and, by establishing the supreme authority of the sovereign, facilitated the national amelioration. It cannot be supposed we mean to assert that absolute power is, in itself, to be commended; but that, in an unhealthy state of a nation, it is generally one of the means by which improvement is effected.

How few rights the common people enjoyed, appears from the insurrection of Wat Tyler in Richard the Second's reign, when he and his followers contended merely for enfranchisement from slavery of themselves and descendants. The King, alarmed at the numerical force of the rioters, which amounted to above a hundred thousand men, quieted the people by the grant of a charter, and, tranquillity being restored, revoked his grant in Parliament, leaving the population again in slavery.

Daniel, the historian and poet, who lived in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, and who to his valuable histories in prose has added a metrical record of the civil wars of York and Lancaster, calls the battle at Towton, in Yorkshire, between Henry VI. and Edward, "our great Pharsalian day, the greatest day of ruin that dissension ever brought into this kingdom." In this fierce engagement, no less than a hundred thousand Englishmen madly fought against each other for an issue in which they were not concerned. Our old poet, in decided language (most remarkable in a court writer during the reign of James I.), thus charac

terises the besotted folly of the people in the memorable conflict at Towton: -

"What rage, what madness, England, do we see,
That this brave people, in such multitude,
Run to confound themselves?

And all to be,

Thus mad for lords, and for mere servitude!

What might have been, if (Roman-like and free)
These gallant spirits had nobler ends pursued,
And strain'd to points of glory and renown,
For good of the republic, and their own?

"But here no Cato with a senate stood

For commonwealth; nor here were any who sought
To emancipate the state for public good,

But only headstrong for their faction wrought.
Here every man runs on to spend his blood,

To get but what he had already got;
For whether Pompey or a Cæsar won,
Their state was ever sure to be all one."*

Had there been at this time any middle class sufficiently numerous and informed to give a tone to public opinion, could a civil war, such as the above, have been tolerated?

Henry VII. was an able and a politic prince. Like his brother sovereigns in France, Spain, and Germany, he was jealous of the power of the barons. It was impossible for him and his advisers not to perceive the danger to the regal prerogative from their turbulent disposition, great political influence, and the number of their dependents.

He had sufficient sagacity to perceive the mi

History of the Civil War, by Samuel Daniel, book viii. stanzas 6, 7.

serable condition of the population, and imagined that, by increasing the power of the crown, he not only fulfilled his duty to the country, but added to his own influence and riches. When a prudent and able, and even a virtuous man, imagines he can promote the welfare of others, and gratify also his own. ambition, it requires a very strong barrier of morality to prevent his best exertions from being used in the attempt, without much scruple as to the means.

Although the civil wars had for a time curbed the barons, although the most factious and tumultuous of their body had perished, it was apparent that the successors of these barons, when in possession of the estates of their predecessors, would, with their inheritance, probably inherit also their turbulent and ambitious disposition, — that discontents among them would in process of time take place, leading to a renewal of factions, if not to future civil wars. To counteract this tendency, to secure himself and his descendants with ample prerogative on the throne, and also to achieve the popular results, already mentioned, by lessening the baronial influence, he resolved to have the law of perpetual settlements modified. To effect this, however, was no easy matter. Although the feudal chiefs were desirous to obtain all the luxuries, such as they were, produced by the citizens, and were therefore not disinclined to obtain the command of money, yet, as a body, they always felt great disinclination

to permit a change in the laws of entail. If, therefore, the monarch had at once proposed a legislative enactment to alter the law of entail, his motives might have been suspected: the barons, and their followers and adherents, were too powerful not to place an effective barrier to such an attempt, if openly made in the face of day.

It was necessary for the policy of the crafty monarch to adopt some indirect mode of lessening the enormous influence of the great baronial chiefs, and for this purpose to have recourse to the courts of law. The judges readily lent their powerful assistance, and by their connivance and sanction the fiction of levying fines and suffering recoveries was adopted, which to a certain extent, in an indirect manner, superseded the law of entail.* The proprietors of estates thereby found themselves relieved by facilities which enabled them to convert into money their landed possessions; and many amongst them alienated their property, in whole or in part. By degrees, the immense tracts of land belonging to individuals were divided, and purchased by many. Thus the enormous possessions of the barons were lessened; a process which, together with the creation of wealth in towns, gradually gave birth to a middle class.†

'Henry the Seventh's great object was to lessen the power of the barons and to raise up the lawyers." - Hume, 8vo, vol. ii. "This was evidently agreeable to the intention of Henry VII.,

whose policy was to lay the road as open as possible to the

It must be understood, that although this cause began to take effect in the reign of Henry VII., yet the operation was so slow, that nearly two centuries elapsed before any appearance of the power of the middle class manifested itself.

"Henry the Seventh," says an historian*, "brought peace, union, and tranquillity, to a nation divided, distracted, and besmeared with blood. Having obtained the crown, he politicly took care to put gradual stops to the power of the nobility, who had lately raised such storms in the nation, which he performed by procuring three several laws: by one of which the barons' lands were made alienable, which would cause them insensibly to divide and break in pieces: by another, he encouraged husbandry, ascertaining portions of land for tillage; by which the country farmers, living more plentifully, would not so readily be seduced by their lords to disturb the public peace; by a third, retainers were lopped off; so that the nobility were stripped of their mighty retinues, and could not easily compose a cavalry, which was usually made up of their followers: by all of which the balance of the nation was gradually altered, and the Com

alienation of landed property, in order to weaken the overgrown power of his nobles. But as they, from opposite reasons, were not easily brought to consent to such a provision, it was therefore couched in his act under covert and obscure expressions." -Blackstone's Com., book ii.

* Echard, p. 258.