IV.

ENGLAND'S EARLIEST RELATIONS TO AUSTRIA

AND PRUSSIA.

It would almost seem as if from the earliest periods of historical record, the relations of Great Britain with the Continent had assumed and retained a northern rather than a southern direction. When the Romans were compelled to evacuate the island, there arrived nations of a northern origin, as Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, who contended for, and soon successfully gained possession of the island from the Celts. The first foreign political relations established by the conquerors reacted strongly upon their own northern homes. For the Christian doctrines to which the Anglo-Saxons had been converted in the subjugated land of the Britons, were now carried by them into Friesland, the northern and central parts of Germany, and even beyond the boundaries which separate the Scandinavian from the German races. The power and magnificence of Charlemagne had irresistibly attracted to his court the insular Saxons no less than their continental brethren. Offa of Mercia was on friendly terms with the Emperor as their letters testify, while Egbert, the first founder of one united Germanic kingdom in Great Britain, had derived his liberal political views from his intercourse with the leading men of the Emperor's court.

Thus when the Saxons of the Continent succeeded to the inheritance of the universal supremacy that had hitherto belonged to Rome, the ancient alliance with the kindred races who dwelt on the opposite sides of the Channel was re-established on the closest footing. Otho the great, by his marriage with a granddaughter of King Alfred, cemented the first of the many matrimonial alliances, which have united the royal houses of England and Northern Germany for more than a thousand years. It would almost seem as if that costly present of a gorgeously illuminated Gospel, which King Athelstan received from his brother-in-law the Emperor and his sister, and in which their names are still inscribed, had constituted the first link in a hitherto uninterrupted chain of alliances. Throughout the whole of that century of Scandinavian pillage there existed moreover a long established and most beneficial commercial intercourse between the Thames and the opposite German coasts, which could not possibly have been interrupted either under the rule of the Danish dynasties or that of the early Norman kings.

Henry II. the first of the Plantagenets, who in his opposition to that spirit of Romanism, by means of which the Church endeavoured to secure to herself an undue amount of temporal power, involuntarily sought aid from ancient Saxon institutions, first laid the foundation of a system of English policy in connexion with the Continent, the threads of which may be traced throughout the whole of the century. The marriage of his daughter to Henry the Lion, the bravest of all the Guelphic princes, shows us the direction taken by the English domestic policy in the great contest between the Emperor and

the Pope, which was in fact a struggle between the principles of a unity and a multiplicity of powers. Richard Cœur de Lion, who, before and during his captivity in Germany, had been involved in the political interests of the Empire, used all his efforts to secure the nomination of his nephew Otho to the dignity of King of Rome. When this prince quarrelled with Rome, he made common cause with John of England, who had his own differences to settle with Pope Innocent III. This family compact received a severe check at the battle of Bouvines, but nevertheless the cities of Germany, and trade generally, continued to increase in importance under the long continued patronage of the Guelphic party. It is to this period that the cities of Flanders, the sea trade of the Dutch and Frisians, and the maritime ports of the Hanseatic confederation owe their rapid and prosperous development. The German princes, who by the disruption of th Imperial union and the struggles maintained by the reigning sovereigns with Rome, had acquired a much greater degree of independence than they had ever before enjoyed, now strove to outvie one another in the liberality with which they offered protection and immunities of every kind to the towns within their domains; and we even find that the different rulers of the districts in which maritime trade had been most rapidly developed, were often ready to make common cause together, and it was in this manner that England was constantly being brought into contact and alliance with Flanders, Brabant, Holland, Guelders, Juliers, Cologne, and Saxony. After the fall of the Hohenstauffen family, the title of King of Germany was borne by an English prince, the candidate of the Guelphic party, whose strength lay chiefly in the

Rhineland and the north-western part of the Empire. He was unable to restore the splendour of the Empire, and the only traces of the benefits conferred by his rule are afforded by the privileges which he granted in reference to the long-established trade between Germany and England, unless we include under that head certain architectural improvements which may still be traced in some of the fine cathedrals in the districts of the Rhine. Notwithstanding the daily decline of power of the Ducal House of Saxony, the old commercial relations with England continued uninterrupted, no slight proof of which was afforded by the fact, that Richard, King of the Germans, had recourse to mountaineers from the Hartz district to work his rich tin and copper mines in Cornwall. This intercourse, which had been equally enjoyed by the subjects of both countries, appears to have been interrupted during the next generation; for Edward I. was the last English monarch who addressed a Duke of Brunswick as his cousin. The rupture was, however, only apparent, for the commercial relations between England and Northern Germany continued to be maintained as heretofore, although they were no longer associated with any one definite royal house, and notwithstanding the attempts that were made from time to time to break off the long continued international communion. They were, indeed, intimately connected with the alternate preponderance of power, and the long-lasting struggles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines.

When Henry II. found himself involved in a contest with the Pope as well as with Becket, his interests and those of Frederick Barbarossa seemed for a short time to have been united at the meeting of the Diet at Würzburg,

held in the year 1165, but they were soon again as widely separated as ever. When after the fall of the Emperor Otho IV. the sons and grandsons of Henry the Lion failed in restoring the supremacy of their house in the Empire, and when the subdivision of their Saxon patrimony even endangered their position in Germany, England began, during the long and weak reign of Henry III., to seek protection against France by entering into some other alliance, on the stability of which it might rely. Thus in the year 1225, the English government for the first time made cordial advances towards the imperial house of the Hohenstauffen, who had acquired a firm footing in Southern Germany, and established its power both over the Empire and Italy. Notwithstanding the long and wearisome negotiations that were entered into by the ambassadors of both countries at Cologne, Ulm, and Frankfort, the treaty was broken off in consequence of the decided leaning evinced by Frederick II. towards a French alliance. The murder of Engelbert I. Archbishop of Cologne, who had been the most influential intercessor with the Pope and Emperor in favour of Henry III., seems also to have been the means of suddenly breaking off the negotiations that had been begun by this remarkable embassy. Ten years later, however, when the position of the Emperor Frederick had been essentially altered, he formed an alliance with Henry, which terminated in his marriage with Isabella, the sister of the English monarch. This marriage opened a prospect of a new and more brilliant alliancethe material results of which might have essentially benefited the districts of Southern Germany. The bitter contest which the Emperor had waged against Rome soon,