they held in their own hands the means of asserting what the law
acknowledged to be their right. The government had no power to compel
submission to injustice, as was proved by the fate of an attempt to levy a
"benevolence" by force, in 1525. The people resisted with a determination
against which the crown commissioners were unable to contend, and the
scheme ended with an acknowledgment of fault by Henry, who retired with a
good grace from an impossible position. If the peasantry had been suffering
under any real grievances we should not have failed to have heard of them
when the religious rebellions furnished so fair an opportunity to press
those grievances forward. Complaint was loud enough when complaint was
just, under the Somerset protectorate. [40]

The incomes of the great nobles cannot be determined, for they varied
probably as much as they vary now. Under Henry IV. the average income of an
earl was estimated at £2000 a year.[41] Under Henry VIII. the great Duke of
Buckingham, the wealthiest English peer, had £6000.[42] And the income of
the Archbishop of Canterbury was rated at the same amount.[43] But the
establishments of such men were enormous; their ordinary retinues in time
of peace consisting of many hundred persons; and in war, when the duties of
a nobleman called him to the field, although in theory his followers were
paid by the crown, yet the grants of parliament were on so small a scale
that the theory was seldom converted into fact, and a large share of the
expenses was paid often out of private purses. The Duke of Norfolk, in the
Scotch war of 1523, declared (not complaining of it, but merely as a reason
why he should receive support) that he had spent all his private means upon
the army; and in the sequel of this history we shall find repeated
instances of knights and gentlemen voluntarily ruining themselves in the
service of their country. The people, not universally, but generally, were
animated by a true spirit of sacrifice; by a true conviction that they were
bound to think first of England, and only next of themselves; and unless we