The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (236 page)

cheese, and butter.
s
A statute was even passed to fix the price of beef, pork, mutton, and veal.
t
Beef and pork were ordered to be sold at a halfpenny a pound: Mutton and veal at a halfpenny half a farthing, money of that age. The preamble of the statute says, that these four species of butcher’s meat were the food of the poorer sort. This act was afterwards repealed.
u

The practice of depopulating the country, by abandoning tillage, and throwing the

lands into pasturage, still continued;w
as appears by the new laws which were, from time to time, enacted against that practice. The king was entitled to half the rents of the land, where any farm houses were allowed to fall to decay.
x
The unskilful husbandry was probably the cause why the proprietors found no profit in tillage. The number of sheep allowed to be kept in one flock, was restrained to two thousand.
y

Sometimes, says the statute, one proprietor or farmer would keep a flock of twenty-four thousand. It is remarkable, that the parliament ascribes the encreasing price of mutton, to this encrease of sheep: Because say they, the commodity being gotten into

few hands, the price of it is raised at pleasure.z
It is more probable, that the effect proceeded from the daily encrease of money: For it seems almost impossible, that such a commodity could be engrossed.

In the year 1544, it appears that an acre of good land in Cambridgeshire was let at a

shilling, or about fifteenpence of our present money.a
This is ten times cheaper than the usual rent at present. But commodities were not above four times cheaper: A presumption of the bad husbandry in that age.

Some laws were made with regard to beggars and vagrants;b
one of the circumstances in government, which humanity would most powerfully recommend to a benevolent legislator; which seems, at first sight, the most easily adjusted; and which is yet the most difficult to settle in such a manner, as to attain the end without destroying industry. The convents formerly were a support to the poor; but at the same time tended to encourage idleness and beggary.

In 1546, a law was made for fixing the interest of money at 10 per cent.; the first legal interest known in England. Formerly, all loans of that nature were regarded as usurious. The preamble of this very law treats the interest of money as illegal and criminal: And the prejudices still remained so strong, that the law, permitting interest, was repealed in the following reign.

This reign, as well as many of the foregoing and even subsequent reigns, abounds with monopolizing laws, confining particular manufactures to particular towns, or excluding the open country in general.
c
There remain still too many traces of similar absurdities. In the subsequent reign, the corporations, which had been opened by a former law, and obliged to admit tradesmen of different kinds, were again shut up by act of parliament; and every one was prohibited from exercising any trade, who was not of the corporation.
d

Henry, as he possessed, himself, some talent for letters, was an encourager of them in others. He founded Trinity college in Cambridge, and gave it ample endowments.

Wolsey founded Christ Church in Oxford, and intended to call it Cardinal college: But PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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upon his fall, which happened before he had entirely finished his scheme, the king seized all the revenues; and this violence, above all the other misfortunes of that minister, is said to have given him the greatest concern.
e
But Henry afterwards restored the revenues of the college, and only changed the name. The cardinal founded in Oxford the first chair for teaching Greek; and this novelty rent that university into violent factions, which frequently came to blows. The students divided themselves into parties, which bore the names of Greeks and Trojans, and sometimes fought with as great animosity as was formerly exercised by those hostile nations. A new and more correct method of pronouncing Greek being introduced, it also divided the Grecians themselves into parties; and it was remarked, that the catholics favoured the former pronunciation, the protestants gave countenance to the new. Gardiner employed the authority of the king and council to suppress innovations in this particular, and to preserve the corrupt sound of the Greek alphabet. So little liberty was then allowed of any kind! The penalties, inflicted upon the new pronunciation were no less than whipping, degradation, and expulsion; and the bishop declared, that rather than permit the liberty of innovating in the pronunciation of the Greek alphabet, it were better that the language itself were totally banished the universities. The introduction of the Greek language into Oxford, excited the emulation of Cambridge.
f

Wolsey intended to have enriched the library of his college at Oxford, with copies of all the manuscripts that were in the Vatican.
g
The countenance given to letters by this king and his ministers, contributed to render learning fashionable in England: Erasmus speaks with great satisfaction of the general regard paid by the nobility and

gentry to men of knowledge.h
It is needless to be particular in mentioning the writers of this reign, or of the preceding. There is no man of that age, who has the least pretension to be ranked among our classics. Sir Thomas More, though he wrote in Latin, seems to come the nearest to the character of a classical author.

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XXXIV

EDWARD VI

State of the regency — Innovations in the regency — Hertford protector —

Reformation completed — Gardiner’s opposition — Foreign affairs — Progress of
the reformation in Scotland — Assassination of cardinal Beaton — Conduct of the
war with Scotland — Battle of Pinkey — A parliament — Farther progress of the
reformation — Affairs of Scotland — Young queen of Scots sent into France —

Cabals of lord Seymour — Dudley earl of Warwic — A parliament — Attainder of
lord Seymour — His execution — Ecclesiastical affairs
The late king, by the regulations, which he imposed on the 1547. State of the

government of his infant son, as well as by the limitations of the regency.

succession, had projected to reign even after his decease; and he imagined, that his ministers, who had always been so obsequious to him during his life-time, would never afterwards depart from the plan, which he had traced out to them. He fixed the majority of the prince at the completion of his eighteenth year; and as Edward was then only a few months past nine, he appointed sixteen executors; to whom, during the minority, he entrusted the government of the king and kingdom.

Their names were, Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury; lord Wriothesely, chancellor; lord St. John, great master; lord Russel, privy seal; the earl of Hertford, chamberlain; viscount Lisle, admiral; Tonstal, bishop of Durham; Sir Anthony Brown, master of horse; Sir William Paget, secretary of state; Sir Edward North, chancellor of the court of augmentations; Sir Edward Montague, chief justice of the common pleas; judge Bromley, Sir Anthony Denny, and Sir William Herbert, chief gentlemen of the privy chamber; Sir Edward Wotton, treasurer of Calais; Dr. Wotton, dean of Canterbury. To these executors, with whom was entrusted the whole regal authority, were appointed twelve counsellors, who possessed no immediate power, and could only assist with their advice, when any affair was laid before them. The council was composed of the earls of Arundel and Essex; Sir Thomas Cheyney, treasurer of the household; Sir John Gage, comptroller; Sir Anthony Wingfield, vice-chamberlain; Sir William Petre, secretary of state; Sir Richard Rich, Sir John Baker, Sir Ralph Sadler, Sir Thomas Seymour, Sir Richard Southwel, and Sir Edmund Peckham.
i
The usual caprice of Henry appears somewhat in this nomination; while he appointed several persons of inferior station among his executors, and gave only the place of counsellor to a person of such high rank as the earl of Arundel, and to Sir Thomas Seymour the king’s uncle.

But the first act of the executors and counsellors was to depart Innovations in the

from the destination of the late king in a material article. No regency.

sooner were they met, than it was suggested, that the government would lose its dignity, for want of some head, who might represent the royal majesty, who might receive addresses from foreign ambassadors, to whom dispatches from English ministers abroad might be carried, and whose name might be employed in all orders and proclamations: And as the king’s will seemed to labour under a defect in PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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this particular, it was deemed necessary to supply it, by chusing a protector; who, though he should possess all the exterior symbols of royal dignity, should yet be

bound, in every act of power, to follow the opinion of the executors.k
This proposal was very disagreeable to chancellor Wriothesely. That magistrate, a man of an active spirit and high ambition, found himself, by his office, entitled to the first rank in the regency after the primate; and as he knew, that this prelate had no talent or inclination for state affairs, he hoped, that the direction of public business would of course devolve in a great measure upon himself. He opposed, therefore, the proposal of chusing a protector; and represented that innovation as an infringement of the late king’s will, which, being corroborated by act of parliament, ought in every thing to be a law to them, and could not be altered but by the same authority, which had established it. But he seems to have stood alone in the opposition. The executors and counsellors were mostly courtiers, who had been raised by Henry’s favour, not men of high birth or great hereditary influence; and as they had been sufficiently accustomed to submission during the reign of the late monarch, and had no pretensions to govern the nation by their own authority, they acquiesced the more willingly in a proposal, which seemed calculated for preserving public peace and tranquillity. It being therefore agreed to name a protector, the choice fell of course on the earl of Hertford, who, as he was the king’s maternal uncle, was strongly interested Hertford protector.

in his safety; and possessing no claims to inherit the crown, could never have any separate interest, which might lead him to endanger Edward’s person or his authority.
l
The public was informed by proclamation of this change in the administration; and dispatches were sent to all foreign courts to give them intimation of it. All those who were possessed of any office resigned their former commissions, and accepted new ones in the name of the young king. The bishops themselves were constrained to make a like submission. Care was taken to insert in their new commissions, that they held their office during pleasure.
m
And it is there expressly affirmed, that all manner of authority and jurisdiction, as well ecclesiastical

as civil, is originally derived from the crown.n

The executors, in their next measure, showed a more submissive deference to Henry’s will; because many of them found their account in it. The late king had intended, before his death, to make a new creation of nobility, in order to supply the place of those peerages, which had fallen by former attainders, or the failure of issue; and that he might enable the new peers to support their dignity, he had resolved, either to bestow estates on them, or advance them to higher offices. He had even gone so far as to inform them of this resolution; and in his will, he charged his executors to make good all his promises.
o
That they might ascertain his intentions in the most authentic manner, Sir William Paget, Sir Anthony Denny, and Sir William Herbert, with whom Henry had always conversed in a familiar manner, were called before the board of regency; and having given evidence of what they knew concerning the king’s promises, their testimony was relied on, and the executors proceeded to the fulfilling of these engagements.

Hertford was created duke of Somerset, marschal and lord

17th Feb.

treasurer; Wriothesely, earl of Southampton; the earl of Essex, marquess of Northampton; viscount Lisle, earl of Warwic; Sir Thomas Seymour, lord Seymour of Sudley, and admiral; Sir Richard Rich, Sir William Willoughby, Sir

Edward Sheffield accepted the title of baron.p
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offered, refused it; because the other part of the king’s promise, the bestowing of estates on these new noblemen, was deferred till a more convenient opportunity.

Some of them, however, as also Somerset the protector, were, in the mean time, endowed with spiritual preferments, deaneries and prebends. For among many other invasions of ecclesiastical privileges and property, this irregular practice, of bestowing spiritual benefices on laymen, began now to prevail.

The earl of Southampton had always been engaged in an opposite party to Somerset; and it was not likely that factions, which had secretly prevailed, even during the arbitrary reign of Henry, should be suppressed in the weak administration, that usually attends a minority. The former nobleman, that he might have the greater leisure for attending to public business, had, of himself and from his own authority, put the great seal in commission, and had empowered four lawyers, Southwell, Tregonel, Oliver, and Bellasis, to execute in his absence the office of chancellor. This measure seemed very exceptionable; and the more so, as, two of the commissioners being canonists, the lawyers suspected, that, by this nomination, the chancellor had intended to discredit the common law. Complaints were made to the council; who, influenced by the protector, gladly laid hold of the opportunity to depress Southampton. They consulted the judges with regard to so unusual a case, and received for answer, that the commission was illegal, and that the chancellor, by his presumption in granting it, had justly forfeited the great seal, and was even liable to punishment. The council summoned him to appear before them. He maintained, that he held his office by the late king’s will, founded on an act of parliament, and could not lose it without a trial in parliament; that if the commission, which he had granted, were found illegal, it might be cancelled, and all the ill consequences of it be easily remedied; and that the depriving him of his office for an error of this nature, was a precedent by which any other innovation might be authorized. But the council, notwithstanding these topics of defence, declared that he had forfeited the great seal; that a fine should be imposed