d, or was turned into a mere form by the overpowering influence of
the Crown. The legislative powers of the two Houses were usurped by the
royal Council. Arbitrary taxation reappeared in benevolences and forced
loans. Personal liberty was almost extinguished by a formidable spy-system
and by the constant practice of arbitrary imprisonment. Justice was
degraded by the prodigal use of bills of attainder, by a wide extension of
the judicial power of the royal Council, by the servility of judges, by
the coercion of juries. So vast and sweeping was the change that to
careless observers of a later day the constitutional monarchy of the
Edwards and the Henries seemed suddenly to have transformed itself under
the Tudors into a despotism as complete as the despotism of the Turk. Such
a view is no doubt exaggerated and unjust. Bend and strain the law as he
might, there never was a time when the most wilful of English rulers
failed to own the restraints of law; and the obedience of the most servile
among English subjects lay within bounds, at once political and religious,
which no theory of king-worship could bring them to overpass. But even if
we make these reserves, the character of the monarchy from the days of
Edward the Fourth to the days of Elizabeth remains something strange and
isolated in our history. It is hard to connect the kingship of the old
English, the Norman, the Angevin, or the Plantagenet kings with the
kingship of the House of York or of the House of Tudor.

[Sidenote: New strength of the Crown]

The primary cause of this great change lay in the recovery of its older
strength by the Crown. Through the last hundred and fifty years the
monarchy had been hampered by the pressure of the war. Through the last
fifty it had been weakened by the insecurity of a disputed succession. It
was to obtain supplies for the strife with Scotland and the strife with
France that the earlier Plantagenets had been forced to yield to the
ever-growing claims which were advanced by the Parliament. It was to win
the consent of Parliament to its occupation of the throne and its support
against every rival that the House of Lancaster bent yet more humbly to
its demands. But with the loss of Guienne the war with France came
virtually to an end. The war with Scotland died down into a series of
border forays. The Wars of the Roses settled the question of the
succession, first by the seeming extinction of the House of Lancaster, and
then by