[1045] Green, p. 258; Stubbs, iii. 32. It is plain that among the factious nobility, and even the courtiers, of the time there was a strong disposition to plunder the Church (Stubbs, iii, 43, 48, 53). Doubt is cast by Bishop Stubbs on Walsingham's story of the Lollard petition of 1410 for the confiscation of the lands of bishops and abbots, and the endowment therewith of 15 earls, 1,500 knights, 6,000 esquires, and 100 hospitals (Stubbs, iii, 65; cp. Milman, Latin Christianity, viii, 214; ix, 17-18); but in any case many laymen leant to such views, and the king's resistance was steadfast. Yet an archbishop of York, a bishop, and an abbot successively rebelled against him. On his hanging of the archbishop, see the remarkable professional reflections of Bishop Stubbs (iii, 53).
[1046] Act 2 Hen. IV, c. 15. Cp. de Montmorency, State Intervention in English Education, 1902, p. 36.
[1047] Stubbs, iii, 626; de Montmorency, p. 29; Act 7 Hen. IV, c. 17.
[1048] Schanz (Englische Handelspolitik, i, 349, 350) decides that the middle class was the only one which gained. The lower fared as ill as the upper. Cp. Stubbs, iii, 610.
[1049] Hallam (Constitutional History, 10th ed. 1, 10) doubts whether Henry VII carried the power of the Crown much beyond the point reached by Edward. Busch, who substantially agrees (England unter den Tudors, i, 8, note), misreads Hallam in criticising him, overlooking the "much." Edward had so incensed the London traders by his exactions that it was by way of undertaking to redress these and similar grievances that Richard III ingratiated himself (Green, pp. 293-94).
[1050] Cp. Green, pp. 285-86.
[1051] Stubbs, iii, 283; Hallam, Middle Ages, iii, 326, 328; Green, ch. vi, § 3, p. 282. This, however, did not mean the maintenance of English shipping, which declined. See Act 4 Hen. VII, c. 10; and cp. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry, § 121. "France seems to have had a considerable share of foreign commerce near a century before England was distinguished as a commercial country" (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. iii, ch. iv). Yet fishing and seafaring ranked as the main national industries (Busch, England unter den Tudors, i, 251).
[1052] See Stubbs, i, 675, as to the large foreign element in the London population, apart from the Hansa factory; and cp. Ashley, Introd. to Economic History, ii, 209.
[1053] The fact that the Scandinavian kings were eager to damage the Hansa by encouraging English and Dutch traders would be a special stimulus.
[1054] Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, i, 392.