England under the Tudors Part 3

[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 t.i.tle was invalid, and that a woman could not herself reign in her own right, Elizabeth's son had indisputably a t.i.tle 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 part.i.tion; 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 princ.i.p.ality.

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 a.s.serting 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 a.s.sistance. 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 Devons.h.i.+re) 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 circ.u.mstances 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 friends.h.i.+p. 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 sh.o.r.es 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 ent.i.tled 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 a.s.sistance 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 outs.h.i.+ne 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 t.i.tle, under conditions which could not have allowed any conceivable t.i.tle to pa.s.s without risk of being challenged. It was therefore necessary for him not merely to b.u.t.tress his hereditary claim by marrying the rival whose t.i.tle was technically the strongest, and securing the p.r.o.nouncement of Parliament in his favour, together with such advent.i.tious 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 n.o.bility 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 ma.s.s 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 const.i.tutional 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 t.i.tle 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 princ.i.p.al 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 punis.h.i.+ng. 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 n.o.bles]

But the att.i.tude 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 n.o.bility 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 n.o.bles 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 acc.u.mulate 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 n.o.bles as ministers no more than he could help. He laid the burdens of statesmans.h.i.+p 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.