ing for his injuries, in the presence of the representatives of the whole people. The equality of civil rights, of which we have before spoken, is probably the reason why we find the knights sitting in the same assembly with the citizens and burgesses. There are few things in our early constitution of more importance than this. Cities and towns, however necessary their assistance for granting aids and taxes, are not likely to obtain, in a feudal country, that kind of respect from the other bodies in the state which would enable them to claim a large share of political power. The separation of this class from the other, was perhaps one of the chief causes of the failure of the Spanish, and other early constitutions similar to our own. But in England, the knights, who represented the landed force of the whole country, gave a stability and compactness to the frame of the House of Commons, and placed it on a broad foundation, not easily shaken by any king who should attempt its overthrow.

The sitting of the knights, citizens, and burgesses in one assembly, however, was not always the rule. It has been established by one of those

happy unions of fortune and counsel to whica the English constitution owes so much;-I know not, indeed, if I ought to call it fortune. There was a practical wisdom in our ancestors, which induced them to alter and vary the form of our institutions as they went on; to suit them to the circumstances of the time, and reform them according to the dictates of experience. They never ceased to work upon our frame of government, as a sculptor fashions the model of a favourite statue. It is an art that is now seldom used, and the disuse has been attended with evils of the most alarming magnitude.

16

CHAP. II.

HENRY THE SEVENTH.

This King, to speak of him in terms equal to his deserving, was one of the best sort of wonders, a wonder for wise men. He had parts, both in his virtues and his fortune, not so fit for a common-place as for observation.

LORD BACON, Life and Reign of Henry VII.

THE battle of Bosworth Field put an end to the long and destructive wars which had wasted the blood, and disfigured the fair face of England, in the quarrel between the houses of York and Lancaster. Such a contention is little less disgraceful to mankind than it would have been to have made the white and red roses the subject, instead of the symbols, of hostility, and affords but too much ground for the assertion of a democratic writer, that hereditary right has caused as long and as sanguinary wars as elective monarchy.

Henry, who was crowned in the field of

battle, lost no time in proving he was as well able to keep, as to acquire a throne. He immediately summoned a parliament, and obtained from them the passing of a statute, not declaring that he was lawful heir to the crown; not asserting the right of conquest, or of election; but enacting "that the inheritance of the crown should rest, remain, and abide in the king." He procured this statute to be confirmed by the pope's bull. In the same spirit of peace and moderation, he caused many exceptions to be inserted in the acts for attainting the adherents of King Richard. A few A few years afterward he procured a law to be passed, declaring that no one should be called in question for obeying a king de facto. He thus quieted the minds of his subjects, and added more to the stability of his government, than he could possibly have done by displaying what Bacon calls the wreath of five; to wit, his own descent, and that of his Queen, the claim of conquest, and the authorities, parliamentary and papal. Amongst these titles, that of the house of York seems to have given him little satisfaction, and he took care not to crown his queen for a considerable

C

time after his marriage. And whether from prejudice or policy, it is certain that his Lancasterian partialities influenced his conduct during the whole of his reign.

One of Henry's first endeavours was to procure a law to prevent conspiracies among the great, and riots among the people. In a parliament assembled in the third year of this reign, Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of the kingdom, spoke the following words:"His Grace (i. e. the King) saith, that it is not the blood spilt in the field that will save the blood in the city; nor the marshal's sword that will set this kingdom in perfect peace; but that the true way is to stop the seeds of sedition and rebellion at the beginnings, and for that purpose to devise, confirm, and quicken good and wholesome laws against riots and unlawful assemblies of people, and all combinations and confederacies of them by liveries, tokens, and other badges of factious dependence; that the peace of the land may by these ordinances, as by bars of iron, be soundly bound in and strengthened, and all force, both in court, country, and private houses, be suppressed."