CHAPTER XXVII.

HENRY VII.

Henry Tudor; Yorkist risings; Lambert Simnel (1)— foreign affairs (2)-Richard Plantagenet or Perkin Warbeck; execution of Stanley; surrender of Perkin; execution of Perkin and Warwick (3)—marriages of Henry's children (4)-Henry's government; story of the Earl of Oxford; Empson and Dudley; death of Henry (5)-allegiance to the King de facto (6)-The Cabots (7).

1. House of Tudor. Henry VII., 1485-1509. -The coronation of Henry Tudor on the battle-field was followed up by a more formal one at Westminster. Without entering into questions of title, Parliament settled the Crown on Henry and his heirs, and in order to unite the rival Roses, pressed him to carry out the intended marriage with Elizabeth of York, which he was supposed to have put off in order that it might not be thought that he reigned by right of his wife. The marriage accordingly took place Jan. 18, 1486, but it is said that his dislike to the House of York led him to treat her with coldness. Another representative of that House, young Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence, he at once removed from Yorkshire, where Richard III. had placed him in captivity, to the Tower; and altogether the King showed himself so unfriendly to the Yorkists that within a year of his accession they made an attempt at revolt, in which Lord Lovel, the "dog," was one of the leaders. This was soon quelled; but the next year the Yorkists tried a new plan. A youth appeared, asserting himself to be the Earl of Warwick, escaped from the Tower. Margaret, the widowed Duchess of Burgundy, and sister of Edward IV., furnished the Earl of Lincoln and Lord Lovel with troops to support him

and he was crowned King in Ireland, where the House of York had always been beloved. But few joined him when he landed in England, and his German and Irish army was overthrown by Henry's troops at Stoke-upon-Trent, June 16, 1487. The Earl of Lincoln and most of the Yorkist leaders fell; Lovel fled, and was never heard of again; while the pretended Warwick, who was one Lambert Simnel, son of a joiner at Oxford, was captured, and treated with contemptuous mercy, Henry making him a scullion in his kitchen.

2. Foreign Affairs. In character Henry was cautious, crafty, fond of money, and ingenious in acquiring it. Being ever in fear of a pretender to his throne, he was anxious for the friendship of foreign princes, in order that they might not help rebels against him. More especially he sought the alliance of Spain, the rival power to France; and though he had no love for war, he joined in 1489 with the Spaniards in sending troops to help Britanny, then at strife with France. The English being well disposed to fight the French, the King got subsidies from Parliament, renewed the extortion of money by "benevolences," and under a show of war-for he did as little as he could-filled his coffers. At last, in 1492, he passed over to France, laid siege to Boulogne for a few days, made peace, and led his murmuring army back. Besides the public treaty there was a private one, by which the King of France bound himself to pay a hundred and forty-nine thousand pounds to the King of England.

3. Perkin Warbeck.-Meanwhile a new claimant to the throne had appeared, styling himself Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. According to his own account, he was the second son of Edward IV., and had been saved alive when his brother Edward V. was put to death; according to Henry, he was one Pierce Osbeck, more commonly called Perkin Warbeck, of Tournay; and people are still in doubt whether he

was an impostor or not. He first showed himself in Cork, where he was well received; he then went to the French court, and thence to Flanders, where the Duchess Margaret of Burgundy received him with open arms. The King discovering, by means of spies, that communications were carried on between the friends of "Richard of York" in England, and those abroad, some executions took place, amongst which was that of the Lord Chamberlain Sir William Stanley, who had saved Henry's life on Bosworth Field. Probably he really was concerned in the conspiracy; but the King's known greed of money caused a suspicion that Stanley only suffered in order that his enormous wealth might be forfeited to the Crown. In 1495 "Richard" passed into Scotland, where the King, James IV., gave him his kinswoman Katharine Gordon in marriage. About two years later the adventurer, landing in Cornwall, was there joined by many of the people; but on the approach of the royal army he left his followers, and took sanctuary, surrendering in a few days on promise that his life should be spared. His beautiful wife, "the White Rose," as she was called, became an attendant on Henry's Queen. For two years "Richard" lived a prisoner; once he made his escape, but being brought back, was set publicly in the stocks, made to read aloud a confession of imposture, and then cast into a dark cell in the Tower. In 1499 he and a fellow-captive, the Earl of Warwick, who, for no crime but his birth, had lain for fourteen years in the Tower, were tried and put to death on charges of high treason. The two young men, as was alleged at the Earl's trial, had planned escape, after which the adventurer was to be again proclaimed as King Richard IV. But the report went that the Earl was sacrificed to Henry's long-cherished scheme for wedding his son to a Spanish princess, whose father, King Ferdinand of Aragon, crafty and careful as Henry himself, was

believed to have said plainly that he did not consider the alliance a safe one as long as Warwick lived.

4. Marriages of Henry's children.-In 1501, at the age of fifteen, the King's eldest son, named Arthur in memory of the Welsh hero from whom Henry claimed descent, was married to Katharine, daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon, whose power extended over nearly the whole of the present Spain. But Arthur dying within five months' time, his young widow was contracted to the King's second son, Henry, a dispensation being obtained from the Pope to legalize this union with a brother's wife. With intent

to cement a peace between England and Scotland, the King's eldest daughter Margaret was married in 1503 to James IV. of Scotland; and this politic alliance proved in the end the means of uniting the two kingdoms of Britain.

5. Henry's Government.-Under the Tudors there came a change over the spirit of the government. The tendency now was to make the King all-powerful. Mindful of the feeble rule of Henry VI. and the turmoil of the civil wars, people were willing to put up with stretches of power on the part of the sovereign, if only he would maintain order and keep a tight hand on the nobles. This task was the easier, because war and the headsman's axe, attainder and forfeiture had thinned and broken the old nobility; and weakened as they were, Henry watched them jealously. It had long been a practice for the great noblemen to give "liveries" and "badges" to the gentlemen and yeomen of their neighbourhood. There was a sort of bond between the great man and those who, on occasions of ceremony, donned his livery; it marked them as his "retainers," entitled to his protection, and ready to fight in his quarrel. The law indeed forbade his giving liveries to any but actual members of his household, but nobody dreamed of observing it. Once, as the tale goes, Henry was

entertained by John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who had fought for him at Bosworth. Two lines of liveried gentlemen and yeomen were drawn up for the King to pass through. The Earl smiled when asked if they all belonged to his household-they were mostly his retainers, he said, who had come to see the King. "By my faith, my Lord," quoth Henry, "I thank you for your good cheer, but I may not endure to have my laws broken in my sight. My attorney must speak with you." And the Earl, who had thought to show honour to the King, had to pay a fine of £10,000. Often the great men were so strong in their own neighbourhood that they could bend the law to their will they bribed or overawed sheriffs and juries, and no one durst go against them. A statute was therefore enacted which gave authority to the Chancellor, the Treasurer, and the Keeper of the Privy Seal, with others of the King's Council, to call such offenders before them for punishment. In the latter part of his reign, Henry's avarice grew upon him when gold coin once went into his strong-boxes, it never came out again, said the Spanish Ambassador-and he made himself hateful by his extortions. His chief instruments were two lawyers, Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, who raked up long-forgotten statutes and old claims of feudal services in order to exact fines and forfeitures for their transgression or omission. The whole course of justice was wrested to furnish pretences for extorting money, and the employment of false witnesses and packed juries rendered it hardly possible for the most innocent to escape. Henry thus added to his hoard, and kept his subjects from growing dangerously rich. He died April 21, 1509, at the palace of Shene, which he had rebuilt with great magnificence, and had called, after his earlier title, Richmond. He was buried in his own beautiful chapel in Westminster Abbey.