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Home British History 55 B.C. - A.D.1485 |
British History 55 B.C. - A.D.1485The Groundwork of British History 55 B.C. - A.D.1485In giving the name The Groundwork of British History to this book, the writers seek to make clear the plan on which it is constructed.If in reading it a boy comes to carry with him some idea of the origin and sequence and relation of events, and gains some notion of history as a whole, he is beginning to build on what may be called a groundwork. Much will remain to be learnt and many details to be added, but these will fall naturally into their places, if the mind is already prepared with a groundwork or general plan on which to fit them. If, on the other hand, there is no such groundwork in his mind, additional knowledge may merely produce additional confusion. Every teacher in history is only too familiar with the painful method of "learning" - so called - by which a boy will get up some pages of a book so thoroughly as to be able to answer every question on the pages set, and yet have no grip of his history as a whole. Take him "outside the lesson" and he is at once bewildered and lost - with perhaps a suppressed sense of injustice; feeling that to ask questions "outside the lesson" is not playing the game. Such a perplexed learner often deserves more sympathy than he gets. He dutifully burdens his memory with all the names and dates and facts which he finds on the pages prescribed, not knowing which are the most important, not having been taught to connect events with their past causes or their future developments. Now and again his memory, being unsupported by any general sense of where he is, plays him false, and he produces those grotesque onslaughts upon chronology and probability with which we are all acquainted. It is to meet such difficulties that our book is directed. Our aim is to provide the reader with a groundwork at once solid and broad-based, upon which increasing knowledge may gradually be built; to trace out the main threads of British history, omitting small and unfruitful details; to treat events in logical sequence by pursuing one subject at a time; and to concentrate the mind upon what was the chief policy or course of action in each age. In order to do this the book strives to encourage the faculties of understanding and reason rather than mere memory; and to make boys think why things happened and what the consequences were. For example, the history of the thirteenth century is grouped round the Making of Parliament; the Hundred Years War is followed from its beginnings in Edward Ill's reign to its end in Henry VI’s without interrupting the story to narrate events which, though contemporary, had no logical connection with it; the baronial troubles culminating in the Wars of the Roses are treated as a whole, beginning with the overthrow of the legitimate line of Richard II by the house of Lancaster, and passing through the troubles of Henry IV at home to the final outburst in Henry VI’s reign. The history of Scotland is more fully dealt with than is usual in school histories: the way in which Scotland was united, the fortunes of the house of Bruce, the misfortunes of the house of Stuart, the cause of the Scottish Reformation, are treated in a continuous series of chapters. The method is the same as that followed in Mr. Warner's Brief Survey of British History, but the book is intended for those who have got beyond the elementary outlines, and who require a general view of the broadening stream of our national history.
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