PRINCE HENRY AND HIS ENVIRONMENT.
The Prince, who now succeeded to the position of heir-apparent, was
nearly five years younger than his brother. The third child and second
son of his parents, he was born on 28th June, 1491, at Greenwich, a
palace henceforth intimately associated with the history of Tudor
sovereigns. The manor of Greenwich had belonged to the alien priory of
Lewisham, and, on the dissolution of those houses, had passed into the
hands of Henry IV. Then it was granted to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,
who began to enclose the palace grounds; on his death it reverted to
the Crown; and Edward IV., many of whose tastes and characteristics
were inherited by his grandson, Henry VIII., took great delight in
beautifying and extending the palace. He gave it to his Queen,
Elizabeth, and in her possession it remained until her sympathy with
Yorkist plots was punished by the forfeiture of her lands. Henry VII.
then bestowed it on his wife, the dowager's daughter, and thus it
became the birthplace of her younger children. Here was the scene of
many a joust and tournament, of many a masque and revel; here the
young Henry, as soon as he came to the throne, was wedded to Catherine
of Aragon; here Henry's sister was married to the Duke of Suffolk; and
here were born all future Tudor sovereigns, Edward VI., Mary, (p. 016)
and Elizabeth. At Greenwich, then, through the forfeit of his
grandmother, Henry was born; he was baptised in the Church of the
Observant Friars, an Order, the object first of his special favour,[31]
and then of an equally marked dislike; the ceremony was performed by
Richard Fox,[32] then Bishop of Exeter, and afterwards one of the
child's chief advisers. His nurse was named Ann Luke, and years
afterwards, when Henry was King, he allowed her the annual pension of
twenty pounds, equivalent to about three hundred in modern currency.
The details of his early life are few and far between. Lord Herbert,
who wrote his _Life and Reign_ a century later, records that the young
Prince was destined by his father for the see of Canterbury,[33] and
provided with an education more suited to a clerical than to a lay
career. The motive ascribed to Henry VII. is typical of his character;
it was more economical to provide for younger sons out of ecclesiastical,
than royal, revenues. But the story is probably a mere inference from
the excellence of the boy's education, and from his father's thrift.
If the idea of an ecclesiastical career for young Henry was ever
entertained, it was soon abandoned for secular preferment. On 5th
April, 1492, before the child was ten months old, he was appointed to
the ancient and important posts of Warden of the Cinque Ports and
Constable of Dover Castle.[34] A little later he received the still
more honourable office of Earl Marshal; the duties were performed by
deputy, but a goodly portion of the fees was doubtless (p. 017)
appropriated for the expenses of the boy's establishment, or found its
way into the royal coffers. Further promotion awaited him at the
mature age of three. On 12th September, 1494, he became Lord-Lieutenant
of Ireland;[35] six weeks later he was created Duke of York, and
dubbed, with the usual quaint and formal ceremonies,[36] a Knight of
the Bath. In December, he was made Warden of the Scottish Marches, and
he was invested with the Garter in the following May.[37]
[Footnote 31: _L. and P._, i., 4871.]
[Footnote 32: Fox's own statement, _L. and P._,
iv., 5791.]
[Footnote 33: Herbert gives Paolo Sarpi as his
authority.]
[Footnote 34: G.E.C [okayne], _Complete Peerage_,
_s.v._ Cornwall.]
[Footnote 35: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, Rolls
Ser., ii., 374.]
[Footnote 36: _Ib._, i., 388-404; _Paston Letters_,
iii., 384-85.]
[Footnote 37: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, ii., 57.]
The accumulation of these great offices of State, any one of which
might have taxed the powers of a tried administrator, in the feeble
hands of a child appears at first sight a trifle irrational; but there
was always method in Henry's madness. In bestowing these administrative
posts upon his children he was really concentrating them in his own
person and bringing them directly under his own supervision. It was
the policy whereby the early Roman Emperors imposed upon Republican
Rome the substance, without the form, of despotism. It limited the
powers of mischief which Henry's nobles might otherwise have enjoyed,
and provided incomes for his children without increasing taxation or
diminishing the privy purse. The work of administration could be done
at least as effectively, much more economically, and with far less
danger to internal peace by deputies of lower rank than the dukes and
earls and barons who had been wont to abuse these high positions for
the furtherance of private ends, and often for the levying of (p. 018)
private war. Nowhere were the advantages of Henry's policy more
conspicuous than in his arrangements for the government of Ireland.
Ever since Richard, Duke of York, and George, Duke of Clarence, had
ruled as Irish viceroys, Ireland had been a Yorkist stronghold. There
Simnel had been crowned king, and there peers and peasants had fought
for Perkin Warbeck. Something must be done to heal the running sore.
Possibly Henry thought that some of Ireland's loyalty might be
diverted from Yorkist channels by the selection of a Tudor prince as
its viceroy; but he put his trust in more solid measures. As deputy to
his infant son he nominated one who, though but a knight, was perhaps
the ablest man among his privy council. It was in this capacity that
Sir Edward Poynings[38] crossed to Ireland about the close of 1494,
and called the Parliament of Drogheda. Judged by the durability of its
legislation, it was one of the most memorable of parliaments; and for
nearly three hundred years Poynings' laws remained the foundation upon
which rested the constitutional relations between the sister kingdoms.
Even more lasting was the precedent set by Prince Henry's creation as
Duke of York; from that day to this, from Henry VIII. to the present
Prince of Wales, the second son of the sovereign or of the heir-apparent
has almost invariably been invested with that dukedom.[39] The original
selection of the title was due to substantial reasons. Henry's name
was distinctively Lancastrian, his title was no less distinctively
Yorkist; it was adopted as a concession to Yorkist prejudice. (p. 019)
It was a practical reminder of the fact which the Tudor laureate,
Skelton, celebrated in song: "The rose both red and white, in one rose
now doth grow". It was also a tacit assertion of the death of the last
Duke of York in the Tower and of the imposture of Perkin Warbeck, now
pretending to the title.
[Footnote 38: See the present writer in _D.N.B._,
xlvi., 271.]
[Footnote 39: An exception was made in the case of
the late Duke of Edinburgh. It was designed if
Henry VIII. had a second son, to make him Duke of
York (_L. and P._, vii., 1364).]
But thoughts of the coercion of Ireland and conciliation of Yorkists
were as yet far from the mind of the child, round whose person these
measures were made to centre. Precocious he must have been, if the
phenomenal development of brow and the curiously mature expression
attributed to him in his portrait[40] are any indication of his
intellectual powers at the age at which he is represented. Without the
childish lips and nose, the face might well be that of a man of fifty;
and with the addition of a beard, the portrait would be an unmistakable
likeness of Henry himself in his later years. When the Prince was no
more than a child, says Erasmus, he was set to study.[41] He had, we
are told, a vivid and active mind, above measure able to execute
whatever tasks he undertook; and he never attempted anything in which
he did not succeed.[42] The Tudors had no modern dread of educational
over-pressure when applied to their children, and the young Henry was
probably as forward a pupil as his son, Edward VI., his daughter,
Elizabeth, or his grand-niece, Lady Jane Grey. But, fortunately for
Henry, a physical exuberance corrected his mental precocity; and, (p. 020)
as he grew older, any excessive devotion to the Muses was checked by
an unwearied pursuit of bodily culture. He was the first of English
sovereigns to be educated under the new influence of the Renaissance.
Scholars, divines and poets thronged the Court of Henry VII. Margaret
Beaufort, who ruled in Henry's household, was a signal benefactor to
the cause of English learning. Lady Margaret professors commemorate
her name in both our ancient universities, and in their bidding prayers
she is to this day remembered. Two colleges at Cambridge revere her as
their foundress; Caxton, the greatest of English printers, owed much
to her munificence, and she herself translated into English books from
both Latin and French. Henry VII., though less accomplished that the
later Tudors, evinced an intelligent interest in art and letters, and
provided for his children efficient instructors; while his Queen,
Elizabeth of York, is described by Erasmus as possessing the soundest
judgment and as being remarkable for her prudence as well as for her
piety. Bernard Andre,[43] historian and poet, who had been tutor to
Prince Arthur, probably took no small part in the education of his
younger brother; to him he dedicated, after Arthur's death, two of the
annual summaries of events which he was in the habit of compiling.
Giles D'Ewes,[44] apparently a Frenchman and the author of a notable
French grammar, taught that language to Prince Henry, as many (p. 021)
years later he did to his daughter, Queen Mary; probably either D'Ewes
or Andre trained his handwriting, which is a curious compromise
between the clear and bold Italian style, soon to be adopted by
well-instructed Englishmen, and the old English hieroglyphics in which
more humbly educated individuals, including Shakespeare, concealed the
meaning of their words. But the most famous of Henry's teachers was
the poet Skelton, the greatest name in English verse from Lydgate down
to Surrey. Skelton was poet laureate to Henry VII. Court, and refers
in his poems to his wearing of the white and green of Tudor
liveries.[45] He celebrated in verse Arthur's creation as Prince of
Wales and Henry's as Duke of York;[46] and before the younger prince
was nine years old, this "incomparable light and ornament of British
Letters," as Erasmus styles him, was directing Henry's studies.
Skelton himself writes.--
The honor of England I learned to spell,
I gave him drink of the sugred well
Of Helicon's waters crystalline,
Acquainting him with the Muses nine.
[Footnote 40: This is an anonymous portrait of
Henry at the age of eighteen months or two years
belonging to Sir Edmund and Lady Verney.]
[Footnote 41: Erasmus, _Epist._, p. 1182; _L. and
P._, iv., 5412.]
[Footnote 42: This testimonial was written in 1528
before Henry VIII. had given the most striking
demonstrations of its truth.]
[Footnote 43: See _D.N.B._, i., 398. Erasmus,
however, described Andre as being "of mean
abilities" (_L. and P._, iv., 626).]
[Footnote 44: _D.N.B._, xiv., 449; _cf._ _L. and
P._, i., 513. On Henry VIII's accession D'Ewes was
appointed keeper of the King's library at Richmond
with a salary of L10 per year.]
[Footnote 45: Skelton, _Works_, ed. Dyce, vol. i.,
p. xiii.; the white and green still survive as the
colours of Jesus College, Oxford, founded by Queen
Elizabeth.]
[Footnote 46: _Ib._, p. xxi.; a copy of the latter,
which Dyce could not find, is in _Brit. Mus. Addit.
MS. 26787_.]
The coarseness of Skelton's satires and his open disregard of the
clerical vows of chastity may justify some doubt of the value of the
poet's influence on Henry's character; but he so far observed the
conventional duties of his post as to dedicate to his royal pupil, in
1501, a moral treatise in Latin of no particular worth.[47] More
deserving of Henry's study were two books inscribed to him a (p. 022)
little later by young Boerio, son of the King's Genoese physician and
a pupil of Erasmus, who, according to his own account, suffered untold
afflictions from the father's temper. One was a translation of
Isocrates' _De Regno_, the other of Lucian's tract against believing
calumnies.[48] The latter was, to judge from the tale of Henry's
victims, a precept which he scarcely laid to heart in youth. In other
respects he was apt enough to learn. He showed "remarkable docility
for mathematics," became proficient in Latin, spoke French with ease,
understood Italian, and, later on, possibly from Catherine of Aragon,
acquired a knowledge of Spanish. In 1499 Erasmus himself, the greatest
of the humanists, visited his friend, Lord Mountjoy, near Greenwich,
and made young Henry's acquaintance. "I was staying," he writes,[49]
"at Lord Mountjoy's country house when Thomas More came to see me, and
took me out with him for a walk as far as the next village, where all
the King's children, except Prince Arthur, who was then the eldest
son, were being educated. When we came into the hall, the attendants
not only of the palace, but also of Mountjoy's household, were all
assembled. In the midst stood Prince Henry, now nine years old, and
having already something of royalty in his demeanour in which there
was a certain dignity combined with singular courtesy. On his right
was Margaret, about eleven years of age, afterwards married to James,
King of Scots; and on his left played Mary, a child of four. Edmund
was an infant in arms. More, with his companion Arnold, after (p. 023)
paying his respects to the boy Henry, the same that is now King of
England, presented him with some writing. For my part, not having
expected anything of the sort, I had nothing to offer, but promised
that, on another occasion, I would in some way declare my duty towards
him. Meantime, I was angry with More for not having warned me, especially
as the boy sent me a little note, while we were at dinner, to challenge
something from my pen. I went home, and in the Muses' spite, from whom
I had been so long divorced, finished the poem within three days." The
poem,[50] in which Britain speaks her own praise and that of her
princes, Henry VII. and his children, was dedicated to the Duke of
York and accompanied by a letter in which Erasmus commended Henry's
devotion to learning. Seven years later Erasmus again wrote to Henry,
now Prince of Wales, condoling with him upon the death of his
brother-in-law, Philip of Burgundy, King of Castile. Henry replied in
cordial manner, inviting the great scholar to continue the correspondence.
The style of his letter so impressed Erasmus that he suspected, as he
says,[51] "some help from others in the ideas and expressions. In a
conversation I afterwards had with William, Lord Mountjoy, he tried by
various arguments to dispel that suspicion, and when he found he could
not do so he gave up the point and let it pass until he was
sufficiently instructed in the case. On another occasion, when we were
talking alone together, he brought out a number of the Prince's
letters, some to other people and some to himself, and among them one
which answered to mine: in these letters were manifest signs of (p. 024)
comment, addition, suppression, correction and alteration--You might
recognise the first drafting of a letter, and you might make out the
second and third, and sometimes even the fourth correction; but
whatever was revised or added was in the same handwriting. I had then
no further grounds for hesitation, and, overcome by the facts, I laid
aside all suspicion." Neither, he adds, would his correspondent doubt
Henry VIII's authorship of the book against Luther if he knew that
king's "happy genius". That famous book is sufficient proof that
theological studies held no small place in Henry's education. They
were cast in the traditional mould, for the Lancastrians were very
orthodox, and the early Tudors followed in their steps. Margaret
Beaufort left her husband to devote herself to good works and a
semi-monastic life; Henry VII. converted a heretic at the stake and
left him to burn;[52] and the theological conservatism, which Henry
VIII. imbibed in youth, clung to him to the end of his days.
[Footnote 47: _Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 26787._]
[Footnote 48: _Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 19553._]
[Footnote 49: F.M. Nichols, _Epistles of Erasmus_,
i., 201.]
[Footnote 50: Printed in 1500 at the end of
Erasmus's _Adagia_.]
[Footnote 51: F.M. Nichols, pp. 423-24; _L. and
P._, iv., 5412.]
[Footnote 52: _Cotton MS._, Vitellius, A., xvi., f.
172.]
Nor were the arts neglected, and in his early years Henry acquired a
passionate and lifelong devotion to music. Even as Duke of York he had
a band of minstrels apart from those of the King and Prince Arthur;[53]
and when he was king his minstrels formed an indispensable part of his
retinue, whether he went on progress through his kingdom, or crossed
the seas on errands of peace or war.[54] He became an expert performer
on the lute, the organ and the harpsichord, and all the cares of State
could not divert him from practising on those instruments both day (p. 025)
and night. He sent all over England in search of singing men and boys
for the chapel royal, and sometimes appropriated choristers from
Wolsey's chapel, which he thought better provided than his own.[55]
From Venice he enticed to England the organist of St. Mark's, Dionysius
Memo, and on occasion Henry and his Court listened four hours at a
stretch to Memo's organ recitals.[56] Not only did he take delight in
the practice of music by himself and others; he also studied its
theory and wrote with the skill of an expert. Vocal and instrumental
pieces of his own composition, preserved among the manuscripts at the
British Museum,[57] rank among the best productions of the time; and
one of his anthems, "O Lorde, the Maker of all thyng," is of the
highest order of merit, and still remains a favourite in English
cathedrals.
[Footnote 53: _Hist. MSS. Comm._, 5th Rep., App.,
p. 549.]
[Footnote 54: _L. and P._, i., 4314.]
[Footnote 55: _L. and P._, ii., 410, 4024.]
[Footnote 56: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 780; _L. and P._,
ii., 2401, 3455.]
[Footnote 57: _E.g._, _Add. MS. 31922_.]
In April, 1502, at the age of ten, Henry became the heir-apparent to
the English throne. He succeeded at once to the dukedom of Cornwall,
but again a precedent was set which was followed but yesterday; and
ten months were allowed to elapse before he was, on 18th February,
1503, created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, the dukedom of York
becoming void until a king or an heir apparent should again have a
second son.[58] The first sign of his increased importance was his
implication in the maze of matrimonial intrigues which formed so large
a part of sixteenth-century diplomacy. The last thing kings (p. 026)
considered was the domestic felicity of their children; their marriages
were pieces in the diplomatic game and sometimes the means by which
States were built up. While Duke of York, Henry had been proposed as a
husband for Eleanor,[59] daughter of the Archduke Philip; and his
sister Mary as the bride of Philip's son Charles, who, as the heir of
the houses of Castile and of Aragon, of Burgundy and of Austria, was
from the cradle destined to wield the imperial sceptre of Caesar. No
further steps were taken at the time, and Prince Arthur's death
brought other projects to the front.
[Footnote 58: The next prince to hold the title was
Charles, afterwards Charles I., who was created
Duke of York on 6th Jan., 1605.]
[Footnote 59: Afterwards Queen of Portugal and then
of France. _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, i., 285,
425.]
Immediately on receiving the news, and two days before they dated
their letter of condolence to Henry VII., Ferdinand and Isabella
commissioned the Duke of Estrada to negotiate a marriage between the
widowed Catherine and her youthful brother-in-law.[60] No doubt was
entertained but that the Pope would grant the necessary dispensation,
for the spiritual head of Christendom was apt to look tenderly on the
petitions of the powerful princes of this world. A more serious
difficulty was the question of the widow's dower. Part only had been
paid, and Ferdinand not merely refused to hand over the rest, but
demanded the return of his previous instalments. Henry, on the other
hand, considered himself entitled to the whole, refused to refund a
penny, and gave a cold reception to the proposed marriage between
Catherine and his sole surviving son. He was, however, by no means
blind to the advantages of the Spanish matrimonial and political
alliance, and still less to the attractions of Catherine's dower; (p. 027)
he declined to send back the Princess, when Isabella, shocked at Henry
VII.'s proposal to marry his daughter-in-law himself, demanded her
return; and eventually, when Ferdinand reduced his terms, he suffered
the marriage treaty to be signed. On 25th June, 1503, Prince Henry and
Catherine were solemnly betrothed in the Bishop of Salisbury's house,
in Fleet Street.
[Footnote 60: _Sp. Cal._, i., 267.]
The papal dispensation arrived in time to solace Isabella on her
death-bed in November, 1504; but that event once more involved in
doubt the prospects of the marriage. The crown of Castile passed from
Isabella to her daughter Juana; the government of the kingdom was
claimed by Ferdinand and by Juana's husband, Philip of Burgundy. On
their way from the Netherlands to claim their inheritance, Philip and
Juana were driven on English shores. Henry VII. treated them with all
possible courtesy, and made Philip a Knight of the Garter, while
Philip repaid the compliment by investing Prince Henry with the Order
of the Golden Fleece.[61] But advantage was taken of Philip's plight
to extort from him the surrender of the Earl of Suffolk, styled the
White Rose, and a commercial treaty with the Netherlands, which the
Flemings named the Malus Intercursus. Three months after his arrival
in Castile, Philip died, and Henry began to fish in the troubled
waters for a share in his dominions. Two marriage schemes occurred to
him; he might win the hand of Philip's sister Margaret, now Regent of
the Netherlands, and with her hand the control of those provinces; or
he might marry Juana and claim in her right to administer Castile. On
the acquisition of Castile he set his mind. If he could not gain (p. 028)
it by marriage with Juana, he thought he could do so by marrying
her son and heir, the infant Charles, to his daughter Mary. Whichever
means he took to further his design, it would naturally irritate
Ferdinand and make him less anxious for the completion of the marriage
between Catherine and Prince Henry. Henry VII. was equally averse from
the consummation of the match. Now that he was scheming with Charles's
other grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian, to wrest the government of
Castile from Ferdinand's grasp, the alliance of the King of Aragon had
lost its attraction, and it was possible that the Prince of Wales
might find elsewhere a more desirable bride. Henry's marriage with
Catherine was to have been accomplished when he completed the age of
fourteen; but on the eve of his fifteenth birthday he made a solemn
protestation that the contract was null and void, and that he would
not carry out his engagements.[62] This protest left him free to
consider other proposals, and enhanced his value as a negotiable
asset. More than once negotiations were started for marrying him to
Marguerite de Valois, sister of the Duke of Angouleme, afterwards
famous as Francis I.;[63] and in the last months of his father's
reign, the Prince of Wales was giving audience to ambassadors from
Maximilian, who came to suggest matrimonial alliances between the
prince and a daughter of Duke Albert of Bavaria, and between Henry
VII. and the Lady Margaret of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands.[64]
Meanwhile, Ferdinand, threatened on all sides, first came to terms (p. 029)
with France; he married a French princess, Germaine de Foix, abandoned
his claim to Navarre, and bought the security of Naples by giving
Louis XII. a free hand in the north of Italy. He then diverted
Maximilian from his designs on Castile by humouring his hostility to
Venice. By that bait he succeeded in drawing off his enemies, and the
league of Cambrai united them all, Ferdinand and Louis, Emperor and
Pope, in an iniquitous attack on the Italian Republic. Henry VII.,
fortunately for his reputation, was left out of the compact. He was
still cherishing his design on Castile, and in December, 1508, the
treaty of marriage between Mary and Charles was formally signed. It
was the last of his worldly triumphs; the days of his life were
numbered, and in the early months of 1509 he was engaged in making a
peace with his conscience.
[Footnote 61: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, ii., 158;
_Ven. Cal._, i., 867.]
[Footnote 62: _Sp. Cal._, i., 458; _L. and P._,
iv., 5791.]
[Footnote 63: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, i.,
241-47; ii. 342-43.]
[Footnote 64: _Sp. Cal._, Suppl., p. 23.]
* * * * *
The twenty-four years during which Henry VII. had guided the destinies
of England were a momentous epoch in the development of Western
civilisation. It was the dawn of modern history, of the history of
Europe in the form in which we know it to-day. The old order was in a
state of liquidation. The mediaeval ideal, described by Dante, of a
universal monarchy with two aspects, spiritual and temporal, and two
heads, emperor and pope, was passing away. Its place was taken by the
modern but narrower ideal of separate polities, each pursuing its own
course, independent of, and often in conflict with, other societies.
Unity gave way to diversity of tongues, of churches, of states; and
the cosmopolitan became nationalist, patriot, separatist. Imperial
monarchy shrank to a shadow; and kings divided the emperor's power (p. 030)
at the same time that they consolidated their own. They extended their
authority on both sides, at the expense of their superior, the
emperor, and at the expense of their subordinate feudal lords. The
struggle between the disruptive forces of feudalism and the central
power of monarchy ended at last in monarchical triumph; and internal
unity prepared the way for external expansion. France under Louis XI.
was first in the field. She had surmounted her civil troubles half a
century earlier than England. She then expelled her foreign foes,
crushed the remnants of feudal independence, and began to expand at
the cost of weaker States. Parts of Burgundy, Provence, and Brittany
became merged in France; the exuberant strength of the new-formed
nation burst the barriers of the Alps and overflowed into the plains
of Italy. The time of universal monarchy was past, but the dread of it
remained; and from Charles VIII.'s invasion of Italy in 1494 to
Francis I.'s defeat at Pavia in 1525, French dreams of world-wide
sovereignty were the nightmare of other kings. Those dreams might, as
Europe feared, have been realised, had not other States followed
France in the path of internal consolidation. Ferdinand of Aragon
married Isabella of Castile, drove out the Moors, and founded the
modern Spanish kingdom. Maximilian married Mary, the daughter of
Charles the Bold, and joined the Netherlands to Austria. United France
found herself face to face with other united States, and the political
system of modern Europe was roughly sketched out. The boundaries of
the various kingdoms were fluctuating. There still remained minor
principalities and powers, chiefly in Italy and Germany, which offered
an easy prey to their ambitious neighbours; for both nations had (p. 031)
sacrificed internal unity to the shadow of universal dominion, Germany
in temporal, and Italy in spiritual, things. Mutual jealousy of each
other's growth at the expense of these States gave rise to the theory
of the balance of power; mutual adjustment of each other's disputes
produced international law; and the necessity of watching each other's
designs begat modern diplomacy.[65]
[Footnote 65: _Cf._ A.O. Meyer, _Die Englische
Diplomatie_, Breslau, 1901.]
Parallel with these developments in the relations between one State
and another marched a no less momentous revolution in the domestic
position of their sovereigns. National expansion abroad was marked by
a corresponding growth in royal authority at home. The process was not
new in England; every step in the path of the tribal chief of Saxon
pirates to the throne of a united England denoted an advance in the
nature of kingly power. Each extension of his sway intensified his
authority, and his power grew in degree as it increased in area. So
with fifteenth-century sovereigns. Local liberties and feudal rights
which had checked a Duke of Brittany or a King of Aragon were
powerless to restrain the King of France or of Spain. The sphere of
royal authority encroached upon all others; all functions and all
powers tended to concentrate in royal hands. The king was the emblem
of national unity, the centre of national aspirations, and the object
of national reverence. The Renaissance gave fresh impetus to the
movement. Men turned not only to the theology, literature, and art of
the early Christian era; they began to study anew its political
organisation and its system of law and jurisprudence. The code of
Justinian was as much a revelation as the original Greek of the (p. 032)
New Testament. Roman imperial law seemed as superior to the barbarities
of common law as classical was to mediaeval Latin; and Roman law
supplanted indigenous systems in France and in Germany, in Spain and
in Scotland. Both the Roman imperial law and the Roman imperial
constitution were useful models for kings of the New Monarchy; the
Roman Empire was a despotism; _quod principi placuit legis habet
vigorem_ ran the fundamental principle of Roman Empire.[66] Nor was
this all; Roman emperors were habitually deified, and men in the
sixteenth century seemed to pay to their kings while alive the Divine
honours which Romans paid to their emperors when dead. "Le nouveau
Messie," says Michelet, "est le roi."[67]
[Footnote 66: The conclusion of the maxim _utpote
cum lege regia quae de imperio ejus lata est,
populus ei et in eum omne suum imperium et
potestatem conferat_ (Ulpian, _Digest_, I., iv.,
1), was conveniently forgotten by apologists for
absolutism, though the Tudors respected it in
practice.]
[Footnote 67: _Hist. de France_, ed. 1879, ix.,
301.]
Nowhere was the king more emphatically the saviour of society than in
England. The sixty years of Lancastrian rule were in the seventeenth
century represented as the golden age of parliamentary government, a
sort of time before the fall to which popular orators appealed when
they wished to paint in vivid colours the evils of Stuart tyranny. But
to keen observers of the time the pre-eminent characteristic of
Lancastrian rule appeared to be its "lack of governance" or, in modern
phrase, administrative anarchy.[68] There was no subordination in the
State. The weakness of the Lancastrian title left the king at the
mercy of Parliament, and the limitations of Parliament were never (p. 033)
more apparent than when its powers stood highest. Even in the realm of
legislation, the statute book has seldom been so barren. Its principal
acts were to narrow the county electorate to an oligarchy, to restrict
the choice of constituencies to resident knights and burgesses, and to
impair its own influence as a focus of public opinion. It was not
content with legislative authority; it interfered with an executive
which it could hamper but could not control. It was possessed by the
inveterate fallacy that freedom and strong government are things
incompatible; that the executive is the natural enemy of the Legislature;
that if one is strong, the other must be weak; and of the two
alternatives it vastly preferred a weak executive. So, to limit the
king's power, it sought to make him "live of his own," when "his own"
was absolutely inadequate to meet the barest necessities of government.
Parliament was in fact irresponsible; the connecting link between it
and the executive had yet to be found. Hence the Lancastrian "lack of
governance"; it ended in a generation of civil war, and the memory of
that anarchy explains much in Tudor history.
[Footnote 68: Fortescue, _Governance of England_,
ed. Plummer, 1885.]
The problems of Henry VIII.'s reign can indeed only be solved by
realising the misrule of the preceding century, the failure of
parliamentary government, and the strength of the popular demand for a
firm and masterful hand. It is a modern myth that Englishmen have
always been consumed with enthusiasm for parliamentary government and
with a thirst for a parliamentary vote. The interpretation of history,
like that of the Scriptures, varies from age to age; and present
political theories colour our views of the past. The political
development of the nineteenth century created a parliamentary legend;
and civil and religious liberty became the inseparable stage (p. 034)
properties of the Englishman. Whenever he appeared on the boards, he
was made to declaim about the rights of the subject and the privileges
of Parliament. It was assumed that the desire for a voice in the
management of his own affairs had at all times and all seasons been
the mainspring of his actions; and so the story of Henry's rule was
made into a political mystery. In reality, love of freedom has not
always been, nor will it always remain, the predominant note in the
English mind. At times the English people have pursued it through
battle and murder with grim determination, but other times have seen
other ideals. On occasion the demand has been for strong government
irrespective of its methods, and good government has been preferred to
self-government. Wars of expansion and wars of defence have often
cooled the love of liberty and impaired the faith in parliaments; and
generally English ideals have been strictly subordinated to a passion
for material prosperity.
Never was this more apparent than under the Tudors. The parliamentary
experiment of the Lancastrians was premature and had failed.
Parliamentary institutions were discredited and people were
indifferent to parliamentary rights and privileges: "A plague on both
your Houses," was the popular feeling, "give us peace, above all peace
at home to pursue new avenues of wealth, new phases of commercial
development, peace to study new problems of literature, religion, and
art"; and both Houses passed out of the range of popular imagination,
and almost out of the sphere of independent political action.
Parliament played during the sixteenth century a modester part than it
had played since its creation. Towards the close of the period (p. 035)
Shakespeare wrote his play of _King John_, and in that play there is
not the faintest allusion to Magna Carta.[69] Such an omission would
be inconceivable now or at any time since the death of Elizabeth; for
the Great Charter is enshrined in popular imagination as the palladium
of the British constitution. It was the fetish to which Parliament
appealed against the Stuarts. But no such appeal would have touched a
Tudor audience. It needed and desired no weapon against a sovereign
who embodied national desires, and ruled in accord with the national
will. References to the charter are as rare in parliamentary debates
as they are in the pages of Shakespeare. The best hated instruments of
Stuart tyranny were popular institutions under the Tudors; and the
Star Chamber itself found its main difficulty in the number of suitors
which flocked to a court where the king was judge, the law's delays
minimised, counsel's fees moderate, and justice rarely denied merely
because it might happen to be illegal. England in the sixteenth
century put its trust in its princes far more than it did in its
parliaments; it invested them with attributes almost Divine. By Tudor
majesty the poet was inspired with thoughts of the divinity that doth
hedge a king. "Love for the King," wrote a Venetian of Henry VIII. in
the early years of his reign, "is universal with all who see him, for
his Highness does not seem a person of this world, but one (p. 036)
descended from heaven."[70] _Le nouveau Messie est le Roi._
[Footnote 69: Magna Carta may almost be said to
have been "discovered" by the parliamentary
opponents of the Stuarts; and in discovering it,
they misinterpreted several of its clauses such as
the _judicium parium_. Allusion was, however, made
to Magna Carta in the proceedings against Wolsey
for _Praemunire_ (Fox, vi., 43).]
[Footnote 70: _Ven Cal._, ii., 336.]
Such were the tendencies which Henry VII. and Henry VIII. crystallised
into practical weapons of absolute government. Few kings have attained
a greater measure of permanent success than the first of the Tudors;
it was he who laid the unseen foundations upon which Henry VIII.
erected the imposing edifice of his personal authority. An orphan from
birth and an exile from childhood, he stood near enough to the throne
to invite Yorkist proscription, but too far off to unite in his favour
Lancastrian support. He owed his elevation to the mistakes of his
enemies and to the cool, calculating craft which enabled him to use
those mistakes without making mistakes of his own. He ran the great
risk of his life in his invasion of England, but henceforth he left
nothing to chance. He was never betrayed by passion or enthusiasm into
rash adventures, and he loved the substance, rather than the pomp and
circumstance of power. Untrammelled by scruples, unimpeded by principles,
he pursued with constant fidelity the task of his life, to secure the
throne for himself and his children, to pacify his country, and to
repair the waste of the civil wars. Folly easily glides into war, but
to establish a permanent peace required all Henry's patience, clear
sight and far sight, caution and tenacity. A full exchequer, not empty
glory, was his first requisite, and he found in his foreign wars a
mine of money. Treason at home was turned to like profit, and the
forfeited estates of rebellious lords accumulated in the hands of the
royal family and filled the national coffers. Attainder, the
characteristic instrument of Tudor policy, was employed to (p. 037)
complete the ruin of the old English peerage which the Wars of the
Roses began: and by 1509 there was only one duke and one marquis left
in the whole of England.[71] Attainder not only removed the particular
traitor, but disqualified his family for place and power; and the process
of eliminating feudalism from the region of government, started by
Edward I., was finished by Henry VII. Feudal society has been described
as a pyramid; the upper slopes were now washed away leaving an
impassable precipice, with the Tudor monarch alone in his glory at its
summit. Royalty had become a caste apart. Marriages between royal
children and English peers had hitherto been no uncommon thing; since
Henry VII.'s accession there have been but four, two of them in our
own day. Only one took place in the sixteenth century, and the Duke of
Suffolk was by some thought worthy of death for his presumption in
marrying the sister of Henry VIII. The peerage was weakened not only
by diminishing numbers, but by the systematic depression of those who
remained. Henry VII., like Ferdinand of Aragon,[72] preferred to
govern by means of lawyers and churchmen; they could be rewarded by
judgeships and bishoprics, and required no grants from the royal
estates. Their occupancy of office kept out territorial magnates who
abused it for private ends. Of the sixteen regents nominated by Henry
VIII. in his will, not one could boast a peerage of twelve years'
standing;[73] and all the great Tudor ministers, Wolsey and (p. 038)
Cromwell, Cecil and Walsingham, were men of comparatively humble birth.
With similar objects Henry VII. passed laws limiting the number of
retainers and forbidding the practice of maintenance. The courts of
Star Chamber and Requests were developed to keep in order his powerful
subjects and give poor men protection against them. Their civil law
procedure, influenced by Roman imperial maxims, served to enhance the
royal power and dignity, and helped to build up the Tudor autocracy.
[Footnote 71: The Duke was Buckingham, and the
Marquis was Dorset.]
[Footnote 72: See a description of Ferdinand's
court by John Stile, the English envoy, in _L. and
P._, i., 490.]
[Footnote 73: See the present writer's _England
under Protector Somerset_, p. 38.]
* * * * *
To the office of king thus developed and magnified, the young Prince
who stood upon the steps of the throne brought personal qualities of
the highest order, and advantages to which his father was completely a
stranger. His title was secure, his treasury overflowed, and he
enjoyed the undivided affections of his people. There was no alternative
claimant. The White Rose, indeed, had languished in the Tower since
his surrender by Philip, and the Duke of Buckingham had some years
before been mentioned as a possible successor to the throne;[74] but
their claims only served to remind men that nothing but Henry's life
stood between them and anarchy, for his young brother Edmund, Duke of
Somerset, had preceded Arthur to an early grave. Upon the single
thread of Henry's life hung the peace of the realm; no other could
have secured the throne without a second civil war. It was small
wonder if England regarded Henry with a somewhat extravagant loyalty.
Never had king ascended the throne more richly endowed with mental and
physical gifts. He was ten weeks short of his eighteenth year. (p. 039)
From both his parents he inherited grace of mind and of person. His
father in later years was broken in health and soured in spirit, but
in the early days of his reign he had charmed the citizens of York
with his winning smile. His mother is described by the Venetian
ambassador as a woman of great beauty and ability. She transmitted to
Henry many of the popular characteristics of her father, Edward IV.,
though little of the military genius of that consummate commander who
fought thirteen pitched battles and lost not one. Unless eye-witnesses
sadly belied themselves, Henry VIII. must have been the desire of all
eyes. "His Majesty," wrote one a year or two later,[75] "is the
handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on; above the usual height, with
an extremely fine calf to his leg; his complexion fair and bright,
with auburn hair combed straight and short in the French fashion, and
a round face so very beautiful that it would become a pretty woman,
his throat being rather long and thick.... He speaks French, English,
Latin, and a little Italian; plays well on the lute and harpsichord,
sings from the book at sight, draws the bow with greater strength than
any man in England, and jousts marvellously." Another foreign resident
in 1519[76] described him as "extremely handsome. Nature could not
have done more for him. He is much handsomer than any other sovereign
in Christendom; a great deal handsomer than the King of France; very
fair and his whole frame admirably proportioned. On hearing that
Francis I. wore a beard, he allowed his own to grow, and as it is (p. 040)
reddish, he has now got a beard that looks like gold. He is very
accomplished, a good musician, composes well, is a capital horseman, a
fine jouster, speaks French, Latin, and Spanish.... He is very fond of
hunting, and never takes his diversion without tiring eight or ten
horses which he causes to be stationed beforehand along the line of
country he means to take, and when one is tired he mounts another, and
before he gets home they are all exhausted. He is extremely fond of
tennis, at which game it is the prettiest thing in the world to see
him play, his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest
texture."
[Footnote 74: _L. and P., Henry VII._, i., 180,
233, 319.]
[Footnote 75:_L. and P._, ii., 395.]
[Footnote 76: Giustinian, _Despatches_, ii., 312;
_Ven. Cal._, ii., 1287; _L. and P._, iii., 402.]
The change from the cold suspicious Henry VII. to such a king as this
was inevitably greeted with a burst of rapturous enthusiasm. "I have
no fear," wrote Mountjoy to Erasmus,[77] "but when you heard that our
Prince, now Henry the Eighth, whom we may well call our Octavius, had
succeeded to his father's throne, all your melancholy left you at
once. For what may you not promise yourself from a Prince, with whose
extraordinary and almost Divine character you are well acquainted....
But when you know what a hero he now shows himself, how wisely he
behaves, what a lover he is of justice and goodness, what affection he
bears to the learned, I will venture to swear that you will need no
wings to make you fly to behold this new and auspicious star. If you
could see how all the world here is rejoicing in the possession of so
great a Prince, how his life is all their desire, you could not
contain your tears for joy. The heavens laugh, the earth exults, all
things are full of milk, of honey, of nectar! Avarice is expelled the
country. Liberality scatters wealth with a bounteous hand. Our (p. 041)
King does not desire gold or gems or precious metals, but virtue,
glory, immortality." The picture is overdrawn for modern taste, but
making due allowance for Mountjoy's turgid efforts to emulate his
master's eloquence, enough remains to indicate the impression made by
Henry on a peer of liberal education. His unrivalled skill in national
sports and martial exercises appealed at least as powerfully to the
mass of his people. In archery, in wrestling, in joust and in tourney,
as well as in the tennis court or on the hunting field, Henry was a
match for the best in his kingdom. None could draw a bow, tame a
steed, or shiver a lance more deftly than he, and his single-handed
tournaments on horse and foot with his brother-in-law, the Duke of
Suffolk, are likened by one who watched them to the combats of
Achilles and Hector. These are no mere trifles below the dignity of
history; they help to explain the extraordinary hold Henry obtained
over popular imagination. Suppose there ascended the throne to-day a
young prince, the hero of the athletic world, the finest oar, the best
bat, the crack marksman of his day, it is easy to imagine the
enthusiastic support he would receive from thousands of his people who
care much for sport, and nothing at all for politics. Suppose also
that that prince were endowed with the iron will, the instinctive
insight into the hearts of his people, the profound aptitude for
government that Henry VIII. displayed, he would be a rash man who
would guarantee even now the integrity of parliamentary power or the
continuance of cabinet rule. In those days, with thirty years of civil
war and fifteen more of conspiracy fresh in men's minds, with no
alternative to anarchy save Henry VIII., with a peerage fallen (p. 042)
from its high estate, and a Parliament almost lost to respect, royal
autocracy was not a thing to dread or distrust. "If a lion knew his
strength," said Sir Thomas More of his master to Cromwell, "it were
hard for any man to rule him." Henry VIII. had the strength of a lion;
it remains to be seen how soon he learnt it, and what use he made of
that strength when he discovered the secret.
[Footnote 77: F.M. Nichols, _Epistles of Erasmus_,
i., 457.]