nts of the house of York, Lambert Simnel
and Perkin Warbeck, supported from abroad, found the greatest sympathy
and recognition in England. The first Henry VII had to meet in open
battle, the second he got into his hands only by a great European
combination.

But he did not wish to have always to encounter open disturbance. He
was entirely of the opinion which his chancellor gave, that enmities
of such a sort could not be extinguished by the sword of war, but only
by well-planned and stringent laws which would destroy the seed of
rebellion, and by institutions strong enough to administer those laws.
Above all he found it intolerable that the great men kept numerous
dependents attached to them under engagements which were publicly
paraded by distinctive badges. The lower courts of justice and the
juries did not do the service expected from them in dealing with the
transgressions of the law that came before them. Uncertainty as to the
supreme authority, and the power which the great party-leaders
exercised, filled the weaker, who had to sit in judgment on them, with
dread of their sure revenge. To put an end to this disorder Henry VII
established the Starchamber. With consent of the Parliament, from
which all hostile party-movements were excluded, he gave his Privy
Council, which was strengthened by the chief judges, a strong
organisation with this end in view. It was to punish all those
personal engagements, the exercise of unlawful influence in the choice
of sheriffs, all riotous assemblies, lastly to have power to deal with
the early symptoms of a tumult before it came to an outbreak, and that
under forms which were not usual in the English administration of
justice. This powerful instrument in the hands of government might be
much abused, but then seemed necessary to keep in check unreconciled
enemies and the spirit of faction that was ever surging up again. We
see the prevailing state of things from the fact, that the King's
councillors themselves, to be secured against acts of violence, passed
a special law, which characterised attacks on them as attacks on the
King himself. But then, like men who stood in the closest connexion
with the King and his State, they used their authority with
unapproachable severity. The internal tranquillity of England has been
thought to be mainly due to the erection of this court of justice.[76]

Since Henry laid so much stress on his being a Lancaster, it might
have been expected th