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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 51

Second Epoch (1485—1688)

Second Epoch (1485—1688).

In the Second Epoch, embracing the times of the Tudors and Stuarts, there grew up an entirely new order of noble fungi—parchment-made peers—base crawling courtiers, perfect prodigies of avarice, cowardice, servility, lying, forgery, plotting and all the meaner and meanest human vices. Henry VII. and Henry VIII. sent them to the block by the score for any reason or none. The "Virgin Queen" thought nothing of boxing the ears of a great nobleman, or even of spitting in his face. The craven Duke of Norfolk with "the blood of all the Howards" in his veins, was a party to the execution of both his nieces, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, and congratulated the Royal Bluebeard on throwing his "ungracious mother-in-law, his unhappy brother and wife, and his lewd sister of Bridgewater," into the Tower. He and his fellow peers showed their respect for public liberty by decreeing that royal proclamations should have the force of law!

This was the hey-day of the notorious Church robbers—the Russells, the Cavendishes, Cecils and Co. The immense Monastery Lands were the mainstay of the poor. Deprived of these, they were reduced to vagrancy by thousands. To repress mendicancy the despoilers by statute visited their victims with branding, slavery, and death. In Henry the Eighth's reign seventy-two thousand lord-made beggars were hanged out of hand. Elizabeth was content with hanging a modest three or four hundred per annum. The "Virgin Queen's" ministers—the Cecils, father and son—(from whom Lord Salisbury claims descent)—literally governed England by—the rack. Even Lord Clarendon, the Tory historian, could hardly tolerate the younger Cecil. "No act of power," he writes, "was ever proposed which he did not advance and page 98 execute with the utmost rigour. No man so great a tyrant in this country." When the boy Edward VI., came to the throne the ring of upstart courtiers that got hold of him forged a clause in his father's will decreeing themselves immense estates and extraordinary titles. One fellow, Seymour, called himself Duke of Somerset by the grace of God! To save their estates they all punctually changed their religion with every change of government. In James the First's reign peerages were sold at the rate of £10,000 each, rich men being occasionally compelled to become hereditary legislators against their will.

When the storm-clouds of revolution finally burst about the head of Charles Stuart, the Peers showed scarcely a trace of capacity, civil or military. If they had helped the Commons to curb the royal prerogative not a drop of blood need have been shed. But they did not. In the hour of danger most of them slunk like rats into holes, whence they only emerged at the Restoration. But if they had none of the instincts of the lion, they had certainly some of those of the hyaena. They tore up and exposed to obloquy the dead bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw, Pym, Admiral Blake, and even those of Cromwell's mother and daughter! Noblesse oblige!

At this time land yielded the State nearly half its revenue. Of this most just obligation the nobles relieved themselves at a blow in 1660 by substituting Customs and Excise duties for the Land Tax. They subsequently undertook to pay 4s. in the pound on true annual rental, but they have since fraudulently kept to the original valuation of 1692, with the result that they are now paying one million per annum when they should be paying forty. Mr. W. A. Hunter, than whom there is no better authority, has calculated that whereas forty working men with aggregate wages amounting to £2,000 (£50 a year for each) contribute £12 to the revenue out of every £100 of their wages, one man—an absolute non-producer, perchance—with an income of £2,000 contributes but £3 out of every £100 of income. So much for the effects of the notorious Land Tax Swindle which has already caused the loss of £1,250,000,000 of state revenue.