Such a view is no doubt exaggerated and unjust.

Bend and strain the law as he might, there never was a time when the most wilful of English rulers failed to own the restraints of law; and the obedience of the most servile among English subjects lay within bounds, at once political and religious, which no theory of king-worship could bring them to overpass.

But even if we make these reserves, the character of the monarchy from the days of Edward the Fourth to the days of Elizabeth remains something strange and isolated in our history.

It is hard to connect the kingship of the old English, the Norman, the Angevin, or the Plantagenet kings with the kingship of the House of York or of the House of Tudor.
[Sidenote: New strength of the Crown] The primary cause of this great change lay in the recovery of its older strength by the Crown.

Through the last hundred and fifty years the monarchy had been hampered by the pressure of the war.