TEN TUDOR STATESMEN
[Illustration: _HENRY VII._
_From a Painting by an unknown Flemish artist, in the National Portrait
Gallery_]
TEN TUDOR
STATESMEN
_By_ ARTHUR D. INNES
_AUTHOR OF_
“ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS”
[Illustration]
LONDON
EVELEIGH NASH
1906
Printed by BALLANTYNE & CO. LIMITED
Tavistock Street, London
PREFATORY
The series of studies contained in this volume is in no way a history
of the Tudor period. My object in preparing it has been first to
form in my own mind and secondly to present to my readers a clear
and consistent conception of the character of sundry persons, who in
their own day either exercised an effective influence on the course of
politics, or embodied political ideas which have influenced succeeding
generations. The events narrated are considered not in the light
of their intrinsic importance, but as they bear on the particular
character under investigation.
To arrive at a fair estimate of any man’s character, the primary
necessity is to endeavour to realise his point of view, to appreciate
his preconceptions. If we require of him that his preconceptions shall
coincide with our own, we may reconstruct an interesting dramatic
figure, but we shall not discover the man as he really was. And if we
do succeed in placing ourselves at his point of view, we shall almost
inevitably find that the man who ultimately emerges is different
from, and probably somewhat better than, the man as we had previously
conceived him.
Concerning these ten figures, two curious points may be noted. Eight of
them may be described as ministers: not one of the eight was actually
of noble birth, two were not even of gentle birth. That fact emphasises
the change in the political centre of gravity which accompanied the
establishment of the Tudor Dynasty. Secondly, of those eight, four
perished on the scaffold and one at the stake: a sixth was in custody
under accusation of treason when death released him. That illustrates
not less emphatically the distance at which we stand from the Tudors
to-day.
A. D. I.
CONTENTS
I
HENRY VII
PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 3
II. HENRY’S EARLY YEARS, ACCESSION, AND ESTABLISHMENT
OF THE DYNASTY 5
III. THE TUDOR ABSOLUTION AND THE EXCHEQUER 11
IV. COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL POLICY 16
V. JUDICATURE 21
VI. FOREIGN POLICY 23
VII. CHARACTER 27
II
CARDINAL WOLSEY
I. APPRECIATIONS 35
II. CARDINALIS PACIFICATOR 38
III. WOLSEY AND THE FRENCH WAR 46
IV. DOMESTIC POLICY 48
V. THE DIVORCE 53
VI. WOLSEY AND THE REFORMATION 62
VII. WOLSEY’S FALL AND CHARACTER 67
III
SIR THOMAS MORE
I. INTRODUCTORY 75
II. UNDER HENRY VII 77
III. THE EARLY YEARS OF HENRY VIII 82
IV. THE “UTOPIA” 85
V. MORE IN PUBLIC LIFE 94
VI. INDIGNATIO PRINCIPIS 103
VII. CHARACTER AND DEATH 106
IV
THOMAS CROMWELL
I. THOMAS CROMWELL 115
II. EARLIER CAREER AND RISE TO POWER 117
III. PLANNING THE CAMPAIGN 125
IV. CONTRA ECCLESIAM 130
V. THE FABRIC OF DESPOTISM 135
VI. CROMWELL AND PROTESTANTISM 146
VII. CROMWELL’S FALL 151
V
HENRY VIII
I. APPRECIATIONS 157
II. THE CARDINAL RULES 159
III. WAR 167
IV. THE DIVORCE 170
V. THE NEW POLICY 177
VI. DIVERGENCES BETWEEN HENRY AND CROMWELL 182
VII. HENRY’S CLOSING YEARS 187
VIII. HENRY’S MARRIAGES 192
IX. HENRY’S CHARACTER 198
VI
PROTECTOR SOMERSET
I. MISCONCEPTIONS 205
II. THE PROTECTOR AND HIS PROBLEMS 207
III. SOMERSET AND SCOTLAND 212
IV. SOMERSET’S RELIGIOUS POLICY 217
V. SOMERSET AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 222
VI. THE LORD ADMIRAL 225
VII. THE EX-PROTECTOR 230
VII
ARCHBISHOP CRANMER
I. INTRODUCTORY 237
II. CRANMER AT CAMBRIDGE 239
III. RISE TO THE ARCHBISHOPRIC 244
IV. HENRY’S PRIMATE 248
V. CRANMER AND SOMERSET 258
VI. THE FLOWING TIDE OF PROTESTANTISM 263
VII. DE PROFUNDIS 267
VIII
WILLIAM CECIL (LORD BURGHLEY)
I. THE MINISTERS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH 279
II. CECIL UNDER EDWARD VI. AND MARY 281
III. FOREIGN AFFAIRS AT ELIZABETH’S ACCESSION 288
IV. DOMESTIC AND SCOTTISH POLICY 296
V. CECIL AND PROTESTANTISM 303
VI. ELIZABETH’S SECOND PERIOD 307
VII. THE WAR WITH SPAIN 315
VIII. AN APPRECIATION 319
IX
SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM
I. WALSINGHAM’S CHARACTER 325
II. WALSINGHAM’S RISE 328
III. AMBASSADOR AT PARIS 332
IV. ENTANGLEMENTS 339
V. DETECTIVE METHODS 348
VI. THE END 355
X
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
I. CHARACTER 361
II. RALEIGH’S RISE 363
III. VIRGINIA 369
IV. AFTER THE ARMADA 376
V. FAVOUR AND FALL 381
VI. CAPTIVE AND VICTIM 387
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
HENRY VII. _Frontispiece_
_From a Painting by an unknown Flemish artist, in the
National Portrait Gallery_
_To face page_
CARDINAL WOLSEY 36
_From a Painting by_ HOLBEIN _in the collection at Christ
Church, Oxford_
SIR THOMAS MORE 76
_From a Painting by_ HOLBEIN _in the National Portrait
Gallery_
THOMAS CROMWELL, 1ST EARL OF ESSEX 116
_By_ HOLBEIN, _from an Engraving by Houbraken in the
British Museum_
HENRY VIII. 158
_From a Portrait by_ JOST VAN CLEEF _in the Royal
Collection at Hampton Court Palace_
PROTECTOR SOMERSET 206
_From a Painting by_ HOLBEIN
THOMAS CRANMER 238
_From a Painting by_ G. FLICCIUS _in the National
Portrait Gallery_
WILLIAM CECIL (LORD BURGHLEY) 280
_From a Portrait by_ MARC GHEERAEDTS (?) _in the
National Portrait Gallery_
SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM 326
_From an engraving by_ G. VERTUE _after the picture by
Holbein, in the British Museum_
SIR WALTER RALEIGH 362
_From the Painting by_ FEDERIGO ZUCCARO _in the
National Portrait Gallery_
HENRY VII
I
INTRODUCTORY
“This King, to speak of him in terms equal to his deserving, was one
of the best sort of wonders, a wonder for wise men.” In those words
Francis Bacon summed up Henry VII., a hundred years after the first
Tudor king had been laid in his grave. Bacon’s history still is,
and is likely to remain, the classic narrative. Not that he was a
“contemporary,” or that he had access to any extraordinary sources
of information; but because being at once a practical politician, a
student of political theory, and a literary artist, any historical work
from his pen could hardly have failed to be of the highest interest,
and the subject he actually chose was--to him--peculiarly sympathetic.
It is in fact quite evident that Henry was held in the very highest
estimation by his biographer. The history is addressed to Prince
Charles, and it can hardly be doubted that in calling his hero “the
English Solomon,” Bacon had in mind the reigning king’s description as
the “Scottish Solomon”; the direct suggestion of a parallel (repeated
in other terms in the Preface) must have been meant to be looked
upon as a compliment by James. Henry was at least to be accounted
the shrewdest ruler amongst the very astute princes who were more or
less his contemporaries. Yet, for all the impression of shrewdness,
Bacon fails to win our sympathy for Henry, perhaps because those
two minds had too close kinship. Bacon, except in the case of a few
enthusiasts, does not inspire affection. Pope’s summary is too accurate
an expression of what is at least the popular conception; and Henry
is judged to have been not quite so bright, nearly but not quite
so wise--and still more mean. English history provides examples of
monarchs whom every one actively hates like King John, or scorns like
Edward II.; other monarchs too, who, if they had evil qualities, yet
display something of the heroic; towards whom our feelings, if mixed,
are still warm. But Henry VII. inspires almost universally a strong
sentiment of cold dislike, such as no one else creates.
There is justice in that impression, but there is also injustice. In
his latter years, it is hardly too much to call him detestable. He had
reigned for fourteen years before he committed the one commonplace
crime of tyrants which stains his record, the execution of Warwick.
From that time a kind of degeneration seems to have come upon him,
accelerated by the deaths first of his wisest counsellor Morton,
then, two years later, of the son he loved, and then of his wife. To
these years belongs nearly every story which tells seriously to his
discredit. But during the earlier and longer half of his reign, his
record is remarkably free from blemish, and shows an enlightenment
which under happier conditions might have won him a place not only
among the kings who have deserved well of the State--that, at least
in the historian’s eyes, he did achieve--but among those whose memory
posterity have cherished.
II
HENRY’S EARLY YEARS, ACCESSION, AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DYNASTY
After the death of Henry V., his widow accepted in marriage the hand
of a Welsh knight of ancient lineage, Owen Tudor. In 1456, their son
Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, took to himself a very youthful bride,
the Lady Margaret Beaufort, the representative of John of Gaunt’s
family by Katherine Swynford, legitimatised by Act of Parliament in
the reign of Richard II. On January 28, 1457, Margaret gave birth to a
son, Henry, some weeks after Edmund himself had died; the charge of the
boy devolving mainly upon Edmund’s brother Jasper, Earl of Pembroke.
During the next fourteen years, the great Earl of Warwick was playing
see-saw with the fortunes of the rival houses of York and Lancaster.
In 1461, the Yorkists won the upper hand; but Jasper held out in
Wales for Lancaster, for nearly seven years. Then Harlech Castle was
surrendered, and young Henry was placed in charge of its captor, the
new Earl of Pembroke, and was well enough treated. Then Lancaster had
a turn of success, but the party was crushed at the battles of Barnet
and Tewkesbury, and the line was quenched by the deaths of Henry VI.
and his son. Yorkists and Lancastrians alike fixed upon young Henry
Tudor as being now the representative of John of Gaunt; England was
too dangerous a habitation for a possible claimant to the throne; and
the boy in his fifteenth year was successfully shipped off by his
friends to Brittany, where for twelve years he abode under the Duke’s
protection.
If the dynasty of York had established itself in regular fashion--if
Edward IV. had been followed by an Edward V. as Henry IV. had been
followed by Henry V.--there would have been little enough to fear. But
Edward’s brother usurped the throne by a particularly foul murder, and
being on it proved himself a tyrant. Men’s eyes turned to the one scion
of the Plantagenets whom it was possible to set up as a claimant to the
crown. If he could be set on the throne with Edward’s daughter at his
side, the rival factions of York and Lancaster might be stilled. The
first attempt to challenge the usurper failed completely. Buckingham’s
plan of campaign was ruined by the flooding of the Severn, and by a
storm which scattered the fleet wherewith Richmond sailed from Brittany
to co-operate. Henry, returning thither, had to flee very soon after
to safer shelter in France. But it was not long before the attempt was
renewed, this time with success. On Bosworth field Richard was slain,
and Henry declared King of England.
The victor was a young man of eight-and-twenty. For fourteen years he
had lived in England, amidst civil broils and perpetual alarms. For
fourteen more he had lived mainly in Brittany, conscious that he was in
perpetual danger of being surrendered into the hands of those who might
at any time find his destruction convenient. All his life he had been
in an atmosphere of suspicion, of possible treachery, encompassed with
deeds of blood. He had learned to study others and to trust himself. He
had learned that his life might depend on alertness and self-restraint.
And he had been able to see that Louis XI. was incomparably the most
successful master of state-craft of his generation. These were lessons
calculated to kill all youthful qualities, and at twenty-eight Henry
might as well have been forty.
This was the man who had grasped a sceptre to which it was impossible
to establish for him a legal title. In plain truth, he was King of
England because he was the only man of the blood-royal who was able to
challenge the usurper who was wearing the crown. As far as right of
inheritance went, if Edward IV.’s daughters were barred by their sex,
the son of Clarence was indubitably the heir of Edward III., whether
descent through the female line were admitted or no. Henry might marry
Elizabeth of York and claim the crown in her right; but then her death
would leave him in a highly anomalous position; it was imperative that
he should be accepted himself as the lawful king in his own person.
The marriage might make matters perfectly safe for a son, but not for
him. Hence even the semblance of depending on his wife’s title must be
avoided.
He had won the realm by the sword; that was the first step. The second
was to commit the representatives of the nation to affirm that he
was the lawful sovereign: this was effected by a Declaratory Act in
Parliament, which judiciously abstained from naming the grounds on
which his claim rested. After that was to come the marriage, which
should muzzle the partisans of York. This took place in the following
January; but it is easy to see that the king had good reason for not
proceeding to his wife’s coronation at least till a son should be
born. Not long after that son was born, the Simnel plot was brewing;
the coronation under those circumstances might have taken the colour
of a defensive measure. Consequently the ceremony was not performed
until Elizabeth had been his wife for very nearly two years, being thus
emphasised as a mere act of grace.
No doubt if, by marrying the Plantagenet princess, Henry could have
appropriated the Yorkist title to himself personally whether his queen
lived or died, he would have been able to do without repressing the
heads of the Yorkist faction at all. But, as things stood, that could
not be risked. Warwick, Clarence’s young son, was imprisoned in the
Tower, and some of the last king’s principal supporters were attainted.
Being thus kept dissatisfied, it was a long time before active Yorkist
plots ceased. The Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, Margaret, sister of
Edward IV., made her Court a regular centre of anti-Tudor intrigue; nor
did Henry ever feel really safe till the myth of a surviving Richard of
York was finally exploded and the actual Edward Plantagenet, Earl of
Warwick, had been done to death. The course which Henry took involved
a certain degree of injustice--but _Fiat Justitia, Ruat Cælum_, is
a maxim that princes with an uncertain title are rarely, if ever,
disposed to adopt without reservation. One is disposed to wonder rather
that Warwick was allowed to live so long than that Henry ultimately
yielded to the temptation to slay him.
This plain business of securing himself on the throne was necessarily
the first consideration. Only an established dynasty could restore
steady government in a country which within a hundred years had seen
four kings slain and the great bulk of her ancient baronage wiped
out. Between foreign wars, successful or the reverse, and a wild
warfare of armed factions at home, stability had been destroyed.
The prolonged reign of strong rulers maintaining one policy was an
absolute condition of recuperation. The way in which Henry secured it
was entirely characteristic and entirely successful. The sword, the
poniard, and the headman’s axe or the dungeon, were normally relied on
by rulers whose seat was uncertain. Henry acted on a strictly original
scheme. When he took the field against rebels, he sent before him
proclamations of pardon to those who would come in; and he kept his
word. He did not massacre the routed foe: he spared them, seizing only
their leaders. He was responsible for no murders. A Lambert Simnel or
a Perkin Warbeck when captured was not hanged out of hand, but sent to
join the scullions, or set in the stocks as an impostor. Executions
were singularly rare; rebels who might become powerful merely had their
claws clipped by fines and confiscations--very efficiently clipped, no
doubt. Where imprisonment was resorted to, the confinement was seldom
harsh; and the king never had qualms about restoring a quondam rebel
to favour and authority, if he judged that his man would show himself
worthy of the faith reposed in him. When Surrey’s gaoler offered to let
him go free, Surrey refused to escape; the king had put him in ward,
and the king alone should release him. The king did so, and gave him a
command of the highest trust. Kildare set authority at defiance when
he was Deputy in Ireland, and when he was deposed, “All Ireland cannot
rule this man,” said his enemies. “Then let this man rule all Ireland,”
quoth Henry, and restored him to the Deputyship. Neither Surrey nor
Kildare gave him cause for repentance.
Such a record would have entitled Henry to praise as a prince of
unparalleled magnanimity, but for its common-sense accompaniment
of fines and confiscations. But in fact, to penalise rebellion in
some sort was an absolute necessity; not to have done so would have
jeopardised the throne. The method adopted might not be heroic, but it
was supremely practical; inasmuch as it wrought the minimum of positive
injury to the punished, while at once depriving them of power to harm
and supplying the king himself with the sinews of government, of which
he was sorely in need. It was dictated quite as much by policy as by
magnanimity, but the mere fact that Henry recognised it from the outset
as sounder policy than any precedents, recent at any rate, suggested,
is testimony to the acuteness of his moral perceptions as well as to
the keenness of his intelligence. Nor is it fair to deprive Henry of
the credit of magnanimity, merely because the magnanimity paid. To
realise that it did pay and prove completely successful, we have only
to observe that after the battle of Stoke there was no baronial rising
in England. Warbeck got all his support either from the exiles or from
foreign courts: when he tried to raise the West of England on his own
account, he collapsed ignominiously. It is true that an army of Cornish
insurgents had marched to Blackheath just before, and had there been
broken up; but that was a purely popular rising in protest against
taxation, and its chiefs were a blacksmith and a lawyer.
III
THE TUDOR ABSOLUTISM AND THE EXCHEQUER
It was not sufficient, however, merely to secure the sceptre in the
hands of a strong king; it was necessary further to establish a strong
system. For half a century the great power and estates of individual
barons had enabled them to keep the country in perpetual turmoil.
The idea of universal obedience to the established government simply
because it was established had vanished from the military and political
classes: the idea even of concerted government by one class, guided by
its interests as a class, had disappeared; it was only the personal
factor, personal interests, that counted. Below the baronage, the
gentry who bordered on the baronage, and their retainers, townsfolk and
country folk stood aloof from the fighting, and lived as peacefully
as they might--all things considered, with a wonderful freedom from
disturbance. But standing aloof from the fighting, they had perforce
stood aloof also from the business of government, which fell to the
military faction that happened for the time being to have the upper
hand. They were in short ready to support and profit by a government
which gave promise of peace and stability, order and justice; but
they were not ready to organise such a government for themselves, or
to take a prominent part in conducting it. Under such conditions, the
Yorkists had established a despotism, as the only workable form of
government. But their despotism was one that rested almost exclusively
on the personal forcefulness of the ruler. It was Henry’s task to keep
the effective power concentrated in the King’s hands, but to give it
a constitutional colour--to make the nation feel it as a government
by consent. It was therefore necessary to eliminate factors which
naturally tended to disturbance--in other words, to deprive the
individual barons of the power of aggressive self-assertion; and at the
same time, so to treat the naturally orderly elements of society as to
keep them on the side of the government.
This was the root-principle of the Tudor Absolutism, devised and put
into practice by the first Tudor king, and systematically carried
out by his son and grand-daughter. The system carried England to the
first place among the nations. But it broke down when the Stuarts
ignored its fundamental principle, and so treated the naturally orderly
elements of society as to turn them against the government. For under
the system, those elements acquired the power of organisation and
self-protection, as the accompaniment of the prosperity they enjoyed
increasingly; and it followed that the system could only remain stable
so long as there was essential harmony and sympathy between the monarch
and his subjects.
For the concentration of power, effective power, in the king’s hands,
money was essential; while to keep the general population contented, it
was necessary that their purses should not be subjected to too severe
exactions, which must fall elsewhere. Henry directed them against the
nobility. The nation at large had no objection; the king’s treasury was
filled and the power of the nobles curtailed by the same operation.
Thus the king eliminated the disturbing factor, or allowed it to
eliminate itself. When noblemen got themselves mixed up with treasons,
they could not complain if their lives were spared and their goods paid
the forfeit. They had been wont to maintain great households, every man
having in his service the nucleus of an army. These crowds of retainers
were forbidden by law, as being, for obvious reasons, a public danger.
If noblemen, accustomed to over-ride the law, chose to keep up their
households in despite of it, they could not expect sympathy when they
were called upon to pay in cash the penalty of breaking the law. These
measures were not only thoroughly defensible as being entirely free
from any taint of injustice; they also served directly to relieve
taxation, to fill the royal coffers, and to make wanton insurrection
difficult.
Yet, while keeping within what might be called legitimate bounds, as he
habitually did while Morton was alive, the king undoubtedly permitted
himself to apply methods which savoured of trickery. He made great
parade of a war with France, appealing to national patriotism to supply
the funds. The appeal was successful, but there was no corresponding
expenditure on the campaign. Excellent reasons for inactivity were of
course forthcoming, but it is none the less certain that no activity
was ever contemplated. All that was intended was a demonstration which
might induce the French monarch to buy the English king off with
solid cash--as he eventually did. The whole transaction was eminently
profitable, but Henry had certainly got his money out of his own
subjects by false pretences. The same plea was resorted to, to get
benevolences authorised, when the famous dilemma traditionally--but
as it would seem quite unjustly--attributed to Cardinal Morton
was applied. People who lived handsomely could obviously afford a
contribution by curtailing their extravagance; people who did not live
handsomely must have wealth laid by. In either case, there could be
no inability to serve the king’s need. The spirit which prompted the
invention of that dilemma is illustrated in a story reported by Bacon
as traditional. Henry paid a visit to the Earl of Oxford at Henningham,
where he was sumptuously entertained, and on his departure passed
out through a lane of the earl’s retainers drawn up to do him honour.
“These, no doubt, are your menial servants,” observed the king. The
earl demurred; they were not menials, but retainers, who had turned out
to do him credit when he had so distinguished a guest. Whereupon “The
king started a little, and said, ‘By my faith, my lord, I thank you for
my good cheer, but I may not endure to have my laws broken in my sight.
My attorney must speak with you.’ And it is part of the report that the
earl compounded for no less than fifteen thousand marks.” It is obvious
that such a story might have been developed out of some really quite
justifiable incident; but it is tolerably certain that it was not only
in his closing years that Henry displayed what we may call an unkingly
acquisitiveness.
In passing, however, it may be remarked that this was a family trait.
Elizabeth inherited her grandfather’s prejudice against spending a
shilling that could be kept in her purse, or neglecting any plausible
pretext for attracting coin into it. She also inherited his business
principle of repaying every loan he contracted with unfailing
punctuality. Henry VIII. did not indeed practise economy, but he could
haggle over a money bargain as keenly as his father or his daughter,
and his generosity, when he indulged it, was usually at the expense of
another pocket than his own. The art of appropriating in the public
eye credit to which he was not in the least entitled, was one of which
he was a past master; it was one the value of which his father, who
certainly neglected any efforts to make himself personally popular,
somewhat underrated. Thrift is a virtue; for Henry VII., a particularly
necessary virtue; but it is not one that under any circumstances helps
to make him who exercises it attractive. When it assumes a sordid
aspect, it becomes definitely repellent.
That did not trouble Henry; he wanted money, and during the greater
part of his reign he got it without flagrant extortion; with such
success, too, that in his later years he was able almost entirely to
work without calling Parliament: the skill with which he conducted his
foreign negotiations on the same cash principles contributing not a
little to this result.
IV
COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL POLICY
It was characteristic of Henry, and somewhat unfortunate for his
reputation, that he cared nothing at all about investing his policy
with any showiness unless some specific end was to be gained thereby.
The objects his government had in view were essentially prosaic:
commonplace they cannot be called, because in a mediæval monarch they
were eminently original. It was customary for kings to interfere in
commercial affairs chiefly when they saw their way to collect by so
doing contributions to the exchequer, or when it seemed worth while
to make enactments in favour of capital as against labour. Henry has
the credit of being the first English king who clearly recognised
commercial development as a primary care of government: which hitherto
only the oligarchical city-states of Italy and the German free-towns
had done. It is true that he was quite ready to subordinate the
commercial to a political end; to attack those who sheltered his
enemies, not with pikes and culverins but with commercial restrictions
only less injurious to English trade than to that of the antagonist.
He did so without suffering from the illusion that the loss of the
foreign merchant was the gain of the English. In these cases he
weighed the economic loss against the political gain. In mediæval
practice, the economic consideration would have counted for practically
nothing in the scale. In the eyes of some politicians to-day, no
political advantage would be worth counting as against an economic
inconvenience--and it is usually extremely difficult to show that a
political advantage will accompany an economic inconvenience. But Henry
was only just emerging from mediæval conceptions. The remarkable thing
is that he realised commerce as an object of policy at all, not that
he rated its importance lower than Adam Smith: that he relaxed the
mediæval theory, not that he did not discard it altogether.
This argument is not to be misunderstood. It has nothing to do with
the rightness or wrongness of any economic theory, but only with the
place of economics in the whole scheme of government. Henry thought it
worth while, as every king before him would have done, almost to cut
off England from her best market for her most paying product, wool,
if he could thereby force the archduke’s government to withdraw its
effective countenance from Perkin Warbeck. But he made it a constant
object of his policy to negotiate the opening of fresh markets for that
commodity, and when he came to terms with the archduke, the commercial
benefits to be secured by the treaty known as the _Intercursus Magnus_
were his first care.
As Henry was the first to give commercial considerations a leading
place in his system, so he is to be distinguished for the attention he
gave to shipping; on which head Bacon has a rather remarkable note, to
the effect that he deserves praise for perceiving that in this instance
it was worth while to diminish commerce for the sake of developing
the marine--to subordinate the economic loss to the political gain.
If Bacon read Henry’s mind aright, he was not under the delusion
that the protection of English shipping interests by his successive
Navigation Acts was of direct economic advantage; but he did see that
it was worth while to pay the price in order to give England such a
mercantile navy as in Bacon’s own day enabled her to win the supremacy
of the seas. Those Acts, restricting the importation of foreign goods
to English ships, raised the price of imports without benefiting any
English industry at all except that of the shippers; but the impetus
given to shipping provided the country with a fighting force at sea
which ultimately enabled her to challenge the might of Spain. The naval
development of England was the work of the Tudor dynasty, though Edward
I., Edward III., and Henry V., had ideas. Whether the Navigation Acts
really did give the impetus attributed to them--as to which economists
may dispute--the intention is unmistakable, and the foresight which
deliberately set up naval development as an end to be pursued is a very
clear mark of Henry’s statesmanship. The creation of the English navy
is generally credited either to King Alfred or to Henry VIII.; but the
latter certainly inherited the conception from his father.
It is matter for regret, but hardly for reproach, that the king did not
apply his ideas of maritime expansion more actively in another field,
that of oceanic exploration. Portugal and Spain were allowed to take
the lead. Yet it was so well known that the English king was favourable
to such enterprises that it appears only to have been an accident which
placed Christopher Columbus in the service of Ferdinand and Isabella
instead of in Henry’s. How history might have been affected if the
West Indies had fallen in the first instance to England instead of to
Spain, is an interesting subject of speculation. But Spain won the
prize. The sailors who put out from Bristol port tried their chance in
more northerly latitudes; the territories they discovered were very
unpromising; and after the outset the Genoese (or Venetian) Cabots,
sailing in command of English crews, naturally enough got little
support from the king. But at the outset--that is, before it seemed
probable if not certain that Spain and Portugal, by right of priority
backed by a Papal Bull, had, so to speak, staked out a claim to
all that was worth having--Henry gave material encouragement to the
exploring spirit.
There was, indeed, one important economic problem--with
concomitants--at grappling with which no serious attempt was made. This
was the growing agricultural depression: due in part to legitimate and
in part to illegitimate action on the part of landowners. There was a
very large demand for English wool for foreign looms. Sheep-breeding
was seen to be highly lucrative, whereas tillage was not. The landowner
saw no sufficient reason why he should be called upon to provide
employment for a quantity of labour which brought him in a small
return, when the employment of a very little labour over the same area
would bring him a large return. Therefore he converted his arable
lands into pasture for sheep. Economic history abounds in cases of
the displacement of labour by the decay, temporary or permanent, of
some industry which is ceasing to be lucrative: it abounds also with
examples of legislative attempts to maintain the decaying industries,
and to compel some one or other to provide employment for the displaced
labour. Such attempts appear to be doomed to failure. No remedy has
yet been found except the development of fresh industries which in
course of time absorb that displaced labour. Even in the twentieth
century, that is a process which might take years to accomplish; in
the period which we are considering, the rural displacement took a
century to remedy. Political altruists, like More or Somerset, tried
to set legislation to work, but with the usual want of success. The
encouragement of commercial enterprise which begets new industries
was the only hopeful direction to work in, and to that Henry’s policy
tended; but it was not till Elizabeth’s government pursued the same
policy that the industrial situation was appreciably affected.
Legislation did a little towards checking the rapidity with which small
holdings were being absorbed into great estates, and great estates were
being converted into sheep-runs, but it never amounted to more than a
very feeble brake. The problem is one which still awaits a satisfactory
solution.
V
JUDICATURE
Bacon enumerates with applause a variety of good laws enacted by Henry.
He was not in fact remarkable as a legislator, but his modifications
of the law were all save one in the nature of removal of abuses. There
are, however, two of his enactments which demand special attention. The
first of these was the Act of 1487, which gave statutory recognition
to judicial functions which had for some time been exercised by the
Privy Council or a committee thereof, sitting in a room known as the
Star Chamber. In later days, this Court of Star Chamber was perverted
into an instrument of tyranny; in Henry’s time, it was the only
judicial body which was out of reach of the fear or suspicion of being
terrorised by a powerful noble. It had come into being because the
Sanction of the ordinary law was inadequate to deal with barons who
chose to over-ride the law. The Privy Council could make and enforce
its decrees without fear. Under these conditions, the powers it had
assumed were necessary to the assertion of the royal authority against
offenders who contemned the normal Courts.
Without the confident maintenance of the king’s authority against such
offenders, the recurrence of the anarchy of the last fifty years would
have constantly threatened; but it is obvious that the powers needed
to that end might be misused for the ends of tyranny. Yet for more
than a century the Court exercised its functions unmistakably for the
public weal. Henry’s Act is notable, not as creating the Court, but as
formally recognising and regulating its duties; a sound step, tending
to prevent its abuse, not to introduce its use.
The other Act, however, that of 1495, is not capable of any such
defence. It was abused from the beginning, and was the great instrument
of those exactions by the notorious Empson and Dudley, which so stain
the record of the latter half of Henry’s reign. Its repeal was one
of the first and most popular acts of his successor. It is to be
remembered, however, that though Empson and Dudley were not slow in
getting to their evil work, their grosser activities were exercised in
the last decade of the reign after Cardinal Morton’s decease. Henry
was never generous; but the thrift and “nearness” of his earlier
days took some time in developing into the grasping sordidness of
his later years. More than half his reign had passed before the term
extortionate could be applied to him without exaggeration. The Act,
when it was passed, purported to be, and probably was, intended to
prevent offenders against the law from escaping justice through lack
of an accuser. It permitted judges to institute in their own Courts,
on information laid by a resident in the district, proceedings for
offences not involving penalties affecting the life or limb of
the guilty party. Such men as Empson and Dudley, however, had no
difficulty--with partial if not complete connivance from the king--in
procuring information which would enable them under colour of law to
impose extortionate fines for the king’s benefit and incidentally to
extract from the victims very handsome perquisites for themselves.
VI
FOREIGN POLICY
The reign of Henry V. had made the English king as powerful a monarch
as any in Europe. The sixty-three years that intervened between his
death and the accession of Henry VII. saw England lose her pride of
place among the nations. On the other hand, the attempt of Charles
the Bold to create a central Burgundian kingdom had failed, while,
partly on the wreck of his schemes, Louis XI. had consolidated the
French monarchy, and the kingdom he left to Charles VIII. required
for its completion only the effective absorption of Brittany. The
union of Aragon and Castile by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella
had raised Spain to a new position, which in like manner lacked but
one thing, the conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada, for its
complete establishment. Maximilian, “King of the Romans,” heir to
Austria and practically heir to the Imperial crown, had strengthened
his own position by marrying the Duchess of Burgundy, Charles the
Bold’s daughter, and thus acquiring a paramount interest in the wealthy
Netherlands. England, with her internal turmoils and her lost military
prestige, had for the moment lost all weight in the counsels of Europe.
Even had the immediate termination of civil discord been assured, she
was too much exhausted to recover her place by force of arms; and as
long as there was a Yorkist Pretender at large, civil discord could not
be regarded as conclusively at an end. Nevertheless, even during the
years while his dynasty was threatened, the king’s diplomatic skill
completely changed the relations of England and the Continental Powers;
while his policy towards Scotland kept the normal hostility of the
Northern kingdom in check, and bore ultimate fruit in the union of the
crowns, a century afterwards. He did not, like Wolsey--his disciple as
far as methods were concerned--achieve or aim at a dominant position;
but when English interests were concerned, the voice of England could
not in his later years be neglected, as at the beginning of the reign.
He worked not by exploits in the stricken field but by diplomacy,
therein illustrating his modernity. He sent armies into Brittany
and Picardy, but they were intended to threaten, not to strike. He
found a kindred spirit in Ferdinand of Aragon: of whom Louis XII. in
later years complained that he had once cheated him. “He lies,” said
Ferdinand, with pride; “I have cheated him three times.” Ferdinand’s
respect was reserved for Henry, whom he could not cheat at all, or even
out-wit, which is not quite the same thing. Henry did not cheat--that
is, he did not break faith; but his engagements were always so
carefully hedged that the smallest evasion on the part of an ally could
be made an adequate ground for complete evasion on his own. He could
not prevent the absorption of Brittany; but the French king, as soon as
he turned his ambitions towards Italy, found that Henry could hamper
him so seriously that he willingly bought him off. Maximilian remained
impecunious--harmless, therefore, unless he could persuade some one
else to finance him--since the Netherlands declined to recognise his
authority. As for Ferdinand, Henry fought him with his own weapons; and
evenly matched as they were, the Englishman did not prove less adept
than the Spaniard. Their first treaty seemed a very one-sided affair;
but Henry in fact won by it that recognition which was of the first
importance to him at that early stage, while he appeared to render in
return a great deal more than he actually gave. In 1495, the Spanish
sovereigns attached so much value to his alliance that in spite of
haggling they were obliged next year to concede him his own terms,
which, though not extravagant, were much higher than they liked, and
very much higher than he would have ventured even to propose six or
seven years earlier. But they could still regard the betrothal of their
daughter Katherine to the Prince of Wales as something of an act of
grace on their part. Four years later, it is evident that they thought
Henry could better afford to break that marriage off than they could
themselves: and again a little later, when Prince Arthur died, they
were not a whit less desirous than Henry himself of betrothing the
young widow to the new Prince of Wales. This restoration of status
Henry achieved at the cost of nothing more than some military parade
which was very much more than recouped out of the French treasury.
The key to Henry’s success is to be found just in the fact that the
most astute of his rivals was quite unable to trick him; secondly, in
his skilful avoidance of any measures which committed him to a position
from which he could not retreat without loss of prestige. His value
to Spain lay chiefly in his ability to hamper France. Presently Spain
awoke to his capacity for restricting the hampering process precisely
within the limits which were convenient to himself, which might be very
much narrower than suited her. Presently again it appeared that he
might find it still more convenient to join hands with France, which
would minimise the use to be made of Maximilian. Instead of Henry being
in need of assistance against France, which might be doled out at the
convenience of Spain, Spain had to supply inducements to keep England
on her side. As a matter of fact, Henry to the last needed Ferdinand
quite as much as Ferdinand needed him, but succeeded in giving a
different impression.
VII
CHARACTER
Our survey so far seems to show conclusively that for some two-thirds
of his reign Henry conducted the business which had devolved upon
him not only with remarkable practical success but without at
all justifying the sinister impression of his character which is
indubitably prevalent. Yet, even without the record of his later years,
as to which something remains to be said, this unattractive impression
is not unnatural. We feel that a great ruler of a great nation ought to
have something about him, majestic, splendid, heroic. We even forgive a
man for evil deeds done in a grand style; we do not feel our admiration
stirred even by good deeds done in a pedestrian style. Magnanimity
loses its flavour when we scent policy in it. We are offended with
a king who is not kingly, and kingliness demands those Aristotelian
virtues which are generally rendered as Magnanimity and Magnificence.
They are attributes in which the seventh Henry is conspicuously
deficient.
A phrase at the beginning of the foregoing paragraph was employed
with definite intention. Henry treated kingship as a business. He
entered upon it very much as a new managing director might enter upon
the conduct of a great concern which demands re-organisation. He knows
that the retention of his position depends on his successfulness; that
success is possible only if he has a free hand, while his board likes
to think that it is exercising the real control. He has to establish
confidence in himself within, and to re-establish confidence in the
house without. He avoids palpable injustice; no one can call him
dishonest; he knows exactly how far he can trust clients, and rely
on the co-operation of other establishments in a joint policy; and
he makes that business a distinct success--but he is not very likely
to make himself personally popular, or in any sense an object of
enthusiasm. For that, something is needed over and above a strict and
capable attention to business; and the something over and above was
wanting in Henry Tudor. In keenness of intelligence, he was more than
a match for the most astute of living statesmen. The general rectitude
of his aims was commendable; the moderation of his methods was
meritorious. He did good service to the nation over which he ruled. He
was not cruel; he was not capricious; he was never guided by prejudice
or passion; but he remains hopelessly and irredeemably unsympathetic.
Yet had he died within a year or two of his best minister, his portion
would have been cold praise, but still praise. He outlived Morton by
nearly nine years, whose baleful shadow is over his whole career,
turning a negative into a positive dislike. For in those years every
baser quality of which there is any hint in the earlier days becomes
intensified.
He had always treated marriage primarily as an affair of politics,
as was natural and inevitable, but with a sufficient respect for its
moral aspects to keep him faithful to his own wife. Yet when his son
died, the idea of joining the widow to his second son had for him
none of that repulsion which it excited almost universally in his
day. It is even said that when his own queen died he contemplated
marrying Katherine himself. It is quite certain that he contemplated
marrying Katherine’s sister Joanna of Castile, although he knew her
to be mentally deranged. His economy degenerated into niggardliness;
his politic scheming to fill his treasury developed into a griping
greed for gold. Empson and Dudley carried on their nefarious work of
extortion with his knowledge and sanction. He grew vindictive, and when
Thomas More opposed a subsidy in the Parliament of 1504, he sought an
excuse for fining the father, and the “beardless boy” himself had to
retire into private life, lest a worse thing should befall him. He had
always considered himself at liberty to break the spirit of a promise
provided that he kept the letter; but, if tradition does not wrong him,
when the Earl of Suffolk was surrendered on promise that he would not
put him to death, he took care to suggest to the Prince of Wales that
the promise would not bind his heir when his time came.
The man revealed to us in these later years is ugly, sordid, very
unlovely. But this man does not truly or fairly present to us the
real Henry who restored order in England, and recovered for her a
respectable position among the nations; holding his own in a singularly
difficult situation and keeping at bay the onslaughts of an embittered
faction at the cost of a quite astonishingly small amount of bloodshed,
and with the minimum of anything that could reasonably be called
injustice towards antagonists. This at least England owes to him, that
he did more than any of his predecessors to lay the foundations of her
commercial greatness; that he recognised more clearly than any of them
the benefit of her maritime development.
The man moreover was not altogether lacking in some finer qualities
which seem to have withered when his degeneration set in. He who
seems almost an incarnation of chill-blooded, unemotional craftiness
was capable of very human and very tender feeling. A record from the
hand of an anonymous contemporary, when his son Arthur died, has been
transcribed before, and is worth transcribing again.