Comic History of England.

by Bill Nye.

PREFACE.

The readers of this volume will share our regret that the preface cannot be written by Mr. Nye, who would have introduced his volume with a characteristically appropriate and humorous foreword in perfect harmony with the succeeding narrative.

We need only say that this work is in the author's best vein, and will prove not only amusing, but instructive as well; for the events, successions, dates, etc., are correct, and the trend of actual facts is adhered to. Of course, these facts are "embellished," as Mr. Nye would say, by his fancy, and the leading historical characters are made to play in fantastic _roles_. Underneath all, however, a shrewd knowledge of human nature is betrayed, which unmasks motives and reveals the true inwardness of men and events with a humorous fidelity.

The unfortunate illness to which Mr. Nye finally succ.u.mbed prevented the completion of his history beyond the marriage of Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LANDING OF WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE, AT TORBAY (1688).]

CHAPTER I.

INVASION OF CAESAR: THE DISCOVERY OF TIN AND CONSEQUENT ENLIGHTENMENT OF BRITAIN.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUST OF CAESAR.]

From the glad whinny of the first unicorn down to the tip end of the nineteenth century, the history of Great Britain has been dear to her descendants in every land, 'neath every sky.

But to write a truthful and honest history of any country the historian should, that he may avoid overpraise and silly and mawkish sentiment, reside in a foreign country, or be so situated that he may put on a false moustache and get away as soon as the advance copies have been sent to the printers.

The writer of these pages, though of British descent, will, in what he may say, guard carefully against permitting that fact to swerve him for one swift moment from the right.

England even before Christ, as now, was a sort of money centre, and thither came the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians for their tin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DISCOVERY OF TIN IN BRITAIN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAESAR CROSSING THE CHANNEL.]

These early Britons were suitable only to act as ancestors. Aside from that, they had no good points. They dwelt in mud huts thatched with straw. They had no currency and no ventilation,--no drafts, in other words. Their boats were made of wicker-work plastered with clay. Their swords were made of tin alloyed with copper, and after a brief skirmish, the entire army had to fall back and straighten its blades.

They also had short spears made with a rawhide string attached, so that the deadly weapon could be jerked back again. To spear an enemy with one of these harpoons, and then, after playing him for half an hour or so, to land him and finish him up with a tin sword, const.i.tuted one of the most reliable boons peculiar to that strange people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAESAR TREATING WITH THE BRITONS.]

Caesar first came to Great Britain on account of a bilious attack. On the way across the channel a violent storm came up. The great emperor and pantata believed he was drowning, so that in an instant's time everything throughout his whole lifetime recurred to him as he went down,--especially his breakfast.

Purchasing a four-in-hand of docked unicorns, and much improved in health, he returned to Rome.

Agriculture had a pretty hard start among these people, and where now the glorious fields of splendid pale and billowy oatmeal may be seen interspersed with every kind of domestic and imported fertilizer in cunning little hillocks just bursting forth into fragrance by the roadside, then the vast island was a quaking swamp or covered by impervious forests of gigantic trees, up which with coa.r.s.e and shameless glee would scamper the n.o.bility.

(Excuse the rhythm into which I may now and then drop as the plot develops.--AUTHOR.)

Caesar later on made more invasions: one of them for the purpose of returning his team and flogging a Druid with whom he had disagreed religiously on a former trip. (He had also bought his team of the Druid.)

The Druids were the sheriffs, priests, judges, chiefs of police, plumbers, and justices of the peace.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLOUGHING 51 B.C.]

They practically ran the place, and no one could be a Druid who could not pa.s.s a civil service examination.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRUID SACRIFICES.]

They believed in human sacrifice, and often of a bright spring morning could have been seen going out behind the bush to sacrifice some one who disagreed with them on some religious point or other.

The Druids largely lived in the woods in summer and in debt during the winter. They worshipped almost everything that had been left out overnight, and their motto was, "Never do anything unless you feel like it very much indeed."

Caesar was a broad man from a religious point of view, and favored bringing the Druids before the grand jury. For uttering such sentiments as these the Druids declared his life to be forfeit, and set one of their number to settle also with him after morning services the question as to the matter of immersion and sound money.

Religious questions were even then as hotly discussed as in later times, and Caesar could not enjoy society very much for five or six days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONUMENT OF AGRICULTURE, OR ANCIENT SCARECROW.]

At Stonehenge there are still relics of a stone temple which the Druids used as a place of idolatrous worship and a.s.sa.s.sination. On Giblet Day people came for many miles to see the exercises and carry home a few cutlets of intimate friends.

After this Rome sent over various great Federal appointees to soften and refine the people. Among them came General Agricola with a new kind of seed-corn and kindness in his heart.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AGRICOLA ENCOURAGES AGRICULTURE.]

He taught the barefooted Briton to go out to the pump every evening and bathe his chapped and soil-kissed feet and wipe them on the gra.s.s before retiring, thus introducing one of the refinements of Rome in this cold and barbaric clime.

Along about the beginning of the Christian "Erie," says an elderly Englishman, the Queen Boadicea got so disgusted with the Romans who carried on there in England just as they had been in the habit of doing at home,--cutting up like a hallowe'en party in its junior year,--that she got her Britons together, had a steel dress made to fight in comfortably and not tight under the arms, then she said, "Is there any one here who hath a culverin with him?" One was soon found and fired.

This by the Romans was regarded as an opening of hostilities. Her fire was returned with great eagerness, and victory was won in the city of London over the Romans, who had taunted the queen several times with being seven years behind the beginning of the Christian Era in the matter of clothes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROMAN COAT OF ARMS.]

Boadicea won victories by the score, and it is said that under the besom of her wrath seventy thousand Roman warriors kissed the dust. As she waved her sceptre in token of victory the hat-pin came out of her crown, and wildly throwing the "old hot thing" at the Roman general, she missed him and unhorsed her own chaperon.

Disgusted with war and the cooking they were having at the time, she burst into tears just on the eve of a general victory over the Romans and poisoned herself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DEATH OF BOADICEA.]

N.B.--Many thanks are due to the author, Mr. A. Barber, for the use of his works ent.i.tled "Half-Hours with Crowned Heads" and "Thoughts on Shaving Dead People on Whom One Has Never Called," cloth, gilt top.

I notice an error in the artist's work which will be apparent to any one of moderate intelligence, and especially to the Englishman,--viz., that the tin discovered by the Phoenicians is in the form of cans, etc., formerly having contained tinned meats, fruits, etc. This book, I fear, will be sharply criticised in England if any inaccuracy be permitted to creep in, even through the ill.u.s.trations. It is disagreeable to fall out thus early with one's artist, but the writer knows too well, and the sting yet burns and rankles in his soul where pierced the poisoned dart of an English clergyman two years ago. The writer had spoken of Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain for the purpose of replenishing the Roman stock of umbrellas, top-coats, and "loydies," when the clergyman said, politely but very firmly, "that England then had no top-coats or umbrellas." The writer would not have cared, had there not been others present.

CHAPTER II.