Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

EDWARD IV.
329
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conscious of their ultimate destination. The Tudor
spy-system, the rack in the Tower, and their abuse
of the royal prerogative were all proper developments
of Edward IV.'s new monarchy. The secret of
Henry VIII.'s absoluteness, of his subjects' abject
subservience, must be traced to his grandfather's
policy, itself a consequence of the Wars of the Roses.
The great invention of the printing-press was introduced
in 1476 by Caxton, a Kentish man. It may
be likened to the discovery of a new continent.
Polite society at that time was not in the habit of
reading, but the printing-press was to bring the
blessing or the curse of books within the reach of
every man. Edward IV. patronised Caxton, who
was the single literary glory of his reign. The arts
of peace were scarcely at home in that troubled
period, nor could they be fully appreciated by those
who were born of the Roses only to fall under the
tyranny of the Tudors.
It was the custom of the times for parents of the
middle classes to place their daughters in the households
of great ladies, as a sort of polite education.
Sons in their early youth received the same kind of
training, and thus " it is that we rind Thomas More
in the household of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of
Canterbury in succession to Bouchier (1486). Morton,
no less than Warliam after him, encouraged the
new learning, and his influence impressed itself in-
delibiy upon Thomas More's youthful mind. A
-ynod in St. Paul's held in 1486, at which Morton