Excerpt from A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, Vol. 4: From the Year After the Oxford Parliament (1259) To the Commencement of the Continental War (1793)

The material progress of England was for a time ao companied by great advances in political liberty and by the noble energy of the Commons in Parliament. The action of the House of Commons in the first half of the fifteenth century supplied the precedents on which the liberties of the seventeenth were reconstructed, and it seemed that England would, at a period long before that in which the foundations of her political freedom were actually and permanently laid, be securely opulent and free. But this was not to be. Causes were at work which few probably suspected, and events too surely followed which postponed for centuries the natural growth of English institutions, and the early imitation of them by the civilised world.

By the middle of the fifteenth century the old Church had become hopelessly corrupt though it was still useful to the government. The aristocracy was entirely de moralized, and was Split by lawless feuds into bitter fac tions. The King was always a child. The administra tion of affairs had fallen into the hands of an unpopular and intriguing party, which was greedy, insolent, and in capable. The long war with France had collapsed, and England was full of soldiers by profession, at all times the most dangerous of the dangerous classes. All the elements of anarchy were ready at hand, and there was nothing to check or control them.