Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/372

 benevolences for the expedition to France; some have paid what they promised, some have not; the crown is empowered to enforce the fulfilment of the promises. There can be little doubt after this as to the great value of the benevolence; no further demand is made of the parliament, but the clergy grant an entire tenth.

The next session was not so happy. It was in January, 1497; the archbishop lectured this time on Roman history, Scipio, Curtius, Scævola, Regulus, Julius Cæsar and S. Augustine: the occasion was really pressing: the Scots king was making a succession of raids, and the invasion by Perkin was impending. And a very exceptional grant was made, two fifteenths and tenths first, and then another sum of the same amount, reaching, according to Lord Bacon, to £120,000, and no doubt contributing to the disaffection which brought the Cornishmen to Blackheath and encouraged Perkin to land at Penzance. The clergy are asked for £40,000, of which the king remits £10,000. This is the last great tax of the reign: peace is practically insured, and the king finds other ways of enriching himself. Nevertheless, in 1503 the clergy pay a tenth, or thereabouts, for the expedition against the Turks, that is to say, the subsidy promised to Maximilian for his expulsion of Edmund de la Pole; and in 1504 the parliament granted £40,000 as an aid on the knighting of the king's eldest son and marriage of his eldest daughter. This was the last session of the reign. Morton had died four years before; and archbishop Warham opened the parliament with a discourse on moral philosophy from Aristotle and Cicero, of a much more florid and less scholastic type than the sermons of his predecessor, and probably in better Latin.

This closes the financial history of the reign except in one point. Henry VII is said to have left behind him £1,800,000 sterling, a great part of which must have been the result of savings from royal demesne and forfeitures, but which was partially, and in popular belief principally, accumulated by exactions made by Empson and Dudley. These two men, acting as members of the royal council and under the direct control of the king, had reduced to a system the extraction of