Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

CHAPTER
X.
WARS OF ROSKS: CAUSE AND RESULT (1455-1509).
THE Wars of the lioses constitute one of those
periods which, apparently, full of lawlessness,
cruelty, and blood-shedding, are, in reality, fraught
with consequences not to England alone, but even
to Christendom. There is, perhaps, an analogy
between the Papal Schism and this civil war, but
the consequences show the wide difference between
a divine and an earthly kingdom. In England,
tyranny followed upon the rival claims of two conflicting
royalties, a tyranny foreign to the national character
which did not strengthen the cause of monarchy.
In the Papacy, on the contrary, the monarchical
authority of the Pope, over and above the General
Council, was more clearly proved by the very trial
which, humanly speaking, should have overthrown
it. *
Edward the Fourth's reign has been called the
new monarchy, and it was so to a certain extent.
The House of York was less of a constitutional
monarchy than the House of Lancaster. The
Tudors were scarcely constitutional at all : they
made their will law, and that they succeeded in an
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