At first this monarchical principle was embodied in the form of military power, was based upon feudal loyalty, and was associated with the noble ideals, but somewhat reckless practices, of mediaeval chivalry. The victories of Egbert and Alfred the Great transformed the Heptarchy into a substantial English Kingdom. The military skill of William the Conqueror gave an opportunity to blend the graces of Norman chivalry, and a somewhat higher form of civilization, with the rougher virtues of the Saxon character. Henry II. personally illustrated this combination, with his ruddy English face and strong physical powers, and impressed himself upon British history by the conquest of Ireland. Richard Coeur de Lion gave his country many famous pages of crusading in the East, and embodied in his life and character the adventurous and daring spirit of the age. Edward I. dominated events by his energy and ability, subdued Wales, and for a time conquered the Kingdom of Scotland. Edward III., in his long reign of fifty years, carried the British flag over the fields of France, and won immortality at the battles of Crecy and Poictiers. Henry V. gained the victory of Agincourt, and won and wore the title of King of France. Then came the Wars of the Roses and the turbulent termination to a period of six centuries during which the English Monarchs had represented the military spirit of their times, and had led in the rough process of struggle and conquest out of which was growing the United Kingdom of to-day.

With the reign of Henry VIII. commenced the period of religious change--the struggles for religious liberty against ecclesiastical dominance. Limited as were the achievements of Henry and Elizabeth, in this respect, by prevailing bigotry and narrowness of view as well as by diverse personal characteristics, they none the less did great service to the country and the people. The rule of Cromwell--who, in the exercise of Royal power and the possession of regal personal ability, may properly be included in such a connection--gave that liberty of worship to a portion of the masses with which previous Sovereigns had more especially endowed the classes. During the reign of the Stuarts religious dissensions and ecclesiastical controversies and intermittent persecutions, illustrated the predominant passion of the period; and forced the weak or indifferent monarch of the moment to be an unconscious factor in the progress towards that general toleration which the Revolution of 1688 and the crowning of William and Mary finally accomplished. But, whether it was Henry persecuting the monks, or Elizabeth the Roman Catholics, or Mary the Protestants, or Cromwell the Episcopalians, or Charles II. the Dissenters, each ruler was being led, to a great degree, by the undercurrent of surrounding bigotry and was, in the main, representative of a strong, popular sentiment of the time. Henry voiced the national uprising against Rome, just as the second Charles embodied popular reaction against the Puritans, and as William of Orange was enabled to lead a successful opposition to the gloomy and personal bigotry of the last of the Royal Stuarts.

The third period of British monarchical history in this connection was that marked by the growth toward constitutional government under the sway of the House of Hanover. Coupled with this was the equally important foundation of a great Colonial empire, and the loss of a large portion of it in the reign of George III. But the development of constitutional rule under the Georges should not be confounded with the growth of the popular and Imperial system which exists to-day. The latter is simply a progressive evolution out of the aristocratic and oligarchical government of the Hanoverian period, just as that system had been a step from the kingly power of the Tudors and the Stuarts, which, in turn, had arisen upon the ruins of feudalism and military monarchical power. It is this gradual growth, this "gently broadening down from precedent to precedent," which makes the British constitution of to-day the more or less perfected result of centuries of experience and struggle. But that result has only been made possible by a peculiar series of national adjustments in which the power of the Monarchs has been modified from time to time to suit the will of the people, while the ability of individual Sovereigns has been at the same time given full scope in which to exercise wise kingcraft or pronounced military skill. It has, in fact, been a most elastic system in its application and to that elasticity has been due its prolonged stability of form under a succession of dynastic or personal changes.

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE MONARCHY

It is a common mistake to minimize the importance and value of the aristocratic rule by which the government of England was graded down from the high exercise of royal power under the Tudors and Stuarts to that beneficial exercise of royal influence which marks the opening of the present century period. To the aristocracy of those two centuries is mainly due the fact that the growth from paternal government and personal rule to direct popular administration was a gradual development, through only occasional scenes of storm and stress, instead of involving a succession of revolutions alternating with civil war. Somers and Godolphin, Walpole and Chatham, Pitt and Shelburne, Eldon and Canning, Grey and Liverpool, Wellington and Durham, Melbourne and Palmerston, were all of this aristocratic class, though of varying degrees in rank and title and with varied views of politics. They filled the chief places in the Government of the country during a period when the people were being slowly trained in the perception and practice of constitutional and religious liberty. At the best such processes are difficult and often prove bitter tests of national endurance; and it was well for Great Britain that the two centuries under review produced a class of able and cultured men who--though naturally aristocratic at heart--were upon the whole honestly bent upon furthering the best interests of the masses. And this despite the mistakes of a Danby or a North.

Yet, even towards the close of this period of preparation, popular government, as now practised, was neither understood by the immediate predecessors of Queen Victoria, nor by the nobles who presided over the changing administrations of the day. It was not clearly comprehended by Liberals like Russell and Grey; it was feared by Wellington and the Tories as being republican and revolutionary; it was dreaded by many who could hardly be called Tories and who, in the condition of things then prevalent, could scarcely even be termed Loyalists. Writing in 1812, Charles Knight, the historian, described the fierce national struggle of the previous twenty years with Napoleon and expressed a longing wish for the prop of a sincere and spontaneous loyalty to the throne in the critical times that were to follow. But such a sentiment of loyalty was not then expressed, and could hardly have been publicly evoked by a ruler of the type of George IV., whether governing as Prince-Regent or as King.

There is, however, no doubt of its having existed, and there seems to have been, even through those troubled years, an inborn spirit of loyalty to the Crown as being the symbol of the State and of public order. Its wearer might make mistakes and be personally unpopular, but he represented the nation as a whole and must consequently be respected. This powerful feeling has often in English history made the bravest and strongest submit to slights from their Sovereign, and has won the most disinterested devotion and energetic action from men who have never even seen the Monarch in whose personal character there was sometimes little to evoke or deserve such faith and sacrifice. For ages this loyalty had been the preservative of society in England, and it is still indispensable to the tranquility and permanence of a state, whether given in its full degree to the Sovereign of Great Britain, or in a more divided sense to the elective and partisan head of a modern republic.

In the time of the Georges, as well as in the middle ages and at the present moment, loyalty was and is a sincere and honest patriotism, refining the instincts and elevating the actions of those who were willing to waive self-interest on any given occasion in order to guard what they believed to be the true basis of national stability and order. Certainly, a Monarchy which could survive the wars and European revolutions, the internal discontents and personal deficiencies, of the period which commenced with the reign of George I. and closed with that of William IV., must have possessed some inherent strength greater than may be gathered from many of the superficial works which pass for history. But, whatever that influence was, it does not appear to have been personal. With the close of the reign of Queen Anne the brilliant prestige of personal authority and power wielded by the Sovereign had passed quietly away and, up to the death of William IV. and the accession of Victoria, had not been replaced by the personal influence of a constitutional ruler.