o subvert the
government, or oppose a neighboring baron. By all these means the cities
increased; the middle rank of men began to be rich and powerful; the
prince, who in effect was the same with the law, was implicitly obeyed:
and though the further progress of the same causes begat a new plan of
liberty, founded on the privileges of the commons, yet in the interval
between the fall of the nobles and the rise of this order, the sovereign
took advantage of the present situation, and assumed an authority almost
absolute.

Whatever may be commonly imagined, from the authority of Lord Bacon,
and from that of Harrington, and later authors the laws of Henry VII.
contributed very little towards the great revolution which happened
about this period in the English constitution. The practice of breaking
entails by a fine and recovery, had been introduced in the preceding
reigns; and this prince only gave indirectly a legal sanction to the
practice, by reforming some abuses which attended it. But the settled
authority which he acquired to the crown enabled the sovereign to
encroach on the separate jurisdictions of the barons, and produced a
more general and regular execution of the laws. The counties palatine
underwent the same fate as the feudal powers; and, by a statute of Henry
VIII.,[*] the jurisdiction of these counties was annexed to the crown,
and all writs were ordained to run in the king's name. But the change of
manners was the chief cause of the secret revolution of government, and
subverted the power of the barons. There appear still in this reign some
remains of the ancient slavery of the boors and peasants,[*] but none
afterwards.

Learning, on its revival, was held in high estimation by the English
princes and nobles; and as it was not yet prostituted by being too
common, even the great deemed it an object of ambition to attain a
character for literature. The four successive sovereigns, Henry, Edward,
Mary, and Elizabeth, may, on one account or other, be admitted into
the class of authors. Queen Catharine Parr translated a book: Lady Jane
Gray, considering her age, and her sex, and her station, may be regarded
as a prodigy of literature. Sir Thomas Smith was raised from being
professor in Cambridge, first to be ambassador to France, then secretary
of state. The despatches of those times, and among others those of
Burleigh himself, are frequently interlarded with quotations from the
Greek and Latin classics. Even