NOTE: The chapters in the text of Hume's History of England are not subdivided into Sections, as my posts will be. The Sections will broadly (not always exactly) correspond with the subdivisions of the LibraVox recording of the book to which I am listening.
"[...] Having effected that difficult point of disembarking them safely in Asia, he entered into a private correspondence with Soliman, Emperor of the Turks; and practised every insidious art, which his genius, his power, or his situation enabled him to employ, for disappointing the enterprise, and discouraging the Latins from making thenceforward any such prodigious migrations. His dangerous policy was seconded by the disorders inseparable from so vast a multitude, who were not united under one head, and were conducted by leaders of the most independent, intractable spirit, unacquainted with military discipline, and determined enemies to civil authority and submission. The scarcity of provisions, the excess of fatigue, the influence of unknown climates, joined to the want of concert in their operations, and to the sword of a warlike enemy, destroyed the adventurers by thousands, and would have abated the ardour of men impelled to war by less powerful motives. Their zeal, however, their bravery, and their irresistible force, still carried them forward, and continually advanced them to the great end of their enterprise. After an obstinate siege they took Nice, the seat of the Turkish empire; they defeated Soliman in two great battles; they made themselves masters of Antioch; and entirely broke the force of the Turks, who had so long retained those countries in subjection: the Soldan of Egypt, whose alliance they had hitherto courted, recovered, on the fall of the Turkish power, his former authority in Jerusalem; and he informed them by his ambassadors, that if they came disarmed to that city, they might now perform their religious vows, and that all Christian pilgrims, who should thenceforth visit the holy sepulchre, might expect the same good treatment which they had ever received from his predecessors. The offer was rejected; the soldan was required to yield up the city to the Christians; and on his refusal, the champions of the Cross advanced to the siege of Jerusalem, which they regarded as the consummation of their labours. [...]"
David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.5, Section 1, 1762
"[...] After a siege of five weeks, they [the Crusaders] took Jerusalem by assault; and, impelled by a mixture of military and religious rage, they put the numerous garrison and inhabitants to the sword without distinction. Neither arms defended the valiant, nor submission the timorous: no age or sex was spared: infants on the breast were pierced by the same blow with their mothers, who implored for mercy: even a multitude, to the number of ten thousand persons, who had surrendered themselves prisoners, and were promised quarter, were butchered in cool blood by those ferocious conquerors [a]. The streets of Jerusalem were covered with dead bodies [b]; and the triumphant warriors, after every enemy was subdued and slaughtered, immediately turned themselves, with the sentiments of humiliation and contrition, towards the holy sepulchre. They threw aside their arms, still streaming with blood: they advanced with reclined bodies, and naked feet and heads, to the sacred monument: they sung anthems to their Saviour who had there purchased their salvation by his death and agony: and their devotion, enlivened by the presence of the place where he had suffered, so overcame their fury, that they dissolved in tears, and bore the appearance of every soft and tender sentiment. So inconsistent is human nature with itself! and so easily does the most effeminate superstition ally, both with the most heroic courage and with the fiercest barbarity!"
David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.5, Section 1, 1762
"[...] So inconsistent is human nature with itself! and so easily does the most effeminate superstition ally, both with the most heroic courage and with the fiercest barbarity!"
David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.5, Section 1, 1762
"[Henry I], without losing a moment, hastened with the money to London; and having assembled some noblemen and prelates, whom his address, or abilities, or presents, gained to his side, he was suddenly elected, or rather saluted, king, and immediately proceeded to the exercise of royal authority. In less than three days after his brother's death, the ceremony of his coronation was performed by Maurice, Bishop of London, who was persuaded to officiate on that occasion; and thus by his courage and celerity, he intruded himself into the vacant throne. No one had sufficient spirit or sense of duty to appear in defence of the absent prince: all men were seduced or intimidated: present possession supplied the apparent defects in Henry's title, which was indeed founded on plain usurpation: and the barons, as well as the people, acquiesced in a claim which, though it could neither be justified nor comprehended, could now, they found, be opposed through the perils alone of civil war and rebellion."
David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.5, Section 1, 1762 (italics added)
"But as Henry foresaw that a crown, usurped against all rules of justice, would sit unsteady on his head, he resolved, by fair professions at least, to gain the affections of all his subjects. Besides taking the usual coronation oath to maintain the laws and execute justice, he passed a charter, which was calculated to remedy many of the grievous oppressions which had been complained of during the reigns of his father and brother. [...]" (See post containing the Charter of Liberties of Henry I, 1100)
David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.5, Section 1, 1762
"To give greater authenticity to these concessions, Henry lodged a copy of his charter in some abbey of each county, as if desirous that it should be exposed to the view of all his subjects, and remain a perpetual rule for the limitation and direction of his government: yet it is certain, that, after the present purpose was served, he never once thought, during his reign, of observing one single article of it; and the whole fell so much into neglect and oblivion, that in the following century, when the barons, who had heard an obscure tradition of it, desired to make it the model of the great charter which they exacted from King John, they could with difficulty find a copy of it in the kingdom. But as to the grievances here meant to be redressed, they were still continued in their full extent; and the royal authority, in all those particulars, lay under no manner of restriction. Reliefs of heirs, so capital an article, were never effectually fixed till the time of Magna Charta; and it is evident that the general promise here given, of accepting a just and lawful relief, ought to have been reduced to more precision, in order to give security to the subject. The oppression of wardship and marriage was perpetuated even till the reign of Charles II. And it appears from Glanville, the famous justiciary of Henry II, that in his time, where any man died intestate, an accident which must have been very frequent when the art of writing was so little known, the king, or the lord of the fief, pretended to seize all the movables, and to exclude every heir, even the children of the deceased: a sure mark of a tyrannical and arbitrary government."
David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.5, Section 1, 1762 (italics added)
"[...] But laws had at this time very little influence: power and violence governed every thing."
David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.5, Section 1, 1762 (italics added)
"The Normans, indeed, who domineered in England, were, during this age, so licentious a people, that they may be pronounced incapable of any true or regular liberty; which requires such improvement in knowledge and morals as can only be the result of reflection and experience, and must grow to perfection during several ages of settled and established government.
A people so insensible to the rights of their sovereign as to disjoint, without necessity, the hereditary succession, and permit a younger brother to intrude himself into the place of the elder, whom they esteemed, and who was guilty of no crime, but being absent, could not expect that that prince would pay any greater regard to their privileges, or allow his engagements to fetter his power and debar him from any considerable interest or convenience.
They had, indeed, arms in their hands, which prevented the establishment of a total despotism, and left their posterity sufficient power, whenever they should attain a sufficient degree of reason, to assure true liberty: but their turbulent disposition frequently prompted them to make such use of their arms, that they were more fitted to obstruct the execution of justice, than to stop the career of violence and oppresion.
The prince, finding that greater opposition was often made to him when he enforced the laws than when he violated them, was apt to render his own will and pleasure the sole rule of government; and, at every emergence, to consider more the power of the persons whom he might offend, than the rights of those whom he might injure.
The very form of this charter of Henry proves that the Norman barons (for they, rather than the people of England, were chiefly concerned in it) were totally ignorant of the nature of united monarchy, and were ill qualified to conduct, in conjunction with their sovereign, the machine of government. It is an act of his sole power, is the result of his free grace, contains some articles which bind others as well as himself, and is therefore unfit to be the deed of any one who possesses not the whole legislative power, and who may not at pleasure revoke all his concessions."
David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.5, Section 1, 1762 (Formatting and Italics added)
"[...] No act of [Henry I]'s reign rendered him equally popular with his English subjects, and tended more to establish him on the throne [than his marriage to Matilda, daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland]. Though Matilda, during the life of her uncle and brothers, was not heir of the Saxon line, she was become very dear to the English on account of her connexions with it: and that people, who, before the Conquest, had fallen into a kind of indifference towards their ancient royal family, had felt so severely the tyranny of the Normans, that they reflected with extreme regret on their former liberty, and hoped for more equal and mild administration, when the blood of their native princes should be mingled with that of their new sovereigns."
David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.5, Section 1, 1762 (Italics added)
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