his conscience.

[Footnote 61: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, ii., 158;
_Ven. Cal._, i., 867.]

[Footnote 62: _Sp. Cal._, i., 458; _L. and P._,
iv., 5791.]

[Footnote 63: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, i.,
241-47; ii. 342-43.]

[Footnote 64: _Sp. Cal._, Suppl., p. 23.]

* * * * *

The twenty-four years during which Henry VII. had guided the destinies
of England were a momentous epoch in the development of Western
civilisation. It was the dawn of modern history, of the history of
Europe in the form in which we know it to-day. The old order was in a
state of liquidation. The mediaeval ideal, described by Dante, of a
universal monarchy with two aspects, spiritual and temporal, and two
heads, emperor and pope, was passing away. Its place was taken by the
modern but narrower ideal of separate polities, each pursuing its own
course, independent of, and often in conflict with, other societies.
Unity gave way to diversity of tongues, of churches, of states; and
the cosmopolitan became nationalist, patriot, separatist. Imperial
monarchy shrank to a shadow; and kings divided the emperor's power (p. 030)
at the same time that they consolidated their own. They extended their
authority on both sides, at the expense of their superior, the
emperor, and at the expense of their subordinate feudal lords. The
struggle between the disruptive forces of feudalism and the central
power of monarchy ended at last in monarchical triumph; and internal
unity prepared the way for external expansion. France under Louis XI.
was first in the field. She had surmounted her civil troubles half a
century earlier than England. She then expelled her foreign foes,
crushed the remnants of feudal independence, and began to expand at
the cost of weaker States. Parts of Burgundy, Provence, and Brittany
became merged in France; the exuberant strength of the new-formed
nation burst the barriers of the Alps and overflowed into the plains
of Italy. The time of universal monarchy was past, but the dread of it
remained; and from Charles VIII.'s invasion of Italy in 1494 to
Francis I.'s defeat at Pavia in 1525, French dreams of world-wide
sovereignty were the nightmare of other kings. Those dreams might, as
Europe feared, have been realised, had not other States followed
France in the path of internal consol