Peace, however, could not be obtained at once, nor the embers of thirty years' strife stamped out in a moment. For fifteen years open revolt and whispered sedition troubled the rest of the realm and threatened the stability of Henry's throne. Ireland remained a hot-bed of Yorkist sympathies, and Ireland was zealously aided by Edward IV.'s sister, Margaret of Burgundy; she pursued, like a vendetta, the family quarrel with Henry VII., and earned the title of Henry's Juno by harassing him as vindictively as the Queen of Heaven vexed the pious Æneas. Other rulers, with no Yorkist bias, were slow to recognise the parvenu king and quick to profit by his difficulties. Pretenders to their rivals' thrones were useful pawns on the royal chess-board; and though the princes of Europe had no reason to desire a Yorkist restoration, they thought that a little judicious backing of Yorkist claimants would be amply repaid by the restriction of Henry's energies to domestic affairs. Seven months after the battle of Bosworth there was a rising in the West under the Staffords, and in the North under Lovell; and Henry himself was nearly captured while celebrating at York the feast of St. George. A year later a youth of obscure origin, Lambert Simnel,[23] claimed to be first the Duke of York and then the Earl of Warwick. The former was son, and the latter was nephew, of Edward IV. Lambert was crowned king at Dublin amid the acclamations of the Irish people. Not a voice was raised in Henry's favour; Kildare, the practical ruler of Ireland, earls and archbishops, bishops and barons, and great officers of State, from Lord Chancellor downwards, swore fealty to the reputed son of an Oxford tradesman. Ireland was only the volcano which gave vent to the subterranean flood; treason in England and intrigue abroad were working in secret concert with open rebellion across St. George's Channel. The Queen Dowager was secluded in Bermondsey Abbey and deprived of her jointure lands. John de la Pole, who, as eldest son of Edward IV.'s sister, had been named his successor by Richard III., fled to Burgundy; thence his aunt Margaret sent Martin Schwartz and two thousand mercenaries to co-operate with the Irish invasion. But, at East Stoke, De la Pole and Lovell, Martin Schwartz and his merry men were slain; and the most serious of the revolts against Henry ended in the consignment of Simnel to the royal scullery and of his tutor to the Tower.
Lambert, however, was barely initiated in his new duties when the son of a boatman of Tournay started on a similar errand with a less congenial end. An unwilling puppet at first, Perkin Warbeck was on a trading visit to Ireland, when the Irish, who saw a Yorkist prince in every likely face, insisted that Perkin was Earl of Warwick. This he denied on oath before the Mayor of Cork. Nothing deterred, they suggested that he was Richard III.'s bastard; but the bastard was safe in Henry's keeping, and the imaginative Irish finally took refuge in the theory that Perkin was Duke of York. Lambert's old friends rallied round Perkin; the re-animated Duke was promptly summoned to the Court of France and treated with princely honours. When Charles VIII. had used him to beat down Henry's terms, Perkin found a home with Margaret, aunt to all the pretenders. As usual, there were traitors in high places in England. Sir William Stanley, whose brother had married Henry's mother, and to whom Henry himself owed his victory at Bosworth, was implicated. His sudden arrest disconcerted the plot, and when Perkin's fleet appeared off the coast of Kent, the rustics made short work of the few who were rash enough to land. Perkin sailed away to the Yorkist refuge in Ireland, but Kildare was no longer deputy. Waterford, to which he laid siege, was relieved, and the pretender sought in Scotland a third basis of operations. An abortive raid on the Borders and a high-born Scottish wife[24] were all that he obtained of James IV., and in 1497, after a second attempt in Ireland, he landed in Cornwall. The Cornishmen had just risen against Henry's extortions, marched on London and been defeated at Blackheath; but Henry's lenience encouraged a fresh revolt, and three thousand men flocked to Perkin's standard. They failed to take Exeter; Perkin was seized at Beaulieu and sent up to London to be paraded through the streets amid the jeers and taunts of the people. Two years later a foolish attempt at escape and a fresh personation of the Earl of Warwick by one Ralf Wulford[25] led to the execution of all three, Perkin, Wulford, and the real Earl of Warwick, who had been a prisoner and probably the innocent centre of so many plots since the accession of Henry VII. Warwick's death may have been due to the instigation of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, who were negotiating for the marriage of Catherine of Aragon with Prince Arthur. They were naturally anxious for the security of the throne their daughter was to share with Henry's son; and now their ambassador wrote triumphantly that there remained in England not a doubtful drop of royal blood.[26] There were no more pretenders, and for the rest of Henry's reign England enjoyed such peace as it had not known for nearly a century. The end which Henry had sought by fair means and foul was attained, and there was no practical alternative to his children in the succession to the English throne.
But all his statecraft, his patience and labour would have been writ in water without children to succeed him and carry on the work which he had begun; and at times it seemed probable that this necessary condition would remain unfulfilled. For the Tudors were singularly luckless in the matter of children. They were scarcely a sterile race, but their offspring had an unfortunate habit of dying in childhood. It was the desire for a male heir that involved Henry VIII. in his breach with Rome, and led Mary into a marriage which raised a revolt; the last of the Tudors perceived that heirs might be purchased at too great a cost, and solved the difficulty by admitting its insolubility. Henry VIII. had six wives, but only three children who survived infancy; of these, Edward VI. withered away at the age of fifteen, and Mary died childless at forty-two. By his two[27] mistresses he seems to have had only one son, who died at the age of eleven, and as far as we know, he had not a single grandchild, legitimate or other. His sisters were hardly more fortunate. Margaret's eldest son by James IV. died a year after his birth; her eldest daughter died at birth; her second son lived only nine months; her second daughter died at birth; her third son lived to be James V., but her fourth found an early grave. Mary, the other sister of Henry VIII., lost her only son in his teens. The appalling death-rate among Tudor infants cannot be attributed solely to medical ignorance, for Yorkist babies clung to life with a tenacity which was quite as inconvenient as the readiness with which Tudor infants relinquished it; and Richard III., Henry VII. and Henry VIII. all found it necessary to accelerate, by artificial means, the exit from the world of the superfluous children of other pretenders. This drastic process smoothed their path, but could not completely solve the problem; and the characteristic Tudor infirmity was already apparent in the reign of Henry VII. He had three sons; two predeceased him, one at the age of fifteen years, the other at fifteen months. Of his four daughters, two died in infancy, and the youngest cost the mother her life.[28] The fruit of that union between the Red Rose and the White, upon which so much store had been set,[29] seemed doomed to fail.
The hopes built upon it had largely contributed to the success of Henry's raid upon the English throne, and before he started on his quest he had solemnly promised to marry Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward IV., and heiress of the House of York. But he was resolute to avoid all appearance of ruling in her right; his title had been recognised by Parliament, and he had been five months de facto king before he wedded his Yorkist wife (18th January, 1486). Eight months and two days later, the Queen gave birth, in the priory of St. Swithin's, at Winchester, to her first-born son. Four days later, on Sunday, 24th September, the child was christened in the minster of the old West Saxon capital, and given in baptism the name of Arthur, the old British king. It was neither Yorkist nor Lancastrian, it evoked no bitter memories of civil strife, and it recalled the fact that the Tudors claimed a pedigree and boasted a title to British sovereignty, beside the antiquity of which Yorkist pretentions were a mushroom growth. Duke of Cornwall from his birth, Prince Arthur was, when three years old, created Prince of Wales. Already negotiations had been begun for his marriage with Catherine, the daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. Both were cautious sovereigns, and many a rebellion had to be put down and many a pretender put away, before they would consent to entrust their daughter to the care of an English king. It was not till 2nd October, 1501, that Catherine landed at Plymouth. At her formal reception into England, and at her marriage, six weeks later, in St. Paul's, she was led by the hand of her little brother-in-law, Prince Henry, then ten years old.[30] Against the advice of his council, Henry VII. sent the youthful bride and bridegroom to live as man and wife at Ludlow Castle, and there, five and a half months later, their married life came to a sudden end. Prince Arthur died on 2nd April, 1502, and was buried in princely state in Worcester Cathedral.
CHAPTER II.
PRINCE HENRY AND HIS ENVIRONMENT.
The Prince, who now succeeded to the position of heir-apparent, was nearly five years younger than his brother. The third child and second son of his parents, he was born on 28th June, 1491, at Greenwich, a palace henceforth intimately associated with the history of Tudor sovereigns. The manor of Greenwich had belonged to the alien priory of Lewisham, and, on the dissolution of those houses, had passed into the hands of Henry IV. Then it was granted to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who began to enclose the palace grounds; on his death it reverted to the Crown; and Edward IV., many of whose tastes and characteristics were inherited by his grandson, Henry VIII., took great delight in beautifying and extending the palace. He gave it to his Queen, Elizabeth, and in her possession it remained until her sympathy with Yorkist plots was punished by the forfeiture of her lands. Henry VII. then bestowed it on his wife, the dowager's daughter, and thus it became the birthplace of her younger children. Here was the scene of many a joust and tournament, of many a masque and revel; here the young Henry, as soon as he came to the throne, was wedded to Catherine of Aragon; here Henry's sister was married to the Duke of Suffolk; and here were born all future Tudor sovereigns, Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. At Greenwich, then, through the forfeit of his grandmother, Henry was born; he was baptised in the Church of the Observant Friars, an Order, the object first of his special favour,[31] and then of an equally marked dislike; the ceremony was performed by Richard Fox,[32] then Bishop of Exeter, and afterwards one of the child's chief advisers. His nurse was named Ann Luke, and years afterwards, when Henry was King, he allowed her the annual pension of twenty pounds, equivalent to about three hundred in modern currency. The details of his early life are few and far between. Lord Herbert, who wrote his Life and Reign a century later, records that the young Prince was destined by his father for the see of Canterbury,[33] and provided with an education more suited to a clerical than to a lay career. The motive ascribed to Henry VII. is typical of his character; it was more economical to provide for younger sons out of ecclesiastical, than royal, revenues. But the story is probably a mere inference from the excellence of the boy's education, and from his father's thrift. If the idea of an ecclesiastical career for young Henry was ever entertained, it was soon abandoned for secular preferment. On 5th April, 1492, before the child was ten months old, he was appointed to the ancient and important posts of Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle.[34] A little later he received the still more honourable office of Earl Marshal; the duties were performed by deputy, but a goodly portion of the fees was doubtless appropriated for the expenses of the boy's establishment, or found its way into the royal coffers. Further promotion awaited him at the mature age of three. On 12th September, 1494, he became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland;[35] six weeks later he was created Duke of York, and dubbed, with the usual quaint and formal ceremonies,[36] a Knight of the Bath. In December, he was made Warden of the Scottish Marches, and he was invested with the Garter in the following May.[37]
The accumulation of these great offices of State, any one of which might have taxed the powers of a tried administrator, in the feeble hands of a child appears at first sight a trifle irrational; but there was always method in Henry's madness. In bestowing these administrative posts upon his children he was really concentrating them in his own person and bringing them directly under his own supervision. It was the policy whereby the early Roman Emperors imposed upon Republican Rome the substance, without the form, of despotism. It limited the powers of mischief which Henry's nobles might otherwise have enjoyed, and provided incomes for his children without increasing taxation or diminishing the privy purse. The work of administration could be done at least as effectively, much more economically, and with far less danger to internal peace by deputies of lower rank than the dukes and earls and barons who had been wont to abuse these high positions for the furtherance of private ends, and often for the levying of private war. Nowhere were the advantages of Henry's policy more conspicuous than in his arrangements for the government of Ireland. Ever since Richard, Duke of York, and George, Duke of Clarence, had ruled as Irish viceroys, Ireland had been a Yorkist stronghold. There Simnel had been crowned king, and there peers and peasants had fought for Perkin Warbeck. Something must be done to heal the running sore. Possibly Henry thought that some of Ireland's loyalty might be diverted from Yorkist channels by the selection of a Tudor prince as its viceroy; but he put his trust in more solid measures. As deputy to his infant son he nominated one who, though but a knight, was perhaps the ablest man among his privy council. It was in this capacity that Sir Edward Poynings[38] crossed to Ireland about the close of 1494, and called the Parliament of Drogheda. Judged by the durability of its legislation, it was one of the most memorable of parliaments; and for nearly three hundred years Poynings' laws remained the foundation upon which rested the constitutional relations between the sister kingdoms. Even more lasting was the precedent set by Prince Henry's creation as Duke of York; from that day to this, from Henry VIII. to the present Prince of Wales, the second son of the sovereign or of the heir-apparent has almost invariably been invested with that dukedom.[39] The original selection of the title was due to substantial reasons. Henry's name was distinctively Lancastrian, his title was no less distinctively Yorkist; it was adopted as a concession to Yorkist prejudice. It was a practical reminder of the fact which the Tudor laureate, Skelton, celebrated in song: "The rose both red and white, in one rose now doth grow". It was also a tacit assertion of the death of the last Duke of York in the Tower and of the imposture of Perkin Warbeck, now pretending to the title.
But thoughts of the coercion of Ireland and conciliation of Yorkists were as yet far from the mind of the child, round whose person these measures were made to centre. Precocious he must have been, if the phenomenal development of brow and the curiously mature expression attributed to him in his portrait[40] are any indication of his intellectual powers at the age at which he is represented. Without the childish lips and nose, the face might well be that of a man of fifty; and with the addition of a beard, the portrait would be an unmistakable likeness of Henry himself in his later years. When the Prince was no more than a child, says Erasmus, he was set to study.[41] He had, we are told, a vivid and active mind, above measure able to execute whatever tasks he undertook; and he never attempted anything in which he did not succeed.[42] The Tudors had no modern dread of educational over-pressure when applied to their children, and the young Henry was probably as forward a pupil as his son, Edward VI., his daughter, Elizabeth, or his grand-niece, Lady Jane Grey. But, fortunately for Henry, a physical exuberance corrected his mental precocity; and, as he grew older, any excessive devotion to the Muses was checked by an unwearied pursuit of bodily culture. He was the first of English sovereigns to be educated under the new influence of the Renaissance. Scholars, divines and poets thronged the Court of Henry VII. Margaret Beaufort, who ruled in Henry's household, was a signal benefactor to the cause of English learning. Lady Margaret professors commemorate her name in both our ancient universities, and in their bidding prayers she is to this day remembered. Two colleges at Cambridge revere her as their foundress; Caxton, the greatest of English printers, owed much to her munificence, and she herself translated into English books from both Latin and French. Henry VII., though less accomplished that the later Tudors, evinced an intelligent interest in art and letters, and provided for his children efficient instructors; while his Queen, Elizabeth of York, is described by Erasmus as possessing the soundest judgment and as being remarkable for her prudence as well as for her piety. Bernard André,[43] historian and poet, who had been tutor to Prince Arthur, probably took no small part in the education of his younger brother; to him he dedicated, after Arthur's death, two of the annual summaries of events which he was in the habit of compiling. Giles D'Ewes,[44] apparently a Frenchman and the author of a notable French grammar, taught that language to Prince Henry, as many years later he did to his daughter, Queen Mary; probably either D'Ewes or André trained his handwriting, which is a curious compromise between the clear and bold Italian style, soon to be adopted by well-instructed Englishmen, and the old English hieroglyphics in which more humbly educated individuals, including Shakespeare, concealed the meaning of their words. But the most famous of Henry's teachers was the poet Skelton, the greatest name in English verse from Lydgate down to Surrey. Skelton was poet laureate to Henry VII. Court, and refers in his poems to his wearing of the white and green of Tudor liveries.[45] He celebrated in verse Arthur's creation as Prince of Wales and Henry's as Duke of York;[46] and before the younger prince was nine years old, this "incomparable light and ornament of British Letters," as Erasmus styles him, was directing Henry's studies. Skelton himself writes.—
The honor of England I learned to spell,
I gave him drink of the sugred well
Of Helicon's waters crystalline,
Acquainting him with the Muses nine.