1495] POYNINGS' LAW 363 the King being officially informed of it; and that no Acts should be introduced without having previously received the approbation and license of the King under the Great Seal. After the passing of this Act a conciliatory policy was adopted, Kildare liberated and restored to his position, and the quiet of the country for the time secured. The influence of the great nobles of the Yorkist party had received heavy blows in the unsuccessful rebellions of the reign; while to judge by the story of the heavy fines exacted from the Earl of Oxford for receiving the King attended by a crowd of liveried servants, even the Lancastrians were not exempt from the severe enactments against maintenance, nor free from that legal tyranny which Henry, in common with most rising despots, employed as the chief instrument to secure his power. Foreign policy. Secure at home, he now sought to complete his alliances with foreign countries. The idea of a marriage which might ultimately bring Scotland and England under one crown was a traditional one with English politicians. In the earlier part of his reign, Scotland had been in the hands of James III., a man, unlike the uncultivated nobility around him, a favourer of artists and architects, but a poor soldier, and with a leaning towards the English alliance. His rough nobility could not put up with such crimes. They set up against him the claims of his young son, who was afterwards James IV.: the rival factions met at Sauchie Burn; and the King, as he fled from the battle, was thrown from his horse, and murdered at Beaton Mill, whither he had been taken after his fall. Thus placed upon the throne by the anti-English party, James IV. was not likely to maintain his father's policy. None the less did Henry continue negotiations; and, in 1495, he had urged upon the new King a marriage with his daughter Margaret. The opportunity afforded by the arrival of Warbeck was not neglected by James; but, after two destructive incursions into the Northern counties, he had been induced, chiefly by the intervention of the Spanish ambassador, to get rid of Warbeck, and to enter into a seven years' truce with England. The Spanish influence was sufficiently strong to carry the negotiations to a conclusion, and, in 1502, perpetual peace James IV. with was established, and all the arrangements for the marriage completed. A year and a half afterwards the Princess went to Scotland, and the match was consummated. It was a change in the position of Europe which had Spanish government to use its friendly influence on behalf of Henry. The recovery of France after the Marriage of Margaret. induced the Influence of Spain, English invasions, and the rapid consolidation of the monarchy, had made it an object of dread to other nations. Henry was therefore inclined in the earlier part of his reign, as we have seen, to oppose it. At the same time he could not enter frankly into alliance with Burgundy, where his antagonists the Yorkists had met with their chief support. The lukewarm and inefficient policy of his earlier years was the consequence. But the invasion of Naples (a country on which Aragon had just claims) by Charles VIII. had produced in an especial manner hostility between France and Spain; and Ferdinand had determined to form a combination to check the further advance of the threatening power. In fact, the lengthened rivalry between France and the Austro-Spanish house was just beginning. His plans embraced a close union with the Burgundian house, friendship with England, and the withdrawal of Scotland from her old alliance with France. A sure ground for a more determined line of foreign policy was thus laid for Henry. By allying himself with Ferdinand, he assured himself against the danger of further support of the Yorkist interest on the part of Burgundy. For by the marriage of Ferdinand's daughter Joanna with the Archduke Philip, Maximilian's son, Spain and Burgundy had become closely united When therefore Ferdinand, in pursuance of his own plans, proposed a marriage between his daughter Catherine and the Prince of Wales, Henry received the offer gladly. The negotiations for Prince Arthur. this marriage continued from 1496 till its completion in 1501. The dowry of the Princess was to be 200,000 crowns. One half of this was paid, when, early in 1502, Prince Arthur died. Ferdinand thus ran the risk of losing the friendship of England, and through England that of Scotland. He at once suggested the marriage of Catherine with Prince Henry, who succeeded his brother as Prince of Wales. The necessary dispensations were procured, but each of the crafty and avaricious monarchs thought it well to have a means of exerting some pressure upon his fellow; while Henry could threaten to forbid the match, Ferdinand could refuse to pay the remaining part of the dowry. Thus the marriage remained unfinished till the death of the King. Marriage of The death of Henry's wife in 1503 gave him fresh opportunities for strengthening his position in Europe and drawing closer his connection with the Austro-Spanish house. He first sought the hand of the Dowager Queen of Naples, but speedily transferred his suit to Margaret of Savoy, the sister of Philip the Fair, Duke of Burgundy, the husband of Joanna of Castile. An additional advantage in connection with 1504] MARRIAGE SCHEMES 365 this marriage was to be the surrender of Edmund de la Pole, head of the Yorkists, at that time a refugee in Flanders, to which Henry compelled Philip to consent during an enforced delay in England, whither he had been driven by a storm. He further proposed a match between his daughter Mary and Charles, the child Political schemes of Philip and Joanna, who was afterwards the great of matrimony. Charles V. In his desire for immediate gain he overreached himself. Isabella of Castile was dead, and Ferdinand had assumed the regency of that country for his daughter Joanna and grandson Charles, Philip, Duke of Burgundy, having meanwhile died. Eager to secure the immediate enjoyment of that kingdom, Henry threw up all chance of his marriage with Savoy, and of the future grandeur of his daughter Mary, and himself sought the hand of the widow Joanna, although she was imbecile and totally unfit to be married.1 Nor was it till after a year, during which the weakness of her mind increased, that he could be induced to believe that his suit was hopeless. He died before any matrimonial plan could be perfected. His death. His last years were marked in England by a rapacious use of the means the law put in his hands. His agents, the chief of Exactions of his whom were Empson and Dudley, at once filled the royal later years. coffers, and extended the royal authority, by the revival of obsolete penal statutes, and by an unjust employment of the royal right of escheat. When a state escheated to the Crown inquiry was made as to the facts before a jury. By a judicious selection, and the bribing of jurymen, the escheaters were generally able to make out a case in favour of the Crown. It was therefore with a feeling of relief that England heard of Henry's death; although it cannot be denied that his sagacity, his economy, and even the less Retrospect of amiable qualities of pitilessness and love of authority, had secured for England that rest from internal dissension which was so much required, had placed the country in a good position with regard to Europe, and set it upon that natural road of progress which the new birth of freedom and industry in the century that was passing away had rendered necessary. Feudalism had come to its last days, the spirit of industry and commercial enterprise was rising, a new nobility of statesmen had sprung into existence. It remained for his son to complete the destruction of the second great phenomenon of the middle ages-the Church. his work. 1 This seems so inconsistent with his usual prudence, that, as Ranke suggests, his request for the hand of Joanna may have been only intended as a means to check the urgent demands of the Spanish Court for the completion of the marriage between Catherine and the Prince of Wales, which Henry had no wish to see consummated. Thomas Cranmer, 1533. Junction of the and Lancaster. Chancellors. William Warham, 1502. ENRY VIII. had some peculiar advantages in his favour. He in a certain sense represented the two Houses whose rivalry had so long disturbed the peace of England, for, although Houses of York the actual connection of Henry VII. with the Lancastrian princes was but slight, he had been acknowledged as head of the party, while Elizabeth was the accepted heir of the House of York. His personal gifts were not slight; even ten years later the Venetian Ambassador thinks him " as handsome as Nature could form him," and mentions that he was an excellent musician and composer, an admirable horseman and wrestler, and possessed of 1509] HENRY'S CHARACTER 367 a good knowledge of French, Latin and Spanish. His success in athletic sports was very great, and the same writer tells us how he would weary ten horses in a day's hunting, and how people came to see him for the sake of his beauty, while playing bowls. Besides these outward graces, he was possessed of considerable knowledge of theology, to which his father had trained him before he was heirapparent to the throne-a pursuit which, though perhaps of no great worth in itself, at all events tended to the training of his intellect. He accepted as his counsellors those whom he already found in that position. Archbishop Warham was his Chancellor, and Bishop Fox his Secretary; Surrey, with Shrewsbury, Somerset and Poynings, were all members of what may be termed his ministry. Henry's His first step was to complete his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. For six years the dispensation necessary to allow him to marry his brother's widow had been in marriage. England, but the marriage had been postponed, partly from a superstitious dread on the part of Henry VII., who conceived that Heaven had declared itself against the union,' and partly from money difficulties. It is perhaps worth noticing, in relation to the subsequent question of the divorce, that the young Queen, at this her second marriage, was dressed in white, with unadorned hair, as though a maiden, and not as a widow. His first measures. Empson and Prosecution of Dudley. The accession of a popular monarch of necessity brought some popular measures in its train, and not long after his marriage Henry ordered the prosecution of his father's chief extortioners, Empson and Dudley. Although the use they made of legal quibbles deserves no less severe a name than extortion, it was found impossible to form of any number of instances of such extortions a capital charge, and recourse was therefore had to a trumped up story of a threatened conspiracy for carrying off the King. On this charge they both suffered death. This trial gives an early instance of the way justice was administered throughout this reign. Both these criminals were attainted in the Parliament, attacked that is by Bill, and not by process of law. They had however both been convicted in the law courts before the Bill of Attainder was passed. Indeed few of those who fell under suspicion, or were brought to trial during this reign, escaped unconvicted. This was owing probably to the necessary subserviency of a nobility, resting upon the Crown, and to the pressure which Henry VII.'s 1 This feeling arose from the untimely death, of some of his children. |