The History of England

David Hume's six-volume history of England from the Roman invasion through the Glorious Revolution of 1688, published between 1754 and 1762. Hume wrote from a philosophically sceptical perspective, treating historical causation as a web of contingent circumstances rather than providential design, and offering famously controversial assessments of figures from King John to Charles I. The work was a bestseller in its own time and established the narrative style and critical method that Gibbon would refine.