Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Book.i. the person of Henry VII., to rest the authority of the L"AP a' crown oa 'the consent of the lords, at the request of ' the commons,' passing by the question of hereditary right. One other good deed was ddne by that parliament. It passed a law which declared that no man should be adjudged a traitor for obeying a king who was such in fact, though it should afterwards be ruled that he was not such by right. The principle of this enactment promised to be of great value, and it was often appealed to in later periods of our history,, though not always successfully. .so. The great business of the first parliament under Henry VIII. consisted in the proceedings against the delinquents Empson and Dudley. Three years later Henry convened his second parliament. The purpose of its meeting was, that the two houses might concur in a declaration of war against France, and that the requisite supplies might be voted. The war was popular, and a subsidy and a poll-tax were granted. In i5i4, the third parliament in this reign was assembled. It had not been deemed expedient to enforce the, poE-tax -on the humbler classes. The king was in want of money. Some sumptuary laws, and others concerning trade, were passed: English wool was not to be exported, and English cloth was to be produced free from certain faults and deceptions which had much impeded the sale of that article. Tillage land was not to be turned into pasture ; and new regulations were imposed concerning wages. But the most significant fact in the history of this parliament was, that as the session advanced, many of the members withdrew, and it was observed that those who remained, consisted very much of persons who combined together to oppose or carry particular measures, and who were described, on that account, as factious perso... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.