to take up, as we proceed, some of the most significant aspects
of the social history which underlies the political history. The
variation of the balance, maintained between the several
agencies at work in the national growth, will be regarded
as the point of sight in our sketch, but the main object of the
chapter will be the examination of the factors themselves ; the
strength, weight and influence of royalty ; the composition,
personal and territorial, of the baronage and gentry ; their
political ideas and education ; the growth of the middle class
and its relation to those above and below it ; and the con-
dition of the lowest class of the nation. It is obvious that
only a sketch can be attempted; it is possible that anything
more ambitious than a sketch would contain more fallacies
than facts.

455. Taking the king and the three estates as the factors of
the national problem, it is probably true to say in general
terms that, from the Conquest to the Great Charter, the crown,
the clergy, and the commons, were banded together against the
baronage ; the legal and national instincts and interests against
the feudal. From the date of Magna Carta to the revolution of
1399, the barons and the Commonswere banded in resistance
to the aggressive policy of the crown, the action of the clergy
being greatly perturbed by the attraction and repulsion of the
papacy. From the accession of Henry IV to the accession of
Henry VII, the baronage, the people, and the royal house, were
divided each within itself, and that internal division was work-
ing a sort of political suicide which the Tudor reigns arrested,
and by arresting it they made possible the restoration of the
national balance. In such a very comprehensive summary of
the drama, even the great works of Henry II and Edward I
appear as secondary influences ; although the defensive and
constructive policy of the former laid the foundation both of
the royal autocracy which his descendants strove to maintain,
and of the national organisation which was strong enough to
overpower it; and the like constructive and defensive policy of
Edward I gave definite form and legal completeness to the
national organisation itself. In the struggle of the fifteenth

century the clergy, alone of the three estates, seem to retain the THθ τ∏dor
unity and cohesion which was proof against the disruptive in-
fluences of the dynastic quarrel ; but their position, though
apparently stronger, had a fatal source of weakness in their
alliance with or dependence on a foreign influence ; whilst the
weakness of the crown and the people was owing to personal
and transient causes, which a sovereign with a strong policy,
and a people again united, would very soon reduce to insigni-
ficance. The crown was a lasting power, even when its wearers
were incapable of governing; the nation was a perpetual cor-
poration, in nowise essentially affected by personal or party
changes ; whereas in the baronage personal and constitutional HumiHa-
existence were one and the same thing, and the blow that baronage,
destroyed the one destroyed the other. Hence during the early
days of the Tudor dictatorship, the baronage was powerless ;
and the clergy and commons, although like the crown they
retained corporate vitality, were thrown out of working order
by the absence of all political energy in the remains of the
other estate. The commons, having lost the leaders who had Apa½y _ot

.                          ,                       ,                                         the com-

misled them to their own destruction, threw themselves into mo∏s.

other work, and, ceasing to take much interest in politics, grew
richer and stronger for the troubled times to come. The clergy, Dependence
without much temptation to aggression and with little chance ° * ^{e olergy}∙
of obtaining greater independence, seeing little in Rome to
honour and nothing at home to provoke resistance, gradually
sank into complete harmony with and dependence on the king.

And this constituted the strength of the position of Henry VIII :
he had no strong baronage to thwart him ; he or his ministers
had wisdom enough to understand the interests which were
dearest to the commons; the church was obsequious to his
friendship, defenceless against his hostility. With the support Positionof
of his parliament, which trusted without loving him, and con- ^llcn,'^y'ɪɪɪ'
firmed the acts by which he fettered them, he permanently
changed the balance between church and state and between the
crown and the estates. He overthrew the monastic system,
depriving the church of at least a third of her resources and
throwing out of parliament nearly two-thirds of the spiritual

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