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 exemption, and vice-versa, until his fortunes are shipwrecked and himself drowned." The court is described as "a mere monopolie to cozen the subjects of their monies."

Some improvements had, however, been made in the time of the Commonwealth, and up to the middle of the nineteenth century abuses were checked one by one, and at length destroyed.



HE consequences of the usurpation of Bolingbroke were on the whole bad. The effect was to destroy the real "Old Nobility" of England, a class which with all its faults produced in every generation men capable of directing the councils of kings; and it did this only to make way for Henry VIII.'s new nobility, noble in nothing but the name — mostly adventurers, with no great traditions of the past to inspire or restrain them. No one can fail to be struck by the contrast between the independent spirit of the old Norman and Plantagenet barons and earls, and the sordid subserviency of the new men, who sold themselves without shame for mere wealth. And when liberty revived, and the struggle with arbitrary government was renewed, it was the commons and not the barons of England that led the van.

Although the Black Death had so much reduced tillage and increased grazing, it is impossible to doubt that the first half of the sixteenth century was one of prosperity and happiness for the people. Sir John Fortescue's famous comparison of the condition of the French commonalty with that of the English was written when he was in banishment with Margaret of Anjou and her son, the unfortunate Prince Edward. It does not turn on any land question. As its name implies—"The Praise of the Laws of England"—it is a comparison between a country where there are laws which can be called "Laws of the Land," and one where laws are only laws of the Prince—a country where, as was said by the Civil Law (professing to follow the Institutes of Justinian)—"What pleases the Prince has