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

by Anonymous

At the head of the party in opposition to the queen was Lord Home, on whose conduct at Flodden aspersions had been cast. By him and his party it was that Albany was invited to Scotland. Henry was greatly alarmed at this proposition, and for some time the fear of a breach induced Francis I. to restrain Albany from accepting the offer. Yet in May, 1515, Albany made his appearance in Scotland. He found that kingdom in a condition which required a firm and determined hand to govern it. The nobility, always turbulent, and kept in order with difficulty by the strongest monarchs, were now divided into two factions, for and against the queen and her party. Lord Home, by whom Albany had chiefly been invited, had the ill-fortune to be represented to Albany, immediately on his arrival, as, so far from a friend, one of the most dangerous enemies of legitimate authority in the kingdom. Home, apprised of this representation, and of its having taken full effect on the mind of Albany, threw himself into the party of the queen, and urged her to avoid the danger of allowing the young princes to fall into the hands of Albany, who was the next heir to the crown after them, and was, according to his statement, a most dangerous and ambitious man. Moved by these statements, Margaret determined to escape to England with her sons, and put them under the powerful protection of their uncle Henry.

Henry had himself made similar representations to her, for nothing would suit his views on the crown of Scotland so well as to have possession of the infant heirs. But Albany was quickly informed of the queen's intentions; he besieged the castle of Stirling, where she resided with the infant princes, compelled her to surrender, and obtaining possession of the princes, placed them in the keeping of three lords appointed by Parliament. Margaret herself, accompanied by her husband Angus, and Lord Home, succeeded in escaping to England, where she was delivered of a daughter.

The part which Francis I. evidently had in permitting the passage of Albany to Scotland, and in supporting his party there, had given great offence to Henry. He sent strong remonstrances through his ambassador to Francis, complaining that Albany had been permitted to leave France and usurp the government of Scotland, contrary to the treaty; and that by this means the Queen of Scotland, the sister of the King of England, had been driven from the regency of the kingdom and the guardianship of her children. Francis I. endeavoured to pacify Henry by assurances that Albany's conduct had received no countenance from him, but that he had stolen away at the urgent solicitation of a strong body of nobles in Scotland. Henry was not convinced, but there was nothing to be obtained by further remonstrances, for Francis was at this moment at the head of a powerful army, while Henry, having spent his father's hoards, was not in a condition for a fresh war without the sanction of Parliament.

Francis was bent on prosecuting the vain scheme of the conquest of Milan, which had already cost his predecessors and France so much. He had entered into alliance with Venice and Genoa, and trusted to be able easily to overcome Maximilian Sforza the native Prince; Sforza, on his part, depended upon the support of the Pope and the Swiss. Francis professed, in the first place, that his design was to chastise the hostile Swiss. These hardy people had fortified those passes in the Alps by which they calculated that the French would attempt to pass towards Milan, but Francis made his way with 60,000 troops over the mountains in another direction, a large part of his army taking the way to the left of Mount Genèvre, a route never essayed by any army before. The Swiss mercenaries in the service of Sforza, thus taken by surprise, were rapidly defeated by the French, and were on the point of capitulation, when their countrymen, who had been watching to intercept Francis and his army, seeing that he had stolen a march upon them, descended from their mountains, 20,000 strong, and came to the relief of their countrymen under the walls of Milan. At Marignano, Francis won a great victory over them on September 13th, 1515.

The effect at the English Court of this brilliant success was to heighten extremely that discontent with Francis which Henry had shown at the very moment that the chivalric young French king had set out for Italy. Henry, who was ambitious of military renown, was stung to the quick by it, and his envious mood was artfully aggravated by the suggestions of Wolsey.

On the 12th of November, 1515, Parliament was summoned to meet. Henry had caught a very discouraging glimpse of the iron at the bottom of his father's money-chests, and was, therefore, obliged to ask supplies from his subjects. His application does not appear to have been successful, and Parliament was therefore dissolved on the 22nd of December, and was never called again till the 31st of July, 1523, an interval of eight years. A Parliament which would not grant money was not likely to be a very favourite instrument with Henry, and this still less so, because it had involved him in a contention with the Convocation. The Convocation had dared to claim exemption for the clergy from the jurisdiction of the secular courts. The clergy in Henry's interest resisted this claim; it was brought before Parliament, and both the Lords and Commons, as well as the judges, decided against the Convocation. Henry, who was at once as fond of power and as bigoted as the Church, found himself in a most embarrassing dilemma, but declared that he would maintain the prerogatives of the Crown, and was glad to get rid of the dispute by the dismissal of Parliament.

On the 8th of February, 1516, Queen Catherine gave birth to a daughter, who was named Mary, and who survived to wear the crown of England. In the previous month died the queen's father, Ferdinand of Spain, one of the most cunning, grasping, and unprincipled monarchs that ever lived, but who had by his Machiavelian schemes united Spain into one great and compact kingdom, and whose sceptre Providence had extended, by the discovery of Columbus, over new and wonderful worlds. His grandson Charles, already in possession of the territories of the house of Burgundy, and heir to those of Austria, succeeded him, as Charles V. Henry had just entered into a commercial treaty with Charles, as regarded the Netherlands, and perceiving the vast power and greatness which must centre in Charles—for on the death of Maximilian, who was now old, he would also become Emperor of Germany—he was anxious to unite himself with him in close bonds of interest and intimacy. To this end, he gave a commission to Wolsey, assisted by the Duke of Norfolk and the Bishop of Durham, to cement and conclude a league with the Emperor Maximilian and Charles, the avowed object of which was to combine for the defence of the Church, and to restrain the unbridled ambition of certain princes—meaning Francis.

The sordid Emperor Maximilian, who had so often and so successfully made his profit out of the vanity of Henry, seeing him so urgent to cultivate the favour of his grandson Charles, thought it a good opportunity to draw fresh sums from him. Maximilian was now tottering towards his grave, but he was not the less desirous to pave his way to it with gold. In a confidential conversation, therefore, with Sir Robert Wingfield, the English ambassador at his Court, he delicately dropped a hint that he was grown weary of the toils and cares attending the Imperial office. Pursuing the theme, he pretended great admiration for the King of England; he declared that amongst all the princes of Christendom, he could see none who was so fitted to succeed him in his high office, and at the same time become the champion and protector of Holy Church against its enemies. He therefore proposed to adopt Henry as his son, for a proper consideration. According to his plan, Henry was to cross the Channel with an army. From Tournay he was to march to Trèves, where Maximilian was to meet him, and resign the empire to him, with all the necessary formalities. Then the united army of English and Germans was to invade France, and, whilst they thus sufficiently occupied the attention of Francis, Henry and Maximilian, with another division, were to march upon Italy, crossing the Alps at Coire, to take Milan, and, having secured that city, make an easy journey to Rome, where Henry was to be crowned emperor by the Pope.

In this wild-goose scheme—which equally ignored the fact that Charles V. was the grandson of Maximilian, heir of his kingdom, and therefore neither by the natural affection of the emperor, nor by the will of his subjects, likely to be set aside for a King of England; and the difficulty, the impossibility almost, of the accomplishment of the enterprise by two such monarchs as Maximilian and Henry—only one thing was palpable, that Maximilian would give his blessing to the stipulated son for these impossible honours, and then would as quickly find a reason for abandoning the extravagant scheme as he had already done that of taking Milan. Yet it is certain that, for the moment, it seized on the imagination of Henry, and he despatched the Earl of Worcester and Dr. Tunstall, afterwards Bishop of Durham, to the Imperial Court, to settle the conditions of this notable scheme. Tunstall, who was not only an accomplished scholar, but a solid and shrewd thinker, no sooner reached the Court of Maximilian than he saw at a glance the hollowness of the plot and of the Imperial plotter. He, as well as Dr. Richard Pace, the ambassador at Maximilian's Court, quickly and honestly informed Henry that it was a mere scheme to get money.