I was saying, that all your demands would be satisfied, as I went along in this discourse. It is true, an attentive reader of our history, who considers what is said of the mixed frame of our government, and the struggles that were occasioned by it, is surprised to find that these contentions at once subsided on the accession of the house of Tudor; and that the tenour of the government thenceforth for many successions is as calm, and the popular influence as small, as in the most absolute and despotic forms. This appearance tempts him to conclude, that the crown had at length redeemed itself from a forced, unconstitutional servitude; and that, far from usurping on the people, it only returned to the exercise of its old and acknowledged rights. For otherwise it will be said, how could the people at once become so insensible, and their representatives in parliament so tame, as to bear with the most imperious of their princes without reluctance; they, who had resented much smaller matters from the gentlest and the best?
But those, who talk in this strain, have not considered, that there were some circumstances in the state of things, from the time we are speaking of, that DISABLED the nation from insisting, and many more that INDISPOSED them to insist, on their ancient and undoubted rights.
I took notice, that the ruinous contentions of the two houses of York and Lancaster, from which the nation was at last delivered by the accession of Henry VII. disposed all men to submit with satisfaction to the new government. Such a conjuncture was favourable, of itself, to the increase of the regal power. But the truth is, there was little danger of any successful opposition to the crown, if the nation had been ever so ill inclined towards it. The great lords or barons were, in former days, both by the feudal constitution, and by the vast property they had in their hands, the proper and only check on the sovereign. These had been either cut off, or so far weakened at least by the preceding civil wars, that the danger seemed entirely over from that quarter. The politic king was aware of his advantage, and improved it to admiration. One may even affirm, that this was the sole object of his government.
For the greater security, and majesty of his person, he began with the institution of his LIFEGUARD. And having thus set out with enlarging his own train, his next care was to diminish that of his nobles. Hence the law, or rather laws (for, as Lord Bacon observes, there was scarcely a parliament through his whole reign which passed without an act to that purpose) against Retainers. And with how jealous a severity he put those laws into execution, is sufficiently known from his treatment of one of his principal friends and servants, the earl of Oxford[7].
It was also with a view to this depression of the nobility, that the court Of Star-chamber was considered so much, and confirmed by act of parliament in his reign: “That which was principally aimed at by it being, as his historian frankly owns, Force, and the two chief supports of Force, COMBINATION OF MULTITUDES, and maintenance of HEADSHIP OF GREAT PERSONS.”
To put them still lower in the public estimation, he affected to fill the great offices with churchmen only. And it was perhaps, as much to awe the nation by the terror of his prerogative as to fill his coffers, that he executed the penal laws with so merciless a rigour on the very greatest of his subjects.
Still further to prevent the possibility of a return, in any future period, of the patrician power, this politic prince provided with great care for the encouragement of trade, and the distribution of property. Both which ends were effected at once by that famous act, which was made to secure and facilitate the alienation of estates by fine and proclamation.
All these measures, we see, were evidently taken by the king to diminish the credit and suppress the influence of his nobles; and of consequence, as he thought, to exalt the power of the crown above control, if not in his own, yet in succeeding ages. And his policy had this effect for some time; though in the end it served, beside his expectation, to advance another and more formidable power, at that time little suspected or even thought of, the POWER OF THE PEOPLE[8].
The truth is, Henry’s policy was every way much assisted by the genius of the time. Trade was getting up: and Lollardism had secretly made its way into the hearts of the people. And, though liberty was in the end to reap the benefit of each, prerogative was the immediate gainer. Commerce, in proportion to its growth, brought on the decline of the feudal, that is, aristocratic power of the barons: and the authority of the church, that other check on the sovereign, was gradually weakened by the prevailing spirit of reformation.
Under these circumstances, Henry found it no difficulty to depress his great lords; and he did it so effectually, that his son had little else left him to do, but to keep them down in that weak and disabled state, to which his father had reduced them. ‘Tis true, both he and his successors went further. They never thought themselves secure enough from the resistance of their old enemies, the barons[9]; and so continued, by every method of artifice and rapine, to sink them much lower than even the safety of their own state required. But the effects of this management did not appear till long afterwards. For the present, the crown received a manifest advantage by this conduct.