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 Under the firm rule of the House of Tudor the kingly authority superseded the feudal powers of the barons, and the statute of alienation or of fines, originally enacted in the reign of Richard II., enabled them to sell their land, while another law of Henry VII.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. 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

son the forces of Protestantism triumphed, but the power of the crown was so great that the accession of a Catholic princess was sufficient to turn back the tide of the Reformation. England passed from Protestantism to Catholicism under Mary, and back under Elizabeth. This politic princess used the reforming movement to support her claim to the throne, yet held it within bounds, and organised a church which has ever since occupied a middle position between the old faith and the new. Elizabeth had sense enough to steer with the drift of events, which made her popular, but she possessed the love of rule, and kept her prerogative high. The great gathering of the north called the "Pilgrimage of Grace," in 1569 gave way under the mere prestige and terror of royalty without any fighting.

The queen treated the House of Commons with much haughtiness, resented any advice about her government, and raised money by illegal monopolies which, however, towards the close of her reign she was constrained to give up. Any opposition to the royal demands was done with servile protestations of loyal devotion and with real trembling. The crown had so many ways of crushing opponents, and they had so few of defence, that those who made themselves obnoxious only injured themselves. The people might applaud those who resisted an illegal tax or denounced a vexatious monopoly, but they could not protect them. The right to impose or refuse taxation was the only one the parliament really possessed, and this was often evaded by the crown selling the monopoly of particular articles to private traders, who charged high prices for bad wares. The foreign policy was beyond their reach.

THE SUBJECT MAKES THE KING GREAT

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When involved in a war they might indeed refuse subsidies; but they were constrained to defend the national honour and the national safety. It is difficult for the most powerful intellect to rise above the ideas of his age. The people of England had little reason to be grateful to their kings, who had extracted from them as much of their substance as they could, and bled them in many wars sought out for their own greed of power. But the church had for ages taught the people that it was the will of God that they should submit to those in the seat of power, and her lessons were re-echoed by the voices of self-interest. Thus the many were deeply imbued with the belief that their kings were born heirs to their obedience and had a right to exact sacrifices from them. They were pleased to raise a man to a high place and bow down before him. In their poverty they would make him rich; in their helplessness they would make him strong. In their ignorance they trusted their destinies to his guidance. They were proud of the greatness which weighed upon their own necks. In their abasement they were eager not only to surrender their liberty, but to force others to do the same. Thus, while they delighted to crawl, they hated to see any one walk upright. Nevertheless, during the reign of Elizabeth there was one of those mighty increases of mental power which bore along both the people and their rulers in its irresistible momentum. Causes were at work, some of them apparent, others beyond human ken, sapping the divine right of kings as well as of popes, and producing effects which in their turn became causes. It was impossible that the intellectual strength of a nation should grow as it did in the days

of the Tudor queen, without a heightened feeling of the dignity of man; and towards the end of her reign there was a spirit of resistance in the House of Commons which made her modify her measures, if it did not get her to abate the haughtiness of her language. The same process of exhaustion which had thinned the ranks of the higher nobility also affected the royal family of England. In default of male heirs, two females reigned one after the other; and on the death of Queen Elizabeth the line of English sovereigns became extinct. Self-interest might prompt the courtiers round the new king to profess the highest loyalty; but the English people could hardly forget that the new king was the descendant of thos Scottish princes who for three hundred years had sustained war on their northern frontier and been the allies of France. On the other hand, James might have counted on his Scottish subjects to support him on the English throne.

It was a misfortune for England that no arrangement was made on the accession of the Scottish prince so far to define and modify the royal prerogative as to satisfy those popular demands which Elizabeth had such difficulty in resisting, and to secure which the nation had to go through a bloody civil war and two revolutions. James wanted the faculty of dignified self-assertion. Both bodily and mentally there was an awkwardness about him. Though selfish and sensual, he was not cruel, nor does it appear that his love of peace proceeded from timidity alone. His ostentatious claims to absolute power were made in long speeches, not in hard words or deeds. Some of his sayings show much shrewdness, and he would