At no time had Parliament played so constant and prominent a part in the government of the realm.

At no time had the principles of constitutional liberty seemed so thoroughly understood and so dear to the people at large.

The long Parliamentary contest between the Crown and the two Houses since the days of Edward the First had firmly established the great securities of national liberty--the right of freedom from arbitrary taxation, from arbitrary legislation, from arbitrary imprisonment, and the responsibility of even the highest servants of the Crown to Parliament and to the law.
[Sidenote: Results of the Wars of the Roses] But with the close of the struggle for the succession this liberty wholly disappeared.

If the Wars of the Roses failed in utterly destroying English freedom, they succeeded in arresting its progress for more than a hundred years.

With them we enter on an epoch of constitutional retrogression in which the slow work of the age that went before it was rapidly undone.
From the accession of Edward the Fourth Parliamentary life was almost suspended, or was turned into a mere form by the overpowering influence of the Crown.