Henry VIII mounted the throne, so great had been the ravages of the scourge, and so unsettled had been the interval, that the nation was still suffering from the effects of the great sickness.
To the Church the scourge of 1349 must have been especially disastrous. Apart from the poverty and distress occasioned by the unoccupied lands and the consequent diminution of tithes, the sudden removal of the great majority of the clergy must have broken the continuity of the best traditions of ecclesiastical usage and teaching. The monastic houses also suffered, not only in the destruction of their chief source of income by the depreciated value of their lands and the want of cultivation consequent upon the impossibility of finding labourers in place of the tenants swept off by the pestilence, but more than all by reason of the great diminution of their numbers, which rendered the proper performance of their religious duties, and the diligent discharge of their obligations as regards monastic discipline, difficult, and often almost impossible.
The long and bitter feud between the Houses of York and Lancaster must likewise be regarded as an important element in the chain of events which rendered possible the political and social changes of Henry's reign. The insecurity and instability of well-nigh half a century, as well as the ferocity of that contest, must have stamped a peculiar character upon the men of the early Tudor period.[1] When Henry VIII succeeded his father, every man of thirty must have had within his own personal recollection some knowledge of the terrible war, whilst his parents must have lived through the whole of it.
The obvious result of a knowledge of the danger and troubles of this long civil war, whether derived from personal experience or the relation of parents, was a willingness to hazard everything rather than recur to such a period of distress and bloodshed. Periods of revolution inspire peculiar prudence, and protracted war a determination at all costs to cling "to peace and pursue it." Hence the population generally throughout England in the days of Henry had
- ↑ Those who may wish to understand this more fully would do well to read an Essay by H. W. Wilberforce on "Events Preparatory to the English Reformation" in Essays on Religion and Literature, Second series. Longmans, 1867.
