LIFE OF SIR HENRY VANE

CHAPTER I

The growth of Freedom in England. Rise of the Towns. Decay of the Nobility. Great power of the Crown under the Tudors. James. Charles I. His Character. He dissolves his First Parliament. First attempts at Arbitrary Rule. State of the English Navy. The Expedition to Cadiz. Charles's Second Parliament. Impeachment of Buckingham. Third Parliament. Petition of Rights. Murder of Buckingham. Charles's inglorious Foreign Policy. Second session of Third Parliament. The King dissolves it, and governs without a Parliament.

It would be too long to trace the slow growth of freedom in England after the Norman Conquest,how the barons helped the people to loosen the yoke of the kings, and how the kings helped them to get rid of the feudal powers of the barons. Let us but take note that the large towns in the hard times succeeding the Conquest gave a refuge to the oppressed villeins, and, continually growing in population, freed themselves from the authority of the barons, till at last, governed by their own laws and the laws of the Empire, they gained for England those free institutions of which she is so justly proud, and which she has communicated to Scotland and Ireland, and taught to the whole of Europe. It was the habit of self-government gained within

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the walls of these towns which enabled the country. to escape both from aristocratic and regal oppression. From the earliest times we trace this broad distinction between the town and the country. The towns are free from or struggling against, the country is subjected to, the tyranny of great landed proprietors. It is perfectly true that the rise of a free peasantry and the bold and manly spirit of the yeomanry were of much avail in the battle for freedom: still, without the towns the struggle would have been carried on and ended in a different manner.

As the baron expected his serfs and tenants to assist him in battle, he was naturally anxious that they should be well fed, robust, well armed, and attached to his person; and though the English peasantry undoubtedly suffered cruel wrongs from their arrogant and haughty masters, and were more than once goaded into rebellion, it is clear that the powers of the feudal lords were not often pushed to their extreme length, and that they let slip privileges which the more commercial tyranny of modern landlords would have vigilantly insisted upon. There is no doubt that a very large portion of the English peasantry passed from villeinage, in which condition they were incapable of holding any property (or at least could be deprived of it at the pleasure of their lord), and that they so passed without any express manumission or decree of liberation. A great number of these serfs had become tenants or free labourers before the middle of the fourteenth century, and at the close of the sixteenth century there were scarcely any left in England.

Mr Rogers questions the correctness of the in

EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS

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ference of Hallam, who was disposed to believe that the gradual emancipation of the villeins was due to the scorn which the nobility might have felt in insisting upon all the paltry cesses due by their dependents. "There is certainly," he remarks, "no warranty for such a view. A very cursory examination into such accounts as have contributed the material for these pages is conclusive to the contrary, and shows that no source of income, however small, was neglected or unappropriated by the feudal superior." But though the registers and accounts which he has consulted of course record the rights to petty taxes on which the feudal lords insisted, they do not explain how those rights were through time allowed to slip, and there is the undeniable fact that they were. allowed to slip. Mr Rogers traces the liberation of the villeins and the growth and prosperity of a free tenantry to such great economical causes as the black death, which created a keen demand for free labour, and rendered the villeins ready to flee away and difficult to be held to their lands under the old hard conditions. This rendered the cultivation of estates by bailiffs difficult and unremunerative, and made it the interest of the feudal lords to be indulgent to the cultivators. The feudal lands were at the same time gradually alienated in small parcels, and passed into the hands of small proprietors. The towns still kept increasing in importance. The influence of the citizens of London, though perhaps not so great as Froissart represents, was no doubt felt in a marked manner in the dethronement of

1 History of Agriculture and Prices in England, by James E. T. Rogers, London, 1866, vol. i., p. 64.

Richard II., and liberty gained ground under the first two princes of the House of Lancaster. Towards the close of the feeble reign of Henry VI. great efforts were made to control the votes of the yeomanry, for the authority of parliament, so often called to judge on highly important matters, was getting stronger. It has been often pointed out that there was a great slaughter of the Norman barons during the Wars of the Roses. This assisted a natural process, for it has been observed since the dawn of history that families reared in luxury and having all the means of self-indulgence, decay, diminish in number, and pass away. The English nobility were thus continually getting exhausted. Under the firm rule of the House of Tudor the kingly authority superseded the feudal powers of the barons, and the statute of alienation or of fines, originally enacted in the reign of Richard II., enabled them to sell their land, while another law of Henry VII. caused their numerous retainers to be dispersed. Instead of taking their revenue in kind, and spending the best part of it in feeding their retainers and in indiscriminate hospitality, they began to take their rents in money, which they spent upon themselves, dealing principally with merchants and artificers, who were in no way dependent upon the goodwill of one however wealthy.

Thus, while the power of the nobility decayed, that of the crown increased. The same process took place all over Europe from the need of a central authority, which a more complex civilisation both required and facilitated.

In poring through these centuries of tyranny and

TYRANNY OF HENRY VIII

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misrule it is hardly a consolation to discern the slow dawning of a better light. How many generations came and went with the sense of wrong and oppression or with outbursts of futile rage recoiling upon themselves!

Under the yoke of Henry VIII. the spirit of freedom seemed extinct as a practical force. That monarch had no difficulty in making the old safeguards of liberty the instruments of a tyranny and misrule as coarse as it was cruel. He did such violence to the possessions, the consciences, and the religious convictions of his subjects as no contemporary monarch could have dared to do; England in his reign had less freedom than any of the great kingdoms of Europe. "Ho! man, will they not suffer my bill to pass ?" said the obese tyrant, setting his hand on the head of an influential member of the Lower House. "Get my bill passed, or else by to-morrow this head of yours will be off;" and so a subsidy was granted, larger than ever had been levied in England before. Obedient judges and juries sent the best men of England to the scaffold. Insurrections were raised but to dwindle away without crossing swords with the troops sent against them. He plucked down the pope, the idol of a thousand years, and put his own bloated image in his place.

Henry let loose and held back at his will the rising Reformation, and rode rough-shod over the Catholics and Reformers alike. The peers, who had often combined to check the powers of the Plantagenets, were eager for the notice of their dread sovereign, and scrambled to share in the spoils of the monasteries and religious houses. During the short reign of his