6. Great Power of the King.-Henry VII. thus maintained himself on the throne. He gave to the English people the great thing that they wanted, peace and security. Yet he also gave them what in the long-run is not good for any people, the habit of seeing burdens placed on the rich instead of being placed justly and fairly on all in proportion to their means, and the habit of seeing the king do very much as he pleased. The fact is that now that the nobles were weakened, the people were not accustomed to act together. There were no newspapers to tell them what was going on all over the country, and those who lived in one county scarcely knew anything of what was happening in another. They were therefore content to trust the king, and this made the king strong enough to do a great deal of good. Unfortunately also it made him strong enough to do a great deal of harm, and the English people had afterwards to undergo many hardships to take away from the descendants of Henry VII. the power which they had allowed him to gain.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE FIRST YEARS OF HENRY VIII.

(1509-1529.)

1. Popularity of Henry.-The eldest son of Henry VII., Arthur, Prince of Wales, had died in his father's lifetime. The next brother succeeded as

Henry VIII., and married Arthur's widow, Catharine For some years he and the new queen

of Aragon.

lived happily together. Henry VIII. was thoroughly popular. He was strong and active, could leap

men.

further and shoot an arrow nearer the mark than any one of his subjects. Bluff King Hal, as he was called, had a ready jest and a hearty word for all For some time he left the management of affairs of state to his minister, Cardinal Wolsey. But he had a strong will of his own; and whenever he gave himself the trouble to think about business, he knew better how to contrive to get what he wanted than the cleverest man in his dominions.

2. Wars on the Continent.-During the first years of his reign Henry took part in wars upon the Continent. The kings of France had grown strong since those miserable wars with the English had come to an end, and Spain, which had before been divided. into several states, was now united into one state. During the reign of Henry VIII., Francis I., king of France, was almost always at war with Charles I., king of Spain, who was known as Charles V., because he was chosen emperor, and ruled over Germany by that title. Henry was afraid that one or the other would grow too strong, and always took the part of the one who happened to be weakest at the time. Wars conducted in this way were not likely to do good to any one.

3. Condition of the People. All this while Henry's subjects at home were studying and thinking more. than they had been able to do during the Wars of the Roses. In England, as in the rest of Europe, men read more than they had done for centuries, now that printing-presses were at work. Not only did they read more, but they read different things.

Instead of studying lives of the saints, and religious books written by priests and monks, they read the old books written by the Greeks and Romans. Instead of thinking how men could best leave their fellow-men and pass their time in a monastery to prepare for heaven, they began to ask how they could best help their fellow-creatures here upon earth. There was certainly much need of thinking about this. It is true that the poor were no longer serfs as they had been in the days of Richard II., but they were very hardly treated. When the king went to war, he hired a large number of men to be his soldiers, and when he finished his war he turned them off. They had forgotten how to work, and unless they were ready to starve, they must procure food in some bad way. They robbed and murdered for a livelihood. The cruel laws of those days condemned every thief to be hanged. Thousands were put to death in the course of this reign, though the robberies and murders went on as before. In some respects the punishments made things worse. If a man committed a robbery he knew that he would be hanged if he were caught, and that he could not be more than hanged if he committed a murder. He therefore usually murdered the man he had robbed, to prevent his living to give evidence against him.

4. The Inclosures.-Another evil came from a change in the management of the land. Landlords found that they could get more money by selling wool than they could by selling corn, and they therefore turned a large quantity of land, which

before had been ploughed for corn-land, into pastureland on which to keep sheep. In this way a large number of men were thrown out of work, because one or two shepherds could look after a very large flock of sheep, whilst it would take several men to cultivate for corn the land on which the sheep were feeding. The men thus thrown out of work were often driven to live by robbery and murder like the discharged soldiery.

5. The Utopia and the Discovery of America. It was long before remedies were found for these evils. One great and wise man, Sir Thomas More, wrote a book called 'Utopia,' in which he advised that the land should again be sown with corn, and that men should be helped to work that they might be kept out of temptation to rob, instead of being hanged after they had committed crimes. Great improvements cannot be made at once, but it was a good sign that some men were beginning to think how they could be made. As often happens, the way to improvement comes from something which does not at the time seem to have anything to do with it. In the reign of Henry VII., Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean and discovered America. As yet England gained no advantage by this. In 1492 Columbus discovered America for Spain. Scarcely any except Spanish ships sailed to the New World. Spaniards alone settled there, and carried to their own country the stores of gold and silver which were dug out of its mines. By-and-by England would have its share in the New World, and more than its share in the trade and commerce which sprung up