HALLAM ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL EFFECTS OF THE REIGN [1509 A.D.] It has been usual to speak of this reign as if it formed a great epoch in our constitution; the king having by his politic measures broken the power of the barons who had hitherto withstood the prerogative, while the commons had not yet risen from the humble station which they were supposed to have occupied. I doubt, however, whether the change was quite so precisely referable to the time of Henry VII, and whether his policy has not been somewhat overrated. In certain respects his reign is undoubtedly an era in our history. It began in revolution and a change in the line of descent. It nearly coincides, which is more material, with the commencement of what is termed modern history, as distinguished from the middle ages, and with the memorable events that have led us to make that leading distinction, especially the consolidation of the great European monarchies, among which England took a conspicuous station. But it is not evident that Henry VII carried the authority of the crown much beyond the point at which Edward IV had left it. The strength of the nobility had been grievously impaired by the bloodshed of the civil wars, and the attainders that followed them. From this cause, or from the general intimidation, we find that no laws favourable to public liberty, or remedial with respect to the aggressions of power, were enacted, or (so far as appears) even proposed in parliament, during the reign of Edward IV; the first, since that of John, to which such a remark can be applied. The commons, who had not always been so humble and abject as smatterers in history are apt to fancy, were by this time much degenerated from the spirit they had displayed under Edward III and Richard II. Thus the founder of the line of Tudor came, not certainly to an absolute, but a vigorous prerogative, which his cautious, dissembling temper and close attention to business were well calculated to extend. The laws of Henry VII have been highly praised by Lord Bacong as "deep and not vulgar, not made upon the spur of a particular occasion for the present, but out of providence for the future, to make the estate of his people still more and more happy, after the manner of the legislators in ancient and heroical times." But when we consider how very few kings or statesmen have displayed this prospective wisdom and benevolence in legislation, we may hesitate a little to bestow so rare a praise upon Henry. Like the laws of all other times, his statutes seem to have had no further aim than to remove some immediate mischief, or to promote some particular end. One, however, has been much celebrated as an instance of his sagacious policy and as the principal cause of exalting the royal authority upon the ruins of the aristocracy-the statute of Fines (as one passed in the fourth year of his reign is commonly called), which is supposed to have given the power of alienating entailed lands. But both the intention and effect of this seem not to have been justly apprehended. In the first place, it is remarkable that the statute of Henry VII is merely a transcript, with very little variation, from one of Richard III, which is actually printed in most editions. It was re-enacted, as we must presume, in order to obviate any doubt, however ill grounded, which might hang upon the validity of Richard's laws. Thus vanish at once into air the deep policy of Henry VII and his insidious schemes of leading on a prodigal aristocracy to its ruin. It is surely strange that those who have extolled this sagacious monarch for breaking the fetters of landed property (though many of them [1509 A.D.] were lawyers) should never have observed that whatever credit might be due for the innovation should redound to the honour of the unfortunate usurper. But Richard, in truth, had no leisure for such long-sighted projects of strengthening a throne for his posterity which he could not preserve for himself. His law, and that of his successor, had a different object in view. The real intention of these statutes of Richard and Henry was not to give the tenant in tail a greater power over his estate (for it is by no means clear that the words enable him to bar his issue by levying a fine; and when a decision to that effect took place long afterwards, it was with such difference of opinion that it was thought necessary to confirm the interpretation by a new act of parliament); but rather, by establishing a short term of prescription, to put a check on the suits for recovery of lands, which, after times of so much violence and disturbance, were naturally springing up in the courts. It is the usual policy of governments to favour possession; and on this principle the statute enacts that a fine levied with proclamations in a public court of justice shall after five years, except in particular circumstances, be a bar to all claims upon lands. This was its main scope; the liberty of alienation was neither necessary, nor probably intended to be given. The two first of the Tudors rarely experienced opposition but when they endeavoured to levy money. Taxation, in the eyes of their subjects, was so far from being no tyranny, that it seemed the only species worth a complaint. Henry VII obtained from his first parliament a grant of tonnage and poundage during life, according to several precedents of former reigns. But when general subsidies were granted, the same people, who would have seen an innocent man led to prison or the scaffold with little attention, twice broke out into dangerous rebellions; and as these, however arising from such immediate discontent, were yet a good deal connected with the opinion of Henry's usurpation and the claims of a pretender, it was a necessary policy to avoid too frequent imposition of burdens upon the poorer classes of the community. He had recourse accordingly to the system of benevolences, or contributions apparently voluntary, though in fact extorted from his richer subjects. These, having become an intolerable grievance under Edward IV, were abolished in the only parliament of Richard III with strong expressions of indignation. But in the seventh year of Henry's reign, when, after having with timid and parsimonious hesitation suffered the marriage of Anne of Brittany with Charles VIII, he was compelled by the national spirit to make a demonstration of war, he ventured to try this unfair and unconstitutional method of obtaining aid; which received afterwards too much of a parliamentary sanction by an act enforcing the payment of arrears of money which private men had thus been prevailed upon to promise. Archbishop Morton is famous for the dilemma which he proposed to merchants and others whom he solicited to contribute. He told those who lived handsomely that their opulence was manifest by their rate of expenditure. Those, again, whose course of living was less sumptuous, must have grown rich by their economy. Either class could well afford assistance to their Sovereign. This piece of logic, unanswerable in the mouth of a privy councillor, acquired the name of Morton's fork. Henry doubtless reaped great profit from these indefinite exactions, miscalled benevolences. But, insatiate of accumulating treasure, he discovered other methods of extortion, still more odious, and possibly more lucrative. Many statutes had been enacted in preceding reigns, sometimes rashly or from temporary motives, sometimes in opposition to prevailing usages which they could not restrain, of which the [1509 A.D.] pecuniary penalties, though exceedingly severe, were so little enforced as to have lost their terror. These his ministers raked out from oblivion; and, prosecuting such as could afford to endure the law's severity, filled his treasury with the dishonourable produce of amercements and forfeitures. The feudal rights became, as indeed they always had been, instrumental to oppression. The lands of those who died without heirs fell back to the crown by escheat. It was the duty of certain officers in every county to look after its rights. The king's title was to be found by the inquest of a jury, summoned at the instance of the escheator, and returned into the exchequer. It then became a matter of record, and could not be impeached. Hence the escheators taking hasty inquests, or sometimes falsely pretending them, defeated the right heir of his succession. Excessive fines were imposed on granting livery to the king's wards on their majority. Informations for intrusions, criminal indictments, outlawries on civil process, in short, the whole course of justice, furnished pretences for exacting money; while a host of dependants on the court, suborned to play their part as witnesses, or even as jurors, rendered it hardly possible for the most innocent to escape these penalties. Empson and Dudley are notorious as the prostitute instruments of Henry's avarice in the later and more unpopular years of his reign; but they dearly purchased a brief hour of favour by an ignominious death [under Henry VIII] and perpetual infamy. The avarice of Henry VII, as it rendered his government unpopular, which had always been penurious, must be deemed a drawback from the wisdom ascribed to him; though by his good fortune it answered the end of invigorating his power. By these fines and forfeitures he impoverished and intimidated the nobility. The earl of Oxford compounded, by the payment of £15,000, for the penalties he had incurred by keeping retainers in livery; a practice mischievous and illegal, but too customary to have been punished before this reign. Even the king's clemency seems to have been influenced by the sordid motive of selling pardons; and it has been shown that he made a profit of every office in his court, and received money for conferring bishoprics. It is asserted by early writers, though perhaps only on conjecture, that he left a sum, thus amassed, of no less than £1,800,0001 at his decease. This treasure was soon dissipated by his successor, who had recourse to the assistance of parliament in the very first year of his reign. The foreign policy of Henry VIII, far unlike that of his father, was ambitious and enterprising. No former king had involved himself so frequently in the labyrinth of continental alliances.i KNIGHT'S PICTURE OF ENGLAND AT THIS PERIOD It is the opinion of Hallami that "there had evidently been a retrograde tendency towards absolute monarchy between the reigns of Henry VI and Henry VIII." An Italian historian, Biondi, who wrote in the time of James I, describes our mixed constitution as "a well-constituted aristocratic-democratic monarchy" (aristodemocratica monarchia). It was the policy of the first Tudor to impair, if not to destroy, the aristocratic branch, before the democratic had acquired any great political force. The Venetian secretary says, "of these lords, who are called milites, there are very few left, and these diminish daily." [1 Gairdnerb estimates this as equivalent to £18,000,000 to-day.] [1509 A.D.] At the commencement of the reign of Henry VII, the long immunity of the clergy from any interference of the legislature with their course of life, however criminal, was in a slight degree interrupted by a statute, which recognises the existence in the commonwealth of "priests, clerks, and religious men openly noised of incontinent living." The "act for bishops to punish priests and other religious men for dishonest life," provides that they may be committed to ward and prison, upon examination and other lawful proof, and that no action of wrongful imprisonment shall arise out of such commitment. But by a statute of three years later we learn how frightful were the exemptions from the course of justice which persons in holy orders obtained. At the end of the reign of Henry VII the monastic establishments were at the culminating point of their wealth and luxury. Some of the gross profligacy which gave the appearance, if not the reality, of justice to their violent suppression was the subject of papal admonitions in 1490. But in their hospitality and their magnificence they commanded much popular support; and nothing seemed so unlikely as that in thirty years they should be swept away. There was scarcely a cloud, "bigger than a man's hand," to give sign of the coming storm. It is only when we have evidence of the real contempt which the higher order of minds, even amongst churchmen, felt for the impostures which contributed so mainly to the riches of the monastic shrines, that we discover how doubtful was that tenure of popularity which rested more upon vain delusions than upon the real benefit which the people derived from the teachings of religion. PILGRIM COSTUME Although the material wealth of England had been decidedly increasing during the reign of Henry VII, we have abundant evidence that its natural resources were very imperfectly brought into operation. The population appeared to the Venetian travellery not to bear any proportion to the fertility of the land and the riches of the cities. In passing from Dover to London, and from London to Oxford, the country appeared to him to be very thinly inhabited. He inquired, also, of those who rode to the north of the kingdom, and of those who went to Bristol and into Cornwall, and found there was no difference in their report upon this point. The population at the beginning of the sixteenth century has been estimated at four millions; but the data for this conclusion are scarcely to be relied on. In an act of 1488-9, "concerning the Isle of Wight," it is recited that the isle is "late decayed of people"; and in an act of the same session, "against pulling down of towns," it is declared, that "where, in some towns, two hundred persons were occupied and lived by their lawful labours, now be there occupied two or three herdmen." The grievance to which this decay of population is ascribed, is the conversion of tilled land into pasture; and the consolidation of farms and farmholds "into one man's hold and hands, that of old time were wont to be in many several persons' holds and hands, and H. W.-VOL. XIX. E [1509 A.D.] many several households kept in them, and thereby much people multiplied." This is the process of which More so bitterly complains, but of which he judged with the half-knowledge of his time on all economical questions. 'Forsooth, my lord, quoth I"-he is addressing Morton-"your sheep, that were wont to be so meek and tame, and so small eaters, now, as I hear say, be become so great devourers and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves. They consume, destroy, and devour whole fields, houses, and cities." In the time in which Henry VII legislated, and More declaimed against the decay of population through pasturage, the tillage of the land was so unprofitable that it afforded no return for the employment of capital. It yielded only a miserable subsistence to those who worked it, with imperfect instruments; with no knowledge of the rotation of crops; with no turnip husbandry to fatten sheep less wastefully than in the pastures; with no sufficient knowledge of the value of manures. The employment of capital in the feeding of sheep, being the more profitable mode of its use, speedily produced a greater demand for the labour of the whole country, than the ancient mode of cultivating small patches of land by the cottier-tenantry, who had succeeded the serfs of the earlier times. The pastures were furnishing employment to the manufacturers, the retailers, the merchants, of the great towns; and the profit of the pastures would, in course of time, bring about that larger system of tillage which would more perfectly unite the operations of the shepherd and the ploughman under the same tenancy. It was more profitable to export wool and broad-cloth than to export grain; and no legislation and no philosophy could compel the application of capital to the growth of corn where it could be more advantageously applied to the growth of sheep. The indirect stimulus which a judicious investment of accumulated wealth in one branch of industry must produce upon all industries, was not then understood; nor was it understood during succeeding periods of growing prosperity. The visible wealth of the people in plate was the admiration of foreigners. "There is no small innkeeper, however poor and humble he may be, who does not serve his table with silver dishes and drinking cups; and no one who has not in his house silver plate to the amount of at least £100 sterling, is considered by the English to be a person of any consequence." This observer adds, "The most remarkable thing in London is the wonderful quantity of wrought silver." The accumulation of capital in the form of plate was the result of the law which forbade any investment which would produce interest upon loan. And yet legislation here, as in all other cases which interfere with the natural laws of exchange, was not altogether effectual; for the same traveller remarks, of the English traders, "they are so diligent in mercantile pursuits, that they do not fear to make contracts on usury." They had the boldness to carry on commerce upon borrowed capital-a proof that the industry of the country had become, to some extent, energetic and self-reliant. Another law, of the same contracted nature, was the more stringent reenactment of a statute of Edward IV which had expired, forbidding coin of England or any other country, or plate, bullion, or jewels, to be carried out of the kingdom, "to the great impoverishing of the realm.' This fallacy, that a country is rich in proportion as it receives money foreign commercial transactions and pays none, was kept up for several hundred years in the delusion called Balance of Trade. How this law interfered with the extension of commerce, and the consequent ability of the consumers to be supplied at the cheapest rate, may be easily conceived. Its |