How this
may be ac-
counted for.
Internal
jealousies in
the towns.
Possible
alliance
between
Richard II
and the
towns.
Policy of
Richard II,
6ιo Constitidwnal History. [chap.
or of the neighbourhood, were reproduced and intensified, and
the two representatives would be the nominees of two rival
parties. In most of the towns however the members would
almost certainly be the nominees of the local magistrates rather
than of the great body of the commons ; and the facility or
difficulty with which this result was secured would be the only
index of any political aspiration in the inferior body. Traces
of any such difficulty in the matter of parliamentary elections
are, as we have seen, extremely rare ; but they are not alto-
gether absent, and they have their reflexions in the proceedings
of parliament. In the reign of Richard II several petitions
were presented in parliament which show that the strife be-
tween the governing bodies and the craft guilds was not yet
decided; possibly the statute which subjected the guild lands
to the restraints of the mortmain acts owed its acceptance to
this jealousy ; and, more distinctly, the proposal to limit the
right of the towns to enfranchise villeins speaks of an intention
in the represented classes to hold fast their power1. The most
offensive of these proposals were rejected by the king, but they
were made in the most subservient parliaments of the reign,
and by that party no doubt which might have reckoned most
securely on the king’s support. But Richard had probably
conceived the idea of appealing to the lower stratum of the
nation in order to crush the baronial opposition ; and with all
his weakness he was clever enough to see that, in the class
which had risen against his ministers in 1381, there was a
power which it would be foolish to oppress, and which it might
be wise to propitiate. He would defend the villein against the
burgher, the burgher against the knight, the knight against
the baron, but it was that he himself might profit by the over-
throw of all. And this has to be borne in mind in reading the
whole of his most instructive history. There were many points
in his policy which were, in themselves, far more liberal than
the policy of the barons ; yet it was on the victory of the
barons that the ultimate fate of the constitution hung.
Richard, very early in his career, would have saved the
1 See above, vol. ii. pp. 485, 509.
XXi.] Social Influences on Politics. 61 i
villeins when the-parliament revoked the charters; he refused
to sanction later restrictive measures against them ; his court,
if not himself, was strongly inclined to tolerate the Wycliffites ;
many of the wisest measures against the papacy were passed
during the time of his complete supremacy; the barons and
knights of the shire may be represented as a body of self-
seekers and oppressors in these very points, and they certainly
were in the closest alliance with the persecuting party in the
church. Yet they were the national champions, and their
victory was the guarantee of national progress. If Richard
had overcome them England might have become the counter-
part of France, and, having passed through the ordeal, or
rather the agony, of the dynastic struggle and the discipline
of Tudor rule, must have sunk like France into that gulf from
which only revolution could deliver her.
In the fifteenth century the towns seem to have shared Thepoiitics
pretty evenly the sympathies of the dynastic parties ; but under the
they do not play, either in or out of parliament, an important kings,
part in the struggle. They were courted by the kings as a
counterpoise to the still overpowering baronage, and by the
aspirants to power against its actual possessors ; they were
courted by Henry IV as against the party of Richard, and by
the Yorkists against Henry VI ; and it was the absence of any
popular qualities in Henry, as compared with the gallant and
popular manners of the rival princes, which, far more than
any questions of deeper import, placed him at a disadvantage
regarding them. But the readiness with which the Tudor Relation of
succession was welcomed proved that there was no real affec- York to the
tion felt for the house of York, and proves further that the
towns as well as the nation at large were weary of dynastic
politics. From that time the municipal organisation is
strengthened and hardened, still with that tendency towards
restriction which betrays a want of political foresight : the
victory of the trading spirit once won, the trading spirit
shows itself as much inclined to engross power and to exclude
competition as any class had done before.
490. It cannot be too carefully borne in mind, especially as