Ten Tudor Statesmen

by Arthur D. Innes

This argument is not to be misunderstood. It has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of any economic theory, but only with the place of economics in the whole scheme of government. Henry thought it worth while, as every king before him would have done, almost to cut off England from her best market for her most paying product, wool, if he could thereby force the archduke’s government to withdraw its effective countenance from Perkin Warbeck. But he made it a constant object of his policy to negotiate the opening of fresh markets for that commodity, and when he came to terms with the archduke, the commercial benefits to be secured by the treaty known as the Intercursus Magnus were his first care.

As Henry was the first to give commercial considerations a leading place in his system, so he is to be distinguished for the attention he gave to shipping; on which head Bacon has a rather remarkable note, to the effect that he deserves praise for perceiving that in this instance it was worth while to diminish commerce for the sake of developing the marine—to subordinate the economic loss to the political gain. If Bacon read Henry’s mind aright, he was not under the delusion that the protection of English shipping interests by his successive Navigation Acts was of direct economic advantage; but he did see that it was worth while to pay the price in order to give England such a mercantile navy as in Bacon’s own day enabled her to win the supremacy of the seas. Those Acts, restricting the importation of foreign goods to English ships, raised the price of imports without benefiting any English industry at all except that of the shippers; but the impetus given to shipping provided the country with a fighting force at sea which ultimately enabled her to challenge the might of Spain. The naval development of England was the work of the Tudor dynasty, though Edward I., Edward III., and Henry V., had ideas. Whether the Navigation Acts really did give the impetus attributed to them—as to which economists may dispute—the intention is unmistakable, and the foresight which deliberately set up naval development as an end to be pursued is a very clear mark of Henry’s statesmanship. The creation of the English navy is generally credited either to King Alfred or to Henry VIII.; but the latter certainly inherited the conception from his father.

It is matter for regret, but hardly for reproach, that the king did not apply his ideas of maritime expansion more actively in another field, that of oceanic exploration. Portugal and Spain were allowed to take the lead. Yet it was so well known that the English king was favourable to such enterprises that it appears only to have been an accident which placed Christopher Columbus in the service of Ferdinand and Isabella instead of in Henry’s. How history might have been affected if the West Indies had fallen in the first instance to England instead of to Spain, is an interesting subject of speculation. But Spain won the prize. The sailors who put out from Bristol port tried their chance in more northerly latitudes; the territories they discovered were very unpromising; and after the outset the Genoese (or Venetian) Cabots, sailing in command of English crews, naturally enough got little support from the king. But at the outset—that is, before it seemed probable if not certain that Spain and Portugal, by right of priority backed by a Papal Bull, had, so to speak, staked out a claim to all that was worth having—Henry gave material encouragement to the exploring spirit.

There was, indeed, one important economic problem—with concomitants—at grappling with which no serious attempt was made. This was the growing agricultural depression: due in part to legitimate and in part to illegitimate action on the part of landowners. There was a very large demand for English wool for foreign looms. Sheep-breeding was seen to be highly lucrative, whereas tillage was not. The landowner saw no sufficient reason why he should be called upon to provide employment for a quantity of labour which brought him in a small return, when the employment of a very little labour over the same area would bring him a large return. Therefore he converted his arable lands into pasture for sheep. Economic history abounds in cases of the displacement of labour by the decay, temporary or permanent, of some industry which is ceasing to be lucrative: it abounds also with examples of legislative attempts to maintain the decaying industries, and to compel some one or other to provide employment for the displaced labour. Such attempts appear to be doomed to failure. No remedy has yet been found except the development of fresh industries which in course of time absorb that displaced labour. Even in the twentieth century, that is a process which might take years to accomplish; in the period which we are considering, the rural displacement took a century to remedy. Political altruists, like More or Somerset, tried to set legislation to work, but with the usual want of success. The encouragement of commercial enterprise which begets new industries was the only hopeful direction to work in, and to that Henry’s policy tended; but it was not till Elizabeth’s government pursued the same policy that the industrial situation was appreciably affected. Legislation did a little towards checking the rapidity with which small holdings were being absorbed into great estates, and great estates were being converted into sheep-runs, but it never amounted to more than a very feeble brake. The problem is one which still awaits a satisfactory solution.

V
JUDICATURE

Bacon enumerates with applause a variety of good laws enacted by Henry. He was not in fact remarkable as a legislator, but his modifications of the law were all save one in the nature of removal of abuses. There are, however, two of his enactments which demand special attention. The first of these was the Act of 1487, which gave statutory recognition to judicial functions which had for some time been exercised by the Privy Council or a committee thereof, sitting in a room known as the Star Chamber. In later days, this Court of Star Chamber was perverted into an instrument of tyranny; in Henry’s time, it was the only judicial body which was out of reach of the fear or suspicion of being terrorised by a powerful noble. It had come into being because the Sanction of the ordinary law was inadequate to deal with barons who chose to over-ride the law. The Privy Council could make and enforce its decrees without fear. Under these conditions, the powers it had assumed were necessary to the assertion of the royal authority against offenders who contemned the normal Courts.

Without the confident maintenance of the king’s authority against such offenders, the recurrence of the anarchy of the last fifty years would have constantly threatened; but it is obvious that the powers needed to that end might be misused for the ends of tyranny. Yet for more than a century the Court exercised its functions unmistakably for the public weal. Henry’s Act is notable, not as creating the Court, but as formally recognising and regulating its duties; a sound step, tending to prevent its abuse, not to introduce its use.

The other Act, however, that of 1495, is not capable of any such defence. It was abused from the beginning, and was the great instrument of those exactions by the notorious Empson and Dudley, which so stain the record of the latter half of Henry’s reign. Its repeal was one of the first and most popular acts of his successor. It is to be remembered, however, that though Empson and Dudley were not slow in getting to their evil work, their grosser activities were exercised in the last decade of the reign after Cardinal Morton’s decease. Henry was never generous; but the thrift and “nearness” of his earlier days took some time in developing into the grasping sordidness of his later years. More than half his reign had passed before the term extortionate could be applied to him without exaggeration. The Act, when it was passed, purported to be, and probably was, intended to prevent offenders against the law from escaping justice through lack of an accuser. It permitted judges to institute in their own Courts, on information laid by a resident in the district, proceedings for offences not involving penalties affecting the life or limb of the guilty party. Such men as Empson and Dudley, however, had no difficulty—with partial if not complete connivance from the king—in procuring information which would enable them under colour of law to impose extortionate fines for the king’s benefit and incidentally to extract from the victims very handsome perquisites for themselves.

VI
FOREIGN POLICY

The reign of Henry V. had made the English king as powerful a monarch as any in Europe. The sixty-three years that intervened between his death and the accession of Henry VII. saw England lose her pride of place among the nations. On the other hand, the attempt of Charles the Bold to create a central Burgundian kingdom had failed, while, partly on the wreck of his schemes, Louis XI. had consolidated the French monarchy, and the kingdom he left to Charles VIII. required for its completion only the effective absorption of Brittany. The union of Aragon and Castile by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella had raised Spain to a new position, which in like manner lacked but one thing, the conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada, for its complete establishment. Maximilian, “King of the Romans,” heir to Austria and practically heir to the Imperial crown, had strengthened his own position by marrying the Duchess of Burgundy, Charles the Bold’s daughter, and thus acquiring a paramount interest in the wealthy Netherlands. England, with her internal turmoils and her lost military prestige, had for the moment lost all weight in the counsels of Europe. Even had the immediate termination of civil discord been assured, she was too much exhausted to recover her place by force of arms; and as long as there was a Yorkist Pretender at large, civil discord could not be regarded as conclusively at an end. Nevertheless, even during the years while his dynasty was threatened, the king’s diplomatic skill completely changed the relations of England and the Continental Powers; while his policy towards Scotland kept the normal hostility of the Northern kingdom in check, and bore ultimate fruit in the union of the crowns, a century afterwards. He did not, like Wolsey—his disciple as far as methods were concerned—achieve or aim at a dominant position; but when English interests were concerned, the voice of England could not in his later years be neglected, as at the beginning of the reign.