A Political and Social History of Modern Europe | Page 8

The English Monarchy]
In the year 1500 the English monarchy embraced little more than what on the map is now called "England." It is true that to the west the principality of Wales had been incorporated two hundred years earlier, but the clannish mountaineers and hardy lowlanders of the northern part of the island of Great Britain still preserved the independence of the kingdom of Scotland, while Irish princes and chieftains rendered English occupation of their island extremely precarious beyond the so- called Pale of Dublin which an English king had conquered in the twelfth century. Across the English Channel, on the Continent, the English monarchy retained after 1453, the date of the conclusion of the Hundred Years' War, only the town of Calais out of the many rich French provinces which ever since the time of William the Conqueror (1066- 1087) had been a bone of contention between French and English rulers.
While the English monarchy was assuming its geographical form, peculiar national institutions were taking root in the country, and the English language, as a combination of earlier Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French, was being evolved. The Hundred Years' War with France, or rather its outcome, served to exalt the sense of English nationality and English patriotism, and to enable the king to devote his whole attention to the consolidation of his power in the British islands. For several years after the conclusion of peace on the Continent, England was harassed by bloody and confused struggles, known as the Wars of the Roses, between rival claimants to the throne, but at length, in 1485, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor dynasty, secured the crown and ushered in a new era of English history.
[Sidenote: Increase of Royal Power in England under Henry VII]
Henry VII (1485-1509) sought to create what has been termed a "strong monarchy." Traditionally the power of the king had been restricted by a Parliament, composed of a House of Lords and a House of Commons, and as the former was then far more influential than the latter, supreme political control had rested practically with the king and the members of the upper house--great land-holding nobles and the princes of the church. The Wars of the Roses had two effects which redounded to the advantage of the king: (1) the struggle, being really a contest of two factions of nobles, destroyed many noble families and enabled the crown to seize their estates, thereby lessening the influence of an ancient class; (2) the struggle, being long and disorderly, created in the middle class or "common people" a longing for peace and the conviction that order and security could be maintained only by repression of the nobility and the strengthening of monarchy. Henry took advantage of these circumstances to fix upon his country an absolutism, or one-man power in government, which was to endure throughout the sixteenth century, during the reigns of the four other members of the Tudor family, and, in fact, until a popular revolution in the seventeenth century.
Henry VII repressed disorder with a heavy hand and secured the establishment of an extraordinary court, afterwards called the "Court of Star Chamber," to hear cases, especially those affecting the nobles, which the ordinary courts had not been able to settle. Then, too, he was very economical: the public revenue was increased by means of more careful attention to the cultivation of the crown lands and the collection of feudal dues, fines, benevolences [Footnote: "Benevolences" were sums of money extorted from the people in the guise of gifts. A celebrated minister of Henry VII collected a very large number of "benevolences" for his master. If a man lived economically, it was reasoned he was saving money and could afford a "present" for the king. If, on the contrary, he lived sumptuously, he was evidently wealthy and could likewise afford a "gift."], import and export duties, and past parliamentary grants, while, by means of frugality and a foreign policy of peace, the expenditure was appreciably decreased. Henry VII was thereby freed in large measure from dependence on Parliament for grants of money, and the power of Parliament naturally declined. In fact, Parliament met only five times during his whole reign and only once during the last twelve years, and in all its actions was quite subservient to the royal desires.
[Sidenote: Foreign relations of England under Henry VII]
Henry VII refrained in general from foreign war, but sought by other means to promote the international welfare of his country. He negotiated several treaties by which English traders might buy and sell goods in other countries. One of the most famous of these commercial treaties was the Intercursus Magnus concluded in 1496 with the duke of Burgundy, admitting English goods into the Netherlands. He likewise encouraged English companies of merchants to engage in foreign trade and