A Political and Social History of Modern Europe | Page 8

safely proceed with the story of European development
during the past four hundred years, it is necessary to know what were

the chief countries that existed at the beginning of our period and what
were the distinctive political institutions of each.
A glance at the map of Europe in 1500 will show numerous unfamiliar
divisions and names, especially in the central and eastern portions.
Only in the extreme west, along the Atlantic seaboard, will the eye
detect geographical boundaries which resemble those of the present day.
There, England, France, Spain, and Portugal have already taken form.
In each one of these countries is a real nation, with a single monarch,
and with a distinctive literary language. These four states are the
national states of the sixteenth century. They attract our immediate
attention.
ENGLAND
[Sidenote: 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