WARS OF THE ROSES THEIR CHARACTER AND RESULTS 305 were not prepared for his coming, as were the Germans and Netherlanders for the advent of Luther, a century and a half later. He died, and his sect substantially died with him, for they were soon crushed out by the persecutors of the Bishops' Court. At the conclusion of the war with France, almost every vestige of his influence had disappeared. Religious enthusiasm was dead. The one belief of the time was in sorcery and magic.* We are now descending into a deep valley with great rapidity. In 1415, the English won their famous victory at Agincourt. In 1431, they burned Joan of Arc at the stake for sorcery, in turning the tide of conquest which had been so long setting against the French. In 1451, the long war came to an end; the English were driven from the Continent, holding nothing but the city of Calais as a memento of their triumphs.† France became a mightier power than ever before, and the English nobles were left to fight among themselves. The story of the last hundred years had been dark enough for English civilization, but that which is to follow is darker still. No page in history is more dreary than that which chronicles the Wars of the Roses, extending from 1450 to 1485. The contest was not one of principle, nothing being involved but the supremacy of faction; and it was characterized simply by treachery, selfishness, and ruthless cruelty. The old, untamed, Anglo-Saxon nature seemed to be let loose, and we have again the battles of the kites and crows. In the period which extends from the accession of Henry VI. to that of Henry VII., thirteen pitched battles were fought between Englishmen and on English soil; the crown was * Green, p. 288. This was lost in the reign of Mary. twice won and twice lost by each of the contending houses; three out of four kings died by violence; eighty persons connected with the blood royal were reckoned as having perished on the field or scaffold or by the hand of the assassin; and the great majority of the noble families became extinguished, or sank into obscurity.* The wholesale confiscations which followed the final establishment of the Tudors transferred, it is said, nearly one fifth of the land of the kingdom into the hands of the successful reigning house. As the ultimate issue of the contest, the progress of English freedom was arrested for over a hundred years. Up to this time, even during the long war with France, although civilization was falling so rapidly behind, the forms of liberty had been preserved, and the security of the citizens so well guarded as to excite the admiration of observers like Commines, who pronounced England the best-governed country in the world. But all this was passing away. Liberty in England, like that in Spain, had rested on the strength of the great barons, who, as a condition of securing their own rights, had been compelled to protect those of their humbler allies and retainers. The Wars of the Roses, in which gunpowder was first used on British soil, dealt the death-blow to everything which was beneficial in the feudal system, leaving only its withered branches still to cumber the earth. With this power gone, the greater nobles being removed by death and the lesser ones cowed and scattered; with a middle class just born, and the people as yet undreamed of; with a Church, *Kirk's "Charles the Bold," ii. 29. LIBERTY AND LEARNING UNDER THE TUDOR KINGS 307 which through the Middle Ages had been the friend of freedom, now sunk into debauchery or falling into pitiable decrepitude; with manufactures almost unknown, and commerce in its infancy, nothing could be expected but the absolutism of the crown, and this came to stay, until hacked down by the rude blows of the Puritans in the days of Charles I. It was at this time that torture was introduced as part of the regular machinery of state, not to be finally put away until after the Revolution of 1688. The priv ilege of self-taxation now became a delusion; for the Tudor kings, when in want of money, did not lay a formal tax, to be sure, but by forced loans simply helped themselves from the coffers of their wealthy subjects. Jury trials were turned into a farce, when the juries. were always packed, and, in addition, punished if they gave a verdict against the crown. As for Parliament, it was rarely summoned, and then met only to record the decrees which riveted the fetters of tyranny.* If liberty seemed dead under the Tudor kings, literature and learning were hardly less lifeless. This was not the fault of the age, for in the fifteenth century, and especially towards its close, the whole of the Continent of Europe was in an intellectual ferment. England alone, peaceful England, cut off from the elder civilization by the Channel, scarcely felt the movement, and was not to feel it for nearly a hundred years to come. In this connection, however, two events should be noticed, not from the importance of their immediate results, but because they form little landmarks in English history, and give promise of something better in the future. *See Green for an admirable account of these features of the period from the Wars of the Roses to the accession of Elizabeth. The first is the introduction of printing into England. In 1476, William Caxton, after an absence of thirty-five years, returned home with a priceless treasure: a printing-press, which he had learned to use while living in the Netherlands. This brought England again into some relations with the Continent, but a single fact will show how slight was its effect upon the general public. In the thirty years which succeeded the setting-up of Caxton's press at Westminster, from ten to fifteen thousand editions of books and pamphlets were printed in Europe; but of all this number only one hundred and forty-one appeared in England.* The quality, too, was on a par with the quantity. The first book which issued from the German press was the Bible. Caxton's first production was a little work on the Game of Chess, or perhaps one on the Siege of Troy. Well may Hallam say, reviewing them all, that his publications "indicate, on the whole, but a low state of knowledge in England.”+ These simple facts should be borne in mind when we read the glowing sentences in which historians have described the revival of learning. There was a glorious revival about this time, but until the latter days of Elizabeth England *Hallam's "Literature of Europe," i. 192. + Hallam, i. 135. Strype, in his "Ecclesiastical Memorials," in giving the important events of the year 1551, throws considerable light on the small advance made by English printers even at that time. He says: "Let me add here, now we are upon the mention of books printed, that in April this year, two foreign printers-the one an Italian, the other a Dutchman-had privileges granted them to print certain books, which it seems our English printers had not skill or learning enough to do." The Italian printed the Digests and Pandects of the Roman Civil Law; the Dutchman printed a Herbal compiled by William Turner, Doctor in Physic. Strype, ii. THE OXFORD REFORMERS AND THEIR WORK 309 had very little share in it; the mass of her people could not read, and hence had no need of books. What the upper classes read, I shall describe hereafter. The second event was the gathering at Oxford, in the latter part of the fifteenth and the early part of the sixteenth century, of a little band of scholars, called the Oxford Reformers. The band was made up of Grocyn, Linacre, and Colet-all of whom had been students in Italy-with Thomas More and a few others, who, incited by the scholars of the Continent, began the study of classical literature. To them came Erasmus for the study of Greek under Grocyn, being too poor to go to Italy. A mere boy, full of enthusiasm and ignorant of Italian culture, the new-comer, shortly after his arrival, wrote a letter praising in high terms the learning which he found at Oxford. This letter has been the delight of almost every English author who has written of this period;* but Hallam, the cold, sober-minded historian, pricks the bubble. He points out that Erasmus was writing to an English friend, that he was always given to flattery, and concludes that the English cannot in conscience take his praises to themselves.† *See extracts in Green's "Short History," p. 317. "The scholars were few, and not more than three or four could be found, or at least now mentioned, who had any tincture of Greek -Grocyn, Linacre, William Latimer, who, though an excellent scholar, never published anything, and More, who had learned at Oxford under Grocyn."-Hallam's "Literature of Europe," i. 185. Grocyn, after returning from Italy, communicated his acquisitions "chiefly to deaf ears." Idem, p. 184; see also p. 219 as to the "panegyrical humor" of Erasmus. In 1510, More succeeded in again bringing Erasmus over to England to teach Greek at Cambridge. "The students," says Hallam, "were too poor to pay him anything, and his instruction was confined to the grammar. In the same year Colet, |