gunpowder had been in use as early as Crecy, it was not till the accession
of the House of Lancaster that it was really brought into effective
employment as a military resource. But the revolution in warfare was
immediate. The wars of Henry the Fifth were wars of sieges. The "Last of
the Barons," as Warwick has picturesquely been styled, relied mainly on
his train of artillery. It was artillery that turned the day at Barnet and
Tewkesbury, and that gave Henry the Seventh his victory over the
formidable dangers which assailed him. The strength which the change gave
to the Crown was in fact almost irresistible. Throughout the Middle Ages
the call of a great baron had been enough to raise a formidable revolt.
Yeomen and retainers took down the bow from their chimney corner, knights
buckled on their armour, and in a few days a host threatened the throne.
Without artillery however such a force was now helpless, and the one train
of artillery in the kingdom lay at the disposal of the king.

[Sidenote: Weakness of the Church]

The Church too was in no less peril than the baronage. In England as
elsewhere the great ecclesiastical body still seemed imposing from the
memories of its past, its immense wealth, its tradition of statesmanship,
its long association with the intellectual and religious aspirations of
men, its hold on social life. But its real power was small. Its moral
inertness, its lack of spiritual enthusiasm, gave it less and less hold on
the religious minds of the day. Its energies indeed seemed absorbed in a
mere clinging to existence. For in spite of steady repression Lollardry
still lived on, no longer indeed as an organized movement, but in
scattered and secret groups whose sole bond was a common loyalty to the
Bible and a common spirit of revolt against the religion of their day.
Nine years after the accession of Henry the Sixth the Duke of Gloucester
was traversing England with men-at-arms to repress the risings of the
Lollards and hinder the circulation of their invectives against the
clergy. In 1449 "Bible men" were still formidable enough to call a prelate
to the front as a controversialist: and the very title of Bishop Pecock's
work, "A Repressor of overmuch blaming of the clergy," shows the damage
done by their virulent criticism. Its most fatal effect was to rob the
priesthood of moral power. Taunted with a love of wealth, with a lower
standard of life than that of the ploughman and weaver who gather