The early Tudors. Henry VII.: Henry VIII.

Front matter

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Preface

As the plan of works in this Series does not allow of systematic references at the foot of the pages to larger and more detailed histories of the period, it may be well to mention here a few of the books which are likely to be most useful to those who wish to study it more fully. So far as these are complete histories, they must be chiefly modern, as the age was not fertile in contemporary narratives. Thus for Richard III.'s time Mr. Gairdner's excellent Life of that king should be studied, with its appendix on Warbeck; for Henry VII. Lord Bacon's Life, which has been carefully edited for the Cambridge University Press by Mr. Lumby. The Stanhope Essay by Mr. Williamson on the 'Foreign Commerce of England under the Tudors ' gives ample details on this subject in very small cornpass; and the religious movement from 1485 to 1509 is described to perfection in Mr. Seebohm's delightful work on Colet, Erasmus, and More, and in Cooper's Life of the Lady Margaret.

For Henry VIII.' s reign much has been done of late years, above all by Mr. Brewer in his celebrated Prefaces to the papers of the reign in the Rolls

VI Preface.

Series (which have been published separately in two volumes), illustrating the years from 1509 to 1529, The history of the early Reformation is given with much detail and liveliness in Dean Hook's Lives of Archbishops Morton, Warham, and Cranmer; the Dissolution of the Monasteries and other measures of the reign have been examined with great care in Dixon's ' History of the Church of England,' a work of unusual merit. The subject of religion is admirably treated as regards Germany in Ranke's * History of the Reformation,' which Miss Austen has translated.

It is hardly necessary to refer to Mr. Froude's history of Henry VHI., for no one can hope to know the period without reading it diligently. True it is that this industrious and most eloquent writer may probably fail in inspiring readers with his own admiration for Henry's actions, which indeed he has of late shown some disposition to reconsider. But, qualify his verdict as we will, we shall still find abundant profit as well as pleasure in reading his great work, especially if we check and perhaps correct his view of some great events by comparing with it Mr. Friedmann's recently published Life of Anne Boleyn, which is full of important information and shows the hand of a master throughout. For Scottish affairs Mr. Burton's * History of Scotland ' is all that can be desired.

Lastly, it may be permitted to refer to some very interesting papers on Henry VII. and Henry VIII.

Preface. vii

contained in Bishop Stubbs's recently published volume of Oxford Lectures. No use has been made of these in the present work, which was in type before they appeared ; its writer ventures to remark that, where he himself has praised Henry VII., he often finds with great pleasure that the Bishop does the same. It is somewhat disquieting to observe that the Lectures attribute to Henry VIII. far more innate power and ruling faculty than has been here traced in his administration, civil, military, and religious. It may perhaps serve as an excuse for differing from so high an authority that Mr. Friedmann, after taking a connected view from without of Henry's entire management of home and foreign affairs, and of the opinions with regard to him expressed by foreign sovereigns and their correspondents, is inclined to place him lower, even in mere intellect, than any English writer has yet ventured to do.

Chapter I. Pagi?

National unity from despotism ...... I

Despotism in Spain ....... 3

Despotism in France ....... 7

Despotism in England ....... 9

CHAPTER II. Henry VII. 's claim to the tarone 14

The Lady Margaret . . . • . . . 15

Henry's invasion . . . . . . . .16

Battle of Bosworth Field 18

Henry's title to the throne . . . . . .21

The Coronation . . . . . . . . 22

Restoration of persons attainted . . . . -23

The Pestilence ........ 25

English feeling under it . . . . . . .26

CHAPTER III. Parliament of 1485 27

Rebellion of the Staffords ...... 28

Causes of Yorkist feeling ....... 29

Simnel. Battle of Stoke 30

Affairs of Bretagne . . . . . . . 34.

French policy there ........ 36

Northern and Scottish rebellions . . . . . 33

Quasi- war with France. Peace of Etaples . , -39

CHAPTER IV. Warbeck widely supported . , . . . .42

Warbeck in Ireland and Scotland . . ... . 45

Cornish rebellion. Blackbeath Field . . . • 47

X Conients.

PAGB

Warbeck in Devonshire ...... 49

The Intercursus Magnus ....... 50

CHAPTER V. Charles VIII. in Italy 5 1

Royal marriages. The Ita'ian League .... 54

Crusade refused ........ 56

Prince Arthur and Katherine ..... 57

Plan for Katherine's second marriage . . . -59

The Archduke Philip in England ..... 60

Empson and Dudley ....... 63

Death of Henry VII 64

CHAPTER VI. State of Ireland 65

Poynings' Daws ........ 66

Fraternity of St. George ....... 69

Laws of Henry VII. ....... 69

The Star Chamber . . . . . . . .71

Navigation Law, &c. ....... 73

Trade with the Netherlands ...... 73

French trade ........ 75

Voyages of discovery. Vasco de Gama. Columbus . .76

CHAPTER VII. Spirit of the Renaissance ....... 79

Enthusiasm for Latin and Greek authors. Colet, More . 80

Works of Erasmus .... ... 86

Schools and colleges for the New Learning ... 88 Printers. Wynkyn de Worde. Poetry of the time . -91

Prose of the period. The ' Utopia ' .... 93

Cardinal Morton and Church Reform . . . .94

Erasmus on pilgrimages ...... 96

Buildings, &c., of the jDcriod ...... 98

CHAPTER VIH.

Henry VIII. fond of the navy . . . . ■ . . loi

, Execution of Empson and Dudley .... 103

Contents.

Marriage with Katharine of Aragon .

Death of the Lady Margaret ....

Disciplinary laws ..;...

Argument on Church privileges

James IV. of Scotland. The Bartons

War with France : how regarded .

CHAPTER IX. The League of Cambray

Resistance of Venice . . " .

Henry VIII. joins the Holy League; his failure

Naval operations .....

Invasion of France ......

Battle of Plodden Field ....

Home effects of the war .....

Chapter X

English trade in the Netherlands Cort.ish mining . . . .

Jealousy of foreigners .....

Population shifting in England Depopulation of the rural districts The rise in rents .

Scotland under Queen Margaret The government of Ireland ....

Vain attempts at a Crusade . . . .

Chapter XI

The French in Italy. Battle of Marignano Wolsey's administration ....

Field of the Cloth of Gold: its uselessness The Duke of Buckingham executed Henry's treachery to Francis . . . .

The War of Pavia . . . .

Turkish conquest of Rhodes ....

War taxation in England ....

Sack of Rome .......

PAGB

Contents.

Chapter XII. Page

Old anti-Papal laws 150

Forerunners of the Reformation. Doctrine of Luther . 151

Henry VIII. Defender of the Faith 155

Beginning of the Divorce question . . . .156

Its dangers to England . . . . . . -158

Commission of Campeggio . . , . . ■ '59 Fall of Wolsey . . . . . . . . .162

His arrest and death . ... . . . .166

The first Reforming Parliament. Prannmire against the

Resistance of the clergy overruled . . . . . 1 70

CHAPTER XIII. Appeal to the Universities on the Divorce. . . .171

Cranmer's Court at Dunstable. Popular feeling towards Anne 173

• 175

d' Hire . 176

. 180

Conditional excommunication of Henry . The Nun of Kent. Peter's Pence. The conge Northern conspiracies. Rising in Ireland Death of Fisher and More ....

Character of Sir T. More ....

Chapter XIV

The Bull of Deposition drawn up Execution of Anne Boleyn .

Henry's Protestant leanings State of the monasteries The Universities visited ....

Visitation of the Monasteries The Louth rebellion .....

The Yorkshire insurrection .

The ' Bishops' Book ' . . ,

Prince Edward born. Case of Lambert

Chapter XV

Lord Exeter and the Poles. The Six Articles . . . 209 Legislation for Wales 213

Contents.

XIII

The alliance wiili Cleves. Fall of Cromwell . The Reformation in Scotland ....

Solway Moss. Death of James V. Attempts at Union Lord Leonard Grey in Ireland ....

Katherine Howard. Death of Lady Salisbury

PAGE

. 214

. 219

. 224

CHAPTER XVL

Charle.i V. fails at Algiers ...... 225

Henry joins Charles against Francis and the Turks . 227

French attack on Portsmouth ...... 229

The currency debased ....... 230

Execution of Lord Surrey . . . . . -231

Henry's last persecutions; his last foundations . . 233

Katherine Parr ........ 234

Death of Henry . . . . . . . .235

Henry's influence on the Church ..... 236

Civil laws of Henry VHI 238

Trials under Henry VHI. ...... 24O

Poetry of the period ....... 240

The stage and prose ........ 242

Character of the middle classes ..... 244

Effect of Henry VHI.'s institutions .... 246

INDEX 247

MAPS.

England and Wales, 1485-1547 Campaign of Terouenne Battle of Flodden Field .

Cleves, Mark, Berg, Jqliers

To face Tit'efagi

119 214

THE CHIEF EUROPEAN SOVERE 'GNS AND MEMBERS OF ROYAL FAMILIES.

(1485-1547.)

A. Emperors of Germany,

1. Frederic III. (first Emperor of the Austrian House of

Hapsburg), King of the Romans 1440; crowned Emperor 1459; died 1493.

2. Maximilian I. (son of FredericIII.),Kingof the Romans

i486, never crowned; styles himself ' Emperor Elect' from 1503; died 1519. Married (a) Mary of Burgundy; (b') Anne of Bretagne; (by proxy — marriage dissolved) ; (r) Bianca Maria Sforza of Milan.

Has issue — («) The Archduke Philip, who inherits the Netherlands from his mother, Mary of Burgundy, 1483; marries Juana of Castile 1505; dies 1506. [b') Margaret of Savoy ; betrothed to Charles VIII. ; married to the Duke of Savoy.

3. Charles V. (son of Philip and Juana), King of Spain

1516; King of the Romans 1519; crowned Emperor 1531; abdicated 1558.

B. Sovereigns of Sixain.

f Ferdinand King of Aragon . . 1479-1504

' I Isabella Queen of Castile . . 1474-1504

2. juana Queen of Spain . . . 1504-1516

Cliief European Sovereigns. XV

C. Kings of France.

2. Charles VITI. . . 1483-149S "t Successively married

3. Louis XII. . . 1498-1515 J to Anne of Bretagne.

D. Kings of England.

E. Topes.

1. Alexander VI 1492-1503

2. Pius III 1503

F. Members of the English Royal Family. {a) The daughters of Henry VII. : —

1. Margaret, marrieJ (a) James IV. of Scotland; (/') Lord

Angus; (r) Lord Methuen; and was mother of {ci) James V. of Scotland ; (/') of Lady Margaret Lennox (mother of Lord Darnley).

2. Mary, married (<?) Louis XII. ; (/;) Charles Brandon,

Duke of Suffolk; and was the grandmother of Lady Jane Grey. [b) The House of Lancaster (descended from John of Gaunt through the Beauforts) : — The Lady Margaret (mother of Henry VII.). (f) The House of York (descended from Lionel Duke of Clarence, the third son, and Thomas of Woodstock, the sixth son, of Edward HI) : —

Chief European Sovereigns.

1. Margaret Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV.

2. Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., married Henry VII.,

3. The Earl of Lincoln (killed at Stoke 1487) and the

Earl of Suffolk (beheaded i5i3),sons of Elizabeth, sister of Edward IV.

4. The Earl of Warwick, son of George Duke of Clarence

(beheaded 1499), and his sister.

5. The Countess of Salisbury (beheaded 1539); had issue

(rt) Lord Montagu (beheaded 1539); (1^) Cardinal Pole; (if) Sir Geoffrey Pole (and others).

6. The Marquis of Exeter (beheaded 1539); his mother

was Lady Courtenay, daughter of Edward IV.

7. The Duke of Buckingham (beheaded 1521) was de-

scended from Thomas of Woodstock, sixth son of Edward III.

8. The Earl of Surrey (beheaded 1546) ; had the same de-

scent through his mother, who was daughter of the Duke of Buckingham.

G. Members of the Scottish Royal Family.

1. Mary (Queen of Scots), daughter of James V.

2. The Duke of Albany, son of a younger brother of

James III.

3. The Earl of Arran, son of a sister of James III.

4. Margaret Lady Lennox, daughter of Queen Margaret

of Scotland by Lord Angus; mother of Henry Darnley.

THE EARLY TUDORS.

Chapter I. The Growth Of Despotism In Europe During The Fifteenth Century

For those who, like ourselves, are trained under free institutions, it is hard to realise that great nations are generally those which have been despotism™ long under the stern discipline of a despotism at last shaken off. Yet it cannot be denied that this form of government, extending over the whole of a large country, and ruling all things within it, has been more able than any other to create a strong sense of nationality overpowering narrow local differences, to establish thorough internal security, and to direct the people to enterprises requiring great exertion in the general cause, and leading to strong enthusiasms, whether through defeat or victory. It has been mostly when their energies have been thus guided that nations have forgotten the jealousies of province against province, county against county, district against district, and learned that the members of one State are immeasurably nearer to one another than any foreigner can be. And when this feeling for the first time gains strength, and a great nation is brought to feel its own I unity, how many important consequences spring from the change ! A people which has been thus ruled, if only the despotism does not last long enough to break its spirit, is sure to feel intensely. Loyalty to the power which has made it one becomes a passion, sometimes even a madness. Bravery makes no account of its own life or of other men's. Self-devotion prevails in many of its most striking forms. High-spirited men become proud of laying down their freedom at the feet of a master who gives them in exchange for it the prospect of ruling over their fellow-men as his deputies. In such times we must not indeed expect to find justice, humanity, and peacefulness, or even truth and honour as now understood ; these are plants which spring only from the soil of freedom. But we can say that the national mind, in order that it may some time feel truth and right strongly, is at any rate learning to feel somethmg strongly. That something may be, and often is, perverse ; indeed it is with a people as with a child, in whom we tolerate a certain violence and misdirection of will, because we know that such strength is the very seedbed of future excellence, and that no one can be really great of whom we cannot say that ' quidquid volet valde volet.' Such, then, is on the whole the meaning of those who say that few nations become really great without having been under despotism for a time. In this sense eminent Italian politicians, even of the present day, sometimes hold to Macchiaveili's opinion, that it is the greatest of national misfortunes to their countrymen never to have been welded together by passing through this stage ; and far-seeing thinkers among ourselves have considered the present constitution of Russia not unfavourable to her chance of being great at last, seeing that despotism has certainly built up her unity and inspired

-1500 ■ Growth of Despotism in Europe. 3

her with the spirit of obedience and self-sacrifice, without hitherto breaking down the energy which will some time achieve her political freedom.

Whether the history of England from the sixteenth century onwards proves the truth of this theory will be best settled when we have gone through it. It is plain enough, at any rate, that a despotism did establish itself under the Tudors, and that many of the qualities likely to characterise a nation thus governed did, in fact, show themselves in Englishmen. We do, as a matter of fact, see them proud of their national unity, bearing themselves haughtily towards foreigners, immoderately fond of aggressive expeditions, recklessly brave, deeply and sometimes even insanely loyal. The object of this work is to trace the rise of the autocracy which had these effects ; and, as the history of England is seldom or never so cut off from that of the Continent as to have nothing in common with what goes on there at the same time, it will be well, by way of introduction, to show that increasing despotism was in the fifteenth century the law, so to speak, of advance in the countries of Western Europe. Thus we shall presently be enabled to see what changes among ourselves sprang from direct imitation of our neighbours, and what others arose from causes of a general character affecting all countries alike.

Spain, as might be expected from the mixture of Eastern blood in her people, and the military type of her civilisation, had been first to enter in'spain.'" upon the course of absolutism which for a time raised her power to such a portentous height, and then laid it prostrate. Indeed her feuds of the Trastamare family had been as effective as our Wars of the Roses a hundred years later in clearing off the turbulent nobles, and thus enabling the Crown of Castile to strengthen itself by the help of the Commons. Under the young Henry III. (1390), the husband of Catherine of Lancaster, the Third Estate was in remarkable prosperity; commerce and manufactures improved greatly, and the history of the country might have been different but for Henry's death in 1406, at the early age of twentyeight. He was succeeded by his son, John II., whose reign of forty-eight years was little else than a perpetual conspiracy against his subjects' freedom. Aided by his imperious minister Alvaro de Luna, he excluded from the royal Council the deputies of the Commons, raised taxes without legislative sanction, and issued pragmaticas asserting his own right to make laws for his subjects. When opposition to these arbitrary measures was threatened, he devised and carried out successfully a wicked scheme for dividing the popular party. Some of the towns were induced, first to petition that they might defray the expenses of their deputies during the session of the Cortes; and then, with a surprising want of political foresight, to allow them to be excused attendance altogether, in older to save the same charges. Thus after a while only eighteen towns sent deputies, the rest being obliged to entrust their interests to these. So successfully were the seeds of division thus sown, that in 1 506, when some of the excluded towns wished to have their ancient rights" back, they were vigorously opposed by the privileged cities, which maintained that the right of representation was theirs alone. The policy of John II. was followed by Henry IV., Isabella of Castile's elder brother, who also threw the trade of the country into utter disorder by debasing the coinage, besides demoralising society by his own bad example. Isabella herself, on her accession in 1474, resolved to resume the old policy of relying on the Commons, to which she was

-1592 Growth of Despotism in Europe. 5

the more inclined from her earnest desire to benefit the people which she ruled. By decrees obtained from the courts of justice she wrested from the nobles many of the estates, annuities, and other grants which they had unconstitutionally got from her predecessors. Besides this, both she and her husband, Ferdinand, King of Aragon, employed men of humble birth in posts which had been always held by nobles ; above all, she adopted, and placed under the patronage of the Crown, the ' Holy Hermandad,' an association of the towns for the repression of violence ; using it, in defiance of the nobles, as a national police which she could entirely trust. It must not for a moment be thought that her patronage of the people aimed in the least at restoring their ancient liberties : on the contrary, by establishing and enthusiastically supporting the Inquisition in her dominions, Isabella made any return to constitutional methods impossible, besides deeply staining her own character for honour, patriotism, and humanity. Satisfied with making the towns prosper materially, and with using their support against the grandees, she never foresaw that they would so soon be trying to wrest from her grandson by force of arms the liberty which she denied them. Few passages of history are sadder than the account of their rebellion against the young Charles V. in 1 520 ; when, amidst a host of quite rational petitions for the better conduct of justice, for the relief of taxation, for a native administration, for the abolition of all privileges obtained at the expense of the Commons, for the reform of the Cortes, and for sessions once in three years at least, they still, shortsighted like their fathers, demanded that the estates of the nobles should be re-annexed to the Crown — as if they wished to destroy all barriers against despotism except their own.

Accordingly, when their forces were beaten on the fatal field of Villalar, and their leaders sent to execution by Charles's ministers, the mainspring of popular freedom in Spain was broken, and they entered upon a long period of decay which has not closed even now, and which hardly required that Philip II. should ensure it by destroying, as he did in 1 592, the last fragments of real power possessed by the Cortes both in Castile and in Aragon. These changes were the more melancholy because Spain had in her old institutions a thoroughly good foundation for rational freedom. Her Cortes dated from two hundred years before the time of Simon de Montfort, and had the completest control over state affairs. The accession of each fresh sovereign required their sanction, and they exercised most fully those powers of remonstrating against grievances and of voting supplies which have always been the two pivots of English freedom. In one point they went beyond us ; for their petitions, if accepted by the King, had at once the force of law. In Aragon, where the ancient liberties were even stronger than in Castile, the ' Justicia ' judged officially and of right whether the King's letters were genuine and his acts constitutional ; while the acknowledged privileges of the kingdom acted as Magna Charta did among ourselves. Catalonia and Valencia again had all the free spirit wliich goes with maritime enterprise. Here the traders were often knights, all being held equal within the mercantile guilds, and the sons of merchants valued as high as those of noblemen if hostages were required in war. No cause less baleful than the bigotry which created the Inquisition could have destroyed such safeguards and the high hopes which might have been founded on them.

-1483 Growth uf Despotism m Europe. 7

Before the end of the fifteenth century, a similar struggle with the nobles in France had also ended in favour of the Crown. Yet no sovereign could ,

have been weaker than Louis XI. at his acces- l?f tvance* sion in 1461, and when, four years later, his nobles began the war of the ' Bien Public ' against him, he was surrounded by great feudatories, all of whom he had offended bitterly. Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, held, in France, Burgundy proper, with Artois and Franche-Comte ; beyond it, Brabant, Limburg, Hainault, and the wealthy cities of Flanders ; and was on the point of excluding France from all communication with the rest of Europe, except through his States, by seizing the Provencal dominions of Rene of Anjou. The Dukes of Bretagne and Bourbon, and the Count of Armagnac with his Gascons, were equally opposed to Louis ; and there was not one of these potentates who would have scrupled for a moment to call in against him the English or any other foreigners. In spite of all this, he succeeded by unresting vigilance and craft in baffling them one by one, and in establishing his own power on the ruin of theirs. On the other hand, the Commons were with him, and favour to them was a ruling principle of his reign. He was never tired of encouraging trade (as when he founded the silk manufacture in France) or of increasing the privileges of the cities. As his reign advanced, and enemy after enemy fell before him, agriculture flourished more and more from the ever-increasing security of the country. His taxation was heavy, for he bought off such enemies as Edward IV. instead of fighting them ; yet, in spite of Commines' invidious comparison between his revenue of 4,700,000 francs and the 1,800,000 paid under his father Charles VII., there is no appearance that his imposts were considered excessive in his lifetime.

Such were some of the points marking liis government of the masses ; he was to the best of his knowledge a supporter of the- low against the high. Yet all that he tiied to do on their behalf was more than counterbalanced by his masterful administration. Other kings had fitfully claimed a right to collect taxes by their sole authority ; precedents to that effect had been common in the reigns of John, Charles v., Charles VI., and Charles VII. But Louis all through his long reign of twenty-two years, never raised money in any other way, and thus made his people forget the very notion of freedom. For, though isolated thinkers like Philippe de Commines still held that a king who levies money unconstitutionally is tyrannous and violent, and that, as long as he does so, he will never be really strong, the States-General had altogether forgotten such ideas when they assembled at Tours after Louis's death to provide for the regency. Although they took at first a high tone, and claimed the abolition of the ' taille ' and other arbitrary taxes, they still allowed themselves to be worsted by a manoeuvre of the Court, and granted the new king the right to levy the taxes of Charles VII., with an addition of twenty-five per cent. Their stipulation that this power should be treated as a concession of their own, and last for only two years, after which the States were to be assembled again, hardly looks like a serious attempt at freedom, when we remember that a French king could get his revenue feom the Provincial Councils much more easily than he could from the States-General, and was therefore most unwilling to summon the latter, at the risk of remonstrances against every act of his government and every detail of his household arrangements. Thus Louis XL, from the success with which he organised a system of arbitrary taxation, and established it by means of his personal popularity,

1399' H8 5 Groivth of Despotis7n in Euiope. g

must needs be considered as one of the great overthrowcrs of liberty in France. As to other points of administration, it is ahiiost superfluous to remark how absolute he was. No purely patriotic care for his subjects' welfare can be ascribed to the king who had men tried before judges who were to have their property if they were found guilty ; nor can he be considered tender of their lives who ordered his guards to shoot down every one who came near his palace walls before a stated hour in the morning or of their personal freedom who enclosed them at pleasure in iron cages. We must, therefore, ascribe his care for commerce and the towns to the absolute necessity under which he lay of finding popular support against his too powerful feudatories. That this view of interest ripened into a positive sympathy with the industrious classes, which showed itself in many simple and natural acts of kindness, we are in no degree called upon to deny. But it is not the less true that he demoralised these very classes, first through the crooked contrivances by which he quelled their oppressors, and then still more completely by his resolution to allow them nothing like political as distinct from municipal freedom ; and thus left them at his death prepared to submit to any tyranny which the course of time might produce.

It is not necessary to enumerate the various tyrannies which had raised themselves at the time we are considering upon the ruins of popular freedom in every great city of Italy, with the one exception of Ya^n^l^xiA Venice ; nor yet those which the weakness of emperors like Frederic III. had allowed to begin in the various States of Germany. But the last Plantagenet reigns in England are so important as paving the way for the Tudor despotism, that a few words must needs be lo The Early Tiidors. I399~

said upon them, under the guidance of the latest and most learned of our constitutional historians.

The fifteenth century may be said to begin with the accession of the Lancastrian dynasty in 1399. As regards the points on which political writers most frequently dwell, Henry IV. and Henry V. were strongly inclined — the former from his defective title and the latter from an innate power of influencing men as he would — to a really constitutional government. Again and again did Henry IV. listen to the remonstrances of his Parliaments ; as in 1401, when they claimed that he should accept no account of their proceedings except from themselves ; in 1404, when he consented on their petition to remove any councillor distasteful to them, and in particular to dismiss all aliens from the Queen's service ; in 1406, when they insisted that he should give an account of his expenditure and dismiss ' the rascally crew ' which composed his household ; and in 1407, when the Commons protested against any bill of supply originating with the Lords. Besides this, parliamentary grants to him were strictly appropriated to their intended purposes — a restriction which we are inclined to consider an improvement of modern times, and one to which even Cromwell as Protector was unwilling to submit. The Parliaments of Henry V. were naturally compliant, from the overflowing favour with which a war in France was regarded, where, as Commines repeatedly notes, every Englishman made sure of enriching himself by plunder and the ransom of captives ; thus in 141 7 and 1419 large subsidies were willingly paid. When, however, they did make remonstrances, he was, like his father, always ready to attend ; as when they prayed in 1414 ' that there be never no law made ' (on their petition), ' and engrossed as statute and law, neither by addition