The wealthiest of the emerging bourgeoisie were indeed "merchant princes" with palaces to rival any of the feudal aristocracy. They even acquired political influence as advisers to the crowned heads of Europe. But they were barred from direct political power by a political system that vested absolute power in one monarch and even if they consorted with kings, they never were considered socially equal. As commerce and money grew in importance the gap between the importance of the bourgeoisie in the economy and its lack of political privilege and social status became increasingly obvious. In England the bitter and protracted War of the Roses among competing aristocratic factions for control of the monarchy in the last half of the fifteenth century had led to the decimation of the feudal aristocracy. The victor in this civil war was Henry Tudor who used weariness and general disgust with feudal anarchy to build a strong reasonably centralized monarchy. Wealthy bourgeois were courted for their financial support; bought empty aristocratic titles and married their daughters to poverty-stricken aristocrats. In general there occurred a blurring of class lines between the new wealthy bourgeoisie and what was left of the old feudal aristocracy. Unlike most of their continental counterparts, English aristocrats were becoming commercial agriculturists and fused with a "funded" aristocracy of urban capitalists in a community of interest not necessarily best served by the crown. In the seventeenth century, the House of Commons, comprising the landed gentry as well as representatives of the commercial classes and the towns, launched what turned out to be a revolution of modernization. In challenging the right of the King Charles I to arbitrarily levy new taxes, Commons asserted its right of "advice and consent" as held in traditional feudal contract and reiterated in Magna Carta. The struggle involved a twenty-year civil war and later a short, virtually bloodless "Glorious Revolution," and by 1689 had created a government in which sovereignty rested in Parliament. The Bill of Rights and other acts and laws liberated Englishmen from most of what was left of feudal privilege and arbitrary royal authority. The modern, bourgeois concept of private property was established as the legal basis for land ownership and was established as the criterion for the voting franchise. A vague concept of England as one nation, ruled over by a representative Parliament, albeit elected by only about 6 per cent of the population, had developed.