Parliament assembled at Westminster, on the 7th of November. The accession of King Henry VII. to the throne was due to the discontent of the nation under the sanguinary yoke of Richard III. and to the hopes which were founded upon the projected union between the two rival Houses of York and Lancaster. Henry himself attributed it to his valour upon the battle-field of Bosworth, from which he always dated the commencement of his reign; but the national weariness and the royal conquest were not sufficiently secure bases upon which to solidly found a throne, and in the speech of Henry VII. to the reassembled Commons, he urged his hereditary rights at the same time as the favour of the Most High, who had given the victory to his sword. This last clause excited some uneasiness among the great noblemen who held all their titles and property from the fallen monarch. Henry hastened to reassure them, declaring that each should retain "his estates and inheritances, with the exception of the persons whom the present Parliament should think proper to punish for their offences." Scrupulous persons for a moment experienced an agitation when they perceived that the majority of the members of the House of Commons had formerly been outlawed by the Kings Edward IV. and Richard III.; the very sovereign who had convoked this Parliament, found himself in the same position. Had the Houses the right to sit? The judges were consulted, and declared that the crown removes all disqualifications, and that the king, in ascending the throne, was, by that fact alone, relieved of all the sentences passed upon him; the members of the House of Commons being outlawed, were obliged to defer taking their seats until a law should revoke their condemnation; the act was immediately voted, and the Lancastrians, excluded by the policy of the sovereigns of the House of York, re-entered Parliament; all were weary of the struggle and the great noblemen easily obtained special ordinances which re-established them in all their rights and honours.
Such was not, however, the will of the king in all respects, he was not bloodthirsty, and did not seek to avenge himself by the execution of his enemies, but he was greedy, he wanted money, and confiscations were an easy means of enriching himself without oppressing or exasperating the people. Henry VII. therefore presented to Parliament, a law which antedated by a single day his accession to the throne, namely, the 21st of August, the eve of the battle of Bosworth; the new sovereign, who then in reality was but the Earl of Richmond, thus found himself in a position to accuse of high treason all those who had fought against him, beginning with Richard III., whom he called the Duke of Gloucester, and of whom he enumerated with good reason all the tyrannies and crimes. Richard was dead, as well as the greater number of the partisans who had remained faithful to him; others had exiled themselves; but if the Duke of Norfolk had fallen at Bosworth, if Lord Lovel had taken refuge in a church, their visible property, the riches accumulated in their castles, had not disappeared with them, and the act meekly voted by Parliament, permitted the king to seize their lands and treasures. He was not sparing of them; no sanguinary vengeance sullied the beginning of the new reign; Henry VII. contented himself with filling his coffers.
It was still to Parliament, discredited as it was by the servility which it had for so many years manifested towards the rival sovereigns who had succeeded each other upon the throne, that belonged the right of constituting the new dynasty. The provident wisdom of King Henry VII. did not seek in this solemn act to lean upon long genealogies, nor upon the Divine favour manifested by the victory; he contented himself with causing the revocation of all the acts passed in the Yorkist Parliaments against the House of Lancaster, avoiding with care any allusion to the Princess Elizabeth and her family; he simply relieved her of the stain of illegitimacy, which Richard III. had inflicted upon her to justify his usurpation; the Parliament contented itself with declaring that the inheritance and succession to the crown "should be, remain, and rest forever the portion of the royal person of the sovereign Lord, King Henry VII., and of his legitimate descendants, for ever, by the grace of God." The rights of the House of York to the throne were passed over in silence, mention was not made of the projected union with the Princess Elizabeth; Henry VII. was unwilling that it should be said that he owed the crown to a woman.
The nation, however, had not forgotten its past misfortunes; it hoped to enjoy a little peace only through the alliance of the two rival houses, and the delay of the king in celebrating his marriage, the affectation which he made of not speaking of it, caused uneasiness, not only to his Yorkist enemies, but to the whole people. When the commons came and solemnly offered the king the duties upon ships and upon woolens, now conceded for life, they accompanied their liberality by a peremptory request, asking him to take for his wife and spouse the Princess Elizabeth "which marriage," it was added, "the Lord would deign to bless with a posterity of the race of kings." The Lords spiritual and temporal supported the petition of the Commons. Henry VII. understood that he had delayed enough, and on the 18th of January 1486, the two Roses were at length united upon the same stem; the hatreds and rivalries, which had cost so much blood to England, were definitely appeased by the marriage of King Henry VII., the descendant of the House of Lancaster through his ancestor, John of Gaunt, and the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King Edward IV., the direct heiress of the rights and pretensions of the House of York. All the gifts accorded by the sovereigns who had succeeded each other upon the throne of England since the thirty-fourth year of the reign of Henry VI., the period at which the war had begun to assume the character of a revolt, were revoked by Parliament; an amnesty act was proclaimed for all those who were willing to submit to the royal mercy and take the oath of allegiance; the king reinstated in his property and honours the son of the Duke of Buckingham, the last victim of the cruelty of Richard III., he loaded with favours the friends who had helped him to ascend the throne, Chandos, Sir Giles Dunbury, Sir Robert Willoughby, the Marquis of Dorset, Sir John Bourchier; he caused his authority to be confirmed by a bull of Pope Innocent III., which proclaimed all the hereditary rights of the new sovereign, wisely omitted from the English Act of Parliament, granted to Henry VII. the necessary dispensation for his marriage with the Princess Elizabeth, of whom he was a relative, then confirmed the elevation of the king to the throne, freely interpreting the Act of Parliament, and declaring that in the event that the queen should happen to die without children, or after having lost them, the crown should belong by right to the posterity of Henry VII. by a second marriage. All precautions being wisely taken, and his authority solidly established, the king pronounced the dissolution of his Parliament, and began a royal tour through the northern counties, in order to secure the good will of that portion of the kingdom still attached to the House of York.
The customary prudence of the king had failed him on one point. Jealous of the supreme power, he had kept in the shade the princess whom he had been compelled to wed, and had not taken her with him upon his journey through his kingdom; discontent was everywhere manifested upon this point in the north, but the pregnancy of the queen served as an excuse for her absence; the royal journey did not proceed, however, without disquieting incidents. On the 17th of April the king was at Pontecraft, when he learnt that Lord Lovel had quitted the sanctuary at Colchester and cut off his passage with considerable forces. The nobility of the counties which Henry VII. had recently passed through assembled around him; he advanced against the rebels; Lord Lovel fled, concealed himself, and soon repaired to Flanders; his friends Humphrey and Thomas Stafford, who had prepared an insurrection in Worcestershire, took refuge in Colesham Church, near Abington; they were dragged therefrom, and the elder, Humphrey, perished on the scaffold; the younger received his pardon; and the king, on the 26th of April, entered York, one of the rare spots in England where tho memory of King Richard III. was affectionately preserved.
We have said that Henry VII. was greedy; but he could contrive, when necessary, to relax his greed; he lavished gifts and honours, reduced the fines of the City of York, caused festivals to be celebrated, and thus conquered the favour of the people, who cried in the streets, "God save King Henry! God preserve that handsome and sweet countenance!" When he resumed his march towards the south-east, Henry VII. continued, from town to town, the practice which he had established at York. He attended regularly at divine service; but after mass, every Sunday and holiday, one of the bishops who accompanied him read and expounded to the faithful the papal bull, threatening with eternal punishment all the enemies of the monarch, whose rights to the throne were therein so carefully developed. The king arrived in London, in the month of June, and received an embassy from James IV., King of Scotland, with whom he concluded a treaty of alliance, promising to cement it later on by a union between the two families; peace and mutual good feeling were equally important to the two kings, surrounded by enemies, whom they dreaded to see take refuge in the neighbouring kingdom. The little prince, whose hand Henry VII. had already promised, was born on the 20th of September, at Winchester, and was named Arthur, in memory of the hero of the old romances of King Arthur of the Round Table, whose death tradition still denied.