the standard of
revolt. The gallows did its work in vain. "If you do not remedy the evils
which produce thieves," More urged with bitter truth, "the rigorous
execution of justice in punishing thieves will be vain." But even More
could only suggest a remedy which, efficacious as it was subsequently to
prove, had yet to wait a century for its realization. "Let the woollen
manufacture be introduced, so that honest employment may be found for
those whom want has made thieves or will make thieves ere long." The
extension of industry at last succeeded in absorbing this mass of surplus
labour, but the process was not complete till the close of Elizabeth's
day, and throughout the time of the Tudors the discontent of the labour
class bound the wealthier classes to the crown. It was in truth this
social danger which lay at the root of the Tudor despotism. For the
proprietary classes the repression of the poor was a question of life and
death. Employer and proprietor were ready to surrender freedom into the
hands of the one power which could preserve them from social anarchy. It
was to the selfish panic of the landowners that England owed the Statute
of Labourers and its terrible heritage of pauperism. It was to the selfish
panic of both landowner and merchant that she owed the despotism of the
Monarchy.

[Sidenote: The Nevilles]

Thus we find that in the years which followed the Wars of the Roses a
change passed over the spirit of English government which was little short
of a revolution. As the country tasted the sweets of rest and firm
government that reaction of feeling, that horror of fresh civil wars, that
content with its own internal growth and indifference to foreign
aggrandizement, which distinguished the epoch of the Tudors, began to
assert its power. The Crown became identified with the thought of national
prosperity, almost with the thought of national existence. Loyalty drew to
itself the force of patriotism. Devotion to the crown became one in men's
minds with devotion to their country. For almost a hundred years England
lost all sense of a national individuality; it saw itself only in the
Crown. The tendency became irresistible as the nation owned in the power
of its kings its one security for social order, its one bulwark against
feudal outrage and popular anarchy. The change however was a slow and
gradual one. It is with the victory of Towton that the new power of the
Monarchy begins, but in the years that im