relief of the poor was to be collected on Sundays and festival days by the churchwardens and other parish officials, and the clergy were enjoined to stir up the congregation to give freely, but no means of compulsion was provided for. Also, sturdy beggars were to be set to work, though the law did not state how. This Act, while the principles were not yet worked out in detail, foreshadows the principles of the more famous laws of Elizabeth which remained in force down to the nineteenth century-the responsibility of the parish for the relief of those unable to work and for the employment of the able-bodied.

The Navy. Henry VII had fostered the navy, directly, to some extent, by building ships of war, and indirectly by developing the merchant marine, but it was Henry VIII who marked a real advance. Up to his reign there had been only a few ships owned by the Sovereign, which in time of peace were either used for police purposes or let out to merchants. At his death there was a roval fleet of 71 vessels; moreover he organized the navy into a standing force and placed it under a separate Government Department. A portion of the spoils of the monasteries was devoted to shipbuilding and coast defense; the southeastern shore was studded with castles provided with permanent garrisons, reënforced by local levies in time of need; the King did much, too, for making rivers navigable, and harbors safer and more accessible; he founded dockyards on the Thames, and organized the pilots into the corporation of Trinity House. Although exploration was still largely a monopoly of the Spanish and Portuguese, a few Western voyages were undertaken. Trade to the Levant flourished lustily, and tall ships carried English cloths and hides to the ports of the Mediterranean and brought back the wines, oils, carpets, and spices of the East to English markets.

Learning and Education. - Scholars of Henry's day were turning their backs on the old learning and pursuing the new, they were devising more rational systems of education to replace the worn-out medieval methods, and the King encouraged them by his enlightened zeal, by his studious pursuits, and by the training of his children. Colet's foundation, St. Paul's, was a model of what a boys' school should be; Wolsey's school at Ipswich perished with him, but before the close of the reign some fifty others were founded, including five attached to Henry's new bishoprics. Yet it was in the theory of education that the real strides of progress were taken. Erasmus left England for the last time in 1514, but his later writings must have penetrated and influenced the circle in which he had lived and worked,

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particularly his First Liberal Education for Boys (1529) which, with its sage precepts and recommendations, marks a shining contrast to the prevailing mechanical methods in which flogging was employed as the chief incentive. Best known among the men of recognized capacity selected as tutors for the royal children was Roger Ascham. His famous treatise The Scholemaster was not printed till 1570, but already, in 1545, he was putting in practice the broad and liberal views therein advocated. Although this book, on account of its learning, kindly humor, appreciation of boy nature, and rational views has deservedly become an English classic, its methods involved too much pains and patience on the part of the teacher to make it acceptable at the time.

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Nevertheless, while Henry's reign marks an epoch in the theory of education, and while the King deserves much credit for his encouragement of education and for the example which he himself set, he contributed little material aid in the way of money and endowment, especially in view of what he took from the monastic institutions. Their schools and those of the chantry priests were inadequate and out of date, but their destruction was serious when Henry devoted a major part of their resources to rewarding his greedy supporters instead of establishing new schools. At Oxford and Cambridge, after scholasticism and its teachers had been expelled, provision was made for regular lectures on the ancient languages and the Scriptures, while, in 1540, a few Regius professorships were endowed, yet the total expenditure was small and Henry founded only one new college. Altogether, in education it was a time of great promise but scanty achievement.

Literature. So it was in literature. Few notable works were produced, but the reign marks the transition from a bygone period to the wonderful Elizabethan Age. Breaking away from the influence of the French medieval romance, the men of Henry's day began to study the classics, both directly, and indirectly through the Renascence writers, chiefly those of Italy. Much of the writing of the period can be passed by with a mere allusion. The disordered social conditions and the break from Rome produced a mass of controversial pamphlets which, valuable as they are to the historian, hardly rank as literature. Latimer's sermons are vivid and eloquent, but he was a preacher rather than an author. Cranmer was a master of the art of expression; but his greatest achievement, the English Book of Common Prayer, was the work of the next reign. Four men only

A chantry was a place where a priest was appointed to sing masses for the souls of pious contributors. Often he acted as schoolmaster in addition.

stand above their contemporaries, and herald the coming ageRoger Ascham, who did his earliest writing in Henry's reign, Sir Thomas More, the Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt. More's most notable production was his Utopia, one of those rare books which, primarily written as a protest against existing abuses, has survived as a classic. An Elizabethan critic refers quaintly to Surrey and Wyatt as" two courtly makers, who having traveled into Italy and there tasted the sweet and stately measures of Italian poesy, greatly polished our rude and homely manner." It is unlikely that Surrey ever went to Italy, but Wyatt did. The two introduced the sonnet into English speech, and their joint production, Songs and Sonates, was published in 1557. Moreover, Surrey in his translation of two books of the Eneid marked an epoch by employing blank verse for the first time in English. So the Henrician era, if the writers were few and their product inconsiderable, was significant in literary development.

The King and the Age. - The age, like many another, has its grim and unlovely and its gracious heroic sides. Henry and his officials were self-seeking, ruthless, regardless of human life and suffering. The merchants, the wool growers, and the cloth makers, intent on gain, were content to let the King have his will and joined in the oppression of the lesser folk. Callousness to pain and lack of pity were all too general in those times; every class flocked to a cockfight, to a bear baiting, or to witness a martyr burning at the stake with equal alacrity. On the other hand, there were strong earnest men and women who were content to suffer rather than to sacrifice their faith, were it Protestant or Roman Catholic. There were those who had prophetic visions of a new era in literature, in education, in religion, in industry, and did their part in pulling down the old medieval edifice. There was much hardship and misery while the new structure was a-building; but there was sound and vigorous health in the workers who were striving for better things. In the midst of this complex age, Henry VIII stands out as the great commanding figure, embodying its most striking tendencies, good and bad.

FOR ADDITIONAL READING

Constitutional. Taylor; Hallam; and Taswell-Langmead. A. F. Pollard, Factors in Modern History (1907) on the "New Monarchy," the "Reformation" and the "Composition of Parliament." Stubbs, Lectures. General Conditions. Traill, and the other works cited in chs. V, XIII, etc.; Froude, History of England, I, ch. I; Innes, ch. XI. Thomas More,

Utopia (first published in Latin, 1516, later translated and often reprinted. R. H. Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (1912). E. P. Cheney, Social Changes in England in the Sixteenth Century (1895). D. Hannay, A Short History of the English Navy (1898); H. Oppenheim, A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy (1897); W. L. Clowes, The Royal Navy (vol. 1, 1897). J. W. Fortescue, History of the British Army (vols. I-VII, 1899-1912), the standard work on the subject.

Scotland and Ireland. P. H. Brown, Scotland, I, II; A. G. Richey, Short History of the Irish People (1887); R. Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors (1885), I; J. E. Morris, Great Britain and Ireland, 1485-1910 (1914), besides Joyce and Turner.

CHAPTER XXII

THE PROTESTANT EXTREMISTS IN POWER. EDWARD VI

(1547-1553)

The Situation at Henry's Death. Henry left as his successor a child not yet ten years old when the situation demanded a strong man of ripe wisdom and tried capacity. "Abroad Paul III was scheming to recover the schismatic realm; the Emperor was slowly crushing England's national allies in Germany; France was watching her opportunity . . .; and England herself was committed to hazardous designs on Scotland. At home there was religious revolution half accomplished and a social revolution in ferment; evicted tenants and ejected monks infested the land, centers of disorder and raw material for revolt; the treasury was empty, the kingdom in debt, the coinage debased. In place of the old nobility of blood stood a new peerage raised on the ruins and debauched by the spoils of the Church, and created to be docile tools in the work of revolution."

Before

Hertford Becomes Lord Protector and Duke of Somerset. his death, Henry had named sixteen executors as a Council of Regency during Edward's minority. This body was composed mainly of men of much ambition and little scruple, and under the influence of Hertford, whom they chose Governor and Protector of the Realm, they gave full rein to the policy of reform which the conservative Henry had held in check. At the same time, they did not neglect their own interests, one of their first acts being to secure for themselves a number of new peerages. Hertford the Protector, who became Duke of Somerset, was already known as a dashing and successful general. While greedy of power, he meant to serve his country well; in addition to carrying the Protestant Revolution to its extreme limits, he strove to unite England and Scotland, and labored to alleviate the wretchedness of the poor. But he was a dreamer rather than a practical ruler of men. He was unable to comprehend that the consent of the Scots was essential to any real union, and, by attempting to carry it at the point of the sword, he inflamed their already bitter opposition. seeking to befriend the poor he excited hopes which he was unable to

In