СНАР.

V.

§18. The Decay of the Baron

age.

labouring class against its oppressors, it dwindled away. Some traces of it, indeed, are long to be found. Much dissatisfaction with the lives and teaching of the clergy lingered on till the dawn of the Reformation. The sharp statute which authorised the burning of heretics in the reign of Henry IV. found its martyrs for a time, and then fell asleep for lack of material, till a new attack upon the clergy appeared to awaken it afresh.

Whilst a new class was thus rising up to share in the the privileges of freemen, the victors of 1399 were reaping the natural consequences of their success. The revolution of selfish conservatism was followed by a scramble for power. Only with the greatest difficulty did Henry IV. succeed in holding his own against the great feudal houses. His son, Henry V., turned their energies and their love of plunder upon foreign soil. More unprincipled war there never was. It had not even the excuse which the war of Edward III. had, of the necessity of giving protection to the English trade with Flanders. When, after Henry's death, the English conquerors were driven step by step out of the territory which they had held for a time, they found themselves in much the same position as that in which their ancestors had been a century before. Cooped up within the limits of their island, they sighed for fresh fields to plunder, and those of their own countrymen were alone accessible. To restrain men in such a temper would have been difficult even for a strong king. Unhappily, the king on the throne was always weak in mind, and was often absolutely insane. The name of Henry VI. became a weapon in the armoury of men whose only object was to enrich themselves under legal forms. Men who were great and powerful already saw their opportunity of becoming more great and powerful still. Great landowners, who had crowds of armed retainers in their service, bribed and bullied juries till

the administration of the law became a farce, and on the
rare occasions when this course failed, they knew how to
vindicate their claims by maiming or assassinating their
opponents, or by laying siege to houses, the possession
of which they coveted. A desire for a strong govern-
ment to put an end to the anarchy arose, not merely in
the breast of the peasant and the labourer, but amongst
stout country-gentlemen who wished to keep the lands
which had descended to them from their ancestors, and
amongst tradesmen who wished to enjoy in peace the
profits of their industry. When, therefore, the baronage,
torn by its intestine divisions, broke out into civil war,
the wishes of all those who had no interest in the per-
petuation of confusion gradually turned to the Yorkist
party as affording a hope of better things. Edward IV.
had his faults, but at least he was not an idiot or a mad-
man. He was anxious to take advantage of the general
desire for order and government to strengthen his own.
position, and the diminution of the great houses by death
upon the field and on the scaffold rendered his task easier
than it would have been for anyone a few years before.
Only after the overthrow of Richard III. and the
assumption of the crown by Henry VII. did the greatness
of the change which had taken place fully appear.
nation needed peace, but that it might have it permanent-
ly it needed a firm government. It is delusive to trace
the exceeding strength of the Tudor monarchy merely to
the disappearance of the great houses. Undoubtedly the
Tudor monarchy would never have established itself if
the great houses had remained standing. But they fell, not
by the accident of civil warfare, but because they deserved
to fall; because they had been turbulent, aggressive, and
tyrannical; because they had misused the strength of
their position to oppress their inferiors in social rank with
forms of law and without forms of law. The monarchy in

The

CHAP.

V.

§ 19.

Causes of

the Rise of

the Tudor Monarchy.

СНАР.
V.

the hands of Henry VII. stepped into their place because it was able to realise the promise of the older monarchy, to dispense justice without fear or favour, to check the ascendancy of the rich over the poor, of the strong over the weak. History knows no violent breaches of continuity, no new monarchy established on the ruins of the old. The kingship of Henry VII. was but the kingship of Henry II. and Edward I. adapted to the needs of a different generation. But the very fact that it was so adapted modified its character profoundly. The dread of a return of the anarchy which had prevailed under the forms of constitutional order made men think lightly of the worth of constitutional order itself. The king as the active and executive factor of the constitution was magnified beyond measure. Parliament which had made itself to a great extent the instrument of the nobility was for a time discredited. From Edward IV. downwards, kings found that they could venture upon actions which their predecessors had not dared to commit. Illegal levies of money, illegal imprisonments, were winked at from fear lest the rule of the great houses should return. Nor was this change confined to England alone. In all the great states of the continent the path to equality before the law lay through absolutism. England reaped the benefit of her earlier progress in the restrictions upon absolutism which, in form at least, she retained at the time when her monarchy approached the nearest to absolutism. But even she could not escape from the operation of the political law which prevailed elsewhere.

CHAPTER VI.

THE TUDOR MONARCHY.

THE reign of Henry VII. gave to the English middle classes what they most needed, the protection of a firm government. By strict execution of the statute of liveries of Edward IV., the great noblemen were prohibited from giving to their followers the outward symbol of a military force, and Henry was strong enough in the general support to take care that armies were not levied at all excepting in his own name. As far as legislation was concerned, parliaments became mere instruments in his hands. The House of Lords had been thinned away by the recent massacres and executions, and the House of * Commons was filled with men who had neither the power nor the will to be other than his humble servants. Men might grumble at his exorbitant taxation, but the bare idea of seeing feudal anarchy again raising its head was too terrible to be thought of, and much could be endured by those who knew what a dire calamity a successful insurrection would bring forth. Those who were ready to endure much themselves, would not be very careful of the sufferings of others, and the lesson was soon learnt by the king that, in spite of all restraints of the law, the lives and properties of the higher classes were at h mercy. Juries would be ready to convict those whom he saw fit to bring to trial. Parliaments would be prepared to condone arbitrary aggressions upon

CHAP.

VI.

§ 2. The

Star

Chamber,

liberty and property. The middle classes were too much under the sway of a violent desire for peace, and were even yet too little trained in experience of constitutional politics, to feel instinctively that wrong done to one is done to all, and that the rich and powerful cannot be deprived of the safeguards of law without risk to the humble and the poor. It could not probably have been otherwise. But it was a happy thing that the forms of better days survived, for the very reason, perhaps, that the spirit which once filled them had so completely fallen asleep that they seemed entirely innocuous to the ruling powers. The day would come when a new life would enter into them, a life which would assuredly have found in any case. its own forms, but which flowed on gently and wthout disturbance because it had not to create new channels for itself.

Henry VII., indeed, did not leave the constitution quite as he found it. Lawyers tell us that the court of the Star Chamber was derived from the ancient jurisdiction of the Privy Council. But it was reinvigorated by Act of Parliament in the early part of the reign of the first Tudor king, and, for all practical purposes, it may be held to date from his time. Consisting, at first, of certain royal officers and one of the chief justices, and ultimately, of all privy councillors together with the two chief justices, it was a tribunal formed to take cognisance of all cases in which justice was not to be had from the ordinary courts. It could not take away life, and, till later times, it did not claim to punish by more than fine and imprisonment. The full exercise of the powers which had been given to it was a healing measure. Wherever a powerful landowner cajoled or bullied juries, wherever faction banded men together to oppress the innocent, the Star Chamber righted the balance. Hurried