Upon Edward’s death in 1483, the crown for a moment rested on the head of his young son, Edward V, only to be snatched away in favor of the lad’s uncle Richard III. Richard received from Parliament in 1484 a grant of tunnage and poundage and the subsidy on wool for life.[265] His death on Bosworth Field the next year gave the world no opportunity to see what use he would make of the freedom which Parliament thus gave him. [Prohibition of benevolences, 1484] During the brief three years of Richard’s ascendancy, however, there occurred an assertion of right and its complementary statute which assume great importance in the light of later events. When Richard was invited to become king, he was presented with a remarkable address, which, among other things, cited the benevolences of the late reign as “extorcions, ... agenst the Lawes of God and Man,” and as more intolerable than “jopardye of deth.”[266] At his only Parliament, held in 1484, benevolences were declared unlawful, and were to be “dampned and annulled forever.”[267] [The Tudors] Henry VII, the first of the Tudors, ascended the throne upon the successful issue of the battle of Bosworth. The wonder of the era which he introduced lies not in any increase in the powers of Parliament, but rather that they existed at all when the period closed. The one hundred and twenty years of the Tudor epoch exhibits no progress toward the realization of parliamentary supremacy; on the other hand, the trend was in the opposite direction. The Tudors were not tyrannical enough to rouse opposition to the fever heat as did John; they knew rather how to bridle their despotism in time to check revolt, and especially how to make unlawful acts assume the aspect of legality. Furthermore, the immense activity of commerce, the progress of literature, the religious reconstitution during the sixteenth century, were in themselves reasons for slow advance in matters of government; the stress of trade consequent upon the discovery of a new world, the absorbing interest in new subjects for thought, the intensity and magnitude of new religious conceptions, engaged the minds of men on subjects other than those of Parliament and king. As long as these worked in apparent harmony and the results did not greatly offend, men were content to let well enough alone. So it was that the Tudors, surrounding themselves with a new nobility attached to the throne by reasons of their very origin and continuance, were able to follow their own devices and raise money almost as seemed to them good. [Parliaments of Henry VII The “new-found” subsidy]