Excerpt from England: From Earliest Times, to the Great Charter

The present volume, which is the first of a series, treats of the history of England from earliest times to Magna Carta. In this period the English race was being evolved, and the English Constitution, as we to-day know it, was slowly struggling into being.

The volume, indeed, is concerned with the birth of the English State. That splendid creation was not produced without much labour. Civilizations arose and fell away, conquest succeeded conquest, Briton and Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman followed one another in possession of the reins of power: but at length, after battles without number, after countless struggles in Church and State, the English found themselves firmly planted in this island, and standing at the threshold of the Empire which in later years was to open its doors to them.

Though we have not, on the whole, to deal with such great events as those which make notable our country's subsequent growth into maturity, that is not to say that our period possesses little movement. The youth of England was a sturdy and striving one. Progress and retrogression alternate, and the social history of the period is both complex and varied.

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