their strength as they did later in the days of the Stuarts. He
obtained grants of tonnage and poundage enjoyed by some of his Yorkist
predecessors, had recourse to the system of forced grants known as
benevolences, set up the Star Chamber nominally to preserve order but
in reality to repress his most dangerous opponents, and treated
Parliament as a mere machine, whose only work was to register the
wishes of the sovereign. In brief, Henry VII., acting according to the
spirit of the age, removed the elements that might make for national
disunion, consolidated his own power at the expense of the nobility,
won over to his side the middle and lower classes whose interests were
promoted and from whom no danger was to be feared, and laid the
foundations of that absolute government, which was carried to its
logical conclusions by his son and successor, Henry VIII.

By nature Henry VII. was neither overbearing nor devoid of tact, and
from the doubtful character of his title to the throne he was obliged
to be circumspect in his dealings with the nation. It was not so,
however, with Henry VIII. He was a young, impulsive, self-willed
ruler, freed from nearly all the dangers that had acted as a restraint
upon his father, surrounded for the most part by upstarts who had no
will except to please their master, and intensely popular with the
merchants, farmers, and labourers, whose welfare was consulted, and
who were removed so far from court that they knew little of royal
policy or royal oppression. The House of Lords, comprising as it did
representatives of the clergy and nobles, felt itself entirely at the
mercy of the king, and its members, alarmed by the fate of all those
who had ventured to oppose his wishes, would have decreed the
abolition of their privileges rather than incur his displeasure, had
they been called upon to do so. The House of Commons was composed to a
great extent of the nominees of the Crown, whose names were forwarded