The habits of luxury dissipated the immense fortunes of the ancient barons: and as the new methods of expense gave subsistence to mechanics and merchants, who lived in an independent manner on the fruits of their own industry, a nobleman, instead of that unlimited ascendant which he was wont to assume over those who were maintained at his board, or subsisted by salaries conferred on them, retained only that moderate influence which customers have over tradesmen, and which can never be dangerous to civil government.

The landed proprietors also, having a greater demand for money than for men, endeavored to turn their lands to the best account with regard to profit; and either enclosing their fields, or joining many small farms into a few large ones, dismissed those useless hands which formerly were always at their call in every attempt to subvert the government, or oppose a neighboring baron.

By all these means the cities increased; the middle rank of men began to be rich and powerful; the prince, who in effect was the same with the law, was implicitly obeyed: and though the further progress of the same causes begat a new plan of liberty, founded on the privileges of the commons, yet in the interval between the fall of the nobles and the rise of this order, the sovereign took advantage of the present situation, and assumed an authority almost absolute.
Whatever may be commonly imagined, from the authority of Lord Bacon, and from that of Harrington, and later authors the laws of Henry VII.
contributed very little towards the great revolution which happened about this period in the English constitution.

The practice of breaking entails by a fine and recovery, had been introduced in the preceding reigns; and this prince only gave indirectly a legal sanction to the practice, by reforming some abuses which attended it.

But the settled authority which he acquired to the crown enabled the sovereign to encroach on the separate jurisdictions of the barons, and produced a more general and regular execution of the laws.