He worked not by exploits in the stricken field but by diplomacy, therein illustrating his modernity. He sent armies into Brittany and Picardy, but they were intended to threaten, not to strike. He found a kindred spirit in Ferdinand of Aragon: of whom Louis XII. in later years complained that he had once cheated him. “He lies,” said Ferdinand, with pride; “I have cheated him three times.” Ferdinand’s respect was reserved for Henry, whom he could not cheat at all, or even out-wit, which is not quite the same thing. Henry did not cheat—that is, he did not break faith; but his engagements were always so carefully hedged that the smallest evasion on the part of an ally could be made an adequate ground for complete evasion on his own. He could not prevent the absorption of Brittany; but the French king, as soon as he turned his ambitions towards Italy, found that Henry could hamper him so seriously that he willingly bought him off. Maximilian remained impecunious—harmless, therefore, unless he could persuade some one else to finance him—since the Netherlands declined to recognise his authority. As for Ferdinand, Henry fought him with his own weapons; and evenly matched as they were, the Englishman did not prove less adept than the Spaniard. Their first treaty seemed a very one-sided affair; but Henry in fact won by it that recognition which was of the first importance to him at that early stage, while he appeared to render in return a great deal more than he actually gave. In 1495, the Spanish sovereigns attached so much value to his alliance that in spite of haggling they were obliged next year to concede him his own terms, which, though not extravagant, were much higher than they liked, and very much higher than he would have ventured even to propose six or seven years earlier. But they could still regard the betrothal of their daughter Katherine to the Prince of Wales as something of an act of grace on their part. Four years later, it is evident that they thought Henry could better afford to break that marriage off than they could themselves: and again a little later, when Prince Arthur died, they were not a whit less desirous than Henry himself of betrothing the young widow to the new Prince of Wales. This restoration of status Henry achieved at the cost of nothing more than some military parade which was very much more than recouped out of the French treasury.

The key to Henry’s success is to be found just in the fact that the most astute of his rivals was quite unable to trick him; secondly, in his skilful avoidance of any measures which committed him to a position from which he could not retreat without loss of prestige. His value to Spain lay chiefly in his ability to hamper France. Presently Spain awoke to his capacity for restricting the hampering process precisely within the limits which were convenient to himself, which might be very much narrower than suited her. Presently again it appeared that he might find it still more convenient to join hands with France, which would minimise the use to be made of Maximilian. Instead of Henry being in need of assistance against France, which might be doled out at the convenience of Spain, Spain had to supply inducements to keep England on her side. As a matter of fact, Henry to the last needed Ferdinand quite as much as Ferdinand needed him, but succeeded in giving a different impression.

VII
CHARACTER

Our survey so far seems to show conclusively that for some two-thirds of his reign Henry conducted the business which had devolved upon him not only with remarkable practical success but without at all justifying the sinister impression of his character which is indubitably prevalent. Yet, even without the record of his later years, as to which something remains to be said, this unattractive impression is not unnatural. We feel that a great ruler of a great nation ought to have something about him, majestic, splendid, heroic. We even forgive a man for evil deeds done in a grand style; we do not feel our admiration stirred even by good deeds done in a pedestrian style. Magnanimity loses its flavour when we scent policy in it. We are offended with a king who is not kingly, and kingliness demands those Aristotelian virtues which are generally rendered as Magnanimity and Magnificence. They are attributes in which the seventh Henry is conspicuously deficient.

A phrase at the beginning of the foregoing paragraph was employed with definite intention. Henry treated kingship as a business. He entered upon it very much as a new managing director might enter upon the conduct of a great concern which demands re-organisation. He knows that the retention of his position depends on his successfulness; that success is possible only if he has a free hand, while his board likes to think that it is exercising the real control. He has to establish confidence in himself within, and to re-establish confidence in the house without. He avoids palpable injustice; no one can call him dishonest; he knows exactly how far he can trust clients, and rely on the co-operation of other establishments in a joint policy; and he makes that business a distinct success—but he is not very likely to make himself personally popular, or in any sense an object of enthusiasm. For that, something is needed over and above a strict and capable attention to business; and the something over and above was wanting in Henry Tudor. In keenness of intelligence, he was more than a match for the most astute of living statesmen. The general rectitude of his aims was commendable; the moderation of his methods was meritorious. He did good service to the nation over which he ruled. He was not cruel; he was not capricious; he was never guided by prejudice or passion; but he remains hopelessly and irredeemably unsympathetic.

Yet had he died within a year or two of his best minister, his portion would have been cold praise, but still praise. He outlived Morton by nearly nine years, whose baleful shadow is over his whole career, turning a negative into a positive dislike. For in those years every baser quality of which there is any hint in the earlier days becomes intensified.

He had always treated marriage primarily as an affair of politics, as was natural and inevitable, but with a sufficient respect for its moral aspects to keep him faithful to his own wife. Yet when his son died, the idea of joining the widow to his second son had for him none of that repulsion which it excited almost universally in his day. It is even said that when his own queen died he contemplated marrying Katherine himself. It is quite certain that he contemplated marrying Katherine’s sister Joanna of Castile, although he knew her to be mentally deranged. His economy degenerated into niggardliness; his politic scheming to fill his treasury developed into a griping greed for gold. Empson and Dudley carried on their nefarious work of extortion with his knowledge and sanction. He grew vindictive, and when Thomas More opposed a subsidy in the Parliament of 1504, he sought an excuse for fining the father, and the “beardless boy” himself had to retire into private life, lest a worse thing should befall him. He had always considered himself at liberty to break the spirit of a promise provided that he kept the letter; but, if tradition does not wrong him, when the Earl of Suffolk was surrendered on promise that he would not put him to death, he took care to suggest to the Prince of Wales that the promise would not bind his heir when his time came.

The man revealed to us in these later years is ugly, sordid, very unlovely. But this man does not truly or fairly present to us the real Henry who restored order in England, and recovered for her a respectable position among the nations; holding his own in a singularly difficult situation and keeping at bay the onslaughts of an embittered faction at the cost of a quite astonishingly small amount of bloodshed, and with the minimum of anything that could reasonably be called injustice towards antagonists. This at least England owes to him, that he did more than any of his predecessors to lay the foundations of her commercial greatness; that he recognised more clearly than any of them the benefit of her maritime development.

The man moreover was not altogether lacking in some finer qualities which seem to have withered when his degeneration set in. He who seems almost an incarnation of chill-blooded, unemotional craftiness was capable of very human and very tender feeling. A record from the hand of an anonymous contemporary, when his son Arthur died, has been transcribed before, and is worth transcribing again.

“In the year of our Lord God 1502, the second day of April, in the castle of Ludlow, deceased Prince Arthur, first begotten son of our sovereign Lord, King Henry the Seventh, and in the 17th year of his reign. Immediately after his death Sir Richard Poole his Chamberlain, with other of his Council, wrote and sent letters to the King and Council to Greenwich, where his Grace and the Queen’s lay, and certified them of the Prince’s departure. The which Council discreetly sent for the King’s ghostly father, a friar observant, to whom they showed this most sorrowful and heavy tidings, and desired him in his best manner to show it to the King. He in the morning of the Tuesday following, and somewhat before the time accustomed, knocked at the King’s chamber door; and when the King understood that it was his Confessor, he commanded to let him in. The Confessor then commanded all those there present to avoid, and after one salutation began to say Si bona de Manu Domini suscipimus, mala autem quare non sustineamus? and so showed his Grace that his dearest son was departed to God. When his Grace understood that sorrowful heavy tidings he sent for the Queen, saying that he and his Queen would take the painful sorrows together. After that she was come, and saw the King her lord and that natural and painful sorrow, as I have heard say, she with full great and constant comfortable words, besought his Grace that he would, first after God, remember the weal of his own noble person, the comfort of his realm and of her. She then said that my lady his mother had never no more children but him only, and that God by his grace had ever preserved him and brought him where that he was; over that, how that God had left him yet a fair prince, two fair princesses; and that God is where he was, and we are both young enough; and that the prudence and wisdom of his Grace sprung over all Christendom, so that it should please him to take this accordingly thereunto. Then the King thanked her of her good comfort. After that she was departed and come to her own chamber, natural and motherly loss smote her so sorrowful to the heart, that those that were about her were fain to send for the King to comfort her. Then his Grace, of true, gentle, and faithful love, in good haste came and relieved her, and showed her how wise counsel she had given him before; and he for his part would thank God for his son, and would she should do in like wise.”