baronial houses became extinct in the Henry made no the history of the combined action of these causes, which made possible the emancipation of the monarchy at the accession of Edward IV., we must look for a full explanation of the almost entire suspension of parliamentary life which characterizes the politics of the sixteenth century, rather than to the incomplete and inaccurate statement which attributes such suspension to the assumptions that the older nobility had been to a great extent cut off in the Wars of the Roses, and that the commons had not yet grown sufficiently strong and selfreliant to act alone. The truth is that the decline of the baronage, which began in the days of the Edwards, progressed so rapidly under the Lancasters that, after the battle of Agincourt, the number of temporal peers touched its lowest point, - from that time to the accession of the Tudors they numonly two of bered but fifty-two. Only two of the great baronial houses— the great Beaufort and Tiptoft - became extinct for the want of heirs during the civil war, and the reason why only twenty-seven lay peers met Henry VII. in his first parliament is explained civil war; by the fact that he failed to summon twenty-five more upon whose fidelity he could not rely.1 The decay of the baronage, which had been gradually brought about by the wreck of feu-] check the dalism, the extinction of the greater families, and the breaking up of great estates, Henry showed no disposition to check or repair. His coronation was attended with only three creations, and the new nobility which grew up under him and his succesdependent sors was composed of new men, creatures of royal favor, who character of assumed the rôle rather of courtiers than of parliamentary effort to decline of the baronage; the new nobility; barons. Such of the older nobles as the Percies, the Nevilles, and the Howards were held in check by the advancement of men like Morton, Fox, Wolsey, Cromwell, Cecil, Bacon, and Walsingham. As Bacon himself has told us: "Henry VII. kept a strait hand on his nobility, and chose rather to advance clergymen and lawyers, which were more obsequious to him, but had less interest in the people," - a policy which was 1 See Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. ii. pp. 13-15; Moberly, The Early Tudors, p. 27. 2 "The aggregate number of the newly created peerages, as well as of those advanced in rank, is given as follows: under Henry VII., twenty; under Henry VIII., sixty-six; under Edward VI., twenty-two; under Mary, nine; and under Elizabeth, twenty nine. The Tudors restricted their creations, with scarcely an exception, to the old knightly families. Only once did the aggregate of the temporal peers under the Tudors reach the number of sixty." Gneist, Hist. of the Eng. Const., p. 473. 3 "Hist. of Henry VII.," Bacon's Works, vol. i. p. 383. a repetition lences; pursued both by Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. The policy of Henry VII. towards the parliament as a whole was simply a Henry's parliamenrepetition of that of Edward IV. Like Edward, Henry was tary policy willing to summon parliament only on rare and critical occa- of that of sions, when it was necessary to draw strength from its authority Edward IV.; or revenue from its bounty. Like Edward, Henry looked to parliament for a recognition of his title, for a grant of tonnage and poundage for life, and for bills of attainder from which he could enrich himself from the spoils of his enemies. Strength- his financial policy; ened by such a beginning, it seemed to be the prime object of his policy to render himself independent of parliament, by reducing to the smallest possible limit his expenditures, on the one hand, and by increasing his revenues, on the other, by the enforcement of all kinds of obsolete feudal forfeitures and amercements, and by a revival of that odious form of royal taxation known as benevolences.1 The exchequer was greatly benevo enriched at one time from the source last named through the enforcement of an argument called "Morton's fork," invented Morton's by the archbishop of that name, who maintained that those who lived handsomely should give liberally because their wealth was manifest, and that those who lived plainly should be even more liberal because it was certain that economy had made them opulent. More odious even than these forced revival of contributions were the fines and other obsolete feudal exac- feudal extions which the king, in imitation of Edward IV., mercilessly actions, enforced through two infamous agents, Empson and Dudley, and who practiced all kinds of oppressions and illegalities, and who robbed every class in order to enrich the king, and who robbed the king in order to enrich themselves. Such a financial policy, although it deeply stained Henry's memory, brought to parliament him the independence of parliament which he designed to se- only seven cure. During the twenty-four years of his rule he summoned times durparliament only seven times, and nearly all of these meetings reign; 1 In 1490 and in 1497, when general subsidies (one of a novel character) were levied upon the nation, serious insurrections occurred; the first in the north, and the last in Cornwall, which was suppressed only after great bloodshed. See Lingard, vol. iii. pp. 314, 324. In order to remove the irritation thus produced by the pressure of general taxation, Henry seems to have resorted, with the aid of "Morton's fork," to the fork; obsolete Empson Dudley; summoned ing the were called in the first half of the reign. During his last thirteen years, parliament was summoned only once.1 At his the king's death the king's hoarded treasure is said to have amounted to nearly two millions of pounds. hoard. Henry's purpose to remedies evils; his two great stat the utes, one to secure the subject under a king de 5. A careful review of the legislation of Henry VII. will legislation; hardly sustain the eulogy of Lord Bacon, who has pronounced him to be "the best lawgiver to this nation since Edward I." Henry's laws seemed to have been designed, not so much as Bacon says, "out of providence for the future, to make the estate of his people still more and more happy, after the manits leading ner of the legislators in ancient and heroical times," as from a desire to provide immediate remedies for the lawlessness provide immediate and disorder which remained as the natural legacy of the civil for pressing war. To restore peace, order, and confidence to the realm, by strengthening the royal authority, and by providing new expedients for the enforcement of existing laws, seems to have been the leading motive of Henry's legislation. To quiet the minds of such as might doubt the stability of his title, he enacted the statute for the protection of the subject who served a king de facto; to crush the expiring system of livery and maintenance, as well as the riots and disorders which disturbed facto; the the local administration of justice, he enacted the statute which strengthen so greatly invigorated the criminal jurisdiction of the council as exercised in the star chamber. With the same general design were passed the acts which provided for the punishment of vagrants, and of those who attempted to enrich themselves by the stealing of women of fortune.2 In this connecthe act in- tion may be noted the act (3 Hen. VII. c. 3) which gave authority of authority to justices of the peace to take bail of felons under justices of conditions which finally led to their being charged with the duty of making preliminary investigations in all criminal cases.8 The most notable act of the reign touching private right is Statute of the act of 4 Hen. VII. c. 24, known as the Statute of Fines, Fines; which Henry was at one time supposed to have enacted with the subtle design of completing the ruin of the aristocracy by enlarging their power to alienate their entailed estates. This misconception of motive, which other to the criminal jurisdiction of the council; creasing the the peace; 1 The last parliament called was that of 1504. 2 See Reeves' Hist. Eng. Law, vol. iv. pp. 181, 202. seems to have been borrowed 8 See Gneist, Hist. of the Eng. Const., p. 466; Stephen, Hist. of the Crim. Law of Eng., vol. i. pp. 236, 237. from Bacon by Hume, has now given way before the fact that the act in question was a mere transcript of another to the same effect passed in the reign of Richard III. The modern view is that the act last named was reënacted in Henry's reign not to give to the tenant in tail a greater power to alienate his estate, but by establishing a short term of prescription to put a check upon the large number of suits for the possession of land which sprang up after the civil war.1 navigation tion of Ed No reference to Henry's legislation, however brief, should Henry's omit the fact that, in the hope of developing English ship- act; ping, he enacted a navigation law,2 which provided that traders with Gascony should import their wine and wood only in English vessels manned by English seamen, when such could be obtained. To the legislation of Edward I. can be traced the protective policy bebeginnings of that system of national regulation designed for gins with the protection of native as opposed to foreign interests, which the legisla appears as a definitely organized scheme of public economy in ward I.; the time of Elizabeth. This protective system which was gradually developed in the interests of industry, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures was first extended to English shipping by the navigation act of Richard II., which provided first navithat "to increase the navy of England which is now greatly that of diminished, it is assented and accorded, that none of the king's Richard II.; liege people do from henceforth ship any merchandise in going out or coming within the realm of England, in any port, but only in ships of the king's liegance." 4 The navigation policy thus inaugurated by Richard, and neglected by the kings of the house of Lancaster, was not revived until the reign of Edward IV., when an act 6 was passed which seems to have expired at the end of three years. The next navigation act 1 See Reeves' Hist. Eng. Law, vol. iii. pp. 373, 374, and notes (Finlason ed.). Reeves' views are restated and approved by Hallam, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 11-13 and notes. 21 Hen. VII. c. 8; 4 Hen. VII. c. 10. See "Hist. of Henry VII.," Bacon's Works, vol. i. p. 336. It is a pleasure to be able to refer, in this connection, to the great work of Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. i. pp. 243246. 4 Rich. II. i. c. 3. This act was 5 modified some years later by 6 Rich. 5 Henry IV. failed to enforce the gation act was that passed in the first year of Henry VII. Although Henry may have been too parsimonious to lead in the work of discovery,' he was too wise not to see that a great change was at hand, a change destined soon to revolutionize the commerce of the world, and to lay the foundations for the great international trade of modern times. That he was infected with the spirit of maritime adventure, which was the leading feature of the age, can hardly be doubted, when we find him in 1496 issuing to the Genoese navigator, John Cabot, long a resident of the Cabots. Bristol,2 that famous patent,3 the oldest surviving document connecting the old land with the new, under which was made the first of those discoveries that became the basis of England's title to the soil of the New World. Henry's patents to The Eng sance; 6. Just as the long night of political reaction, which was lish Renais- coextensive with the supremacy of the York and Tudor monarchy, began to settle down like a blight upon the growth of the English constitution, the dawn of the Renaissance began to break upon the life of the English people. While Edward IV. and Henry VII. were fastening upon the island kingdom that system of absolutism which had begun to prevail throughout the continental nations, the main body of the people were beginning to be stirred by the spirit of that new and marvellous era of national awakening generally known as the English Renaissance, a term which must not be confined to the mere revival of learning, but so expanded as to embrace the whole process of mental and material development which brought to the English people its new conceptions of philosophy and religion, its new understanding of government and law, its reawakened interest in the arts and sciences, its new-born activity in commerce and manufacture, as well as that spirit of discovery and adventure that widened its destiny through conquest and colonization in another hemisphere. During the period in which Edward IV. was overawing the law courts and trampling upon the parliament, the "shining seed-points of light," 1 In 1488 Bartholomew Columbus resulted from their discoveries should came to Henry's court and sought in be brought to England. vain his patronage for his brother Christopher. See Nar. and Crit. Hist. (Winsor), vol. ii. p. 102; Peschel, II2. 2 See vol. i. p. 17 and note 4. In the patents granted to the Cabots it was provided that whatever commerce 3 In 1480 two ships set out from Bristol in quest of the island of Brazil. William of Worcester, Itinerary (Dallaway), 153. "Such projects seem to have met with much support from the merchants there." - Cunningham, vol. i. p. 421. |