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Home Lancaster and York The Break-up of the Yorkist Power; Part 4 |
The Break-up of the Yorkist Power; Part 4Yet one more precaution was taken by Henry VII in his creation of the Star Chamber. This court, though set up by Act of Parliament, owed its powers indirectly to the Crown. The King in theory was the fount of justice. Sitting in his council he could deal with offenders too powerful for the ordinary law. Henry VII had no wish to be judge himself; the days for a king on the bench were past; but his powers were handed over to the Star Chamber. In it sat the Chancellor, Treasurer, and Privy Seal, a bishop, and two chief justices, armed with powers to suppress all breaches of the law by offenders too noble or too high to be reached by the ordinary courts. It could punish by fines and imprisonment; it could deal with juries who gave unsatisfactory verdicts; it was, in short, a court to protect the weak against the strong. It is strange that in its later days it should be turned from its original use, and become the engine of tyranny, a byword of oppression.Thus either in battle, or on the scaffold, or under the new authority of the Crown, the barons' power dwindled. No longer monopolizing the great offices of State, no longer exalted by intermarriage with royal sons and daughters - for Henry began a new policy of marriage - the great houses ceased to be a menace to the kingdom. Their power passed away, but the dread of it lived on later. As we shall see, under the Tudors the nation steadily supported the Crown, even when it seemed tyrannous, for fear that to weaken it might open the door to disorder once more. The great baronial houses perished in the turmoil they had created. They perished, however, alone. The Wars of the Roses hardly touched the common folk. The fact becomes clear at once if the Wars of the Roses be compared with the Civil War of 1642. That teems with sieges: the attitude of London, the resistance of Gloucester, the capture of Bristol, the plot against Hull; these, and a host of others, mark a political or military crisis. In the Wars of the Roses are no sieges, save of the Lancastrian castles in the north. No town was interested enough to stand a siege in the cause of Lancaster or York; when the enemy draws near it surrenders; when the enemy departs it thanks God that it is rid of a knave. The struggle was of the barons, not of the people. True, the party of York was more "popular" than the party of Lancaster. The Lancastrians had enjoyed a longer time to exhibit their capacity for misgovernment, and their supporters from the Welsh borders and the north were unusually fierce and lawless, even in a lawless age. Hence well-to-do merchants, peaceful traders, and honest craftsmen, were Yorkist rather than Lancastrian. But they confined their encouragement to sympathy; they took no active share. Hence, save for the local disorder, the realm throve well enough; its industrial progress went on steadily; its wool trade with Burgundy was not interrupted; some of the older towns decayed, but new ones were springing up. We find how little the bulk of England cared about the wars in another contrast to the Civil War. There, men act from high motives, and cling sternly to duty: they do not fight for their own gain, but because they believe King or Parliament to be right; and in the struggle we find famous men, and noble deeds in plenty. The Wars of the Roses produced no great man, and no noble deed. Warwick is the most striking figure, and it may be admitted that for a time he tried to do his duty. But when duty became difficult and dangerous, he chose treason. The truth is that there was no further place for him. He had raised Edward to the throne; henceforth he could only be his patron or his enemy. Edward was too masterful to obey a patron; Warwick, too proud to sink into a courtier, and too powerful to be tolerated as a foe. The idea of a great minister under the throne was not yet developed. Thus, when Warwick fell from the path of honesty, he deserves some sympathy as a man placed in an impossible position and confronted with extreme temptation. But of the other players in the tragedy there is little that is good to be said. True that a few were loyal to their party, but that by itself is no great virtue; the majority were not even honest. Half of the battles were decided by treason or the expectation of it. Scarcely a noble house that did not sway and veer in its politics as the wind blew from York or Lancaster. Therefore, all the good features of the Civil War - loyalty, integrity, mercy - are replaced in the Wars of the Roses by treachery, self-seeking, and cruelty; the one is the best form of party struggle, and the other the worst form of faction. The house of York, at one time so strong, was broken away piecemeal. First it lost the Nevilles; then the Clarence faction; then Richard III quarrelled with Edward's nobility, the Greys and the Woodvilles; his seizure of the throne cost him all Edward's friends and the support of Burgundy; his brutal murder of the little princes sent Edward's queen into the Lancastrian ranks; Buckingham rebelled against him; finally, his monstrous proposal to marry his niece alienated the Church. It was like that familiar bundle of sticks, strong enough when tied, easily snapped when single. But the final snapping of them meant more than the destruction of a house, or of a party, or even of a policy. It is the break between medieval and modern England. |
Chronology |
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