Cassell's History of England, Vol. 2 (of 8) / From the Wars of the Roses to the Great Rebellion

by Anonymous

It was not likely that Philip of Burgundy would make much progress with Henry, except so far as he could serve him by keeping certain matters, well known at the Courts of Burgundy and Flanders, concerning the real history of Perkin Warbeck, secret; and his anxiety on this head more and more convinced people that Warbeck had been something more than the son of a Jew.

Henry VII. having succeeded in ridding himself of all the pretenders to his crown, now set himself to complete the marriages of his children, and to make money with redoubled ardour. Negotiations had been going on with James of Scotland for the marriage of Henry's eldest daughter, Margaret. In 1496 James, who had previously declined the match, now in communication with Fox, Bishop of Durham, offered to enter into that contract. Henry gladly assented, and, when some of his council suggested that in case of the failure of the male line in England, a Scottish prince, born of this marriage, would become the heir, and England a mere appendage of Scotland, "No," replied Henry, "Scotland will become an appendage of England, for the smaller must follow the larger kingdom." And, no doubt, this idea had from the first actuated the calculating mind of the Tudor. On the 29th of January, 1502, the parties were solemnly affianced in the queen's chamber, the Earl of Bothwell having come to London as proxy for James. Margaret, at the time of this affiancing, was but just turned twelve years of age, and it was agreed that she should remain twenty months longer under the roof of her parents. Accordingly, it was not till the 8th of July, 1503, that she set out on her journey to Scotland.

THE BYWARD TOWER: TOWER OF LONDON.

Simultaneously had been proceeding the negotiations with the Spanish Court for the marriage between Henry's eldest son, Arthur, and Catherine, the daughter of Ferdinand, King of Aragon. The negotiations for this marriage had commenced so early as 1489, when the young prince was not yet three years old, and Catherine but four. In 1496 a further step was taken; and Ferdinand then promised to give the princess a portion of 200,000 crowns, and Henry engaged that his son should endow her with one-third of his present income, and the same of the income of the Crown, if he should live to be king. It was stipulated that so soon as Prince Arthur reached his twelfth year, a dispensation should be obtained to empower him to make the contract; and, accordingly, the marriage was performed by proxy, the Spanish ambassador assuming this part, in the chapel of the prince's manor of Bewdley. These two children, who were at this period, the one ten, and the other eleven years of age, were educated in the highest possible degree by their respective parents; and at the time of their actual marriage, in 1501, when Arthur was fifteen, and Catherine nearly sixteen, they were perhaps the two most learned persons of their years in the two kingdoms of Spain and England. The festivities over, Arthur retired to his castle of Ludlow with his bride, and there kept a Court modelled on that of the king. Great hopes and auguries were drawn from this marriage, and wonderful futures to them and their descendants were promised them by the astrologers. But little more than five months sufficed to falsify all the earthly predictions; for the young prince fell suddenly ill and died. Various reasons for his death are assigned by different authorities. Some assert that he died of consumption; others declare that he was perfectly sound and robust, and that he died of some epidemic—the sweating sickness, or, as the Spanish historian says, the plague. Great sickness of some kind was prevailing in the neighbourhood, so that at Worcester the funeral, according to the Spanish herald, was but thinly attended. Prince Arthur died on the 2nd of April, 1502. He was a prince of great promise, and the beauty of his person, the sweetness of his manner, and his brilliant accomplishments, won him universal favour, which was equally shared by his young bride.

The death of Arthur was a shock to the political arrangements, as well as to the affections of the royal parties on both sides. Ferdinand was anxious to retain a close alliance with England, as a counterpoise to the ascendency of France. He therefore proposed to Henry that Catherine should be affianced to Henry Duke of York, Prince Arthur's younger brother. This was a very legitimate project according to the Jewish law, but not so much in accordance with the practice of the Christian world. Henry VII. appeared to hesitate—it may safely be surmised with no intention of allowing the young princess, and her dowry of 200,000 crowns, to escape him; but rather, it may be supposed, with a design to exact something more. To hasten his decision, however, the Spanish monarch announced as the alternative that Catherine must be at once restored to her parents, with half of the marriage portion already paid. This had immediate effect on the deliberations of Henry. He showed himself ready to assent, if there were an additional incentive in the shape of another sum. Ferdinand and Isabella were firm. They declared themselves ready to pay the remaining 100,000 crowns on the contract of the marriage, which should take effect two months after the receipt of a dispensation from the Pope. Henry tried every art to extort a larger sum, and it was not till June, 1503, that this proposition was finally accepted. The solemnisation of the marriage was to take place on the young Prince Henry completing his fourteenth year. But the difficulties were not yet over. The two monarchs continued, like two skilful players, to try every move which might delay the payment of the money, or compel it with an augmentation. In this state the matter remained till 1504, when Henry and Catherine, on the 25th of June, were betrothed, but still not married, at the house of the Bishop of Salisbury, in Fleet Street.

Scarcely had the eyes of Elizabeth of York closed (she died in 1503), at the early age of thirty-seven, than Henry was on the look-out for another wife, for it was another opportunity of making a profit. His eyes glanced over the courts and courtly dames of Europe; and the lady who struck him as the most attractive in the world was the widow of the late King of Naples—for the deceased monarch had bequeathed her an immense property. Her ducats were charms that told on the gold-loving heart of Henry most ravishingly. He posted off three private gentlemen, well skilled in such delicate inquiries, to Naples, to learn from real sources whether all was safe as to this grand dowry. Poor Catherine was even made to play a part in this notable scheme of courtship, by furnishing the emissaries with a letter to her relative, the queen-dowager. The gentlemen reported in the most glowing terms the charms of the queen-dowager's person, the sweetness of her disposition, and the brilliant endowments of her mind, but they were obliged to add that, though the lady's fortune was in justice as large as fame reported it, the present king refused to carry out the will by which it was conferred. This one unlucky fact at once blotted out all the rest, and Henry, giving not another thought to the dowager-queen of Naples, turned his attention to the dowager-duchess of Savoy, who was also reported to be rich.

While Henry, however, was traversing Europe with the design of adding to his ever-growing hoards, he was equally diligent at home in prosecuting every art by which he could add another mark to his heap. He sought out and kept in his pay clever and unprincipled lawyers to search the old statute-books for laws grown obsolete, but which had never been formally repealed; and he had another set of spies in correspondence with them, who went to and fro throughout the whole kingdom to mark out all such persons of property as had transgressed these slumbering laws. Such a state of things could never have been tolerated in any former reign; but the wars of the Roses had cut off all the chief nobility, and the House of Commons, terrified by the summary proceedings against offenders, had become utterly cowed, and trembled at the mere word of this imperious monarch. Never, therefore, was the English people at any time so completely prostrated beneath the talons of a royal vampire as at this period. The rich merchants of London found themselves accused of malpractices in the discharge of their civic offices, and were subjected to the same process of squeezing in Henry's universal press.

To drain the coffers of the landed aristocracy, Henry's agents brought up against them all the old obsolete feudal charges of wardships, aids, liveries, premier seizins, and scutages. Their estates had long been held under a different tenure, obtained from former monarchs. No matter: all those marked out for legal bleeding were brought into the private inquisition of the king's commissioners, and compelled to pay whatever was demanded, or to suffer worse inconveniences. Even his own friends were not exempted from the ever-watchful eyes and schemes of this money-making king. The law which he had enacted against the practice of "maintenance" was a prolific source of emolument. A striking example of this species of royal sharp practice was given in the case of John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. This nobleman having entertained the king on one occasion for several days magnificently at his castle of Henningham, to do the utmost honour to him at his departure, summoned all his friends and retainers, arrayed in all their livery coats and cognisances, and ranged them in two rows leading from the reception rooms to the royal carriage. Henry's eye was instantly struck with this prodigious display of wealth and of men, and his mind as suddenly leapt to a felicitous conclusion. There was money to be made out of it. The king said: "By my faith, my lord, I thank you for your good cheer, but I may not endure to have my laws thus broken in my sight: my attorney must speak to you." The earl was prosecuted for thus seeking to flatter the vanity of his master, and compelled to gratify Henry's avarice by a fine of 15,000 marks.

Whilst the king himself set so notable an example of extortion, we may be sure that his commissioners, spies, and tools of all sorts were not slack in this abominable business of ferreting out and putting through the cruel torture of their secret courts, the unhappy subjects of every corner of the kingdom who had any substance to prey upon. "The king," says Bacon, "had gotten for his purpose, or beyond his purpose, two instruments, Empson and Dudley, whom the people esteemed as his horse-leeches and shearers: bold men, and careless of fame, and that took toll of their master's grist. Dudley was of a good family, eloquent, and one that could put hateful business into good language. But Empson, that was the son of a sieve-maker, triumphed always upon the deed done, putting off all other respects whatsoever."