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England was born. r
i
s
p A the
modern world
a Becket cut down in Canterbury by servants of his king, Richard III betrayed by Lord Stanley and killed by Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosw j th Field, Charles I tried by his own people and executed for his crimes these are the vital beginnings. Under the guidance of her peers qi* ^-witted Alfred, controversial ^**g John, headstrong
Thomas
.
:
"
VIII, redheaded Elizabeth, ''Harry's daughter and England's Queen" the island grew to empire,
Henry
shaping by
literature,
language, and
deed her English-speaking heirs around the globe. From her parliaments came a tradition of democracy, from her courts a respect for law, from hec^jcommoners the right to liberty.
Yeomen as well as kings paved the way for democracy and the welfare state. What made them cheer John Lilburne at his
trials
or follow the
Duke of Monmouth into battle? Why had they rallied behind Wat Tyler or Robert Kett? How did the Norman Conquest change
their lives?
Were
continued on back flap
The
15- volume
UNIVERSITY OF MICHI-
GAN HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLO is a global exploration of the recent past which makes intelligible the current upheavals of our shrinking world. These are books written for everyone who wants to understand modern history in the making.
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The United
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by Foster Rhea Dulles
Modern History by John
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Fred Rippy
Modern History by Maurice Ashley
A Modem
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Modern History by Albert Guerard
A
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Modern History by Denis Mack Smith
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GREAT BRITAIN TO A Modem
1688
History
The
University of Michigan History of the
Edited by Allan Nevins and
Modern World
Howard M. Ehrmann
GREAT BRITAIN TO 1688 A Modern History
BY MAURICE ASHLEY
Ann Arbor: The
University of Michigan Press
by The University of Michigan 1961
Copyright
All rights reserved
Published
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Preface
Although I have written a number of history books and history has always been the occupation of my leisure and is my delight, I am not
by profession a teacher: indeed
1
belong to what
may be
I fear
a dying
class, that of the intellectual journalist. So in preparing this book I have felt as if my youth has been renewed and I have been allowed to return
old university of Oxford and study, as in happy bygone days thirty years ago, for the papers set in British history in the Honours School.
in spirit to
my
Alas! ghosts walk there. I have in mind in particular the Rt. Hon. H. A. L. Fisher, who was then Warden of my old college (New College called) and encouraged me in the art and science of historical not writing only by precept but by example; for he lectured and wrote more clearly and more attractively than any other Oxford historian of as
it
is
that time.
But
I also
cannot help paying tribute to
my
old friend and
who inspired Llewellyn Woodward, the joys of exploring the problems of modern history. I think he was disappointed that I never became a don or acquired donnish ways.
tutor, Sir in
still
active at Princeton,
me
But that was not his 1
fault.
have tried to recapitulate the early history of
my
country without
and without, I hope, whose books I have Mr. Edward Miller, and Mr. John's St. of Fellow Roger Schofield, College, Cambridge, B.A., of Clare College, Cambridge, for attempting to keep me on the rails, and to Professor Gerald Abraham of Liverpool University for helping me over my chapter on music. I have been struck, as I have been writing this book, how quickly assuming knowledge of the subject in my readers treading upon the corns of those many experts used and tried to understand. I am obliged to
ideas about British history have changed over thirty years. It is not merely that vast quantities of books and articles have been published
PREFACE it only that new generathroughout the English-speaking world. Nor is tions ask new questions. For it seems to me that the form of presentation has changed, that university historians are less sure of themselves than and that they once were, that old patterns are no longer being followed,
old shibboleths have been abandoned. also is important: we are now looking at matters in the the of Nuclear Age in which we live and are reading history books light written not in the buoyant, confident world before the first German war, but books written in what many of us in England regarded as the Age of Guilt. Thirty years ago we were brought up in the afterglow of Vic-
The focus
by Germanic systems.
those systems, of British history, I think, which have been most misleading to students I deal here. Scholars of which the with in my generaperiod especially torian optimism, supplemented
It is
were brought up to talk about the "feudal system," the "manorial system," the "mercantile system," and many other systems. It took me
tion,
a long time to realize that these scarcely existed outside the minds of was invented by antiquarians in the professional historians. Feudalism seventeenth century, when the wickedness of the a commonplace of advanced political argument.
Norman Conquest was We now know that the
"manorial system," which for a generation took pride of place in the textbooks of economic history, had no universal application. The "mersystem" derived from a rather patronizing attitude adopted toward government policies in the era of Free Trade, which died in cantile
in 1931. Thus I have become suspicious whenever I see the word "system" in a history book and I have tried here to leave out words and phrases that imply such a thing. If they have crept into this
England
book
at
all, it
must be blamed on the
historical education I received at
school.
have also
my use of the phrase book. For few scholars agree when they look at the broad continuity of British history what is meant by a medieval idea* It is true that I have given the title "Middle Ages" to the second book of I
"medieval" in
tried, as far as possible, to limit
this
volume, but only because it is admirably vague and I could think no more satisfactory way of describing the period between AngloSaxon times and the Tudor age. My personal view is that the outlook
this
of
of men changed perceptibly in the period when this volume ends, when the great mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton published his Prindpia. The sudden spurt in science and mathematics in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the publication of more sophisticated the birth of ideas, political nonconformity, and the dawn of religious toleration all suggest to me the beginnings of modern times. Yet one recalls that
Newton
himself
was often absorbed
in theology, while the
PREFACE Popish Plot showed impinging upon
how men
could
still
be agitated by religious causes
politics.
Again, the structure of British history thirty years ago was profoundly "constitutional." Economic history was still thought of as a new and rather doubtful subject; there
when
went
was no Professor of Economic History
But constitutional history was de rigueur. Both at school and at the university we were invited to learn volumes of constitutional documents almost by heart. My father did, and so did I. Sir Arthur Haselrig, M.P., said once in the second Protectorate ParI first
to Oxford.
liament: "Princes are mortal, but the Commonwealth lives forever." In the same way we were taught that constitutions had more historical significance than mortal men. The history of England, it seemed, swung between the two poles of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. I was
not persuaded of that
an Oxford college
me
to
in St. Aldate's as
was more
was young, although the present head of me I remember his saying this
I
if it
were yesterday
that constitutional history
it was the embodiment and the history of political ideas was the very best kind. all, men and women who make history. I therefore offer
interesting than any other kind because
of political ideas,
But
when
at that time assured
it is,
after
no apology for pausing
in this book from time to time to give brief character sketches of the rulers of England from Alfred the Great to King James II. I do not believe with Thomas Carlyle that history is a
chain of biographies of great men, but certainly the personal character of rulers has always affected ideas and events. I have witnessed in my lifetime the age of Coolidge
and the age of Franklin D. Roosevelt;
I
have lived through the ages of Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, and Neville Chamberlain, on the one hand, and those of Sir Winston Churchill and Lord Attlee, on the other; and I refuse to consider that it
made no
difference
who our
leaders were.
know is how the government of kings or other rulers has influenced the lives of ordinary people in the past. Modern historical research, which properly concerns itself with social Yet what one would
and economic
affairs
and
like to
local history, as well as big political events
constitutional ideas or revolutions in thought, does this question.
But information,
its
and
utmost to answer
especially for the early period before the
invention of printing, is sparse and will always be incomplete. Only occasionally even in the seventeenth century, which was a prolific time for memoir and letter writers, can we obtain a straightforward insight into the lives of "the
Lilburne at his
why
How off
trials
common people." What made them cheer John or follow the Duke of Monmouth into battle? Or
in earlier times did they rally behind Wat Tyler or Robert Kett? affect their simple lives? Were they better did the Norman
Conquest under Queen Elizabeth I or under King Charles II?
I
have verv tenta-
viii
answer a few of these questions, but I am sure I shall b< told they are unanswerable. As G. K. Chesterton wrote, "We are tht Yet in our own Age o people of England that never have spoken yet." his ancestors speak to hear like we should the Common Man dearly My book, then, is an introduction into that modern world where tin historian of Britain can draw upon newspapers and accurate parliamen lively tried to
White Papers and Blue Books am tary reports, as well as on so many to read in hb cannot as he volumes of "lives and letters" possibly hope whole
life.
Before then there are few authentic
statistics
and much
guesswork. Nevertheless, looking back on our early history, as
I
must
i*
do.
from the vantage point of what we in Britain today call the Welfare State, I take an incurably optimistic view. I have reread what the experts have to say about early days and, having done 1 '
lieve
wholeheartedly either in "golden ages
so,
I
find
it
hard to be-
or in a "Mcrrie England."
To my mind
people as a whole are today better off in nearly every way, better fed, better clothed, better educated, more fully employed and yet with far ampler leisure and more freedom, than they have ever been before in British history. I know what has been said about the "myth of progress," about the benefits that have been conferred by the aristocracy or plutocracy of the past in patronizing the arts, in the pursuit of disinterested knowledge, and in the distribution of charity. I am aware that
material improvements are not everything, that spiritual values have changed, and that the professional classes, to which I belong, are in some respects worse off than they were in
my
father's
and grandfather's days.
Progress has not of course been evenly spaced or unchcckered. One of the first things my history master at St. Paul's School in London told me
when
I was a boy was not to be superior about the "Middle Ages/' Yet think that ordinary Englishmen were in fact happier under the Normans than they were under Alfred the Great and happier in the reign of King
I
Charles II than they were, say, under
But even as recently
as
Henry VI. 300 years ago the world was
for the few,
and
the very few. Slowly order replaced disorder. Gradually the standard of living
was
knowledge increased and became more and women became less inhibited and more in-
raised. Imperceptibly
widely spread.
Men
History itself ceased to be monkish chronicle or political controversy rehashed. It is to be hoped that our children will learn from the telligent.
study of history that men can improve themselves, can overcome war and superstition, as they seem to be overcoming want and ignorance. Their problem is to ensure that physical science is their servant and not their master.
Today
approach Britain.
we have left most of us the "kingdom Thomas Hobbes in The Leviathan. That by
at least
fairies" described
to history, as I see
it
today.
Now I shall begin to
tell
of the is
my
the story of
Contents BOOK
EARLY TIMES
I:
Chapter of Caesar
3
\
Prehistoric Britain to the
n
Britain under the
in
v
The Coming of the Anglo-Saxons 22 The Conversion of England to Christianity 26 The Rise of Wessex and Alfred the Great 32
vi
Origins of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland
vn
From Edward
iv
Coming Romans 8
the Elder to
English Society Before the
ix
The Foundation Confessor
BOOK x xi
II
:
the Confessor
47
Norman Conquest Normandy and the Reign of Edward
vin
of
Edward
41
55
61
MIDDLE AGES
The Norman Conquest 69 The Reigns of William II, Henry
I,
and Stephen 88
77
xni
The Reigns of Henry II and Richard I The Reign of John and Magna Carta
xiv
The Reign
xv
Wales, Scotland, Ireland in the Eleventh, Twelfth, and
xii
of
Henry
103
III
Thirteenth Centuries
96
110
xvi
English Life and Art in the Twelfth and Thirteenth 1 14 Centuries
xvn
The Reigns of Edward I and Edward The Reign of Edward III 128
xvin xix
xx xxi
xxn
England Richard
II
118
Century 135 and the Great Revolt 145
in the Fourteenth II
The Reigns of Henry IV and Henry V 151 The Loss of France and the Wars of the Roses
159
the
Wales, Scotland, and Ireland in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
xxm
175
Centuries
xxiv
BOOK
180
Fifteenth-century England
III:
THE TUDOR AGE: THE REFORMATION
xxv
English Society in the Early Tudor
xxvi
The Reign
xxvii
Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey 203 The English Church on the Eve of the Reformation
xxvin
of
Henry VII
The Beginning
The Last Years
xxxi
The Reign The Reign
xxxn
xxxm
194
of
of
225
Henry VIII
Edward VI
Mary
232
240
I
John Knox and Mary, Queen of Scots The Early Years of Elizabeth I 253
xxxiv
247
xxxv
The Foreign
xxxvi
Elizabeth I and the
xxxvii
The Economic and
xxxvni
The Expansion
xxxix
Learning, Literature, and Art in the Tudor Age
XL
The Character
BOOK
IV
:
208
214
of the English Reformation
xxix
xxx
of
187
Age
Policy of Elizabeth
War
I
259
268
Against Spain
Social Life of the Elizabethan
Age
285
of England
293
300
of Elizabethan England
STUART TIMES: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION
XLI
The Accession
XLII
The Last Years
XLIII
XLIV
The Reign of Charles I 321 The Coming of the Civil War 330
XLV
The
XLVI
The Execution
First Civil
of James I
309
of James I
War
316
341
of Charles I
349
XL VII
The Interregnum and
XL VIII
The Restoration
XLIX
Charles II and the Rise of Political Parties
L
Economic and England
the Protectorate
of Charles II
357
368
Social Life in Seventeenth
376 Century
382
LI
Education and Culture in the Seventeenth Century
LII
Music Through the Seventeenth Century
397
389
276
CONTENTS xi LIII
Scientific
and
Political Ideas
400
Century LIV
James
LV
toward
LVI
Britain in 1688: Conclusion
and the Revolution of 1688
II
a British Empire
412
420 427
433
Suggested Readings
443
List of Sovereigns
Index
Through the Seventeenth
i
MAPS Celtic
and Roman
Anglo-Saxon England Early Wales
30
42
44
Scotland Ireland
15
Britain
46
France: The Angevin Empire
90
France: The Hundred Years'
War
England and Wales
The World
in the
Tudor England
in
Wars
163
of the Roses
Reign of Queen Elizabeth 282
First British Settlements in
America
172
263
290
England, Wales, and Southern Scotland in the Seventeenth
Century
346
BOOK
I
EARLY TIMES
Prehistoric Britain to
the
Coming of Caesar
"Well," said an American visitor once, when he first saw the cliffs of southern England, "it is a little island and it has often been conquered." The history of Britain up to fewer than 1,000 years ago is that of repeated invasions, in which different tribes, peoples, or nations moved in
from the their
east, north,
own ways upon
and south of Europe to conquer,
settle,
and impose
a small but inviting land.
The invaders
usually crossed what were to be known as the English Channel and the North Sea and spread across the lowland zone of the island. Those who came from modern France or Belgium were again in familiar country indeed, upon the other side of a chalk ridge divided the ocean. Their advance was simplified by the slow-moving rivers by that led into the very heart of the country; alternatively they could
beach
their boats at the
many
excellent harbors
and
the south coast and stretched as far east as the
inlets
which dotted
mouth of the
river
Thames. In early times Britain was exceptionally vulnerable to assault by peoples hungry for land and was therefore in the end inhabited by an extremely mixed population. "Saxon and Norman and Dane are we": Iberian and Celtic, Roman and Jutish, Frisian and Norwegian too truly a melting pot of early Europe. one is certain about the origin of Britain's name. By the ancients the island was called "Albion," the White Land, and was supposed to be
No
A
Greek merchant, Pytheas of part of the lost continent of Atlantis. a of in the forerunner Columbus Marseilles, age of Alexander the Great and the first explorer known by name to have traveled to the island, deinhabitants as the "Pretanic" or painted people. Julius Caesar, following perhaps wrongly and obscurely the geographers of the Classical World, called the country which he invaded "Britannia"; and Britain it scribed
its
has remained.
The country was flourished
from the
first
famous for
earliest
its
tin in
recorded times.
which an export trade
Its forests
afforded timber
of many kinds; the damp, mixed, but never extreme, climate made the land green, wherever the forest was not king; it was lavishly watered and much of it was easy to cultivate with a primitive spade or plough.
Throughout the lowlands
it
was a gentle and welcoming country, and
it
4
possessed rich coal and iron ore deposits, to be enjoyed by future ger erations.
The lowland zone
of Britain extended across the south, middle, an
bounded, apart from the sea, by a where the city of Exeter now stands to the east,
zone was far
less attractive to invaders.
running north-east fror
line site
of
Durham. The
Broken by
the
highlani
Midland Gap
un
79 Stuart, a cousin of the king, arrived from France,~bis au-
fierce
and tough old
Kirk.
He overcame
when Esme thority was undermined and
1580 he was executed on a iromj^&Aip first Duke of Lennox, was a fasStuart* charge. cinating intriguer and proved to be an evil influence upon the boy-king. He exploited the king's profound affection for him, drawing him "into a carnal lust'* in sharp reaction against his Puritan upbringing by Buchanan^Lennox, though he declared himself to be converted to Prot-
Esme
in
who was
created
GREAT BRITAIN TO 1688 310 estantism, induced the king to enter into relations with France and other Catholic powers and to write affectionate letters to his mother, who then proposed that they should be associated together in the rule of Scotland.
Neither the Scottish Protestant nobility nor the Presbyterian clergy to acquiesce in the king's approaches to his mother and
was prepared
Roman Catholics. In 1582 James VI was kidnapped when hunting near Perth; Lennox was ordered to leave the country; the Scottish ministers trumpeted their conquest from the pulpits. Their victory was the
short-lived.
With the aid of James Stewart, Earl of Arran, and the Arch-
bishop of St. Andrews, the Protestant lords were in turn defeated; a Scottish parliament in 1584 put an end for the time being to the Presbyterian system, declaring King James VI to be head of the Church. Again the situation rapidly changed. Arran was now defeated; the Protestant leaders and ministers returned; but the king remained free. In
with England and accepted a pension from Queen Elizabeth. Thus when his mother was put to death for treason in February 1587 he had high hopes that if he were cautious 1586 he concluded an
alliance
and did not blot his copybook he would yet be Queen Elizabeth's successor in England. He weathered the storm of Scottish anger at the fate of Mary, Queen of Scots; he made it clear that in spite of public pleas and protests he had no intention of avenging his mother. And wisely he did not commit himself to the Spanish cause while King Philip II was preparing to invade England.
|
and conspiracies rent Scottish history in Complicated the 1590's; for a time the Catholics were in the ascendant and at anintrigues, plots,
James VI married
in 1589 a young blonde him Danish princess named Anne who gave several children, including Prince Charles, the future King Charles I of England, who was born in other, the Presbyteriana/iKing
1600. Gradually the king strengthened his own place in Scottish politics; he overthrew the Catholic lords in 1595, then in 1597 he attacked
first
the leaders of the Kirk and restored the bishops. He successfully frustrated fresh plans to kidnap, depose, or even kill hiny/When in 1598 and
1599 he published two books, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies and the Basilikon Down, in which he set out lofty claims for the divine right of kings, he could fairly assert that the
and shown
he knew more than most men about
He
of monarchy. had overcome a thousand intrigues himself to be a master of his many unruly subjects. Moreover
difficult art
he had kept out of trouble in his tricky relations with Queen Elizabeth. Therefore in the spring of 1603, when he left Edinburgh for London to claim his throne at Westminster,
he could
fairly
boast that at the age
of thirty-nine he was an old, experienced, and successful king/ King James was delighted with his heritage and his new subjects
THE ACCESSION OF JAMES
I
311
appeared pleased with him. They greeted him enthusiastically, and swarmed along the roads to meet him: they thought of him as a good Protestant rulert with adequate progeny to ensure a Protestant suc!
cession, .even
of golden
if
he was only a poor Scottish relative of the
late
queen
memory.iThe poet Dekker wrote: Blest
God, when we
for fear scarce
looked to have seen Peace's moonshine
Then
send'st from the North, past all our hopes, King James his glorious sunshine.
There was a pronounced dualism in the character of the man who I of -England. He was both uncouth and sophisticated,
ribald
man" who craved
and
philosophical, clever
love, but
and
was unlovable. In
foolish:
an "old young
his conduct of business
he was nervous and excitable, willful and /often lazy. Extravagant in his habits, he had a fine opinion of himselfejSoon tiring of his wife, he reverted to his normal homosexuality.! When Jie came to England he was dazzled by the opportunities that opened before himfJFreed from the bullying of the Scottish nobles and ministers, no longer poor or despised, he expected his will to prevail in this wealthy kingdom just as
Queen
Elizabeth's
had done. What he
failed to understand
was
that
England the nobility did not count for as much as it did in Scotland, that the middle classes represented in parliament were already insistin
ing upon their right to wider political authority than they had ever exand that it was only the skilled statecraft of his predeercised before/ cessor and her ministers that kept the government in command of events
and the Puritan movement, which corresponded roughly to the Scottish Presbyterian, under control. 'The House of Commons, for its part, when it met in 1604, contained a number of outstanding leaders in debate and committee who had also served in Queen Elizabeth I's last parliament, but very few privy coun-
new monarch/ it disclosed a nuand showed a determination to right
cilors to represent the interests of the
cleus of resistance to court policies
grievances of which many members had long been conscious. /Meanwhile the Puritans within the English Church hoped that their new ruler
with his Presbyterian upbringing and background would be sympathetic to their demands for reform, especially for the abolition of Catholic ritual
which the old queen had fought
himself naturally enough adhered to
to preserve) In fact, the king
Queen
Elizabeth's policies: he had no intention of abating the prerogatives of the Crown; he had no wish to enhance the strength of the House of Commons; and remembering his own painful experiences in Scotland, he found the extreme all
views of the Puritans repugnant. Like Elizabeth also, he regarded the
GREAT BRITAIN TO 1688 312
episcopacy as a bulwark of the monarchy.
He
coined the phrase "no
in its way, bebishop, no king." Thus the honeymoon, genuine enough tween him and his new subjects did not last for long. The conflict between the Crown and parliament, which had been looming up in the down by the early years of Queen Elizabeth but had been damped of King character The of war the exigencies against Spain, reappeared.
James I, whatever its weaknesses, was only one factor in a struggle which had begun before he arrived in London and was to continue throughout the whole of British history in the seventeenth century. '""When the first parliament of the reign met in March 1604 the memactive parliament. It
new
proved to be an extremely held four sessions averaging about 100 days in
bers crowded in to hear their
king. It
compared with the longest session of 76 days in the reign Queen Elizabeth I; it set up many committees; and the first "committee of the whole House" met in 1607/King4ames I rubbed it the
length, as
of
v
wrong way. \Whenite published a proclamation for the elections of members he ordered that all returns should be made into chancery, which was to decide upon their validity,] A case soon arose when an outlaw named Sir Francis Goodwin was returned; the House of Commons declared that he was properly elected and insisted that it was its right and not that of the court of
chancery
to decide
upon
the validity of the re-
turns of members.^ In the end/the king was obSged to give way, although a new writ was issued/Another constitutional case related to an M.P.
who was confined in the Fleet prison for debt. The House of Commons summoned the warder of the Fleet and committed him to the Tower of London for a breach of its privileges. Again the king was compelled to intervene and to .yield.
^House
'
an old grievance which had the namely prerogative right of the to exact to pre-empt for servants king "purveyance," enabling royal goods at low prices; the Commons also objected to the right of wardIn
its first
session this
been expressed in
also raised
earlier times,
ship whereby the king could draw profits from the properties of well-todo minors who were orphans of tenants-in-chief. These wardships, like
commercial and industrial patents, were usually conferred upon courtiers as rewards or perquisites. The king resented the complaints and scolded the
Commons
for ventilating them.
They now
retorted with an
"apology" which was one of the most outspoken statements ever to be published by the House: it was, in effect, a reminder to a "foreign" king of what the powers and privileges of an English parliament consisted: their privileges, it was asserted, were "more universally and dangerously impugned than ever before." firm: "let
The conclusion was
polite but
your Majesty be pleased to receive public information from
THE ACCESSION OF JAMES
I
313
your
Commons
as to the civil estate
and government" for "the voice of is said to be as the voice
the people, in the things of their knowledge, of God."
Before the parliament met for its next session an attempt was made by a group of Roman Catholic conspirators to blow up the king and
both houses of parliament in what was known as the Gunpowder Treason or Plot. The plot was betrayed and detected at the last moment.
Whatever the exact truth about shocked and
blown up,
it
its
origins
may have
been, the episode
The king explained that if he had been would have been in the best of company and in the most
thrilled the nation.
honorable place in the country, far better than, say, an ale house or a brothel. Gratified by this