The Tudors.
Re-establishment Of The Regular Government.
Henry VII. (1485 — 1509).
The new sovereign of England was destined to render important
services to her; he was not, however, a great man. Amidst the
general disorder, in view of the growing desire for peace and
order, he was enabled to display a prudence and moderation which
caused him to avoid the great faults, and preserved him from the
terrible reverses which had attended his predecessors; but his
character and his acts rarely excite our admiration or respect.
His first care, on the morrow of the victory which had placed him
upon the throne, was to transfer from the castle of
Sheriffe-Sutton to the Tower of London, Edward Plantagenet, earl
of Warwick, son of the unhappy Duke of Clarence, a child of
fifteen years, who had grown up in prison since the death of his
father, and who was destined there to pass the remainder of his
life. He had had since a short time previously, as a companion in
his captivity, Princess Elizabeth, confined at Sheriffe-Sutton,
by her uncle, King Richard III., when he had been compelled to
relinquish his scheme of marrying her. The Earl of Warwick was
sent to the Tower, an abode fatal to the princes of his race.
Lady Elizabeth was, on the contrary, loaded with honours and
brought back, with a numerous retinue, to her mother, Queen
Elizabeth Woodville, already willing to hail the new sovereign
for and against whom she had plotted, and who at length promised
her the satisfaction of her ambition.
{118}
These precautions being taken, Henry VII. made his entry into
London, on the 27th of August, 1485 with much pomp, and laid upon
the high altar of St. Paul's church, the three standards under
which he had marched to victory, the image of St. George, the Red
Dragon, and, it is not known why, a brown Cow.
The people made merry in the streets, but already among the poor
a distemper manifested itself, which soon spread into all classes
of society, and made great ravages. It was a species of sweating
disease, which does not appear to have been known hitherto, and
the attacks of which were, it is said, almost always fatal. It
was necessary to wait for the amelioration of the public health
before proceeding with the coronation of the new king. On the
occasion of the ceremony, which took place on the 30th of
October, by the Cardinal-Archbishop Bourchier, the same who, two
years before, had proclaimed Richard III., the new sovereign
raised his uncle, the Earl of Pembroke, to the rank of Duke of
Bedford; his father-in-law, Lord Stanley, was created Earl of
Derby, and Sir Edward Courtenay became Earl of Devonshire. The
king at the same time took care to surround his person with a
guard of robust archers; this innovation astonished and
discontented the people, but Henry VII., nevertheless, kept his
guard; he knew by experience the small value of moral guarantees
in a time of disorder and corruption.
{119}
Parliament assembled at Westminster, on the 7th of November. The
accession of King Henry VII. to the throne was due to the
discontent of the nation under the sanguinary yoke of Richard
III. and to the hopes which were founded upon the projected union
between the two rival Houses of York and Lancaster. Henry himself
attributed it to his valour upon the battle-field of Bosworth,
from which he always dated the commencement of his reign; but the
national weariness and the royal conquest were not sufficiently
secure bases upon which to solidly found a throne, and in the
speech of Henry VII. to the reassembled Commons, he urged his
hereditary rights at the same time as the favour of the Most
High, who had given the victory to his sword. This last clause
excited some uneasiness among the great noblemen who held all
their titles and property from the fallen monarch. Henry hastened
to reassure them, declaring that each should retain "his estates
and inheritances, with the exception of the persons whom the
present Parliament should think proper to punish for their
offences." Scrupulous persons for a moment experienced an
agitation when they perceived that the majority of the members of
the House of Commons had formerly been outlawed by the Kings
Edward IV. and Richard III.; the very sovereign who had convoked
this Parliament, found himself in the same position. Had the
Houses the right to sit? The judges were consulted, and declared
that the crown removes all disqualifications, and that the king,
in ascending the throne, was, by that fact alone, relieved of all
the sentences passed upon him; the members of the House of
Commons being outlawed, were obliged to defer taking their seats
until a law should revoke their condemnation; the act was
immediately voted, and the Lancastrians, excluded by the policy
of the sovereigns of the House of York, re-entered Parliament;
all were weary of the struggle and the great noblemen easily
obtained special ordinances which re-established them in all
their rights and honours.
{120}
Such was not, however, the will of the king in all respects, he
was not bloodthirsty, and did not seek to avenge himself by the
execution of his enemies, but he was greedy, he wanted money, and
confiscations were an easy means of enriching himself without
oppressing or exasperating the people. Henry VII. therefore
presented to Parliament, a law which antedated by a single day
his accession to the throne, namely, the 21st of August, the eve
of the battle of Bosworth; the new sovereign, who then in reality
was but the Earl of Richmond, thus found himself in a position to
accuse of high treason all those who had fought against him,
beginning with Richard III., whom he called the Duke of
Gloucester, and of whom he enumerated with good reason all the
tyrannies and crimes. Richard was dead, as well as the greater
number of the partisans who had remained faithful to him; others
had exiled themselves; but if the Duke of Norfolk had fallen at
Bosworth, if Lord Lovel had taken refuge in a church, their
visible property, the riches accumulated in their castles, had
not disappeared with them, and the act meekly voted by
Parliament, permitted the king to seize their lands and
treasures. He was not sparing of them; no sanguinary vengeance
sullied the beginning of the new reign; Henry VII. contented
himself with filling his coffers.
{121}
It was still to Parliament, discredited as it was by the
servility which it had for so many years manifested towards the
rival sovereigns who had succeeded each other upon the throne,
that belonged the right of constituting the new dynasty. The
provident wisdom of King Henry VII. did not seek in this solemn
act to lean upon long genealogies, nor upon the Divine favour
manifested by the victory; he contented himself with causing the
revocation of all the acts passed in the Yorkist Parliaments
against the House of Lancaster, avoiding with care any allusion
to the Princess Elizabeth and her family; he simply relieved her
of the stain of illegitimacy, which Richard III. had inflicted
upon her to justify his usurpation; the Parliament contented
itself with declaring that the inheritance and succession to the
crown "should be, remain, and rest forever the portion of the
royal person of the sovereign Lord, King Henry VII., and of his
legitimate descendants, for ever, by the grace of God." The
rights of the House of York to the throne were passed over in
silence, mention was not made of the projected union with the
Princess Elizabeth; Henry VII. was unwilling that it should be
said that he owed the crown to a woman.
The nation, however, had not forgotten its past misfortunes; it
hoped to enjoy a little peace only through the alliance of the
two rival houses, and the delay of the king in celebrating his
marriage, the affectation which he made of not speaking of it,
caused uneasiness, not only to his Yorkist enemies, but to the
whole people. When the commons came and solemnly offered the king
the duties upon ships and upon woolens, now conceded for life,
they accompanied their liberality by a peremptory request, asking
him to take for his wife and spouse the Princess Elizabeth "which
marriage," it was added, "the Lord would deign to bless with a
posterity of the race of kings."
{122}
The Lords spiritual and temporal supported the petition of the
Commons. Henry VII. understood that he had delayed enough, and on
the 18th of January 1486, the two Roses were at length united
upon the same stem; the hatreds and rivalries, which had cost so
much blood to England, were definitely appeased by the marriage
of King Henry VII., the descendant of the House of Lancaster
through his ancestor, John of Gaunt, and the Princess Elizabeth,
daughter of King Edward IV., the direct heiress of the rights and
pretensions of the House of York. All the gifts accorded by the
sovereigns who had succeeded each other upon the throne of
England since the thirty-fourth year of the reign of Henry VI.,
the period at which the war had begun to assume the character of
a revolt, were revoked by Parliament; an amnesty act was
proclaimed for all those who were willing to submit to the royal
mercy and take the oath of allegiance; the king reinstated in his
property and honours the son of the Duke of Buckingham, the last
victim of the cruelty of Richard III., he loaded with favours the
friends who had helped him to ascend the throne, Chandos, Sir
Giles Dunbury, Sir Robert Willoughby, the Marquis of Dorset, Sir
John Bourchier; he caused his authority to be confirmed by a bull
of Pope Innocent III., which proclaimed all the hereditary rights
of the new sovereign, wisely omitted from the English Act of
Parliament, granted to Henry VII. the necessary dispensation for
his marriage with the Princess Elizabeth, of whom he was a
relative, then confirmed the elevation of the king to the throne,
freely interpreting the Act of Parliament, and declaring that in
the event that the queen should happen to die without children,
or after having lost them, the crown should belong by right to
the posterity of Henry VII. by a second marriage.
{123}
All precautions being wisely taken, and his authority solidly
established, the king pronounced the dissolution of his
Parliament, and began a royal tour through the northern counties,
in order to secure the good will of that portion of the kingdom
still attached to the House of York.
The customary prudence of the king had failed him on one point.
Jealous of the supreme power, he had kept in the shade the
princess whom he had been compelled to wed, and had not taken her
with him upon his journey through his kingdom; discontent was
everywhere manifested upon this point in the north, but the
pregnancy of the queen served as an excuse for her absence; the
royal journey did not proceed, however, without disquieting
incidents. On the 17th of April the king was at Pontecraft, when
he learnt that Lord Lovel had quitted the sanctuary at Colchester
and cut off his passage with considerable forces. The nobility of
the counties which Henry VII. had recently passed through
assembled around him; he advanced against the rebels; Lord Lovel
fled, concealed himself, and soon repaired to Flanders; his
friends Humphrey and Thomas Stafford, who had prepared an
insurrection in Worcestershire, took refuge in Colesham Church,
near Abington; they were dragged therefrom, and the elder,
Humphrey, perished on the scaffold; the younger received his
pardon; and the king, on the 26th of April, entered York, one of
the rare spots in England where tho memory of King Richard III.
was affectionately preserved.
{124}
We have said that Henry VII. was greedy; but he could contrive,
when necessary, to relax his greed; he lavished gifts and
honours, reduced the fines of the City of York, caused festivals
to be celebrated, and thus conquered the favour of the people,
who cried in the streets, "God save King Henry! God preserve that
handsome and sweet countenance!" When he resumed his march
towards the south-east, Henry VII. continued, from town to town,
the practice which he had established at York. He attended
regularly at divine service; but after mass, every Sunday and
holiday, one of the bishops who accompanied him read and
expounded to the faithful the papal bull, threatening with
eternal punishment all the enemies of the monarch, whose rights
to the throne were therein so carefully developed. The king
arrived in London, in the month of June, and received an embassy
from James IV., King of Scotland, with whom he concluded a treaty
of alliance, promising to cement it later on by a union between
the two families; peace and mutual good feeling were equally
important to the two kings, surrounded by enemies, whom they
dreaded to see take refuge in the neighbouring kingdom. The
little prince, whose hand Henry VII. had already promised, was
born on the 20th of September, at Winchester, and was named
Arthur, in memory of the hero of the old romances of King Arthur
of the Round Table, whose death tradition still denied.
{125}
Usurpations engender conspiracies; no reign was to be more
constantly agitated by them than that of Henry VII.; he had
occupied the throne for fifteen months only, when, in the month
of November, 1486, a priest and a youth of most charming
countenance disembarked at Dublin. The priest announced that his
young companion was no other than Edward Plantagenent, Earl of
Warwick, escaped by a miracle from the Tower of London. By
degrees, partisans gathered around the young man; he was
handsome, intellectual, his manners were noble, he had been
carefully instructed in his part, and did not experience much
difficulty in deceiving minds prejudiced by hereditary attachment
to the father and grandfather of the Earl of Warwick, who had
both contrived to render themselves popular in their government
of Ireland. Edward Plantagenet had even been born in that
country, and thus possessed additional claims to the attachment
of that nation. The great noblemen who might have shown
themselves to be more clearsighted were, in general, little in
favour of the state of affairs recently established in England,
and the Earl of Kildare, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, received the
Sham Warwick with open arms, presenting him to all his friends as
the legitimate heir to the throne in the character of the only
male descendant of Richard of York; on all sides the pretender
was saluted with the title of king; messengers had already borne
the news to Flanders, where the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy,
sister of Edward IV., held her court, and received into her good
graces all the enemies of the new King of England, when the
latter learnt, in London, the danger that threatened him. He
immediately convoked his Council; the discontent was general, the
amnesty had been ill-observed, a mass of restrictions had
hindered the application of it, and the real Earl of Warwick was
not the only inhabitant of the prison of the Tower.
{126}
The first care of the prudent king wad to proclaim a fresh
amnesty, more complete and earnest than the first, and, at the
same time, to produce in public, in all parts of London, the real
Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, who had not for a single
instant left his prison. The third measure of the king appeared
at variance with the clemency manifested by the amnesty; the
Dowager Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, was arrested under the
frivolous pretext that she had formerly broken faith with the
Earl of Richmond, now King of England, because, after having
promised him her daughter in marriage she had consigned her into
the hands of the usurper Richard III., who wished to marry her.
The real motive of the disfavour which thus suddenly attacked the
intriguing widow of Edward IV. has never been known; it has been
supposed that she had been compromised in the conspiracy which
had caused a new pretender to the throne to spring up in Ireland;
it has been said that she alone could have instructed the young
man or his tutor in the private details which he related about
the royal family; but these assertions remain at least doubtful;
what is certain is the confiscation of the property of Elizabeth
Woodville and her imprisonment in a convent near Bermondsey.
Meanwhile, the young pretender had received an unexpected
support. The Earl of Lincoln, son of John de la Pole, duke of
Suffolk, and of Elizabeth, sister of the kings Edward IV. and
Richard III., formerly designated by his uncle Richard to succeed
him upon the throne, had quitted England and repaired to the
residence of his aunt, the Duchess of Burgundy. She had furnished
him with money and troops, and Lincoln had embarked for Ireland
with Lord Lovel.
{127}
He could not be deceived about the imposture; he knew the Earl of
Warwick, but it suited his views to adopt the cause of the
pretender, and he caused him to be crowned in Dublin Cathedral.
The golden crown from a statue of the Virgin was borrowed to
represent the royal diadem, and the young man, being proclaimed
under the name of Edward VI., was carried in triumph upon the
shoulders of his new subjects, while King Henry VII. was raising
troops and quietly riding about in his kingdom, selecting by
preference for his visits the counties where the influence of the
Earl of Lincoln was especially exercised.
The queen and the little prince were already established in the
fortress of Kenilworth, when the pretender and his partisans
landed at Fouldrey, at the southern extremity of Furness. A few
friends of Lincoln and Lovel joined him, but the population did
not rise in their favour, and the hopes of the rebels were
growing faint, when, on the 16th of June, 1487, they encountered
the advanced guard of the king at Stoke; the Earl of Oxford, who
commanded it, carried off a brilliant victory, notwithstanding
the desperate courage of the assailants. His Majesty Edward VI.,
or, simply, Lambert Simnel, the son of an humble baker, was made
a prisoner, with his tutor, the priest Simon; but the noblemen
who had embraced his cause, nearly all died upon the field of
battle, the Earl of Lincoln at their head. Lord Lovel alone
disappeared; but this time he concealed himself so well that, two
hundred years later, the skeleton of a man was discovered in a
vault in his castle of Minster-Lovel, in Oxfordshire; it is
supposed that the unhappy master of the house had taken refuge
therein and had there perished by some accident.
{128}
Very few executions followed the revolt and the victory, but the
harvest of confiscations was abundant; the priest Simon was
imprisoned, and none heard speak of him any more, "the king being
fond of concealing his own dangers," says a chronicler, "Lambert
Simnel was placed in the royal kitchens, ignominiously turning
the spit, after having worn a crown;" he became eventually one of
the falconers of the king. Henry VII. had recently made a
pilgrimage to deposit his victorious banner upon the altar of Our
Lady of Walsingham.
The king had too much sense and sagacity to refuse to understand
the symptoms of discontent which had manifested themselves by
this revolt; he knew that he had incensed the Yorkists by the
jealous obscurity in which he kept the queen, and he resolved to
grant her the honour of coronation, which had hitherto in vain
been claimed for her; on the 20th of November, Elizabeth of York
was solemnly crowned at Westminster, while her husband, hidden
behind a carved screen, contemplated the ceremony at which he was
not willing to be present.
For more than two years past. King Henry VII. had concentrated
all his efforts upon the internal pacification of his kingdom,
without making himself uneasy about the troubles of the
Continent; but scarcely had he gained the victory of Stoke, when
he saw an embassy arrive in England from the King of France,
Charles VIII. While Henry VII. had been repulsing the pretentions
to the throne of an impostor supported by rebels, his old
protector, the King of France, had attacked a still older friend
of his, the Duke Francis of Brittany, who had given shelter to
the Duke of Orleans, subsequently Louis XII., accused of having
conspired against his cousin.
{129}
The French army had entered Brittany, summoned by a certain
number of Breton noblemen dissatisfied with the influence which
the Duke of Orleans had assumed over their duke, and it had
reaped important advantages, when the ambassadors of Charles
VIII., fearing an English intervention in favour of the Duke of
Brittany, came to expound to the wise Henry VII. the legitimacy
of a war which they qualified as defensive. None made allusion to
the probable annexation of the duchy of Brittany to France,
either by conquest or by the marriage of the young king with the
heiress of the Duke Francis; Henry VII. asked no indiscreet
questions, and when the Bretons appeared, in their turn, at his
court, begging assistance in men and money, the King of England
piously offered his mediation "in order to acquit himself before
God and men of all his duties of gratitude towards the king and
the duke, for whom he was even disposed to go upon a pilgrimage."
The French asked for nothing more, their army pursued the course
of its victories, but the coming and going of the English
negotiators from London to Paris and from Paris to Rennes, did
not satisfy the Bretons, who saw themselves closely pressed. Sir
Edward Woodville, one of the uncles of the queen, attempted, at
his risk and peril, a little expedition in favour of the Duke
Francis; but King Henry forbade any demonstration of this kind.
His envoys who were then in Paris, were in great danger, it was
said, at the news of the succour sent to the Bretons by the
English.
{130}
The cause of Brittany was popular in England, and decided though
he was not to wage war, the king took advantage of this feeling
to cause Parliament to vote considerable subsidies; at the same
time he secretly warned the court of France that he should
perhaps be compelled to send reinforcements to the Bretons. The
warning was profited by to push measures with vigour; all the
factions of Bretons had now united against the common enemy; the
forces of the duke were supported by the troops sent by the King
of the Romans, Maximilian, and by the Count d'Albert, as well as
the Englishmen of Sir Edward Woodville. The Duke Francis and his
allies were defeated, however, on the 20th of July, 1488, by the
Sire de la Trémoille, commander of the French army, at Saint
Aubin-du-Cormier; the Duke of Orleans was made a prisoner, and
the English were cut to pieces; before the public voice had been
raised in England to demand vengeance, the French had taken Dinan
and Saint Malo, and were threatening the Duke of Brittany as far
as in Rennes; the unhappy prince had no resource other than to
sign a treaty by which he undertook to summon no assistance from
abroad, and never to marry his daughters without the consent of
France. One month after having suffered this humiliation, he died
broken hearted, and the little Duchess Anne, a child twelve years
of age, remained alone with her council of regency in the
presence of her enemies.
The King of France claimed the guardianship of the unhappy
princess, and her barons had not yet had time to reply to this
pretension, which was equivalent to the surrender of the duchy,
when the French army again entered Brittany and took possession
of several towns.
{131}
This time all the prudence of Henry VII. could not suffice to
repress the indignation of his people at the aspect of this
unequal war; perhaps the growth of the power of France also made
him uneasy, in his policy; the King of England formed an alliance
with the great sovereigns of Europe to arrest the conquests of
Charles VIII. Maximilian, King of the Romans, who claimed the
hand of the little Duchess Anne, and his son the Archduke Philip,
the King of Spain, and the King of Portugal undertook to enter
France to turn aside the forces furious for the ruin of Brittany.
Henry VII. demanded fresh subsidies from Parliament to continue
the war.
Well supplied with money, notwithstanding the reduction which the
Commons had imposed upon his requests, Henry VII., holding two
ports upon the coast of Brittany, at length sent to the
assistance of the duchess six thousand archers in the spring of
1489; at the same time, a Spanish army was crossing the defile of
Roncevaux, which allowed the English, under the orders of Lord
Willoughby de Broke, to hold in check the French troops remaining
in Brittany; another English corps seconded the attempts of the
King of the Romans upon the north, and distinguished itself at
the capture of Saint Omer; a treaty of peace was concluded at the
end of the year without much glory for either party. The rigour
with which the officers of the King of England exacted the
subsidies excited an insurrection in the northern counties, and
notwithstanding the prompt repression of the disturbances, the
new taxes produced only the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds
sterling, instead of seventy-five thousand pounds voted by
Parliament; Henry VII. took advantage of it to claim, of the
Duchess of Brittany, the reimbursement of all the expenditure
which he had incurred to help her.
{132}
While preparations were being made for renewing the hostilities,
and Parliament was voting a tax of the tenth and the fifteenth
denier to support the war, one of the allies of King Henry,
Maximilian, by negotiating secretly with the counsellors of the
Duchess of Brittany, obtained the promise of her hand, and
mysteriously married her at Rennes, through his ambassador, the
Prince of Orange, in the month of April, 1491; he would have
acted more wisely by going in person for the heiress of such
large dominions, sought by so many suitors. Scarcely had the Sire
d'Albret, a disappointed pretender, who had at one time attempted
the abduction of the young princess, been assured of the object
of the mission of the Prince of Orange, when he gave warning to
the court of France of it, at the same time surrendering to the
French, the town of Nantes. In vain did the duchess, who took the
title of Queen of the Romans, demand assistance of her new
spouse; he was absorbed in a revolt of his Flemish subjects:
Brittany again found itself alone, confronting the whole strength
of France.
But the views of the court of France towards Brittany had
changed. Charles VIII. was now of age, he had shaken off the yoke
of his sister, the Dame de Beaujeu; he had released from prison
his cousin the Duke of Orleans, and he secretly laid claim to the
hand of the Duchess Anne. Betrothed in infancy to the Princess
Elizabeth of York, now Queen of England, afterwards designed by
his father King Louis XI. to become the husband of Margaret of
Austria, "Margot, the gentle damsel," daughter of Margaret of
Burgundy, he had seen his little affianced bride, who was then
eleven years of age, brought up at his court, and he still
publicly announced his intention of wedding her as soon as she
should be of age.
{133}
He carried on negotiations, however, with the lords and ladies
who surrounded Anne of Brittany, and when he thought himself
assured of a sufficient party among them, he frankly declared his
purpose, notwithstanding the engagement with the Princess
Margaret, as well as the more sacred bonds which bound the
Duchess Anne to Maximilian, the father of the affianced bride of
Charles VIII. All these obstacles did not arrest the King of
France, and his victorious arms were a powerful argument in his
favour. Maximilian did not send assistance to his wife, although
the French threatened to besiege Rennes. The question lay, with
Anne, between captivity and marriage: she concluded a treaty with
Charles VIII., declared void the union which she had contracted
with the King of the Romans, and definitively assured Brittany to
the crown of France, by wedding, on the 6th of December, 1491,
King Charles, in the castle of Langeais, in Touraine. The long
struggles of England and France, upon Breton territory, were now
forever ended.
In England the anger was great; perhaps Henry VII. had in fact
been deceived: he proclaimed it very loudly, declaring that
Charles VIII., disturbed the Christian world, and that in future
he would no longer hesitate to march to the conquest of France,
his legitimate and natural inheritance; at the same time he
talked loudly of the alliances which he had concluded, and he
obtained fresh subsidies from Parliament, the usual result of the
warlike protestations of Henry VII.
{134}
The raising of troops proceeded rapidly; the names of Crecy,
Agincourt, Poictiers, Verneuil, were in all mouths; the noblemen
pawned their property, reserving only their horses and swords;
they thought themselves certain of acquiring beautiful estates in
France; an army of twenty-five thousand foot soldiers and sixteen
hundred horses embarked in the month of October, 1492. It was a
question of the conquest of the whole of France, an undertaking
which could not fail to be long, and winter quarters could be
taken up at Calais. Siege was immediately laid to Boulogne,
without any attempt at resistance from the French; all the plan
of the campaign was known beforehand between the two monarchs,
and peace had been concluded before the commencement of the war.
Eight days only had been passed before the town, without an
assault being made, when letters began to circulate in the camp
destroying all hope of the co-operation of the King of Spain or
the King of the Romans; Henry VII. thereupon assembled his
council, and submitted for its deliberation the grave question of
peace with France. All the favourites of the king had been bought
over in advance with French gold, and they solemnly decided for
the conclusion of peace. The treaties, long since prepared, were
signed at the beginning of November; by the public conditions the
two kings undertook always to live in peace; mutual understanding
was even to subsist for one year after the death of whichever of
the sovereigns should survive the other; by the secret treaty,
Charles VIII. bound himself to pay by degrees to the King of
England, the sum of a hundred and forty-nine thousand pounds
sterling, in discharge of all his claims upon the duchy of
Brittany, and in payment of the tribute due to King Edward IV. It
was thus that Henry VII. knew how to sell war to his subjects and
peace to his enemies. Charles VIII. found himself at liberty to
proceed with his undertakings against the kingdom of Naples, and
the King of England could concentrate all his attention upon his
internal affairs, which threatened to give him fresh and grave
cares.
{135}
A second pretender had in fact arisen for the crown. This time,
it was no longer a question, as with Lambert Simnel, of a living
prince, easy to be confronted with the imposter; the new rival
who had been raised up against King Henry VII. was none other, it
was said, than the Duke of York, brother of the unhappy Edward
V., escaped from the Tower by a miracle, wandering about the
world for seven years past, and now determined to reclaim his
crown. He at first presented himself in Ireland, and soon
contrived to form a party there, notwithstanding the recent
remembrance of Lambert Simnel. But the Earl of Kildare hesitated,
and the young pretender turned his steps to France. Soldier and
chivalrous as he was, Charles VIII. was not destitute of the
cunning natural to the son of Louis XI. It was before the war
with England, and he was well pleased to frighten Henry VII.: he
received the adventurer, recognized his rights, and admitted him
to his court. He was soon surrounded there by a guard of English
exiles. While the treaties had remained unsigned at Etaples,
Charles VIII. looked with favour upon the pretender; the peace
with Henry VII. being once proclaimed, the self-styled Duke of
York was compelled to quit the court of France and to take refuge
beside the Duchess of Burgundy, the usual resource of the enemies
of Henry VII.
{136}
The latter had demanded that the pretender should be delivered up
to him; but Charles VIII. refused this act of treachery as
unworthy of his honour. Meanwhile, the Duchess of Burgundy
hesitated, or pretended to hesitate, to recognize her nephew. She
interrogated him, and caused him to undergo a minute examination
upon the secrets of the family. Finally, she solemnly proclaimed
that he was really the Duke of York, son of her brother King
Edward IV., the White Rose of England; she gave him at her court
the state of a prince, furnished him with a guard, and wrote
everywhere to her friends in England and on the Continent to
announce the miracle which had restored her nephew. The English
malcontents, and they were numerous, joyfully embraced this new
hope. A delegate was secretly despatched to the court of the
Duchess, to verify the pretensions of the prince; he came back as
convinced as the Duchess herself. It was really, he said, the
Duke of York, the legitimate heir to the crown of England, the
amiable and intellectual child whose loss had been mourned. The
conspiracy began to spread and to organize.
King Henry meanwhile had not remained inactive; he also had sent
secret emissaries to Ireland, who asserted that the pretended
Duke of York was no other than Perkin Warbeck, the son of a
merchant of Tournay, a converted Jew; that he had much frequented
the society of English merchants in Flanders, then had travelled
in Europe in the suite of Lady Brompton, wife of an exile. Upon
the faith of these instructions Henry demanded of the Archduke
Philip, son of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, to deliver up or,
at least, to drive from his states this audacious impostor.
Philip lavished assurances of his devotion, promised to refuse
all support to the pretender; but the Duchess Margaret was
sovereign in her states, and none could compel her to send Perkin
Warbeck away.
{137}
Henry VII. interdicted to his subjects all commerce with
Flanders, and he had recourse to deceit to obtain that which
diplomacy refused him. Sir Robert Clifford, being bribed, gave up
the names of the conspirators; they were all arrested: Sir Simon
Montford, Sir Robert Ratcliffe and William Daubeney were
immediately executed. Among those who received their pardon "few
men survived long," says the chronicler; Lord Fitzwalter, amongst
others, having attempted to escape from his prison at Calais, was
beheaded without any more ado. One greater than he was shortly
going to pay with his life for the same suspicions.
Sir William Stanley, brother of the Lord Stanley, now Earl of
Derby, who had placed Henry VII. upon the throne, and who had
himself saved the life of the king at Bosworth, was accused by
Clifford of having been concerned in the conspiracy. The king
refused at first to believe it; but when he interrogated his
chamberlain, Sir William was embarrassed in his answers, and
ended by confessing to a certain degree of complicity. The judges
of Westminster held the crime to be sufficient and Stanley was
condemned to death. All reckoned upon his pardon; the king's
aversion to blood was remembered, as well as the services which
the family of the guilty man had rendered him; but the large
fortune of Sir William was forgotten and he was executed and all
his property was confiscated. Terror began to seize the
conspirators; they distrusted each other. The position of Warbeck
became difficult in Flanders; the merchants complained of the
cessation of the English commerce.
{138}
The adventurer resolved to land unexpectedly in England, hoping
that an insurrection in his favour would take place. He arrived
near Deal on the 3rd of July, 1495, while the king had gone to
pay a visit to his mother, in Lancashire. He was accompanied by
about five hundred men, all English exiles and of desperate
courage; but the population rose _against_ the impostor, and
not _for_ him: the peasants of Kent fought with their sticks
and pitchforks. The assailants were killed or made prisoners; a
small number succeeded in reaching the vessels: Warbeck was at
the head of these latter. The captives were all conducted to
London, their hands tied together, like a flock of sheep, and
they were executed in a mass in the same manner. Henry VII.
lavished praises and promises upon the brave countrymen who had
repulsed the enemy; he, at the same time, concluded a treaty with
the Flemings, promising to restore the freedom of commerce, if
the Duke Philip would undertake to prevent the Duchess Margaret
from receiving Warbeck and his partisans. The adventurer was
therefore compelled to quit Flanders; he presented himself in
Ireland, where he was coldly received; it was to Scotland that he
went to seek refuge. The king of Scotland was discontented with
Henry VII.; he willingly received the pretender.
Notwithstanding numerous treaties and projects of alliance so
many times concluded between the courts of England and Scotland,
Henry VII. had always been concerned in the conspiracies against
James III. The brother of the King of Scotland, Albany, was dead;
but the barons had not become subdued; the malcontents had
rallied around the young Duke of Rothsay, the eldest son of the
monarch, and this unnatural war, after alternations of successes
and reverses, had been terminated, on the 18th of June, 1488, by
a sanguinary combat at Little Canglar, a wild heath about one
league from Stirling.
{139}
The king had been carried off by his horse; he had fallen in a
swoon. Some peasants had lifted him up without knowing him; but
amidst the tumult a man approached the unhappy prince, and
leaning towards him as though to succor him, he struck him two
blows with a dagger. James III. was only thirty-five years of
age, and his death excited in the heart of the son, who had
fought and almost dethroned him, a remorse which ended only with
his life. The example of revolt which he had set bore, moreover,
its fruits; he lived in the midst of conspiracies and internal
struggles, finding at times in his embarrassments traces of the
influence of Henry VII., more often being ignorant of his
complicity, but convinced, notwithstanding, that the King of
England was a perfidious ally with whom it was necessary to
arrive at an open rupture. Perkin Warbeck furnished him with the
opportunity for it. James did not look very closely into the
truth of his story; he was duped, or feigned to be so, and,
shortly after the arrival of his "good cousin of York" in
Scotland, amidst tournaments and rejoicings which he lavished,
the King of Scotland married the adventurer, Perkin Warbeck, to
Lady Catharine Gordon, the charming daughter of the Earl of
Huntley, and through her mother, a near relative of the royal
house.
{140}
So many favours caused uneasiness to the King of England, who
kept spies amongst the great Scottish noblemen, and was thus
informed exactly of the movements of Warbeck. The barons of
Scotland were less favourable to him than the king, some because
they had been gained over by Henry, others because they foresaw
the disasters of a war undertaken in his favour. Meanwhile, the
Duchess of Burgundy had caused men and money to arrive; the court
of France, discontented at the obstacles which Henry VII. placed
to the attempts of King Charles upon Italy, urged Warbeck to
attempt an invasion of England. Henry had caused an offer to be
made to the King of Scotland of a hundred thousand crowns of gold
if he would deliver up the pretender to him. James IV. had
rejected the proposal with indignation. "I have melted up my
plate for him," he had said. "I will not betray him." Warbeck had
recently published a document, skilfully conceived, in which he
related his escape from the Tower and his wandering life, dwelt
upon the tyranny of Henry VII., upon the exactions with which he
burdened his people, and summoned the English to rise and rally
round him. The King of Scotland accompanied him, solely through
friendship, he said, and would retire as soon as an English army
should be on foot. It was with these declarations that Warbeck
crossed the frontier and entered England in 1497.
The northern counties did not trust to the disinterestedness of
the Scotch, and nobody came to meet the pretender; all the cattle
had been led away, the grain and fodder had been hidden, and when
the Scottish troops began to pillage to compensate themselves for
the cold reception which the population gave them, the
self-styled Duke of York in vain sought to restrain them, saying
that he would prefer to lose the throne rather than to owe it to
the sufferings of the English.
{141}
The soldiers were dying of hunger and did not fail to take
advantage of any excess. The peasants began to arm themselves.
The army of invasion found itself compelled to recross the
frontiers without having fought, without having even awaited the
English army, as had been announced by the clever spy of Henry
VII., Ramsey, Lord Bothwell, formerly a favourite of James.
The King of England meanwhile was suffering from the grave
consequences of the war and the avidity which always led him to
profit by it to oppress his subjects. He had obtained of
Parliament a gift of two-tenths and two-fifteenths, but the
people were determined not to pay taxes so oppressive. The
insurrection commenced in Cornwall; the people demanded the head
of Morton, archbishop of Canterbury, prime minister and friend of
Henry VII., accused of having advised the new taxes. Sixteen
thousand rebels entered Devonshire; they were soon joined by
numerous adherents, at the head of whom marched Lord Audley and
other noblemen. Each county which they traversed furnished
reinforcements; they presented a formidable aspect when they
arrived, on a fine day in June, at Blackheath, near London. The
army of the King awaited them; the agitation was great in the
city; but Lord Daubeney and the Earl of Oxford advanced against
the rebels. Henry VII., had prudently remained in the rear with
the reserve; he had commanded that Saturday should be awaited to
give battle; it was his lucky day, he said. The 22nd of June,
1499, made no exception to the rule. The insurgents fought
valiantly; but they had no cavalry nor artillery, nor experienced
chiefs; a great slaughter resulted, and many of their number were
made prisoners, among others Lord Audley, a lawyer named
Flammock, and Joseph, a blacksmith, who had greatly contributed
to excite the revolt by the violence of his speeches against the
king and the archbishop.
{142}
They all three perished, but they perished alone; the mass of
peasants were soon released. The king had caused the execution of
all the desperate men captured at Deal in the following of Perkin
Warbeck, because neither repentance nor gratitude could be
expected of them; he amnested the rebels of Cornwall, and thus
re-established tranquility in the insurrectionary provinces.
Henry VII. was as wise as he was provident; he was neither
vindictive nor sanguinary, and there was nothing to confiscate of
the poor peasants. He had, however, flattered himself too much in
reckoning upon the gratitude of the county of Cornwall. Perkin
Warbeck had quitted Scotland in consequence of the treaty of
peace concluded between James IV. and Henry VII. through the
efforts of Don Pedro Ayala, the Spanish ambassador; the delicate
cares and kindnesses of the Scottish monarch had followed him up
to his embarkation. The Duke and Duchess of York, as they were
still called, had put in, in the first instance, at Cork, in
Ireland; but Warbeck in vain sought to urge the Irish to
insurrection. He then conceived the project of disembarking in
Cornwall, of which he had received favourable accounts; and on
the 7th of September he landed at Whitsand Bay. His forces did
not amount to a hundred and fifty men; but soon the relatives and
friends of the men killed at Blackheath came and joined him.
Warbeck was at the head of an army, when he appeared, on the 17th
of September, before the city of Exeter, having solemnly taken
the title of King of England and France, under the name of
Richard IV.
{143}
The queen had taken refuge, for greater security, in the fortress
of St. Michael. Whether prince or imposter, the pretender had
contrived to gain the heart of his wife; she was devoted to his
fortunes, and she awaited with anxiety the result of the
campaign. Exeter was defended by the Earl of Devonshire,
supported by the gentlemen and citizens. The insurgents had
neither artillery nor besieging machines; they sought in vain to
burst open the portal, but the cannons of the ramparts swept them
down without mercy. The peasants of Devonshire were beginning to
retreat in small detachments, but the men of Cornwall remained
firm, and promised to die to the last man for the king whom they
had chosen. An advance was made as far as Taunton. There it was
necessary to confront the royal army. Warbeck reviewed his rustic
troops, urging them to fight well on the morrow; but during the
night he selected his fleetest horse and fled without warning any
one. When the insurgents found themselves without a chief they
did not try the fortune of arms, but placed themselves at the
mercy of the king, who caused the leaders to be hanged, and sent
back the others, half naked and dying of hunger. The best runners
of the army were in pursuit of Warbeck; but he had forestalled
them and took refuge in the church at Beaulieu, in the heart of
the New Forest, before he could be reached. The king had caused
men-at-arms to be despatched to arrest Lady Catherine Gordon,
whose beauty and whose tears touched him; he confided her to the
care of Queen Elizabeth, who treated her captive with much
kindness.
{144}
The royal troops surrounded Beaulieu church; but Henry hesitated
to violate the sanctuary; he employed about Warbeck skillful
agents, who persuaded the adventurer to accept the pardon which
they were commissioned to offer to him. The self-styled Duke of
York therefore quitted his refuge, without having seen the king,
who had privately contemplated him, being curious to examine the
features of the audacious impostor. When Henry VII. re-entered
London, Warbeck formed part of his retinue; he had not been
ill-treated, but he had been made to pass slowly through the
principal streets of the city, in order to satisfy the curiosity
of the people. He was conducted as far as the Tower, and the
spectators thought to have seen him for the last time; but at the
end of a few hours he reappeared, still accompanied by his
guards, and took the road to Westminster. There he came to the
court, apparently free, but closely watched. Far from being
degraded into service, like Simnel, he was surrounded with
considerations and certain honours. He was several times
interrogated before the secret council, but his avowals remained
a mystery, "so much so that men, disappointed at that which they
heard, came to imagine it was not known what, and found
themselves more perplexed than ever: but the king rather
preferred to mystify the curious than to light the braziers."
The conduct of King Henry VII. remained an enigma to his
contemporaries, and time has not divulged the secret of it.
Perkin Warbeck had lived for eight months at the court, when he
contrived to escape therefrom. Being immediately pursued, he took
refuge in the priory of Sheen, near Richmond. The prior obtained
his pardon of the king before consenting to deliver him up, but
the honours which had been assigned to him had vanished: he was
placed in the stocks before the gate of Westminster, a document
in hand, compelled to read his confession to the people and to
suffer their insults all day.
[Image]
Confession Of Peter Warbeck.
{145}
This time the prisoner avowed his humble origin, and related his
whole career, cursing the ambition which had caused his
imposture. After the second reading, Warbeck was shut up in the
Tower, where he became the companion of the unhappy Earl of
Warwick.
One year had elapsed since the attempt of Warbeck and his public
humiliation. A third pretender, Ralph Wilford, had renewed the
fraud of Simnel, and assumed the name of Warwick; he had been
executed, and the Augustine monk who preached his, cause, had
been condemned to imprisonment for life. It was in the month of
July, 1499, when a rumour was spread of a plot formed by Warbeck
and the real Earl of Warwick to escape together from the Tower
and foment a fresh insurrection. The charm of the manners and
mind of Warbeck must have been great, for he had not only seduced
his companion in captivity, but he had contrived to win over all
his jailors. The governor of the Tower was to be assassinated,
and the freed prisoners intended to take refuge in a safe place,
to proclaim King Richard IV., by summoning to their aid all the
partisans of the Duke of Clarence, brother of Warwick. Such, at
least, were the allegations in the indictment, for the execution
of the plot had not even been begun when it was discovered. It
was sufficient to explain the execution of Warbeck. He had long
and cleverly played his part; but he did not retract his
confessions at the supreme moment and died courageously at
Tyburn, on the 23rd of November, 1499.
{146}
His last attempt cost the life of the unhappy Earl of Warwick; he
was accused before the peers, not only with having sought to
escape, but with having plotted with Warbeck to overthrow the
king. The poor prince was twenty-nine years of age, but, having
been a prisoner since the age of seven years, he was as ignorant
of the world as a child; he confessed all the crimes with which
he was accused, and having been condemned, he was beheaded on
Tower Hill on the 23rd of November. With him ended the numerous
attempts against the crown of Henry VII.; all the possible heirs
to the throne, real or pretended, had disappeared, and political
passions began to be appeased under government regular and firm,
if it was at times greedy and despotic.
Relieved of any fears of internal wars, and more tranquil abroad,
Henry VII. turned his views towards the settlement of his
children; he had for a long time past resolved to marry his
eldest daughter, Margaret, to the King of Scotland, in order to
definitively attach that sovereign to him. At the beginning of
the year 1500, he sent to King James one of the most clever among
the ecclesiastical negotiators formed in his service, Fox, Bishop
of Durham; and this skilful negotiator contrived to lead the
young monarch into asking for the hand of the princess; the
marriage was celebrated in London, in the month of January, 1502,
but Margaret, who was then twelve years of age, was not sent to
Scotland until the end of 1505, during this interval, her elder
brother, Prince Arthur, heir presumptive to the throne, had
married the Princess Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the able
Ferdinand and the great Isabella, but he had died almost
immediately after his marriage, and King Henry mooted the
question with Ferdinand and with the Pope, to know whether the
princess of twenty-one years of age, and widow of the elder
brother, could marry the younger brother, Henry, who was but
thirteen years of age.
{147}
The dispensation arrived and the betrothal was resolved upon, for
King Ferdinand finding that matters dragged on at length, had
claimed not only the princess, but the large sums paid for her
dowry. Catherine lived at the court of her father-in-law,
honoured and beloved by all, waiting for five years the
celebration of a marriage which was to terminate so sadly.
Amidst the negotiations of alliances for his children, Henry VII.
had also been occupied in marrying himself; the queen, his wife,
had died shortly after having lost Prince Arthur, and the great
preoccupation of the widowed monarch was to find a spouse rich
enough to sensibly increase the treasures which he took so much
pleasure in hoarding. His negotiations and hopes, however, did
not prevent him from continuing to oppress his subjects.
Avaricious passions grow with age; Archbishop Morton, whom the
people had so often cursed, had died in 1500, but the nation
gained nothing thereby; he had been replaced in his exactions by
two leeches, "two shearers," as they were called, more bold and
rapacious than Morton, less skilful than he in proving to the
good English people that all was going on in a legal manner and
that the province of the subjects in the State was limited to
paying the taxes cheerfully. The two new agents, Empson and
Dudley, were equally detested. Dudley was of good birth and knew
how to set off the exactions in a suitable form; Empson, the son
of a workman, triumphed coarsely over the unfortunate people whom
he oppressed, and ridiculed their miseries.
{148}
Both were lawyers, well versed in their profession; each offence,
crime, or misdemeanor became in their hands a matter for a fine,
and to allow none to escape, they kept spies everywhere charged
to warn them, and juries composed of wretches who decided all
matters at their pleasure. "They hovered thus over all England,"
says the chronicler, "like tame falcons for their master and
savage falcons for themselves, and they amassed great riches,"
while filling the royal coffers.
Notwithstanding these abuses the national prosperity went on
increasing; the revival of order had sufficed to give scope to
the commerce which was to found in England the middle class; the
great aristocracy, decimated and ruined by the wars of the Roses,
driven from power by the skillful conduct of Henry VII., remained
shut up in the castles, and the younger members of the noblest
houses began to devote themselves to agriculture, sometimes even
to commercial enterprises, instead of recognizing no other career
than arms or the Church.
The English, however, had not yet attempted the great voyages
beyond the seas which were soon to render their navy so famous.
Christopher Columbus had applied to Henry VII., in his efforts to
find a sovereign who would entrust a few vessels to him and
conquer the New World; but Bartholomew Columbus, brother of the
great navigator had been shipwrecked before arriving in England;
when he had at length accomplished his mission to King Henry, and
had returned to Spain to announce to his brother that he was
summoned to London, Isabella the Catholic, had already granted
the demands of Columbus, assuring to Castile the riches of the
West Indies. The English therefore had no part in the discovery
of the New World, and the rumour of the treasures which were
found there must more than once have made King Henry VII. pale
with jealousy.
{149}
The navigators whom he had sent had brought him back neither gold
nor silver. John Cabot or Cabotte, of Venetian origin,
established at Bristol, and his three sons Lewis, Sebastian and
Sanches, had received from King Henry VII., on the 5th of March,
1496, letters patent, authorizing them to sail with five vessels
in all seas, in order there to make discoveries and take
possession of them in the name of England; the prudent monarch
had reserved for himself one-fifth of the profits of the
enterprise; it is to the first voyage of John Cabott and his son
Sebastian in 1497 that we owe the discovery of Canada; in the
same year, Vasco de Gama doubling the Cape of Good Hope for the
first time, in his journey towards India, opened up to commerce a
new route by which all the riches of the East were to flow into
Europe. Notwithstanding all the overthrows and agitations which
the world was yet to suffer, the time of material force,
exclusive and brutal, was beginning to pass away; peaceful
intelligence and activity saw a vast field of influence and
effort, open up before them.
Parliament had become the docile instrument of the king, and
unresistingly voted all that he was pleased to demand, but the
subsidies granted in 1504 excited great murmuring among the
people. The king had claimed the feudal gifts in honour of the
knighthood conferred upon Prince Henry, and the marriage of
Princess Margaret; the Commons offered forty thousand pounds
sterling, but the king had the moderation to accept only thirty
thousand.
{150}
The malcontents appeared to have found a chief. Edmund de la
Pole, second son of the Duke of Suffolk, and brother of the Earl
of Lincoln, the protector of Simnel, who had been killed at
Stoke, was an embittered and turbulent man. Henry VII. had
refused to grant him his paternal inheritance, by alleging that
he inherited of his brother and not of his father, and that Lord
Lincoln, being declared a traitor, had had his property
confiscated; Edmund had therefore been compelled to content
himself with a shred of the estates of his family and the title
of Earl of Suffolk. He had had the misfortune to kill a man in a
quarrel; the king, still jealous of all that bore the name of
Plantagenet, had taken advantage of this opportunity to accuse
him of murder; Suffolk took refuge at the court of the Duchess of
Burgundy; whence he hatched plots, it was said. The king caused
him to be watched, charged a treacherous emissary to insinuate
himself into his confidence, and according to the instructions
received by this means, he suddenly caused the arrest of the men
upon whom Suffolk relied most; his brother William de la Pole,
Lord Courtenay, who had married one of the daughters of Queen
Elizabeth Woodville, Sir James Tyrrel, accused of the murder of
Edward V. and the Duke of York in the Tower, and a few other
persons were secretly interrogated. Courtenay and De la Pole
remained in prison, but Sir James Tyrrel confessed the crime
formerly committed upon the young princes by order of Richard
III., and he was executed, as well as certain accomplices of the
Earl of Suffolk, although the conspiracy of the latter was in no
respect proved.
{151}
The murmurs which he had been accused of encouraging, were
stifled, and the king, until the end of his life, dispensed
henceforth with having recourse to Parliament; he contented
himself with collecting taxes under the name of "benevolences,"
his coffers overflowed with gold, and he passed for the richest
monarch of Christendom.
A favourable event happened and secured the vengeance of the king
upon the Earl of Suffolk; the bad weather drove upon the coasts
of England the Archduke Philip the Fair and his wife Joanna, who
had become Queen of Castile by the death of her mother, Isabella
the Catholic. The young sovereigns were repairing from Flanders
to their new dominions; their counsellors urged them to face the
tempest rather than to set foot upon English soil and thus to
place themselves in the hands of the skilful Henry VII. Perhaps
from curiosity, perhaps from fear, the Archduke insisted upon
landing. The King of England appeared to have foreseen all; the
illustrious travellers were immediately received with all the
honours which were due them, and it was announced that the king
was coming to meet them. Philip saw that he was caught in the
trap, and being in a hurry to put an end to his compulsory visit,
he hastened to anticipate Henry VII. The two monarchs met near
Windsor, reciprocally lavishing the most touching marks of
friendship and confidence. But the wise counsellors of the King
of Castile had not been deceived; before the Spanish monarchs
were able to take to the sea again, Philip had been compelled to
consent to deliver up the Earl of Suffolk, who was living
modestly in Flanders; to promise to the King of England the hand
of his sister, the Duchess of Savoy, who was a widow and very
rich, and finally to affiance his first-born son, who afterwards
became the Emperor Charles V., to the little Princess Mary of
England.
{152}
After having besides granted great commercial advantages to the
English in the Flemish markets, Philip the Fair was at length
enabled to resume the journey to Spain. Suffolk being enticed to
England, was thrown into prison, and one of the last orders which
Henry VII. signed was that for his execution.
Before the negotiations for the marriage with the Duchess of
Savoy were ended, Philip the Fair had died in Spain, and King
Henry cast his eyes upon his widow, whom he supposed to be richer
than her sister-in-law. Unfortunately Joanna was insane,
hopelessly insane with grief. The health of the King of England
grew more and more impaired, and it became evident to all those
who approached him that it was time for him to think of death and
not of marriage.
Amidst his exactions, of the harshness of which he had given
proof, and the perfidy of his intrigues, Henry VII. was a
religious prince, preoccupied with the future life and the
salvation of his soul; the weakening of his powers warned him to
think of his end, and he multiplied his alms; his complaint
increasing in 1508, he for the first time lent ear to the cries
of his subjects, ruined by the exactions and malversations of
Empson and Dudley. The king wished to render justice, he said,
and a sincere remorse for all the crimes which he had permitted
appeared to have taken possession of his soul; "but Empson and
Dudley, although they knew the scruples of the king, continued
their practices as furiously as in the past, as though the soul
of the king and his money had belonged to different places," says
the chronicler.
[Image]
Chapel And Tomb Of Henry VII.
{153}
The health of the king had momentarily improved, his conscience
had been somewhat quieted, and the treasures which he himself
held locked up in his manor of Richmond regained all their charm
in his eyes. When in the springtime of 1509, a return of his
cough brought him to the threshold of the tomb, he had time to
make his will, recommending his successor to repair the wrongs
which he had done and to restore that which he had unjustly
taken. He died at Richmond in the night of the 21st of April,
1509, at the age of fifty-two. He had reigned twenty-three years
over a kingdom upset by internal dissensions, impoverished by
wars, and a prey to the most frightful disorder: he had gradually
calmed men's passions, repressed or stifled insurrections and
conspiracies, favoured commerce and industry; but he had
oppressed his subjects to wrest from them the money of which he
was greedy, he had lowered the authority of the Parliaments, he
had struck severe blows at the great aristocracy, and he had
above all shrouded his policy in so many subterfuges, and pursued
his ends through so many intrigues and falsehoods, that even time
has not been able to throw light upon the truth; the real and
only excuse of King Henry VII. is that he belonged to the age of
Louis XI., and that he had to treat with Ferdinand of Aragon.
{154}