scaffold, as one or other faction triumphed. The rest he meant to rule by the law, and to rule the law by the lawyers. He had creatures—Empson and Dudley—ready to do his will. He kept within legality. Bacon says it was his plan to rule the people by the laws, and the laws by the lawyers. He elevated the Star Chamber into a legal tribunal, till it became the greatest instrument of arbitrary power that ever sovereign had. He caught men "with slumbering laws"; his ministers were "lawyers, lawyers in science, and privy counsellors in authority," and "turned law and justice into wormwood rapine." No man knew when he had offended. "Their principal working was upon penal laws, wherein they spared none, great nor small; nor considered whether the law were possible or impossible, in use, or obsolete."[1] He obtained the reputation of "a merciful prince"; but "the less blood he drew, the more he took of treasure." And "as some construed it," this was because he dared not take both blood and treasure.
He had reigned nineteen years before he enacted his own Statute of Liveries, but there were many former statutes to be revived—of Richard II., Henry IV., and a very stringent one of Edward IV. These statutes—sometimes called " of Maintenance," forbade, under heavy fines, the putting retainers—not actual servants—into livery. During the French wars of Edward III., it was rather a convenience to the King that great nobles should maintain what was in reality an independent soldiery. But this had ended in every great noble being the leader of a little army. At first these little armies had been composed of tenants, who in times of peace returned to their farms, but in course of time, and especially when the long French War made war chronic, the barons had great companies of retainers whose only trade was fighting. There are statutes of the reign of Edward III. which complain that such companies—clad in some great man's "livery"—ride armed about the country, and commit depredations, even in time of peace. They had degenerated into something not far removed from banditti.
Henry VII. put down this nuisance, but he did so in the worst way possible. By his time, the great lords had
