26 INTRODUCTORY'. 



9 



liveries was in effect only temporary and did not in itself quell 

 the spirit of aristocratic turbulence, the new law of treason was 

 made a mere quibble by Henry's grand-daughter as well as by 

 the judges of the Restoration, and the Star Chamber, moderate 

 in its action for more than a century, was employed afterwards 

 and under a different family as the ready instrument of private 

 malice. The real work of Henry's reign was the development 

 of administrative despotism under the forms of law, and in the 

 interest of the exchequer. Henry was avaricious and cautious. 

 He did not desire to provoke popular discontent, and he did 

 not care to have his government reviewed by parliament. He 

 dispensed with parliaments for longer periods than any other 

 English monarch, and he employed every artifice for the accumu- 

 lation of treasure. Between the years 1485-1492, he held five 

 parliaments, during the remaining seventeen years of his reign 

 he held only three. Now it was impossible for an English king 

 to do without a parliamentary grant, and with it parliamentary 

 advice and remonstrance, unless he was very penurious, very 

 prudent, and very rapacious. 



The reign of Henry the Eighth commenced under the most 

 favourable circumstances. He inherited the hoards of his 

 father, he was recognised by the best members of both factions, 

 in so far as they still existed, as the undoubted heir of both 

 houses, and the two years at the beginning of his reign were 

 characterised by the most abundant harvests which had been 

 gathered during that period of agricultural prosperity, which 

 had with scarcely a break continued in England for a century. 

 Henry was not like his father, prudent and penurious, for his 

 expenditure was profuse, and his policy was reckless. He 

 occupied indeed a remarkable position in Europe. It was in 

 his reign that the doctrine of the balance of power was adopted 

 from the school of Italian politicians into the statecraft of 

 Western Europe, and no monarch was better placed for medi- 

 ating between the two monarchs and rivals of France and 

 Spain than Henry was. He was ready enough to act. His 

 vanity was flattered by the courtesies of Julius the Second, and 



