The History of England A Study in Political Evolution

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does not seem to have flourished under ecumenical inspiration; and even Wycliffe and Chaucer may be claimed as products of the national rather than of the catholic spirit. But with the transition from medieval to modern history, the conditions were altered in England's favour. The geographical expansion of Europe made the outposts of the Old World the entrep?ts for the New; the development of navigation and sea-power changed the ocean from the limit into the link of empires; and the growth of industry and commerce revolution

of his people were the aims of all his treaties with other powers. At home he carefully depressed the over-mighty subjects who had made the Wars of the Roses; he kept down their number with such success that he left behind him only one English duke and one English marquis; he limited their retainers, and restrained by means of the Star Chamber their habits of maintaining lawbreakers, packing juries, and intimidating judges. By a careful distribution of fines and benevolences he filled his exchequ

e papacy at the moment when Henry wanted the pope to annul his marriage with the emperor's aunt, Catherine of Aragon. Henry desired a son to succeed him and to prevent the recurrence of dynastic wars; he had only a daughter, Mary, and no woman had yet ruled or reigned in England. The death of all his male children by Catherine convinced him that his marriage with his deceased brother Arthur's widow was invalid; and hi

der, and more deeply seated forces were at work. In one sense the breach was simply the ecclesiastical consummation of the forces which had long been making

ings for itself; there were the convocations of Canterbury and York, but these were two subordinate provinces of the Catholic church; and, whatever may be said for provincial autonomy in the medieval church, the only marks of national autonomy were stamped upon it by the state. York was more independent of Canterbury than Canterbury was of Rome; and the unity as well as the independence of the national church depends upon the common subjection of both its provinces to the crown. This predominance of state over church was a consequence of its nationalization; for where the boundaries of the two coincide, the state generally has the upper hand. The papacy was only made possible by the fall of the Western

checks imposed, on the one hand by the Catholic church, and on the other by the feudal franchises. But the supremacy was not exclusively royal; parliament was the partner and accomplice of the crown. It was the weapon which the Tudors employed to pass Acts of Attainder against feud

eptibly with one another. The revolt of the nation against a foreign authority is the most easily distinguished of these tendencies; another is the revolt of the laity against the clerical specialist. The church, it must be remembered, was often regarded as consisting not of the whole body of the faithful, but simply of the clergy, who continued to claim a monopoly of its privileges after they had ceased to enjoy a monopoly of its intelligence and virtue. The Renaissance had been a new birth of secular learning, not a revival of clerical learning. Others besides the clergy could now read and write and understand; town chronic

by authority of masses too illiterate to think for themselves. Attendance at public worship would necessarily be their only form of devotion. But the general emancipation of servile classes and spread of intelligence by the Renaissance had led to a demand for vernacular versions of the Scriptures and to a great deal of private

o penetrate men's thoughts and differentiate their actions according to their motives; there had been a time when possession had seemed more real than property, and when the transference of a right was incomprehensible without the transference of its concrete symbols. There could be no gift without its manual conveyance, no marriage without a ring, no king without a coronation. Many of these material swaddling-clothes remain and have their value. A national flag stimulates loyalty, gold lace helps the cause of discipline. Bishop Gardiner, in

sm might be an ideal religion if men were compounded of pure reason; being what they were, many adopted it because they were impervious to artistic influence or impatient of spiritual discipline. It will hardly do to divide the nation into intelligent Protestants and illiterate Catholics: the point is that the somewhat crude symbolism which had satisfied th

so many men and women from productive purposes impeded the material prosperity of the nation. But the devotion of the proceeds to the foundation of private families, instead of to educational endowment, can only be explained and not excused by the exigencies of political tactics. His real services were political, not religious. He taught England a good deal of her insular confidence; he proclaimed the indivisible and indisputable sover

Land held in severalty was found more profitable than land held in common, large estates than small holdings, and wool-growing than corn-growing. Small tenants were evicted, small holdings consolidated, commons enclosed, and arable land converted to pasture. The mass of the agricultural population became mere labourers without rights of property on the soil they tilled; thousands lost employment and swelled the ranks of sturdy beggars; and sporadic disorder came to a head in Kett's rebellion in Norfolk in

ndered its national independence. Those who repudiated their foreign jurisdiction were naturally treated as contumacious by the papal courts in England and sent to the stake; and English adventurers were prohibited, in the interests of Spain and Portugal, from trespassing in the New World. Finally England was plunged into war with France

right to deal independently with ecclesiastical matters, and suffered deprivation and imprisonment rather than recognize a schismatic national church. Elizabeth rejected Philip's offers of marriage and paid no heed to his counsels of state. She scandalized Catholic Europe by assisting the revolted Scots to expel the French from North Britain; and revenged the contempt,

the past the adaptability of its rivals. Even in feudal times there was little law about status; and when the customary arrangement of society in two agricultural classes of landlord and tenant was modified by commerce, capitalism, and competition, nobles adapted themselves to the change with some facility. They took to sheep-farming and commercial speculations, just as later on they took to keeping dairy-shops. It is the smallness rather than the source of his profits that excites social prejudice against the shopkeeper in England. On the Continent, however, class feeling prevented the governing classes from participating in the expansion of commerce. German barons, for instance,

rade had become an avenue to the House of Lords. The justices of the peace, on whom the Tudors relied for local administration, were largely descended from successful city men who had, like the Walsinghams, planted themselves out in the country; and Elizabeth herself was great-great-granddaughter of a London mayor. This social elasticity enabled the government to avail itself of able men of all classes, and the efficiency of Tudor ad

teenth it attained patriotic proportions. Henry VII had encouraged Cabot's voyage to Newfoundland, but the papal partition of new-found lands between Spain and Portugal barred to England the door of legitimate, peaceful expansion; and there can be little doubt that this prohibition made many converts to Protestantism among English seafaring folk. Even Mary could

val tactics. England, on the other hand, had, largely under the inspiration of Henry VIII, adapted its navy to oceanic purposes. A type of vessel had been evolved capable of crossing the ocean, of manoeuvring and of fighting under sail; to Drake the ship had become the fighting unit

y. The flight of Mary Queen of Scots into England in 1568 provided a focus for noble discontent with Cecil's rule, and the northern earls rebelled in 1569. The rebellion was easily suppressed, but its failure did not deter the Duke of Norfolk, the earls' accomplice, from joining Ridolfi's plot with similar ends. He was brought to the block in 1572, and in him perished the last surviving English duke. For more than half a century Eng

ron of these exiles and of their plots against the English government; and as Spain and England drew apart, England and France drew together. In 1572 a defensive alliance was formed between them, and there seemed a prospect of their co-operation to drive the Spaniards out of the Netherlands. But Catholic France resented this Huguenot policy, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew put a violent end to the scheme, while Elizabeth and Philip patched up a truce for some years. There could, however, be no permanent compromise, on the one hand, between Spanish exclusiveness and the determination of Englishmen to force open the door of the New World and, on the other, between English nationali

of conquest vanished, and he continued the war merely in the hope of securing guarantees against English interference in the New World, in the Netherlands, and in France, where he was helping the Catholic League to keep Henry of Navarre off the French throne. Ireland, however, was his most promising sphere of operations. There religious and racial hostility to the English was fusing discordant Irish septs into an Irish nation, and the appearan

a rift appeared between the monarchy and the nation. For one thing the alliance, forged by Henry VIII between the crown and parliament, against the church, was being changed into an alliance between the crown and church against the parliament, because parliament was beginning to give expression to democratic ideas of government in state and church which threatened the principle of personal rule common to monarchy and to episcopacy. "No Bishop, no King," was a shrewd aphorism of James I, which was in the making before he reached the throne. In other respects-such as monopolies, the power of the crown to levy indirect taxation without consent of parliament, to impriso