CHAP.

V.

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 government 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 perpetuation 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 madman. 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. The the Tudor nation needed peace, but that it might have it permanently 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

$19.

the Rise of

Causes of

Monarchy.

CHAP.
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 con-
tinuity, 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
was for a time discredited.
wards, 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 restric-
tions 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.

instrument of the nobility From Edward IV. down

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 his 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

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

off to Westminster, the offender found himself in the presence of judges whom no bribery would influence, no threats divert from their course. The time might come when the king would separate himself from the national feeling, and when such a court might convert itself into an instrument of oppression. For the present the Star Chamber was the weapon with which the oppressed armed the king, that he might strike the oppressors down.

The strength which a government acquires by being armed against anarchy is short-lived. Its very success brings such strength to an end. Not only are the violent measures to which it resorts no longer needed when it has become master of the enemies of peaceful progress, but it becomes itself deteriorated in the process. It comes to look upon coercion not as a necessary means of escape from extreme peril, but as a permanent mode of exercising power. The reign of Henry

VII. did not come to an end before he had roused indignation by the extortionate injustice which has ever since been connected with the names of his ministers, Empson and Dudley. Always alive to the importance of a well-filled exchequer to a prince who wishes to be master of his subjects, he had forgotten that the goodwill of his subjects was even better than their money. He could comprehend the strength which his eyes could see and his hands could handle. Into the unseen his vision did not penetrate. In this he was but the representative of his age. The ideals of the past were gone ; the science of the medieval ages had become a laughingstock. The medieval saints were all dead, and had left no successors. The medieval church had become either a sink of corruption, or at the best, a house of idleness, Anyone who would devote himself for its sake was a rare exception in the midst of a careless and a mocking