INCREASED INFLUENCE OF LANDED GENTRY 141 



\ 

 Changes were already at work which, within the next half century, 



not only restored the position of the landed gentry, but gave them 

 an influence which they had never before possessed. Parliament 

 gained control over the Government, and the House of Commons 

 over Parliament. At the same time the jurisdiction of magistrates 

 was greatly extended. ControUing the House of Commons through 

 the county elections, administering local justice, aUied with the 

 Church as the bulwark of Protestantism, recruiting from its 

 wealthiest members the order of the peerage, absorbing into its 

 own ranks their younger sons, the landed gentry became the pre- 

 dominant class in the country. Hoav great was the increase in 

 their power may be illustrated by the difference in the attitude 

 which Elizabethan and Hanoverian Parliaments assumed towards 

 enclosures. Many of the seeds of this growth in the political and 

 social ascendancy of the landed aristocracy were sown during the 

 period under notice. 



One of the first questions which came before the Restoration 

 Parliament was that of finance. Some permanent provision had 

 to be made for the ordinary charges of Government. A Committee 

 was appointed which reported that the average yearly income of 

 Charles I. for the period 1637-41 had been £900,000, but that of 

 this sum £200,000 were derived from sources no longer available. 

 Parhament decided to raise the annual income of the Crown to 

 £1,200,000. In providing this sum the fines laid down by the 

 Repubfican financiers were in the main followed. The cost of the 

 Civil War and the subsequent expenses of the Commonwealth 

 Government had been met by the old device of customs duties, and 

 by the new expedients of monthly assessments on lands and goods, 

 and of excise duties, borrowed from the Dutch financiers, on a 

 large range of products which at one time included meat and salt. 

 The old feudal dues, exacted by the Crown on all lands held by 

 mihtary tenure, had dwindled in importance and value, in spite of 

 the attempts made by Henry VIII. and Charles I. to enforce them 

 with greater rigour. To a large extent their place had been taken 

 by parliamentary grants of subsidies on lands and goods. Those 

 which remained in operation were comparatively unproductive ; 

 they were besides uneconomical, uncertain, and inconvenient. They 

 were also not granted by Parhament, and thus provided the Crown 

 with funds which were not under national control. Their abohtion 

 had been recommended in the reign of James I. ; it had been 



