ever, the conditions of the game changed.
Philip died a few months after his arrival in Spain, leaving a mad
widow, and as Ferdinand then regained his authority Catharine's
marriage was again discussed. Other schemes were also proposed,
amongst them one for marrying Catharine, not to the young prince, but
to her old father-in-law, the king. In =1509=, before any of these
plans could take effect, Henry VII. died. He deserves to be reckoned
amongst the kings who have accomplished much for England. If he was
not chivalrous or imaginative, neither was the age in which he lived.
His contemporaries needed a chief constable to keep order, and he gave
them what they needed.

25. =Architectural Changes and the Printing Press.=--Architecture,
which in England, as upon the Continent, had been the one great art of
the Middle Ages, was already, though still instinct with beauty,
giving signs in its over-elaboration of approaching decadence. To the
tower of Fotheringhay Church (see p. 311) had succeeded the tower of
St. Mary's, Taunton. To the roof of the nave of Winchester Cathedral
(see p. 276) had succeeded the roof of the Divinity School at Oxford
(see p. 319), and of the chapel of King's College, Cambridge (see p.
355). Art in this direction could go no farther. The new conditions in
which the following age was to move were indicated by the discovery of
America and the invention of printing. New objects of knowledge
presented themselves, and a new mode of spreading knowledge was at
hand. In the reign of Edward IV., Caxton, the earliest English
printer, set up his press at Westminster, and the king and his nobles
came to gaze at it as at some new toy, little knowing how profoundly
it was to modify their methods of government. Henry VII. had enough to
do without troubling himself with such matters. It was his part to
close an epoch of English history, not to open a fresh one.

_Books recommended for further study of Part IV._

GREEN, J. R. History of the English People. Vol. i. p. 521-Vol. ii. p.
77.

STUBBS, W. (Bishop of Oxford). Constitutional History of England. Vol.
ii. from p. 441, and Vol. iii.

HALLAM, H. Constitutional History of England. Vol. i. pp. 1-15.

ROGERS, J. E. THOROLD. History of Agriculture and Prices. Vols. iii.
and iv.

CUNNINGHAM, W. The Growth of English Industry and Commerce. Vol. i.
pp. 335-449.

WYLIE, J. H. History of England under Henry IV.

GAIRDNER, JAMES. Lancaster and York.

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