cal
nobility. If the great men in a county resolved that certain persons
should be returned as members, those who came to the place of election
in support of others would be driven off, and perhaps beaten or
wounded. Consequently each House of Commons had hitherto represented
the dominant party, Lancastrian or Yorkist, as the case might be.
Before there could be a House of Commons capable of governing, the
interference of the nobles with elections would have to be brought to
an end, and it was only by a strong king that their power could be
overthrown. The strengthening of the kingship was the only road to
future constitutional progress.

[Illustration: Edward IV.: from an original painting belonging to the
Society of Antiquaries.]

2. =Loss of the Mediaeval Ideals.=--Before the end of the 15th century
the English people had lost all the ideals of the middle ages. The
attempt of Henry V. to revive the old ecclesiastical feeling had
broken down through the race for material power opened by his French
wars, and through the savagery of the wars of the Roses. The new
religious feeling of Wycliffe and the nobler Lollards had perished
with Sir John Oldcastle from the same causes. Neither the Church nor
the opponents of the Church had any longer a sway over men's hearts.
The clergy continued to perform their part in the services of the
Church not indeed without belief, but without the spiritual fervour
which influences the lives of men. The chivalry of the middle ages was
as dead as its religion. Men spoke of women as coarsely as they spoke
of their cattle. Human nature indeed could not be entirely crushed.
John Paston's wife (see p. 321), for instance, was quaintly
affectionate. "I would," she once wrote to her husband, "ye were at
home, if it were for your ease ... now liever than a gown, though it
were of scarlet." But the system of wardship (see p. 116) made
marriages a matter of bargain and sale. "For very need," wrote a
certain Stephen Scrope, "I was fain to sell a little daughter I have
for much less than I should." When Scrope was old he wished to marry
Paston's young sister, and the girl was willing to take him if she
were sure that his land was not burdened with debt. She would be glad
enough to escape from home. Her mother kept her in close confinement
and beat her once or twice every week, and sometimes twice a day, so
that her head was broken in two or three places. This low and material
view of domestic life h