The History of England (1754–1761) is David Hume's great work on the history of England (also covering Wales, Scotland, and Ireland), which he wrote in installments while he was librarian to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. It was published in six volumes in 1754, 1757, 1759, and 1762. The first publication of his History was greeted with outrage by all political factions, but it became a best-seller, finally giving him the financial independence he had long sought.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, entry on Hume Hume's History spanned "from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688" and went through over 100 editions. Many considered it the standard history of England in its day.
Publication history Hume set out at first only to write a history of England under the Stuart monarchs James I and Charles I, which appeared in 1754. He followed this with a second history that continued to the Revolution of 1688. With the relative success of these two volumes, Hume researched the history of earlier eras and produced a total of six volumes. As a result, the fifth volume was the first to appear in print, in 1754, while the first two volumes were published last, in 1762. The complete History of England is arranged in chronological order, as follows:
Vols. 1–2: The history of England from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the accession of Henry VII (i.e. 55 BC – AD 1485; first published in 1762)See Vols. 3–4. The history of England under the House of Tudor (covering the years 1485–1601; published 1759) Vol. 5. The history of Great Britain, containing the reigns of James I and Charles I (covering the years 1601–1649; published 1754) Vol. 6. The history of Great Britain, containing the Commonwealth, and the reigns of Charles II and James II (covering the years 1649–1688; published 1757)
Because of the titles of the last two volumes, the whole work has occasionally been mistakenly referred to as History of Great Britain rather than History of England.
Circumstances of the work's composition
The last Jacobite uprising of 1745 was a very recent memory, and had come close to turning the War of the Austrian Succession into a war of the British succession. This had come as a shock to Hume. So his main concern was to legitimise the Revolution of 1688, and forestall any future insurrection. He wanted his philosophy of government to appeal to both Whigs and former Jacobites. Perhaps this can be best understood in his 1748 essay "Of the Original Contract". He was not an adherent of any party.
In England, anti-Scottish prejudice was running high. Hume was a master of the internalised Scoticism,this phenomenon appears to have been defined by David Masson and even wrote a booklet about how to do it. The History of England is a classic of the genre. It helps understand Hume to re-externalise the milieu that he flourished in.
The Revolution of 1688
He wrote of the Revolution: By deciding many important questions in favour of liberty, and still more, by that great precedent of deposing one king, and establishing a new family, it gave such an ascendent to popular principles, as has put the nature of the English Constitution beyond all controversy. Thus Hume is at odds with those who argue that the British Constitution is entirely evolutionary, and did not emerge from a revolution, just like the later American and French Constitutions, and the earlier Dutch Constitution.
The source of this antinomian interpretation of British freedom can be traced in Hume's account of the revolutionary debates themselves. William of Orange had been invited to invade by a coalition of English Whigs and Tories. To placate the latter's maxim that "the throne was never vacant", or in modern parlance the monarch never dies, the fiction was agreed that King James would be said to have abdicated. It fell to the Scottish Parliamentary Convention, meeting a month after the English one: "in a bold and decisive vote", to declare "that king James, by his maladministration, and his abuse of power, had forfeited all title to the crown". Hume wanted to present the UK as having a modern constitution. He did not see it as something that stretched back seamlessly to Magna Carta or the laws of King Alfred.
The narrative ends with a parliamentary convention annexing to the settlement a declaration of rights, where all the points, which had, of late years, been disputed between king and people, were finally determined; and the powers of the royal prerogative were more narrowly circumscribed and more exactly defined, than in any former period of the English government. In fact Britain has two declarations of right from this period. The Bill of Rights is (or was) the basic law of England, the Claim of Right that for Scotland.
There are important differences between these little studied declarations. Where the Bill of Rights states that the King cannot make laws without the consent of Parliament, the Claim of Right says that all assertions of a right to rule above the law are themselves against the law. The Bill of Rights was inspired by John Locke. Behind the Claim of Right can be detected the guiding hand of James Dalrymple, 1st Viscount of Stair 1619–1695.See Macaulay's rather dusty account. This Stair is not to be confused with his son, the genocidaire of Glencoe. Hume studied law as a student at Edinburgh. He implies that he neglected this study.My Own Life. This can be read in vol 1 of the online edition of Hume's History linked above This must be taken with a pinch of salt. He may have wanted to avoid giving the lay reader the impression that he had written a history just for lawyers like William Blackstone. What is certain is that he names two of the founders of Roman Dutch law, Johannes Voet and Arnold Vinnius, in the same breath as Cicero and Virgil. Cicero was, of course, a lawyer. The standard work for a Scottish law student to study was, then as now, "Stair's Institutions of the laws of Scotland".
Hume names neither of the unamended constitutions of 1689. He wanted a new constitution for the United Kingdom to flesh out these outline declarations. He set out his proposals in the essay Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth, which is a reworking of The Commonwealth of Oceana by the 17th-century visionary James Harrington. Leaving the extent of the Commonwealth and the location of its capital undecided, Hume's highly devolved scheme was "to have all the advantages both of a great and a little Commonwealth". In some ways it resembles the model of Presbyterian church government. Hume was no theorist of an unwritten constitution.
Narrative
The work can perhaps be best discussed as four separate histories in the order in which he wrote them.
The History of Great Britain Part 1
The book begins auspiciously with James VI of Scotland peacefully assuming the title of first King of Great Britain. He immediately began a series of attempts to promote a Union between his two kingdoms, and found for this a staunch ally in Francis Bacon. These came to nothing, curiously more because of opposition in the English Parliament than in the Scottish one. On the whole, Hume portrays this complex king, who had grown up with the same predicament as Orestes, as a beneficent ruler keeping Britain at peace, notably by staying out of the Thirty Years' War.
However an epic of unintended consequences was unravelling. As the King was dying, his son's wooing of the Spanish Infanta turned into a jilting, and the two countries drifted into a war, spurred on by Protestant extremists in the House of Commons. Charles I's attempt following the Petition of Right (1628) to rule without a Parliament in England collapsed after he provoked the revolution of the National Covenant in Scotland (1638). Irish Catholics led by Felim O'Neill seized the opportunity to rebel (1641). Civil War broke out in England. The king was defeated, tried, and executed (1649). Thus Hume's first volume ends at the start of England's short-lived experiment with republicanism.
Of the book's reception, Hume wrote:
I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation; English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory, churchman and sectary, freethinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, united in their rage against the man, who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I, and the Earl of Strafford.
The History of Great Britain Part 2
Hume continues the story with an account of: the leveller experiment with communism; of the Scottish Parliament's proclamation of Charles II as king; of Cromwell's genocidal suppression of the Irish revolt; of his near nemesis at the Battle of Dunbar; of the crowning of Charles II at Scone; of Cromwell's final destruction of the now royalist Covenanter army at the Battle of Worcester; and of his subsequent annexation of Scotland.
After Cromwell's death, his son Richard Cromwell, "Tumbledown Dick", could not keep the republic together; and General Monck brought the army of occupation in Scotland south to effect the Restoration. This was followed by the execution of the remaining regicides: ... a mind, seasoned with humanity, will find a plentiful source of compassion and indulgence ... No saint or confessor ever went to martyrdom with more assured confidence of heaven than was expressed by those criminals, even when the terrors of immediate death, joined to many indignities, were set before them. They were hanged drawn and quartered. Four (already dead) were disinterred and subject to Posthumous execution.
Of this volume, Hume wrote: In 1756, two years after the fall of the first volume, was published the second volume of my History, containing the period from the death of Charles I. till the Revolution. This performance happened to give less displeasure to the Whigs, and was better received. It not only rose itself, but helped to buoy up its unfortunate brother.
The History of the House of Tudor This history, written during the Seven Years' War, starts (Vol. 3) with the final overthrow and extinction of the old Plantagenet royal family by the Anglo-Welsh Henry Tudor; and his success in gaining acceptance for what was a weak hereditary claim. Robert Adamson tells us that this was the point where Adam Smith wanted Hume to begin the history.article "Hume", Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th edition There follows the reign of Henry VIII, and his break with Rome; the English Reformation under his ill-starred son Edward VI; and the attempt at counter-reformation by his daughter "bloody" Mary I.
Vol. 4 continues with the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Hume wrote: In 1759, I published my History of the House of Tudor. The clamour against this performance was almost equal to that against the History of the two first Stuarts. The reign of Elizabeth was particularly obnoxious. Hume's portrayal of Elizabeth is hardly flattering. However, there was another reason for the outrage. Hume, along with Dr. William Robertson, had been examining the papers relative to Mary, Queen of Scots. Both historians found that Queen Mary had indeed been complicit in the murder of her husband Darnley, thus exonerating what the Scottish Parliament had said when they deposed her. There have been copious attempts to refute Hume and Robertson on this.An outstanding question is what part this controversy had in the education of Catherine the Great, who also appears to have been an uxoricide. It could be said in partial expiation of Mary that Catherine seems to have succeeded where Darnley had failed. Neither Darnley nor Catherine had any claim to the throne, except through their spouses. It is said of Catherine that she sent Robertson a gem studded snuff-box, and that this is listed in his will.
The Early History of England