A history of England

by Charles Oman

Character of Henry VIII.

Henry's character was a very complex one, mingling qualities good and bad in strange confusion. In many things he showed the traits of his grandfather Edward IV., his selfishness, his love of display, his sensuality, his outbursts of ruthless cruelty. But Edward had been nothing more than a soldier and a man of pleasure; he had no love of work, no power to read the character of others. Henry VIII. was a student, a statesman, a deep plotter, a keen observer of other men. He chose his servants—or rather his tools—with a clear-headed sagacity which no king ever surpassed, and he could break them or fling them away when they became useless, with a coolness that was all his own. Love of power, love of work, love of pleasure, love of show and pomp, did not distract him the one from the other, but blended closely together into one complex impulse—the determination to have his own will in all things. Such a state of mind bespeaks the tyrant, and a tyrant Henry became; but a tyrant whose brain was as strong as his will—who knew the possible from the impossible, who could discern how far it was safe to go, and could check himself on the edge of any dangerous precipice of foreign or internal politics. He kept, as it were, a finger on the nation's pulse, and could restrain himself for a space if ever it began to beat too excitably. He did his best to court popularity with the English by an affable bearing and a regard for their prejudices. He strove to make them look on him as the nation's representative, and to flatter them into believing that his resolves were really in accordance with their own will and interests. He represented to them not only law and order, but national feeling and national pride. It was this clever acting that made it possible for him to manipulate England according to his wishes. He appeared to take the people into his confidence, and they replied by believing his statements even when they were most unfounded and misleading. Thus it was that Henry was able to rule despotically for forty years without having a serious quarrel with his Parliament, and without being compelled to raise a standing army—the tool which all contemporary despots were forced to employ.

His popular qualities.

Henry VIII. was very young when he came to the throne—he had only reached the age of eighteen. His character was still undeveloped, though he was known to be both clever and active. All that the nation knew of him was that he was a bright, handsome youth, fond of horse and hound, but equally fond of his books and his lute. He had from the first an eye for popularity, and did all that he could to please the people by shows and pageants that forced him to dip deeply into his father's hoarded money.

Executions of Empson and Dudley.

Yet the first act of Henry's reign was ominous of future cruelty and ruthlessness. Knowing the unpopularity of his father's harsh and extortionate but faithful servants, Empson and Dudley, he cast them into prison, and had them attainted by Parliament on a preposterous charge of treason. They were well hated, and the people saw their heads fall with joy, not reflecting on the character of a king who could deliberately slay his father's councillors merely to win popular applause.

Foreign policy.—The Holy League.

Henry retained most of his father's old ministers in office, but he instantly reversed his father's policy of non-intervention in the wars of the continent. He had not long been seated on the throne when he joined the "Holy League," a confederacy formed against France by Pope Julius II., in which both those old intriguers, the Emperor Maximilian and King Ferdinand of Aragon, were already enlisted (1511). Henry might have left them to fight their own battles for the mastery of Italy and Flanders, but he was burning to assert his power in Europe and to win military distinction. His arms were fairly fortunate. A first attack on the south of France failed, but he met with considerable success in 1513, when he landed at Calais with 25,000 men, took the towns of Tournay and Térouanne, and routed the French army of the North at an engagement called "the Battle of the Spurs," from the haste with which the French knights urged their horses out of the fray. Finding his armies losing ground both in Italy and in Flanders, King Lewis XII. sought peace from Henry, and obtained it at the cheap price of paying 100,000 crowns, and marrying the Princess Mary, the young English monarch's favourite sister (1514). These easy terms were granted because Henry found that his two wily allies, Ferdinand and Maximilian, had no intention of helping him, and were bent purely on their own aggrandisement. The alliance with Lewis was not to have much duration, for within a year he was dead—killed, as the chroniclers assert, by the late hours and high living which his gay young English queen persuaded him to adopt. His widow soon dried her tears, and married Sir Charles Brandon, one of her brother's favourite companions, whom Henry, to grace the match, decorated with the ill-omened title of Duke of Suffolk, the spoil of the unhappy de la Poles. From this union sprang one who was to sit for a brief moment on the English throne. [31]

Scottish war.

Ere the French treaty had been made, a short stirring episode of war had taken place on England's northern frontier. King James IV. of Scotland had certain border feuds to settle with the English, and thought he might best take his revenge while Henry and his army were over-seas in Flanders. So he suddenly declared war, and crossed the Tweed into Northumberland.