AN ACT TO FREE THE SUBJECTS FROM BENEVOLENCES (1484).
Source.—Statutes of the Realm, 1 Richard III., c. ii.
The King remembering how the Commons of this his realm by new and unlawful inventions and inordinate covetise, against the laws of this realm, have been put to great thraldom and importable charges and exactions, and in especial by a new imposition named a benevolence, whereby divers years the subjects and Commons of this land against their wills and freedom have paid great sums of money to their almost utter destruction; For divers and many worshipfull men of this realm by occasion thereof were compelled by necessity to break up their household and to live in great penury and wretchedness, their debts unpaid and their children unpreferred, and such memorials as they had ordained to be done for the wealth of their souls were anentised and annulled to the great displeasure of God and to the destruction of this realm. Therefore the King will it be ordained, by the advice and assent of his lords spiritual and temporal and the Commons of this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that his subjects and the commonalty of this his realm from henceforth in no wise be charged by none such charge or imposition called benevolence, nor by any such like charge; And that such exactions called benevolence before this time taken, be taken for no example to make such or anylike charge of any his said subjects of this realm hereafter, but it be damned and annulled for ever.
HENRY TUDOR AND THE WELSH (1485).
Sources.—(a) Llanstephan MSS. 136, f. 80. (National Library of Wales.) (b) Ceinion Llenyddiaeth Gymreig, i., pp. 220, 221. (London, n.d.). (c) Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi, p. 477, lines 3-12. (Oxford: 1837.)
[Note.—The following extracts are translated from contemporary Welsh poems. The first two are selected as examples of the 'bruts' or vaticinatory poems, written and circulated to stir up the Welsh chieftains to support Henry. The third extract illustrates the excitement among his countrymen on the eve of Henry's landing.]
(a) The knell of the Saxon shall be our satisfaction; a prince shall we have of our own race.... Cadwaladr[47] will come to his own again with his eightfold gifts and his doughty deeds.... Woe to the black host beside the wave if misfortune should come to the strangers. Jasper[48] will breed for us a Dragon; of the fortunate blood of Brutus[49] is he. The Bull of Anglesey[50] is our joy; he is the hope of our race. A great grace was the birth of Jasper from the stock of Cadwaladr of the beautiful [spear] shaft.
[47] The last King of Britain. The Tudors claimed descent from Cadwaladr.
[48] Jasper Tudor, uncle of the Earl of Richmond.