[Sidenote 1: France and England] [Sidenote 2: 1498]

The peace-policy towards Scotland was facilitated by the development of friendly relations with France, especially after the accession of Lewis XII.: for the traditional "auld alliance," between France and Scotland, had proved times out of mind too strong to be over-ridden by English treaties. If France wanted Scottish help, or Scotland wanted French help, there was always some excuse for rendering it; the plain truth being that no treaties could restrain the forays and counter-forays of the border clans on both sides of the Tweed, whether the Wardens of the Marches winked at them or not; so that there was, in either country, a standing pretext for declaring that the other had broken truce. An instance of these border difficulties occurred within a few months of the truce of December, 1497. A small party of Scots crossed the border, and appeared in the neighbourhood of Norham. They were challenged, and replied—with insolence or with proper spirit, according to the point of view. Thereupon they were attacked by superior numbers; some were slain; in the pursuit, damage was done on the north side of the border. The Scots King felt that he had been outraged, and was on the verge of breaking off all negotiations with his brother of England. It required all the diplomatic skill of Fox (at this time Bishop of Durham), and the mediatorial efforts of the Spaniard Ayala to prevent a serious breach from resulting.

[Sidenote: Marriage negotiations, 1498-1503]

The opportunity, however, was seized by Fox to emphasise his master's pacific intentions by bringing forward the proposal for the marriage of James with Margaret. Nevertheless, for the next twelve months, Henry displayed no eagerness in the matter. Margaret was only in her eighth year, so that in any case the marriage could not be completed for some time; but apart from that, there was already existing a project of marriage between James and one of the Spanish princesses—which Spain had no real wish to carry out, while James was disposed to push it. It would appear, therefore, that Henry meant to give effect to his own scheme, but did not intend Spain to feel free of the complication while it could be used as a means of pressure.

[Sidenote: Marriage of James IV, and Margaret 1503]

At last, however, in July, 1499, a fresh treaty of peace was concluded with Scotland, but it was not till January, 1502, that the marriage treaty was finally ratified; the marriage to take place in September, 1503 (when Margaret would be nearly thirteen), and the two Kings to render each other mutual aid in case either of them was attacked. James, however, declined to bind himself permanently to refuse renewal of the French alliance. There was much characteristic haggling over dower and jointure, matters in which the Tudors always drove the hardest bargain they could. The ceremony was performed by proxy, after the fashion of the times, the day after the treaty was ratified; and the actual marriage took place at the time fixed, in the autumn of 1503—a momentous event, since it brought the Stuarts into the direct line of succession, next to descendants of Henry in the male line; and—inasmuch as one of Henry's sons had no children, and the other no grandchildren—ultimately united on one head the Crowns of England and Scotland, exactly one hundred years after the marriage.

[Sidenote: Spain and England: marriage negotiations, 1488-99]

In the meantime the other and much older project for the union between the Prince of Wales and a daughter of Spain had been carried out. Originally, Henry's prime motive in this matter had been to secure a decisive recognition of his dynasty by the sovereigns, whom he regarded as the greatest political force in Europe. By this time, however, (1498), the stability of his throne and of the succession was no longer in peril; but Spain was still the Power whose alliance would give the best guarantees against hostile combinations. Neither Spain nor England wished to be involved in war with France; but neither country could view her aggrandisement with complete equanimity. At the same time, while her ambitions were chiefly directed to Italy both could afford for the most part to abstain from active hostilities. On the other hand, times had changed since Henry had been ready to go almost cap-in-hand to Ferdinand and Isabella for their support. The Spanish sovereigns were now quite as much afraid of his joining France as he was of any step that they could take. So the marriage treaty was ratified in 1497 on terms satisfactory enough to Henry; and both in 1498 and 1499 proxy ceremonies took place. In the latter year, clauses left somewhat vague in the earlier treaties were given a clearer definition in a sense favourable to Henry.

[Sidenote: 1499 Lewis XII]

The accession of Lewis XII. in 1497 affected French policy. Lewis required in the first place, to gain the friendship of the Pope Alexander VI., in order to obtain a divorce from his wife and a dispensation to marry Charles's widow, Anne of Brittany, so as to retain the duchy. In the second place, he claimed Milan as his own in right of his descent from Valentina Visconti (not as an appanage of the French Crown). He was anxious then to conciliate both Spain and England, and ready to make concessions to both in order to hold them neutral. His first steps, therefore, aimed at satisfying them, and at detaching the Archduke Philip from his father Maximilian; all of which objects were rapidly accomplished, England obtaining the renewal of the treaty of Etaples, with additional undertakings in the matter of harbouring rebels. Lewis made separate treaties with Spain and with Philip; but the former remained none the less anxious on the score of a possible further rapprochement between France and England.

[Sidenote: The Spanish marriage negotiation, 1499-1501]

So long as Perkin Warbeck had been able to pose as Richard of York, he was necessarily, to all who believed in him, the legitimate King of England. Setting him aside, it was still possible to argue for the Earl of Warwick as against his cousin Elizabeth, Henry's queen. But when Perkin and Warwick were both put to death at the end of 1499, there was no arguable case for any one outside Henry's own domestic circle. Even if it were held that Henry's title was invalid, and that a woman could not herself reign in her own right, Elizabeth's son had indisputably a title prior to any other possible claimant. It was stated, though the truth of the statement is doubtful, that the Spanish sovereigns had never felt at ease as to the stability of the Tudor dynasty till November, 1499; but, at any rate, after that date they could not even for diplomatic purposes pretend to feel any serious apprehensions. The year 1500 presents the somewhat curious spectacle of Henry on one side and Ferdinand and Isabella on the other, each quite determined to carry through the marriage of Arthur and Katharine, but each also determined to make a favour of it. In this diplomatic contest, Henry proved the more skilful bargainer, though the Spaniards were adepts. He frightened them not a little by crossing the Channel and holding a conference with the Archduke Philip, which was suspected of having for its object the negotiation of another marriage for the Prince of Wales with Philip's sister (Maximilian's daughter) Margaret, who was already a widow. [Footnote: Margaret had been married to Don John, son of Ferdinand and Isabella; while Philip married their second daughter Joanna. Their eldest daughter married the Portuguese Infant.] In fact, there was no such intention; but an agreement was actually made that Prince Henry should many Philip's daughter, while the youngest Tudor princess, Mary, should be betrothed to Philip's infant son Charles, then a babe of four months, in after years the great Emperor Charles V.

[Sidenote: Marriage of Prince Arthur and Katharine 1501]

So the marriage treaty was once more ratified. But it was not till the summer of the next year (1501) that Katharine sailed from Spain; and in November the actual marriage took place with no little display. It is probable, however, that Arthur and Katharine were still husband and wife in name only when, six months later, the Prince of Wales was stricken with mortal illness and died; leaving his brother Henry heir to the throne, and a fresh crop of matrimonial schemes to be matured.

[Sidenote 1: 1502 New marriage schemes] [Sidenote 2: 1504 Dispensation granted]

The truth was that Ferdinand of Aragon and Henry of England were men of very much the same type. Both were crafty diplomatists, cautious and long-headed, not to be inveigled into rash schemes, keenly suspicious, masters of the art of committing themselves irrevocably to nothing; both had a keen appreciation of the value of money, and were experts at striking a bargain; while each wanted the political support of the other. Each had been working up to the matrimonial alliance which was now nullified by Arthur's death. Ferdinand had already paid over half his daughter's dower; he now declared that the Princess and her dower ought to be returned to Spain. Henry argued on the other side that the balance of the dower should be paid over. The Spaniards then proposed that the young widow should be betrothed to the still younger prince, Henry; but at a comparatively early stage in the negotiations over the new project, Henry's own queen died (February, 1503), and it was no long time before the English King began to contemplate a new marriage for himself. He is even said [Footnote: Gairdner, Henry VII. (Twelve English Statesmen), p. 190. The rumour was current, but it is doubtful whether it was more than a rumour; cf. Busch, p. 378.] to have thought of proposing that he should take his own son's widow to wife. Logically, of course, as a mere question of affinity, the idea was not more inadmissible than that of Katharine's marriage with Henry Prince of Wales; but it was infinitely more repellent, and Isabella was horrified at the suggestion. At any rate, nothing came of it, and an agreement for the marriage of Katharine with the younger Henry was ratified in the course of the year [Footnote: It was in the August of this same year (1503) that the other marriage, between James of Scotland and Henry's elder daughter Margaret, was finally concluded.]—subject, of course, to a papal dispensation. This was obtained, during 1504, from the successor of Alexander VI., Pope Julius II., and Isabella had the satisfaction of seeing it before her death. Political exigencies had only recently been accepted by Pope Alexander as justifying a dispensation for the divorce of Lewis XII. from his wife, to enable him to marry Anne of Brittany; but this dispensation of Pope Julius was destined to an immense importance in history—to be the hinge whereon swung open the gates of the English Reformation.

[Sidenote: 1499-1506 Affairs on the Continent]

The years from 1498 to 1503 had not been without importance in Franco- Spanish relations, more particularly with reference to the position of the two Powers in Italy. Lewis had made himself master of Milan in 1499; but the kingdom of Naples presented a more difficult problem; since, after disposing of the reigning family, the French King would still find a rival claimant in Ferdinand of Spain. In 1500 these two monarchs agreed to a partition; but French and Spaniards quarrelled, war broke out, the Spanish captain Gonsalvo de Cordova expelled the French; and in 1508 Naples was annexed to Aragon. A renewed attempt of France upon Naples in the following year proved a complete failure.

In 1503 died the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI.—poisoned, as it was believed, by the cup he had intended for another. The personal wickedness of Alexander and his relatives was the climax of papal iniquity, the reductio ad absurdum of the claim of the Roman Pontiff to be the representative of Christ on earth. His immediate successor hardly survived election to the Holy See; and was followed by Julius II., an energetic and militant Pope, who was bent on forming the Papal States into an effective temporal principality.

In the next year Isabella of Castile died, and by her death the European situation was again materially affected. While she lived she worked in complete accord with her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon; her name stands high among the ablest of European sovereigns. But with her death the Crowns of Castile and Aragon were no longer united. Ferdinand was not King of Castile; the sceptre descended to the dead Queen's daughter Joanna, [Footnote: The elder sister was already dead, as well as the one brother.] and in effect to her husband, the Archduke Philip, Maximilian's son, and after her to their son Charles. At the most, Ferdinand could hope only to exercise a dominant influence (converted after Philip's death in 1506 into practical sovereignty as Regent), with a perpetual risk of Maximilian turning his flighty ambitions towards asserting himself as a rival.

[Sidenote: The Earl of Suffolk 1499-1505]

Although both Warbeck and Warwick had been removed in 1499, Henry had not been altogether free from Yorkist troubles in the succeeding years. Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was brother of that Earl of Lincoln who had fallen at the battle of Stoke, and son of a sister of Edward IV. The Earl had not hitherto come forward as a claimant to the throne; but in 1499 he developed a personal grievance against the King, and betook himself to the Continent, where a certain Sir Robert Curzon espoused his cause with Maximilian. At the time, nothing came of the matter; Henry was not afraid of Suffolk, whom he induced to return to England with a pardon. In 1501, however, the Earl again betook himself to the Continent and made a direct appeal to Maximilian for assistance. But Henry was now on particularly good terms with the Archduke Philip, and Maximilian was inclining to revert to friendly relations with England. He was in his normal condition of impecuniosity, and Henry was prepared to provide a loan to help him in a Turkish war if his own rebellious subjects were handed over. The issue of these negotiations, towards the end of 1502, was a loan from Henry of fifty thousands crowns, and a promise from Maximilian to eject Suffolk and his supporters. In the meantime several of Suffolk's accomplices were executed in England, including James Tyrrel who had abetted Richard III. in the murder of the Princes in the Tower; and [Footnote: See genealogical table (Front.).] William de la Pole and William Courtenay (son of the Earl of Devonshire) were imprisoned on suspicion of complicity. Suffolk, however, remained at Aix la Chapelle, Maximilian making him many promises and providing inadequate supplies, while with equal lightness of heart— having got his loan—he left his pledges to Henry unfulfilled by anything more substantial than professions that he was doing his best to carry them out. In 1504 the migratory Earl had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Duke of Gueldres, who detained him for use as circumstances might dictate—to the annoyance of the Kings of France and Scotland, both of whom wished him to be handed over to the King of England.

[Sidenote: 1505 Henry's position]

In 1505 then Henry's relations with all foreign Powers were satisfactory: that is, none of them were hostile and most of them were anxious for his friendship. In these later years, however, of Henry's reign he appears consistently in a more definitely unamiable light than before. The two counsellors who, however thoroughly they endorsed his policy, had probably exercised a moderating and refining influence—Cardinal Morton and Reginald Bray—were now both dead, and there is no doubt that Elizabeth of York, popular herself, had been a very judicious helpmeet to her husband. Moreover, though he was still by no means an old man, Henry was becoming worn out; yet he could never escape from dynastic anxieties, the younger Henry being now his only son. Marriage schemes had always been prominent features in his policy, and the marriage schemes for himself which he evolved one after the other in the closing years of his reign show him in a singularly unattractive light, at the same time that his financial methods were growing increasingly mean, and his evasions of honourable obligations increasingly unscrupulous.

Now the Duke of Gueldres was in conflict with the Archduke Philip—at this time not only lord of the Burgundian domains, but also in right of his wife King of Castile and not on the best of terms with his father-in-law of Aragon. In 1505 Philip got possession in his turn of the person of Suffolk, by capturing the town where the Duke of Gueldres held him. Therefore during this year Henry became particularly anxious to make friends with Philip, and lent him money; having got which, Philip preferred placing his hostage again in the hands of the Duke of Gueldres, who had submitted to him.

[Sidenote: Schemes for his marriage]

Out of these conditions rose another futile suggestion of a marriage for Henry: who had already considered and dismissed the idea of marrying the younger of the two living ex-Queens of Naples—both named Joanna—a niece of Ferdinand of Aragon. The wife now proposed was Philip's sister, Margaret, who on her first widowhood had been spoken of as a possible alternative to Katharine for Arthur of Wales. Since then, she had become Margaret of Savoy, the name by which she is generally known; but had been widowed a second time. This proposal probably came from Philip, but was resolutely resisted by Margaret herself.

[Sidenote: 1506 Philip in England]

In 1506 fortune favoured Henry. Philip sailed from the Netherlands in January to take possession of the throne of Castile: but was driven on to the English shores by stress of weather. The English King received him royally, but while the utmost show of friendliness prevailed, Philip found that he had no alternative to acceptance of Henry's suggestions. Before the King of Castile departed, he had not only entered on a treaty for mutual defence against any aggressor, but had actually delivered over the person of the unhappy Suffolk [Footnote: So Busch. Gairdner is doubtful.] to his sovereign, though under promise that he should not be put to death. The prisoner, however, was committed to the Tower, and though Henry kept his word, he is reported to have advised his son that the promise would not be binding on him. At any rate Suffolk was executed, apparently without further trial, early in the next reign. His brother Richard, known as the "White Rose," who had abetted him, remained abroad, and was ultimately killed in the service of Francis I. at the battle of Pavia in 1525, leaving no children.

Philip had hardly departed from England when a new commercial treaty which he had authorised was signed with the Netherlands, terminating the war of tariffs which had again become active in recent years. This treaty, it is not surprising to remark, was so favourable to England that in contradistinction to the older Intercursus Magnus the Flemings entitled it the Intercursus Malus.

[Sidenote: Death of Philip]

The few remaining months of Philip's life were troubled. The position in Castile was difficult enough, and in his absence the Duke of Gueldres again revolted, with some assistance from France. Henry interfered, as he was bound to do by the recent treaty, not without some effect. But Philip's death in September left his wife Joanna Queen of Castile, with her father Ferdinand as Regent, and her young son Charles Lord of the Netherlands, with Margaret of Savoy at the head of the Council of Regency. Under these new conditions Henry agreed to modifications in the new commercial treaty, which indeed, as it stood, was almost impossible of fulfilment; probably in the hope that his project of marriage with Margaret of Savoy might still be carried out, the dowry she would bring being very much more satisfactory than that of Joanna of Naples.

[Sidenote: 1507-8 Matrimonial projects]

In a very short time, however, Margaret had another rival, at least for the purposes of diplomacy. This was Joanna of Castile, Philip's widow, whom Henry had seen in the spring of 1506. That her sanity was already very much in question seems to have made very little difference. Throughout the greater part of 1507 and 1508 the English King was making overtures to Margaret herself, and for Joanna to Ferdinand, blowing hot and cold in the matter of his son Henry and Katharine, and pushing on the betrothal of his younger daughter Mary with the boy Charles—a proposal brought forward, when the latter was but four months old, in 1500, but not at that time sedulously pressed. In part, at least, the explanation of all this diplomatic play lies in Henry's relations with Ferdinand. The King of Aragon, having lost his wife Isabella, wished to retain control of Castile; at the same time he was in difficulties about paying up the balance of Katharine's dowry, without which Henry would not allow her marriage with his son to go forward, while the luckless princess was kept scandalously short of supplies. Henry certainly wished to put all the pressure possible on Ferdinand to get the dowry; perhaps he seriously contemplated marriage with Joanna as a means of himself depriving Ferdinand of control in Castile; the marriage of Charles to his daughter Mary would have a similar advantage. On the other hand, if he married Margaret of Savoy he would get control of the Netherlands, and still grasp at the control of Castile through Charles, while playing off the boy's two grandfathers, Maximilian and Ferdinand, against each other. Henry was in fact paying Ferdinand back in his own coin; but the picture is an unedifying one, of craft against craft, working by sordid methods for ends which had very little to do with patriotism and no connexion with justice.

[Sidenote: 1508 The League of Cambrai]

If, however, it was now Henry's primary object to isolate Ferdinand so that he could impose his own terms on him, the object was not attained. Maximilian had just taken up a new idea—the dismemberment of Venice; an object which appealed both to Lewis of France and to Pope Julius. Ferdinand could generally reckon that if he joined a league he would manage to get more than his share of the spoils for less than his share of the work. The League of Cambrai—a simple combination for robbery without excuse—was formed at the end of 1508. Henry was left out, for which, indeed, he cared little, knowing that the process of spoliation would inevitably result in quarrels among the leaguers. But though he advanced the arrangements for the marriage of Charles and Mary so far as to have a proxy ceremony performed, the marriage project with Joanna was withdrawn, and his overtures were also finally declined by Margaret of Savoy.

[Sidenote: Wolsey]

In the last year of his life, however, his diplomatic successor—destined to outshine him in his own field—came into employment as a negotiator. It was Thomas Wolsey who probably carried through the arrangement for the union with Charles; Wolsey also who re-established friendly relations with Scotland, which had been becoming seriously strained. In 1505 James had more definitely promised not to renew the French alliance; but had considered himself absolved from this and other obligations, on the usual ground of border raids, in which Wolsey himself admitted that the English had been very much more guilty than the Scots.

[Sidenote: 1509 Death of Henry VII.]

But Henry's own days were numbered. As a boy and as a young man he had lived a hard life; throughout the four-and-twenty years of his reign he had never been free from the strain of anxiety, never relaxed his labours, never allowed himself to cast his cares upon other shoulders. In 1508 he had a serious illness, from which he never fully recovered; in the early spring of 1509 his health finally and fatally broke down. On April 21st the founder of the Tudor dynasty and of the Tudor system left the throne, which he had won by the sword, to a son, whose right by inheritance was beyond dispute.



CHAPTER IV

HENRY VII (iv), 1485-1509—ASPECTS OF THE REIGN

[Sidenote: 1485 Henry's position]

The task before Henry when he ascended the throne was a difficult one. He had to establish a new dynasty with a very questionable title, under conditions which could not have allowed any conceivable title to pass without risk of being challenged. It was therefore necessary for him not merely to buttress his hereditary claim by marrying the rival whose title was technically the strongest, and securing the pronouncement of Parliament in his favour, together with such adventitious sanction as a Papal Bull afforded; but further to make his subjects contented with his rule.

Two things were definitely in his favour. The old nobility who between the spirit of faction and the love of fighting had kept the country in a state of turmoil for half a century were exhausted—not merely decimated but almost wiped out; while the mass of the population was weary of war and ready to welcome almost any one who could and would provide orderly government. The country was craving to have done with anarchy.

[Sidenote: Studied legality]

A firm hand and a resolute will were thus the primary necessities; but tired as the nation was, it was still ready to resent a flagrant tyranny. The Yorkist Kings had seen that absolutism was the condition of stability; Henry perceived that, applied as they had applied it, the stability would still be wanting. He had to find a mean between the wantonly arbitrary absolutism which had been attempted a century before by Richard II. and recently by Edward IV. and Richard III. on the one hand, and on the other hand the premature application of constitutional ideas under the House of Lancaster. The actual method evolved was the concentration of all control in the hands of the King, accompanied by an ostentatious deference to the forms of procedure which were liable to be put forward as popular rights, and a very keen attention to the limits of popular endurance.

Thus Henry's first step was to summon Parliament and follow the Lancastrian precedent of obtaining its ratification of his own title to the throne. The next step, necessitated by his position, was to cut the claws of the Yorkists as a faction by striking at Richard's principal supporters. This could only be done effectively by treating them as traitors—a proceeding which could not but savour of tyranny, since they had at any rate been supporting the de facto King: so again Henry took the only means of minimising the arbitrary character of his action, by obtaining parliamentary sanction. Some ten years later, at the time of Perkin Warbeck's attempted landing at Deal, he procured the remarkable enactment that support of a de facto King should not in the future be accounted as treason to the successor who dethroned him—a measure characterised by Bacon, writing a hundred years later, as too magnanimous to be politic. In 1485 it would have been so; but at the actual time Henry was himself the de facto monarch; he had no wish to punish his predecessor's supporters further; and he was really providing an inducement to his subjects to be loyal to the ruling dynasty. At the same time he could pose as advocating abstract justice in preference to the prevailing practice by which he had himself profited; strengthening his own hands in fact, while in theory he was introducing into politics the recognition of an ethical principle which—as it happened—no longer conflicted with his own advantage.

[Sidenote: Policy of lenity]

In fact Henry had an unusual perception of the political uses of a judicious leniency: but the leniency was deliberate and considered. He could also strike hard, on occasion. The rebels who were taken in the fighting near Deal met with scant mercy; and a very few months earlier, the execution of the apparently trusted and powerful William Stanley had been a sharp reminder that the royal clemency could not be taken for granted. Three years later he carried severity altogether beyond the limits of justice in executing Warwick. But as a rule he was lenient to a degree which had even its dangers. Simnel was treated as of too small account to be worth punishing. Warbeck from his capture till his attempt to escape was maintained in comfort and almost in freedom. Suffolk's earlier escapades were pardoned. Kildare was repeatedly forgiven, and really converted into a loyal subject. The Cornish insurgents of the Blackheath episode were dealt with so tenderly that they took clemency for weakness. Warbeck's Cornish rising was turned conveniently to account for the replenishment of the royal treasury by the infliction of fines, but no one who had supported it could complain of harsh treatment; rather they must have felt in every case that they had been let off very easily according to all precedents.

Even when Lovel's and Simnel's risings were in actual progress, pardons were offered to such of the rebels as would make haste to repent; and there was no withdrawal of those pardons afterwards on more or less plausible pretexts, in the manner of preceding Kings and of Henry's successor after the Pilgrimage of Grace. Broadly speaking it was the King's policy to emphasise the fact that he had no intention of attempting to play the tyrant, or to vary a rash generosity by capricious blood-thirstiness, like Richard III. The sole victim of tyrannous treatment in this sense throughout the reign was the unhappy Warwick.

[Sidenote: Repression of the nobles]

But the attitude of strict conformity to law was entirely compatible with that steady concentration of all real control in the King's hands, which was the leading object of Henry's policy. For this purpose the primary condition was that none of his subjects should be sufficiently powerful to challenge his authority and raise the standard of revolt, as the King-Maker and others had done in the past. The old nobility were practically wiped out. Insignificant husbands were chosen for the daughters of York. The blood of the Plantagenets ran in the veins of the house of Buckingham; but it was only in the last generation that the De la Poles had mated with the royal house, and their estates were much diminished; the Howards had suffered as supporters of Richard. Surrey indeed was deservedly restored to grace; but no amount of personal loyalty or of royal favour exempted the nobles from the severe restriction of the old practice of maintaining retainers in such numbers as to form a working nucleus for a fighting force; nor were they allowed to accumulate wealth dangerously. Henry was well pleased that his subjects should gather sufficient riches to feel a strong interest in the maintenance of order, but not enough to use it to create disorder.

Beyond this, however, he was careful to employ the nobles as ministers no more than he could help. He laid the burdens of statesmanship as much as possible on the clergy—on Morton and Fox and Warham. Fox, as Bishop of Durham, played a part in the relations of England and Scotland at least as influential as that of Surrey. After Morton's death Warham became Chancellor. Yet each of these three bishops felt happier in the conduct of his ecclesiastical functions than as a minister of the Crown. All three did worthy and conscientious service, but would willingly have withdrawn from affairs of State. They were counsellors, not rulers; the one real ruler was the King himself.

While the King restrained the power of the nobility as military factors in the situation, he developed his own control of military force by the revival of the militia system, always theoretically in force, but practically of late displaced by the baronial levies; and his hands were further strengthened by the possession of the only train of artillery in the realm, the value of which was markedly exemplified in the suppression of the Cornish insurgents.

[Sidenote: The Star Chamber]

Another instrument in the King's hands, invaluable for the purpose of holding barons and officials in check, was the institution which came to be known as the Star Chamber. [Footnote: Cf. Maitland in Social England, vol. ii., p. 655, ed. 1902; Busch, p. 267.] Beside the development of the House of Peers as the highest court of judicature in the realm, the development of the Great Council on similar lines had long been going on. The two bodies differed somewhat in this way—that the peers had the right of summons to the former, when the judges might be called in to their assistance; whereas there were ex officio members of the Council who were not peers, and considerable uncertainty prevailed as to the right of peers as peers to attend the Council. The customary powers of the Council arose from the need of a court too powerful and independent to be in danger of being intimidated or bribed by influence or wealth, able to penalise gross miscarriage of justice fraudulently procured, and to take in hand cases with which the ordinary courts would have had grave difficulty in dealing. In exercising this function the Council practically came to resolve itself into a judicial committee, meeting in a room known as the Star Chamber, and its authority was regularised by Act of Parliament in 1487. Absorbing into its hands offences in the matter of "maintenance" and "livery,"—i.e., broadly speaking, practices which the nobility had indulged in for the magnification of their households, and the provision of a military following—and being peculiarly subject to the royal influence, it was exceedingly useful to the King in keeping the baronage within bounds. Following, on the other hand, a procedure analogous to that of the ecclesiastical courts, unchecked by juries, and having authority to punish officers of the law whom it found guilty of illegal or corrupt practices, its influence was gradually extended, so that the fear of it guided the judgments of inferior courts. Under Henry VII., however, its functions were exercised at least mainly in the cause of justice—they were used, not abused—to the public satisfaction, as well as to the strengthening of the King's own hands. The moderation with which Henry used the powers he was accumulating concealed the latent possibility of the misuse of those same powers by a capricious or arbitrary monarch.

[Sidenote: Henry's use of Parliament]

Not less conspicuous is Henry's application of the same principles in his dealings with Parliament. He was careful, as we have seen, to secure for his own claims the sanction of the National Assembly, and to give due recognition to the authority of the estates of the realm. But he gave it no opportunity of acquiring powers of initiative, and he directed his financial policy to placing himself in such a position that he could escape that extension of its controlling powers, which naturally followed whenever a King found himself dependent on it for supplies. Throughout the first half of his reign he summoned frequent Parliaments, obtaining considerable grants on the pretext of foreign wars which were in themselves popular; but he turned the wars themselves to account by evading extensive military operations, and securing cash indemnities when peace was made. He even resorted, when a serious emergency arose, to benevolences, which were illegal; but he first secured the approval of the Council, which could still act to some degree as a substitute for Parliament when the Legislature was not in session, and he afterwards obtained the ratification of Parliament itself. By this means he obtained more than sufficient for the actual expenditure; in the meantime accumulating additional treasure by forfeitures from rebels and fines for transgression of the law. We have already observed his method of consistently resorting to pecuniary penalties as an apparently lenient form of punishment, which conveniently replenished his treasury. Thus, during the latter part of his reign, he was able to do without Parliaments almost entirely; supplementing his revenues through his agents Empson and Dudley, who made it their business to discover pretexts for enforcing fines under colour of law, and often with the flimsiest pretence of real justice.

[Sidenote: Financial exactions]

It was in this field that Henry overstepped his normal policy of not only working through the law but avoiding misuse of it. For the filling of Henry's treasury, the law was abused. The exactions of Empson and Dudley were made possible by the statute of 1495, empowering judges, upon information received, to initiate in their own courts trials of offenders who were supposed to have escaped prosecution through the corruption or intimidation of juries. Empson and Dudley being appointed judges found it an easy task to provide informers, who laid before them charges on which a case could be made out for fining the accused. In theory, of course, the King was not responsible, and the guilty judges paid the penalty with their lives early in the following reign. But the King did in fact get his full share of the discredit attaching; and perhaps his methods in this particular have been emphasised out of proportion to other traits in his character and policy by popular writers. There is some reason to doubt if Henry was ever quite fully aware of the extent to which these extortions were distortions of law; and there is no doubt at all that Empson and Dudley did not conduct their operations with a single eye to their master's benefit, but contrived to intercept ample perquisites on their own account. The statute was soon repealed under Henry VIII.

[Sidenote: Trade theories]

Modern economic theories depend for their validity on the postulates of the transferability of capital and of labour. In proportion to the limitation of the industries possible to a community, their laws apply, or fail to apply, within that community. The development of a new industry may be impossible, in the competition with established rivals, without artificial assistance—assistance given to that industry at the expense of the community at large; the preservation of an existing industry may demand like assistance. When the labour and capital employed can be transferred productively to another industry, it is obviously better that the transfer should take place, and the failing industry lapse, than that the community should be charged with maintaining an industry which cannot support itself —whether or no the competitors driving it out of the market are enabled to do so only by like extraneous assistance. When the capital and the labour cannot be transferred, but the industry can be maintained by assistance, the question becomes one of weighing the cost of maintenance to the community against the injury to the community from the collapse of the industry. Thus in any state with its commerce in the making, when the transferability of capital and labour is at best in dispute, the theory of buying in the cheapest market, wherever it is to be found, is not in favour. It is held better to raise the prices to the point at which the native product pays its native producers. In mediaeval times the foreigner was prima facie a person who came not to bring trade but to appropriate it. Hence he was subjected to regulations, limitations and charges for permission to carry on his operations. The next stage is reached when reciprocal free trade is recognised as an advantage and mutual concessions are made, restrictions and duties becoming, so to speak, implements of war, often enough proving two-edged.

[Sidenote: Henry's commercial policy]

Henry VII. was not an economist far in advance of the theories of his age; but economic considerations, as they were then understood, carried much more weight, and generally played a much larger part in his policy than was customary with the king-craft of the times, or with state-craft outside the commercial republic of Venice, the commercial association of German Free cities known as the Hansa or Hanseatic League, and the Netherlands. Accordingly we find him using every available means to obtain a footing in fresh foreign markets for the main English products of his day—wool and woollen goods; to secure for English merchants the rights and privileges which would enable them to compete on equal terms with the foreigner, and to curtail those privileges of the foreigner in England. In the matter of wool, the primacy of the English article was so thoroughly established that little extraneous aid was required. But with manufactured woollen goods the case was different, since the Flemings held the lead; and shipping also demanded artificial encouragement—first, because it was necessary to enterprise in the development of the export trade, at present largely carried on in foreign bottoms; second, because the King was, at least to some extent, alive to the strategic uses of a fleet which could be requisitioned for war purposes.

[Sidenote: The Netherlands trade]

The great mart for English wool was the Netherlands, whose manufacturing business required the raw product: the Netherlanders were more dependent on England than the English were on them. Hence this trade was used by Henry throughout his reign as a political lever—a means to political ends rather than an end in itself. If his own subjects suffered from a customs war, Philip's suffered more. So long as Burgundy made trouble on behalf of Perkin Warbeck the battle went on. In 1496 Philip gave up the contest, and the Intercursus Magnus followed. Soon after the beginning of the new century the fight was renewed, to be terminated by what the Flemings called the Intercursus Malus, an arrangement so one-sided and pressing so hard on them that its terms were practically impossible of fulfilment; and Henry assented to their modification before his death, partly with a view to overcoming the reluctance of Margaret of Savoy to accept his matrimonial overtures.

[Sidenote: The Hansa]

When Henry came to the throne, he found the export trade mainly in the hands of two foreign groups—the Hansa, who had acquired privileges in England which they did not reciprocate, and the Venetians, who held their own without privileges by superior commercial acuteness—and of two English groups, the Merchants of the Staple, who controlled the wool markets, and the Merchant Adventurers, who were mainly interested in the manufactured goods. The King therefore followed a consistent policy of straining, in a restrictive sense, the interpretation of the concessions made to the Hansa, of emphasising grievances against them and of pressing for counter- privileges; and he successfully negotiated with Denmark in 1489 a commercial treaty, which interfered with the Hansa monopoly of the Scandinavian trade, by placing English merchants on a competitive footing with them. In a similar manner, he brought pressure to bear on the Venetians by opening direct relations with the Florentines at their port of Pisa. It is curious to note incidentally that the export dues on raw wool were enormously heavier than those on the manufactured goods; the difference being made in order to encourage the home sale of the wool and to stimulate the home manufacture by this means, as well as by encouraging the foreign sale of the manufactured goods. It is also observable that when an attempt was made by the London merchants to capture the worsted trade, Henry nipped it in the bud. It was no part of his policy to allow corporations—any more than individuals—to become powerful enough to demand terms for their political support.

[Sidenote: The Navigation Acts]

Recognising, as we saw, the commercial advantage to England of doing her own carrying trade and of multiplying ships and seamen, Henry—tentatively at first, but with increasing confidence—adopted artificial methods of encouraging this branch of industry, at the expense of free competition. Very early in the reign a Navigation Act required that goods shipped for England from certain foreign ports should be embarked on English vessels, during a specified period. Then the Act was renewed for a longer period, and finally without a time limit, and with more extended application. A great impetus was given to English shipping, with momentous results which can hardly have entered into Henry's calculations. He could not have anticipated the vast extensions of empire which were to be the prize of the nations with ocean-going navies, with the ocean itself for the great battlefield; or even the extent to which commerce and naval preponderance were destined to go hand in hand. The monopoly of the States with a Mediterranean sea-board was coming to an end.

[Sidenote: Voyages of discovery]

Yet it was in his reign that the vast change was initiated. In 1492 Christopher Columbus made his great voyage: in 1497 Vasco da Gama sailed for India, not westwards but southwards and eastwards round the Cape of Good Hope. Ten years later, Albuquerque was founding a Portuguese Empire in the Indian seas. Spain and Portugal, pioneers of the great movement, led the way, one in the new world of the West, the other in the fabled world of the East; where for many a year to come they were to divide a monopoly authorised by the Papal Bull of Alexander VI. Before another century closed, their dominion was to be challenged by England grown mighty and by Holland emancipated. As yet, however, men dreamed only formless if gorgeous dreams of what the unknown realms might bring forth. England played no very large part in these early voyages. Christopher Columbus, craving to discover a westerly route to the Indies, and failing of Portuguese support, sent his brother Bartholomew to petition the English King for aid; but Bartholomew was captured by pirates. Ultimately he reached England, but before he could achieve his purpose, Christopher had found other helpers; the prize fell to Ferdinand and Isabella. The first historic expedition which sailed from English ports was captained not by an Englishman but by another Italian, John Cabot, and his son Sebastian, in 1497. The Cabots were Venetians who had for some time been established at Bristol. They aimed for a north-west passage, and found Labrador and Newfoundland, cold, inhospitable, producing no wealth: the explorers who sailed under Spanish auspices struck the wealthy and entrancing regions of the south. There was little enough material inducement beyond the simple spirit of enterprise to attract capital to expend itself in aid of the Bristol men who followed in the wake of Cabot. Henry deserves full credit for the encouragement and actual pecuniary help which he rendered at first, and no blame for its discontinuation. The daring of the adventurers was but ill repaid for the time; yet a mighty harvest was to be reaped by England in the days to come.

[Sidenote: The rural revolution]

If England, however, did not for more than half a century turn the new discoveries to material account, wealth and prosperity did increase greatly in the towns, and the country recovered her lost position among the commercial nations—partly from Henry's policy directed to that end, partly from the comparatively settled conditions of life which gradually prevailed. In the agricultural districts, however, this was hardly the case, owing to the increasing tendency to substitute pasture for cultivation. The country had no difficulty in producing sufficient for its own consumption; and the development of the woollen manufacture made sheep-farming in particular much more lucrative. But sheep-farming called for the employment of many fewer hands; proprietors dispossessed small tenants to make large sheep-runs; migration from the rural districts to the nascent manufacturing centres was not a simple matter; and thus there was no little distress, and a great multiplication of beggars and vagabonds. The monasteries, which in the past had been progressive farmers, had degenerated into landlords easy-going indeed but without enterprise. The wealth of the gentry increased, but unemployment increased also, and labour at the same time became cheaper. The evil was to a great extent realised; in the Isle of Wight, which was rapidly becoming depopulated, an attempt was made to improve matters by limiting the size of farms; the heavy export duties on raw wool were doubtless intended actually to restrict the output as well as to divert it to English rather than foreign manufacturers; but since this did not effectively check the growing demand at home, the production of wool remained so lucrative that it continued to be more attractive than cultivation. Attempts were made to transfer labour from agriculture to manufacture by interfering with, the restrictions imposed by the trade-guilds (which always aimed at making themselves close bodies), the object of such legislation being quite as much to prevent idleness as to relieve distress. Nevertheless, the evil grew. Sir Thomas More in his introduction to the Utopia, written early in the next reign, gives a vigorous sketch of the prevalent vagabondage just before the death of Cardinal Morton, adding to the causes above mentioned the number of lackeys employed by the wealthy who when dismissed became a useless burden on the community. He also charges the land-owners, expressly including many abbots and others of the clergy, with causing depopulation and misery by forcing up rents. From him too as well as from other sources we learn of the frequency of crimes of violence, attributed by him to the reckless employment of the death penalty for minor offences, encouraging the fugitive criminal—already doomed if caught—to take life without hesitation.

[Sidenote: The Church]

To a certain extent, then, we have to note among the causes of change in rural districts the failure of the monasteries to discharge their old function of agricultural leadership. In other respects, also, these communities had fallen from the high standards of earlier days. Discipline was lax. Visitations instituted by Cardinal Morton revealed the presence of gross immorality, not only among the very small houses, but in so great an institution as the Abbey of St. Albans, where the highest officials were guilty of the gravest misbehaviour; and the correspondence seems to imply that the disapprobation was by no means in proportion to the offences, from which it is fair to infer that no high standard was normally expected. The most to be looked for was an absence of flagrant misconduct. The clergy were much more particular about ceremonial observances and ecclesiastical privileges than about the morals either of themselves or of their flocks. But as yet there was no sign of a coming Reformation. Lollardry, it is true, had never been killed; its anti-clerical propaganda was by no means inactive. But it worked beneath the surface, and could not be taken to indicate an approaching convulsion. The greatest Churchmen of the day, Morton, Warham and Fox, were absorbed—albeit reluctantly—in affairs of State. Blameless, even austere in their own lives, patrons of learning, sincerely pious, they lacked the Reformer's passion, without which it was vain to combat the vis inertiae; generated by long years of clerical sloth, and of the formalism by which the highest Mysteries were vulgarly distorted into superstitions and Faith into ceremonial observances.

[Sidenote: Henry and Rome]

The first Tudor himself was a pious man, as piety was reckoned: punctual in observances, commended and complimented by Popes. His chapel in Westminster Abbey is evidence of his zeal in one direction; he gave alms with a business-like regard to their post-mortem efficacy. Throughout his reign the Popes made much talk of a new crusade, and Henry seems to have been the one European monarch who took the idea seriously. It is true that when Alexander VI. appealed in 1500 for funds to that end, the English King preferred to be excused; but the polite irony of his refusal was more than justified by his confidence that if the Pope got the money it would not be expended for the benefit of Christendom; moreover, he did actually hand over four thousand pounds. In fact, he took the Church as he found it. There was but one almost infinitesimal curtailment of ecclesiastical privileges in his reign, necessitated by political considerations and accepted by the Pope, whereby the right of Sanctuary was withdrawn in cases of treason.

[Sidenote: Learning and letters]

Practically it is only in the beginnings of an educational revival that we find promise of the dawn of a new order. It was in Henry's reign that the study of Greek, and with it the new criticism, began to establish itself. Grocyn and Linacre led the way. In the last decade of the century John Colet was lecturing at Oxford, the apostle of the new learning on its religious side; calling his pupils to the study of the Scriptures themselves, rather than of the schoolmen or doctors of the Church; treating them as organic treatises, not as collections of texts. There he won the friendship of young Thomas More; thither on flying visits came Erasmus twice. Colet, made Dean of St. Paul's about 1505, continued to carry on his educational work as the founder of the famous St. Paul's School; winning renown also as a great preacher and a fearless moralist; a man of rich learning, of a reverent enthusiasm, of a splendid sincerity, of a noble simplicity; the prophet of much that was best, and of nothing that was not best, in the coming Reformation.

But during Henry's reign Colet's figure is almost the only one—apart from such representatives of erudition and scholarship as Grocyn and Linacre— which stands forth holding out a promise of intellectual and moral progress. In effect there was no literature; in this respect Scotland was in advance of England with the verse of William Dunbar. More's Utopia was still unwritten. When Henry died the Universities had not yet, or had only just, received within their portals the men who were to fight the theological battle of the Reformation. More than half a century was to pass before the splendid sunrise of the Shakespearian era.

[Sidenote: Henry's character]

It has hardly, perhaps, been the custom to render full justice to the founder of the Tudor dynasty. His reign is stamped with a character sordid and unattractive. There is no romance in it, no clashing of arms, no valiant deeds, no suggestion of the heroic. The King's enemies are, for the most part, contemptible persons; the King himself is a cold-blooded, long-headed ruler, merciful indeed, but from policy, not from generosity, and of a meanness in money matters very far from royal. Yet he was not without virtues. He was not unjust; he was a statesman more loyal to his pledges than most of his contemporaries or their successors. He gave something like order and rest to a distracted land, and raised her again to a position at least respectable among the nations, securing himself on a most unstable throne without resorting to the usual methods of the tyrant. Had he died when Morton died, the baser aspects of his reign would never have achieved so unlovely a prominence as they have done.

The truth is, indeed, that judged by the first half of his reign alone Henry might have been numbered among the princes with a title to be regarded almost with affection. It is only in the light of the later years that even his financial policy really assumes a mean aspect, though occasionally it came perilously near what may be called sharp practice—and the excuse was great, seeing that a full treasury was an absolutely necessary condition of establishing the new rule. The imprisonment of Warwick was an act of palpable injustice, yet the risk of letting him go free would have been enormous. In another ruler than Henry, the leniency which we attribute to astute policy would have been freely described as surprising magnanimity. He never betrayed a loyal servant. His genuine appreciation of the true spirit of chivalry was shown when he took Surrey [Footnote: Surrey, the son of "Jockey of Norfolk," Richard's supporter, was imprisoned in the Tower. At the time of Simnel's insurrection his gaoler offered to let him escape, but he refused, saying that the King had sent him to confinement, and only from the King would he accept release.] from the Tower to entrust him with high command in the North. The luckless Lady Katharine Gordon, the wife of Perkin Warbeck, was treated with remarkable courtesy and liberality. There was even a genial humour in the King's behaviour to Kildare. His own marriage he doubtless looked upon as a purely political affair; but while his wife lived his loyalty to his marriage vow is in strong contrast to the general licentiousness of the princes of his day; and the picture of Henry and Elizabeth striving in turn to comfort each other on Prince Arthur's death, as recorded by a contemporary, [Footnote: Gairdner, Chron., i., p. 36; Leland's Collectanea, v., p, 373.] can hardly be fitted on to the conception of Henry as a man almost without the more tender feelings of humanity.

[Sidenote: Deterioration after 1499]

Yet all this is forgotten or discoloured by reason of the ugly picture of those later days when Morton and Prince Arthur and Elizabeth were gone. It seems, indeed, as though a certain moral deterioration had set in from the time when Henry made up his mind to do violence to his conscience by making away with Warwick in 1499. Morton, his wisest counsellor, of whom More gives a most attractive portrait in the Utopia, died the next year; Arthur, whom he loved, in the spring of 1502; Elizabeth, always a refining and softening influence, within a twelvemonth of Arthur. To these latter years belong almost entirely the extortions of Empson and Dudley; the harsh treatment of Katharine of Aragon, a helpless hostage in his hands; the revolting proposal for a union with the crazy Joanna of Castile. This view is further borne out when we observe that in these years also his political foresight degenerates into craftiness, personal animosities playing a larger part. The intellectual falling off is hardly less marked than the moral. For the personal repute of a King who was almost, if not quite, one of the great, it is to be regretted that his last years have cast a permanent cloud over a reign which emphatically made for the good of the nation over which he ruled.



CHAPTER V

HENRY VIII (i), 1509-27—EGO ET REX MEUS

[Sidenote: Europe in 1509]

Roughly speaking, the forty years preceding the accession of Henry VIII. had witnessed the birth of modern Europe. The old feudal conception of Christendom had passed away: the modern conception of organic States had taken its place. The English Kings had for some time ceased to hold sway in France, whether as claimants to the throne or as great feudatories. France herself had become a united and aggressive nation; the fusion of the Spanish monarchies was almost completed: the Emperor was no longer regarded as the titular secular head of Christendom, but was virtually the chief of a loose Germanic confederation. The Turk, finally established in Eastern Europe, was shortly to find himself regarded as a possible ally of Christian Powers; Christendom still reckoned the Pope as its spiritual head, but the cataclysm was already preparing; and the enterprise of daring seamen had but just rent the veils that had hidden from the nations of Europe the boundless possibilities of a new world in the West and an ancient world in the East, converting the pathless ocean into the great Highway.

[Sidenote: England's position in Europe]

Since the death of the conqueror Henry V., England herself had been rent and torn by internal broils. For many a long year she had taken but little share in the affairs of Europe. But it had been the part of the first Tudor King to win for her breathing time; to secure a period for rest and internal recuperation, which should fit her to hold her own in the counsels of Europe should her interests demand it. The civil broils were ended; trade had revived; wealth had been accumulating. Henry had not sought military glory, but he had played the game of diplomacy with acuteness and finesse. When he ascended the throne, the princes of Europe had regarded England as a Power that might safely be neglected unless she could be used as a cat's-paw; but before he died they had learned that they could no longer negotiate with him except on equal terms. In a sense, perhaps, it is true that England was still reckoned as no more than a third-rate [Footnote: Cf. Brewer, Reign of Henry VIII., i., p.3; Creighton, Wolsey, p. 11. The estimate, however, seems to be rather the outcome of an inclination to magnify Wolsey's achievement.] power, since her military prestige had fallen and the chances of its restoration were untested, while her interests would not naturally lead her into active participation in European complications; but she had at least achieved sufficient importance for the Powers to desire her favour rather than her ill-will, and for herself to be able to put a price on her support when it was asked.

[Sidenote: The new King]

So far, however, it was rather respect for the personal ability of Henry VII. than a high estimate of the English nation that had secured the English position; and when the astute old monarch was succeeded on the throne by a frank, high-spirited lad of eighteen, the Princes of Europe flattered themselves that England would revert to the position of a cat's-paw. From this point of view the first beginnings of the reign were promising. Europe, however, was soon to be undeceived; to discover that the young King had an unfailing eye for a capable minister, a sincere devotion to his own interests, and an unparalleled power of reconciling the dictates of desire and conscience.

At home, circumstances combined to render Henry extraordinarily popular. Handsome, endowed with a magnificent physique, a first-rate performer in all manly exercises, gifted with many accomplishments, scholar enough to be proud of his scholarship, open of hand, frank and genial of manner, with a boyish delight in his endowments and a boyish enthusiasm for chivalric ideals, all English hearts rejoiced in his accession. The scholars looked forward to a Saturnian age; his martial ardour fired the hopes of the fighting men; the populace hailed with joy a King who began his rule by striking down the agents of extortion to whom he owed the wealth inherited from his economical sire. Henry in fact was blessed with the most valuable of all possessions for a ruler of men, a magnetic personality, which made his servants ready to go through fire and water, to stifle conscience, to forgo their own convictions at his bidding.

When he ascended the throne, however, none had the glimmering of a suspicion whither that imperious will was to direct the destinies of the nation: his earliest acts gave little indication of the later developments of his character and policy.

[Sidenote: 1509 Marriage]

His first step was to complete the marriage with Katharine of Aragon, to whom he had been betrothed, under the papal dispensation, on the death of his elder brother, her husband. It is not without interest to note, in view of a plea put forward against the "divorce" in later years, that the bride was arrayed for the wedding as one who was not a widow but a maiden. Shortly afterwards Empson and Dudley, his father's unpopular agents, were brought to the block after attainder on a not very credible charge of treason, [Footnote: Brewer, i., p. 44; L. & P., i., 1212.] since the misdeeds of which they had been guilty could hardly be construed into capital offences.

Now, however, events on the Continent were to offer a field for Henry's ambitions, and incidentally to disillusion, at least in part, his young enthusiasms.

[Sidenote: The Powers: 1509-12]

The three great Powers—France, Spain, and the Empire—which had been evolved out of the mediaeval European system, were united in the desire of preventing Italy from following their example and consolidating into a nation. Venice, as the one Italian State strong enough to have some chance of combining the rest under her leadership, was the object not only of their jealousy but also of the Pope's. A few months before the death of Henry VII., these four combined in the League of Cambrai, for the dismemberment of Venice. The allies, however, were not guided in their actions by any altruistic motives—any excessive regard for the interests of their associates. The French King, Lewis XII., by prompt and skilful action, made himself master of the north of Italy before the rest were ready to move. This was by no means to the taste of Ferdinand or of Pope Julius; but as yet Maximilian had seen no reason to be displeased. Ferdinand would not risk a quarrel with Maximilian, which might have led to that monarch's interference in Castile on behalf of the boy Charles—his grandson as well as Ferdinand's—the nominal King of that portion of what Ferdinand looked on as his own dominions. So the crafty old King bided his time, dropping a quiet hint to young Henry in England that a moment might be approaching favourable to an English attack on France, in revival of the ancient claim to the crown, or at any rate to Guienne.

Henry, as yet unskilled in the tortuous diplomacy of his father-in-law, was well content to be guided by his advice. Ferdinand intrigued to unite Julius and Maximilian against France, and to shift the burden of battle, when it should come, off his own shoulders on to Henry's. Meantime, the outward professions to France remained of the most amicable character.

[Sidenote: 1512 Dorset's expedition]

Then Lewis made a blunder which gave his enemies their opening. He called a General Council at Pisa which was in effect an attack on the spiritual authority of Rome. By the end of 1510, Julius was at open war with the French King; Ferdinand was in alliance with the Pope; in the course of the next year, the Holy League was formed; a combined attack was concerted; and in June, 1512, an English expedition, under the command of Lord Dorset, landed in Spain, on the theory that it was to be assisted by Ferdinand in the conquest of Guienne.

The expedition was a melancholy failure. The English troops and their commander were alike inexperienced in war; Ferdinand would not move against Guienne, urging with some plausibility that the securing of Navarre was a needful preliminary; the soldiers wanted beer and had to put up with Spanish wines; finally they insisted on returning to England, and Dorset had to put the best face he could on a very awkward situation. Officially it was announced that the withdrawal was made with Ferdinand's approval.

So far, the European anticipations of England's incapacity had been duly fulfilled. A military fiasco had accompanied an innocence of diplomatic guile which looked promising to the Continental rulers. But the promise was to be disappointed.

[Sidenote: Rise of Wolsey]

Henry VII. had avoided war and had been his own foreign minister; when he died, he left to form his son's Council some capable subordinates like Fox the Bishop of Winchester, but no one experienced in the responsibilities of control. Among the noble houses, the Howards were shortly to display at least a fair share of military capacity. But it was to a minister of at best middle-class origin, a rising ecclesiastic who had, however, hitherto held no office of the first rank, that England was to owe a surprisingly rapid promotion to European equality with the first-class Powers.

With that skill in selecting; invaluable servants which distinguished his entire career, Henry VIII. by the time he was one-and-twenty had already discovered in Thomas Wolsey the man on whose native genius and unlimited power of application he could place complete reliance.

Wolsey had been employed on diplomatic missions by the old King; whose methods he had gauged and whose policy he had assimilated, but only as a basis for far-reaching developments. He was brought into the Royal Council by Fox, partly no doubt in the hope that he would counteract the influence of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, and others of the nobles who were martially inclined and imbued with a time-honoured hostility to France. It was no long time before he outshone his patron, who, however, had rightly judged his tendencies. Wolsey was no friend to war, and had no hostility to France, for the plain reason that he preferred diplomatic to military methods, and was quite as well pleased to advance English interests by alliance with France as by alliances against her if he saw his way to profit thereby. It is probable enough that he would have avoided the war with France if he had had the power; since he had not, he devoted his energies to making the war itself as successful as possible.

[Sidenote: 1513 The French war]

The arrangements for the Guienne expedition had not unnaturally been singularly defective. Wolsey devoted himself with untiring zeal to the organisation of a new expedition in the following spring. Nothing was left to chance over which it was possible for one man's energy to exercise supervision. The first outcome was a naval engagement off Brest on 25th April, wherein the English admiral, Sir Edward Howard, restored at least the English reputation for valour, falling—overwhelmed by numbers—on the deck of the French flag-ship which he had boarded almost single-handed. The French fleet was much larger than that of the English, and the attack on it which he led was a desperate enterprise in which his ships were beaten off; but those who had jeered at the failure in Guienne were silenced, and Henry was enabled to land his troops undisturbed at Calais at the end of June. Both the King and Wolsey were with the army, and proceeded to lay siege, on 1st August, to Terouenne, which was partially re-victualled by the bold dash of a relief party of horsemen through the besieger's lines. Here the besiegers were shortly joined by a contingent under Maximilian (who professed himself a mere volunteer under the English King). The advancing French array was put to complete rout in the "battle of the Spurs"—the consequence of a sudden panic—and on August 22nd Terouenne surrendered. Tournai followed suit a month later.

In the meantime, events of moment had been taking place on the Scottish border.

[Sidenote: Scotland 1499-1513]

James IV., as we have seen, had by no means been on continuously good terms with Henry VII., and had lent a good deal more than merely moral support to the pretensions of Perkin Warbeck. At the close of the adventurer's active career in the end of 1497, a treaty was made between England and Scotland which was to remain in force till a year after the death of either monarch; and there were further treaties when James married Margaret Tudor in 1503. On the other hand, James had always maintained the traditional alliance with France, and in 1507 had declined the papal invitation to enter the league then formed to resist French aggression. Since the accession of Henry VIII., the relations between the two countries had been exceedingly strained. There were personal quarrels about jewels retained in England which James claimed for his wife. Scottish sea-captains had been treated as pirates by the English authorities. Henry, having joined the league against France, wished to patch up the quarrel with James; James, incited by the French, would not make friends with the active enemy of France; the French Queen sent him a message bidding him strike a blow on English ground as her knight. West, [Footnote: Brewer, Henry VIII., p.29. L & P., i., 1926, 3128, 3129, 3811, 3838, 3882.] the English ambassador, gives a highly uncomplimentary account of James's bearing at this time, but his evidence may be coloured. At any rate, there can have been little doubt in James's mind that a successful war with France would leave Henry ready to make himself extremely unpleasant to Scotland, even though he might not patently set the treaty aside; and for himself there was a degree of obligation to help France when she came to open hostilities with England; while Henry's instructions to West are hardly consistent with a character for stainless and unassailable honour. [Footnote: Cf. Lang, Hist. Scot., i., p.375; commenting on Brewer, Henry VIII., pp.28, 29 q.v.]



[Sidenote: 1513 James invades England (Aug.)]

At any rate, the conclusion of the matter was that when Henry sailed for Calais, James soon made up his mind, with the support of most of the nobility, to declare war, and sent Henry his defiance—as he had promised West to do before opening hostilities. On 22nd August he was in England at the head of a great army; by the end of the month, Norham Castle, Ford, and other strongholds were in his hands. [Footnote: Cf. Lang, Hist. Scot., i., p. 377.] Thereafter, he entrenched himself on Flodden Ridge, and awaited the approach of the English army.

Queen Katharine and the Earl of Surrey had been left in charge at home when the King with Wolsey and Fox also crossed the channel. To the Queen's energy the successful results were in no small degree due, as well as to the military skill and audacity of the Howards, and to James's reckless disregard of strategical and tactical principles.

Had the Scottish monarch held to his plans, his campaign could hardly have failed to be successful. His army was large, and well victualled; his position on Flodden Edge was exceedingly strong; he had secured the fortresses which might otherwise have threatened him on flank or rear. His object was to entice the English commander, Surrey, away from his base, and force him to fight at a disadvantage, or to see his levies melt away, for lack of provisions. Surrey, advancing from Alnwick to Wooler, tried to inveigle him into descending from the Ridge to the open plain, but James was not to be tempted.

[Sidenote: Flodden (Sept.)]

Eastward of Flodden the Till flows north to join the Tweed. Surrey put the Till between himself and the Scottish army, and marched north, his movement masked by hills on his left, with the intention of reaching Berwick, or of threatening the Scottish communications. Arrived at Barmoor Wood, the Admiral, Thomas Howard, Surrey's son, proposed to march west, cross the Till, and move south again, threatening the rear of James's position. The operation, involving a very hard march, was carried out. The main army crossed at Twizel Mill, the rearguard fording the stream as high up as Sandyford; the junction being effected behind Branxton Marsh. The passage of the troops might easily have been prevented; but James, very inefficiently served in scouting, knew nothing of what was going on. When the approach of the English became known, he suddenly resolved to descend and give battle [Footnote: The traditions concerning the King and the old Earl of Angus on this occasion have been very untenderly handled by Mr. Andrew Lang, Hist. Scot., 1., p. 390.] on the plain, instead of remaining in his almost impregnable position. So on the afternoon of September 9th was fought the bloody and decisive battle of Flodden. Of the two armies, the Scottish was probably the larger; but the English captains had their troops better in hand than the border lords on the Scottish left, or the highland chiefs on their right. After fierce fighting, the Scottish wings were broken, and the Scottish centre was completely enveloped. There, headed by the King, fought the pick of the Scottish chivalry. The stand made was magnificent, the slaughter appalling. The English victory this time was one not of the bow—as so often before—but of the bill or axe against the spears in which the northern nation trusted. By hewing away the spear-heads, the English disabled their opponents; yet they fought on, till man by man they fell around their monarch. The King himself, brave as any man on the field, was slain; in the ring of his dead companions in arms were found the bodies of thirteen earls, three bishops, and many valiant lords. There were few families in Scotland which did not contribute to that hecatomb, whereof the memory is enshrined in the national song of lamentation, "The Flowers of the Forest".

[Effects of Flodden]

For many a long year the military power of Scotland was broken on the black day of Flodden. From that quarter Henry was to have no more serious fears. Great and decisive, however, as Surrey's [Footnote: Surrey was rewarded with the Dukedom of Norfolk, held by his father. Accordingly, after this he becomes "Norfolk," and his son Thomas becomes "Surrey". In 1524 the son succeeded to the Dukedom, and is the "Norfolk" of the latter half of the reign, the "Surrey" of its last years being his son Henry.] triumph was, the English also had paid a heavy price, and were unable to follow up victory by invasion. But Scotland had not only lost the best and bravest of her sons; the King's death left the Crown to a babe not eighteen months old, and the government of the country to the babe's mother, Margaret, the sister of Henry VIII., and to a group of nobles, to whose personal feuds and rivalries, constantly fomented by English diplomacy, the interests of the Scottish nation were completely subordinated.

[Sidenote: Recovery of English prestige]

The year 1513 had completely restored the reputation of the English arms. The sea-fight off Brest, the successes at Terouenne and Tournai, and, finally, the great victory of Flodden, proved beyond dispute that Englishmen only needed to be well led to show themselves as indomitable as ever they had been in the past. The march of 8th and 9th September immediately before Flodden was a feat which not many commanders would have cared to attempt, and few troops could have carried out. And it had become evident that generalship was not, after all, a lost art. It was now time for Europe to discover that England, habitually inferior to other nations in the arts of diplomacy, possessed in Wolsey a diplomatist of the highest order. The old King had indeed been as little susceptible to the beguilement of fair promises, as shrewd in detecting his neighbours' designs, little less capable of concealing his own, little less tenacious in pursuing them; but his designs themselves had not the amplitude of Wolsey's, who shewed all Henry's skill combined with a far greater audacity in execution, commensurate with the greater audacity and scope of his conceptions. Wolsey was one of those statesmen, rare in England, who for half a generation aimed, with a large measure of success, at dominating the combinations of the European Powers without involving the country in any tremendous war.

[Sidenote: 1514 Foreign intrigues]

Before the winter of 1513 Henry VIII. returned to England, with every intention of following up his successes in the French war in the ensuing year. The campaign, however, had not been at all to the liking of Ferdinand, who gained nothing by the English victories in the north-west. These tended to strengthen his grandson Charles in the Netherlands, where Maximilian's influence over him was stronger; while Ferdinand was bent above all things on maintaining his own control over the boy, and by consequence over Castile. So Ferdinand set about making his own peace privily with France, and trying to draw off Maximilian so as to isolate Henry. In April, 1514, he accomplished his object, and a truce was declared between Ferdinand, the Emperor, and France.

In mid-winter Henry had been struck down by small-pox; he recovered to find these intrigues in active progress, and was highly indignant. His martial projects were, of course, thrown entirely out of gear. Ferdinand, however, had found his match. The English King, when the dictates of his personal interests, translated into terms of conscience, did not obscure the issues at stake, had an acute perception of political expediency, untrammelled by the traditional sentiment which biased the judgment of advisers of the type of Surrey (now raised to the Dukedom of Norfolk). It was Wolsey who swayed his counsels, and Wolsey perceived in an alliance with France an effective alternative to the collapsed alliance against her.

[Sidenote: Policy of French alliance ]

No sooner had he detected the intrigues of Ferdinand than he set his counterplot on foot through the medium of the Duc de Longueville, who had been taken prisoner at the battle of the Spurs and sent over to England. The death of the French Queen, Anne of Brittany, gave him a convenient opening as early as January.

Throughout this century, as in the reign of Henry VII., royal betrothals and royal marriages play an immense part in international negotiations: princesses are the shuttlecocks of statesmen. This particular form of diplomatic recreation now springs again into sudden prominence.

[Sidenote 1: The French marriage] [Sidenote 2: 1515 Francis I]

Henry's younger sister Mary was plighted to the young Charles of Castile and the Netherlands, who was to marry her in the ensuing summer; he being now fourteen, and she about seventeen. The boy's two grandfathers, now both disposed to leave England detached and isolated, began finding excuses for deferring the match. Wolsey pressed them, while secretly negotiating for Mary's marriage with Lewis of France. Thus when his plans were ripe, and not before, he found himself able to declare that the breach was entirely the fault of the other side, whose objects were frustrated by the new alliance, which had not entered into their reckoning. There was no further prospect of keeping France and England embroiled while they appropriated the spoils. Mary was married to the French King in October, and Henry was certainly projecting, in conjunction with him, an aggressive movement against his former allies, on the plea that his wife Katharine shared with her sister the succession to Castile, when the tangible results of the marriage were nullified by the death on January 1st of Lewis, and the succession to the French throne of his cousin Francis I., a prince who was some years younger than Henry himself, and quite as much athirst for military glory.

Again diplomacy intrigued about the person of Lewis's widow. Charles Brandon, [Footnote: Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk in the last reign, and Yorkist intriguer, was executed, apparently without further trial, in 1513. The Dukedom of Suffolk was bestowed on Brandon whom Mr. Froude's imagination has somehow developed into "the ablest soldier of the age," but he never did anything to justify a high estimate of his abilities.] Duke of Suffolk, an intimate personal friend of Henry's and a stout man-at-arms, who was also personally devoted to the Princess Mary, was selected by Wolsey as a better negotiator than one of the anti-French party. Henry and Francis were both keen hands at a bargain, and there was serious trouble as to Mary's dower and the financial arrangements connected with her return. Francis gained his purposes by alarming Mary and at the same time encouraging Suffolk to marry her out of hand; which he did, secretly. After that, there could be no more talk of Mary's dowry being repaid; and Henry had to content himself with making heavy demands on Suffolk's purse. The event is of further significance, because Henry at present had no offspring, and the young King of Scotland, son of his sister Margaret, was heir presumptive to the throne; whereas if his younger sister Mary should have children, it was certain that there would be a party to support their claim in preference to that of the Scottish monarch. In fact, ultimately, Mary's grandchild Lady Jane Grey was actually put up as a claimant to the throne.

[Sidenote: Marignano (Sept.)]

The general effect however was, that Francis drew away from the English alliance, and associated himself more closely with Ferdinand; having Italian conquests and more particularly Milan in view. In the summer he set out, crossed the Alps with unexpected success, and in September won the great victory of Marignano, routing the Swiss troops which had hitherto been reputed invincible. Such triumphant progress however was more than the other monarchs or the Pope, Leo X., had reckoned for, and there was a rapid and general reaction in favour of checking the French King's career. The inflation of the power of France was satisfactory to no one else; but incidentally the effect was not disadvantageous to Wolsey, since it forced Pope Leo into an attitude of compliance with English demands in order to secure English support, with the result that Wolsey was raised to the Cardinalate, having recently been made Archbishop of York. "The Cardinal of York" is the title by which he is named in official references from this time (Nov., 1515).