CHAPTER VI.
REIGN OF HENRY VIII.
The King's Accession—State of Europe—Henry and Julius II.—Treaty between England and Spain—Henry is duped by Ferdinand—New Combinations—Execution of Suffolk—Invasion of France—Battle of Spurs—Invasion of England by the Scots—Flodden Field—Death of James of Scotland—Louis breaks up the Holy League—Peace with France—Marriage and Death of Louis XII.—Rise of Wolsey—Affairs in Scotland—Francis I. in Italy—Death of Maximilian—Henry a Candidate for the Empire—Election of Charles—Field of the Cloth of Gold—Wolsey's Diplomacy—Failure of his Candidature for the Papacy—The Emperor in London.
No prince ever ascended a throne under more auspicious circumstances than Henry VIII. While his father had strengthened the throne, he had made himself extremely unpopular. The longer he lived, the more the selfish meanness and the avarice of his character had become conspicuous, and excited the disgust of his subjects. Henry was young, handsome, accomplished, and gay. He was in many respects the very opposite of his father, and the people always give to a young prince every virtue under the sun. Accordingly, Henry, who was only eighteen, was regarded as a fine, buxom young fellow; frank, affable, generous, capable of everything, and disposed to the best.
Fox was grown old, and under Henry VII. had grown habitually parsimonious. He, therefore, attempted to keep a tight reign on the young monarch, and discouraged all mere schemes of pleasure which necessarily brought expense. But the old proverb that a miser is sure to be succeeded by a spendthrift, was not likely to be falsified in Henry. He was full of health, youth, vigour, and affluence. He was disposed to enjoy all the gaieties and enjoyments which a brilliant Court and the resources of a great kingdom spread around him, and in this tendency he found in the Earl of Surrey a far more facile counsellor than in Fox.
All this made deep inroads into his parental treasures, but it augmented his popularity, which he vastly extended by bringing to justice the two hated extortioners of Henry VII.'s reign. To prepare for this, he appointed commissioners to hear the complaints of those who had suffered from the grievous exactions of the late reign; but these complaints were so loud and so universal that he was soon convinced that it would be impossible to make full restitution; and he therefore resolved to appease the injured in some degree by punishing the injurers. A number of the most notorious informers were therefore seized, set on horses, and paraded through the streets of London, on the 6th of June, with their faces to the horses' tails. This done, they were set in the pillory, and left to the vengeance of the people, who so maltreated them that they all died soon after in prison. The fate of Dudley and Empson—the two main instruments of popular oppression—was suspended by the coronation, which took place on the 24th of the same month. After it was over they were tried and beheaded.
Henry had been married to Catherine of Aragon on the 3rd of the month at Greenwich. Whatever pretences Henry made in after years of his scruples about this marriage—Catherine having been the wife of his elder brother Prince Arthur—he seems to have felt or expressed none now. Archbishop Warham had protested against it on that ground in Henry VII.'s time; but though the princess was six years older than himself, there is every reason to believe that Henry was now anxious for the match. Catherine was at this time very agreeable in person, and was distinguished for the excellence of her disposition and the spotless purity and modesty of her life. She was the daughter of one of the most powerful sovereigns of Europe; and the alliance of Spain was held to be essentially desirable to counteract the power of France. Besides this, the princess had a large dower, which must be restored if she were allowed to return home. The majority of his council, therefore, zealously concurred with him in his wish to complete this marriage; and his grandmother, the sagacious Countess of Richmond, was one of its warmest advocates. "There were few women," says Lord Herbert, "who could compete with Queen Catherine when in her prime;" and Henry himself, writing to her father a short time after the marriage, sufficiently expresses his satisfaction at the union:—"As regards that sincere love which we have to the most serene queen, our consort, her eminent virtues daily more shine forth, blossom, and increase so much, that if we were still free, her would we yet choose for our wife before all others." The conduct of Henry for many years bore out this profession.
To make the general satisfaction complete, Henry summoned a Parliament, in which the chief topic was the prevention in future of the abominable exactions of the past; and the obsolete penal statutes on which the extortioners had acted were formally repealed. The whole number of temporal peers who were summoned to this Parliament was only thirty-six—one duke, one marquis, eight earls, and twenty-six barons.