Presents three great movements that brought Europe out of the Middle Ages and into Modernity The Renaissance The Growth of the English Constitution and, especially, The Growth of the English Parliament and The Reformation. Focuses on the conflict between the principle of self-government and the principle of despotic government to determine which should rule and direct the lives of men. Volume 5 in the 7-volume Streams of History series, which presents a vivid picture of the growth of Western Civilization from the early source of the historic stream back in the Nile, the Tigro-Euphrates and the Indus valleys, and then its widening and deepening as it moves westward. The series highlights the contributions of each culture to the stream of history and shows how its contributions are caught up and carried on to future peoples and nations. The student is led to see how each grows out of that which precedes, and shadows forth what follows, and that the discovery of America, and its subsequen