The government, however, remained strong enough to hold its ground (except during the discreditable interlude of the reign of Edward VI.) for the first three quarters of the century; and until that time the working classes of this country remained in a condition more than prosperous.  They enjoyed an abundance far beyond what in general falls to the lot of that order in long-settled countries; incomparably beyond what the same class were enjoying at that very time in Germany or France.  The laws secured them; and that the laws were put in force we have the direct evidence of successive acts of the legislature justifying the general policy by its success:  and we have also the indirect evidence of the contented loyalty of the great body of the people at a time when, if they had been discontented, they held in their own hands the means of asserting what the law acknowledged to be their right.  The government had no power to compel submission to injustice, as was proved by the fate of an attempt to levy a “benevolence” by force, in 1525.  The people resisted with a determination against which the crown commissioners were unable to contend, and the scheme ended with an acknowledgment of fault by Henry, who retired with a good grace from an impossible position.  If the peasantry had been suffering under any real grievances we should not have failed to have heard of them when the religious rebellions furnished so fair an opportunity to press those grievances forward.  Complaint was loud enough when complaint was just, under the Somerset protectorate. [40]

The incomes of the great nobles cannot be determined, for they varied probably as much as they vary now.  Under Henry IV. the average income of an earl was estimated at L2000 a year.[41] Under Henry VIII. the great Duke of Buckingham, the wealthiest English peer, had L6000.[42] And the income of the Archbishop of Canterbury was rated at the same amount.[43] But the establishments of such men were enormous; their ordinary retinues in time of peace consisting of many hundred persons; and in war, when the duties of a nobleman called him to the field, although in theory his followers were paid by the crown, yet the grants of parliament were on so small a scale that the theory was seldom converted into fact, and a large share of the expenses was paid often out of private purses.  The Duke of Norfolk, in the Scotch war of 1523, declared (not complaining of it, but merely as a reason why he should receive support) that he had spent all his private means upon the army; and in the sequel of this history we shall find repeated instances of knights and gentlemen voluntarily ruining themselves in the service of their country.  The people, not universally, but generally, were animated by a true spirit of sacrifice; by a true conviction that they were bound to think first of England, and only next of themselves; and unless we can bring ourselves to understand this, we shall never understand what England was under the reigns