Thus there grew everywhere a force of this kind, a force of burghers or townsfolk, a middle class, which increased in power as the numbers of townsmen and their riches increased. In England the people, as against the king, had an advantage which the people of Continental countries had not, in their legal right to send representatives to Parliament before contributing to the expense of government. The right existed, even while they were not able to enforce it. And with the growth of this new power of the middle class they began to have greater power for its enforcement, or, at least, greater power to resist the punishments which the king had tried to impose on those who refused to supply him with money which had not been legally voted for his use. The Tudors, for all their masterfulness, had been {72} more prudent than the Stuarts proved themselves. Even Henry VIII., in Wolsey's time, had consented to take only one-half of the sum which he had demanded as a contribution from the people. And we may often see that these Tudors, although they dealt so despotically with their nobility, appear to have kept a finger, as it were, on the pulse of the nation, and to have known how to give way when that pulse beat too forcibly in opposition. Perhaps it takes a strong character to yield, on occasion. Certainly the Tudors had what we should call strong characters, and they knew how to yield. The Stuarts had less strength, and they brought the country into cruel trouble by their inability to yield. Rather, perhaps, we should say, they yielded when they should have stood firm, and stood firm when they should have yielded. Had they yielded more discreetly the people would have had to wait longer for their freedom, though it is possible they might have won it by less painful means. And although James's prospects looked so fair when he came to the throne of England, he yet came to a troubled inheritance. There was all that trouble between the State Church and the Puritans, a trouble which grew greater and which perhaps the Scottish element that James brought down to England with him increased. The Scottish element, if it were not Roman Catholic in religion, was mainly of the extreme Puritan type. There was this double source of trouble, therefore--the king's illegal endeavour to govern and to extort supplies of money without a Parliament, and the increasing tension between the persecuted Puritan party and the party of the State Church. Both Puritans and Catholics had already suffered some persecution under Elizabeth, and under James these persecutions became more severe. It was only a year or two after his accession that the Gunpowder Plot was {73} discovered--a plot contrived by the Catholics to blow up the Houses of Parliament and all the legislators therein. After this discovery, the persecution of the Catholics became more severe than ever. [Sidenote: The Stuart Kings]