Political condition of the nation.
It is necessary, as the border-land is thus reached between modern civilization and that of the middle ages, to say a few words on the political condition of the nation, which allowed of the establishment of the personal monarchy of the Tudors, and of the social state of the people from which modern forms of civilization were to spring.
During the earlier part of the Lancastrian rule, Parliament, and especially the House of Commons, had apparently continued to rise in power. The Constitutional growth of the fourteenth century had been continued. The Commons had secured the unquestioned right of originating money bills, not to be altered by the House of Lords, nor discussed in the presence of the King. They had secured the right not only of recommending in petitions, but also of joining as an equal estate of the realm in the passing of laws. They had succeeded during the reign of Henry VI. in preventing any changes in the form of their petitions (which had not unfrequently been introduced when, after the session, the petition was enrolled), by bringing in complete Statutes, called Bills, to be rejected or accepted as a whole, instead of their old petitions. They had, in several instances, practised unquestioned the right of impeachment, and claimed, with some degree of success, the freedom of their members from arrest, even during the recess of Parliament. But in spite of this apparent advance, the real power of the Parliament before the close of the Wars of the Roses had almost disappeared. A statute in the eighth year of Henry VI. limited the franchise, with regard to the election of knights of the shire, to freeholders of lands or tenements to the value of forty shillings. This at once gave an aristocratic tone to the House. In addition to this it had become the fashion both of the nobility and of the Crown to tamper with the elections. With the new restricted franchise, the power of local magnates in the county elections was predominant, while, as regards the boroughs, the sheriffs exercised a power of summoning burgesses from such towns only as they pleased, and it was not difficult for the Crown or ruling party to bring the sheriffs under their influence. While the House of Commons thus lost its independence, the old Upper House had been virtually destroyed, and the new nobility was by its very nature dependent on the Crown. Another most important element of freedom had likewise disappeared. The great Churchmen, to whom the liberties of England owe so much, had been victorious over their enemies the Lollards. In the struggle they had lost their sympathy with the people. Their desire for the spiritual welfare of the country had shrivelled to a selfish eagerness for the preservation of orthodoxy. They had been drawn into closer communication with Rome, and had begun to share its interests. Cardinal Beaufort, in spite of all opposition, had succeeded in retaining his Roman rank, and it had become habitual that the Archbishop of Canterbury at least should bear the title of Cardinal. Wealthy, worldly and self-seeking, the leaders of the clergy were inclined to devote themselves to political life; and, conscious of the alienation of the lower orders, and fearing for their property, which had already excited the envy of the laity, and which, while confiscation was reducing the nobles to beggary, had remained almost untouched, they sought employment and safety in becoming the devoted servants of the King.
At the same time that the practical efficiency of the Parliament had been decreasing, the power of the King’s Council had been on the increase. The limits of its rights, springing as it did from the Concilium Ordinarium of the Plantagenet kings, had always been questionable, and its encroachments, in meddling with the petitions of the Lower House, and in issuing ordinances without the consent of Parliament, which had yet the authority of temporary laws, had been constantly objected to by the Commons. The long minority of Henry VI., during which the chief direction of the Government had been almost unavoidably in the hands of the Council, had tended greatly to increase its power.
Effects of the Wars of the Roses.
Nevertheless, though constitutional growth had been checked, and the Commons had politically lost ground, the Wars of the Roses did not produce that complete exhaustion and depopulation of the country which might have been expected. The population appears to have been little, if at all, decreased, the number of inhabitants was still between three and four millions. In fact, it must be remembered that the broken hostilities of these wars did not on the whole amount to much more than three years of actual warfare; that the armies were in the field only for short consecutive periods, were usually few in number, and composed of untrained men, who returned, immediately their short service was over, to the cultivation of the fields. Thus the destruction and turbulence seemed to pass over the head of the great bulk of the population. Nor is this all. During the whole continuance of the war, the ordinary apparatus of justice was uninterrupted; courts were held, and judges went their circuit as usual. Indeed, it would seem to have been a period of unusual litigation, attended no doubt often with violence. For as property rapidly changed hands the titles to it became insecure, and the process therefore by which a title was questioned was frequently the violent dispossession of the present holder. But still it was to the courts of law that the ultimate appeal was made. Again, although the loss of France and the exclusive attention to home politics greatly diminished the national strength upon the sea, trade does not appear to have been seriously damaged. At all events, it was so kept alive, that upon the establishment of peace it revived with fresh vigour; and we are told that Edward IV. himself engaged in the pursuit. This trait is characteristic not only of the man but of the time. The pursuit of trade had risen greatly in estimation; great traders had become nobles, and Suffolk, the prime minister, was an example of the height to which such families might rise. From the decay of noble families, and other more permanent causes, land had been necessarily brought into the market. Wealthy traders had purchased it, set up for landowners, and aimed at the dignity of knighthood. At the same time, the secondary gentry of the country, taking advantage of the decline of the nobility, found means in the midst of the disturbances to increase their property and influence. In spite therefore of the apparent insignificance of Parliament, the middle classes were in a vigorous and improving condition.
Changes in the lower classes.
Lower down in the social scale the case was somewhat different. Serfdom had indeed almost disappeared, and existed only here and there in isolated cases. Free labour for wages had become general, and land was largely held by payment of money rents. Thus far there was improvement. But the change from slavery to personal freedom is always purchased at a somewhat heavy price—that price is the existence of poverty; it is no longer incumbent on employers to look after the wellbeing of free labourers; in time of want they are thrown upon their own resources. The new possessors of the soil too were inclined to work it to better profit than their predecessors had done; grazing became more common and employment proportionately scarcer. The unemployed labourer had two courses open to him: he might betake himself to the towns, or join the ranks of the rapidly increasing class of beggars. He there found himself in company of numbers of idle and needy men who took advantage of the disturbed state of the country. Discharged soldiers and sailors, and vagabonds who called themselves travelling scholars, were so plentiful, that as there was as yet no poor law in existence, stringent enactments were made against them. The number of those punished for crimes of lawlessness and violence was enormous. Fortescue describes with pride how the poor Englishman, seeing others possess what he wanted, would never scruple to take it by violence rather than be without it. Those of the unemployed labourers who preferred to seek the towns went to increase the crowd of journeymen, whose position could not have been very enviable. For the guild system was breaking down and giving place to the more modern arrangements of unlimited competition. The craft guilds, which in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had triumphed over the merchant guilds and aristocratic citizens of the towns, had speedily begun to deteriorate. The object for which they were founded was to secure for all members of the craft a fair chance of livelihood, without the danger of destructive competition. This object implied that the guild was co-extensive with the trade, and that its members were themselves craftsmen, carrying on their work with their own hands, with the assistance of apprentices. But a crowd of enfranchised villeins and unemployed labourers had gathered in the towns, and formed a class of journeymen or day-labourers, and the guild, originally a corporation of working men, changed gradually into an exclusive body of capitalists. Moreover, even within their own limits, their principles had failed as early as the reign of Edward III. We hear, for instance, of certain pepperers, who, separating themselves from their guild, became grocers [grossers] or general dealers. In other words, as individuals accumulated capital, they refused to have their enterprise limited by the guild laws; and thus setting up as independent capitalists, began to introduce the same relations between employer and employed which exist at present. Under these circumstances the unincorporated journeymen found the restrictions of the guild an obstacle in the way of advance, and were exposed to all the evils of an eager competition.
Influence of the Renaissance.