A Dream of England
Peter Milward, SJ
Copyright © 2013 Peter Milward
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2013-02-01
Preface
For me England isn’t so much a place as a name, an ideal, a dream. The name is attached to a little Western isle, set, as Shakespeare observes, in the silver sea. Or rather, if I may correct Shakespeare’s observation, it is attached not to the whole isle but only to half of it, the other half being divided between the neighbouring countries of Wales and Scotland. Even within that little half there are so many varieties of place and climate as to defy all attempts to reduce them to a simple unity.
The ideal is a shining vision which has to be seen, like the light of the sun, not in itself but in its various refractions. England, as Shelley says of life, may be compared to “a dome of many-coloured glass” that “stains the white radiance of eternity”. She – for I think of her as a lady – is one in Canterbury and another in York, one in her cities and another in her countryside, one in her Southern counties and another in the Midlands and East Anglia, and yet another in the wild lands North of the Humber. England is different in different places, and yet in them all and above them all she remains herself, as Shakespeare says of himself, ever one and the same.
So it is with the nature of Man. There is no such being as Man in general. There are only individual human beings, in whom human nature is variously realized and refracted. In each human being, not in abstraction from any one individual, we may learn in various ways what it is to be Man. This is the nature we all share in common, but which has no existence apart from each individual.
In order to speak of human nature, therefore, it is necessary to speak of individual men and women, to describe their particular experiences and impressions in detail, their joys and their sorrows, the incidents and the accidents of their daily lives. Of such things is the life of Man made up. As Goldsmith says, “These little things mean much to little Man.” On the other hand, an abstract treatise “Of Human Nature” which takes no account of individuals, such a treatise as was spawned in the age of the so-called “enlightenment”, can never be more than an amusing essay in logic, fitter for mathematicians than for students of humanity.
Similarly, in speaking of England, to do no more than to describe the country and its inhabitants in general terms, or to offer a broad survey of the island from Land’s End to Berwick-upon-Tweed, is a useless task. It’s like saying that a human being is a creature with a head, a body, two arms and two legs, that in his head he has a mouth, a nose, two eyes and two ears, with (or without) a covering of hair, and so on. But to convey a true understanding of England, to afford a glimpse of her ideal being, one must speak of particular places and of particular incidents that happened in those places, to be as detailed and as precise as possible, not in a comprehensive or “guide-book” manner but by speaking at random. Then the impression may well seem to be, again in the words of Shakespeare, “a weak and idle theme” and “no more yielding but a dream”. But again, as I say, such is human life, and such, too, is the mature conclusion of Shakespeare, ”We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
Finally, I have to explain that in the following pages I am deliberately speaking not of “Britain”, still less of the “U.K.”, but of “England”. When the Romans came to these shores some two thousand years ago, they found a people called “the Britons” and so with their customary logic they named the whole island “Britannia”. And so the island remained, till for some reason the Romans had to withdraw their legions, and then in the course of the fifth century AD different parts of the land were invaded by different tribes from what may roughly be called “Germany”. The dominant tribes were called “Angles” and “Saxons”, but while the counties in the South-West received from the Saxons such names as Essex, Middlesex, Sussex and Wessex, the country as a whole came to be called England from the Angles. Meanwhile, the Britons were driven Westwards into Wales and Cornwall, where they nursed an undying hatred of their English conquerors.
For this reason, from the fifth century onwards that part of the island from Wales Eastwards and from Scotland Southwards has been known as England and the inhabitants (up till recent years) have for the most part been Englishmen. Only, the political situation – as opposed to the real situation – changed when the Welsh Tudor Henry VII defeated the last Plantagenet Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and when the last Welsh Tudor Elizabeth I was succeeded on the English throne by the Scottish James I. Wales had long since been annexed to England by Edward I in the thirteenth century, but Scotland remained a separate kingdom till an Act of Union was passed in the early eighteenth century. Then it was that the name of “England” was formally exchanged for “Britain”, and a century later with a further Act of Union and the addition of Ireland the so-called “United Kingdom” came into being. Then it was that the Union Jack also came into being, combining the crosses of St. George of England, St. Andrew of Scotland and St. Patrick of Ireland – without the Dragon of Wales. In spite of all these “cosmetic” changes on the political surface of what used to be called “the British Isles”, the inhabitants still obstinately think of themselves as the English in England, the Welsh in Wales, the Scots in Scotland, and the Irish in Ireland – even while the Irish in the North prefer union (for reasons of their own) with the “United Kingdom” rather than with the independent Ireland to the South.
I have to apologize for going into all these bares bones of history, because we are in the present what we were in the past, and, as is truly said, “a people without history is a people without identity”. So if I speak of myself as English and my island home as England, it is because of things that happened to my ancestors long, long ago. Now they can’t be helped. As Shakespeare also says, “What’s done cannot be undone.” I may also add a quotation from the Latin poet Horace, speaking of the fateful Siege of Troy, “The madness of their rulers has to be endured by the people.” So to my mind it all began with the Battle of Bosworth, when a Welshman became ruler of England, and then the Welsh were replaced by the Scots, and then a Dutchman came along, till finally there came a line of German rulers. All these political changes have been suffered in silence by the poor English, as in the words of a poem by G.K. Chesterton, “We are the people of England that never have spoken yet.” So whatever the politicians and their diplomatic lackeys choose to call us, we stubbornly insist on regarding ourselves as “English” and calling our dear country “England”.
Gateway to England
“The Englishman’s home is his castle.” Indeed, I find something very homely about Canterbury. The houses here are mostly very homely and mostly very old, where they have escaped the bombing of Hitler and the more destructive postwar reconstruction. The people, too, have very homely manners, considering how many of them are elderly and retired, though surprisingly energetic for their age. Somehow I find that age and homeliness go together. The older the homes and their occupants, the homelier they are. And there are few cities in England older and homelier than Canterbury, going as she does all the way back to the ancient Romans, not to mention the Britons.
If Canterbury is homely, she also has the appearance of a castle. If she is a city of peace, this is because she has had good defences against war. As the Latin poet observes, “Si vis pacem, para bellum” – If you wish to live at peace, prepare for war. Today we forget the importance of defences, because today war is fought on such a super-human scale, though in such a sub-human manner. So today walled defences are insufficient. The defences have to be on a world-wide scale or they are of little efficacy against the armed might of a super-power like Nazi Germany. But in the Middle Ages, which may be seen reflected in the opening proverb, castles and city walls were