monarchy peace; covery and out of which the new life was to spring, were being sown amid the embers of the dying mediavalism. The reign of mon- the reign of archy in England, as in the rest of Europe, brought with it brought peace, which gave a marked impetus not only to agriculture with it and manufacture, but to foreign commerce. The shores of the Mediterranean no longer marked the limits of the maritime world; the dominion of the seas had already begun to pass from the Italian seaports to the nations bordering on the Atlantic seaboard; the great era of discovery and conquest had now come, in which English seamen and soldiers were soon to bear their part. During the sixteenth century the Cabots, era of disGilbert, Barlow, Amidas, Drake, and Raleigh braved every conquest; hardship and faced every danger in the prosecution of American discovery; and in the next age their work was crowned by the brave English hearts who at last overcame the terrors of the wilderness, and laid the foundations of the great republic beyond the sea. While the geographical horizon of the English people was thus being widened by discovery and conquest, its intellectual activities were being stirred by the new light now streaming across the Alps from the ancient world. To the Italy of Petrarch we must look for the cradle of the Italian ReRenaissance. Petrarch it was who in the fourteenth century taught his countrymen how to study the Latin masters in a humanistic spirit, and he also pointed out to them the necessity of recovering a knowledge of Greek, which had become, in the full sense of the term, a dead language. Before its capture by the Turks, enthusiastic scholars had visited Constantinople "as the sacred city of the new revelation," and after its fall the Greek scholars who were driven into exile found in the cities of Italy not only congenial homes, but earnest disciples, who were ready to break the new revelation to the Latin and Teutonic world. In that way Italy became the seat of a vast intellectual revival; in her cities the ancient fountains were unsealed from which the two great streams of classic literature flowed into France and Spain, into Germany and the Netherlands, and finally into England. The art of printing, which printing; had been discovered just in time to aid in the distribution of the new learning throughout the Continental nations, stood ready to welcome its advent into the island kingdom. Caxton, the first English printer, after a prolonged absence in Flan naissance; slow pro gress of the new learn ing under Henry VII.; the fresh Henry ders, returned home about the year 1476, bringing with him a printing-press, with the use of which he had probably become familiar at Bruges. Encouraged by the patronage of Edward IV.,1 and such of his despotic courtiers as Gloucester, Rivers, and Tiptoft, and sustained by the growing literary spirit of the age, Caxton printed many of the classics, and all of the best specimens of English literature in poetry and prose. At his death in 1492 he left his art established in England upon a firm foundation. Thus, while Edward and Henry were laying deep the foundations of the monarchy, they were also furthering the establishment of a new institution, which was destined to contribute most to its overthrow. Through the agency of the printing-press, books which had been the property of the few became the possession of the many; by its levelling hand the new "seed-points of light" were sown in every household, and the result was a reëxamination of the whole field of knowledge, a process which shook at last the foundations both of the church and the monarchy. Great, however, as was the progress made by the New Learning during the reign of Henry VII., under the lead of Grocyn, Colet, More, and Erasmus, the group of scholars of which they were the central lights remained a small one until after the accession of Henry VIII. Then it was that the circle widened; then it was that the "new order" began in earnest; then it was that England, thus ushered into the new era, definitely entered upon a career of intellectual development abreast with the foremost of the continental nations. 1 During Edward's reign the statutes and year-books were first printed. The great text-books of Littleton on the common law and Lyndwode on the ec clesiastical law were also published. Reeves' Hist. of Eng. Law, vol. iv. pp. 158, 159. CHAPTER II. HENRY VIII. AND THE BREAK WITH ROME. the concil powers of from the 1. DURING the period of transition that intervened between Outline of the accession of Edward IV. and the death of Henry VII., iar system: the work of reorganizing and consolidating the powers of the monarchy, which had risen triumphant out of the wreck of feudalism and the civil war, went steadily on. The dominant purpose that guided this work of reconstruction was to so endow the monarchy with self-sustaining force as to render it forever free from dependence upon and subserviency to that system of parliamentary sovereignty which had been carried to its highest point in the days of the Lancastrian kings. To transfer the supreme powers of the state from the king Supreme in parliament to the king in council,1 without working any the state change in the outward form of the constitution, and without transferred destroying any of its vital elements, was the cardinal idea that king in parpervaded the policy which Edward inaugurated and Henry the king in expanded. The details have already been drawn out through council; which this end was accomplished, by the establishment of a fiscal system which made the crown independent of parliamentary grants, except at long intervals and upon unusual occasions, and by the abnormal expansion of the powers of the council, in which the royal will was omnipotent.2 Under the new system as thus organized the council became, as from the in the Norman and early Angevin days, the body from which anated all emanated all the more important acts of government, whether the more administrative, legislative (by way of ordinance), fiscal, or politi- acts of govcal.3 The parliament still survived for purposes of extraordinary deliberation. To the law courts was still committed the 1 Upon that subject, see vol. i. pp. 496, 497. 2 As Coke has expressed it, "The king's will is the sole constituent of a privy councillor." "It had at one moment to settle questions of policy; at another to pro vide funds, by which the administration liament to important ernment; ber overawes the ordinary tribunals; as an administra ordinary administration of justice.1 But the supervision and control of the entire judicial system was subject to the dictatorial and irresistible will of the king in council, to which the judicial constitution could impose no efficient barriers. "In star cham- some instances the king transferred to the star chamber cases on which the courts were about to pronounce a decision. When this was done, it wanted but one more step for the king, as the phrase went, 'to take the matter into his own hands,' and, if he chose, pardon the offence, generally after the receipt of a large sum of money." 2 This same kind of interference was also extended to civil suits, and as the records of the counthe council cil show, it was for a time successful. It was, however, rather as an administrative body than as a law court that the council tive body; afforded to the great statesmen of the Tudor age the widest field for their abilities. Under their guidance the despotic yet vigorous and efficient conciliar system not only brought peace and order out of anarchy at the close of the civil war, but it also guided the country safely through the great social and ecclesiastical crisis incident to the Reformation. From the accession of Henry VII. to the Revolution of 1640, the history of the council is the history of the monarchy. During that period of a century and a half not only the law courts, but the parliament, crouched at the feet of its paramount authority. The strength of the system lay in the power of the crown to ness of the pry into all matters, great and small, and to crush any individual, however great, who might dare to oppose a royal mana military date; its weakness lay in the absence of a standing military force); force, in its powerlessness in the presence of an armed people. More than once during the reign of Henry VII. this weakness had revealed itself when, under the pressure of general taxation, large bodies of men had risen in organized rebellion. Against this danger, however, the princes of the house of Tudor seemed 1 “As in the fourteenth century it is again the deliberative body with which the king administers the whole of the business of the realm, so far as it does not devolve upon (i.) The central and lower courts in the ordinary course of justice; (ii.) The Exchequer and the several administrative departments in the ordinary course of administration; (iii.) The Parliament for extraordinary deliberation.". Gneist, Hist. of the Eng. Const., p. 500. strength and weak system (absence of 2 Dicey, The Privy Council, p. 112. 8 See Proceedings of Privy Council, vii. 58, 214, 276. "Nevertheless, for some reason which does not seem to be entirely explained, it paid less and less attention to civil suits, until under Charles I. an attempt was made to revise the jurisdiction in civil causes." -Dicey, The Privy Council, p. 115. 4 See above, p. 29. knew how tune mo to have been guarded by an intuitive insight into the national character. They never failed to yield at the opportune mo- Tudors ment to the serious and menacing demands of a people who, to yield at stirred by the spirit of the New Learning, and absorbed by the the oppor hope of sudden wealth which the discovery of a new world ment; and a growing commerce had excited, were less eager for political agitation than for the security and peace which in that age they seemed willing to enjoy even under the shadow of despotic authority. Such was the strength and such the weakness of the political system which Henry VII. carefully matured, and transmitted intact to his youthful and gifted successor. Under such a system, in which the royal will was the the royal central and driving force, the personal characteristics of the driving sovereign often became upon critical occasions vitally impor- force of the tant links in the chain of causation through which momentous system. political changes were brought about. In that way, and only in that way, does the constitutional history of England become involved, during a critical period, with the characteristics and vicissitudes of Henry VIII. will the conciliar alliances ar VII.: 2. While Henry VII. was laying deep the foundations of Marriage the house of Tudor, he was not unmindful of the support to ranged by be drawn from judicious marriage alliances. "Lest the spec- Henry tre of indefeasible right should stand once more in arms upon the tomb of the House of York," he had reluctantly wedded the heiress Elizabeth. In order to seal with peace the immemorial strife which for nearly two centuries had been going on with the restless kingdom upon his northern border, he arranged in 1503, after a protracted negotiation, the marriage marriage of of his eldest daughter Margaret with James IV. of Scotland, James IV. -a marriage which ultimately placed the house of Stuart upon with Margaret, 1503; the throne of England. The nature of the union between the two kingdoms which was destined to grow out of this alli 1 Hallam, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 9. 3 Henry VII. 2 Lel. Coll., iv. 265-300; Hall, 56. 1. James IV., King of Scots: Margaret=2. Douglas, Earl of Angus. 2 |