viii PREFACE. 



The material progress of England was for a time ac- 

 companied by great advances in political liberty and by 

 the noble energy of the Commons in Parliament. The 

 action of the House of Commons in the first half of the 

 fifteenth century supplied the precedents on which the 

 liberties of the seventeenth were reconstructed, and it 

 seemed that England would, at a period long before that 

 in which the foundations of her political freedom were 

 actually and permanently laid, be securely opulent and 

 free. But this was not to be. Causes were at work 

 which few probably suspected, and events too surely 

 followed which postponed for centuries the natural 

 growth of English institutions, and the early imitation 

 of them by the civilised world. 



By the middle of the fifteenth century the old Church 

 had become hopelessly corrupt though it was still useful 

 to the government. The aristocracy was entirely de- 

 moralized, and was split by lawless feuds into bitter fac- 

 tions. The King was always a child. The administra- 

 tion of affairs had fallen into the hands of an unpopular 

 and intriguing party, which was greedy, insolent, and in- 

 capable. The long war with France had collapsed, and 

 England was full of soldiers by profession, at all times 

 the most dangerous of the dangerous classes. All the 

 elements of anarchy were ready at hand, and there was 

 nothing to check or control them. 



Then came civil war, the strangest civil war ever 

 seen. No one suffered except the combatants. The 

 people took no part in the strife. It was a long battle 

 between two factions of nobles and their retainers. 



