prosperity was probably apt to mean the rapid rise of a few individuals to exceptional wealth. It does not, however, seem possible to doubt that whether or no the wealth of the mass of the population had increased, the aggregate wealth in the country was very much greater at the close of the fifteenth century than it had been one hundred and fifty years before.

The Civil
Wars.

It is probably true that in the main the War of the Roses was a war of factions in which the bulk of the population took very little part. It was not one of those civil wars which were accompanied by wilful devastation, in which districts have been laid waste, city populations have been put to the sword, and cities razed to the ground; but it would be an exaggeration to claim that town life went on through the turmoil practically unaffected. There were certainly towns such as Cambridge, Peterborough, and conspicuously Stamford, which suffered grievously at the hands of the troops of one faction or the other; and there must have been a great deal of miscellaneous pillage and spoliation on the main marching routes. Still, on the whole, the principal civil wars in England have been conspicuous for the comparatively small amount of wanton destruction with which they were accompanied. The fighting, from the first battle to the last struggle on Bosworth Field, was not ruinous, as were many of the struggles on the Continent; but it must be recognised as a manifestly retarding factor in the material progress of the country, apart from the general unsettlement of trade which inevitably accompanies prolonged instability in the government.

BOOK II

THE MERCANTILE PERIOD

CHAPTER IX

THE MERCANTILE ERA AND MERCANTILISM

THE accession of the House of Tudor corresponds in England with the group of events which are generally treated as marking the transition from the medieval to The the modern world. According to our point of New Age. view, we may select varying dates as marking the precise moment of change; the invention of the printing-press, the capture of Constantinople, the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII., the discovery of America, and the Diet of Worms, may any one of them be selected. In the history of the world's commerce there can be no doubt that the voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1492, and of Vasco da Gama in 1498, mark the turning-point. For us it is more convenient to treat the inauguration of the new dynasty of Henry VII. as the opening of the new era.

The three fundamental facts of the time were: the Consolidation of European States; the expansion of the limits of the known world by the discoveries of Four Factors. America and of the Cape route to India; and

the revolt against the papal supremacy. Out of the first arose the doctrine which for a long time to come played the largest part in directing international policy, the doctrine of the Balance of Power. The discovery of the New World made the ocean the commercial highway and an open battlefield, whereas in time past it had been the function of the sea to act as a barrier. The Reformation divided Europe into hostile camps. There was, of course, an immense amount of interaction between these three factors. For three hundred years it was not always easy to tell whether

the leading motive in any given war was the balance of power or commercial rivalry or religious hostility. These motives reacted on each other. To these three factors was added a fourth peculiarly English, the prolonged struggle between the Crown and the Commons for supremacy over the government of England. Each one had its effect in moulding the commercial and industrial history of this country.

The New
Nations.

Until the closing years of the fifteenth century it could scarcely be said that there was in Europe any great consolidated State. France had not even freed herself from the yoke laid on her neck by Henry v. until 1453; it was not till some years later that Louis XI. succeeded in rendering the French kingdom comparatively free from the danger of disruption at the hands of the great feudatories of the Crown. Next came the Union

of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon and the Conquest of Granada, which transformed Spain into a single power. A couple of marriages united in one family, and for a time in one person, the succession to Spain, the Netherlands, the Austrian dominions of the House of Hapsburg, Hungary, and Bohemia, and the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire; while the Spanish dominion included the New World. In 1556, the Hapsburg Empire was divided between the son and the brother of Charles v., the Spanish and the Austrian branches of the House of Hapsburg. Spain, the Netherlands, and the New World fell to Philip II.'s share, to which he succeeded in adding Portugal and the Portuguese maritime dominion in the East. The German branch found enough to occupy them in conserving the religious peace of the German Empire.

Spain.

Commercial and religious motives were mixed in the long struggle which now arose between Spain and England. Philip held the monopoly of the New World, in right of the discovery by Christopher Columbus, who had made his great voyage in the service of the Spanish rulers, and also by the authority of the Papal Bull