The truth seems to be that the government of the Tudors was, with a few occasional deviations, a popular government, under the forms of despotism.  At first sight, it may seem that the prerogatives of Elizabeth were not less ample than those of Lewis the Fourteenth, and her parliaments were as obsequious as his parliaments, that her warrant had as much authority as his lettre de cachet.  The extravagance with which her courtiers eulogized her personal and mental charms went beyond the adulation of Boileau and Moliere.  Lewis would have blushed to receive from those who composed the gorgeous circles of Marli and Versailles such outward marks of servitude as the haughty Britoness exacted of all who approached her.  But the authority of Lewis rested on the support of his army.  The authority of Elizabeth rested solely on the support of her people.  Those who say that her power was absolute do not sufficiently consider in what her power consisted.  Her power consisted in the willing obedience of her subjects, in their attachment to her person and to her office, in their respect for the old line from which she sprang, in their sense of the general security which they enjoyed under her government.  These were the means, and the only means, which she had at her command for carrying her decrees into execution, for resisting foreign enemies, and for crushing domestic treason.  There was not a ward in the city, there was not a hundred in any shire in England, which could not have overpowered the handful of armed men who composed her household.  If a hostile sovereign threatened invasion, if an ambitious noble raised the standard of revolt, she could have recourse only to the trainbands of her capital and the array of her counties, to the citizens and yeomen of England, commanded by the merchants and esquires of England.

Thus, when intelligence arrived of the vast preparations which Philip was making for the subjugation of the realm, the first person to whom the government thought of applying for assistance was the Lord Mayor of London.  They sent to ask him what force the city would engage to furnish for the defence of the kingdom against the Spaniards.  The Mayor and Common Council, in return desired to know what force the Queen’s Highness wished them to furnish.  The answer was, fifteen ships, and five thousand men.  The Londoners deliberated on the matter, and, two days after, “humbly intreated the council, in sign of their perfect love and loyalty to prince and country, to accept ten thousand men, and thirty ships amply furnished.”

People who could give such signs as these of their loyalty were by no means to be misgoverned with impunity.  The English in the sixteenth century were, beyond all doubt, a free people.  They had not, indeed, the outward show of freedom; but they had the reality.  They had not as good a constitution as we have; but they had that without which the best constitution is as useless as the king’s proclamation against