Henry VII of England

“ Henry VII of England, who had obtained possession by conquest of an insecure throne in the very year she was born, naturally sought the alliance of sovereigns whose affairs seemed so prosperous, and his eldest son Arthur, born in September 1486, could hardly have been much more than a year old when he was proposed by his father as a future husband for their youngest daughter. They sent commissioners to England to negotiate as early as 1488. A return embassy sent by Henry VII to Spain met with a magnificent reception at Medina del Campo ”

“ Henry VII. died at his palace of Richmond on the 21st of April, 1509, in the fifty-fourth year of his age and the twenty-fourth of his reign. With all the vices of his character he was fortunate as a monarch, and by his very mean and parsimonious nature benefited the nation. In passing judgment upon him it is necessary to separate our estimate of the monarch from that of the man. As a man he was essentially a mean one; as a monarch he had nothing great and magnanimous about him ”

“ In fact Henry did once revive his claim on the French crown, on Normandy and Guyenne, and took part in a coalition, which was to have forced Charles VIII to give up Brittany; he crossed to Calais and threatened Boulogne. But he was not in earnest with these comprehensive views in his military enterprise, any more than Edward IV had once been in a similar one. Henry VII was contented when a considerable money payment year by year was secured to him, as it had been to Edward. The English called it a tribute, the French a pension. ”

“ The fact was that Henry VII. was too cautious a man to become a reformer. He was too fond of money to risk its loss by the most distant chance of an unsuccessful enterprise, and he was too recently placed on the throne of a vanquished dynasty to venture on so bold a measure of ecclesiastical revolution had he been thus inclined, which he was far enough from being. ”

“ Henry VIII succeeded to the throne of England in April, 1509; three years and five months later, in September, 1513, was fought the battle of Flodden. The causes may soon be told. They fall under three heads. James and Henry were alike headstrong and impetuous, and they were alike ambitious of playing a considerable part in European affairs. They were, moreover, brothers-in-law, and, in the division of the inheritance of Henry VII, the King of England had, with characteristic Tudor avarice, retained jewels and other property which had been left to his sister, the Queen of Scots. ”

“ Henry VII.—The first king of the House of Tudor was a cautious, intelligent man, with little love for anything or anybody but himself. In France he had studied the methods of foreign kings in ruling without parliaments, and when he became king of England he tried to get as much power as he could. He saw that the best way to do this was to lessen the power and influence of the few nobles left after the Wars of the Roses, and to gather as much money as possible, so that he could do without parliaments. ”

“ As an authority he is invaluable for the reign of Henry VII, with whose aims and character he thoroughly sympathised, and he realised fully the changes which marked the passing away of the middle ages (cf. Busch, England under the Tudors, transl., p. 397; Gairdner, Early Chroniclers, p. 306; Ellis, passim; for another view, Markham in Engl. Hist. Rev. vi. 254) . When he comes to the time of Henry VIII he is not so trustworthy, owing to his bias against Wolsey. The substance of his history became, through the medium of Hall and later writers, common property. ”

“ There was no sufficiently strong body of aristocracy left to rebel effectually against his exactions, though exactions had always been the great cause of discontent; and, all rivals collapsing, there grew up round the new dynasty that hedging superstition which had always counted for much, and which was in England to become a main factor in politics. Henry VII wrought assiduously and astutely to build up his power, seeking no less to increase the merchant class than to depress the aristocracy. ”

“ Henry VII. is greatly praised by Hall, the chronicler, as a prince who "by his high policy marvellously enriched his realm and himself, and left his subjects in high wealth and prosperity; as is apparent by the great abundance of gold and silver yearly brought into the kingdom, in plate, money, and bullion, by merchants passing and repassing." But the great reason of the rapid advance of commerce under Henry VII. was, undoubtedly, the quietness and stability of affairs which he introduced; for Henry was too fond of hoarding to be a very munificent patron of trade. ”

“ Under Henry VII., however, its functions were exercised at least mainly in the cause of justice—they were used, not abused—to the public satisfaction, as well as to the strengthening of the King's own hands. The moderation with which Henry used the powers he was accumulating concealed the latent possibility of the misuse of those same powers by a capricious or arbitrary monarch. ”

“ Let us leave such as prefer Charles I. to William III. in the enjoyment of prejudices which are not likely to be overcome by argument. But it must ever be an honour to the English Crown that it has been worn by so great a man. Compared with him, the statesmen who surrounded his throne, the Sunderlands, Godolphins, and Shrewsburys, even the Somerses and 132 Montagues, sink into insignificance. He was, in truth, too great, not for the times wherein he was called to action, but for the peculiar condition of a king of England after the revolution ”

“ In 1173 Henry fled to the court of Lewis of France, alleging as his grievance the fact that the king would not grant him a great appanage—England or Normandy—to rule in his own right. With the aid of Louis VII, the young Henry stirred up all the discontented elements in his father's dominions. He arranged for a simultaneous rising of the discontented barons of Brittany, Anjou, and Poitou, for a rebellion in England to be headed by the earls of Leicester, Derby, and Norfolk, and for an invasion of Northumbria by William, the King of the Scots. ”

“ England was, as she is still, a deeply conservative country; our people were slow at taking up new ideas, and too much in love with money. They wanted kings who would give them peace and order, knock down the great nobles, restrict or even abolish the Pope's power. But they did not at first want ‘heresy’ or wish to break with the Catholic Church of their fathers.
Henry VII, 1485–1509; his task;Henry VII was a king admirably suited to carry out some of these wishes. If you gave him a name you would call him ‘Henry the Prudent’. ”

“ Not till a year later was Elizabeth crowned, and by then a little son had been born to her, named Arthur at his father's wish, in memory of the stainless King Arthur, whom Henry VII. claimed as an ancestor through his Welsh grandfather, Owen Tudor.
It was about this time that a great change came over the people of England in regard to their opinion of Henry VI. They had begun by pitying him for his misfortunes; then they had called to mind his patience and humility, his kind deeds, his love of learning, and his pure life, till at last in their eyes he became nothing short of a saint. ”

“ A parliament called by a conqueror might be presumed to be itself conquered. Yet this assembly did not display so servile a temper, or so much of the Lancastrian spirit, as might be expected. It was "ordained and enacted by the assent of the Lords, and at the request of the Commons, that the inheritance of the crowns of England and France, and all dominions appertaining to them, should remain in Henry VII. and the heirs of his body for ever, and in none other." ”

“ The sudden and harsh innovations made by Henry in religion, as to which every artifice of concealment and delay is required, his destruction of venerable establishments, his tyranny over the recesses of the conscience, excited so dangerous a rebellion in the north of England, that his own general, the Duke of Norfolk, thought it absolutely necessary to employ measures of conciliation. ”

“ But the claim of Henry of Richmond, if a weak one genealogically, sufficed for the overthrow of the red-handed usurper, Richard. Henry, who had been in exile, landed in England in August, 1485, and was quickly joined by large numbers of supporters. Richard hastened to attack them, and was defeated and slain on Bosworth Field. With no more opposition, Henry won the kingdom, and founded, as Henry VII., the Tudor dynasty which held the throne until the death of Elizabeth. ”

“ In the contest between the houses of York and Lancaster, most of the English colony in Ireland had attached themselves to the fortunes of the White Rose; they even espoused the two pretenders who put in jeopardy the crown of Henry VII.; and became, of course, obnoxious to his jealousy, though he was politic enough to forgive in appearance their disaffection. ”

“ This was the ground alleged by Henry for siding with Charles, but it was not his real reason for going to war. Nearly a year before Navarre was invaded, he had discussed the rupture of Mary's engagement with the Dauphin and the transference of her hand to the Emperor.
The real motives of England's policy do not appear on the surface. "The aim of the King of England," said Clement VII. in 1524, [412] "is as incomprehensible as the causes by which he is moved are futile. ”

“ The whole of England was profoundly stirred by the Renaissance to a new and most energetic life, but not least was this true of the Court, where for a time literature was very largely to center. Since the old nobility had mostly perished in the wars, both Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor line, and his son, Henry VIII, adopted the policy of replacing it with able and wealthy men of the middle class, who would be strongly devoted to themselves. ”

“ Though Roussillon and Cerdagne mattered nothing to Henry VII., the disposal of the rich duchy opposite his own shores was of importance to him. France, Spain, England, and the Empire were all trying to outbid one another for the marriage of the Duchess; and, as Charles VIII. of France was the most dangerous suitor, Henry was induced to send his troops across the Channel to Brittany to join those of Spain and the Empire, though neither of the latter troops came. From the first all the allies were false to each other, and hastened to make separate terms with France ”

“ The eldest, Thomas, took part with the Earl of Warwick, upon his defection from Edward IV., and, endeavouring to effect the restoration of Henry VI., was taken and tried for high treason, at Salisbury, in the eighth year of Edward IV., was condemned and beheaded. But in the first year of Henry VII., his attainder, and that of his father, were reversed in Parliament, and his heir had restitution of his lands and honours. ”

“ Henry VII. was recognized as King of England, and crowned soon after; but he seemed in no hurry about his marriage, which did not take place until January 18th of the following year. The event was celebrated with bonfires, banquets, dancing and songs, and the prelate who performed the ceremony held a bunch of red and white roses, tied together for the first time. This was in commemoration of the union of the rival houses of York and Lancaster.
A.D. 1486. The royal couple then went to live at Winchester, where in the course of a year their first child was born. ”

“ Exactions of Henry VII.—The two first of the Tudors rarely 18 experienced opposition but when they endeavoured to levy money. Taxation, in the eyes of their subjects, was so far from being no tyranny, that it seemed the only species worth a complaint. Henry VII. obtained from his first parliament a grant of tonnage and poundage during life, according to several precedents of former reigns. But when general subsidies were granted, the same people, who would have seen an innocent man led to prison or the scaffold with little attention, twice broke out into dangerous rebellions ”

“ But in England many other causes had co-operated to raise the power and condition of the people. The long civil wars had, by the time of the accession of Henry VII., reduced the old nobility to a mere fragment. Such extraordinary specimens of baronial wealth and dominion as the Warwicks, Beauchamps, and Shrewsburys, no longer existed. In the first Parliament of Henry VII., the peers amounted to only twenty-eight ”

“ The Work of Henry II.—The wisest and most powerful ruler can only assist the forces of nature; he cannot work against them. Those who merely glance at a map in which the political divisions of France are marked as they existed in Henry's reign, cannot but wonder that Henry did not make himself master of the (p. 158) small territory which was directly governed, in turn, by Louis VII. and Philip II. A careful study of the political conditions of his reign shows, however, that he was not really strong enough to do anything of the kind. ”

“ This state of things, this facility of drawing forces to the field on the shortest notice, and on the most certain basis, was particularly provided for by Henry VII. He took care to save money by all means, and to hoard it, so that though no man was more reluctant to spend, and none ever incurred so much odium by his parsimony where the military fame of the nation was concerned; yet he gained at least the reputation of ample means, and the credit for a disposition to punish promptly and severely any disloyalty or adverse claims on his Crown. ”