PREFACE. ix 



At last one of the parties ventured on pillaging the 

 people, and a change of dynasty came at once. Parlia- 

 ment lost its power, because it ceased to be the centre 

 of order, but the people prospered. Nevertheless, the 

 despotism which succeeded retained the forms of 

 liberty, and was materially assisted by Parliamentary 

 action, which came to have an acknowledged legal force, 

 and to be recognised as binding by the law courts. 



The prosperity of the nation remained unbroken. 

 My reader will find, on looking down the annual 

 record of corn and labour prices, that the means of 

 life were obtained with greater ease, and that the 

 wages of labour were not appreciably lessened. The 

 avarice and caution of Henry VII shut England out 

 from participation in the geographical discoveries of 

 his reign. But these defects of character were accom- 

 panied by thrift. No English king ever asked less of 

 his subjects. If he saved, the people saved also. 



His son committed himself to a meddlesome and 

 vacillating foreign policy, and to unbounded extrava- 

 gance at home. But he was popular, as wasteful 

 people generally are. He destroyed the monastic in- 

 stitutions, and confiscated their treasures. On the 

 whole, they entirely deserved to be destroyed. The 

 treasures he squandered in an incredibly short time, 

 and upon invisible objects ; the lands he distributed 

 among a new nobility, some still visible, the most 

 servile, the most rapacious, and the most malignant 

 in the English annals. Only the Scotch nobles of the 

 Reformation, being worse, were a foil to them. This 



