Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: KING AND PARLIAMENT (A.D. 1603 — 1714.) CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. The Middle Ages had ended in England amid the storm and stress of the Wars of the Roses. Wearied out by thirty years of bloodshed on the battlefield The Tudor and the scaffold, the English nation threw government, itself at the feet of Henry VII., and craved of him nought but " strong governance " and the end of anarchy. -It was on these terms that he and his progeny ruled England. But the Tudors had a shrewd perception of the truth that Englishmen are more easily led than driven. They were tyrannical to many individuals who resisted their will in things secular or religious, but to the majority they represented that majesty and security which we now describe as the " State". For, while they maintained strict law and order in the land, as is the first duty of every government, they studiously avoided collisions with the prejudices and feelings of the nation. The result was that during the sixteenth century Englishmen developed a new spirit. It was not quite a spirit of liberty. We are accustomed nowadays to Lea to a na- a freedom in our actions and opinions which tiona1 spirit, was quite unknown then. If a man spoke or wrote or even thought differently from his fellows in Tudor times, he was suspected of disloyalty. There had been so much anarchy and division during the civil wars of the previous century, that an absence of disagreement was felt to be the all-important thing. The king and his government must be obeyed without 2 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. criticism. Religion was not, as now, a matter for each man to choose for himself without interference. The government could not afford to let men obey their own consciences. A Roman Catholic was an enemy of the nation, because he believed in the...