Samuel Rawson Gardiner
Encyclopedia
Samuel Rawson Gardiner was an English
historian
.
The son of Rawson Boddam Gardiner, he was born near Alresford, Hampshire
. He was educated at Winchester College
and Christ Church, Oxford
, where he obtained a first class in literae humaniores
. He was subsequently elected to fellowships at All Souls
(1884) and Merton
(1892). For some years he was professor of modern history at King's College London
, and devoted his life to the subject. In 1896, he was elected to give the first series of Ford Lectures
at Oxford University.
revolution, he wrote its history in a series of volumes, originally published under different titles, beginning with the accession of King James I of England
. It was completed in two volumes by CH Firth
as The Last Years of the Protectorate (1909).
The series is History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603-1642 (10 vols. 1883-4); History of the Great Civil War, 1642-1649 (5 vols. 1893); and History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660 (4 vol. 1903). Gardiner's treatment of the subject is exhaustive and philosophical, taking in political and constitutional history, the changes in religion, thought and sentiment, their causes and their tendencies. Of his original sources, many exist only in manuscript, and his researches in public and private collections of manuscripts at home, and in the archives of Simancas
, Venice
, Rome
, Brussels
and Paris, were tireless and productive.
He may have been drawn to the period by the fact that he was descended from Oliver Cromwell
and Henry Ireton
, but his judgements are unbiased, and his appreciations of character reveal fine perception and broad sympathies. This is shown in his analyses of the characters of James I
, Francis Bacon
, William Laud
, Strafford and Cromwell
.
On constitutional matters, he writes with an insight achieved by the study of political philosophy, discussing in a masterly fashion the dreams of idealists and the schemes of government proposed by statesmen. Throughout his work he gives a prominent place to everything which illustrates human progress in moral and religious, as well as political conceptions, and specially to the rise and development of the idea of religious toleration, finding much of his source material in the writings of obscure pamphleteers, whose essays indicate currents of public opinion. His record of the relations between England and other states proves his thorough knowledge of contemporary European history, and is rendered specially valuable by his researches among manuscript sources which have enabled him to expound for the first time some intricate pieces of diplomacy.
Gardiner's work is long and minute. He is apt to attach an exaggerated importance to some of the authorities which he was the first to bring to light, to see a general tendency in what may only be the expression of an individual eccentricity, to rely too much on ambassadors' reports which may have been written for some special end, to enter too fully into the details of diplomatic correspondence. His style is clear, unadorned, and somewhat lacking in force; he appeals to the intellect rather than to the emotions, and is seldom picturesque, though in describing a few famous scenes, such as the execution of Charles I
, he writes with pathos and dignity.
The minuteness of his narrative detracts from its interest; though his arrangement is generally good, here and there the reader finds the thread of a subject broken by the intrusion of incidents not immediately connected with it, and does not pick it up again without an effort. And Gardiner has the defects of his supreme qualities, of his fairness and critical ability as a judge of character; his work lacks enthusiasm, and leaves the reader cold and unmoved. Yet, apart from its sterling excellence, it is not without beauties, for it is marked by loftiness of thought, a love of purity and truth, and refinement in taste and feeling.
He wrote other books, mostly on the same period, but his great history is that by which his name will live. It is a worthy result of a life of unremitting labour, a splendid monument of historical scholarship. His position as a historian was formally acknowledged: in 1882 he was given a civil list pension of £150 per annum, "in recognition of his valuable contributions to the history of England"; he was honorary D.C.L. of Oxford, LL.D. of Edinburgh, and Ph.D. of Göttingen, and honorary student of Christ Church, Oxford; and in 1894 he declined the appointment of Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, lest its duties should interfere with the accomplishment of his history.
is especially significant. No figure in English history has called forth a greater range of evaluations. On the positive side Gardiner concluded:
He edited collections of papers for the Camden Society
, and from 1891 was editor of the English Historical Review.
----
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
.
The son of Rawson Boddam Gardiner, he was born near Alresford, Hampshire
New Alresford
New Alresford or simply Alresford is a small town and civil parish in the City of Winchester district of Hampshire, England. It is situated some 12 km north-east of the city of Winchester and 20 km south-west of the town of Alton...
. He was educated at Winchester College
Winchester College
Winchester College is an independent school for boys in the British public school tradition, situated in Winchester, Hampshire, the former capital of England. It has existed in its present location for over 600 years and claims the longest unbroken history of any school in England...
and Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...
, where he obtained a first class in literae humaniores
Literae Humaniores
Literae Humaniores is the name given to an undergraduate course focused on Classics at Oxford and some other universities.The Latin name means literally "more humane letters", but is perhaps better rendered as "Advanced Studies", since humaniores has the sense of "more refined" or "more learned",...
. He was subsequently elected to fellowships at All Souls
All Souls College, Oxford
The Warden and the College of the Souls of all Faithful People deceased in the University of Oxford or All Souls College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England....
(1884) and Merton
Merton College, Oxford
Merton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to...
(1892). For some years he was professor of modern history at King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
, and devoted his life to the subject. In 1896, he was elected to give the first series of Ford Lectures
Ford Lectures
The Ford Lectures are a prestigious series of public lectures given annually in English or British History by a distinguished historian. Known commonly as "The Ford Lectures," they are properly titled "Ford's Lectures in British History" and they are given by a scholar elected to be "Ford's...
at Oxford University.
Puritan Revolution
Regarded into the 21st century as the foremost historian of the PuritanPuritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
revolution, he wrote its history in a series of volumes, originally published under different titles, beginning with the accession of King James I of England
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
. It was completed in two volumes by CH Firth
Charles Harding Firth
Sir Charles Harding Firth was a British historian.Born in Sheffield, he was educated at Clifton College and at Balliol College, Oxford...
as The Last Years of the Protectorate (1909).
The series is History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603-1642 (10 vols. 1883-4); History of the Great Civil War, 1642-1649 (5 vols. 1893); and History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660 (4 vol. 1903). Gardiner's treatment of the subject is exhaustive and philosophical, taking in political and constitutional history, the changes in religion, thought and sentiment, their causes and their tendencies. Of his original sources, many exist only in manuscript, and his researches in public and private collections of manuscripts at home, and in the archives of Simancas
Simancas
Simancas is a town and municipality of central Spain, located in the province of Valladolid, part of the autonomous community of Castile and León...
, Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
and Paris, were tireless and productive.
He may have been drawn to the period by the fact that he was descended from Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
and Henry Ireton
Henry Ireton
Henry Ireton was an English general in the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War. He was the son-in-law of Oliver Cromwell.-Early life:...
, but his judgements are unbiased, and his appreciations of character reveal fine perception and broad sympathies. This is shown in his analyses of the characters of James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
, Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
, William Laud
William Laud
William Laud was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633 to 1645. One of the High Church Caroline divines, he opposed radical forms of Puritanism...
, Strafford and Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
.
On constitutional matters, he writes with an insight achieved by the study of political philosophy, discussing in a masterly fashion the dreams of idealists and the schemes of government proposed by statesmen. Throughout his work he gives a prominent place to everything which illustrates human progress in moral and religious, as well as political conceptions, and specially to the rise and development of the idea of religious toleration, finding much of his source material in the writings of obscure pamphleteers, whose essays indicate currents of public opinion. His record of the relations between England and other states proves his thorough knowledge of contemporary European history, and is rendered specially valuable by his researches among manuscript sources which have enabled him to expound for the first time some intricate pieces of diplomacy.
Gardiner's work is long and minute. He is apt to attach an exaggerated importance to some of the authorities which he was the first to bring to light, to see a general tendency in what may only be the expression of an individual eccentricity, to rely too much on ambassadors' reports which may have been written for some special end, to enter too fully into the details of diplomatic correspondence. His style is clear, unadorned, and somewhat lacking in force; he appeals to the intellect rather than to the emotions, and is seldom picturesque, though in describing a few famous scenes, such as the execution of Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
, he writes with pathos and dignity.
The minuteness of his narrative detracts from its interest; though his arrangement is generally good, here and there the reader finds the thread of a subject broken by the intrusion of incidents not immediately connected with it, and does not pick it up again without an effort. And Gardiner has the defects of his supreme qualities, of his fairness and critical ability as a judge of character; his work lacks enthusiasm, and leaves the reader cold and unmoved. Yet, apart from its sterling excellence, it is not without beauties, for it is marked by loftiness of thought, a love of purity and truth, and refinement in taste and feeling.
He wrote other books, mostly on the same period, but his great history is that by which his name will live. It is a worthy result of a life of unremitting labour, a splendid monument of historical scholarship. His position as a historian was formally acknowledged: in 1882 he was given a civil list pension of £150 per annum, "in recognition of his valuable contributions to the history of England"; he was honorary D.C.L. of Oxford, LL.D. of Edinburgh, and Ph.D. of Göttingen, and honorary student of Christ Church, Oxford; and in 1894 he declined the appointment of Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, lest its duties should interfere with the accomplishment of his history.
Evaluation of Oliver Cromwell
As a foremost historian of the era, Gardiner's evaluation of Oliver CromwellOliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
is especially significant. No figure in English history has called forth a greater range of evaluations. On the positive side Gardiner concluded:
- "The man--it is ever so with the noblest--was greater than his work. In his own heart lay the resolution to subordinate self to public ends, and to subordinate material to moral and spiritual objects of desire. He was limited by the defects which make imperfect the character and intellect even of the noblest and the wisest of mankind. He was limited still more by the unwillingness of his contemporaries to mould themselves after his ideas. The blows that he had struck against the older system had their enduring effects. Few wished for the revival of the absolute kingship, of the absolute authority of a single House of Parliament, or of the Laudian system of governing the Church....The living forces of England--forces making for the destruction of those barriers which he was himself breaking through, buoyed him up--as a strong and self-confident swimmer, he was carried onward by the flowing tide."
- "In the latter portion of the Protector's career it was far otherwise. His failure to establish a permanent Government was not due merely to his deficiency in constructive imagination. It was due rather to two causes: the umbrage taken at his position as head of an army whose interference in political affairs gave even more offence than the financial burdens it imposed on a people unaccustomed to regular taxation; and the reaction which set in against the spiritual claims of that Puritanism of which he had become the mouthpiece…. It was no reaction against the religious doctrines or ecclesiastical institutions upheld by the Protector that brought about the destruction of his system of government.... So far as the reaction was not directed against militarism, it was directed against the introduction into the political world of what appeared to be too high a standard of morality, a reaction which struck specially upon Puritanism, but which would have struck with as much force upon any other form of religion which, like that upheld by Laud, called in the power of the State to enforce its claims. Even though Oliver was in his own person no sour fanatic, as Royalist pamphleteers after the Restoration falsely asserted; it is impossible to deny that he strove by acts of government to lead men into the paths of morality and religion beyond the limit which average human nature had fixed for itself."
- "In dealing with foreign nations his mistake on this head was more conspicuous, because he had far less knowledge of the conditions of efficient action abroad than he had at home. It may fairly be said that he knew less of Scotland than of England, less of Ireland than of Great Britain, and less of the Continent than of any one of the three nations over which he ruled. It has sometimes been said that Oliver made England respected in Europe. It would be more in accordance with truth to say that he made her feared."
- "Oliver's claim to greatness can be tested by the undoubted fact that his character receives higher and wider appreciation as the centuries pass by. The limitations on his nature--the one-sidedness of his religious zeal, the mistakes of his policy--are thrust out of sight, the nobility of his motives, the strength of his character, and the breadth of his intellect, force themselves on the minds of generations for which the objects for which he strove have been for the most part attained, though often in a different fashion from that which he placed before himself. Even those who refuse to waste a thought on his spiritual aims remember with gratitude his constancy of effort to make England great by land and sea; and it would be well for them also to be reminded of his no less constant efforts to make England worthy of greatness."
Other books
Among the more noteworthy of Gardiner's separate works are:- Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage (2 vols., London, 1869)
- Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-1660 (1st ed., Oxford, 1889; 2nd ed., Oxford, 1899)
- Oliver Cromwell (London, 1901)
- What Gunpowder Plot was (London, 1897)
- Outline of English History (1st ed., London, 1887; 2nd ed., London, 1896)
- Student's History of England (2 vols., 1st ed., London, 1890–1891; 2nd ed., London, 1891–1892).
He edited collections of papers for the Camden Society
Camden Society
The Camden Society, named after the English antiquary and historian William Camden, was founded in 1838 in London to publish early historical and literary materials, both unpublished manuscripts and new editions of rare printed books....
, and from 1891 was editor of the English Historical Review.
----
Further Reading
- Nixon, Mark. 2011. Rawson Gardiner and the Idea of History'. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Royal Historical SocietyRoyal Historical SocietyThe Royal Historical Society was founded in 1868. The premier society in the United Kingdom which promotes and defends the scholarly study of the past, it is based at University College London...
. ISBN 9780861933105.
External links
- The Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I, 1637-1649 by Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1882): Volume I (1637-1640), Volume II (1640-1642)
- History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603-1642 by Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1883): Volume I (1603-1607), Volume II (1607-1616), Volume III (1616-1621), Volume IV (1621-1623), Volume V (1623-1625), Volume VI (1625-1629), Volume VII (1629-1635), Volume VIII (1635-1639), Volume IX (1639-1641), Volume X (1641-1642)
- History of the Great Civil War, 1642-1649 by Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1886–1901): Volume I (1642-1644), Volume II (1644-1647), Volume III (1645-1647), Volume IV (1647-1649)
- Oliver Cromwell by Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1901)