An act of Parliament is a law or statute proceeding from the parliament of the United Kingdom passed in both houses, and having received the royal assent. Before it is passed it is a bill and not an act. Acts are either public or private, the former affecting the whole community, the latter only special persons and private concerns. The whole body of public acts constitutes the statute law. An act of Parliament can only be altered or repealed by the authority of parliament. Acts are usually cited in this way, '13 and 14 Vict. c. (or chap.) 21,' which means the 21st act in succession passed in year 13th-14th of the queen's reign (for example 1850). Short titles, such as 'the Merchant Shipping Act, 1854', are also used. Up to the time of Edward I acts of parliament were in Latin; then French was introduced, and for some time was exclusively employed. It was not tillHenry VII. that all acts were in English. Research Act of Parliament
A nation is a body of people, organised into a single state. One of the most characteristic of the ideas of the Age of the Renaissance was that of the Nation and its sovereign independence - an idea still very active in our own days. The Middle Ages had been dominated by the Catholic ideal of world unity. The great institutions of those ages were international - for example, the Feudal System, and above all the Church and the Papacy. Latin, too, was an international language; and though the various peoples had their own languages, the continual use of Latin in both Church and State affairs helped educated men to regard themselves as members of one society, the society of Christendom. Above all, these peoples - English, French, Spanish, Italian, German - were all members of one Church. All belonged in some measure to the Christendom of which the heads were the Pope and the Emperor. Then, gradually, from the early days of the Renaissance, the newer idea of the 'Nation' took root, and this in time changed the unity of 'Christendom' into the disunion of 'Europe'.
Modern Europe is dominated by national feeling and is divided into independent national states; and these have no longer even the common bond of one Church. Europe has lost as well as gained by the disappearance of medieval Christendom. She has gained, because the old feudal divisions in most countries meant internal disunion, civil warfare, and baronial tyranny. But Europe has also lost, because the old ideal of a united Christendom has disappeared in the jealous rivalries of warring nations. From time to time attempts have been made to check these dangerous rivalries. But the problem of international peace and co-operation - of a 'society of nations' - is one which mankind is still trying to solve in a satisfactory manner. The nations which took the lead in Europe in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were those that first achieved national unity, and the chief of these were France, Spain, and England. Italy, which had given so much to the world in art and letters, did not share in this political change. Great men lived in Italy - in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, and Milan - but all these cities were the capitals of small states. In short, Italy was not a nation; hence she became from 1494 the prey of powerful neighbours. As with Italy, so with Germany.
The Holy Roman Empire was an empire only in name; in practice, Germany contained three or four hundred separate States. Both Germany and Italy retained, until even the nineteenth century, their internal divisions and discords. France, Spain, and England had achieved national unity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whereas Germany and Italy had to wait another three centuries - and some of our problems to-day are due to the fact that they are still comparatively new nations. The means by which national unity was brought about in France, Spain, and England was the monarchy. It was their kings who saved and made these countries - saved them from feudal anarchy and made them into nations. It was monarchs like Henry VII and Henry VIII of England, Louis XI and Francis I of France, and Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain who united their countries under a strong rule, and led them to a great destiny. A Holy Roman Emperor (Maximilian) contrasted the new monarchs with himself as follows: 'The Emperor is indeed a king of kings, for no one feels bound to obey him; and the King of Spain is a king of men, for, though resisted, he is still obeyed; but the King of France is a king of beasts, for him none dare gainsay.' Research Nation
The Navigation Act of 1485 was passed by Henry VII so as to build up a Merchant Navy. The Act ordained that the Bordeaux wines brought to Britain were to be carried only in English ships manned by English, Irish or Welsh sailors.
A later Navigation Act, was promulgated by the British Government in 1651 (or even, in a sense, in 1645) for the protection of British commerce and the carrying trade. Its renewal with a few changes was made in 1660, soon after the accession of Charles II. The act related to five subjects: Coasting trade; fisheries; commerce with the colonies; commerce with European countries; commerce with Asia, Africa and America, and was chiefly a move in England's struggle with the Dutch for the possession of the carrying trade of the world. Parts of the Act provided that all colonial trade should be carried on in ships built and owned in England and the colonies, (a provision which powerfully stimulated colonial ship-building) and that, in the case of many specified goods, trade should be with England only. The act was largely rendered inoperative by colonial smuggling. The efforts at last made to enforce it were among the chief causes of the American War Of Independence. Research Navigation Act
Poynings' Law (the statute of Drogheda) was an act of the Irish parliament, passed in 1495, whereby all general statutes before that time in England were declared of force in Ireland. It was so named from Sir Edward Poynings, deputy of Ireland under Henry VII in 1494 when he suppressed the revolt of Perkin Warbeck. Research Poynings' Law
The Renaissance was that change in the outlook of Europe which took place during the centuries from the fourteenth to the sixteenth. In its broadest sense the Renaissance affected every department of human life. But in its narrower sense it refers to the revival of the learning of ancient Greece, and to the effects of that revival on the arts and literature of modern peoples. The Church in the Middle Ages had taught men to revere authority and to find in her teaching an answer to all the problems of life, whereas the Greeks taught men to inquire and to explore rather than to accept, and to enjoy rather than to suffer. It was this attitude of mind, more than anything else, which shook the medieval world to its foundations. The views of the ancient Greeks, now re-born into the world, were in sharp contrast with the ideals of the Middle Ages. From these ideals many men for a time turned with a feeling of contempt.
The Renaissance was a many-sided movement: it deeply influenced learning and education, art and architecture, science and invention, geography and exploration, and, above all, religion. After the fall of Rome, a knowledge of Greek had rapidly died out in the West and no provision was made for its teaching similar to that made for Latin. In Italy, owing to the closeness of its relations with the East, the number of scholars, monks, and others, who learnt some Greek was greater than elsewhere. It is not, surprising, therefore, that the revival of learning received its main impulse from Italy. From the time of Petrarch and Boccaccio, Italian scholars became more and more devoted to ancient studies, and they began to visit Constantinople, where Greek learning had been preserved. There they hunted out, copied, and eagerly studied the precious manuscripts of the past, and these opened up a new world of thought. Further, from the time that the Turks' crossed from Asia into Europe, some of the Greeks themselves began to travel westwards and to accept well-paid teaching posts in the wealthy Italian cities. And, though the revival began in Italy, the new ideas were rapidly circulated by the new printing presses invented at the time, and every nation in due course played its part in the Renaissance.
The great and wealthy city of Florence was the centre of the Italian Renaissance. Cosimo de Medici, a merchant prince who became ruler of the city, was a patron of the New Learning, and he encouraged Greek scholars to settle in Florence. His grandson, Lorenzo de Medici, known as The Magnificent, loved to gather round him the learned men of the day; he spent 60,000 pounds a year on books; and he caused 200 rare manuscripts to be brought from the East to the Medici library. Rome was second only to Florence as a centre of the New Learning. The Popes themselves became great patrons of learning. Nicholas V founded the Vatican Library. When the son of Lorenzo de Medici became Pope as Leo X, the Renaissance in Rome reached its highest point. Leo made Rome, as he said, ' the capital of the world in literature, as it is in everything else'. He provided a hundred professors for his Greek college in Rome, and he brought his father's library to the Holy City. The library was afterwards restored to Florence by his cousin Clement VII, another member of this remarkable Medici family. The New Learning influenced England from the time of Edward IV, and it made great headway in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII when the scholars known as the Oxford Reformers were flourishing.
The first Englishman to bring Greek manuscripts to England was William Selling. One of his pupils was Thomas Linacre, who went to Florence and shared the instruction given to the young Medici princes; he read in the Vatican Library, and made the acquaintance of Aldo at Venice. Another Oxford teacher who drew his inspiration from Italian sources was William Grocyn, one of the first men to give lectures on Greek literature at his University.
One of Grocyn's pupils was John Colet, who visited Italy in 1496 and returned to lecture on the Gospels in the Greek original at Oxford. He and Sir Thomas More, were friends of Erasmus, a Dutch scholar of international fame. Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, was herself a patroness of the New Learning. She founded two Cambridge colleges, Christ's and St. John's, and two Lady Margaret Professorships of Divinity, one at Oxford and one at Cambridge. The Revival of Learning was one aspect of the Renaissance; the outburst of artistic energy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was another. The painters of the new period broke away from the conventional art of the Middle Ages and began again to draw from living models. As with the artists, so with the sculptors. Donatello 'went straight with his mighty chisel to original sources - to youth and manhood, and the love of living'. The great figures of that age - Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian - still dominate the history of European art. Examples of their works, and of many other Italian artists of the Renaissance, as well as of the Northern artists - Holbein, Durer, and others - are to be seen in the magnificent collection at the National Gallery.
It was natural that men who sought their inspiration from the Greeks should turn with renewed interest to classical architecture. The ruins of ancient Rome provided examples ready to hand; and soon churches planned like classical temples were rising in every city in Italy. St. Peter's, Rome, was designed by Bramante, and the famous dome added by Michelangelo. But great as was the enthusiasm for this architecture Renaissance architecture did not establish itself in England until the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, though Henry VII's tomb at WestminsterAbbey is an example of the Florentine art of the period.
The Renaissance period, filled as it was with a love of experiment, naturally produced a renewed interest in science. With the exception of isolated geniuses like Friar Roger Bacon, there were no medieval scientists worthy of the name. Practically no scientific discoveries had been made for centuries. Modern Science begins its history with the Renaissance and owes a good deal to Leonardo da Vinci. He was the first of a long line of experimenters whose work has continued to the present day. The greatest shock to the medieval notions of the universe was given by Copernicus. For two thousand years mankind with few exceptions had believed that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun revolved round our planet every twenty-four hours. Such had been the teaching of Ptolemy, the Greek scientist. Another Greek, Pythagoras, had questioned it, and advanced the extraordinary notion that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the universe; but there were few who accepted his theory until Copernicus turned his attention to the 'solar system'. Through slits cut in the walls of his house, Copernicus watched the movements of the planets. Just before he died in 1543 he published a book - 'The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies' - giving to the world the results of his observations.
Twenty years later the famous Galileo was born at Pisa, and it was he who perfected the telescope. He lived to popularise the theory of Copernicus, but he was nearly put to death for his pains and was forced by the Court of Inquisition to recant. The Italian Galileo, and the English Newton who discovered the laws of gravity, were the two greatest scientists of the seventeenth century. In the realm of geographical discovery, no age in the world' s history was more momentous than the Age of the Renaissance. Columbus, who discovered America; Vasco De Gama, who found the Cape Route to India; Cabot, Cartier, and Cortez, the discoverers of Newfoundland, Canada, and Mexico; Balboa, who first sailed on the Pacific; Magellan, whose ship was the first to sail round the world - all these and many more make the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries an era without parallel in the annals of discovery.
The new ideas which came surging into the world during the Renaissance acted in many respects as disruptive forces. This was particularly true in the realm of religion. An unquestioning acceptance of authority - i.e. of the teaching of the Catholic Church - was the keynote of the medieval attitude to life, but an eager, inquiring generation began to question this attitude. Men, too, were shocked by the moral decay of the Church and of the Papacy; voices were raised demanding reforms. Some reformers, like Colet and Erasmus, tried to reconcile the new ideas with the Church of Rome and worked to reform it; others, of whom Luther was the greatest, rejected altogether its authority.
The revolution in European history known as the Reformation was an indirect result of the Renaissance - of the New Learning which invited comparison between the present and the past; of the invention of printing which scattered broadcast the new ideas; and again, of the growing idea of the Nation and with it the supremacy of the State. Research Renaissance
The Star Chamber was an English court founded in 1487 by Henry VII to punish the misdemeanours of sheriffs and juries, and all illegal assemblies and disturbances. It had jurisdiction over all cases civil and criminal except capital offences. However, under Laud it was miss-used and torture was regularly used to obtain confessions. The Star Chamber was abolished in 1641. Research Star Chamber
Sir Edmund Dudley was an English statesman. He was born in 1462 and died in 1510. He is noted in English history as an instrument of Henry VII in the arbitrary acts of extortion by the revival of obsolete statutes and other unjust measures practised during the latter years of his reign. On the accession of Henry VIII. he was arrested for high treason, and died on the scaffold with his associate Sir Richard Empson. Research Edmund Dudley
Francis Bacon was an English philosopher and statesman, Baron of Verulam, ViscountSt Albans, and Lord High Chancellor of England. He was born in 1561 at London and died in 1626. His father, Nicholas Bacon, was keeper of the great seal under Queen Elizabeth. He was educated at Cambridge and in 1575 was admitted to Gray's Inn. In 1576-79 he was at Paris with Sir Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador. The death of his father called him back to England, and being left in straitened circumstances he zealously pursued the study of law, and was admitted
a barrister in 1582. In 1584 he became member of parliament for Melcombe Regis, and soon after drew up a Letter of Advice to Queen Elizabeth, an able political memoir.
In 1586 he was member of parliament for Taunton, in 1589 for Liverpool. A year or two after he gained the Earl of Essex as a friend and patron. Bacon's talents and his connection with the lord-treasurer Burleigh, who had married his mother's sister, and his son Sir Robert Cecil, first secretary of state, seemed to promise him the highest promotion; but he had displeased the queen, and when he applied for the attorney-generalship, and next for the solicitor-generalship (1595), he was unsuccessful. Essex endeavoured to indemnify him by the donation of an estate in land. Bacon, however, forgot his obligations to his benefactor, and not only abandoned him as soon as he had fallen into disgrace, but without being obliged took part against him on his trial, in 1601, and was active in obtaining his conviction. He had been chosen member for the county of Middlesex in 1593, and for Southampton in 1597, and had long been a queen's counsel.
The reign of James I was more favourable to his interest. He was assiduous in courting the king's favour, and James, who was ambitious of being considered a patron of letters, conferred upon him in 1603 the order of knighthood. In 1604 he was appointed king's counsel, with a pension of 60 pounds; in 1606 he married; in 1607 he became solicitor-general, and six years after attorney-general. Between James and his parliament he was anxious to produce harmony, but his efforts were without avail, and his obsequiousness and servility gained him enmity and discredit. In 1617 he was made lord-keeper of the seals; in 1618 Lord High Chancellor of England and BaronVerulam. In this year he lent his influence to bring a verdict of guilty against Walter Raleigh. In 1621 he was made ViscountSt Albans. Soon after this his reputation received a fatal blow. A new parliament was formed in 1621, and the lord-chancellor was accused before the house of bribery, corruption, and other malpractices. It is difficult to ascertain the full extent of his guilt; but he seems to have been unable to justify himself, and handed in a 'confession and humble submission,' throwing himself on the mercy of the Peers. He was condemned to pay a fine of 40,000 pounds, to be committed to the Tower during the pleasure of the king, declared incompetent to hold any office of state, and banished from court for ever. The sentence, however, was never carried out. The fine was remitted almost as soon as imposed, and he was imprisoned for only a few days. He survived his fall a few years, during this time occupying himself with his literary and scientific works, and vainly hoping for political employment. In 1597 he published his celebrated Essays, which immediately became very popular, were successively enlarged and extended, and translated into Latin, French, and Italian. The treatise on the Advancement of Learning appeared in 1605; The Wisdom of the Ancients in 1609 (in Latin); his great philosophical work,
e Novum Organum (in Latin), in 1620 ; and the De Augmentis Scientiarum, a much enlarged edition (in Latin) of the Advancement, in 1623. His New Atlantis was written about 1614-17; Life of Henry VII. about 1621. Various minor productions also proceeded from his pen. Numerous editions of his works have been published, by far the best being that of Messrs. Spedding, Ellis, & Heath (1858-74).
Francis Bacon was great as a moralist, a historian, a writer on politics, and a rhetorician; but it is as the father of the inductive method in science, as the powerful exponent of the principle that facts must be observed and collected before theorizing, that he occupies the grand position he holds among the world's great ones. His moral character, however, was not on a level with his intellectual, self-aggrandizement being the main aim of his life. Research Francis Bacon
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