Page:Landholding in England.djvu/58



HE great struggles of the Roses, which prepared the way for the House of Tudor as a dynasty, also prepared the way for that House as a form of government. The destruction of the old nobility widened the gap between governors and governed, and the essentially modern genius of the Tudors used the situation created by thirty years of civil disorder and unstable authority, to reduce government to an organised system, every part of which system strengthened the Crown, and allied it more and more with that Civil Law, which is the will of the Prince.

The accession, not of Henry VII., but of Edward IV., marks the beginning of that reign of terror which reached its climax under Henry VIII. For three quarters of a century—from the deposition of Richard II. to the battle of Bosworth, circumstances had been preparing the way for absolute monarchy. It may seem strange that the deposition of a king should have strengthened the Crown, but the explanation is simple—the throne now rested on a military foundation. Henry IV. reigned as an arbitrary sovereign—no one can read the history of his reign without seeing this, though circumstances prevented the fact from becoming too glaringly obvious. He was a usurper, who had obtained the Crown by conquest—the first King of England since William the Norman who had done so. Edward IV. declared that he held by the same right (Rymer, xi. 710). Henry VII. appealed to it—it was indeed the least dubious of his titles; and though Parliament omitted it in the recital of those titles they knew but too well that henceforth all men would hold their lands at the King's pleasure. The question put by the Chancellor to the Judges shows this conclusively. It was the doctrine of that age, that a conqueror could dispossess all men even of their lands,