6. Jeanne Darc and the Relief of Orleans. 1429.—The miracle was wrought by a young maiden of seventeen, Jeanne Darc, the daughter of a peasant of Domremi, in the duchy of Bar. Her home was at a distance from the actual scenes of war, but whilst she was still little more than a child, tales of horror, reaching her from afar, had filled her with 'pity for the realm of France' and for its young king, whom she idealised into the pattern of every virtue. As she brooded over the thought of possible deliverance, her warm imagination summoned up before her bright and saintly forms, St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret, who bade her, the chosen of God, to go forth and save the king, and conduct him to Reims to be crowned and anointed with the holy oil from the vessel which, as men believed, had been brought down from heaven in days of old. At last in 1428 her native hamlet was burnt down by a Burgundian band. Then the voices of the saints bade her go to Vaucouleurs, where she would find a knight, Robert de Baudricourt, who would conduct her to Charles. Months passed before Baudricourt would do aught but scorn her message, and it was not till February 1429, when the news from Orleans was most depressing, that he consented to take her in his train. She found Charles at Chinon, and, as the story goes, convinced him of her Divine mission by recognising him in disguise in the midst of his courtiers. Soldiers and theologians alike distrusted her, but her native good sense, her simple and earnest faith, and above all her purity of heart and life disarmed all opposition, and she was sent forth to lead an army to the relief of Orleans. She rode on horseback clothed in armour as a man, with a sword which she had taken from behind the altar of St. Catherine by her side, and a consecrated banner in her hand. She brought with her hope of victory, enthusiasm built on confidence in Divine protection, and wide-reaching patriotism. 'Pity for the realm of France' inspired her, and even the rough soldiers who followed her forsook for a time their debaucheries that they might be fit to follow God's holy maid. Such an army was invincible; but whilst to the French the maid was an instrument of the mercy of God, to the English she was an emissary of hell and the forerunner of defeat. On May 7 she led the storm of one of the English fortified posts by which the town was hemmed in. After a sharp attack she planted her standard on the wall. The English garrison was slain to a man. The line of the besiegers was broken through, and Orleans was saved. On the 12th the English army was in full retreat.



7. The Coronation of Charles VII. and the Capture of the Maid. 1429—1430.—The Maid followed up her victory. She had at her side brave and skilful warriors, such as La Hire and the Bastard of Orleans, the illegitimate son of the murdered Louis of Orleans, and with their help she pressed the English hard, driving them northwards and defeating them at Patay. She insisted on conducting Charles to Reims, and he, indolently resisting at first, was carried away by her persistent urgency. Hostile towns opened their gates to her on the way, and on July 17 she saw with chastened joy the man whom she had saved from destruction crowned in the great cathedral of Reims. For her part, she was eager to push on the war, but Charles was slothful, and in a hurry to be back to the pleasures of his court. When she led the troops to the attack of Paris, she was ordered back by the king, and the army sent into winter quarters. In the spring of 1430 the Maid was allowed again to attack the English, but she had no longer the support which she had once had. Many of the French soldiers were meanly jealous of her, and were vexed when they were told that they owed their victories to a woman. On the other side the Duke of Burgundy was frightened by the French successes into giving real aid to Bedford, and on May 23, in a skirmish before Compiegne, her countrymen doing nothing to save or to rescue her, the Maid was taken by Burgundian soldiers. Before the end of the year her captors sold her to the English, who firmly believed her to be a witch.

8. The Martyrdom at Rouen. 1431.—The English had no difficulty in finding an ecclesiastical court to judge their prisoner. Even the French clergy detested the Maid as having appealed to supernatural voices which had not been recognised by the Church; and in spite of an intelligent and noble defence she was condemned to be burnt. At the stake she behaved with heroic simplicity. When the flames curled round her she called upon the saints who had befriended her. Her last utterance was a cry of "Jesus!" An Englishman who had come to triumph hung his head for shame. "We are lost," he said; "we have burnt a saint!"

9. The Last Years of the Duke of Bedford. 1431—1435.—The English gained nothing by their unworthy vengeance. Though the personal presence of the Maid was no longer there to encourage her countrymen, they had learnt from her to cherish that 'pity for the realm of France' which had glowed so brightly in her own bosom. It was in vain that towards the end of 1431 Bedford carried the young Henry, now a boy of ten years, who had already been crowned in England the year before, to be crowned at Notre Dame, the cathedral of Paris. The Parisians were disgusted by the troop of foreigners which accompanied him, and their confidence was shaken when Bedford sent the king back to England as not venturing to trust him amongst his French subjects. In 1432 the armies of Charles VII. stole forwards step by step, and Bedford, who had no money to pay his troops, could do nothing to resist them. The English Parliament, which had cheerfully voted supplies as long as there seemed a prospect of conquering France, hung back from granting them when victories were no longer won. In 1433 Bedford was again forced to return to England to oppose the intrigues of Gloucester, who, though he had lost the title of Protector when the young king was crowned, had thrown the government into confusion by his intrigues. When Bedford went back to France in 1434 he found the tide running strongly against him. Little more than Paris and Normandy were held by the English, and the Duke of Burgundy was inclining more and more towards the French. In 1435 a congress was held at Arras, under the Duke of Burgundy's presidency, in the hope that peace might be made. The congress, however, failed to accomplish anything, and soon after the English ambassadors were withdrawn Bedford died at Rouen. If so wise a statesman and so skilful a warrior had failed to hold down France, no other Englishman was likely to achieve the task.

10. The Defection of Burgundy. 1435.—After Bedford's death the Duke of Burgundy renounced his alliance with the English and entered into a league with Charles VII. In 1430, by the death of the Duke of Brabant, he inherited Brabant, and in 1436 he inherited from the faithless Jacqueline Hainault, Holland, Zealand, and Friesland (see p. 308). He thus, being already Count of Flanders, became ruler over well-nigh the whole of the Netherlands in addition to his own territories in Burgundy. The vassal of the king of France was now a European potentate. England had therefore to count on the enmity of a ruler whose power of injuring her was indeed serious.

11. The Duke of York in France. 1436—1437.—Bedford's successor was the young Richard, Duke of York, whose father was that Earl of Cambridge who had been executed at Southampton (see p. 301); whilst his mother was Anne Mortimer, the sister of the Earl of March. As the Earl of March had died in 1425, the Duke of York was now, through his mother, the heir of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and thus, if hereditary right was to be regarded, heir to the throne. That a man with such claims should have been entrusted with such an office shows how firmly the victories of Henry V. had established the House of Lancaster in England. Disputes in the English Council, however, delayed his departure, and in April 1436, before he could arrive in France, Paris was lost, whilst the Duke of Burgundy besieged Calais. England, stung by the defection of Burgundy, made an unusual effort. One army drove the Burgundians away from before Calais, whilst another under the Duke of York himself regained several fortresses in Normandy, and in 1437 Lord Talbot drove the Burgundians behind the Somme.

12. The English Lose Ground. 1437—1443.—Gallant as the Duke of York was, he was soon recalled, and in 1437 was succeeded by Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. Warwick, however, failed to do more than to hold what his predecessor had gained, and he died in 1439. Both in England and France the suffering was terrible, and England would find neither men nor money to support a falling cause. In 1439 a peace conference was held at Calais, but the English continued arrogantly to claim the crown of France, and peace was not to be had. In 1440 York was sent back, and fighting went on till 1443, in which the English lost ground both in Normandy and in Guienne.



13. Continued Rivalry of Beaufort and Gloucester. 1439—1441.—The chief advocate in England of the attempt to make peace at Calais in 1439 had been Cardinal Beaufort, whose immense wealth gave him authority over a Council which was always at its wits' end for money. Beaufort was wise enough to see that the attempt to reconquer the lost territory, or even to hold Normandy, was hopeless. Such a view, however, was not likely to be popular. Nations, like men, often refuse openly to acknowledge failure long after they cease to take adequate means to avert it. Of the popular feeling Gloucester made himself the mouthpiece, and it was by his influence that exorbitant pretensions had been put forward at Calais. In 1440 he accused Beaufort of using his authority for his own private interests, and though Beaufort gave over to the public service a large sum of money which he received as the ransom of the Duke of Orleans from a captivity which had lasted twenty-four years (see p. 303), Gloucester virulently charged him with an unpatriotic concession to the enemy. Gloucester's domestic relations, on the other hand, offered an easy object of attack. When he deserted Jacqueline he took a mistress, Eleanor Cobham, and subsequently married her, which he was able to do without difficulty, as his union with Jacqueline was, in the eyes of the Church, no marriage at all. The new Duchess of Gloucester being aware that if the king should die her husband would be next in order of succession to the throne, was anxious to hasten that event. It was a superstitious age, and the Duchess consulted an astrologer as to the time of the king's death, and employed a reputed witch to make a waxen image of the king under the belief that as the wax melted before the fire the king's life would waste away. In 1441 these proceedings were detected. The astrologer was hanged, the witch was burnt, whilst the Duchess escaped with doing public penance and with imprisonment for life. Gloucester could not save her, but he did not lose his place in the Council, where he continued to advocate a war policy, though with less success than before.



14. Beaufort and Somerset. 1442—1443.—In 1442 Henry was in his twenty-first year. Unfeignedly religious and anxious to be at peace with all men, his character was far too weak and gentle to fit him for governing in those rough times. He had attached himself to Beaufort because Beaufort's policy was pacific, and because Gloucester's life was scandalous. Beaufort's position was secured at court, but the situation was not one in which a pacific statesman could hope for success. The French would not consent to make peace till all that they had lost had been recovered; yet, hardly bested as the English in France were, it was impossible in the teeth of English public opinion for any statesman, however pacific, to abandon lands still commanded by English garrisons. Every year, however, brought the problem nearer to the inevitable solution. In 1442 the French attacked the strip of land which was all that the English now held in Guienne and Gascony, and with the exception of Bordeaux and Bayonne captured almost every fortified town. The command in France was given to Cardinal Beaufort's nephew, John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Somerset, who was thoroughly incompetent, did not even leave England till the autumn of 1443, and when he arrived in France accomplished nothing worthy of his office.

15. The Angevin Marriage Treaty. 1444—1445.—Henry now fell under the influence of William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, a descendant of the favourite of Richard II. Suffolk had fought bravely in France, and had learnt by sad experience the hopelessness of the English cause. In 1444, with the consent of the king and the Parliament, he negotiated at Tours a truce for ten months. In order to make it more lasting there was to be a marriage between Henry and Margaret of Anjou. Her father, Rene, the Duke of Anjou, was titular king of Jerusalem and Sicily, in neither of which did he possess a foot of ground, whilst his duchy of Anjou was almost valueless to him in consequence of the forays of the English, who still held posts in Maine. Charles had the more readily consented to the truce, because it was understood that the surrender of Maine would be a condition of the marriage. In 1445 Suffolk led Margaret to England, where her marriage to Henry was solemnised. A French queen who brought with her no portion except a truce bought by the surrender of territory could hardly fail to be unpopular in England.



16. Deaths of Gloucester and Beaufort. 1447.—The truce was renewed from time to time, and Suffolk's authority seemed firmly established. In 1447 Gloucester was charged with high treason in a Parliament held at Bury St. Edmunds, but before he had time to answer he was found dead in his bed. His death may, with strong probability, be ascribed to natural causes, but it was widely believed that he had been murdered and that Suffolk was the murderer. A few weeks later Gloucester's old rival, Cardinal Beaufort, the last real statesman who supported the throne of Henry VI., followed him to the grave, and Suffolk was left alone to bear the responsibility of government and the disgrace of failure.



17. The Loss of the French Provinces. 1448—1449.—Suffolk had undertaken more than he was able to fulfil. Somerset had died in 1444, and Suffolk being jealous of all authority but his own, he sent York to govern Ireland. He could not secure the fulfilment of the conditions which he had made with the king of France. The English commanders refused to evacuate Maine, and in 1448 a French army entered the province and drove out the English. Edmund, the new Duke of Somerset, was sent to take the command in Normandy, which had formerly been held by his brother. In 1449 an Aragonese captain in the English service, who had no pay for his troops, having seized Fougeres, a place on the frontier of Brittany, for the sake of the booty to be gained, Charles made the attack an excuse for the renewal of the war. So destitute was the condition in which the English forces were left that neither Somerset nor the warlike Talbot (see p. 313), who had recently been created Earl of Shrewsbury, was able to resist him. Rouen fell in 1450, and in 1450 the whole of Normandy was lost. In 1451 the French attacked Bordeaux and Bayonne, two port-towns which, in consequence of their close commercial intercourse with England, had no wish to transfer their allegiance to Charles. England, however, sent them no succour, and before the end of the year they were forced to capitulate. The relics of Guienne and Gascony thus passed into the hands of the French, and of all the possessions which the kings of England had once held on the Continent Calais alone remained.



CHAPTER XXI.

THE LATER YEARS OF HENRY VI. 1450—1461.

LEADING DATES

Reign of Henry VI., 1422—1461

Murder of the Duke of Suffolk and Jack Cade's rebellion 1450 First Protectorate of the Duke of York 1453 First Battle of St. Albans and second Protectorate of the Duke of York 1455 Battle of Blore Heath and the discomfiture of the Yorkists 1459 After a Yorkist victory at Northampton the Duke of York is declared heir to the crown, but is defeated and slain at Wakefield 1460 Battles of Mortimer's Cross, St. Albans, and Towton 1461 Coronation of Edward IV. 1461

1. The Growth of Inclosures.—Since the insurrection of the peasants in 1381 (see p. 268) villeinage had to a great extent been dying out, in consequence of the difficulty felt by the lords in enforcing their claims. Yet the condition of the classes connected with the land was by no means prosperous. The lords of manors indeed abandoned the old system of cultivating their own lands by the labour of villeins, or by labourers hired with money paid by villeins in commutation for bodily service. They began to let out their land to tenants who paid rent for it; but even the new system did not bring in anything like the old profit. The soil had been exhausted for want of a proper system of manuring, and arable land scarcely repaid the expenses of its cultivation. For this evil a remedy was found in the inclosure of lands for pasturage. This change, which in itself was beneficial by increasing the productiveness of the country, and by giving rest to the exhausted soil, became oppressive because all the benefit went to the lords of the manors, whilst the tenants of the manors were left to struggle on as best they might. Not only had they no share in the increase of wealth which was brought about by the inclosure of what had formerly been the common land of the manors, but the poorer amongst them had less employment than before, as it required fewer men to look after sheep than to grow corn.

2. Increasing Power of the Nobility.—The disproportionate increase of the wealth of the landowners threw into their hands a disproportionate amount of power. The great landowner especially was able to gather bands of retainers and to spread terror around him. The evil of liveries and maintenance, which had become prominent in the reign of Richard II. (see p. 281), had increased since his deposition. It was an evil which the kings were powerless to control. Again and again complaints were raised of 'want of governance.' Henry V. had abated the mischief for a time by employing the unruly elements in his wars in France, but it was a remedy which, when defeat succeeded victory, only increased the disease which it was meant to cure. When France was lost bands of unruly men accustomed to deeds of violence poured back into England, where they became retainers of the great landowners, who with their help set king and laws at defiance.

3. Case of Lord Molynes and John Paston.—The difficulty of obtaining justice may be illustrated by a case which occurred in Norfolk. The manor of Gresham belonged to John Paston, a gentleman of moderate fortune. It was coveted by Lord Molynes, who had no legal claim to it whatever. Lord Molynes, however, took possession of it in 1448 with the strong hand. If such a thing had happened at present Paston would have gone to law; but to go to law implies the submitting of a case to a jury, and in those days a jury was not to be trusted to do justice. In the first place it was selected by the sheriff, and the sheriff took care to choose such men as would give a verdict pleasing to the great men whom he wished to serve, and in the second place, supposing that the sheriff did not do this, a juryman who offended great men by giving a verdict according to his conscience, but contrary to their desire, ran the risk of being knocked on the head before he reached home. Paston accordingly, instead of going to law, begged Lord Molynes to behave more reasonably. Finding his entreaties of no avail, he took possession of a house on the manor. Lord Molynes merely waited till Paston was away from home, and then sent a thousand men, who drove out Paston's wife and pillaged and wrecked the house. Paston ultimately recovered the manor, but redress for the injury done him was not to be had.

4. Suffolk's Impeachment and Murder. 1450.—A government which was too weak to redress injuries was certain to be unpopular. The loss of the French possessions made it still more unpopular. The brunt of the public displeasure fell on Suffolk, who had just been made a duke, and who, through the queen's favour, was all-powerful at court. It was believed that he had sold himself to France, and it was known that whilst the country was impoverished large grants had been made to court favourites. An outcry was raised that the king 'should live of his own,' and ask for no more grants from his people. In 1450 Suffolk was impeached. Though the charge brought against him was a tissue of falsehoods, Henry did not dare to shield him entirely, and ordered him into banishment for five years. Suffolk, indeed, embarked for the Continent, but a large ship ranged up alongside of the vessel in which he was. Having been dragged on board amidst cries of "Welcome, traitor!" he was, two days afterwards, transferred to a boat, where his head was chopped off with six strokes of a rusty sword. His body was flung on the beach at Dover.

5. Jack Cade's Rebellion. 1450.—Suffolk's supporters remained in office after his death. The men of Kent rose against them, and found a leader in an Irish adventurer, Jack Cade, who called himself Mortimer, and gave out that he was an illegitimate son of the late Earl of March. He established himself on Blackheath at the head of 30,000 men, asking that the burdens of the people should be diminished, the Crown estates recovered, and the Duke of York recalled from Ireland to take the place of the present councillors. Jack Cade's rebellion, in short, unlike that of Wat Tyler, was a political, not a social movement. In demanding that the government should be placed in the hands of the Duke of York, Jack Cade virtually asked that the Duke should step into the place, not of the Council, but of the King—that is to say, that a ruler who could govern should be substituted for one who could not, and in whose name the great families plundered England. It was this demand which opened the long struggle which was soon to devastate the country. At first it seemed as if Jack Cade would carry all before him. London, which had the most to gain by the establishment of a strong government, opened its gates to him. When, however, he was tested by success, he was found wanting. Striking with his sword the old Roman milestone known as London Stone, he cried out, "Now is Mortimer lord of this city." His followers gave themselves up to wild excesses. They beheaded Lord Say and his son-in-law, the Sheriff of Kent, and carried about their heads on pikes. They plundered houses and shops. The citizens who had invited them to enter now turned against them. After a fight on London Bridge the insurgents agreed to go home on the promise of a pardon. Jack Cade himself, attempting to gather fresh forces, was chased into Sussex and slain.

6. Rivalry of York and Somerset. 1450—1453.—In the summer of 1450, Richard, Duke of York, the real leader of the opposition, came back from Ireland. He found that Somerset, who had just returned from Normandy after the final loss of that province (see p. 320), had succeeded Suffolk in the king's confidence. Somerset, however, was not merely the favourite of Henry and the queen. The bulk of the nobility was on his side, whilst York was supported by the force of popular discontent and by such of the nobility as cherished a personal grudge against Somerset and his friends. In 1451 the loss of Guienne and Gascony increased the weight of Somerset's unpopularity. In 1452 both parties took arms; but, this time, civil war was averted by a promise from the king that York should be admitted to the Council, and that Somerset should be placed in confinement till he answered the charges against him. On this York dismissed his army. Henry, however, was not allowed to keep his promise, and Somerset remained in power, whilst York was glad to be allowed to retire unhurt. Somerset attempted to recover his credit by fresh victories in France, and sent the old Earl of Shrewsbury to Bordeaux to reconquer Gascony. Shrewsbury was successful for a while, but in 1453 he was defeated and slain at Castillon, and the whole enterprise came to nothing.

7. The First Protectorate of the Duke of York. 1453—1454.—Henry's mind had never been strong, and in 1453 it entirely gave way. His insanity was probably inherited from his maternal grandfather, Charles VI. The queen bore him a son, named Edward, but though the infant was brought to his father, Henry gave no sign of recognising his presence. It was necessary to place the government in other hands, and in 1454 the Duke of York was named Protector by the House of Lords, which, as the majority of its members were at that time ecclesiastics, did not always re-echo the sentiments of the great families. If only the king had remained permanently insane York might have established an orderly government. Henry, however, soon recovered as much sense as he ever had, and York's protectorate came to an end.

8. The First Battle of St. Albans and the Duke of York's Second Protectorate.—The restoration of Henry was in reality the restoration of Somerset. In 1455 York, fearing destruction, took arms against his rival. A battle was fought at St. Albans, in which Somerset was defeated and slain. This was the first battle in the wars known as the Wars of the Roses, because a red rose was the badge of the House of Lancaster, to which Henry belonged, and a white rose the badge of the House of York. After the victory York accompanied the king to London. Though the bulk of the nobility was against him, he had on his side the powerful family of the Nevills, as he had married Cicely Nevill, the sister of the head of that family, the Earl of Salisbury. Still more powerful was Salisbury's eldest son, who had married the heiress of the Beauchamps, Earls of Warwick, and who held the earldom of Warwick in right of his wife.[30] In June 1455 the king was again insane, and York was for the second time named Protector. This Protectorate, however, did not last long, as early in 1456 the king recovered his senses, and York had to resign his post.

[Footnote 30: Genealogy of the Nevills:—

John of Gaunt Ralph Nevill, = Joan Thomas Montague, Earl of Earl of Salisbury Westmoreland - Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick Alice = Richard, Cicely = Richard, Earl of Duke of Salisbury, York, beheaded at killed at Pontefract, Wakefield, 1460 1460 - Anne = Richard, John, George, Earl of Warwick, Marquess of Archbishop the king-maker, Montague of York killed at Barnet, 1471]



9. Discomfiture of the Yorkists. 1456—1459.—For two years Henry exercised such authority as he was capable of exercising. In 1458 he tried his hand at effecting a reconciliation. The chiefs of the two parties walked hand in hand in procession to St. Paul's, York himself leading the queen. The Yorkists founded masses for the repose of the souls of their enemies slain at St. Albans, and paid money to their widows. It seemed as if the old practice of the weregild (see p. 32) had been unexpectedly revived. The spirit which had made weregild possible was, however, no longer to be found. Warwick retired to Calais, of which he was governor, and sent out vessels to plunder the merchant ships of all nations. When he was summoned to Westminster to give account of his actions, a quarrel broke out there between his servants and those of the king. Believing his own life to be in danger, he made his way back to Calais. The Yorkists spent the winter in preparing for war. In the summer of 1459 Lord Audley, sent by the queen to seize the Earl of Salisbury, was defeated by him at Blore Heath, in Staffordshire. Later in the year the two parties with their whole forces prepared for a battle near Ludlow, but the Yorkists found themselves no match for their enemies, and, without fighting, York, with his second son, the Earl of Rutland, took refuge in Ireland. His eldest son Edward, Earl of March, with Salisbury and Warwick, made his way to Calais.



10. The Battle of Northampton and the Duke of York's Claim to the Throne. 1460.—In 1460 the Yorkist Earls of Salisbury, Warwick, and March were once more in England. They defeated the royal army at Northampton and captured the king. York returned from Ireland, and, as soon as Parliament met, took an unexpected step. If hereditary descent was to count for anything, his claim to the throne was superior to that of Henry himself, as he was the heir of Edward III. through his mother Anne, the sister of the last Earl of March.[31] The Duke of York now placed his hand on the throne, claiming it in right of birth. The Lords decided that Henry, to whom they had sworn oaths of fealty, should retain the crown, but that York should succeed him, to the exclusion of Henry's son, Edward, Prince of Wales.

[Footnote 31: Genealogy of the Houses of Lancaster and York:—

EDWARD III. (1307-1377) Edward, Lionel, Duke John of Edmund, Duke of the Black Prince of Clarence Gaunt of York - RICHARD II. Philippa = Edmund HENRY IV. (1377-1399) Mortimer, (1399-1413) Earl of March - (1) HENRY V. (2) John, Duke (1413-1422) of Bedford (3) Thomas, Duke Roger Mortimer, HENRY VI. of Clarence Earl of March (1422-1461) (4) Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester - Edmund Mortimer, Anne = Richard, Earl of Cambridge Earl of March Richard, Duke of York Edward, Earl of March, afterwards EDWARD IV.]

11. The Battle of Wakefield. 1460.—The struggle, which had at first been one between two unequal sections of the nobility, each nominally acknowledging Henry VI. as their king, thus came to be one between the Houses of Lancaster and York. The queen, savage at the wrong done to her son, refused to accept the compromise. Withdrawing to the North, she summoned to her aid the Earl of Northumberland and the Lancastrian lords. The North was always exposed to Scottish invasions, and the constant danger kept the inhabitants ready for war, and strengthened the authority of the great lords who led them. For the same reason the people of the North were ruder and less civilised than their fellow-countrymen in the South. Plunder and outrage did not come amiss to men who were frequently subjected to plunder and outrage. An army composed of 18,000 of these rough warriors placed itself at the queen's disposal. With these she routed her enemies at Wakefield. York himself was slain. His son, Rutland, was stabbed to death by Lord Clifford, whose father had been slain at St. Albans. Salisbury was subsequently beheaded by the populace at Pontefract. By command of Margaret, York's head was cut off, and, adorned in mockery with a paper crown, was fixed with those of Salisbury and Rutland above one of the gates of York.

12. The Battle of Mortimer's Cross and the Second Battle of St. Albans. 1461.—The battle of Wakefield differed in character from the earlier battles of the war. They had been but conflicts between bands of noblemen and their armed retainers, in which the general population took little part, whilst the ordinary business of the country went on much as usual. At Wakefield not only were cruel passions developed, but a new danger appeared. When Margaret attempted to gain her ends with the help of her rude northern followers, she roused against her the fears of the wealthier and more prosperous South. The South found a leader in York's son, Edward. Though only in his nineteenth year, Edward showed that he had the qualities of a commander. Rapid in his movements, he fell upon some Lancastrian forces and defeated them on February 2, 1461, at Mortimer's Cross. In the meanwhile Margaret was marching with her northern host upon London, plundering and destroying as she went. Warwick, carrying the king with him, met her on the way, but in the second battle of St. Albans—fought on February 17—was driven back, leaving the king behind him.

13. The Battle of Towton and the Coronation of Edward IV. 1461.—With a civilised army at her back, Margaret might have won her way into London, and established her authority, at least for a time. Her unbridled supporters celebrated their victory by robbery and rape, and Margaret was unable to lead them forward. The Londoners steeled their hearts against her. Edward was marching to their help, and on February 25 he entered London. The men of the neighbouring counties flocked in to his support. On March 2 the crown was offered to him at Clerkenwell by such lords as happened to be in London. On his presenting himself to the multitude in Westminster Hall, he was greeted with shouts of "Long live the king!" Edward IV. represented to peace-loving England the order which had to be upheld against the barbarous host which Margaret and the Lancastrian lords had called to their aid. He had yet to justify the choice. The northern host had retreated to its own country, and Edward swiftly followed it up. His advanced guard was surprised and driven back at Ferry Bridge; but his main army pressed on, and on March 29 gained a decisive victory at Towton. The slaughter of the defeated side was enormous. Margaret escaped with Henry to Scotland, and Edward, returning southwards, was crowned at Westminster on June 29.



CHAPTER XXII.

THE YORKIST KINGS.

EDWARD IV., 1461—1483. EDWARD V., 1483. RICHARD III., 1483—1485.

LEADING DATES

Coronation of Edward IV. 1461 Restoration of Henry VI. 1470 Edward IV. recovers the crown—Battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury 1471 Edward V. 1483 Richard III. deposes Edward V. 1483 Richard III. killed at Bosworth 1485

1. Edward IV. and the House of Commons. 1461.—On June 29, 1461, Edward IV. was crowned, and created his two brothers, George and Richard, Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester. His first Parliament declared the three Lancastrian kings to have been usurpers, and Henry VI., his wife, his son, and his chief supporters, to be traitors. At the end of the session Edward thanked the Commons for their support, and assured them of his resolution to protect them at the hazard of his own life. It was the first time that a king had addressed the Commons, and his doing so was a sign that a new era had begun, in which the wishes of the middle class in town and country were to prevail over those of the great nobles. It did not follow that the House of Commons would take the control of the government into its own hands, as it does at the present day. For a long time the election of the members had been carried out under pressure from the local nobility. If the great men in a county resolved that certain persons should be returned as members, those who came to the place of election in support of others would be driven off, and perhaps beaten or wounded. Consequently each House of Commons had hitherto represented the dominant party, Lancastrian or Yorkist, as the case might be. Before there could be a House of Commons capable of governing, the interference of the nobles with elections would have to be brought to an end, and it was only by a strong king that their power could be overthrown. The strengthening of the kingship was the only road to future constitutional progress.



2. Loss of the Mediaeval Ideals.—Before the end of the 15th century the English people had lost all the ideals of the middle ages. The attempt of Henry V. to revive the old ecclesiastical feeling had broken down through the race for material power opened by his French wars, and through the savagery of the wars of the Roses. The new religious feeling of Wycliffe and the nobler Lollards had perished with Sir John Oldcastle from the same causes. Neither the Church nor the opponents of the Church had any longer a sway over men's hearts. The clergy continued to perform their part in the services of the Church not indeed without belief, but without the spiritual fervour which influences the lives of men. The chivalry of the middle ages was as dead as its religion. Men spoke of women as coarsely as they spoke of their cattle. Human nature indeed could not be entirely crushed. John Paston's wife (see p. 321), for instance, was quaintly affectionate. "I would," she once wrote to her husband, "ye were at home, if it were for your ease ... now liever than a gown, though it were of scarlet." But the system of wardship (see p. 116) made marriages a matter of bargain and sale. "For very need," wrote a certain Stephen Scrope, "I was fain to sell a little daughter I have for much less than I should." When Scrope was old he wished to marry Paston's young sister, and the girl was willing to take him if she were sure that his land was not burdened with debt. She would be glad enough to escape from home. Her mother kept her in close confinement and beat her once or twice every week, and sometimes twice a day, so that her head was broken in two or three places. This low and material view of domestic life had led to an equally low and material view of political life, and the cruelty which stained the wars of the Roses was but the outcome of a state of society in which no man cared much for anything except his own greatness and enjoyment. The ideal which shaped itself in the minds of the men of the middle class was a king acting as a kind of chief constable, who, by keeping great men in order, would allow their inferiors to make money in peace.

3. Fresh Efforts of the Lancastrians. 1462—1465.—Edward IV. only very partially responded to this demand. He was swift in action when a crisis came, and was cruel in his revenge, but he was lustful and indolent when the crisis was passed, and he had no statesmanlike abilities to lay the foundations of a powerful government. The wars were not ended by his victory at Towton. In 1462 Queen Margaret reappeared in the North, and it was not till 1464 that Warwick's brother, Lord Montague, thoroughly defeated her forces at Hedgeley Moor and Hexham; for which victories he was rewarded by Edward with the earldom of Northumberland, which had been forfeited by the Lancastrian head of the House of Percy. Montague's victory was marked by the usual butcheries; the Duke of Somerset, a son of the duke who had been slain at St. Albans, being amongst those who perished on the scaffold. In 1465 Henry himself was taken prisoner and lodged in the Tower.

4. Edward's Marriage. 1464.—Whilst these battles were being fought Edward was lingering in the South courting the young widow of Sir John Grey, usually known by her maiden name as Elizabeth Woodville. His marriage to her gave offence to his noble supporters, who disdained to acknowledge a queen of birth so undistinguished; and their ill-will was increased when they found that Edward distributed amongst his wife's kindred estates and preferments which they had hoped to gain for themselves. The queen's father became Earl Rivers and Lord Constable, and her brothers and sisters were enriched by marriages with noble wards of the Crown. One of her brothers, a youth of twenty, was married to the old Duchess of Norfolk, who was over eighty.

5. Estrangement of Warwick. 1465—1468.—No doubt there was as much of policy as of affection in the slight shown by Edward to the Yorkist nobility. Warwick—the King-maker, as he was called—had special cause for ill-humour. He had expected to be a King-ruler as well as a King-maker, and he took grave offence when he found Edward slipping away from his control. It seemed as if Edward had the settled purpose of raising up a new nobility to counterbalance the old. In 1467 Warwick's brother, the Archbishop of York, was deprived of the chancellorship. In foreign politics, too, Edward and Warwick disagreed. Warwick had taken up the old policy of the Beauforts, and was anxious for an alliance with the astute Louis XI., who had in 1461 succeeded his father, Charles VII., as king of France. Edward, perhaps with some thought passing through his head of establishing his throne by following in the steps of Henry V., declared for an alliance with Burgundy. In 1467 Warwick was allowed to go to France as an ambassador, whilst Edward was entertaining Burgundian ambassadors in England. In the same year Charles the Rash succeeded his father, Philip the Good (see p. 306), as Duke of Burgundy, and in 1468 married Edward's sister, Margaret. The Duke of Burgundy, the rival of the king of France, was the lord of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands, and his friendship brought with it that peaceful intercourse with the manufacturing towns of Flanders which it was always the object of English policy to secure.

6. Warwick's Alliance with Clarence. 1469—1470.—Warwick, disgusted with Edward, found an ally in Edward's brother, Clarence, who, like Warwick, was jealous of the Woodvilles. Warwick had no son, and his two daughters, Isabel and Anne, would one day share his vast estates between them. Warwick gave Isabel in marriage to Clarence, and encouraged him to think that it might be possible to seat him—in days when everything seemed possible to the strong—on Edward's throne. Edward had by this time lost much of his popularity. His extravagant and luxurious life made men doubt whether anything had been gained by substituting him for Henry, and in 1469 and 1470 there were risings fomented by Warwick. In the latter year Edward, with the help of his cannon, the importance of which in battles was now great, struck such a panic into his enemies at a battle near Stamford that the place of action came to be known as Lose-coat Field, from the haste with which the fugitives stripped themselves of their armour to make their flight the easier. Warwick and Clarence fled across the sea. Warwick was governor of Calais, but his own officer there refused to admit him, and he was forced to take refuge in France.



7. The Restoration of Henry VI. 1470.—Warwick knew that he had no chance of recovering power without the support of the Lancastrian party, and, disagreeable as it was to him, he allowed Louis XI. to reconcile him to Queen Margaret, the wife of that Henry VI., of whom he had been the bitterest enemy. Louis, who dreaded Edward's alliance with the Duke of Burgundy, did everything to support Edward's foes, and sent Warwick off to England, where he was subsequently to be joined by the queen. Edward, who was in his most careless mood, was foolish enough to trust Warwick's brother, Montague, from whom he had taken away, not only his new earldom of Northumberland to restore it to the head of the Percies (see p. 331), but all the lands connected with it, and had thought to compensate him with the mere marquisate of Montague, unaccompanied by any estate wherewith to support the dignity of his rank. Montague turned against him, and Edward, fearing for his life, fled to Holland. Warwick became master of England, and this time the King-maker drew Henry from the Tower and placed him once more on the throne, imbecile as he now was.

8. Edward IV. recovers the Throne. 1471.—In the spring of 1471 Edward was back in England, landing at Ravenspur, where Henry IV. had landed in 1399. Like Henry IV., he lyingly declared that he had come merely to claim his duchy and estates. Like Henry IV., too, he found a supporter in an Earl of Northumberland, who was this time the Percy who, Lancastrian as he was, had been restored by Edward to his earldom at the expense of Montague. Clarence, too—false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, as Shakspere truly calls him—had offered to betray Warwick. Edward gathered a sufficient force to march unassailed to London, where he was enthusiastically received. Taking with him the unfortunate Henry he won a complete victory at Barnet. The battle was fought in a dense fog, and was decided by a panic caused amongst Warwick's men through the firing of one of their divisions into another. Warwick and Montague were among the slain. By this time Margaret had landed with a fresh army at Weymouth. Edward caught her and her army at Tewkesbury, where he inflicted on her a crushing defeat. Her son, Edward Prince of Wales, was either slain in the battle, or more probably murdered after the fight was over; and the Duke of Somerset, the brother of the duke who had been executed after the battle of Hexham (see p. 331), the last male heir of the House of Beaufort, as well as others, who had taken refuge in the abbey, were afterwards put to death, though Edward had solemnly promised them their lives. On the night after Edward's return to London Henry VI. ended his life in the Tower. There can be no reasonable doubt that he was murdered, and that, too, by Edward's directions.

9. Edward IV. prepares for War with France. 1471—1474.—Edward IV. was now all powerful. He had no competitor to fear. No descendant of Henry IV. remained alive. Of the Beauforts, the descendants of John of Gaunt by Catherine Swynford (see p. 282), the male line had perished, and the only representative was young Henry, Earl of Richmond, whose mother, the Lady Margaret, was the daughter of the first Duke of Somerset, and the cousin of the two dukes who had been executed after the battles of Hexham and Tewkesbury.[32] His father, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who died before his birth, was the son of a Welsh gentleman of no great mark, who had had the luck to marry Catherine of France, the widow of Henry V. The young Richmond was, however, an exile, and, as he was only fourteen years of age when Edward was restored, no serious danger was as yet to be apprehended from that side. Moreover, the slaughter amongst both the Yorkist and the Lancastrian nobility had, for the time, put an end to all danger of a rising. Edward was, therefore, at liberty to carry out his own foreign policy. He obtained grants from Parliament to enable him, in alliance with Charles of Burgundy, to make war against Louis XI. The grants were insufficient, and he supplemented them by a newly invented system of benevolences, which were nominally free gifts made to him by the well-to-do, but which were in reality exactions, because those from whom they were required dared not refuse to pay. The system raised little general ill will, partly because the small owners of property who were relieved from taxation were not touched by the benevolences, and partly because the end which Edward had put to the civil war made his government welcome. In some cases his personal charm counted for something. One old lady whom he asked for ten pounds replied that for the sake of his handsome face she would give him twenty. He kissed her and she at once made it forty.

[Footnote 32: Genealogy of the Beauforts and the Tudors:—

John of Gaunt = Catherine Swynford John Beaufort, Cardinal Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, legitimated by Act legitimated by Act of of Parliament Owen Tudor = Catherine, Parliament widow of Henry V. John, 1st Duke of Somerset Edmund, 2nd Duke of Somerset, killed at St. Albans, 1455 Edmund Tudor = Margaret Henry, Edmund, Earl of Richmond, 3rd Duke of 4th Duke of d. 1456 Somerset, Somerset, HENRY VII. executed after executed after (1485-1509) the battle of the battle of Hexham, 1464 Tewkesbury, 1471]

10. The Invasion of France. 1475.—In 1475 Edward invaded France. If he could have secured the steady support of the Duke of Burgundy he might have accomplished something, but the Duke's dominions were too scattered to enable him to have a settled policy. He was sometimes led to attack the king of France, because he had interests as a French vassal; whilst at other times he threw all his strength into projects for encroachments in Germany, because he had also interests as a vassal of the Emperor. When Edward landed Charles was anxious to carry on war in Germany, and would give no help to Edward in France. Louis XI., who preferred a victory of diplomacy to one of force, wheedled Edward into a seven years' truce by a grant of 75,000 crowns, together with a yearly pension of 50,000, and by a promise to marry the Dauphin Charles to Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the king of England. Louis also made presents to Edward's chief followers, and was delighted when the English army turned its back on France. In consequence of this understanding Queen Margaret recovered her liberty.

11. Fall and Death of Clarence. 1476—1478.—Soon after Edward's return he became suspicious of his brother Clarence, who took upon himself to interfere with the course of justice. In 1477 the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Rash, was slain at Nancy by the Swiss, leaving only a daughter, Mary. Ducal Burgundy was at once seized by Louis, as forfeited for want of male heirs, but Franche Comte, or the county of Burgundy, was a part of the Empire, and therefore beyond his reach; and this latter district, together with the provinces of the Netherlands, formed a dower splendid enough to attract suitors for Mary's hand. Amongst these was Clarence,[33] now a widower. Edward, who had no wish to see his brother an independent sovereign, forbade him to proceed with his wooing. Other actions of Clarence were displeasing to the king, and when Parliament met, 1478, Edward with his own mouth accused his brother of treason. Clarence was condemned to death, and perished secretly in the Tower, being, according to rumour, drowned in a butt of malmsey.

[Footnote 33: Mary was the child of an earlier wife of Charles the Bold than Margaret the sister of Edward IV. and Clarence, and the latter was therefore not related to her.]

12. The Last Years of Edward IV. 1478—1483.—The remainder of Edward's life was spent in quiet, as far as domestic affairs were concerned. In foreign affairs he met with a grave disappointment. Mary of Burgundy had found a husband in Maximilian, archduke of Austria, the son of the Emperor Frederick III. In 1482 she died, leaving two children, Philip and Margaret. The men of Ghent set Maximilian at naught, and, combining with Louis, forced Maximilian in the treaty of Arras to promise the hand of Margaret to the Dauphin, and the cession of some Netherlandish territory to France. Edward died on April 9, 1483, and it has been said that the treaty of Arras, which extended French influence in the Netherlands, brought about his death. It is more reasonable to attribute it to the dissoluteness of his life.

13. Edward V. and the Duke of Gloucester. 1483.—Edward IV. left two sons. The elder, a boy of twelve, was now Edward V., and his younger brother, Richard, was Duke of York.[34] The only grown-up man of the family was the youngest brother of Edward IV., Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Gloucester had shown himself during his brother's reign to be possessed of the qualities which fit a man to fulfil the duties of a high position. He was not only a good soldier and an able commander, but, unlike his brother Clarence, was entirely faithful to Edward, though he showed his independence by refusing to take part in Edward's treaty with Louis of France. He had a rare power of winning popular sympathy, and was most liked in Yorkshire, where he was best known. He had, however, grown up in a cruel and unscrupulous age, and had no more hesitation in clearing his way by slaughter than had Edward IV. or Margaret of Anjou. Though absolute proof is wanting, there is strong reason to believe that he took part in cutting down Prince Edward after the battle of Tewkesbury, and that he executed his brother's orders in providing for the murder of Henry VI. in the Tower. He made no remonstrance against, though he took no part in, the death of Clarence, with whom he was on bad terms, because Clarence claimed the whole of the estates of the King-maker, whose eldest daughter Isabel he had married; whereas Gloucester, having married the younger daughter Anne, the widow of the slaughtered son of Henry VI. put in a claim to half. Gloucester was now to be tried as he had never been tried before, his brother having appointed him by will to be the guardian of his young nephew and of the kingdom. If the authority thus conferred upon him met with general acceptance, he would probably make an excellent ruler. If it were questioned he would strike out, and show no mercy. In those hard days every man of high position must be either hammer or anvil, and Richard was resolved that he would not be the anvil.

[Footnote 34: Genealogy of the Yorkist Kings:—

Richard, Duke of York, killed at Wakefield, 1460 Elizabeth = EDWARD IV. Margaret = Charles, George = Isabel RICHARD Woodville (1461-1483) the Rash, Duke of Nevil III., Duke of Clarence, Duke of Burgundy d. 1478 Gloucester, afterwards king, m. to Anne Nevill (1483-1485) - Elizabeth, m. EDWARD V., Richard, Edward, to Henry VII. murdered Duke of York, Earl of Edward, 1483 murdered 1483 Warwick, d. 1484 executed 1499]

14. Fall of the Queen's Relations. 1483.—The young king was at Ludlow, and rode up towards London, guarded by Earl Rivers, his uncle on his mother's side, and by his half-brother, Sir Richard Grey. Another half-brother, the Marquis of Dorset, was lieutenant of the Tower.[35] Gloucester had strong reasons for believing that the Greys intended to keep the young king in their hands and, having him crowned at once, so as to put an end to his own guardianship, to make themselves masters of the kingdom. He therefore struck the first blow. Accompanied by his friend and supporter, the Duke of Buckingham, he overtook the cavalcade, and sent Rivers and Grey prisoners to Pontefract. The queen-mother at once took refuge in the sanctuary at Westminster, whence no one could remove her without violating the privileges of the Church.

[Footnote 35: Genealogy of the Woodvilles and Greys:—

Richard, Earl Rivers + + Anthony (1) Sir John Grey = Elizabeth Woodville = (2) EDWARD IV. Woodville, Earl Rivers, + + -+ + -+ executed 1483 Thomas Grey, Sir Richard Grey, EDWARD V., Marquis of Dorset executed 1483 murdered 1483]



15. Execution of Lord Hastings.—The young king arrived in London on May 4. The Council acknowledged Gloucester as Protector, and removed Edward to the Tower, which in those days was a place of safety rather than a prison. Dorset, however, had equipped a fleet, and Gloucester was afraid lest a fresh attempt might be made by the queen's party to overthrow him. His fears were increased because Lord Hastings, the leading member of the Council, who had taken his part against the Woodvilles, now turned against him and began to intrigue with the queen's supporters. Coming into the council chamber on June 13, he laid bare his left arm, which had been withered from his birth, and declared that the mischief was the effect of witchcraft, and that the witches were the queen and Jane Shore, who had been one of the many mistresses of Edward IV., and was now the mistress of Hastings. Hastings admitted that the queen and Jane Shore were worthy of punishment if they were guilty. "What!" cried Gloucester, "dost thou serve me with ifs and with ands? I tell thee they have done it, and that I will make good on thy body, traitor." Gloucester struck his fist on the table. Armed men rushed in, dragged Hastings out, and cut off his head on a log of wood. Jane Shore was compelled to do public penance in a white sheet. Of the causes of Hastings' desertion of Gloucester it is impossible to speak with certainty. It is a probable conjecture that he had discovered that Gloucester entertained the thought of making himself more than Protector. Young Edward's coronation would make the boy capable, formally at least, of exercising royal power, and as it was known that the boy loved his mother's relations, it was almost certain that he would place the Woodvilles in power. Now that Gloucester had imprisoned Rivers and Grey, it was certain that the first thing done by the Woodvilles, if they got a chance, would be to send Gloucester to the scaffold, and Gloucester was not the man patiently to allow himself to be crushed. It is ridiculous to speak of Gloucester as an accomplished dissembler. The story of witchcraft served its purpose, but it was the stupid lie of a man who had not hitherto been accustomed to lying.

16. Deposition of Edward V. 1483.—The execution of Hastings was promptly followed by the execution of Rivers and Grey. Dorset saved himself by escaping beyond sea. By threats Gloucester got the Duke of York into his hands, and lodged him with his brother in the Tower. He was now in a temper which would stop at no atrocity. He put up a Dr. Shaw to preach a sermon against Edward's claim to the throne. In those days if a man and woman made a contract of marriage neither of the contracting parties could marry another, though no actual marriage had taken place. Shaw declared that Edward IV. had promised marriage to one of his mistresses before he met Elizabeth Woodville, and that therefore, his marriage with Elizabeth being invalid, all his children by her were illegitimate, and Gloucester was the true heir to the throne. Further, Shaw declared that Gloucester was the only legitimate son of the Duke of York, both Edward IV. and Clarence being the sons of their mother by some other man. That Richard should have authorised so base an attack upon his mother's honour shows the depth of infamy to which he had now sunk. At first it seemed as if he had lowered himself to no purpose. The hearers of the sermon, instead of shouting, "God save King Richard!" held their peace. At a meeting in the City the Duke of Buckingham told the same story as had been told by Shaw, and there the servants of the two dukes shouted for 'King Richard,' and their voice was taken as the voice of the City. On June 25 Parliament declared Gloucester to be the lawful heir, and on July 6 he was crowned as Richard III. The Woodvilles were not popular, and the bloodshed with which Richard had maintained himself against them was readily condoned.



17. Buckingham's Rebellion. 1483.—Richard's enemies were chiefly to be found amongst the nobility. No nobleman could feel his life secure if he crossed Richard's path. The first to revolt was Buckingham, who had played the part of a king-maker, and who was disappointed because Richard did not reward him by conceding his claim to estates so vast that if he possessed them he would have been master of England. Buckingham, who was descended from Edward III. through his youngest son, the Duke of Gloucester, at first thought of challenging a right to the throne for himself, but afterwards determined to support the claim of the Earl of Richmond, the Tudor heir of the House of Lancaster (see p. 334). He was skilfully led from one step to another by John Morton, Bishop of Ely, one of the ablest statesmen of the day. Richmond was to sail from Brittany, where he was in exile, and Buckingham was to raise forces in Wales, where the Welsh Tudors were popular, whilst other counties were to rise simultaneously. The rebellion came to nothing. Heavy rains caused a flood of the Severn, and Buckingham, in Shropshire, was cut off from his army in Wales. Buckingham was betrayed to Richard, and on November 2 was beheaded at Salisbury.

18. Murder of the Princes. 1483.—At some time in the summer or autumn the princes in the Tower ceased to live. There had been movements in their favour in some counties, and there can be no reasonable doubt that Richard had them secretly killed. It was only by degrees that the truth leaked out. Wherever it was believed it roused indignation. Murders there had been in plenty, but the murdered as yet had been grown men. To butcher children was reserved for Richard alone.

19. Richard's Government. 1484—1485.—As long as the last tale of murder was still regarded as doubtful, Richard retained his popularity. In a Parliament which met in January 1484 he enacted good laws, amongst which was one declaring benevolences illegal. In the summer he was welcomed as he moved about, yet he knew that danger threatened. Richmond was preparing invasion and the hollow friendship of the English nobility was not to be trusted. In vain Richard scattered gifts in profusion amongst them. They took the gifts and hoped for deliverance. The popular goodwill grew cooler, and in the winter Richard, needing money, and not venturing to summon another Parliament, raised a forced loan. A loan not being a gift, he did not technically break the statute against benevolences though practically he set it at naught. Domestic misfortunes came to add to Richard's political troubles. His only son, Edward, died in 1484. His wife, Anne, died in 1485. Richard was now eager, if he had not been eager before, to marry his niece, Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV. This monstrous proposal was scouted by his own supporters, and he had reluctantly to abandon the scheme. If there could be queens in England, Elizabeth was on hereditary principles the heiress of the throne, unless, indeed, Richard's argument against her mother's marriage (see p. 340) was to be accepted. Richmond was naturally as anxious as Richard could be to win her hand, and his promise to marry her was the condition on which he obtained the support of those Yorkists who were Richard's enemies.

20. Richard Defeated and Slain at Bosworth. 1485.—In August 1485 Richmond landed at Milford Haven. As he marched on he was joined by considerable numbers, but on August 22 he found Richard waiting for him near Bosworth, with a host far larger than his own. Richard, however, could not count on the fidelity of his own commanders. Lord Stanley, who had married Richmond's widowed mother, the Lady Margaret (see p. 334), together with his brother, Sir William Stanley, were secretly in accord with Richmond, though they had placed themselves on Richard's side. When the battle began Stanley openly joined Richmond, whilst the Earl of Northumberland who was also nominally on Richard's side withdrew his forces and stood aloof. Knowing that defeat was certain, Richard, with the crown on his head, rushed into the thick of the fight and met a soldier's death. After the battle the fallen crown was discovered on a bush, and placed by Stanley, amidst shouts of 'King Henry!' on Richmond's head.



CHAPTER XXIII.

HENRY VII. 1485—1509.

LEADING DATES

Accession of Henry VII. 1485 The Battle of Stoke 1487 Poynings' Acts 1494 Capture of Perkin Warbeck 1497 Alliance with Scotland 1503 Death of Henry VII. 1509



1. The First Measures of Henry VII. 1485—1486.—Henry VII. owed his success not to a general uprising against Richard, but to a combination of the nobles who had hitherto taken opposite sides. To secure this combination he had promised to marry Elizabeth, the heiress of the Yorkist family. Lest an attempt should be made to challenge her title, Henry imprisoned in the Tower the Earl of Warwick, the son of Clarence, who might possibly maintain that a female was incapable of inheriting. He was indeed unwilling to have it thought that he derived his title from a wife, and when Parliament met on November 7 he obtained from it a recognition of his own right to the throne, though it would have puzzled the most acute controversialist to discover in what that right consisted. Parliament, therefore, contented itself with declaring that the inheritance of the crown was to 'be, rest, and abide in King Henry VII. and his heirs,' without giving any reasons why it was to be so.[36] As far as the House of Lords was concerned the attendance when this declaration was made was scanty. Only twenty-nine lay peers were present, not because many of the great houses had become extinct, but because some of the principal Yorkist peers had been attainted, and others had been left without a summons. In the quieter times which followed this slur upon them was removed, and the House of Lords was again filled. On January 18, 1486, Henry married Elizabeth. This marriage and the blending of the white and red rose in the Tudor badge was Henry's way of announcing that he intended to be the king of both parties.

[Footnote 36: Abbreviated genealogy of Henry VII. and his competitors:—

EDWARD III. + Lionel, Duke of Clarence John of Gaunt, : Duke of Lancaster : : + - - : : George : Duke of Clarence : : EDWARD IV. Edward, : Earl of Warwick : Elizabeth HENRY VII.]



2. Maintenance and Livery.—Henry could not maintain himself on the throne merely by the support of the nobility. The middle classes, as in the days of Edward IV., called out for a strong king, and were ready to overlook violence and cruelty if only order could be secured. Henry was shrewd enough to know that their aid was indispensable, and, Lancastrian as he was, he adopted the policy of the Yorkist kings. Economical and patient, he might succeed where Edward IV. had partially failed. He had no injuries to avenge, no cruelties to repay. He clearly saw that both the throne and the lives and properties of the middle classes were rendered insecure by maintenance and livery—the support given by the great landowners to their retainers, and the granting of badges by which the retainers might recognise one another, and thus become as it were a uniformed army ready to serve their lords in the field. Against these abuses Richard II. had directed a statute, (see p. 281) and that statute had been confirmed by Edward IV. These laws had, however, been inoperative; and Henry, in his first Parliament, did not venture to do more than to make the peers swear to abandon their evil courses.

3. Lovel's Rising. 1486.—In 1486 Lord Lovel, who had been one of Richard's ministers, rose in arms and seized Worcester. Henry found warm support even in Yorkshire, where Richard had been more popular than elsewhere. At short warning a 'marvellous great number of esquires, gentlemen, and yeomen' gathered round him, and the rebellion was easily put down. Lovel escaped to Flanders, where he found a protector in Margaret, the dowager Duchess of Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV. and Richard III. Before long a new attack upon Henry was developed. For the first time an English king had to ward off danger from Ireland.



4. Lancaster and York in Ireland. 1399—1485.—Since the expedition of Richard II. no king had visited Ireland, and the English colonists were left to defend themselves against the Celtic tribes as best they might. In 1449 Richard, Duke of York, who had not at that time entered on his rivalry with Henry VI., was sent to Dublin as Lord Lieutenant (see p. 319) where he remained till 1450, and gained friends amongst both races by his conciliatory firmness. In 1459, after the break-up of his party at Ludlow (see p. 326), he appeared in Ireland in the character of a fugitive seeking for allies. Between him and the English colony a bargain was soon struck. They gave him troops which fought gallantly for him at Wakefield, and he, claiming to be Lord Lieutenant, assented to an act in which they asserted the complete legislative independence of the Parliament of the colony. The colony, therefore, became distinctly Yorkist. Its leader was the Earl of Kildare, the chief of the eastern Fitzgeralds or Geraldines, the Earl of Desmond being the chief of the Geraldines of the West. Between them was the Earl of Ormond, the chief of the Butlers, the hereditary foe of the Geraldines, who, probably merely because his rivals were Yorkist, had attached himself to the Lancastrian party. All three were of English descent, but all three exercised the tribal authority of an Irish chief, and were practically independent of English control. Ormond fought at Towton on the Lancastrian side, and was executed after the battle. Family quarrels broke out amongst his kindred, and for the time Kildare was supreme in the English Pale (see p. 265).

5. Insurrection of Lambert Simnel. 1487.—Kildare and the colonists had every reason to distrust Henry, but to oppose him they needed a pretender. They found one in the son of an Oxford tradesman, a boy of ten, named Lambert Simnel, who had been persuaded to give himself out as the Earl of Warwick, who, as it was said, had escaped from the Tower. In 1487 Simnel landed in Ireland, where he was soon joined by Lord Lovel from Flanders, and by the Earl of Lincoln, of the family of Pole or De la Pole,[37] whose mother, Elizabeth, was the eldest sister of Edward IV., and who had been named by Richard III. as his heir after the death of his son (see p. 342). Lincoln and Lovel, after crowning Simnel at Dublin, crossed to Lancashire, taking with them the pretender, and 2,000 trained German soldiers under Martin Schwarz; as well as an Irish force furnished by Kildare. Scarcely an Englishman would join them, and on June 16 they were utterly defeated by Henry at Stoke, a village between Nottingham and Newark. Lincoln and Schwarz were slain. Lovel was either drowned in the Trent or, according to legend, was hidden in an underground vault, where he was at last starved to death through the neglect of the man whose duty it was to provide him with food. Simnel was pardoned, and employed by Henry as a turnspit in his kitchen.

[Footnote 37: Genealogy of the De la Poles and Poles:—

Richard, Duke of York + Elizabeth= John de la Pole, George, Duke Duke of Suffolk of Clarence, died 1477 + + John de la Pole, Edmund de la Pole, Sir Richard Margaret, = Sir Richard Earl of Lincoln, Earl of Suffolk, de la Pole, Countess Pole killed at Stoke, beheaded 1513 killed at of 1487 Pavia, 1525 Salisbury + - Henry, Lord Montague, Reginald Pole, beheaded 1538 Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury, died 1558]

6. The Court of Star Chamber. 1487.—Nothing could serve Henry better than this abortive rising. At Bosworth he had been the leader of one party against the other. At Stoke he was the leader of the nation against Irishmen and Germans. He felt himself strong enough in his second Parliament to secure the passing of an act to ensure the execution of the engagements to which the lords had sworn two years before (see p. 345). A court was to be erected, consisting of certain specified members of the Privy Council and of two judges, empowered to punish with fine and imprisonment all who were guilty of interfering with justice by force or intrigue. The new court, reviving, to some extent, the disused criminal authority of the king's Council, sat in the Star Chamber[38] at Westminster. The results of its establishment were excellent. Wealthy landowners, the terror of their neighbours, who had bribed or bullied juries at their pleasure, and had sent their retainers to inflict punishment on those who had displeased them, were brought to Westminster to be tried before a court in which neither fear nor favour could avail them. It was the greatest merit of the new court that it was not dependent on a jury, because in those days juries were unable or unwilling to give verdicts according to their conscience.

[Footnote 38: So called either because the roof was decorated with stars or because it was the room in which had formerly been kept Jewish bonds or 'starres.']

7. Henry VII. and Brittany. 1488—1492.—Henry VII. was a lover of peace by calculation, and would gladly have let France alone if it had been possible to do so. France, however, was no longer the divided power which it had been in the days of Henry V. When Louis XI. died in 1483, he left to his young son, Charles VIII., a territory the whole of which, with the exception of Brittany, was directly governed by the king. Charles's sister, Anne of Beaujeu, who governed in his name, made it the object of her policy to secure Brittany. She waged war successfully against its duke, Francis II., and after he died, in 1488, she continued to wage war against his daughter, the Duchess Anne. In England there was a strong feeling against allowing the Duchess to be overwhelmed. At the beginning of 1489 Henry, having received from Parliament large supplies, sent 6,000 Englishmen to Anne's assistance. Maximilian—whose hold on the Netherlands, where he ruled in the name of his young son, Philip (see p. 337), was always slight—proposed marriage to the young duchess, and in 1490 was wedded to her by proxy. He was a restless adventurer, always aiming at more than he had the means of accomplishing. Though he could not find time to go at once to Brittany to make good his claim, yet in 1491 he called on Henry to assist him in asserting it.

8. Cardinal Morton's Fork. 1491.—Henry, who knew how unpopular a general taxation was, fell back on the system of benevolences (see p. 335), excusing his conduct on the plea that the statute of Richard III. abolishing benevolences (see p. 342) was invalid, because Richard himself was a usurper. In gathering the benevolence the Chancellor, Cardinal Morton, who had been helpful to Henry in the days of his exile (see p. 341), invented a new mode of putting pressure on the wealthy, which became known as Cardinal Morton's fork. If he addressed himself to one who lived in good style, he told him that his mode of living showed that he could afford to give money to the king. If he had to do with one who appeared to be economical, he told him that he must have saved and could therefore afford to give money to the king. Before Henry could put the money thus gained to much use, Anne, pressed hard by the French, repudiated her formal marriage with Maximilian, who had never taken the trouble to visit her, and gave her hand to Charles VIII., who on his part refused to carry out his contract to marry Maximilian's daughter Margaret (see p. 337). From that time Brittany, the last of the great fiefs to maintain its independence, passed under the power of the king of France. Feudality was everywhere breaking down, and in France, as in England, a strong monarchy was being erected on its ruins.

9. The Invasion of France. 1492.—Maximilian's alliance had proved but a broken reed, but there was now arising a formidable power in the south of Europe, which might possibly give valuable support to the enemies of France. The peninsula to the south of the Pyrenees had hitherto been divided amongst various states, but in 1469 a marriage between Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and Isabella, the heiress of Castile, united the greater part under one dominion. Ferdinand and Isabella were, for the present, fully occupied with the conquest of Granada, the last remnant of the possessions of the Moors in Spain, and that city did not surrender till early in 1492. In the meanwhile all England was indignant with the king of France on account of his marriage with the heiress of Brittany. Money was voted and men were raised, and on October 2, 1492, Henry crossed to Calais to invade France. He was, however, cool enough to discover that both Ferdinand and Maximilian wanted to play their own game at his expense, and as Anne of Beaujeu was ready to meet him half-way, he concluded a treaty with the French king on November 3 at Etaples, receiving large sums of money for abandoning a war in which he had nothing to gain. In 1493 the Spaniards followed Henry's example, and made a peace with France to their own advantage.[39]

[Footnote 39: Genealogy of the Houses of Spain and Burgundy:—

Charles the Rash, Duke of Burgundy Frederick III., Emperor + -+ Mary = Maximilian I. Ferdinand V. = Isabella, Emperor King of Aragon Queen of Castile + -+ + + + + Margaret Philip = Juana Catharine = HENRY VIII., King of England + -+ -+ MARY, Charles V., Ferdinand I., Queen of England Emperor Emperor]

10. Perkin Warbeck. 1491—1494.—Henry's prudent relinquishment of a war of conquest was not likely to bring him popularity in England, and his enemies were now on the watch for another pretender to support against him. Such a pretender was found in Perkin Warbeck, a Fleming of Tournay, who had landed at Cork in the end of 1491 or the beginning of 1492, and who had been pressed by the townsmen to give himself some name which would attach him to the Yorkist family. He allowed them to call him Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the princes who had been murdered in the Tower. He received support from Desmond, and probably from Kildare, upon which Henry deprived Kildare of the office of Lord Deputy. Perkin crossed to France, and ultimately made his way to Flanders, where he was supported by Margaret of Burgundy. In 1493 Henry demanded his surrender, and on receiving a refusal broke off commercial intercourse between England and Flanders. The interruption of trade did more harm to England than to Flanders, and gave hopes to the Yorkist party that it might give rise to ill-will between the nation and the king. For some time, however, no one gave assistance to Perkin, and in 1494 Charles VIII. crossed the Alps to invade Italy, and drew the attention of the Continental powers away from the affairs of England.

11. Poynings' Acts. 1494.—Henry seized the opportunity to bring into obedience the English colony in Ireland. He sent over as Lord Deputy Sir Edward Poynings, a resolute and able man. At a Parliament held by him at Drogheda two acts were passed. By the one it was enacted that all English laws in force at that time should be obeyed in Ireland; by the other, known for many generations afterwards as Poynings' Law, no bill was to be laid before the Irish Parliament which had not been previously approved by the king and his Council in England. At the same time the greater part of the Statute of Kilkenny (see p. 265) was re-enacted; and restricted the authority of the Government at Dublin to the English Pale.

12. Perkin's First Attempt on England. 1495.—Henry's firm government in England had given offence even to men who were not Yorkists. Early in 1495 he discovered that Sir William Stanley, who had helped him to victory at Bosworth, had turned against him. Stanley, who was probably involved in a design for sending Perkin to invade England, was tried and executed. In the summer of 1495 Perkin actually arrived off Deal. Being no warrior, he sent a party of his followers on shore, though he remained himself on shipboard to see what would happen. The countrymen fell upon the invaders, who were all slain or captured. Then Perkin sailed to Ireland, was repulsed at Waterford, and ultimately took refuge in Scotland, where King James IV., anxious to distinguish himself in a war with England, acknowledged him as the Duke of York, and found him a wife of noble birth, Lady Catherine Gordon. It was probably in order to rally even the most timid around him, in face of such a danger, that Henry obtained the consent of Parliament to an act declaring that no one supporting a king in actual possession of the crown could be subjected to the penalty of treason in the event of that king's dethronement.

13. The Intercursus Magnus. 1496.—The danger of a Scottish invasion made Henry anxious to be on good terms with his neighbours. Maximilian had become Emperor in 1493 upon his father's death. In the Netherlands, however, his influence had declined, as his son, the young Archduke Philip, was now growing up, and claimed actually to rule the country which he had inherited from his mother, Mary of Burgundy (see p. 337), his father having merely the right of administering the government of it till he himself came of age. It was therefore with Philip, and not with Maximilian, that Henry concluded, in 1496, a treaty known as the Intercursus Magnus, for the encouragement of trade between England and the Netherlands, each party engaging at the same time to give no shelter to each other's rebels.

14. Kildare Restored to the Deputyship. 1496.—In Ireland also Henry was careful to avert danger. The government of Poynings had not been entirely successful, and the Geraldines had taken good care to show that they could be troublesome in spite of the establishment of English government. The Earl of Kildare was at the time in England, and a story is told of some one who, having brought a long string of charges against him, wound up by saying that all Ireland could not govern the Earl, whereupon the king replied that then the Earl should govern all Ireland. The story is untrue, but it well represents the real situation. In 1496 Henry sent Kildare back as Lord Deputy. A bargain seems to have been struck between them. Henry abandoned his attempt to govern Ireland from England, and Kildare was allowed to use the king's name in any enterprise upon which his heart was set, provided that he did not support any more pretenders to the English throne.

15. Perkin's Overthrow. 1496—1497.—In the autumn of 1496 James IV. made an attack on England in Perkin's name, but it was no more than a plundering foray. Henry, however, early in 1497, obtained from Parliament a grant of money, to enable him to resist any attempt to repeat it. This grant had unexpected consequences. The Cornishmen, refusing payment, marched up to Blackheath, where on June 18 they were overpowered by the king's troops. James IV., thinking it time to be quit of Perkin, sent him off by sea. In July Perkin arrived at Cork, but there was no shelter for him there now that Kildare was Lord Deputy, and in September he made his way to Cornwall. Followed by 6,000 Cornishmen he reached Taunton, but the news of the defeat of the Cornish at Blackheath depressed him, and the poor coward ran away from his army and took sanctuary in Beaulieu Abbey. He was brought to London, where he publicly acknowledged himself to be an impostor. Henry was too humane to do more than place him in confinement.



16. European Changes. 1494—1499.—In 1494 Charles VIII. had passed through Italy as a conqueror to make good his claims to the kingdom of Naples. In 1495 he had returned to France, and in 1496 the French army left behind had been entirely destroyed. Yet the danger of a renewed attack from France made the other Continental powers anxious to unite, and in 1496 the Archduke Philip married Juana, the eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, whilst his sister was sent to Spain to be married to their only son, Juan. In 1497 the death of the young prince led to consequences unexpected when the two marriages were arranged. Philip, who held Franche Comte and the Netherlands, and who was through his father Maximilian heir to the German dominions of the House of Austria, would now, that his wife had become the heiress of Spain, be able to transmit to his descendants the whole of the Spanish monarchy as well. That monarchy was no longer confined to Europe. Portugal at the end of the fourteenth century had led the way in maritime adventure, and Portuguese navigators discovered a way to India round the Cape of Good Hope. Spain was anxious to do as much, and in 1492 Columbus had discovered the West Indies, and the kings of Spain became masters of the untold wealth produced by the gold and silver mines of the New World. It was impossible but that the huge power thus brought into existence would one day arouse the jealousy of Europe. For the present, however, the danger was less than it would be after the deaths of Ferdinand and Isabella, as the actual combination of their territories with those which Philip was to inherit from Maximilian had not been effected. In 1499 France gave a fresh shock to her neighbours. Charles VIII. had died the year before, and his successor, Louis XII., invaded Italy and subdued the duchy of Milan, to which he had set up a claim. Naturally the powers jealous of France sought to have Henry on their side. There had been for some time a negotiation for a marriage between Henry's eldest son, Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Catherine of Aragon, the youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, but hitherto nothing had been concluded.

17. Execution of the Earl of Warwick. 1499.—Perkin had long been eager to free himself from prison. In 1498 he was caught attempting to escape, but Henry contented himself with putting him in the stocks. He was then removed to the Tower, where he persuaded the unhappy Earl of Warwick (see p. 343) to join him in flight. It is almost certain that Warwick was guilty of no more, but Henry, soured by the repeated attempts to dethrone him, resolved to remove him from his path. On trumped-up evidence Warwick was convicted and executed, and Perkin shared his fate.



18. Prince Arthur's Marriage and Death. 1501—1502.—Warwick's death was the one judicial murder of Henry's reign. To the Spaniards it appeared to be a prudent action which had cleared away the last of Henry's serious competitors. The negotiations for the Spanish marriage were pushed on, and in 1501 Catherine, a bride of fifteen, gave her hand to Arthur, a bridegroom of fourteen. In 1502 the prince died, and the attempt to bind England and Spain together seemed to have come to an end.

19. The Scottish Marriage. 1503.—Another marriage treaty proved ultimately to be of far greater importance. Henry was sufficiently above the prejudices of his time to be anxious to be on good terms with Scotland. For some time a negotiation had been in progress for a marriage between James IV. and Henry's daughter, Margaret. The marriage took place in 1503. To the counsellors who urged that in the case of failure of Henry's heirs in the male line England would become subject to Scotland Henry shrewdly replied that there was no fear of that, as 'the greater would draw the less.'