courtiers, and rewarding the meritorious. The grantees sold their patents to companies of traders, who set on the articles the highest prices that purchasers could pay; salt, for example, being raised from 15d. to 15s. a bushel. Scarcely any article had escaped the rapacity of the courtiers*; but in 1601, when the matter had caused a great ferment in the commons, the prudent queen promised that she would revoke all such patents as should be proved injurious.

The reign of Elizabeth was also a period of literary glory. Hitherto the name of Chaucer almost alone could be placed on the rolls of genius; but now a noble band of poets appeared, who were to set England on a line with Greece and Italy. To whom are unknown the undying names of Shakspere and Spenser, the chiefs of this poetic choir? In prose, Hooker first gave proof of the depth and eloquence, the dignity and harmony, of which the English language is capable of being the vehicle.

Newspapers, now of such importance, first appeared in England during the reign of Elizabeth. In the year of the Armada, a kind of gazette, named the Mercury, was established.

* When the list was read in the house in 1601, a member cried, "Is not bread in the number?" "Bread!" cried the rest in amaze. "Nay," said he, "if no remedy is found for this, bread will be there before the next parlia ment."

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CHAPTER XIII.

ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS.

Power of the crown.-House of commons.-Court of Star-chamber.Court of High-commission.-Wardship.-Younger brothers.-Leigers or resident ambassadors.-Lingard.

THE period during which the throne of England was occupied by the house of Tudor was one of transition in politics and religion. The crown at this time acquired a degree of strength and influence unknown to the Plantagenets, but the power which was to control it was secretly growing up. This new power was the commons; for those who in reality had withstood the prerogative of the Edwards and the Henries were the ancient nobility, the feudal aristocracy, beneath whose protection the house of commons acted against the crown. But the war of the Roses,

and various natural and political causes had thinned the ranks and broken the power of the feudal baronage, and the commons without leaders or support became timid and submissive. A new nobility, indebted to royal favour for its honours and to royal munificence or profusion for its wealth, sprang up*. It was naturally timid, subservient and self-seeking, and we have seen on numerous occasions how abjectly it obeyed the royal will. Were it not for the spirit breathed by the Reformation, which gradually infused vigour and courage into the breasts of the commons, the sacred flame of liberty might have become extinct. It is not to be denied that to the puritans we are mainly indebted for its conservation.

Under Henry VIII. the commons were in their most feeble condition; for the very circumstance to which they owed their future strength, namely, the Reformation, con

* Only a small portion of our nobility, such as the Howards, the Stanleys, the Nevilles, the Percies, the Courteneys, can trace its honours beyond the time of the Tudors.

POWER OF THE CROWN.

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tributed to augment the power of the despot, who holding the balance between the two parties, was courted by both, and neither would risk the forfeiture of his favour or incur his displeasure by any efforts in the cause of the national liberties. Yet servile as was the house of commons under Henry, it sometimes presumed to resist the attempts of the crown to obtain money. The commons under Edward VI. showed some symptoms of returning vigour. They ventured to throw out several bills sent down from the lords. The parliaments of Mary proved, as we have seen, refractory on several points, and the puritanic spirit, which began to assume strength in the time of Elizabeth, manifested itself on various occasions by an opposition to the court so strong as to cause that prudent princess to recede from measures which she had proposed, and to promise compliance with the wishes of the commons.

The strongest proof which can be afforded of the growing power of the house of commons is the anxiety of the court to procure influence in it. This was effected by creating new boroughs, or restoring their privilege to those boroughs which, on account of the expense of the wages to their representatives, had let it go out of use. Care of course was always taken to select those places in which the crown or its supporters had influence, and in this manner numbers of the servants of the court obtained seats in the house of commons. In the reign of Edward two-and-twenty boroughs were thus created or restored; Mary added fourteen to the number, and Elizabeth continued the practice. We thus see that Time was not the only agent in the production of rotten boroughs.

The power of the crown, independently of the parliament, was however very considerable and almost overwhelming even under the later Tudors: it retained all its feudal prerogatives, with the addition of the ecclesiastical authority acquired by Henry VIII., and in the courts of star-chamber and of high-commission it had two mighty engines of oppression.

The origin of the court of star-chamber was as follows.

The council, i. e. the Curia Regis, had all along exercised a very arbitrary degree of power. As it usually sat in the apartment named the star-chamber, from the stars with which it was adorned, it thence derived its appellation. It silently acquired the powers vested in the court erected by the statute of 3 Henry VII. It served, as sir Thomas Smith expresses it, "to bridle such stout noblemen or gentlemen which would offer wrong by force to any manner of men, and cannot be content to demand or defend the right by order of the law;" and so far it was beneficial. But it gradually extended its jurisdiction much further, and took cognisance of such a number of offences as rendered it a powerful implement of despotism. Thus it punished scandalous reports of persons in power and the spreading of seditious news; if a man refused to lend money as a benevolence he was summoned before the council, as also were jurors who found verdicts contrary to the wishes of the crown. It punished by fine and imprisonment, and there was no appeal from its sentence.

Severe and arbitrary as the star-chamber was in civil matters, a more tyrannic tribunal took cognisance of affairs relating to religion. This was the court of high-commission, a miniature Inquisition, which was completed in the year 1580. The spirit of the age, which knew not toleration, was the true origin of this tribunal; but its germ appears to have been a commission granted by queen Mary in 1557 to certain prelates and others to inquire after heresies, and punish those who did not come to church, or misbehaved themselves there, etc. The court of highcommission consisted of forty-four members, of whom twelve were bishops. They were to take cognisance of all violations of the acts of supremacy, uniformity, and two other acts, in any way, by deed, speech, or writing. They could punish those who absented themselves from church, and those guilty of incest, adultery, etc.; they might examine suspected persons on their oaths, ex officio, and punish by fine, imprisonment, etc.; they might visit and reform heresies and schisms, and deprive beneficed persons

holding doctrines contrary to the thirty-nine articles. In a word, their power had hardly any limits, and by means of it a perfect despotism over opinion was established.

The feudal burdens continued to be as oppressive as ever. The lower orders of the people were sorely aggrieved by the abuses of purveyance*, and wardship was a source of ruin to numbers of the gentry. The following picture of its evils is from the pen of an able statesman in the reign of Elizabeth.

"Many men," says sir Thomas Smith †, "do esteem this wardship by knight's service very unreasonable and unjust, and contrary to nature, that a freeman and gentleman should be bought and sold like a horse or an ox, and so change guardians as masters and lords, at whose government not only his body but his lands and his houses should be to be wasted and spent without accounts, and then to marry at the will of him who is his natural lord, or his will who has bought him, to such as he likes not peradventure, or else to pay so great a ransom. This is the occasion they say why many gentlemen be so evil brought up touching virtue and learning, and but only in daintiness and pleasure, and why they be married very young and before they be wise, and many times do not greatly love their wives. For when the father is dead, who hath the natural care of his child? not the mother, nor the

* Osborne relates the following anecdote. "A purveyor having abused the county of Kent, upon the queen's remove to Greenwich, a countryman watching the time she went to walk, which was commonly early, and being wise enough to take his time when she stood unbent and quiet from the ordinary occasions she was taken up with, placing himself within the reach of her ear, did after the fashion of his caste cry aloud, 'Which is the queen?' whereupon, as her manner was, she turned about toward him, and he continuing still his question, she herself answered, 'I am your queen: what wouldst thou have with me?' 'You,' replied the fellow, are one of the rarest women I ever saw, and can eat no more than my daughter Madge, who is thought the properest lass in our parish, though short of you; but that queen Elizabeth I look for devours so many of my hens, ducks, and capons as I am not able to live."" The queen, it is added, pleased with the praise of her beauty, inquired who the purveyor was, and, as the story went, caused him to be hanged.

+ Commonwealth of England, Book iii. ch. 5.