on his head, he cried, "I will die King of England," and deserted and surrounded by his enemies, he struggled shouting "treason! treason!" until he fell pierced by deadly wounds, while the victorious troops of the Tudor leader hailed him as Henry VII.

Reasons for the Failure of the Lancastrian and Yorkist Dynasties. Richard's usurpation merely hastened a crisis that seemed inevitable. The situation under Henry VI had proved that England was not ready for the liberties fostered by his father and grandfather. On the other hand, the rule of Edward and Richard had shown that the country had outgrown the age when it would submit to violence and despotism. The first two Lancastrian Henrys had done much for England; they had nurtured parliamentary government, and for a time at least revived English prestige abroad. But wars, famine, pestilence, and chiefest of all, want of governance, administrative feebleness, destroyed the last of the line. The Crown and the treasury were constantly in need of money; individual life and property were never secure; robbery, riot, and factional strife kept the country in continual turmoil. The remedies sought- more power to Parliament, remodeling the Council, and reforming statutes-proved of no avail. A strong hand was necessary; that was why Henry VI was set aside, otherwise his adversaries would never have established their title, nearer in descent though they were. The Yorkists' rule, though stronger, failed. to remedy the evils, to secure peace, or to inspire national confidence. The perversion of justice, robbery, violence, and factional struggles were still rife. A new man and a new policy were needed. As Henry VII united the dynastic claims of the two Houses, so he combined their policies. Observing the forms of constitutional liberty accepted by the Lancastrians, he ruled with a strong hand like the Yorkists. What the country wanted most was peace and prosperity under rulers who could keep order. The line of Henry VII gave them that. It erected a new absolutism, but an absolutism based on popularity. This new absolutism prevailed until the country had recovered from exhaustion, emancipated itself from the bonds of the Middle Ages, and was prepared to make use of the liberty which it had at an earlier time prematurely acquired. It has been said that the result of the struggle between Lancaster and York was to arrest the progress of English freedom for more than a century. At its beginning, Parliament had established freedom from arbitrary taxation, legislation, and imprisonment, and the responsibility of even the highest servants of the Crown to itself and the law. From the time of Edward IV parliamentary life was checked, suspended, or turned into a mere form. The legislative powers were usurped by the royal Council, parliamentary taxation gave

way to forced loans and benevolences, personal liberty was encroached on by a searching spy system and arbitrary imprisonment, justice was degraded by bills of attainder, by the extension of the powers of the Council, by the subservience of judges and the coercion of juries. It required a revolution in the seventeenth century to recover from the Crown what had been recognized and observed in the early part of the fifteenth.

FOR ADDITIONAL READING

Ramsay; Vickers; Oman; and Stubbs all deal in more or less detail with the period covered by this chapter. The Paston Letters, 1422–1509 (6 vols., 1904) throw a flood of light on the public life of the fifteenth century, and the introduction by the editor, James Gairdner, is a valuable commentary. C. R. Markham in "Richard III: A Doubtful Verdict Reviewed," English Historical Review, VI, 250-283, 806-813, took the ground that Henry VII, rather than Richard III, was the murderer of the sons of Edward IV; but his contention was effectually answered by James Gairdner, “Did Henry VII Murder the Princes?" English Historical Review, VI, 444-464, 813-815. Gairdner's Life and Reign of Richard III (1898) is the best account of that reign.

Selections from the sources, Adams and Stephens, nos. 129-133.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BEGINNING OF THE TUDOR ABSOLUTISM. HENRY VII (1485-1509)

The New Absolutism. The victory of Henry Tudor brought England peace and a strong settled government which endured for over a century, while the growth of parliamentary power was checked. Revival of absolutism was due to two causes to the personal character of the Tudor sovereigns, and to the situation of the country.

The three notable rulers of this line, Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Abisulat

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Elizabeth, were alike in many ways; possessed of unbounded courage, physical and moral, they were also keen politicians in discerning the needs and temper of the people. Usually able to get things done as they wished, when they saw that a measure was going to be resisted ter they drew back, but their wishes and those of their subjects were in most respects the same. So they were absolute, not because they had a standing army, or any other of the common props of despotism, but because they were popular, they were needed. Henry VII, founder of the line, though extortionate, was frugal and politic. He fostered trade and industry; he maintained peace abroad and order at home, and kept the country out of debt. Consequently he left a strong central government, a large treasure, and a people attached. to the Crown. However, the revival of monarchial power was not due solely to the personal qualities of the Tudors. Much was due to conditions which had affected seriously the three political classes of the realm, the Nobles, the Clergy, and the Commons. The Nobles were no longer in a position seriously to menace the Crown. Since the introduction of the longbow, and more particularly of gunpowder, their armor had ceased to be invulnerable, while their castles were not impregnable against cannon. Moreover, the strain of the Hundred Years' War and the Wars of the Roses had reduced their numbers and wealth, while, at the same time, they had discredited themselves by their turbulence, extravagance, and self-seeking. The Church, 'It is no longer believed that the bulk of the nobility were killed off in the Wars of the Roses.

too, was losing the assured position it had once held. It had indeed survived the attacks of Wiclif and the Lollards; but its influence had been threatened, and covetous eyes had been more than once cast on its vast wealth, and although it still retained a strong hold on the lesser folk, they counted for little, and it had to look to the Monarchy for support. The Commons, the middle classes in town and country, busy in accumulating material resources, wanted peace and protection rather than liberty. As the Nobility and the Church were unable, so the Commons were unwilling to oppose the new Tudor absolutism in which they saw a friend and protector.

Henry's Problems. Henry VII, therefore, found himself in a situation most favorable to the reëstablishment of the royal power on a secure basis. He was confronted by many problems and he dealt with them prudently and skillfully: he had to establish his title, to dispose of rival claimants, to suppress disorder, to come to terms with Scotland, to settle conditions in Ireland, and to secure England's position abroad. Each of these problems must be considered in turn.

Henry's Means of Securing His Title. Henry's first need was to secure his title. If he based his claim solely on right of conquest, he might have to yield to any one strong enough to drive him out; furthermore, even though he was the nearest male representative of the Lancastrians, the legitimacy of title of his line of descent could be contested on various grounds. So, quite wisely, he secured from Parliament, in 1485, an Act vesting the royal inheritance in him and his heirs without stating any reasons. This done, he married, in 1486, Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward IV, thus uniting the claims of the two rival Houses. His next step was to secure from the Pope, in the same year, a bull recognizing his title. Finally, he made Parliament pass an Act, in 1495, that it was no treason to obey a de facto king.

Royal Pretenders. Lambert Simnel (1487); Perkin Warbeck (1492-1499). There were, however, male representatives of the Yorkist line still living, and many doubted whether the young sons of Edward IV were actually dead, and naturally the enemies of Henry VII were glad to make use of such opportunities to rise against him. In 1487 they put forward one Lambert Simnel, son of an Oxford organ maker, as the Earl of Warwick, son of the Duke of Clarence, although the real Earl 2 was a prisoner in the Tower. Crowned in

1 In Shakespeare's King John, produced in the reign of Elizabeth, Magna Carta is not even mentioned.

2 He was subsequently drawn into a plot, which furnished a pretext for putting him to death.

Ireland, where the sentiment was strongly Yorkist, Simnel invaded England, at the head of a body of supporters which included some of the English nobility and a force of German mercenaries sent over by Margaret of Burgundy. However, the invaders were received with scant favor, and were easily routed by Henry's troops. The Yorkist nobles were mostly killed or disappeared, and the mock king was made a turnspit in the royal kitchen, and later a royal falconer. Another pretender bothered King Henry for nearly eight years. This was Perkin Warbeck, son of a Flemish boatman, put forward as Richard, Duke of York. Receiving support in Ireland, Flanders, and Scotland, he finally landed, August, 1497, in southwest England, after two previous unsuccessful attempts at invasion. The King's army, however, was too much for him, and giving himself up, he was finally hanged, November, 1499.

Henry's Exactions. Henry VII turned most of the plots and risings against him to his own advantage. Refraining so far as possible from shedding blood, he contented himself with the safer and more profitable method of levying fines on those implicated. Another of his many devices to fill his coffers is known as " Morton's Fork," because its invention was attributed to his Chancellor, Thomas Morton. Persons who lived in great magnificence were forced to yield large sums on the ground of their manifest wealth, while those who lived plainly were subjected to equal burdens on the ground of their supposed savings. The royal extortion increased as the years went on. The Court of Star Chamber (1487). — Neither the Lancastrians nor the Yorkists had been able to suppress disorder, and statutes of "livery and maintenance "1 had been directed in vain against lawless nobles and their retainers. In 1487 Henry VII devised a new expedient. Selecting certain great officers of State from the Privy Council, together with two judges, he gave them a special jurisdiction, not only over livery and maintenance, but over misconduct. of sheriffs, over riots and unlawful assemblies. They constituted a court, known as the Star Chamber probably from the room where the meetings were held, which, since it sat in London and had very summary jurisdiction, was able to act more effectively than any of the existing tribunals.2

Poynings's Law (1494). - Ireland was a serious problem. The only place where the English possessed a shadow of authority was

See above, p. 142.

Later, more and more members were added till it came to be a judicial session of the whole Privy Council plus two judges. Subsequently used as an engine of oppression, political and ecclesiastical, it was suppressed in 1641.