40

HISTORY OP ENGLAND,

chap, bution amounting to one sixth of their goods, he soon found

-it necessary to retract. The cry of hundreds of thousands

was that they were English and not French, freemen and notslaves. In Kent the royal commissioners fled for their lives.In Suffolk four thousand men appeared in arms. The King’slieutenants in that county vainly exerted themselves to raisean army. Those who did not join in the insurrection declaredthat they would not fight against their brethren in such aquarrel. Henry, proud and self-willed as he was, shrank, notwithout reason, from a conflict with the roused spirit of thenation. He had before his eyes the fate of his predecessorswho had perished at Berkeley and Pomfret. He not onlycancelled his illegal commissions; he not only granted ageneral pardon to all the malecontents; but he publicly andsolemnly apologized for his infraction of the laws.

His conduct, on this occasion, well illustrates the wholepolicy of his house. The temper of the princes of that linewas hot, and their spirit high: but they understood the cha-racter of the nation which they governed, and never once,like some of their predecessors, and some of their successors,carried obstinacy to a fatal point. The discretion of theTudors was such, that their power, though it was oftenresisted, was never subverted. The reign of every one ofthem was disturbed by formidable discontents: but the go-vernment never failed either to sooth the mutineers, or toconquer and punish them. Sometimes, by timely concessions,it succeeded in averting civil hostilities; but in general itstood firm, and called for help on the nation. The nationobeyed the call, rallied round the sovereign, and enabled himto quell the disaffected minority.

Thus, from the age of Henry the Third to the age ofElizabeth, England grew and flourished under a polity whichcontained the germ of our present institutions, and which,though not very exactly defined, or very exactly observed,