Certaine Considerations Upon The Government Of England

INTRODUCTION. a numerous family and it was then not easier than it now is to pro- vide for daughters and younger sons a position consistent with the honour and dignity of the family from which they sprung. Primo- geniturafacit appanagium but courtiers then swallowed up employments which have in later times been a happy resource for the scions of influential county families and the squire of the seven- teenth century had to provide means for cadets, which a more skilful age has sought in other modes of provision than a careful and frugal economy. And yet, amidst all the distractions of political and public life, and the cares imposed upon him by his station and domestic circum- stances, undeterred by difficulty, undismayed by persecution, we find him devoting the energies of a powerful mind to the investiga- tion of our national antiquities, rendering some of our earlier autho- rities accessible for the first time to his fellow countrymen, and finally producing two of the most remarkable contributions we yet possess to our ecclesiastical and political history. The student in an age like this, when the means of collecting knowledge are widely diffused, and the aids to its co-ordination and implication sufficiently supplied, can form but a faint notion of the difficulties which, in the seventeenth century, still beset the path of the historical inquirer. Much that is now accessible through a never resting press was then still locked up in manuscripts, too often guarded with jealous care from the eye of a stranger. No British Museum opened its hospitable doors to every respectable applicant and even though Cotton and DEwes, and other equally noble men, gave great facilities to all who hadany claims upon their notice, in many cases long negotiations and no little diplomacy were necessarv in order to obtain sight of a rare book or valuable manuscript. . Continental works of the greatest note were not then easily obtained, and even when picked up by the travelling Englishman were only to be purchased at a high rate, and at imminent risk of miscarriage in the transport to this country. Above all, historical studies were but in their infancy nor had the zeal and labour of successive generations of scholars yet established that critical apparatus, without which so many problems in chronology and philology would still remain unsolved. And yet it is impossible to deny that no age has produced a more vigorous race of thinkers, or one to which we owe more gratitude for their labours. It does not, however, seem difficult to account for this. It was an age of restless mental activity, in which every energy of mind was braced and trained by the daily exigences of public life when great principles were still to be brought into light, great ends still to be struggled for, and when strong minds eagerly took part in the struggle, to which circumstances irresistibly hurried them on...