The coin of those times in England was chiefly of gold and silver. The gold coin consisted of nobles, half-nobles, and quarter-nobles, originally equivalent to guineas (the exact value of a noble in Henry IV.'s reign was 21s. 1½d.), half-guineas, and quarter-guineas, or dollars of 5s. 3d. The silver coins were groats, half-groats, and pennies. But it must be remembered that all these coins were of ten times the intrinsic value of our present money; so that the labourer who in the fifteenth century received 1½d. per day, received as much as fifteen pence of the present money. But the great historical fact regarding the money of this age was its continual adulteration, and consequent depreciation.
CANNON OF THE END OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. (From an Engraving by I. van Mechlin.)
CHAPTER V.
THE REIGN OF HENRY VII.
Henry's Defective Title—Imprisonment of the Earl of Warwick—The King's Title to the Throne—His Marriage—Lovel's Rising—Lambert Simnel—Henry's prompt Action—Failure of the Rebellion—The Queen's Coronation—The Act of Maintenance—Henry's Ingratitude to the Duke of Brittany—Discontent in England—Expedition to France and its Results—Henry's Second Invasion—Treaty of Étaples—Perkin Warbeck—His Adventures in Ireland, France, and Burgundy—Henry's Measures—Descent on Kent—Warbeck in Scotland—Invasion of England—The Cornish Rising—Warbeck quits Scotland—He lands in Cornwall—Failure of the Rebellion—Imprisonment of Warbeck and his subsequent Execution—European Affairs—Marriages of Henry's Daughter and Son—Betrothal of Catherine and Prince Henry—Henry's Matrimonial Schemes—Royal Exactions—A Lucky Capture—Henry proposes for Joanna—His Death.
Though Henry Tudor had conquered Richard III. on the field of Bosworth, he had no title whatever to the crown of England, except such as the people, by their own free choice, should give him. He was descended, it is true, from Edward III., through John of Gaunt, but from the offspring of not only an illicit, but an adulterous connection. When the natural children of John of Gaunt, therefore, were legitimatised by Act of Parliament, that Act expressly declared them incapable of inheriting the crown. Still more, the true hereditary claim lay in the house of York; and had that line been totally extinct, and had the bar against his line not existed, the royal house of Portugal at least had a superior title in point of descent from John of Gaunt. Further still, he stood attainted as a traitor by Act of Parliament, and could not, therefore, assert a Parliamentary right. Yet, as we have said, for years public expectation, overlooking the claims of all others of both the contending lines, had turned towards him, as the individual destined by Providence to put an end to the sanguinary broils of York and Lancaster, and unite them in peace.
The only son of the late Duke of Clarence, who, next to the children of Edward IV., was the heir apparent of the line of York, had been confined by his uncle, Richard III., in the castle of Sheriff Hutton, in Yorkshire. Richard had at first treated this poor boy with kindness; he had created him Earl of Warwick, the title of his illustrious grandfather, the king-maker. On the death of his own son, he had at first proposed to nominate him his heir; but, fearing that he might be too dangerous a competitor, he had omitted that favour, and conferred it on the Earl of Lincoln, John de la Pole, the son of his sister the Duchess of Suffolk, and therefore nephew both of himself and Edward IV. Henry, the very first day after the battle of Bosworth, despatched Sir Robert Willoughby to take the young earl from Sheriff Hutton, and convey him to the Tower of London. Henry then put himself at the head of his victorious troops, and commenced his march towards the capital. Everywhere he was received, not as a conqueror, but a deliverer.