola had formerly established his garrisons, Severus, who made an expedition into Britain, and carried his arms to the most northern extremity of it, added new fortifications to the wall of Adrian; and during the reigns of all the Roman emperors, such a profound tranquillity prevailed in Britain, that little mention is made of the affairs of that island by any historian. The only incidents which occur, are some seditions or rebellions of the Roman legions quartered there, and some usurpations of the imperial dignity by the Roman governors. The natives, disarmed, dispirited, and submissive, had lost all desire and even idea of their former liberty and independence.
But the period was now come, when that enormous fabric of the Roman empire, which had diffused slavery and oppression, together with peace and civility, over so considerable a part of the globe, was approaching towards its final dissolution. Italy, and the centre of the empire, removed during so many ages from all concern in the wars, had entirely lost the military spirit, and were peopled by an enervated race, equally disposed to submit to a foreign yoke, or to the tyranny of their own rulers. The emperors found themselves obliged to recruit their legions from the frontier provinces, where the genius of war, though languishing, was not totally extinct; and these mercenary forces, careless of laws and civil institutions, established a military government no less dangerous to the sovereign than to the people. The further progress of the same disorders introduced the bordering barbarians into the service of the Romans; and those fierce nations, having now added discipline to their native bravery, could no longer be restrained by the impotent policy of the emperors, who were accustomed to employ one in the destruction of the others. Sensible of their own force, and allured by the prospect of so rich a prize, the northern barbarians, in the reign of Arcadius and Honorius, assailed at once all the frontiers of the Roman empire; and having first satiated their avidity by plunder, began to think of fixing a settlement in the wasted provinces. The more distant barbarians, who occupied the deserted habitations of the former, advanced in their acquisitions, and pressed with their incumbent weight the Roman state, already unequal to the load which it sustained. Instead of arming the people in their own defence, the emperors recalled all the distant legions, in whom alone they could repose confidence; and collected the whole military force for the defence of the capital and centre of the empire. The necessity of self-preservation had superseded the ambition of power; and the ancient point of honor, never to contract the limits of the empire, could no longer be attended to in this desperate extremity.
Britain by its situation was removed from the fury of these barbarous incursions; and being also a remote province, not much valued by the Romans, the legions which defended it were carried over to the protection of Italy and Gaul. But that province, though secured by the sea against the inroads of the greater tribes of barbarians, found enemies on its frontiers, who took advantage of its present defenceless situation. The Picts and Scots, who dwelt in the northern parts, beyond the wall of Antoninus, made incursions upon their peaceable and effeminate neighbors; and besides the temporary depredations which they committed, these combined nations threatened the whole province with subjection, or, what the inhabitants more dreaded, with plunder and devastation, The Picts seem to have been a tribe of the native British race, who, having been chased into the northern parts by the conquests of Agricola, had there intermingled with the ancient inhabitants: the Scots were derived from the same Celtic origin, had first been established in Ireland, had migrated to the north-west coasts of this island, and had long been accustomed, as well from their old as their new seats, to infest the Roman province by piracy and rapine. 1
These tribes finding their more opulent neighbors exposed to invasion, soon broke over the Roman wall, no longer defended by the Roman arms; and, though a contemptible enemy in themselves, met with no resistance from the unwarlike inhabitants. The Britons, accustomed to have recourse to the emperors for defence as well as government, made supplications to Rome: and one legion was sent over for their protection. This force was an overmatch for the barbarians, repelled their invasion, touted them in every engagement, and having chased them into their ancient limits, returned in triumph to the defence of the southern provinces of the empire.
Their retreat brought on a new invasion of the enemy. The Britons made again an application to Rome, and again obtained the assistance of a legion, which proved effectual for their relief: but the Romans, reduced to extremities at home, and fatigued with those distant expeditions, informed the Britons that they must no longer look to them for succor, exhorted them to arm in their own defence, and urged, that, as they were now their own masters, it became them to protect by their valor that independence which their ancient lords had conferred upon them. That they might leave the island with the better grace, the Romans assisted them in erecting anew the wall of Severus, which was built entirely of stone, and which the Britons had not at that time artificers skilful enough to repair.
And having done this last good office to the inhabitants, they bade a final adieu to Britain, about the year 448, after being masters of the more considerable part of it during the course of near four centuries.
THE BRITONS.
The abject Britons regarded this present of liberty as fatal to them; and were in no condition to put in practice the prudent counsel given them by the Romans, to arm in their own defence. Unaccustomed both to the perils of war and to the cares of civil government, they found themselves incapable of forming or executing any measures for resisting the incursions of the barbarians. Gratian also and Constantine, two Romans who had a little before assumed the purple in Britain, had carried over to the continent the flower of the British youth; and having perished in their unsuccessful attempts on the imperial throne, had despoiled the island of those who, in this desperate extremity, were best able to defend it. The Picts and Scots, finding that the Romans had finally relinquished Britain, now regarded the whole as their prey, and attacked the northern wall with redoubled forces. The Britons, already subdued by their own fears, found the ramparts but a weak defence for them; and deserting their station, left the country entirely open to the inroads of the barbarous enemy. The invaders carried devastation and ruin along with them; and exerted to the utmost their native ferocity, which was not mitigated by the helpless condition and submissive behavior of the inhabitants.
The unhappy Britons had a third time recourse to Rome, which had declared its resolution forever to abandon them. Ætius[7], the patrician, sustained at that time, by his valor and magnanimity, the tottering ruins of the empire, and revived for a moment among the degenerate Romans the spirit, as well as discipline, of their ancestors. The British ambassadors carried to him the letter of their countrymen, which was inscribed, “The groans of the Britons.” The tenor of the epistle was suitable to its superscription. “The barbarians,” say they, “on the one hand, chase us into the sea; the sea, on the other, throws us back upon the barbarians; and we have only the hard choice left us of perishing by the sword or by the waves.”
But Ætius, pressed by the arms of Attila, the most terrible enemy that ever assailed the empire, had no leisure to attend to the complaints of allies, whom generosity alone could induce him to assist.
The Britons, thus rejected, were reduced to despair, deserted their habitations, abandoned tillage, and flying for protection to the forests and mountains, suffered equally from hunger and from the enemy. The barbarians themselves began to feel the pressures of famine in a country which they had ravaged; and being harassed by the dispersed Britons, who had not dared to resist them in a body, they retreated with their spoils into their own country.
The Britons, taking advantage of this interval, returned to their usual occupations; and the favorable seasons which succeeded, seconding their industry, made them soon forget their past miseries, and restored to them great plenty of all the necessaries of life. No more can be imagined to have been possessed by a people so rude, who had not, without the assistance of the Romans, art of masonry sufficient to raise a stone rampart for their own defence; yet the monkish historians, who treat of those events, complain of the luxury of the Britons during this period, and ascribe to that vice, not to their cowardice or improvident counsels, all their subsequent calamities.
The Britons, entirely occupied in the enjoyment of the present interval of peace, made no provision for resisting the enemy, who, invited by their former timid behavior, soon threatened them with a new invasion. We are not exactly informed what species of civil government the Romans, on their departure, had left among the Britons, but it appears probable that the great men in the different districts assumed a kind of regal, though precarious authority, and lived in a great measure independent of each other.
To this disunion of counsels were also added the disputes of theology; and the disciples of Pelagius, who was himself a native of Britain, having increased to a great multitude, gave alarm to the clergy, who seem to have been more intent on suppressing them, than on opposing the public enemy.
Laboring under these domestic evils, and menaced with a foreign invasion, the Britons attended only to the suggestions of their present fears, and following the counsels of Vortigern, prince of Dumnonium, who, though stained with every vice, possessed the chief authority among them, they sent into Germany a deputation to invite over the Saxons for their protection and assistance.
THE SAXONS.
Of all the barbarous nations, known either in ancient or modern times, the Germans seem to have been the most distinguished both by their manners and political institutions, and to have carried to the highest pitch the virtues of valor and love of liberty; the only virtues which can have place among an uncivilized people, where justice and humanity are commonly neglected. Kingly government, even when established among the Germans, (for it was not universal,) possessed a very limited authority; and though the sovereign was usually chosen from among the royal family, he was directed in every measure by the common consent of the nation over whom he presided. When any important affairs were transacted, all the warriors met in arms; the men of greatest authority employed persuasion to engage their consent; the people expressed their approbation by rattling their armor, or their dissent by murmurs; there was no necessity for a nice scrutiny of votes among a multitude, who were usually carried with a strong current to one side or the other; and the measure, thus suddenly chosen by general agreement, was executed with alacrity, and prosecuted with vigor. Even in war, the princes governed more by example than by authority, but in peace, the civil union was in a great measure dissolved, and the inferior leaders administered justice, after an independent manner, each in his particular district. These were elected by the votes of the people in their great councils; and though regard was paid to nobility in the choice, their personal qualities, chiefly their valor, procured them, from the suffrages of their fellow-citizens, that honorable but dangerous distinction. The warriors of each tribe attached themselves to their leader, with the most devoted affection and most unshaken constancy. They attended him as his ornament in peace, as his defence in war, as his council in the administration of justice. Their constant emulation in military renown dissolved not that inviolable friendship which they professed to their chieftain and to each other. To die for the honor of their band was their chief ambition; to survive its disgrace, or the death of their leader, was infamous. They even carried into the field their women and children, who adopted all the martial sentiments of the men: and being thus impelled by every human motive, they were invincible; where they were not opposed, either by the similar manners and institutions of the neighboring Germans, or by the superior discipline, arms, and numbers of the Romans.
The leaders and their military companions were maintained by the labor of their slaves, or by that of the weaker and less warlike part of the community whom they defended. The contributions which they levied went not beyond a bare subsistence; and the honors, acquired by a superior rank, were the only reward of their superior dangers and fatigues. All the refined arts of life were unknown among the Germans: tillage itself was almost wholly neglected; they even seem to have been anxious to prevent any improvements of that nature; and the leaders, by annually distributing anew all the land among the inhabitants of each village, kept them from attaching themselves to particular possessions, or making such progress in agriculture as might divert their attention from military expeditions, the chief occupation of the community.
The Saxons had been for some time regarded as one of the most warlike tribes of this fierce people, and had become the terror of the neighboring nations.
They had diffused themselves from the northern parts of Germany and the Cimbrian Chersonesus, and had taken possession of all the sea-coast from the mouth of the Rhine to Jutland; whence they had long infested by their piracies all the eastern and southern parts of Britain, and the northern of Gaul.
In order to oppose their inroads, the Romans had established an officer, whom they called “Count of the Saxon shore;” and as the naval arts can flourish among a civilized people alone, they seem to have been more successful in repelling the Saxons than any of the other barbarians by whom they were invaded. The dissolution of the Roman power invited them to renew their inroads; and it was an acceptable circumstance that the deputies of the Britons appeared among them, and prompted them to undertake an enterprise to which they were of themselves sufficiently inclined.
Hengist and Horsa[8], two brothers, possessed great credit among the Saxons, and were much celebrated both for their valor and nobility. They were reputed, as most of the Saxon princes, to be sprung from Woden[9], who was worshipped as a god among those nations, and they are said to be his great grandsons; a circumstance which added much to their authority.
We shall not attempt to trace any higher the origin of those princes and nations. It is evident what fruitless labor it must be to search, in those barbarous and illiterate ages, for the annals of a people, when their first leaders, known in any true history, were believed by them to be the fourth in descent from a fabulous deity, or from a man exalted by ignorance into that character. The dark industry of antiquaries, led by imaginary analogies of names, or by uncertain traditions, would in vain attempt to pierce into that deep obscurity which covers the remote history of those nations.
