We now
turn to a nation which played but a minor role in the international
rivalries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Later, from 1689
to 1763, England was to engage in a tremendous colonial struggle with
France. But from 1560 to 1689 England for the most part held herself
aloof from the continental rivalries of Bourbons and Habsburgs, and
never fought in earnest except against Philip II of Spain, who
threatened England's economic and political independence, and against
the Dutch, who were England's commercial rivals. While the continental
states were engaged in dynastic quarrels, England was absorbed in a
conflict between rival principles of domestic government--between
constitutional parliamentary government and unlimited royal power. To
the triumph of the parliamentary principle in England we owe many of
our modern ideas and practices of constitutional government.
[Sidenote: Absolutism of the Tudors, 1485-1603]
Absolutism had reached its high-water mark in England long before the
power and prestige of the French monarchy had culminated in the person
of Louis XIV.
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