Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/355

 and economic wisdom; they knew they had something worth conserving.

Thus England, with her once turbulent baronage depressed and silent, her Church kept subservient by the bestowal of political influence to the loss of religious power, her people in good humour so long as they were not overtaxed, was, under kings with determinate views, rich and ambitious, collected enough and manageable enough to enter as an efficient actor into the international drama. If she wanted leaders, guides, dictators in the coming struggle, she found them in the race which Henry VII founded and impressed with a strong will, a strong policy, and a strong energetic activity that gave her unmistakeably her place in modern history.

It would be very difficult, more difficult than in the case of a reign which has a plot, or a dramatic complexity or unity, to attempt a chronological account of the development of any principle or principles in this reign. I have said it is naturally divided into two great sections; and those two are subdivided in their turn.

I am afraid that, having spent all my generalisations in the preamble, I must in the remainder of this and the following lecture descend to the level of tabular computations, pedigrees, acts of parliament, and treaties. But we will hope for the best. As I am not aware that there is anything in the statute under which I am lecturing which makes it incumbent on me to offer on these occasions a substantive original contribution to history, I shall not apologise for taking my hearers over well known and well trodden ground.

The first point, of course, that occurs to us in a survey of the reign is the nature of Henry VII's title to the throne. On this no little controversy has been raised, and yet very trenchant opinions are given. We are not uncommonly told that Henry VII had not in his own person a shadow of hereditary right; that is a view not uncommonly taken in the schools; it is concise, and not hard to remember. But it is not exactly true. The whole question of the title of the house of Lancaster is a matter of dispute; and the title of the house of York has always, curiously enough, been a