proscribed, their adherents to be ejected from the corporations, and
their leaders to be brought to the scaffold. Resistance was in the same
way rendered hopeless by the standing army of James II., and the
patriots were compelled to stretch their hands for aid to William of
Orange. Even so, it might have gone hard with them if James's soldiers,
and above all Churchill, had been true to their paymaster. Navies are
not political; they do not overthrow constitutions; and in the time of
Charles I. it appears that the leading seamen were Protestant, inclined
to the side of the Parliament. Perhaps Protestantism had been rendered
fashionable in the navy by the naval wars with Spain.

A third consequence of insular position, especially in early times, is
isolation. An extreme case of isolation is presented by Egypt, which is
in fact a great island in the desert. The extraordinary fertility of the
valley of the Nile produced an early development, which was afterwards
arrested by its isolation, the isolation being probably intensified by
the jealous exclusiveness of a powerful priesthood which discouraged
maritime pursuits. The isolation of England, though comparatively
slight, has still been an important factor in her history. She underwent
less than the Continental provinces the influence of Roman Conquest.
Scotland and Ireland escaped it altogether, for the tide of invasion,
having flowed to the foot of the Grampians, soon ebbed to the line
between the Solway and the Tyne. Britain has no monuments of Roman power
and civilization like those which have been left in Gaul and Spain, and
of the British Christianity of the Roman period hardly a trace,
monumental or historical, remains. By the Saxon conquest England was
entirely severed for a time from the European system. The missionary of
ecclesiastical Rome recovered what the legionary had lost. Of the main
elements of English character political and general, five were brought
together when Ethelbert and Augustine met on the coast of Kent. The king