They even appeared as advocates before the courts of law.  Yet they could safely indulge in the wildest freaks of cruelty and rapacity, while their legions remained faithful.  Our Tudors, on the other hand, under the titles and forms of monarchical supremacy, were essentially popular magistrates.  They had no means of protecting themselves against the public hatred; and they were therefore compelled to court the public favour.  To enjoy all the state and all the personal indulgences of absolute power, to be, adored with Oriental prostrations, to dispose at will of the liberty and even of the life of ministers and courtiers, this nation granted to the Tudors.  But the condition on which they were suffered to be the tyrants of Whitehall was that they should be the mild and paternal sovereigns of England.  They were under the same restraints with regard to their people under which a military despot is placed with regard to his army.  They would have found it as dangerous to grind their subjects with cruel taxation as Nero would have found it to leave his praetorians unpaid.  Those who immediately surrounded the royal person, and engaged in the hazardous game of ambition, were exposed to the most fearful dangers.  Buckingham, Cromwell, Surrey, Seymour of Sudeley, Somerset, Northumberland, Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, perished on the scaffold.  But in general the country gentleman hunted and the merchant traded in peace.  Even Henry, as cruel as Domitian, but far more politic, contrived, while reeking with the blood of the Lamiae, to be a favourite with the cobblers.

The Tudors committed very tyrannical acts.  But in their ordinary dealings with the people they were not, and could not safely be, tyrants.  Some excesses were easily pardoned.  For the nation was proud of the high and fiery blood of its magnificent princes, and saw in many proceedings which a lawyer would even then have condemned, the outbreak of the same noble spirit which so manfully hurled foul scorn at Parma and at Spain.  But to this endurance there was a limit.  If the government ventured to adopt measures which the people really felt to be oppressive, it was soon compelled to change its course.  When Henry the Eighth attempted to raise a forced loan of unusual amount by proceedings of unusual rigour, the opposition which he encountered was such as appalled even his stubborn and imperious spirit.  The people, we are told, said that, if they were treated thus, “then were it worse than the taxes Of France; and England should be bond, and not free.”  The county of Suffolk rose in arms.  The king prudently yielded to an opposition which, if he had persisted, would, in all probability, have taken the form of a general rebellion.  Towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, the people felt themselves aggrieved by the monopolies.  The Queen, proud and courageous as she was, shrank from a contest with the nation, and, with admirable sagacity, conceded all that her subjects had demanded, while it was yet in her power to concede with dignity and grace.