ENGLISH HISTORIANS BY CHARLES A. BEARD, PH.D. LECTURER IN HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE New Bork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY All rights reserved COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1906. Reprinted 220528 Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co. - Berwick & Smith Co. PREFATORY NOTE A COLLEGE Course in English history must introduce the student to a number of great authorities on special periods and topics. It is not enough that these authorities should be casually read; they should be studied as carefully as a case-book in law, and then critically considered in the classroom. It is also necessary that all the students should do this special reading at the time when the particular topic is reached in the text-book or lectures. The teacher is therefore confronted with the problem of controlling this additional reading, and of satisfying himself that it is well done by all the students. If he has large classes, he constantly meets the complaint that the students have not been able to secure the required book at the proper time, and concerted class work is thereby destroyed. If he seeks to avoid this difficulty by requiring the students to hand in notes, he not only makes class discussion impossible, but he doubtless discovers that a great deal of the note-taking is perfunctory, and that some have copied from the more industrious. Finding my own experience confirmed by that of many other teachers of English history, I venture to issue this volume of readings as an attempt at a partial solution of the problem stated above. I am conscious of the difficulties accompanying such an enterprise, and realize fully the great and legitimate divergence of opinion that teachers will have in selecting assignments for their students. It seems, however, that all the topics included in this collection are of first-rate importance, and that the authorities represented are those worthy of careful study. That there are hundreds of equally important selections and other writers on English history of quite as high rank, there can |