I. CHAP. commonwealths to favour possession; and on this principle the statute enacts, that a fine levied with proclamations in a public Henry VII. court of justice shall, after five years, except in particular circumstances, be a bar to all claims upon lands. This was its main scope; the liberty of alienation was neither necessary, nor probably intended to be given *. to Mary. The two first of the Tudors rarely experienced opposition but when they endeavoured to levy money. Taxation, in the eyes of their subjects, was so far from being no tyranny, that it seemed the only species worth a complaint. Henry VII. obtained from his first parliament a grant of tonnage and poundage during life, according to several precedents of former reigns. But when general subsidies were granted, the same people, who would have seen an innocent man led to prison or the scaffold with little attention, twice broke out into dangerous rebellions; and as these, however arising from such immediate discontent, were yet a good deal connected with the opinion of Henry's usurpation, and the claims of a pretender, it was a necessary policy to avoid too frequent imposition of burdens upon the poorer classes of the community. He had recourse accordingly to the system of * For these observations on the statute of fines, I am principally indebted to Reeves's History of the English Law (iv. 133.), a work, especially in the latter volumes, of great research and judgment; a continuation of which, in the same spirit, and with the same qualities (besides some others that are rather too much wanting in it), would be a valuable accession not only to the lawyer's, but philosopher's library. That entails had been defeated by means of a common recovery before the statute had been remarked by former writers, and is indeed obvious; but the subject was never put in so clear a light as by Mr. Reeves. The principle of breaking down the statute de donis was so little established, or consistently acted upon, in this reign, that in 11 H. 7, the judges held that the donor of an estate-tail might restrain the tenant from suffering a recovery. Id. p. 159, from the year-book. + It is said by the biographer of Sir Thomas More, that parliament refused the king a subsidy in 1502, which he demanded on account of the marriage of his daughter Margaret, at the advice of More, then but twenty-two years old. "Forthwith Mr. Tyler, one of the privy chamber that was then present, resorted to the king, declaring that a beardless boy, called More, had done more harm than all the rest, for by his means all the purpose is dashed." This of course displeased Henry, who would not, however, he says, "infringe the ancient liberties of that house, which would have been odiously taken." Wordsworth's Eccles. Biography, ii. 66. This story is also told by Roper. I. to Mary. benevolences, or contributions apparently voluntary, though in CHAP. fact extorted, from his richer subjects. These having become an intolerable grievance under Edward IV., were abolished in the Henry VII. only parliament of Richard III. with strong expressions of indignation. But in the seventh year of Henry's reign, when, having with timid and parsimonious hesitation suffered the marriage of Anne of Britany with Charles VIII., he was compelled by the national spirit to make a demonstration of war, he ventured to try this unfair and unconstitutional method of obtaining aid, which received afterwards too much of a parliamentary sanction, by an act enforcing the payment of arrears of money which private men had thus been prevailed upon to promise *. The statute indeed of Richard is so expressed as not clearly to forbid the solicitation of voluntary gifts, which of course rendered it almost nugatory. Archbishop Morton is famous for the dilemma which he proposed to merchants and others, whom he solicited to contribute. He told those who lived handsomely, that their opulence was manifest by their rate of expenditure. Those again, whose course of living was less sumptuous, must have grown rich by their economy. Either class could well afford assistance to their sovereign. This piece of logic, unanswerable in the mouth of a privy counsellor, acquired the name of Morton's fork. It is obvious that the house of commons were actuated by a selfish spirit, and by false views of policy, when they saved a general burden at the expense of a few persons, and gave countenance to what must inevitably be arbitrary and oppressive. Henry, doubtless, reaped great profit from these indefinite exactions, miscalled benevolences. But insatiate of accumulating treasure, he discovered other methods of extortion, still more odious, and possibly more lucrative. * Stat. 11 H. 7, c. 10. Bacon says the benevolence was granted by act of parliament; for which Hume corrects him, and no doubt rightly; for the preamble of this statute recites it to have been "granted by divers of your subjects severally." It con- I. to Mary. CHAP. Many statutes had been enacted in preceding reigns, sometimes rashly or from temporary motives, sometimes in opposition to preHenry VII. vailing usages which they could not restrain, of which the pecuniary penalties, though exceedingly severe, were so little enforced as to have lost their terror. These his ministers raked out from oblivion, and prosecuting such as could afford to endure the law's severity, filled his treasury with the dishonourable produce of amercements and forfeitures. The feudal rights became, as indeed they always had been, instrumental to oppression. The lands of those who died without heirs fell back to the crown by escheat. It was the duty of certain officers in every county to look after its rights. The king's title was to be found by the inquest of a jury, summoned at the instance of the escheator, and returned into the exchequer. It then became a matter of record, and could not be impeached. Hence the escheators taking hasty inquests, or sometimes falsely pretending them, defeated the right heir of his succession. Excessive fines were imposed on granting livery to the king's wards on their majority. Informations for intrusion, criminal indictments, outlawries on civil process, in short, the whole course of justice, furnished pretences for exacting money; while a host of dependants on the court, suborned to play their part as witnesses, or even as jurors, rendered it hardly possible for the most innocent to escape these penalties. Empson and Dudley are notorious as the prostitute instruments of Henry's avarice, in the later and more unpopular years of his reign; but they dearly purchased a brief hour of favour by an ignominious death and perpetual infamy*. The avarice of Henry VII., as it rendered his government unpopular, which had always been penurious, must be deemed a drawback from the wisdom ascribed to him, though, by his good fortune, it answered the end of invigorating his power. By these fines and forfeitures, he impoverished and intimidated the nobility. The earl of Oxford compounded, * Hall, 502. I. by the payment of 15,000 pounds, for the penalties he had incurred CHAP. by keeping retainers in livery, a practice mischievous and illegal, but too customary to have been punished before this reign. Even Henry VII. the king's clemency seems to have sprung from the sordid motive of selling pardons; and it has been shown, that he made a profit of every office in his court, and received money for conferring bishoprics*. It is asserted by early writers, though perhaps but on conjecture, that he left a sum thus amassed, of no less than 1,800,000 pounds at his decease. This treasure was soon dissipated by his successor, who had recourse to the assistance of parliament in the very first year of his reign. The foreign policy of Henry VIII., far unlike that of his father, was ambitious and enterprising. No former king had involved himself so frequently in the labyrinth of continental alliances. And if it were necessary to abandon that neutrality which is generally the most advantageous and laudable course, it is certain that his early undertakings against France were more consonant to English interests, as well as more honourable than the opposite policy, which he pursued after the battle of Pavia. The campaigns of Henry in France and Scotland displayed the valour of our English infantry, little called into action for fifty years before, and contributed with other circumstances to throw a lustre over his reign, which prevented most of his contemporaries from duly appreciating its character. But they naturally drew the king into heavy expenses, and, together with his profusion and love of magnificence, rendered his government very burthensome. At his accession, however, the rapacity of his father's administration had excited such universal discontent, that it was found expedient to conciliate the nation. An act was passed in his first parliament to correct the abuses that had pre * Turner's History of England, iii. 628, from a MS. document. A vast number of persons paid fines for their share VOL. I. in the western rebellion of 1497, from £.200 D to Mary. I. to Mary. CHAP. vailed in finding the king's title to lands by escheat*. The same parliament repealed a law of the late reign, enabling justices of Henry VII. assize, and of the peace, to determine all offences, except treason and felony, against any statute in force, without a jury, upon information in the king's name†. This serious innovation had evidently been prompted by the spirit of rapacity, which probably some honest juries had shown courage enough to withstand. It was a much less laudable concession to the vindictive temper of an injured people, seldom unwilling to see bad methods employed in punishing bad men, that Empson and Dudley, who might perhaps, by stretching the prerogative, have incurred the penalties of a misdemeanour, were put to death on a frivolous charge of high treason . The demands made by Henry VIII. on parliament were considerable, both in frequency and amount. Notwithstanding the servility of those times, they sometimes attempted to make a stand against these inroads upon the public purse. Wolsey came into the House of Commons in 1524, and asked for £. 800,000, to be raised by a tax of one-fifth upon lands and goods, in order to prosecute the war just commenced against France. Sir Thomas More, then speaker, is said to have urged the House to acquiesce §. But the sum demanded was so much beyond any precedent, that all the independent members opposed a vigorous resistance. A * 1 H. 8, c. 8. +11 H. 7, c. 3. Rep. 1 H. 8, c. 6. They were convicted by a jury, and afterwards attainted by parliament, but not executed for more than a year after the king's accession. If we may believe Holingshed, the council at Henry VIII.'s accession made restitution to some who had been wronged by the extortion of the late reign. A singular contrast to their subsequent proceedings! This, indeed, had been enjoined by Henry VII.'s will. But he had excepted from this restitution" what had been done by the course and order of our laws;" which, as Mr. Astle observes, was the common mode of his oppressions. § Lord Herbert puts an acute speech into the mouth of More, arguing more acquaintance with sound principles of political economy, than was usual in the supposed speaker's age, or even in that of the writer. But it is more probable that this is of his own invention. He has taken a similar liberty on another occasion, throwing his own broad notions of religion into an imaginary speech of some unnamed member of the Commons, though manifestly unsuited to the character of the times. In both instances he has deceived Hume, who takes these harangues for genuine. |