om among the
nobility. The dread of Warwick influenced Henry. He inaugurated a policy
which transferred the support of the army from the lands, which should
solely have borne it, to the general revenue of the country. Thus he
relieved one class at the expense of the nation. Yet, when Henry was
about to wage war on the Continent, he called all his subjects to
accompany him, under pain of forfeiture of their lands; and he did not
omit levying the accustomed feudal charge for knighting his eldest son
and for marrying his eldest daughter. The acts to prevent the landholder
from oppressing the occupier, and those for the encouragement of
tillage, failed. The new idea of property in land, which then obtained,
proved too powerful to be altered by legislation.

Another change in the system of landholding took place in those reigns.
Lord Cromwell, who succeeded Cardinal Wolsey as minister to Henry VIII.,
had land in Kent, and he obtained the passing of an act (31 Henry VIII.,
cap. 2) which took his land and that of other owners therein named, out
of the custom of gavelkind (gave-all-kind), which had existed in Kent
from before the Norman Conquest, and enacted that they should descend
according to common law in like manner as lands held by knight's
service.

The suppression of the RELIGIOUS HOUSES gave the Crown the control of
a vast quantity of land. It had, with the consent of the Crown, been
devoted to religion by former owners. The descendants of the donors were
equitably entitled to the land, as it ceased to be applied to the trust
for which it was given, but the power of the Crown was too great, and
their claims were refused. Had these estates been applied to purposes
of religion or education they would have formed a valuable fund for the
improvement of the people; but the land itself, as well as the portion
of tithes belonging to the religious houses, was conferred upon
favorites, and some of the wealthiest nobles of the present day trace
their rise and importance to the rewards obtained by their ancestors out
of the spoils of these charities.

The importance of the measures of the Tudors upon the system of
land-holding can hardly be exaggerated. An impulse of self-defence led
them to lessen the physical force of the oligarchy by relieving the land
from the support of the army, and enabling them to convert to their own
use the income previously applied to the defence of the realm. This was
a bribe, but it brought its ow