The first Tudor king
The claims of the first Tudor king to the throne of England will be seen to be none too sound, if looked at critically. Largely it was Henry's own ability that enabled him to establish himself and to make a final end of the opposition and rebellions after he had been for twelve years king. It was an ability and strength of purpose characteristic of all his successors until the throne of England passed from the Tudors to the Scottish Stuarts. Yet always the despotism of the English kings differed from that of the French kings in this important point: that whereas the French kings had their foot on the necks of both barons and commons, in England even those who were most autocratic over their nobility always kept a wary eye on their commons, and not even Mary in her zeal for the Roman Catholic religion dared to go too far in opposition to the feeling of the country.
CHAPTER XXII
THE TEUTON AND THE SLAV
Thus we have traced in outline the course of the great story up to, or about, the year 1500, in respect of three of the nations which were among the foremost actors in it, England, France, and Spain. We have seen each of them establishing themselves within something very like the national boundaries which enclose them to-day. England and Scotland have not yet come into union, but the Tweed is in 1500, as now, the boundary river between them.
France, by the subtlety of Louis XI., has gained the mastery of all her great vassal lords. The English, it is true, still hold Calais, but no other possession on the Continent. And the boundary of France goes further north in 1500 than now, for it includes that count-ship, or province, of Flanders which had been brought into the possession of France's most powerful and dangerous vassal the Duke of Burgundy.
Northward, again, Holland and Scandinavia (the present Norway and Sweden)—with Denmark, sometimes the most powerful of them all—did not take much part as nations in the great story, but, as we have seen, the Northmen came very largely into its making by reason of their sea-faring raids and settlements upon the coasts of all the Western world. From Normandy they came to England and they conquered. They established themselves as kings of Sicily. A Northman, Baldwin, became Eastern Emperor at Constantinople.