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7. agreement of disagreement of their Interests.

The Era to which this study may be properly confined in the eighteenth Century, is the latter end of the fifteenth. It signifies little that a King or Minister should be thoroughly and intically informed of the events of preceding times, but it is of the utmost consequence that He should be so informed of those that follow; for He will find the foundations of the whole Political system of his own age to have been laid in them.

Property and Power in England received great alterations in the reign of Henry the seventh; when the independency of our great Lords on the Crown, and their influence by Retainers and otherways on the inferior ranks of people were diminished as they have continued to be ever since.

The Constitution of the Church was entirely changed in the reign of his Son, the far greatest part of Her wealth was taken from Her, and a new Ecclesiastical System succeeded that which had so long supported the Papal Tyranny.

It was about the same time that Lewis the eleventh drew the Kings of France, to use the French expression, underline hors de Page /underline, by reducing the nobility to a greater dependence on the Crown: and that several rich Provinces, such as Burgundy for instance, were annexed to it, both these ways the French Monarchy grew more powerful, and she advanced by large steps to Her future Grandure.

Another more exorbitant Power arose soon afterwards, by the union of Spain, of several states in Italy, and of the Low Countries, as well as of the Austrian Dominions in Germany, the immense wealth of the West Indies, and the Imperial Crown under Charles the fifth.

It was in his time likewise that Luther and other Reformers began that great separation from the Papal