Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles | Page 4

strike out his teeth.
There is no Mistresse or Guide, that hath led her followers and servants

into greater miseries.... It is enough for me (being in that state I am) to
write of the eldest times: wherein also why may it not be said, that in
speaking of the past, I point at the present, and taxe the vices of those
that are yet lyving, in their persons that are long since dead; and have it
laid to my charge? But this I cannot helpe, though innocent.
He wrote of remote ages, and contributed nothing to historical
knowledge. But he enriched English literature with a 'just history', as
distinct from annals and chronicles.[5] 'I am not altogether ignorant', he
said, 'in the Lawes of Historie, and of the Kindes.' When we read his
lives and commendations of the great men of antiquity as he pictured
them, we cannot but regret that the same talents, the same
overmastering interest in the eternal human problems, had not been
employed in depicting men whom he had actually known. The other
Elizabethan work that ranks with Raleigh's in its conception of the
historian's office and in its literary excellence, deals with another
country. It is the History of the Turks by Richard Knolles.
The character was definitely introduced into English literature when the
historians took as their subjects contemporary or recent events at home,
and, abandoning the methods of the chronicle, fashioned their work on
classical models. Its introduction had been further prepared to some
extent by the growing interest in lives, which, unlike chronicles that
recorded events, recognized the part played by men in the control of
events. In his Advancement of Learning Bacon regretted that
Englishmen gave so little thought to describing the deeds and
characters of their great countrymen. 'I do find strange', he said, 'that
these times have so little esteemed the virtues of the times, as that the
writing of lives should be no more frequent.' He and Hayward both
wrote lives with the consciousness that their methods were new in
English, though largely borrowed from the classics.[6] Hayward tried
to produce a picture of the period he dealt with, and his means for
procuring harmoniousness of design was to centre attention on the
person of the sovereign. It is a conception of history not as a register of
facts but as a representation of the national drama. His Henry IV gives
the impression, especially by its speeches, that he looked upon history
as resolving itself ultimately into a study of men; and it thus explains
how he wished to be free to describe the times wherein he lived. He is
on the whole earlier than Bacon, who wrote his Historie of the Reigne

of King Henry the Seventh late in life, during the leisure that was forced
on him by his removal from all public offices. Written to display the
controlling policy in days that were 'rough, and full of mutations, and
rare accidents', it is a study of the statecraft and character of a king who
had few personal gifts and small capacity for a brilliant part, yet won
by his ready wisdom the best of all praises that 'what he minded he
compassed'. How he compassed it, is what interested Bacon. 'I have not
flattered him,' he says, 'but took him to the life as well as I could,
sitting so far off, and having no better light.' Would that Bacon had felt
at liberty to choose those who sat near at hand. Who better than the
writer of the Essays could have painted a series of miniatures of the
courts of Elizabeth and James?
When at last the political upheaval of this century compelled men to
leave, whether in histories, or memoirs, or biographies, a record of
what they had themselves experienced, the character attained to its full
importance and excellence. 'That posterity may not be deceaved by the
prosperous wickednesse of these tymes, into an opinyon, that lesse then
a generall combination and universall apostacy in the whole Nacion
from their religion and allegiaunce could in so shorte a tyme have
produced such a totall and prodigious alteration and confusion over the
whole kingdome, and so the memory of those few who out of duty and
conscience have opposed and resisted that Torrent which hath
overwhelmed them, may loose the recompence dew to ther virtue, and
havinge undergone the injuryes and reproches of this, may not finde a
vindication in a better Age'--in these words Clarendon began his
History of the Rebellion. But he could not vindicate the memory of his
political friends without describing the men who had overcome them.
The history of these confused and difficult years would not be properly
understood if the characters of all the chief actors in the tragic