Great increase

of the Crown.

Elizabeth, 1558.

WE have reached now the period of the Tudors. When Henry VII acceded to the throne, in 1485, but twenty-nine Lords were left as a remof the power nant of the old nobility; a continual humiliation of the weakened Baronage was a main object of his policy, which he had no difficulty in following out. The growth of the royal authority became with Henry VIII portentous, a sudden acceleration taking place in consequence of the extinction of still another power, which heretofore had done much to keep it in check. In our narrative, it has been made apparent that in the Lancastrian epoch and the years just preceding, the champions of freedom were in the main the knights-of-the-shire. Still earlier the Barons, in the time of Magna Charta and the reform of Simon de Montfort, by wresting from nascent despotism a portion of the nation's rights, improperly alienated, gave the popular leaders the vantage-ground without which they would have failed of opportunity. In a time yet earlier, it was the Church that had stood foremost in the contest for liberty, its policy during the early Middle Ages,

against the violence of William Rufus, the confused lawlessness of the reign of Stephen, the cunning of Henry I, constituting one long protest against the predominance of mere brute strength. It was due to Langton and the ecclesiastics mainly, indeed, that the Great Charter contained so many popular features, though the Barons then were coming into the foreground. In fact, until the period we have now reached, though less prominent, perhaps, in the later centuries than the earlier, the Church is to be found. at the right hand of every influence that tended to thwart oppression. It upheld the effort of the martyr of Evesham, whom it was almost ready to canonize; in the person of the humble priest, John Ball, it was at the side of Wat Tyler; in Wickliffe and his followers, who, however unorthodox, were, nevertheless, cowled and tonsured priests, it stimulated powerfully the impulses toward freedom which throbbed in the hearts of the people. As the Baronage had become impotent, so the Church was now to be stricken down.

Reformation.

Henry VIII divorced England from Rome, destroying, as he did so, the monastic system and appropriating one-third of the revenues of the Effect of the Church. He constructed a new nobility, composed largely of new men whom he enriched from the spoils of the Church, who naturally were most obsequious, disposed to defend to the last the order of things to which they owed place and pelf. He obtained a lex regia to make him supreme lawgiver; and though he was politic as to interfering with Parliament, he contrived to bring it about, that

1 Stubbs: Constitutional History, III, p. 592.

Parliament did little more than register his decrees. Church and State were now under one over-lord.1 Through the Reformation, the Crown had won a quite new and most independent position. In the domain of the Church, the Sovereign as Defender of the Faith, replacing the Pope, ruled as absolute head, with a hierarchy of ecclesiastics in subordination to him, bishops, canons, and priests. In secular matters, his authority, according to the constitution, was associated with that of the nation represented in the Parliament, which possessed the power of making the laws. The House of Lords, however, were mainly the King's creatures; the House of Commons, through abuses in the borough representation and the restriction of the franchise in the shires, had quite lost its old force. Here also was open to Henry a door to absolutism through which he was not slow to pass. He was astute as he was audacious, and his reign was marked by certain excellent features which caused it to be endured, which even made it popular.

Henry should be treated fairly by the modern world. He can hardly be cleared from the charge of being brutal, rapacious, and tyrannical. He broke the hearts and cut off the heads of noble men and lovable women who had served and esteemed him faithfully. In the matter of the dissolution of the monasteries, the spirit that animated, and the means that were employed, were worse than questionable. If the claim of the Anglican Church, that it was born in the days of St. Augustine, be granted, yet at its re-birth, under Henry VIII, it can scarcely be denied

1 Gneist is here for the most part followed: Geschichte und heutige Gestalt der Aemter in England, p. 180, etc.

Position and

Henry VIII.

that some unpleasant figures stood about the cradle. The redoubtable Spenserian giant, Kirkrapine, was a valiant defender of tender Anglicanism. What would have become of it under Bloody Mary, had it not been stoutly upheld by Henry's new nobles, living on lands and supported by rents sequestrated from the monasteries, lands and rents sure to revert to their former owners had Rome once recovered her lost ground?1 Again, could Henry have had his way, he would have made himself a complete despot. Froude, without doubt, has estimated him too highly. Still he was patriotic, in a cer- character of tain way well-meaning, most attractively courageous, and sometimes wise. Anticipating what is called in our day enlightened despotism,2 the royal authority prohibited what in times since has often become a crying evil, the depopulation of the land by over-large estates and the changing of arable into pasture; earnest care was shown for education and the welfare of the poor, for amusements and exercises in arms, for guilds and trades-unions. Less successful, probably, were Henry's efforts to regulate the rate of wages and the price of provisions, and his prohibition, in the interest of the poor, of inventions likely to displace hand-labor. His intentions, however, were here the best; and if he was in error, his were errors which the world has not yet outgrown. He had to a marked degree that characteristic of a great ruler, the power of choosing instruments, and he caused it to inure fully to the welfare of his realm. His officials, high and low, were skilful, and to each

1 Green: Short History, pp. 350, 351. Taswell-Langmead, p. 435. 2 Aufgeklärter Despotismus.

Good points

was assigned, with good discrimination, the work which he could do best. For all this, it is certain that a grateful echo came from the folk, and unfeigned admiration from clear-seeing contemporaries of a higher intelligence. A consequence of these traits of Henry's rule was a condition of internal quiet, comfort, and prosperity in city, borough, and shire. Bluff Harry, in spite of the enorof his reign. mities of which he was guilty, got very near the popular heart. His Parliament was not so much subservient, as disposed of its own will to acquiesce in what the King imposed. His procedure, arbitrary, but in great part well intended and often beneficent, had in it so much of good that the disposition grew strong among men to overlook the bad. It is to be noticed, as the special constitutional change of Henry's reign, that the House of Commons. acquired a preponderating influence over the House of Lords. As compared with the authority of the King, the authority of Parliament seemed nearly superseded. In a hundred years, the political pendulum had swung through its entire arc; for, in 1406, under Henry IV, with his doubtful title, the power of Parliament had seemed on the point of superseding that of the King. A dose of misrule was needed to set the nation right.

Misrule came soon after Henry's death, with his daughter Mary. A Catholic herself, she married the prince afterward Philip II, soon to be tion under the head and front of Catholic Europe. England, however, had turned its back definitely upon the ancient faith, and when Mary

Catholic reac

Mary.

1 S. R. Gardiner: History of England, I, p. 7.

2 See p. 81.