1527. and sacked May 6. himself to the emperor, and made a cessation of arms; but being again encouraged with some hopes from his allies, and (by a creation of fourteen cardinals for money) having raised 300,000 ducats he disowned the treaty, and gave the kingdom of Naples to count Vaudemont, whom he sent with forces to subdue it. But the duke of Bourbon prevented him, and went to Rome, and giving the assault, in which himself Rome taken received his mortal wound, the city was taken by storm, and plundered for several days, about 5000 being killed. The pope with seventeen cardinals fled to the castle St. Angelo, but was forced to render his person, and to pay 400,000 ducats to the army. This gave great offence to all the princes of Christendom, except the Lutherans of Germany; but none resented it more loudly than this king, who sent over cardinal Wolsey to make up a new treaty with Francis, which was chiefly intended for setting July 11. the pope at liberty. Nor did the emperor know well how to justify an action which seemed so inconsistent with his devotion to the see of Rome; yet the pope was for some months detained a prisoner, till at length the emperor having brought him to his own terms, ordered him to be set at liberty: but he being weary of his guards escaped in a December 9. disguise, and owned his liberty to have flowed chiefly from the king's endeavours to procure it. And thus stood the king as to foreign affairs: he had infinitely obliged both the pope and the French king, and was firmly united to them, and engaged in a war against the emperor, when he began first to move about his divorce. The king's success As for Scotland, the near alliance between him and James IV. king of Scotland, did not take away the standing animositics between the two nations, nor interrupt the alliance between France and Scotland. And therefore when he made the first war upon France in the fourth year of his reign, the king of Scotland came with a great against Scot army into the north of England, but was totally defeated by the earl of Surrey land; Sept. 9, in Flodden field. The king himself was either killed in the battle, or soon 1513. after; so that the kingdom falling under factions, during the minority of the new king, the government was but feeble, and scarce able to secure its own quiet. And the duke of Albany, the chief instrument of the French faction, met with such opposition from the parties that were raised against him by king Henry's means, that he could give him no disturbance. And when there came to be a lasting peace between England and France, then, as the king needed fear no trouble from that warlike nation, so he got a great interest in the government there. And at this time money becoming a more effectual engine than any the war had ever produced, and the discovery of the Indies having brought great wealth into Europe, princes began to deal more in that trade than before: so that both France and England had their instruments in Scotland, and gave considerable yearly pensions to the chief heads of parties and families. In the search I have made, I have found several warrants for sums of money, to be sent into Scotland, and divided there among the favourers of the English interest; and it is not to be doubted but Franco traded in the same manner, which continued till a happier way was found out for extinguishing these quarrels, both the crowns being set on one head. His Coun Having thus showed the state of this king's government as to foreign matters, I shall next give an account of the administration of affairs at home, both as to civil and spiritual matters. The king upon his first coming to the crown did choose a wise council, sels at home. partly out of those whom his father had trusted, partly out of those that were recommended to him by his grandmother, the countess of Richmond and Derby*, in whom was the right of the house of Lancaster, though she willingly devolved her pretensions on her son, claiming nothing to herself, but the satisfaction of being mother to a king. She was a wise and religious woman, and died soon after her grandson came to the crown. There was a faction in the council between Fox, bishop of Winchester, and the lord treasurer, which could never be well made up, though they were often reconciled : 1509. • The "venerable Margaret," the foundress of Christ church and St. John's colleges, Cambridge. She was descended from John of Gaunt and Catherine Swynford, and marrying Edmund earl of Richmond, the son of queen Katherine, widow of Henry V. and Owen Tudor, placed the line of Tudor on the throne in the person of her son Henry VII.—ED. Fox always complaining of the lord treasurer, for squandering away so soon that vast mass of treasure, left by the king's father, in which the other justified himself, that what he did was by the king's warrants which he could not disobey: but Fox objected that he was too easy to answer, if not to procure these warrants, and that he ought to have given the king better advice. In the king's first parliament, things went as he desired upon his Jan. 21,1510. delivering up Empson and Dudley, in which his preventing the severity of the houses, and proceeding against them at the common law, as it secured his ministers from an unwelcome precedent, so the whole honour of it fell on the king's justico. His next parliament was in the third year of his reign, and there was considered the brief from pope Julius II. to the king, complaining of the indignities and injuries done to Feb. 4, 1512. the apostolic see and the pope by the French king, and entreating the king's assistance with such cajoling words as are always to be expected from popes on the like occasions. It was first read by the master of the rolls in the House of Lords, and then the lord chancellor (Warham archbishop of Canterbury) and the lord treasurer, with other lords, went down to the House of Commons and read it there. Upon this and other reasons they gave the king subsidies towards the war with France. At this time Fox, to strengthen his party against the lord Cardinal scy, MSS. in treasurer, fiuding Thomas Wolsey to be a likely man to get into the king's favour, Wolscy's used all his endeavours to raise him, who was at that time neither unknown nor rising. inconsiderable, being lord almoner; he was at first made a privy councillor, and frequently admitted to the king's presence, and waited on him over to France. The king liked him well, which he so managed that he quickly engrossed the king's favour to himself, and for fifteen years together was the most absolute favourite that had ever been seen in England; all foreign treaties and places of trust at home were at his ordering; he did what he pleased, and his ascendant over the king was such, that there never appeared any party against him all that while. The great artifice by which he insinuated himself so much on Cavendish's the king, is set down very plainly by one that know him well, in these words : Life of Wol- "In him the king conceived such a loving fancy, especially for that he was most Bibliotheca. earnest and readiest in all the counsel to advance the king's only will and Nob. D. G. pleasure, having no respect to the case; and whereas the ancient councillors Pierpoint. would, according to the office of good councillors, divers times persuade the king to have some time a recourse unto the council, there to hear what was done in weighty matters, the king was nothing at all pleased therewith; for he loved nothing worse than to be constrained to do anything contrary to his pleasure, and that knew the almoner very well, having secret insinuations of the king's intentions; and so fast as the others counselled the king to leave his pleasures, and to attend to his affairs, so busily did the almoner persuade him to the contrary, which delighted him much, and caused him to have the greater affection and love to the almoner." Having got into such power, he observed the king's inclinations exactly, and followed his interests closely for though he made other princes retain him with great presents and pensions, yet he never engaged the king into any alliance, but what was for his advantage. For affairs at home, after he was established in his greatness, he affected to govern without parliaments, there being from the seventh year of his reign, after which he got the great seal, but one parliament in the fourteenth and fifteenth year, and no more till the one-and-twentieth, when matters were turning about: but he raised great sums of money by loans and benevolences. And, indeed, if we look on him as a minister of state, he was a very extraordinary person; but as he was a churchman, he was the disgrace of his profession. He not only served the king in all his secret pleasures, but was lewd and vicious himself; so that his having the French pox (which in those days was a matter of no small infamy) was so public, that it was brought against him in parliament when he fell in disgrace: he was a man of most extravagant vanity, as appears by the great state he lived in; and to feed that, his ambition and covetousness were proportionable. Oct. 1513. : He was first made bishop of Tournay when that town was taken from the French; then he was made bishop of Lincoln*, which was the first bishopric that fell void in this kingdom; after that, upon cardinal Bembridge's death, he parted with Lincoln, and was made archbishop of York; then Adrian, that was a cardinal and bishop * Rest. temp. 4 March, 5 Regui, 1 Part, Rot. Pat. Novemb. 6 Regni, 1 Part, R. P. |