Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/367

 The next point to note is the composition of the House of Lords. We are open to some risk of exaggeration in relation to this, because of the slaughters and proscriptions connected with the Wars of the Roses. But, great as were the effects of those quarrels on the personality of the baronage, the effect was far greater on the political status and influence of the peerage. It was attenuated in power and prestige rather than in numbers. Even the bloodshed and attainder fall within a narrow circle; generation after generation perishes out of a few great houses; the majority continue in succession and either escape ruin or soon recover. It is as well to be particular as to this, because it has a real bearing on the character of the Tudor despotism or dictatorship; and we are liable to be misled both by striking catastrophes and by untested generalisations. If we compare the last parliament of Edward IV with the first of Henry VII, we find a great difference on the face of it: in 1483 there are forty-five lords summoned to parliament; in 1485 there are only twenty-nine. But for this diminution the recent change of dynasty is only very partially the cause: only six peers are attainted as yet, three of whom, the late King Richard, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Lord Ferrers, had fallen at Bosworth field; and a fourth was Surrey, the son of the Duke of Norfolk. Of the other missing lords, some had perished under Richard's own tyranny, some two or three were now represented by minors, and about half-a-dozen seem to have had their summons suspended during either the whole reign or a great part of it. Of these suspended peers, who all reappear either in the later parliaments or in the first parliament of Henry VIII, the chief are the Ogle, Dacre, and Scrope lords, who rule in the north country, and whose absence, which is not necessarily to be accounted for on political grounds, is a point that has not been satisfactorily investigated. In this way, however, not by proscription or execution, the list is diminished. In the later parliaments not only do many of these suspended peerages revive, the empty places being filled by the restoration of the heirs of Richard's victims, but even the attainders of 1485 are cancelled; the Howards return to favour and power in 1489, Ferrers in 1487,