FOOTNOTES:
[27] The sons of Catherine of France, the widow of Henry V., by her second marriage with a Welsh knight named Owen Tudor.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF YORK.
1471-1485.
The Lancastrian line.—Henry, Earl of Richmond.
All the males of the house of Lancaster had now fallen by the sword or the dagger, not only the last representatives of the elder and legitimate branch which had occupied the throne, but also the whole family of the Beauforts, the descendants of the natural sons of John of Gaunt, who had been legitimized by the grant of Richard II. Even in the female line there remained no one who showed any signs of disputing the claim of Edward IV. to the throne. The only descendants of John of Gaunt's first family who survived were the Kings of Spain and Portugal, who traced themselves back to John's eldest daughter; while the Beauforts were represented by Lady Margaret Beaufort, daughter of that Duke of Somerset who had died in 1444, the elder brother of the man who lost Normandy and fell at St. Albans. The Lady Margaret had married Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, the half-brother of Henry VI., and by him had a single child, Henry, now Earl of Richmond by his father's decease. In Henry the Beaufort line had its last representative, but he was but a boy of fourteen, and was over-sea in Brittany, whither his mother had sent him for safety, while she herself had wedded as her second spouse Lord Stanley, a peer of strong Yorkist proclivities.
Secure rule of Edward IV.
Neither the distant Spaniards nor the boy Henry of Richmond were seriously thought of—even by themselves—as claimants to the English crown, and King Edward might for the rest of his life repose on the laurels of Tewkesbury and Barnet, and take his ease without troubling himself about further dynastic troubles.
He reigned for twelve years after his restoration in 1471, and did little that was noteworthy in that time. His love of ease gradually sapped all his energy; his life grew more and more extravagant and irregular, as he sank into all the grosser forms of self-indulgence. He completely ruined a handsome person and a robust constitution, and by the age of forty-two had declined into an unwieldy and bloated invalid.
Parliament rarely summoned.—Benevolences.
Edward's rule was not so bad for England as might have been expected from his very unamiable character. His second reign was comparatively free from bloodshed—if we except one dreadful crime committed on the person of his own brother. Perhaps he deserves little praise on this score, for both the Lancastrians and the partisans of Warwick had been practically exterminated by the slaughters of 1471. It is more to his credit that he bore lightly on the nation in the matter of taxation. His pockets were full of the plunder of the house of Neville and the old Lancastrian families, and, though self-indulgent, he was not a spendthrift. Indeed, he lived within his means, and seldom asked for a subsidy from Parliament. This moderation, however, does not imply that he was a constitutional sovereign. He ruled through a small clique of ministers and personal dependents, mostly members of his wife's family. He disliked parliamentary control so much that he seldom summoned a Parliament at all. For one whole period of five years (1478-82), he was rich enough to be able to refrain from calling one together. When he did want money, however, he did not shrink from raising it in the most objectionable manner, by compelling rich men to pay him forced loans, called "benevolences." It is fair to add that he generally paid his debts, and only owed £13,000 when he died. On the whole it may be said that his rule, though selfish and autocratic, was not oppressive. He gave the land peace in his later years, and any kind of quiet was an intense relief after the anarchy of the Wars of the Roses.
Revival of industry.
Commerce and industry began slowly to rally, and the wealth of the land seems to have suffered less than might have been expected. The bloodshed and confiscations of the unhappy years between 1455 and 1471 had fallen almost entirely on the nobles and their military retainers, and the cities and the yeomen had fared comparatively well. England had never been left desolate like France at the end of the Hundred Years' War.
Treaty of Picquigny.
Edward's foreign policy was feeble and uncertain. At first, after his restoration, he intended to attack France in alliance with his brother-in-law, Charles the Rash of Burgundy, who had given him shelter and succour during his day of exile. He raised an army and crossed the Channel, talking of recovering Normandy, and of asserting his right to the French crown. But Lewis XI., the wily King of France, offered to buy him off, proffering him a great sum down and an annual subsidy, if he would abandon the cause of Duke Charles. Edward was selfish and ungrateful enough to accept the offer with delight. He met King Lewis in a formal interview at Picquigny, in Picardy, and bargained to retire and remain neutral for 75,000 gold crowns paid down, and an annuity of 50,000 more so long as he lived. He also wrung a second 50,000 out of Lewis as a ransom for the unfortunate Queen Margaret of Anjou, a prisoner since the day of Tewkesbury, and stipulated that the Dauphin was to be married to his eldest daughter, the Princess Elizabeth (1475).
Edward came home with money in his purse, and found that the French annuity, which was punctually paid him, was most useful in enabling him to avoid having to call Parliaments. His betrayal of Charles of Burgundy was deeply resented by that prince, but Edward took no heed, and the duke was slain not long after, while waging war on the Swiss and the Duke of Lorraine.
Death of the Duke of Clarence.
Two years after the treaty of Picquigny occurred a tragedy which showed that Edward could still on occasion burst out into his old fits of cruelty. His brother George, Duke of Clarence, had been received back into his favour after betraying Warwick in 1471, and had been granted half the King-maker's estates as the portion of his wife, Isabel Neville. But Clarence presumed on his pardon, and seems to have thought that all his treachery to his brother in 1468-70 had been forgotten as well as forgiven. He was always a turbulent, unwise, and reckless young man, and provoked the king by his insolent sayings and open disobedience. Edward had twice to interfere with him, once for illegally seizing, and causing to be executed, a lady whom he accused of bewitching his wife Isabel, who died in childbirth; a second time for trying to wed without his brother's leave Mary of Burgundy, the heiress of Charles the Rash. When Clarence was again detected in intrigues with a foreign power—this time with Scotland—the king resolved to make an end of him. Suddenly summoning a Parliament, he appeared before it, and accused his brother of treason, though he gave no clear or definite account of Clarence's misdeeds. Awed by Edward's wrath and vehemence, the two houses passed a bill declaring the duke convicted of high treason. The king then condemned him, cast him into the Tower, and there had him secretly slain (1478).
Richard, Duke of Gloucester.
Edward for the future placed all his confidence in his youngest brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who had served him faithfully all his life, had fled with him to Flanders in 1470, and had fought gallantly at Barnet and Tewkesbury. Gloucester had always been at odds with Clarence. He had married Anne Neville, the King-maker's younger daughter, widow of Edward Prince of Wales, who fell at Tewkesbury. In her right he claimed half the Neville lands, but Clarence had endeavoured to keep them from him, and had only been compelled to disgorge them under the king's stringent pressure. After 1478, Gloucester acted as his brother's chief councillor and representative, and showed himself a very capable and zealous servant.
Scottish war.—Recovery of Berwick.
It was Gloucester who was entrusted with the conduct of a campaign against Scotland, which was undertaken in 1482, and was the last important event of Edward's reign. This was a war not at all creditable to Edward, who intrigued with the rebellious brothers of James III., and picked a quarrel with the Scots on frivolous grounds. His real object was the recovery of Berwick, which had been in Scottish hands since Queen Margaret surrendered it in the year of Towton. Gloucester took Berwick, which after being lost for twenty years again became an English town. He also harried the Merse and Lothian, the Scots retiring before him without a battle. Soon after they made peace, ceding Berwick, and promising that their king's eldest son should marry Edward's daughter Cecily.
Death of Edward IV.
In the year following this treaty the king died, worn out in early middle age by his evil living and intemperance. He left a large family—two sons, Edward aged twelve and Richard aged nine, and five daughters, of whom Elizabeth, the eldest, had reached her eighteenth year.
The decease of Edward, though he was little regretted for himself, threw the nation into great fear and perplexity, for it was confronted with the dangerous problem of a minority, and no one knew who would succeed in grasping power as regent for the little king Edward V. It was almost inevitable that there should be a struggle for the post, for the late king's court had contained elements which were jealous of each other, and had only been kept from collision by Edward's personal influence.
Claimants for the Regency.
There were two persons to whom the regency might have fallen—the queen-dowager, Elizabeth Woodville, and the late king's brother, Richard of Gloucester. Elizabeth's ascendency implied that England would be ruled by her brothers and the sons of her first marriage—the lords Rivers and Dorset, Sir John Grey, and Sir Edward Woodville, all uncles or half-brothers to the little Edward V. Their rule would mean the banishment or suppression of Gloucester, with whom they were already at secret feud. In the same way, the rise of Gloucester to power would certainly mean a like fall for the Woodville clan.
Seizure of Earl Rivers.
At the moment of his accession the young king was in Shropshire, in charge of his uncle, Earl Rivers, a fact which put the queen's party at a great advantage. Rivers at once proceeded to bring his little nephew toward London, for his coronation, guarding him with a considerable armed force. On their way Edward and his cavalcade were encountered at Stony Stratford by Richard of Gloucester, who had also brought with him a considerable body of retainers from his Yorkshire estates.
The two parties met with profuse protestations of mutual friendship and esteem, but when Rivers' suspicions were lulled to sleep, Gloucester suddenly seized him, flung him into fetters, and sent him a prisoner to the north. Rivers' fate was shared by Sir Richard Grey, the little king's half-brother, and several more of their party.
Gloucester takes charge of the young king.
Gloucester then took charge of his nephew's person, and brought him up to London, where he summoned a Parliament to meet. The queen-dowager, on hearing that her brother Rivers and her son Richard Grey were cast into prison, knew that her chance of power was gone, and hastily took sanctuary at Westminster, with her youngest son, the little Duke of York, and her five daughters.
Schemes of Gloucester.
The nation was not displeased to learn that the regency would fall into the hands of Duke Richard, who was known as a good soldier, and had served his brother very faithfully; it much preferred him to the Queen and her relatives, who had a bad reputation for greed and arrogance. But it soon became evident that there was something more in the air than a mere transference of the regency. Gloucester not only filled all the places about the king with his own friends, but commenced to pack London with great bodies of armed men raised on his own estates, a precaution quite unnecessary when all his enemies were crushed. He also made the council of regency confer gifts of money, land, and offices, on a most unprecedented scale, upon his two chief confidants, Henry, Duke of Buckingham, and John, Lord Howard. They were evidently being bought for some secret purpose.
Execution of Lord Hastings.
Gloucester and his nephew the king had been in London more than a month, and the day of the young king's coronation was at hand, when suddenly Duke Richard showed his real intentions by a sharp and bloody stroke. On the 13th of June the Privy Council was meeting in the Tower of London on business of no great importance, and the duke showed himself smooth and affable as was his wont. After a space he withdrew, but ere long returned with a changed countenance and an aspect of gloom and anger. "What shall be done," he suddenly asked, "to them that compass the destruction of me, being so near of blood to the king, and Protector of this realm?" He was answered by Lord Hastings, the late king's best friend, a man of great courage and experience, who had shared in the victories of Barnet and Tewkesbury, and had held the highest offices ever since. "They are worthy of death," said the unsuspicious baron, "whoever they may be." Then Gloucester burst out, "It is my brother's wife," and baring his left arm—which all men knew to be somewhat deformed since his earliest years—he cried, "Look what yonder sorceress and Shore's wife and those who are of their council have done unto me with their witchcrafts." Hastings started at the mention of Shore's wife, for Jane Shore was his own mistress, and an accusation of witchcraft against her touched him nearly. "If they have so done, my lord," he faltered, "they are worthy of heinous punishment." "Answeredst thou me with ifs?" replied Duke Richard. "I tell thee they have done it, and that I will prove upon thy body, thou traitor." Then he smote upon the table, and armed men, whom he had posted without, rushed into the council chamber. Richard bade them seize Hastings, Lord Stanley, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of Ely, all firm and loyal friends of Edward IV.
Hastings was borne out to the court of the Tower and beheaded then and there; the others were placed in bonds. This sudden blow at the young king's most faithful adherents dismayed the whole city; but Gloucester hastened to give out that he had detected Hastings and his friends in a plot against his life, and, as he had hitherto been always esteemed a loyal and upright prince, his words were half believed.
Gloucester gets possession of the Duke of York.
Richard's real object was to free himself from men whom he knew to be faithful to the young king, and unlikely to join in the dark plot which he was hatching. He next went with a great armed following to Westminster, where lay the queen-dowager and her children. Surrounding the sanctuary with guards, and then threatening to break in if he was resisted, he sent Cardinal Bourchier, the aged Archbishop of Canterbury, to persuade Elizabeth to give up her young son, Richard of York. Half in terror, half persuaded by the smooth prelate, who pledged his word that no harm should befall the boy, the Queen placed him in Bourchier's hands. Richard at once sent him to join his brother in the Tower (June 16).
Having both his brother's sons in his power, and having crushed his brother's faithful friends, Richard now proceeded to show his real intent. He was aiming at the crown, and had been preparing to seize it from the moment that his brother died. This was the meaning of the gifts that he had been showering around, and of the masses of armed men that he had gathered.
Doctor Shaw's sermon.
On the 22nd of June he laid his purpose open. His chaplain, Doctor Shaw, was set up to preach to the people at St. Paul's Cross a marvellous sermon, in which he argued that Richard was the rightful king, though both Edward IV. and Clarence, his two elder brothers, had left sons behind them. The Londoners were told to their great surprise that the late king's marriage with Elizabeth Woodville had been invalid. Not only had they been secretly and unlawfully married in an unconsecrated place, but Edward had been betrothed long before to Lady Eleanor Talbot, the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. He had never been given any clerical dispensation from this bond, and therefore he was not free to wed, and his sons were bastards. As to Clarence, he had been attainted, and the blood of his heir was corrupted by his father's attainder.
Gloucester declared king.
The Londoners were astonished at this strange argument; they kept silence and so disappointed Gloucester, who had come to the sermon in hopes to meet an enthusiastic reception. But two days later, a stranger scene was enacted at the Guildhall: the Duke of Buckingham, Gloucester's chief confederate, summoned together the mayor and council of London, and, repeating all the arguments that Doctor Shaw had urged, bade them salute Richard as king. A few timid voices shouted approval, and then Buckingham declared that he recognized the assent and good-will of the people. Next day there met the Parliament which should have witnessed the coronation of Edward V. They were summoned to St. Paul's, where Buckingham presented to them a long document, setting forth the evil government of Edward IV., denouncing his sons as bastards, and ending with a petition to Richard of Gloucester to take upon him as his right the title and estate of king. The Lords and Commons yielded their silent assent, apparently without a word of discussion or argument, and Buckingham then led a deputation to Duke Richard, who, with much feigned reluctance, assented to the petition and declared himself king. The only excuse for this lamentable weakness shown by the Houses is that they were quite unprepared for the coup d'état, and were overawed by the thousands of men-at-arms in the livery of Gloucester and Buckingham, who packed every street.
Execution of Rivers and Grey.
So Richard was crowned with great pomp if with little rejoicing, and thought that he had attained the summit of his desires. But his position was from the first radically unsound. He had seized the throne so easily because his antecedents had not prepared men for such sudden and unscrupulous action, so that there had been no time to organize any opposition to him. But the pious and modest duke had suddenly blossomed forth into a bloodthirsty tyrant. On the very day of his accession he had the unfortunate Rivers and Grey beheaded at Pontefract, and six weeks later he wrought a much darker deed.
Murder of the young princes.
After starting on a festal progress through the midlands, he sent back a secret mandate to London, authorizing the murder of his little nephews, Edward and Richard. They were smothered at dead of night in their prison in the Tower, and secretly buried by the assassins. Their graves were never discovered till 1674, when masons repairing the building came upon the bones of two young boys thrust away under a staircase. The murder took place between the 7th and 14th of August, 1483, but its manner and details were never certainly known.
Buckingham heads a rebellion.
The horror which the disappearance of the harmless, unoffending, young princes caused all over England, was far more dangerous to Richard than their survival could possibly have been. It turned away from him the hearts of all save the most callous and ruffianly of his supporters. Within two months of their death a dangerous rebellion had broken out. It was headed by Buckingham, the very man who had appeared with such shameful prominence at the time of Richard's usurpation. No one can say whether he was shocked by the murder, or whether he was merely discontented with the vast bribes that the new king had given him, and craved yet more. But we find him conspiring with the queen's surviving kindred, the wrecks of the Lancastrian party, and some faithful adherents of Edward IV., to overturn the usurper. They proposed to call over the Earl of Richmond, and to marry him to the princess Elizabeth, the eldest sister of the murdered princes, so blending the claims of Lancaster and York (October, 1483).
Defeat and death of Buckingham.
The insurrection broke out in a dozen different districts all over England, but it was foiled by King Richard's untiring energy and great military talent. He smote down his enemies before they were able to unite, and caught Buckingham, who had been separated from the bulk of his fellow-conspirators by a sudden rising of the Severn. The duke was executed at Salisbury, with such of his party as were taken, but the majority escaped over-sea and joined the Earl of Richmond.
This was destined to be the last gleam of success that Richard was to see. The rest of his short reign (1483-85) was a period of unrelieved gloom. No protestations of his good-will to England, and no attempts, however honest, to introduce just and even-handed government, availed him aught. He summoned a Parliament in 1484, and caused it to pass several laws of excellent intention, but he was not able to observe them himself, much less to enforce them on others. After having with great solemnity abolished the custom of raising benevolences, or forced loans, such as his brother Edward IV. had loved, Richard was compelled by the emptiness of his treasury to have recourse to them again, in less than a twelvemonth after he had disavowed the practice.
Death of the king's wife and son.
Personal misfortunes came upon the king in a way which seemed to mark the judgment of Heaven. Less than a year after he had slain his nephews, his only son Edward, Prince of Wales, died suddenly in the flower of his boyhood (1484). Eleven months later his wife, Queen Anne, the daughter of the King-maker, followed his son to the grave. His enemies accused him of having poisoned her, for all charges were possible against one who had proved himself so cruel and treacherous.
It is said that Richard thought for a moment, after his wife's death, of compelling his niece Elizabeth, Edward IV.'s eldest daughter, to marry him, in order to merge her claim to the crown in his own. But the mere rumour of the intention so shocked the people that all his own partisans urged him to disavow it, which he accordingly did. Being wifeless and childless, he nominated as his heir his nephew, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, the son of his eldest sister.
Renewal of the rebellion.
Meanwhile the conspiracy which had failed to overthrow Richard in the autumn of 1483, was again gathering head. The Earl of Richmond had obtained loans of men and money from France, and was only waiting for the news that his friends were ready, to make a second attempt on England. With him were all the enemies of King Richard who had escaped death—Dorset, the son of Queen Elizabeth, Edward Woodville, Morton Bishop of Ely, and the few surviving Lancastrian exiles headed by the Earls of Pembroke and Oxford. They relied, not on their French soldiery, but on the secret allies who were to join them in England, and especially on Lord Stanley, the Earl of Richmond's father-in-law. That noble, though he had been arrested in company with the unfortunate Hastings, had been pardoned by King Richard, and entrusted by him with much power in Lancashire and Cheshire. Richard's court was honeycombed with treason: his own Attorney-General, Morgan of Kidwelly, kept Richmond informed of his plans and actions. Of all those about the king only a very few were really faithful to him.
Richard knew that treason was abroad, though he could not identify the traitors. He struck cruelly and harshly at all that he could reach; his ferocity may be gauged from the fact that he actually hung a Wiltshire gentleman named Collingbourn for no more than a copy of verses. The unfortunate rhymester had scoffed at Richard's three favourites, Lord Lovel, Sir William Catesby, and Sir Richard Ratcliffe, in the lines—
"The Cat, the Rat, and Lovel our Dog
Rule all England under a Hog."
The Hog was Richard himself, whose favourite badge was a white boar.
Richmond lands in Wales.
In August, 1485, Henry of Richmond landed at Milford Haven, and was joined by many of the Welsh, among whom he was popular because of his own Welsh blood, that came from his father, Edmund Tudor. Advancing into England, he met with aid from the Talbots of Shrewsbury and many other midland gentry. Lord Stanley gathered a considerable army in Lancashire and Cheshire, but did not openly join the earl, because his son, Lord Strange, was in the king's hands, and would have been slain if Richard had been certain of his father's treachery.
Battle of Bosworth Field.
Advancing still further into the midlands, Henry met the king at Bosworth Field, near Leicester. Richard's army was twice the size of that of the earl. He must have conquered if his men had fought honestly for him. But when the battle was joined, the Earl of Northumberland, who led one wing of Richard's host, drew aside and would not fight, and presently Lord Stanley appeared with his contingent and charged the king in flank. The Yorkists began to disperse and fly, for they fought with little heart for their cruel master. But Richard himself would not turn back, though his attendants brought him his horse and besought him to save himself. He plunged into the thick of the fray, cut his way to Richmond's banner, and was there slain, fighting desperately to the last. With him fell his most faithful adherent, John Lord Howard, whom he had made Duke of Norfolk, and a few more of his chief captains. His favourite, Sir William Catesby, was taken prisoner and executed when the battle was over.
Richard's crown, beaten off his helmet by hard blows, was found in a hawthorn bush, and placed on Richmond's head by Lord Stanley, who then saluted him as king by the name of Henry VII. The dead monarch's body was taken to Leicester, and exposed naked before the people, but ultimately given honourable burial in the church of the Grey Friars.
Character of Richard III.
Thus ended the prince who had wrought so much evil, and won his way to power by such unscrupulous cunning and cruelty. He was only thirty-three when he was cut off. There have been worse kings in history, and had his title been good and his hands clean of the blood of his kinsmen, he might have filled the English throne not unworthily. But the consequences of his first fatal crime drove him deeper and deeper into wickedness, and he left a worse name behind him than any of his predecessors. The historians of the next generation drew his portrait even darker than he deserved, making him a hideous hunchback with a malignant distorted countenance. As a matter of fact, his deformity was only that his left arm was somewhat withered, and his left shoulder consequently lower than his right. His portraits show a face not unlike that of his brother Edward, but thinner and set in a nervous and joyless look of suspicion.
CHAPTER XX.
HENRY VII.
1485-1509.
Henry Tudor had the good fortune to appear upon the scene as the avenger of all wrongs, those of the injured heirs of York no less than those of the long-exiled partisans of Lancaster. His victory had been won by the aid of Yorkists like Stanley, Dorset, and Edward Woodville, no less than by that of Oxford, Pembroke, the Courtenays, the Talbots, and other old Lancastrian names. It had been settled, long before he started, that he should blend the claims of the two rival houses by marrying the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest child of Edward IV. Thus he was able to pose as the reconciler of parties, and the bringer-in of peace and quiet. He proved his moderation by abstaining from bloodshed; he spared all the prisoners of Bosworth save three alone, and though he caused a bill of attainder to be passed against King Richard's chief partisans, no more executions followed. Henry's wise view of the situation was set forth by a law which he caused one of his Parliaments to approve at a subsequent date, to the effect that no man should ever be accused of treason for supporting the king de facto against the king de jure.
Title of Henry VII. to the throne.
It required all Henry's moderation and ability, however, to make firm his seat upon the throne. His title to it was very weak—only that of conquest in fact—for the legitimacy of the Beaufort line as representatives of John of Gaunt was more than doubtful. Henry refused to rest his claim to the crown merely on his marriage to Elizabeth of York; he would be no mere king-consort, and he deliberately put off the wedding until he had been crowned at Westminster, and had been saluted by Parliament as king in his own right. Having thus made his position clear, he married Elizabeth, six months after the day of Bosworth Field.
Character of Henry.
Henry Tudor was precisely the sovereign that England required to put an end to the general unrest and unruliness that were the legacy of the Wars of the Roses. He had not an amiable character; he was reserved and suspicious, a master of plot and intrigue, selfish in act and thought, prone to hoard money in and out of season, and ready to strike unmercifully when a stroke seemed necessary. But his brain ruled his passions, and from policy, if not from natural inclination, he was clement and slow to anger. He had some turn for art and letters, and was religious in his own self-centred way. His ministers were wisely chosen; the two chief of them, Bishops Morton and Foxe, were prudent and blameless men. If Empson and Dudley, his two financial advisers, were much hated by the people for their extortions, it was because their master bade them fill his coffers, and was content that they should bear the unpopularity which must otherwise have fallen on himself. He deliberately chose to have scapegoats, lest he should have to take the responsibility for the harsher side of his policy.
Lovel's rising.
Lambert Simnel.
The earlier years of Henry's reign were much disturbed by petty rebellions, the last ground-swell of discontent and lawlessness which lingered on after the great tempest of the Wars of the Roses had abated. Richard III. had left behind him a few devoted partisans who had resolved never to submit; the chief were John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, who had been declared heir to the throne by the late king, and Lord Lovel, the sole survivor of the three favourites who had "ruled all England under the Hog." They were bold reckless men, ready to risk all for ambition and revenge. Before Henry had been a year on the throne, Lovel secretly collected a band of desperate friends, and tried to kidnap him while he was visiting York. Foiled in this scheme, Lovel fled to Flanders, where he was sheltered by Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, the widowed sister of King Edward IV. With her and with Lincoln he concerted a second plan of rebellion. They resolved to try to rouse the wrecks of the Yorkist party in the name of Edward, Earl of Warwick, the son of Clarence, who had been put to death in 1478, and the only male heir of the house of York. This prince was in King Henry's hands, safely kept in custody in the Tower of London. Till they could liberate him they resolved to make an impostor assume his name and title. So they instructed a clever boy named Lambert Simnel, the son of an organ-maker at Oxford, to act the part of the young Clarence, reasoning that Henry would not dare to put the real prince to death, but would keep him alive in order to make the imposture clear, and so they could free the real Clarence if they succeeded, and dismiss the false one when he was no longer needed.
Battle of Stoke.
Ireland had always been friendly to the house of York, and there was no one there who knew the young prince or could detect his counterfeit. So Lambert Simnel was first sent thither, to try the temper of the Irish, giving out that he had just escaped from the Tower. The Earl of Kildare and other prominent Anglo-Irish barons were wholly cozened by the young impostor, and saluted him as king. Four thousand men under Lord Thomas Fitzgerald were raised to aid him; Lincoln and Lovel joined him with 2000 veteran German mercenaries under a captain named Martin Schwartz. They crossed to England and landed in Lancashire, where a few desperate Yorkists joined them. Then advancing inland, they met King Henry at Stoke, near Newark. But their ill-compacted army was routed, the Germans and Irish were cut to pieces, and Lincoln, Schwartz, and Fitzgerald all slain. Lovel escaped to his manor of Minster Lovel, in Oxfordshire, and lurked in a secret chamber, where he was starved to death in hiding. Lambert Simnel fell into the hands of the king, who treated him with contempt instead of slaying him. He lived many years after as a cook in the royal kitchen. The rebels in Ireland were pardoned on submission, for Henry was loth to stir up further troubles in that distressful country (1488).
French war.—Brittany united to France.
Thinking perhaps to turn the attention of the nation from domestic troubles by the old expedient of a war with France, the king in the next year joined in a struggle which was raging in Brittany. Charles VIII., the son of Lewis XI., was trying to annex the duchy, whose heiress was a young girl, the Duchess Anne. Henry agreed to aid this ancient ally of England, and sent over troops both to Brittany and to Calais. The war went not unprosperously at first, and the garrison of Calais won a considerable victory at Dixmuide, in Flanders. But after a time the Bretons grew weary of the struggle, and the Duchess Anne surrendered herself to King Charles, and became his wife (1491). Thus the last of the great French feudal states was united to the crown. For the future the English could get no support from them, and as a consequence all English invasions of France in the ensuing age met with little good fortune. There was never again any chance of dismembering a divided France, such as that with which Edward III. and Henry V. had to deal. The king recognized his powerlessness, and gladly made peace with Charles VIII. on receiving a subsidy of 745,000 crowns, a better bargain than Edward IV. had made under similar circumstances at Picquigny (1492).
Perkin Warbeck.
Henry was wise to make an early and profitable peace, for new troubles were brewing for him at home. News came from Ireland that a young man was secretly harboured at Cork, who gave himself out to be Richard of York, the younger of the two princes smothered in the Tower nine years before. When Henry ordered his arrest, he fled to Flanders and took refuge with Duchess Margaret, who at once recognized him as her true nephew, and gave him a royal reception and a safe refuge for two years. There is no doubt, however, that he was really Perkin Warbeck, the son of a citizen of Tournay, who had plunged very young into a life of adventure, and hoped to gain something by fishing in the troubled waters of English politics. By Margaret's help Perkin engaged in secret intrigues with the few Yorkists who yet survived in England. But King Henry traced out all his plots, and beheaded Lord Fitzwalter and Sir William Stanley, who had listened to his tempting. Stanley's case was a bad one: he had betrayed Richard III. at Bosworth—like his brother Lord Stanley—and had been lavishly rewarded by Henry VII., yet would not keep faithful to his new master because he was refused an earldom (1495).
Though his friends had been detected, the pretender persisted in venturing an attack on England. With 2000 men raised with money lent him by Duchess Margaret, he tried to land in Kent; but the Kentishmen rose and drove him off. He then sailed to Ireland, where—like his predecessor Lambert Simnel—he met with some support. But hearing that James IV. of Scotland was on the brink of war with the English, he soon passed over to the Scottish court, where he was received with royal state. James IV. married him to his cousin, Lady Catherine Gordon, and placed him at the head of an expedition with which he was to try and raise rebellion in Yorkshire, where the supporters of the house of York were still supposed to be numerous. But when Perkin crossed the Border, not an Englishman would join him, and he was obliged to return ignominiously to Scotland. From thence the restless adventurer soon set out on a new quest.
Cornish rising.
The heavy taxation which King Henry raised from his subjects to pay for an army to resist the Scots had provoked much murmuring in some parts of England. Most of all had it been resented in the remote shire of Cornwall, where the local discontent took the form of armed gatherings to resist the taxes. Flammock, a lawyer, and Michael Joseph, a farrier of Bodmin, two turbulent demagogues, put themselves at the head of the rioters, and persuaded them to march on London, there to expostulate with the king. Lord Audley, an unwise south-country baron, joined their company, and led them as far as Blackheath, close to the gates of London. From thence they sent the king messages, bidding him to dismiss his extortionate ministers, and remove his taxes. Henry was taken by surprise, as he had just sent off his army against the Scots, but he promptly recalled the expedition and gave battle to the Cornishmen. The fight of Blackheath ended in their complete discomfiture: Audley, Flammock, and Joseph were taken and executed, but the king let the rest go away unharmed, as mere deluded tools of their leaders (June, 1497).
Failure of Warbeck.
Warbeck had heard of the rising of the Cornishmen, and thought that he discerned in it his best opportunity of making head against King Henry. He landed at Whitesand Bay, but found that he was too late, as the insurgents had already been defeated and scattered. But he rallied around him the wrecks of their bands, and made an attack on Exeter. Being foiled by the stout resistance of the citizens, and hearing that the king was coming against him with a great host, the pretender suddenly lost heart, left his men in the lurch, and fled away to take sanctuary in the abbey of Beaulieu (August, 1497).
Warbeck and the Earl of Warwick executed.
King Henry showed extraordinary moderation in dealing with the insurgents: he fined Cornwall heavily, but ordered no executions. He promised Warbeck his life if he would leave his sanctuary, and when the impostor gave himself up, he was merely placed in honourable custody in the Tower. He was only made to publish the confession of his fraud, and to give a full account of his real life and adventures. Perkin might have lived to old age, like Lambert Simnel, if he had been content to keep quiet. But he made two attempts to escape from England, which roused the king's wrath. On the second occasion he persuaded another State prisoner, Edward of Clarence, the true heir of York, to fly with him; but they were detected, and the king, provoked at last, executed Warbeck, and made the unfortunate Prince Edward share his fate (1499). Perkin had merited his end, but it is impossible to pardon Henry's dealings with the unlucky heir of Clarence, who had been a prisoner ever since Richard III. sent him to the Tower sixteen years before. There is no doubt that Henry was glad of the excuse to lop off another branch from the stem of York. Noting this fact, the next heir of that line, Edmund de la Pole, brother of the Earl of Lincoln who fell at Stoke, wisely fled from England, lest his royal blood should be his ruin.
Suppression of livery and maintenance.
After Warbeck's failure, King Henry was for the future free from the danger of dynastic risings against the house of Tudor. He was able to develop his policy both at home and abroad without any further danger of insurrections. In domestic matters he strove very successfully to put an end to the turbulence which had been left behind from the times of the civil war. His chief weapon was legislation against "livery and maintenance," the evil custom by which a great lord gave his badge to his neighbours, and undertook to support them in their quarrels and lawsuits. This abuse of local influence was sternly suppressed, and no man, however great, was permitted to keep about him more than a limited number of liveried retainers. It is on record that Henry punished his oldest friend and supporter, the Earl of Oxford, for breaking this rule. On the occasion of a royal visit to his castle of Hedingham, Oxford received the king at the head of many hundreds of his followers, all clad in the de Vere livery, and was promptly made to pay a heavy fine for his ostentation.
The Star Chamber founded.
Henry established a special tribunal for dealing with the offences of men, whose power and influence might foil and divert the ordinary course of justice. This was the new and unconstitutional "Court of Star Chamber," a committee of trusted members of the Privy Council, which met in a room at Westminster whose roof was decorated with a pattern of stars. The court was useful at the time, but grew to be a serious grievance in later days, because it stood over and above the ordinary law of the land, and was used to carry out any illegal punishment that the king might devise.
Reduction of the surviving barons.
By these arbitrary means, Henry Tudor succeeded in taming the survivors of the baronage, and in reducing them to such a state of subjection to the crown as England had never before seen. Their spirit had already been broken by the endless slaughters and confiscations of the Wars of the Roses, and the majority of them were well content to surrender the anarchical independence which they had enjoyed of late, in return for a quiet and undisturbed security for life and land. It is to be noticed that many of the oldest and most powerful houses had now disappeared. By the year 1500 there only survived of the older and greater peerages those of Northumberland, Westmoreland, Arundel, Buckingham, Devon, and Oxford, to which may be added the duchy of Norfolk, afterwards restored to the Howards by Henry VIII. If we find other ancient titles borne by men of the Tudor time, we must remember that the holders were not the heirs of the lines whose names they bore, and did not possess the vast estates that had made those titles all-important. The Warwicks or Somersets, the Suffolks or Herefords of the sixteenth century are the mere creatures of Tudor caprice.
Foreign policy of Henry.
A few words are necessary to explain the tiresome and difficult subject of the foreign policy of Henry VII. We have seen that his venture of war with France in 1491 proved unfortunate, and he never repeated it. For the future he preferred to hoard money at home, rather than to lavish it on continental wars. But if he never fought again, he was always threatening to fight, winning what advantage he could by the menace of joining one or other of the parties which then divided Europe. The main troubles of continental politics in his period were caused by the restless ambition of the Kings of France. Freed from the lingering wars with England which had previously been their bane, the French monarchs had turned southward, and were striving to conquer Italy. Charles VIII. and Lewis XII., the two contemporaries of King Henry, spent all their energy in the attempt to annex the kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan, to which they had some shadowy claim of succession. Their schemes called into the field the sovereigns whose position would have been imperilled by the French conquest of Italy—the Emperor, Maximilian of Austria, and Ferdinand and Isabella, the sovereigns of Aragon and Castile, whose marriage had created the united kingdom of Spain.
The Netherlands.
If the struggle had raged in Italy alone, Henry VII. might have viewed it with a philosophic indifference. But it also involved the Netherlands, the near neighbour of England, and the chief market for English trade. The Netherlands were at this moment in the hands of Philip of Austria, the son of the emperor, for Maximilian had married Mary of Burgundy, the heiress of the great dukes who had ruled in the Low Countries, and Philip was their only son. [29] Henry wished to keep on good terms with his neighbours in Flanders, more especially because it was there that the Yorkist refugees found shelter. Not only had the dowager Duchess Margaret aided them from thence, but Maximilian, while acting as regent in the Netherlands for his young son Philip, had given Perkin Warbeck much assistance.
The "Great Intercourse."
Henry's policy was rendered difficult by the incurable perverseness of the emperor and his son, the Duke Philip, but he managed to keep out of war with them, and even obtained from them the "Great Intercourse," a commercial treaty with the Low Countries which was of much use to England, as it provided for the free entry of English goods into Flanders, and of Flemish goods into England, and stipulated that the king and the duke should join together to put down piracy in the Narrow Seas. Some years later Henry was enabled to wring some further advantages out of Duke Philip, in a not very honourable way. The duke was sailing to Spain, when his ship was driven into Weymouth by a storm. The king made him welcome and entertained him royally, but would not suffer him to depart till he had promised to surrender the Yorkist refugee, Edmund de la Pole, [30] who was then staying in Flanders, and to still further extend the terms of the "Great Intercourse" to the benefit of English merchants (1506).
Marriage of the Prince of Wales to Catherine of Aragon.
With Ferdinand of Aragon, the astute and unscrupulous King of Spain, Henry was able to get on better terms than with his capricious neighbour in Flanders, since both were guided purely by self-interest. The two wily kings understood and respected each other, and resolved to ally themselves by a marriage. Accordingly Arthur, Prince of Wales, Henry's eldest son, was wedded to Catherine, the younger daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. They were both mere children, and the prince died before he had reached the age of seventeen. But Ferdinand resolved that the alliance should not drop through, and the Princess Catherine was passed on to Henry, Arthur's younger brother and successor in the title of Prince of Wales. He was some years younger than his bride, and the marriage, as we shall presently see, was a most unhappy one. With his son's wife the English king received a large but unpunctually paid dowry.
Scotland and Ireland.
King Henry's long diplomatic intrigues with Spain and the Emperor brought him no very great profit in the end. But it was otherwise with his dealings with his neighbours in the British Isles. After the defeat of Perkin Warbeck, he made an advantageous peace with James IV. of Scotland, who married his daughter Margaret, and became his firm ally. For the last ten years of his reign Scotland gave no trouble. The still more difficult task of pacifying Ireland was also carried out with considerable success. Henry dealt very gently with the Irish chiefs, in spite of the treasonable support that they had given both to Simnel and to Warbeck. His plan of ruling the country was to enlist in his favour the Earl of Kildare, the most powerful of the Irish barons, by making him Lord Deputy, and entrusting him with very full control over the rest. "All Ireland cannot rule the Earl of Kildare," it had been said; but the king answered, "Then the Earl of Kildare shall rule all Ireland."
Poynings' Act.
This policy was attended by a fair measure of success; if turbulent himself, the earl at least put down all other riotous chiefs. Henry's reign was also notable in Ireland for the passing of Poynings' Act at the Parliament of Drogheda. This put the Irish legislature in strict subordination to England, by providing that all laws brought before it must previously receive the assent of the king and his English Privy Council (1495).
Henry Tudor died before his time in 1509, having not yet reached the age of fifty-four. He left behind him a land peaceful and orderly, a nobility tamed and reduced to obedience, and a treasury filled with £1,800,000 in hard cash—the best possible witness to his wisdom and ability, for no king of England had ever built up such a hoard before. If his aims had been selfish and his hand hard, he had at any rate given England "strong governance," and saved her from sinking into anarchy.