Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/31

 When the feudal nobility was definitely broken as a ruling class, the councils of the king and the ranks of the aristocracy were steadily recruited from the lower orders. All English society moved in the direction of shops and warehouses. Henry VIII's ruthless secular adviser, Thomas Cromwell, was the son of a blacksmith; Cardinal Wolsey, who lamented that he had served his King more faithfully than his God, was the son of a tradesman. After the doughty Henry had quarreled with the Pope over Anne Boleyn, he confiscated the lands of the monasteries, and distributed a large part of it among favorites of lower origins, thus sinking the ancient baronage deeper in a welter of newcomers.

Hard beset for money during his disputes with an obstinate Commons, James I further diluted the military caste by selling honors and titles over the counter at a fixed price to merchants and minor gentry who could command the lucre. By the end of the seventeenth century, therefore, only a handful of noble families could trace their lineage back to proud lords and knights who gathered around the standards of Norman kings. The civil war which raged from 1642 to 1649, with its deaths on the field of battle and sequestrations of estates, almost completed the ruin of the baronage. Henceforward, at least, no iron gates shut the aspiring bourgeois from the fair realm of the titled aristocracy or the councils of state.

This flow of forces which brought disaster to barons of war and lords of church and gave titles to rich merchants was accompanied by prosperity and activity in commerce. The insistent note that runs through the writings of continental travelers who visited England in the sixteenth century is that of surprise at the wealth, comfort, and welfare of the middle classes and artisans of English towns. "The riches of England are greater than those of any other country in Europe!" exclaimed the author of the Italian Relations who knew the land ruled by Elizabeth. Explaining this wonder, he added that the wealth in Lon-