The work which we have now before us is to trace out the extent of territory which the different states and nations of Europe and the neighbouring lands have held at different times in the world’s history, to mark the different boundaries which the same country has had, and the different meanings in which the same name has been used. It is of great importance carefully to make these distinctions, because great mistakes as to the facts of history are often caused through men thinking and sp...

Beyond doubt the finished historian must be a traveller: he must see with his own eyes the true look of a wide land; he must see, too, with his eyes the very spots where great events happened; he must mark the lie of a city, and take in, as far as a non-technical eye can, all that is special about a battle-field. So wrote Mr. Freeman in his Methods of Historical Study,[1] and he possessed to the full the instincts of the traveller as well as of the historian. His studies and sketches of tr...

The Norman Conquest of England was that series of events during the latter part of the eleventh century by which a Norman Duke was set on the throne of England, and was enabled to hand down the crown of England to his descendants. The Norman Conquest of England does in truth mean a great deal more than the mere transfer of the crown from one prince or one family to another, or even than the transfer of the crown from a prince born in the land to a prince who came from beyond the sea. It me...

I HAVE now been able to carry out the design which I spoke of in the Prefaces to the fifth volume and to the second edition of the fourth volume of my History of the Norman Conquest. I have endeavoured to work out in detail the two sides of the memorable years with which I deal in these volumes, their deep importance for general and specially for constitutional history, and their rich store of personal and local narrative. In the former aspect, I believe I may claim to be the first to have...

Edward A. Freeman's history opens on the fateful first movements of 1066, when the sickness and death of King Eadward the Confessor set England's succession in turmoil. Harold's swift election and coronation emerge as a necessary act of national survival, even as Freeman dwells on the grief, ritual, and later reverence that surrounded Eadward's memory. From there, the narrative broadens to William of Normandy's rise: his marriage to Matilda, his alliance with the Church, and his hard-won p...

This is a history that looks at Britain during the colonial era and the Revolutionary era, and it celebrates the life and deeds of George Washington, who the book argues helped “expand” England by winning the Revolution for the new United States and thereby helped spread the culture and customs in the New World.

Contents: 1. Jonathan Swift, by William Makepeace Thackeray 2. The Idea Of A University, by John Henry Newman 3. The Study Of Poetry, by Matthew Arnold 4. Sesame And Lilies, by John Ruskin 5. John Milton, by Walter Bagehot 6. Science And Culture, by Thomas Henry Huxley 7. Race And Language, by Edward Augustus Freeman 8. Truth Of Intercourse And Samuel Pepys, by Robert Louis Stevenson 9. On The Elevation Of The Laboring Classes, by William Ellery Channing 10. The Poetic Principle, by Edgar ...