Reiterated claims had secured in the eighteenth century the general acceptance of the view that England "set the example" of admitting cities to representation in national diets (so Koch,Histor. View of the European Nations, Crichton's tr. 3rd ed. p. 46). But as to the priority of the institution in Spain, see U.R. Burke,History of Spain, Hume's ed. i, 370; and Prescott,Hist. of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, Kirk's ed. 1889, p. 10 and refs. As to its existence in Sicily (circa1232), see Milman,Hist. of Latin Christianity, vi, 154, proceeding on Gregorio,Considerazioni sopra la Storia di Sicilia, 1805 (ed. 2a, 1831-39, vol. ii, cap. v); and Von Raumer,Geschichte der Hohenstaufen(Aufg. 1857-58, B. vii, Haupt. 6, Bd. iii, p. 249). Cp. Von Reumont,The Carafas of Maddaloni, Eng. tr. 1854, p. 61, and refs. Frederick's assemblies, too, were calledParlamente. He in turn had, of course, been influenced by the practice, if not of Spain, at least of the Italian cities, which he wished his own to rival.As to Simon's object in summoning burgesses, Hallam admits (Europe during the Middle Ages, ed. 1855, iii, 27) that it "was merely to strengthen his own faction, which prevailed among the commonalty," though the step was too congruous with general developments not to be followed up. Compare the admissions of Green, pp. 151-53; Stubbs, ii, 96, 103; and the remark of Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, bk. iii, ch. iii) that the representation of burghs in the states-general ofallthe great European monarchies originated spontaneously in the desire of the kings for support against the barons. Freeman's statement (General Sketch of European History, p. 184) that under Simon we find "the whole English nation, nobles, clergy, and people, acting firmly together" against the king, is quite erroneous. Cp. Gneist,Geschichte des Self-government in England, 1863, p. 143. Dr. Gardiner (Student's History, p. 245), speaking of the presence of city burgesses and knights of the shire in the same Parliament under Edward III, writes that "in no other country in Europe would this have been possible." He seems to have been entirely unaware of the Spanish practice.
Reiterated claims had secured in the eighteenth century the general acceptance of the view that England "set the example" of admitting cities to representation in national diets (so Koch,Histor. View of the European Nations, Crichton's tr. 3rd ed. p. 46). But as to the priority of the institution in Spain, see U.R. Burke,History of Spain, Hume's ed. i, 370; and Prescott,Hist. of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, Kirk's ed. 1889, p. 10 and refs. As to its existence in Sicily (circa1232), see Milman,Hist. of Latin Christianity, vi, 154, proceeding on Gregorio,Considerazioni sopra la Storia di Sicilia, 1805 (ed. 2a, 1831-39, vol. ii, cap. v); and Von Raumer,Geschichte der Hohenstaufen(Aufg. 1857-58, B. vii, Haupt. 6, Bd. iii, p. 249). Cp. Von Reumont,The Carafas of Maddaloni, Eng. tr. 1854, p. 61, and refs. Frederick's assemblies, too, were calledParlamente. He in turn had, of course, been influenced by the practice, if not of Spain, at least of the Italian cities, which he wished his own to rival.
As to Simon's object in summoning burgesses, Hallam admits (Europe during the Middle Ages, ed. 1855, iii, 27) that it "was merely to strengthen his own faction, which prevailed among the commonalty," though the step was too congruous with general developments not to be followed up. Compare the admissions of Green, pp. 151-53; Stubbs, ii, 96, 103; and the remark of Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, bk. iii, ch. iii) that the representation of burghs in the states-general ofallthe great European monarchies originated spontaneously in the desire of the kings for support against the barons. Freeman's statement (General Sketch of European History, p. 184) that under Simon we find "the whole English nation, nobles, clergy, and people, acting firmly together" against the king, is quite erroneous. Cp. Gneist,Geschichte des Self-government in England, 1863, p. 143. Dr. Gardiner (Student's History, p. 245), speaking of the presence of city burgesses and knights of the shire in the same Parliament under Edward III, writes that "in no other country in Europe would this have been possible." He seems to have been entirely unaware of the Spanish practice.
As the roots of the temper of equality are weakened, the relative prestige of the king is heightened,[1024]provided that in a turbulent age he is strong enough for his functions; though, again, he runs new risks when, in peace, he is weak enough to make favourites, and thus sets up a source of jealousy in the act of surrendering some of his own special prestige. Then he doubles the force against him. History has generally represented favourites as unworthy; but there is noneed that they should be so in order to be detested; and whether we take Gaveston, or Buckingham, or Bute, we shall always find that the animosity of the favourite's assailants is so visibly excessive as to imply the inspiration of primordial envy quite as much as resentment of bad government. Whether it is noble denouncing favoured noble or Pym impeaching the Duke, there is always the note of primary animal jealousy.
§ 2
A very obvious and familiar general law, here to be noted afresh, is that the constant and extensive employment of energy in war retards civilisation, by leaving so much less for intellectual work. Some sociologists have arrived at the optimistic half-truths that (1) warfare yields good in the form of chivalry, and that (2) great wars like the Crusades promote civilisation by setting up communication between peoples. But it is not asked whether the good involved in chivalry could not conceivably have been attained without the warfare, and whether (as before noted) there could not have been commerce between East and West without the Crusades.[1025]The ancient Phœnicians had contrived as much in their day. Even the expansion of Italian commerce which followed on the Crusades went on the lines of a trade already in existence, as is proved once for all by the mere numbers of the vessels supplied to the crusaders by the Pisans, Genoese, and Venetians;[1026]and inasmuch as these republics fought furiously for the monopoly, each grabbing for special privileges,[1027]till Genoa overthrew Pisa, the total expansion must have been small, and the political disintegration great.
Nor was it on the whole otherwise with the spirit of chivalry, of which Guizot[1028]gives such an attractive picture. It was with the Church-made code of chivalrous morals as with the Church's code of Christian virtue: the ideal and practice were far asunder. As a matter of fact, the rules of chivalry were in part but the rules of prize-fighters,[1029]without which the game could not continuously be played; and they in no way affected the relations of the prize-fighters with other classes, or even their moral relations with each other save in the matter of fighting. To the "common herd" they were not only brutal but base,[1030]recognising no moral obligations inthat direction. So too the Crusades represent a maximum of strife yielding a minimum of intercourse, which (save for the spirit of religious hate which wrought the strife) could have been attained in peace in tenfold degree by the play of the energy spent in preliminary bloodshed.
It is, of course, idle to speak as if the age of warfare might have been different if somebody had anachronistically pointed out the possibilities; but it is worse than idle, on the other hand, to impute a laudable virtue to its impulses because other impulses followed on them. The task of the sociological historian is first to trace sequences, and then to reason from them to the problems of his own age, where most are praise and blame profitable exercises. The lesson of early English history is neither that chivalry is good nor that the feudal knights and kings were ruffians; but that certain things happened to retard civilisation because these had their way, and that similar results would tend to accrue if their ideals got uppermost among us now. Thus we have to note that during the long period of frequent dynastic and other civil war from the Conquest to the reign of Henry II there was almost no intellectual advance in England, the only traceable gain arising when the king was fighting abroad with his foreign forces. There was no such cause at stake as thrilled into fierce song the desperately battling Welsh; and though in the reign of Edward III we have the great poetic florescence of which Chaucer is the crown, the inspiration of that literature had come from or through France; and with the depression of France there came the Nemesis of depression in English culture.
The triumph of Edward over France was, broadly speaking, a result of financial rascality, inasmuch as he succeeded by means of the money which he had borrowed from the Florentine bankers, and which he never repaid.[1031]He was thus well equipped and financed when the French were not; and he was able to buy off the princes of the Empire on the north and east of the French frontier. But though the enterprise thus begun was continued by means of a home revenue raised mainly on the wool trade, the English attempt to dominate France ended in the inevitable way of imperialism, the humiliation of the victors duly following on the misery and humiliation of the vanquished. Only the depopulation of the Black Death prevented extreme misery among the English population; and theconquering king ends his life, as William had done before him, in isolation and ignominy.
It may or may not have been a gain that Edward's victories over France practically determined the adoption of the middle-class, gallicised English speech[1032]by the upper classes, who had hitherto been French-speaking, like the kings themselves. An Anglicising process, such as had been interrupted at the advent of Henry II, had set in when Normandy was lost (1204), to be again interrupted on the accession of Henry III, and resumed in the civil wars of his reign. But Edward I habitually spoke French, and so did his nobles. They had hitherto looked with true aristocratic scorn on the pretensions of the bourgeoisie—"rustici Londonienses qui se barones vocant ad nauseam," in the fashion satirised in all ages, down to our own; but in their new relation of hostility and superiority to Normandy and to France, they insensibly adopted the language that had been framed by that very bourgeoisie out of Saxon, and French and French idioms translated into Saxon.
Cp. Pearson,Fourteenth Century, pp. 222, 233. Prof. Earle's quasi-theory of the cause of the recovery of the native tongue (Philology of the English Tongue, 3rd ed. pp. 44, 66) is purely fanciful. In the end, as he admits, it was not any native dialect, but the artificial composite "King's English," much modified by French, that survived. It is noteworthy that many locutions which pass in the Bible for specially pure archaic English, as "fourscore and ten," are simply translations of a French idiom, itself ancient Celtic translated into Romance. (Cp. theIntroduction to the Study of the History of Language, by Strong, Logeman, and Wheeler, 1891, p. 393.)The Rev. W. Denton, in his learned and instructive survey of the subject (England in the Fifteenth Century, 1888, pp. 1-7), remarks that "from some cause, now difficult to trace, great encouragement was given to French in the reign of Henry III. Probably the foreign tastes and partialities of the king had something to do with this" (p. 4). They certainly had. As soon as he could wield power, "hordes of hungry Poitevins and Bretons were at once summoned over to occupy the royal castles and fill the judicial and administrative posts about the Court" (Green,Short Hist., ch. iii, § 5, p. 140), as had happened before under Henry II. Mr. Denton rightly notes (p. 6) how "in the reign of Henry III the descendants of Norman barons, and the sons of Anglo-Norman fathers, were proud of the name of Englishmen, and took up arms against the king's Norman andAngevin favourites, whom they despised as foreigners." This is the true line of causation. There is doubtless something in the theory that the general resort to the use of English in the schools was a result of the Black Death—the majority of the clergy being destroyed and the new teachers being unable to instruct in French (Gasquet,The Great Pestilence, 1893, p. 202); but there were certainly other causes involved. Mr. de Montmorency (State Intervention in English Education, 1902, pp. 19-23) develops Gasquet's argument with much force, noting further that many of the foreign priests who survived forsook their charges. It might be added that the native peasantry necessarily counted for more in a social as in an economic sense, after the great fall in their numbers. But the fact that the Death came in the period of the successful French wars of Edward III is clearly of capital importance. But for the moral reaction from these wars, the tendency would have been to procure new relays of French priests.It is indeed conceivable that, but for hostilities with France, French would have steadily gained ground through literature, depressing and discrediting the vernacular. On this view it was the continuance of resistance by the Welsh that probably prevented the absorption of the Saxon speech by that of the conquered British; and it is similarly arguable that it was the relation of hostility between the Carlovingian Franks and the more easterly Germans that determined the supremacy of the Romance speech in French. The point is worth psychological investigation.
Cp. Pearson,Fourteenth Century, pp. 222, 233. Prof. Earle's quasi-theory of the cause of the recovery of the native tongue (Philology of the English Tongue, 3rd ed. pp. 44, 66) is purely fanciful. In the end, as he admits, it was not any native dialect, but the artificial composite "King's English," much modified by French, that survived. It is noteworthy that many locutions which pass in the Bible for specially pure archaic English, as "fourscore and ten," are simply translations of a French idiom, itself ancient Celtic translated into Romance. (Cp. theIntroduction to the Study of the History of Language, by Strong, Logeman, and Wheeler, 1891, p. 393.)
The Rev. W. Denton, in his learned and instructive survey of the subject (England in the Fifteenth Century, 1888, pp. 1-7), remarks that "from some cause, now difficult to trace, great encouragement was given to French in the reign of Henry III. Probably the foreign tastes and partialities of the king had something to do with this" (p. 4). They certainly had. As soon as he could wield power, "hordes of hungry Poitevins and Bretons were at once summoned over to occupy the royal castles and fill the judicial and administrative posts about the Court" (Green,Short Hist., ch. iii, § 5, p. 140), as had happened before under Henry II. Mr. Denton rightly notes (p. 6) how "in the reign of Henry III the descendants of Norman barons, and the sons of Anglo-Norman fathers, were proud of the name of Englishmen, and took up arms against the king's Norman andAngevin favourites, whom they despised as foreigners." This is the true line of causation. There is doubtless something in the theory that the general resort to the use of English in the schools was a result of the Black Death—the majority of the clergy being destroyed and the new teachers being unable to instruct in French (Gasquet,The Great Pestilence, 1893, p. 202); but there were certainly other causes involved. Mr. de Montmorency (State Intervention in English Education, 1902, pp. 19-23) develops Gasquet's argument with much force, noting further that many of the foreign priests who survived forsook their charges. It might be added that the native peasantry necessarily counted for more in a social as in an economic sense, after the great fall in their numbers. But the fact that the Death came in the period of the successful French wars of Edward III is clearly of capital importance. But for the moral reaction from these wars, the tendency would have been to procure new relays of French priests.
It is indeed conceivable that, but for hostilities with France, French would have steadily gained ground through literature, depressing and discrediting the vernacular. On this view it was the continuance of resistance by the Welsh that probably prevented the absorption of the Saxon speech by that of the conquered British; and it is similarly arguable that it was the relation of hostility between the Carlovingian Franks and the more easterly Germans that determined the supremacy of the Romance speech in French. The point is worth psychological investigation.
Though, however, Chaucer's own new-English work is part of the result, the intellectual gain stops there for the time being. No nation, from Rome to Napoleonic France, ever helped its own higher culture by destroying other States.[1033]The French wars of Henry V were not less injurious to English civilisation[1034]than the desperate civil wars which followed them, when English medieval culture reached, relatively to the rest of Europe, its lowest point.[1035]And these wars, it is always important to remember, were the result of the young king's acting on the doctrine (doubtfully ascribed to his father, but in any case all too easily acquired by kings) that whereas peace gave headway to domestic sedition, foreign war unified the mass of the people and fixed them to their leader. The shameless aggression on France did so unify them for the moment, as imperialism among an unmoralised public may always be trustedto do; and it left them more demoralised and divided than ever, in due sequence. In all likelihood it was the new bribe of foreign plunder that first drew men away from Lollardism, considered as an outcome of economic discontent, thus preparing the collapse of the movement on its moral side.[1036]One man's egoism could thus sway the whole nation's evolution for evil,[1037]setting up for it the ideal which haloed him, and which survived him in virtue of the accident that the Nemesis of his course fell upon his successors rather than on him.
§ 3
In the matter of plebeian subjection, the second half of the fourteenth century supplies the proof of the tendency of the period of war. The great gain to the serfs in that period was the result of the depopulation caused by the Black Death (1348-50)—a relation of cause and effect which is still ignored by some writers, in their concern to insist that English labour was once better off than at present. But it was later in the same half-century that the rising of the "Jacquerie," which appears to have been in its origin strictly a revolt against taxation,[1038]was so bloodily repressed. The manner of the revolt sufficiently proves that the peasantry had gained new heart with the improvement in their lot which followed on the pestilence, in spite of laws to keep down wages;[1039]but even this improvement could not strengthen them sufficiently to make them hold their own politically in 1381 against the aristocracy, gentry, and middle class, now hardened in class insolence. It would seem as if those who rose to the status of tenants[1040]after the depopulation sought in their turn to keep down those who remained landless servitors. After the southern and eastern risings had been crushed, the men of Essex were told by Richard, who had given them charters of freedom and immediately afterwards revoked them, inclined as he was to protect the serfs in a measure against their masters, that "bondsmen they had been and bondsmen they should remain, inworse bondage than before"; and the following Parliament declared that the landowners would never consent to the freeing of the serfs, "were they all to die for it in a day." It is noteworthy, on the side of economics, that despite this temper serfage did gradually die out, the people being for long unable to multiply up to the old level, by reason of restraint, ill-usage, civil war, the decline of tillage and the grouping of holdings, and the high death-rate. Jack Cade's rebellion, in 1450, indicated the persistence of the democratic spirit, contending as it did for the suppression of the system under which the nobles plundered the kingdom while the king was imbecile.
The question as to the rate at which the population recovered from the Black Death has been discussed by Prof. Thorold Rogers, Mr. Seebohm, and Prof. Cunningham (see the latter'sGrowth of English Industry and Commerce, 1891, i, 304). Prof. Rogers, on the one hand, maintains that by 1377, when the tax rolls seem to give a population of about two and a half millions (cp. Dunton,England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 130), the population had recovered all it had lost in the Plague, he being of opinion that the England of that age could not at any time support more than two and a half millions. Mr. Seebohm, with whom Dr. Cunningham substantially concurs (see also Pearson,Fourteenth Century, p. 249, and Gasquet,The Great Pestilence, 1893, p. 194), thinks that the return of the Plague in 1361 and 1369, and the unsettled state of the country, must have prevented recuperation; and, accepting the loose calculation that the Plague destroyed half the population (Mr. Pearson says "one-half or two-thirds"; Dr. Gasquet endorses the general view that "fully one half" were destroyed), he concludes that the population before 1348 may have been five millions.The truth surely lies between these extremes. That the population should not at all have recovered in twenty-five years is extremely unlikely. That it should have restored a loss of thirty-three per cent in twenty-five years, which is what Prof. Rogers's position amounts to, is still more unlikely (see hisSix Centuries of Work and Wages, pp. 223, 226, where the mortality is estimated at one-third). It is besides utterly incongruous with Prof. Rogers's own repeated assertion that "during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries the population of England and Wales was almost stationary" (Industrial and Commercial History of England, pp. 46, 49;Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 337;Economic Interpretation of History, p. 53). How could a medieval population conceivably stand for half a century at a given figure, then, having been reduced by one-third, replace the loss in twenty-fiveyears, and thereafter continue to subsist without further increase for two centuries more?On the other hand, there is a natural tendency in every suddenly depleted population to reproduce itself for a time at a quickened rate; and in the England of the latter half of the fourteenth century the conditions would encourage such an effort. The lack of house-room and settlement which normally checked increase (cp. Stubbs, § 493) was remedied for a large number of persons; and the general feeling would be all in favour of marriage and repopulation (cp. Rogers,Six Centuries, p. 226, where, however, evidence obviously bad is accepted as to multiplied births), though just after the Plague there would be a great stimulus to the extension of pasture, since that needed fewer hands than tillage.On the whole, we may reasonably surmise that the population before 1348 was, not five millions, but between three and four millions (so Green, ch. v, § 4, p. 241, who, however, takes the somewhat excessive view that "more than one-half were swept away," and further, p. 239, that the population "seems to have all but tripled since the Conquest"), and that it was prevented regaining that figure in the next century by the economic preference of sheep-farming to tillage. Mr. Rogers expressly admits (Six Centuries, p. 233) that "the price of labour, proclamations and statutes notwithstanding, did not ever fall to its old rates," and repeatedly asserts that "the labourers remained masters of the situation." On his own principles, this goes to prove that their numbers remained lower than of old. He infers a "considerable loss of life" in the famine of 1315-16 from the immediate rise of agricultural wages (from 23 to 30 per cent), of which on the average 20 per cent was permanent. Here there is a presumption that even before 1315 the population was greater than afterwards. Yet again he states (p. 326, etc.) that "thefifteenthcentury and the first quarter of thesixteenthwere the golden age of the English labourer"—a proposition which staggers credence. Cp. W.J. Corbett, inSocial England, ii, 382-84.It is impossible, however, to attain demonstration either on that head or as regards the numbers of the population in the periods under notice. Mr. Rogers's claims to give decisive evidence show a serious misconception of what constitutes proof; and there is special reason to distrust his conclusion that population was no greater at the end of Elizabeth's reign than in that of Henry IV. Cp. Mr. Gibbins'sIndustrial History of England, pp. 107-108. Prof. J.E. Symes (inSocial England, iii, 128, 129) decides that a "great increase of the population undoubtedly took place in the reign of Henry VIII," adopting the estimate that the total at the death of Henry VII was about two and a half millions, and atthe death of Henry VIII about four millions. As to the population at the Conquest, see Sharon Turner'sHistory of the Anglo-Saxons, bk. viii, c. 9, vol. iii, and Dunton, as cited, pp. 128-29. It was then probably below two millions; and in the reign of Edward II it may well have been over three millions; for Bishop Pecock about 1450 (cited by Dunton, p. 130note) speaks of a long-continued decrease, such as would be caused by the wars in France and at home. But the assertion of Tyndale in 1532 (id.ib.), that the population was then less by a third than in the time of Richard II, must be dismissed as a delusion set up by the phenomena of agrarian depopulation in certain districts. On this see below, p. 405.
The question as to the rate at which the population recovered from the Black Death has been discussed by Prof. Thorold Rogers, Mr. Seebohm, and Prof. Cunningham (see the latter'sGrowth of English Industry and Commerce, 1891, i, 304). Prof. Rogers, on the one hand, maintains that by 1377, when the tax rolls seem to give a population of about two and a half millions (cp. Dunton,England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 130), the population had recovered all it had lost in the Plague, he being of opinion that the England of that age could not at any time support more than two and a half millions. Mr. Seebohm, with whom Dr. Cunningham substantially concurs (see also Pearson,Fourteenth Century, p. 249, and Gasquet,The Great Pestilence, 1893, p. 194), thinks that the return of the Plague in 1361 and 1369, and the unsettled state of the country, must have prevented recuperation; and, accepting the loose calculation that the Plague destroyed half the population (Mr. Pearson says "one-half or two-thirds"; Dr. Gasquet endorses the general view that "fully one half" were destroyed), he concludes that the population before 1348 may have been five millions.
The truth surely lies between these extremes. That the population should not at all have recovered in twenty-five years is extremely unlikely. That it should have restored a loss of thirty-three per cent in twenty-five years, which is what Prof. Rogers's position amounts to, is still more unlikely (see hisSix Centuries of Work and Wages, pp. 223, 226, where the mortality is estimated at one-third). It is besides utterly incongruous with Prof. Rogers's own repeated assertion that "during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries the population of England and Wales was almost stationary" (Industrial and Commercial History of England, pp. 46, 49;Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 337;Economic Interpretation of History, p. 53). How could a medieval population conceivably stand for half a century at a given figure, then, having been reduced by one-third, replace the loss in twenty-fiveyears, and thereafter continue to subsist without further increase for two centuries more?
On the other hand, there is a natural tendency in every suddenly depleted population to reproduce itself for a time at a quickened rate; and in the England of the latter half of the fourteenth century the conditions would encourage such an effort. The lack of house-room and settlement which normally checked increase (cp. Stubbs, § 493) was remedied for a large number of persons; and the general feeling would be all in favour of marriage and repopulation (cp. Rogers,Six Centuries, p. 226, where, however, evidence obviously bad is accepted as to multiplied births), though just after the Plague there would be a great stimulus to the extension of pasture, since that needed fewer hands than tillage.
On the whole, we may reasonably surmise that the population before 1348 was, not five millions, but between three and four millions (so Green, ch. v, § 4, p. 241, who, however, takes the somewhat excessive view that "more than one-half were swept away," and further, p. 239, that the population "seems to have all but tripled since the Conquest"), and that it was prevented regaining that figure in the next century by the economic preference of sheep-farming to tillage. Mr. Rogers expressly admits (Six Centuries, p. 233) that "the price of labour, proclamations and statutes notwithstanding, did not ever fall to its old rates," and repeatedly asserts that "the labourers remained masters of the situation." On his own principles, this goes to prove that their numbers remained lower than of old. He infers a "considerable loss of life" in the famine of 1315-16 from the immediate rise of agricultural wages (from 23 to 30 per cent), of which on the average 20 per cent was permanent. Here there is a presumption that even before 1315 the population was greater than afterwards. Yet again he states (p. 326, etc.) that "thefifteenthcentury and the first quarter of thesixteenthwere the golden age of the English labourer"—a proposition which staggers credence. Cp. W.J. Corbett, inSocial England, ii, 382-84.
It is impossible, however, to attain demonstration either on that head or as regards the numbers of the population in the periods under notice. Mr. Rogers's claims to give decisive evidence show a serious misconception of what constitutes proof; and there is special reason to distrust his conclusion that population was no greater at the end of Elizabeth's reign than in that of Henry IV. Cp. Mr. Gibbins'sIndustrial History of England, pp. 107-108. Prof. J.E. Symes (inSocial England, iii, 128, 129) decides that a "great increase of the population undoubtedly took place in the reign of Henry VIII," adopting the estimate that the total at the death of Henry VII was about two and a half millions, and atthe death of Henry VIII about four millions. As to the population at the Conquest, see Sharon Turner'sHistory of the Anglo-Saxons, bk. viii, c. 9, vol. iii, and Dunton, as cited, pp. 128-29. It was then probably below two millions; and in the reign of Edward II it may well have been over three millions; for Bishop Pecock about 1450 (cited by Dunton, p. 130note) speaks of a long-continued decrease, such as would be caused by the wars in France and at home. But the assertion of Tyndale in 1532 (id.ib.), that the population was then less by a third than in the time of Richard II, must be dismissed as a delusion set up by the phenomena of agrarian depopulation in certain districts. On this see below, p. 405.
It is important to note, finally, that it was in the age of raised standard of comfort that there occurred the first wide diffusion of critical heresy in England. Wiclif's popular Lollardry was one phase of a movement that went deeper in thought and further afield in social reform than his, since he himself felt driven to confute certain opponents of belief in the Scriptures, and at the same time to repudiate the doctrine that vassals might resist tyrant lords.[1041]Had he not done so, he might have had a less peaceful end; but it is clear that many men were in the temper to apply to lay matters the demand for reform which he restricted to matters ecclesiastical.[1042]John Ball's rising, however, promptly elicited the much superior strength of the feudal military class; and though in 1395 there were still Lollards to petition to Parliament for the abolition of "unnecessary trades," as well as war and capital punishment and the Catholic practices afterwards rejected by Protestantism, their Utopia was as hopeless as that of the insurgent peasants. Even had the invasion of France not come about to bribe and demoralise the nation at large, turning it from domestic criticism to the plunder of a neighbouring State, the nobility of the period were utterly incapable of an intellectual ideal; and any sympathy shown by any section of them for Lollardry was the merest opportunism, proceeding on resentment of Papal exactions or on a premature hope of plundering the Church.[1043]The moment Lollardry openly leant towards criticism of nobility as well as clergy, they were ready to give it up to destruction; and the determining cause of the fall of Richard II was that, besides alienating the nobles at once by maintaining a peace policy, and by refusing tolet them go to all lengths in oppressing the labourers, he alienated the clergy by sheltering the Lollards.[1044]It was the clergy who turned the balance, embracing the cause of Henry IV, who in turn systematically supported them,[1045]as did his son after him. Henry V, the national hero-king, and his father were the first burners of "Protestant" heretics; and it was under Henry IV, in 1401, that there was passed the Act suppressing the voluntary schools of the Lollards.[1046]Doubtless it was a push of the Lollards that carried the later Act of 1406, permitting all men and women to send their sons and daughters "to any school that pleaseth them in the realm;"[1047]but the limitation of school-keeping to the Church was an effective means of limiting the education given; and "by 1430 the Church had recovered from the Lollard revolt against her universal authority."
Mr. Lecky, in his theory of the English aristocracy, credits the nobility with an "eminently popular character" from time immemorial, and cites Comines as to "the singular humanity of the nobles to the people during the civil wars" (History of England in the Eighteenth Century, small ed. i, 212, 213). The nobility, in the circumstances, had need to treat the people better than those of France normally did (which was what Comines was thinking of). Their own wealth—what was left of it—came from the people, to whom, further, they looked for followers. And Comines in the same passage (bk. v, ch. xx) notes that the English people were "more than ordinarily jealous" of their nobility. Of course, the difference between French and English practice dates further back, as above noted.Similarly misleading is Mr. Lecky's statement that "the Great Charter had been won by the barons, but ... it guaranteed the rights of all freemen." Mr. Gardiner expressly points out (Student's History, p. 182; cp. hisIntroduction to English History, pp. 66-67) that the Charter "was won by a combination between all classes of freemen." London had harboured and aided the barons' force; and the clergy were closely concerned. (Cp. McKechnie,Magna Carta, 1905, p. 41.) Therepresentative assembly summoned by John in 1213 stood for the combination of the three classes. Green (Short History, illust. ed. i, 242, 243) uses language which countenances Mr. Lecky, but shows (pp. 235-43) the need the barons felt for aid, and the influence of the Church and the traders. Compare the language of his longer history (1885, i, 244), and his express admission as to the depression the baronage had undergone a century later (id.p. 300). Dr. Stubbs (Const. Hist.i, 571, 583) also indicates that the people co-operated, though he uses expressions (pp. 570, 579) which obscure the facts in Mr. Lecky's favour. Guizot (Essais, p. 282) recognises that the movement was national. Buckle, too, made the point clear long ago (3-vol. ed. ii, 114-20; 1-vol. ed. pp. 350-54). But it is noted even in what he called "the wretched work of Delolme," and was in Buckle's day a generally accepted truth. Cp. Ch. de Rémusat,L'Angleterre du 18ième siècle, 1856, i, 33.It is worth noting in this connection that the Magna Carta, considered in itself, is a rather deceptive historical document. Not only did it need the defeat of John and his German and Flemish allies by the French at Bouvines to enable even the combined lords and commons and clergy to extort the Charter, but the combination was being progressively destroyed by John, by means of his army of French mercenaries, when the barons in despair persuaded the French king to send an invading force, which was able to land owing to the ruin of John's fleet in a storm. Thereupon John's French troops deserted him. Cp. Green, pp. 122-26; Stubbs, ii, 3, 9-16; and McKechnie, pp. 53-57, as to the King's energy and the weakness and inner divisions of the national combination. Thus it was indirectly to French action that England owed first the Magna Carta and then the check upon the King's vengeance, as it was to the Frenchman, Simon de Montfort, later, that it owed the initiative of a three-class Parliament. And, indeed, but for the King's death, the constitutional cause might well have collapsed in the end.
Mr. Lecky, in his theory of the English aristocracy, credits the nobility with an "eminently popular character" from time immemorial, and cites Comines as to "the singular humanity of the nobles to the people during the civil wars" (History of England in the Eighteenth Century, small ed. i, 212, 213). The nobility, in the circumstances, had need to treat the people better than those of France normally did (which was what Comines was thinking of). Their own wealth—what was left of it—came from the people, to whom, further, they looked for followers. And Comines in the same passage (bk. v, ch. xx) notes that the English people were "more than ordinarily jealous" of their nobility. Of course, the difference between French and English practice dates further back, as above noted.
Similarly misleading is Mr. Lecky's statement that "the Great Charter had been won by the barons, but ... it guaranteed the rights of all freemen." Mr. Gardiner expressly points out (Student's History, p. 182; cp. hisIntroduction to English History, pp. 66-67) that the Charter "was won by a combination between all classes of freemen." London had harboured and aided the barons' force; and the clergy were closely concerned. (Cp. McKechnie,Magna Carta, 1905, p. 41.) Therepresentative assembly summoned by John in 1213 stood for the combination of the three classes. Green (Short History, illust. ed. i, 242, 243) uses language which countenances Mr. Lecky, but shows (pp. 235-43) the need the barons felt for aid, and the influence of the Church and the traders. Compare the language of his longer history (1885, i, 244), and his express admission as to the depression the baronage had undergone a century later (id.p. 300). Dr. Stubbs (Const. Hist.i, 571, 583) also indicates that the people co-operated, though he uses expressions (pp. 570, 579) which obscure the facts in Mr. Lecky's favour. Guizot (Essais, p. 282) recognises that the movement was national. Buckle, too, made the point clear long ago (3-vol. ed. ii, 114-20; 1-vol. ed. pp. 350-54). But it is noted even in what he called "the wretched work of Delolme," and was in Buckle's day a generally accepted truth. Cp. Ch. de Rémusat,L'Angleterre du 18ième siècle, 1856, i, 33.
It is worth noting in this connection that the Magna Carta, considered in itself, is a rather deceptive historical document. Not only did it need the defeat of John and his German and Flemish allies by the French at Bouvines to enable even the combined lords and commons and clergy to extort the Charter, but the combination was being progressively destroyed by John, by means of his army of French mercenaries, when the barons in despair persuaded the French king to send an invading force, which was able to land owing to the ruin of John's fleet in a storm. Thereupon John's French troops deserted him. Cp. Green, pp. 122-26; Stubbs, ii, 3, 9-16; and McKechnie, pp. 53-57, as to the King's energy and the weakness and inner divisions of the national combination. Thus it was indirectly to French action that England owed first the Magna Carta and then the check upon the King's vengeance, as it was to the Frenchman, Simon de Montfort, later, that it owed the initiative of a three-class Parliament. And, indeed, but for the King's death, the constitutional cause might well have collapsed in the end.
§ 4
The Wars of the Roses, by destroying in large part the nobility, relatively advantaged the middle class,[1048]as well as the king whose reign followed. Already under Edward IV the powers of Parliament were much curtailed, and indeed paralysed;[1049]this, which is chargedas a sin upon the monarch, being the natural result of his gain of power on the ruin of the baronage. Edward IV only did what Edward I and III would have done if in their situation it had been possible, and what Edward II and Richard II sought to do, but were too weak to compass. The fourth Edward's situation and his force of will together made his power. Not only was the nobility half exterminated, but the trading and middle classes alike desired a strong ruler who should maintain order, by whatever straining of constitutional forms—the invariable sequel of anarchy—at least up to the point of intolerable taxation.[1050]The actual increase of commerce during the wars[1051]is a good proof of the separateness of class interests, and of the decline of the military ideal. Much of it would seem to have been due to the example set by the Hansa merchants, who had factories at London,[1052]Boston, and Lynn, and whose famous League was then powerful enough to force from Edward IV a renewal of its English privileges in return for a concession of a share in the Baltic trade.[1053]In any case, the new development was on the old lines of energetic self-seeking; and already in the reign of Edward IV the cloth manufacture was carried on by capitalists in the modern spirit.[1054]And as the tyrannies of the king were less general and oppressive than the tyrannies of the nobles, the erection of the regal power on the collapse of the old class cohesion gave a new scope for the strife of classes among and for themselves. No national ideal existed (as apart from the readiness to unite in hate of a foreign nation) in monarchic England any more than in old republican Greece or modern republican Italy. The trade gilds were strictly self-seeking institutions, aiming at keeping down the number of competitors in each trade, without providing in any way for the aspirants. Unitary egoism was the universal mainspring. The Church sought above all things to be protected against heresy; the town and trade corporations sought protection for their privileges; and the landowners sought to be supported against the labourers, who from the time of Henry VI are found revolting against enclosures of public land, and were temporarily reinforced by the disbanded retainers of thebarons. Every modern force of social disintegration was already nascent.
Cp. Cunningham,Growth of English Industry and Commerce, i, 395-96, 413, 425; Stubbs,Constitutional History, §§ 486-92 (iii, 586-616). "In every great town there was, every few years, something of a struggle, something of a crisis ... between trade and craft, or craft and craft, or magistracy and commons" (Stubbs, iii, 616). Prof. Ashley (Introd. to Econ. Hist.i, 79) disputes that there was "any such contest in this country between burghers and artisans" as took place on the continent; and cites another passage from Bishop Stubbs (§ 131; i, 453) partly suggesting such a view. But Prof. Ashley goes on (pp. 79-84) to show that therewasa good deal of struggling even in England between burghers and artisans. Cp. his conclusions, pp. 6-10, 42, as to the process of evolution towards at least formal unity. It is to be noted that the gilds dispensed charity (Stubbs, iii, 616, 619).
Cp. Cunningham,Growth of English Industry and Commerce, i, 395-96, 413, 425; Stubbs,Constitutional History, §§ 486-92 (iii, 586-616). "In every great town there was, every few years, something of a struggle, something of a crisis ... between trade and craft, or craft and craft, or magistracy and commons" (Stubbs, iii, 616). Prof. Ashley (Introd. to Econ. Hist.i, 79) disputes that there was "any such contest in this country between burghers and artisans" as took place on the continent; and cites another passage from Bishop Stubbs (§ 131; i, 453) partly suggesting such a view. But Prof. Ashley goes on (pp. 79-84) to show that therewasa good deal of struggling even in England between burghers and artisans. Cp. his conclusions, pp. 6-10, 42, as to the process of evolution towards at least formal unity. It is to be noted that the gilds dispensed charity (Stubbs, iii, 616, 619).
§ 5
Under Henry VII the same conditions subsisted. There was no sufficiently strong body of aristocracy left to rebel effectually against his exactions, though exactions had always been the great cause of discontent; and, all rivals collapsing, there grew up round the new dynasty that hedging superstition which had always counted for much, and which was in England to become a main factor in politics. Henry VII wrought assiduously and astutely to build up his power, seeking no less to increase the merchant class than to depress the aristocracy. From both he thus drew his revenue; from the latter by exaction; from the former by customs duties on the trade he carefully encouraged (as Richard had done before him), finding in such revenue his surest income.[1055]Gradually the monarchic system was made firm. Richard III owed his failure mainly to the sense of the illegality of his position; and the same inversion of the superstition troubled Henry VII in turn, as it had done Henry IV. It seems to have been his possession of the one train of artillery in the kingdom that mainly preserved his power against rebels.[1056]But with Henry VIII the dynasty was secure; and from this point onward the monarchic spell can be seen very clearly in English affairs. The instinct of "loyalty," a moral prepossession religiouslysanctioned, becomes a social force as truly as the simpler instincts of self-seeking and class spirit. By virtue of it, and of his own force of brute will, Henry VIII could commit violences of almost every description, his own personality having some of the characteristics most likely to intensify the spell. Energy such as his hypnotised or terrorised all but the strongest. Even his crimes were not such as revolted average sympathy: the suppression of the Church, as in nearly all the "Teutonic" countries, was a direct bribe to many of the nobles and landowners,[1057]and for the multitude meant the overthrow of an alien jurisdiction; and his domestic procedure satisfied the popular ethic which demurs to mistresses but respects bigamy, and finds a wife's adultery more criminal than her husband's murder of her. For the rest, he had at the beginning of his reign executed his father's minions, and conciliated the scholars, who made opinion. Yet under Henry VIII we find middle-class England, heavily taxed for war, beginning to stand on its rights as upper-class England had done in earlier times; and in the new England as in the old the weakest class went to the wall. The ever-increasing mass of poor, thrown idle and hungry by the continuous rise of sheep-farms in the place of tillage, were the natural enemies of the governing class as well as of the landowners; and in cruelly repressing them the monarchy strengthened the landowners' allegiance.
Thus arose the typical personal monarchy, employing middle-class ministers, who served it zealously and with increasing power, Thomas Cromwell far outgoing Wolsey. The passing coalition of nobles and yeomen in the north in the cause of the old religion was followed by the crushing of the remains of the old nobility, now being rapidly replaced by the new, established on the plunder of the Church. It is to be noted that in England, as in so many other countries, the virtual subjection of the old nobility to the crown was for a time followed by stirrings of new life in all directions, as if feudalism had everywhere meant a repression of possible energy. The process is seen in Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella;[1058]in France under Richelieu and Mazarin; in Sweden under Gustavus Vasa; and is thus plainly a product not of doctrinal Protestantism, as some suppose, but of the comparative social and political liberty that follows on the restriction of ubiquitous feudal tyranny, so muchmore searching and pervasive a force than the simpler tyranny of the feudal king. It may be doubted, indeed, whether the Tudor suppression of the power of the old aristocracy was not as vital a determination of the nation's course as the overthrow of the Catholic Church.
As against Mr. Lecky's indiscriminate panegyric of the English nobility, it is instructive to note Hallam's judgment on the peerage under Henry VIII: "They yielded to every mandate of his imperious will ... they are responsible for the illegal trial, for the iniquitous attainder, for the sanguinary statute, for the tyranny which they sanctioned by law, and for that which they permitted to subsist without law. Nor was this selfish and pusillanimous subserviency more characteristic of the minions of Henry's favour than of the representatives of ancient and honourable houses, the Norfolks, the Arundels, and the Shrewsburys. We trace the noble statesmen of these reigns concurring in all the inconsistencies of the revolutions; supporting all the religions of Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth; adjudging the death of Somerset to gratify Northumberland, and of Northumberland to redeem their participation in his fault; setting up the usurpation of Lady Jane, and abandoning her on the first doubt of success, constant only in the rapacious acquisition of estates and honours from whatever source, and in adherence to the present power" (Constitutional History, 10th ed. i, 48).
As against Mr. Lecky's indiscriminate panegyric of the English nobility, it is instructive to note Hallam's judgment on the peerage under Henry VIII: "They yielded to every mandate of his imperious will ... they are responsible for the illegal trial, for the iniquitous attainder, for the sanguinary statute, for the tyranny which they sanctioned by law, and for that which they permitted to subsist without law. Nor was this selfish and pusillanimous subserviency more characteristic of the minions of Henry's favour than of the representatives of ancient and honourable houses, the Norfolks, the Arundels, and the Shrewsburys. We trace the noble statesmen of these reigns concurring in all the inconsistencies of the revolutions; supporting all the religions of Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth; adjudging the death of Somerset to gratify Northumberland, and of Northumberland to redeem their participation in his fault; setting up the usurpation of Lady Jane, and abandoning her on the first doubt of success, constant only in the rapacious acquisition of estates and honours from whatever source, and in adherence to the present power" (Constitutional History, 10th ed. i, 48).
§ 6
And now effectively arose the new political force of Protestant and Bible-worshipping fanaticism, turning the democratic instinct into its channel, and complicating afresh the old issues of classes. It is not to be forgotten that this was a beginning of popular culture, inasmuch as the desire to read the worshipped book must have counted for more than anything else in making reading common.[1059]
Practically, however, the opposed causes of Lollardism and orthodoxy may at the outset be regarded as the democratic and the conservative instincts, taking these channels in the absence of political development and knowledge.[1060]In imperial Rome, thespread of Christianity was substantially a movement of class cohesion among the illiterate slaves, aliens, and workers, the instinct of attraction taking this form when political grounds of union were lacking. So it was in the England of the period under notice; but whereas in imperial Rome the autocracy went far to annul class distinctions, and so helped the slaves' cult to absorb superstitious patricians, especially women, whose wealth maintained the poor of the Church as the emperor's doles had maintained the poor of the State, in England the vigour of class distinctions fostered differences of sect. The phenomena of political Protestantism in the Reformation era in England, as in Germany, offer many parallels to those of the French Revolution. The revolt of many priests from the routine and restrictions of their office is notable in both epochs. On the other hand, the mass of the well-to-do classes, being unprepared for change by any educative process, were as ready to restore Catholic usages as were those of France later; and when the innovating forces, consisting in a little reasoning and much rapine, had run to seed and to corruption under the Protectorate and Edward VI, the reaction towards the old forms set in powerfully. Nothing, however, could carry it to the length of restoring the Catholic Church's property; and the failure of Mary was due not nearly so much to Protestant dislike of the ceremonial of Rome as to the grip of the new owners on the confiscated lands. In England as in Scotland, in Germany, in the Scandinavian States, and in Switzerland, though Henry stood for a special initiative, the driving forces of the Reformation were mainly those of wealth-seeking; and the financial records of the Protectorate show a conspiracy of plunder to which the annals of monarchy could offer no parallel. The Protestant aristocracy simply encouraged the new Lollardism by way of gaining their personal ends, as they had crushed the old because it menaced their property.
"Crown lands to the value of five millions of our modern money had been granted away to the friends of Somerset and Warwick. The royal expenditure had mounted in seventy years to more than four times its previous total" (Green, ch. vii, § 1, and p. 353). A system of wholesale corruption and waste had grown up under Henry VIII, who, after all his confiscations, was fain to seek funds by adulterating his coin. So Edward VI, the church and college plunder being gone, had to be grantedtaxes on manufactures which tended to stop them. "Yet I cannot find," says Sir Roger Twysden, "all this made the crown rich. Hayward observes Edward's debts were £251,000—at least said to be so. Camden, that Queen Elizabeth received the crownafflictissima...aere alieno quod Henricus VIII et Edwardus VI contraxerant oppressa.... I cannot but reckon the treasure spent in fifteen years, more than half the kingdom to be sold" (Historical Vindication of the Church of England, ed. 1847, pp. 4, 5). So obviously had the treasure gone into the pockets of courtiers and their hangers-on, that the fact gives some excuse for the habitual miserliness of Elizabeth.
"Crown lands to the value of five millions of our modern money had been granted away to the friends of Somerset and Warwick. The royal expenditure had mounted in seventy years to more than four times its previous total" (Green, ch. vii, § 1, and p. 353). A system of wholesale corruption and waste had grown up under Henry VIII, who, after all his confiscations, was fain to seek funds by adulterating his coin. So Edward VI, the church and college plunder being gone, had to be grantedtaxes on manufactures which tended to stop them. "Yet I cannot find," says Sir Roger Twysden, "all this made the crown rich. Hayward observes Edward's debts were £251,000—at least said to be so. Camden, that Queen Elizabeth received the crownafflictissima...aere alieno quod Henricus VIII et Edwardus VI contraxerant oppressa.... I cannot but reckon the treasure spent in fifteen years, more than half the kingdom to be sold" (Historical Vindication of the Church of England, ed. 1847, pp. 4, 5). So obviously had the treasure gone into the pockets of courtiers and their hangers-on, that the fact gives some excuse for the habitual miserliness of Elizabeth.
A new channel had thus been made for the forces of union and strife. An instructive part of the process was the movement towards a new sacerdotalism on the side of the new Calvinistic clergy—a movement much more clearly visible in Scotland than in England. Whether or not it be true that "it was by no means the intention of Knox and his fellow-labourers to erect a new hierarchy upon the ruins of the old,"[1061]it is clear that his immediate successors counted on wielding a power strictly analogous to that of the papacy. Andrew Melville, in haughty colloquy with King James and his councillors, threw down his Hebrew Bible on the table as his authority for his demands. Since all alike professed to accept it, the next step in the argument plainly was that it lay with the presbyter to interpret the sacred book;[1062]and Melville, who took the king by the sleeve and called him "God's silly [= weak] vassal," was quite ready to play Gregory to James's Henry had he been able. The effective check lay in the new Church's lack of revenue, the lands of the old Church having of course been retained by the nobles, who carried through the Reformation simply in order to get them. But even in its poverty, with an indifferent nobility[1063]in possession of the feudal power, the Scottish clergy were nearly as tyrannous socially as their teacher Calvin had been at Geneva; and for nearly two hundred years Scottish life was no freer and much more joyless, under the new presbyter, than under the old priest, though the democratic machinery of the Kirk obviated any need or opportunity for fiscal exaction.
§ 7
As it is with the Reformation period that the play of sheer opinion begins to appear distinctly in English politics, so it is in this period that the phenomena of reactions first begin to be in a manner traceable as distinct from military fluctuations. All faction, of course, is a form of the play of opinion; but after the fading away of feudalism the opinion is more easily to be contemplated as a force in itself, alongside of the simpler instincts; and the ebbing and flowing of causes suggests a certain consequence of action and reaction in human affairs. The gain-getting Protestant movement under the Protectorate was followed by the Catholic reaction under Mary; which again bred reaction by ferocity. Catholics grew cold in their allegiance when Romanism yielded such bloody fruits. Protestantism, besides, flourished on the continual poverty of the lower orders, and on the abeyance of international strife—conditions which necessarily set up new movements of combination and repulsion; and when Elizabeth succeeded to the throne, she served to represent, however incongruously, the religious leanings of the democracy, as well as to unite them in the name of patriotism against Rome and Spain. She, again, profited by the monarchic superstition, while she was menaced by its inversion; and it is to be observed that as a woman she gained immunity with her subjects for flaws of character which in a man would have been odious and despicable, where her rival, Mary of Scotland, suffered deposition for actions of a kind which in a man would have been almost spontaneously forgiven. Mary's complicity in the assassination of a base and unfaithful husband was an unpardonable crime from the reigning ethical point of view, which was purely masculine; and the same ethic held in amused toleration the constant bad faith and personal absurdity of Elizabeth,[1064]which rather flattered than endangered the pride of sex. Thus could monarchic politics be swayed by the prevailing psychology of a period, as well as by its class preponderances and interests. The personality of the monarch always counted for much in the determination of his power.
Where Elizabeth gained, however, James lost. Her power was consolidated by the triumph over the Armada, which in the old fashion fused religious strifes in a common warlike exultation, and definitely made England Protestant by setting her in deadly enmitytowards the great Catholic power;[1065]just as the state of aggressive hostility towards France under Edward I and Edward III drew Englishmen of all classes into the habit of speaking English and discarding the hitherto common use of French. At the same time the Queen's collisions with Parliament and people were always the less dangerous because she was a woman, and so could yield without indignity where a man would have been humiliated and discredited—an advantage overlooked by the historians who praise her sagacity. Such as it was, it was in large part the sagacity of unscrupulousness; and her success is much more the measure of popular infatuation than of her wisdom. All the while, she had wiser councillors than almost any English monarch before or since; and much of her sagacity was theirs, perhaps even down to some of the unscrupulousness; though on the other hand her fickleness often put them in an evil aspect. Burghley might say what he would, in the loyalist manner, about her inspired judgment; but he knew that she imposed Leicester on the Dutch expedition against his advice, then starved her troops, then upset everything because of the easily predictable disobedience of Leicester in accepting the title of Governor-General from the Dutch.[1066]To say in the face of such methods, as does Mr. Green, that while she had little or no political wisdom, "her political tact was unerring," is to frame a spurious paradox. The more than countervailing admission that "in the profusion and recklessness of her lies Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom" is perhaps overcharged: she could not lie more habitually and systematically than did Philip; but in both alike the constant resort to falsehoods for which their antagonists were more or less prepared, is a proof of want of political tact, no less than of want of wisdom.[1067]That she should have been idolised as she was is one of the best proofs of the power of the monarchic feeling; for there has rarely been a less trustworthy woman on a throne. In any circle of sound human beings she would have been disliked anddistrusted; yet English tradition celebrates her as admirably English, in the act of blackening by comparison foreign rulers who were at least not conspicuously falser,[1068]meaner,[1069]or more egotistic. What is true is that many of the forces with and against which she intrigued were either unscrupulous or irrational, and that her home tyrannies were no worse than those which would have been committed by Puritans or Catholics or Churchmen had these been free to go at each other's throats as religion bade. Her trickeries on the whole kept things in equilibrium. But conscienceless trickeries they were, and, as such, singular grounds for historical enthusiasm. And it cannot have been any concern for her celibacy, or subtle intuition of its effects on her character, that endeared her to her subjects; for her often alleged virginity, despite the gross scandals to the contrary, was an element in the hallucination concerning her. "Loyalty" haloed her personality. When, however, she was succeeded by a man certainly not worse or more ungenerous, the spell was for the most part broken. James was a Scotchman—a member, albeit a king, of a hostile nation long evilly spoken of; a prince without personal dignity; a pedant without gravity; and the indulgence paid to falsehood and folly in the capriciously headstrong Elizabeth ceased to be accorded to the unmanly and unregal ways of her not unconscientious successor, whose plans for pacifying Europe were much more creditable to him than were her diplomacies to her. But the very preservation of peace served to undo the king's prestige, inasmuch as it furthered the growth of sects and the spirit of criticism. And there can be no doubt that the psychological shrinkage of the monarchy in public esteem in the person of James prepared the way for the resistance to it in the reign of his son.