A.D. 1485.

ACCESSION OF HENRY VII.

159

few, the king and his court lent a willing aid to the great discovery which was to make knowledge a common property. The statutes of Richard III. were, for the first time enacted in the English tongue; and they were also the first laws of the land which were ever printed. The commercial acts of this reign were not marked by any advance beyond the principle of protection, except in one striking instance-books were to come into the land as freely as the light from heaven. Richard and his counsellors stood upon the threshold of a new state of society; and this encouragement of transcribers, printers, and sellers of books, showed that they understood what was one of the characteristics of their time.

When Richard III. fell covered with wounds, lord Stanley took the crown, which was found amongst the spoil in the field, and set it on the earl of Richmond's head, and the people shouted, "King Henry! King Henry!" In the evening, the camp of Richmond, now King Henry VII., was removed to Leicester; and, two days after, the conqueror went forward to London. The new king was placed in a dilemma. Relying upon the title to be obtained by the marriage with the lady Elizabeth to which he was sworn, he would only have been a king by courtesy. And there were even at that time rumours which were likely to interfere with the title of the lady Elizabeth. As to his own title, as the representative of the house of Lancaster, "he knew it was a title condemned by parliament, and generally prejudged in the common opinion of the realm." As to the third title, that of conqueror, he felt that it would provoke terror, and that even William I. forbore to use that claim in the beginning. He put on the name and state of a king, therefore, without proclaiming any title, in the first instance; and thus, the needy adventurer of August, 1485, was crowned king of England and France, on the 30th of October. The parliament would not accept the vain pretension of an hereditary title, nor the insolent one of a title by conquest. The desire for tranquillity and a peaceful succession was paramount; and a title was made for Henry VII. as king de facto. The parliament at the same time prayed the king that he would be pleased to espouse the lady Elizabeth, daughter of king Edward IV. Henry expressed his willingness to comply with the request; and the marriage took place on the following 18th of January. Henry, however, showed no alacrity in performing the oath which he had taken at Vannes, and the public honour of the queen's coronation was deferred till late in the year 1487.

The new king was essentially different in character from any one of the Plantagenet race. The spirit of the feudal ages had no longer a representative. But Henry VII. brought to the throne a character which was eminently fitted to the requirements of a new state of society; and England was in a great degree fortunate to have passed under the rule of a king who would not retard the progress of improvement by clinging to the worn-out systems of the middle ages.

Edward, earl of Warwick, the son of the duke of Clarence, had been placed by Edward IV. at the Castle of Sheriff Hutton, from the time of his father's death in 1478. The first exercise of authority by Henry was to remove him to the Tower, out of whose dreary walls he never passed. The chief adherents of Richard III. had been attainted; and Henry

revoked, on his own authority, all grants of the crown made since 1454-5. The temper of the king towards the Yorkists produced an injudicious rising in 1486, under lord Lovel and Thomas and Humphrey Stafford. This was soon quelled.

Love for the house of York was still the prevailing feeling in Ireland. In the spring of 1487, a youth presented himself to the earl of Kildare, the lord deputy, at Dublin, and stated that he was the earl of Warwick, who had escaped from his confinement in the Tower. He was accompanied by a priest of the name of Simons. Either his pretensions were implicitly believed by Kildare, or he was a party to the scheme, which had evidently been promoted by persons of influence, probably as a feeler of public opinion. The earl of Lincoln and lord Lovel, with two thousand troops, under an experienced captain, Martin Swartz, set sail from Flanders in March, and landing at Dublin, the pupil of Simons the priest was proclaimed king as Edward VI. Lincoln and Lovel then landed on the Lancashire coast, encamped near Ulverstone, and marched through York. shire towards Newark. Very few joined them. The number of the insurgents, and their foreign auxiliaries, amounted to eight thousand men. At Stoke-upon-Trent, on the 4th of June, the vanguard of Henry's army, under the earl of Oxford, was attacked by this ill-appointed force. The cavalry of the earl of Oxford soon obtained a victory, in which one-half of the insurgents were slaughtered. The earl of Lincoln, lords Thomas and Maurice Fitzgerald, sir Thomas Broughton, and the brave Martin Swartz, fell in the field. Lord Lovel escaped. The pretended earl of Warwick and Simons the priest were captured. The youth, who was named Lambert Simnel, was taken into a mean office in Henry's kitchen. The priest was committed to prison, and was never more heard of. It is related, that in consequence of this attempt to set up a representative of the house of York, the queendowager was shut up in the nunnery of Bermondsey, and all her lands and estates were taken from her. Recent investigations have been held to render this alleged persecution of the widow of Edward IV. more than doubtful. But, though all the chroniclers who wrote at this time had a bias towards Henry VII., they all agree as to his severities towards the mother of his queen, his prejudice against the queen herself, and his unrelenting hostility to the great body of the supporters of the house of York. Two other results of the insurrection were the public exhibition of the real earl of Warwick to the people, in a procession from the Tower to St. Paul's; and a more considerate treatment of the queen, who now appeared with proper state on public occasions.

King Henry pursued a cautious and almost timid policy in his foreign relations. During the minority of Charles VIII., a quarrel had arisen between the governments of Brittany and France, and war was declared against Brittany. Henry VII. had the strongest obligations of gratitude to the duke of that country, who had sheltered him in his period of exile and poverty. The English king was appealed to for assistance by both parties in the contest. He would declare for neither, but offered himself as a mediator. Charles VIII. was now of an age to act for himself; and he carried war into Brittany, and besieged the duke in his capital of Rennes. Henry, meanwhile, had been employed in his natural vocation of

A.D. 1488.

FOREIGN POLICY OF HENRY VII.

161

state-craft; promising assistance to the friend of his adversity, but never rendering it; asking his parliament for means to resist the dangerous aggrandisement of France; and, having obtained a grant of two-fifteenths, concluding an armistice with Charles. By the end of 1488, when Francis of Brittany had died, his country was overrun by the French. Henry now promised an English army to the orphan princess Anne, to serve in her cause for six months. At the same time he contrived to let Charles understand that this force should act only on the defensive. The French king therefore avoided any engagement with the English, and at the end of six months the little army returned home. The English people were indignant at having been made to grant an aid of seventy-five thousand pounds for this mockery of war, and an insurrection broke out in the northern counties. The revolted people murdered the earl of Northumberland, who had enforced the payment of the subsidy. As a general movement, the insurrection was soon suppressed by the earl of Surrey. In 1490, the king again went to parliament for aid to carry on the pretended war, and he further extorted money under the system of "benevolences," which had been annulled by the parliament of Richard. Henry was again at his favourite work of diplomacy; entering into alliances with Ferdinand of Spain, who aimed at the restitution of Rousillon; and with Maximilian, king of the Romans, who wanted the princess Anne and the duchy of Brittany. All that Henry sought was to get money wherever he could. Maximilian was the most open of these royal schemers. He gave manful assistance to the oppressed Bretons, and the princess entered into a contract of marriage with him. Charles of France now put forward his pretensions to the hand of the lady, which were supported by the emphatic presence of a French army; and the princess, who resisted till resistance was no longer possible, was forced into a marriage which she hated, and into the conclusion of a treaty which placed the province, so long independent, under the French dominion. In October, 1491, Henry proclaimed his intention of punishing the French king. He again obtained a large grant from his faithful Lords and Commons. At length, in October of the next year, he landed at Calais with a well appointed army, and invested Boulogne with twenty-five thousand infantry and sixteen hundred cavalry. But, for three months previous to this costly parade, the wily king had been negotiating a peace with Charles of France. Within a week after his landing, Henry called a council, and laid before them a rough draft of a treaty offered by France, which his subservient ministers advised him to sign. There was another document, a private one, by which Charles was to pay a hundred and fortynine thousand pounds to the money-making king of England. The advisers of Henry were handsomely bribed, as well as their master.

About the beginning of 1492 a young man arrived at Cork, who claimed to be the second son of Edward IV. The earl of Desmond, who had been warmly attached to the house of York, declared in favour of this sup posed representative of that house; and the earl of Kildare offered him some assistance. The citizens became enthusiastic in his behalf. But the young man remained only a short time in Ireland, and then passed over to France, where he was acknowledged as the rightful heir to the English throne, and surrounded with a guard of honour, and other demonstrations

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of confidence and respect. When Henry had concluded the pacification with Charles, the French king commanded this guest to leave his dominions. The supposed Richard of York proceeded to Flanders, where he claimed the protection of Margaret, duchess of Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV. This princess welcomed him, as he says himself in a letter to the queen of Spain, "with all piety and honour; out of regard also to her, the most serene king of the Romans, and his son, the archduke of Austria, and the duke of Saxony, my dearest cousins, as likewise the kings of Denmark and Scotland, who sent to me their envoys, for the purpose of friendship and alliance. The great nobles of the kingdom of England did the same." At the time when the so-styled "Richard Plantagenet" wrote this letter from Dendermonde, a town belonging to the archduke of Austria, Henry had despatched an embassy to the archduke as sovereign of Burgundy, to demand the surrender of him who called himself Richard of York, or his expulsion from the territory of the archduke, maintaining that the sons of Edward were murdered in the Tower by their uncle; and declaring that Margaret of Burgundy was the instigator of this plot against the king of England. It was returned for answer, that the archduke would render no aid to the adventurer, but that he could not control the duchess Margaret, who, on the lands which she held as her dower, was wholly independent. Henry, by way of revenge, strictly prohibited all intercourse between England and Flanders, and removed the mart of English cloth from Antwerp. The pretensions of the adventurer in Flanders gradually found powerful but secret supporters in England. Towards the end of 1494, lord Fitzwalter, sir Simon Mountford, sir Thomas Thwaites, Robert Ratcliffe, and others, were arrested on a charge of high treason, and were proved to have corresponded with the friends of Richard abroad. All received sentence of death; and Mountford, Thwaites, and Ratcliffe were at once executed. On the 7th of January, sir William Stanley, who had saved the life of the earl of Richmond on Bosworth Field, was accused of favouring the pretensions of "Richard." He was beheaded, and Henry took possession of his enormous wealth.

Henry chose to deal with clemency towards those in Ireland who had supported the adventurer. He reversed the attainder of the earl of Kildare; pardoned the earl of Desmond ; and only excepted from his mercy Lord Barry and John Water. In the middle of July, 1495, a bold effort was made by "Richard" to land at Deal, with a portion of his foreign troops. The inhabitants repulsed the invaders, and made prisoners of a hundred and sixty-nine, all of whom Henry caused to be hanged. Their young leader returned to his protectress, after an ineffectual attempt to besiege Waterford. But, early in 1496, Henry concluded a commercial treaty with Philip, the archduke, to which an article was annexed that the rebels of either prince should be expelled from their territories, if required. In a few months, the young man, driven out from the Burgundian provinces, was dwelling in honour at the court of James IV., in Scotland, having arrived there with a considerable military force. James IV. treated him in every respect as the real duke of York; and gave the most absolute proof of his conviction of the truth of his pretensions by bestowing upon him in marriage his own kinswoman, Lady Catherine Gordon. It appears

A.D. 1496.

INVASION OF ENGLAND BY JAMES IV.

163

that the men and money with which the self-styled duke of York was supplied came from Maximilian, king of the Romans, and not from the duchess of Burgundy. The employment of spies was an established principle of the government of Henry. He had his men, too, ready for bold acts of violence as well as treachery. One of his most devoted instruments was Ramsay, Lord Bothwell, who, having been proscribed in 1488, was in England in 1491, and was in the intimate confidence of Henry, who had bribed him to seize the persons of King James and his brother, and deliver them to the king of England. There was no open war at that time with Scotland. Bothwell had now obtained a licence for his return to the Scottish court. His business was to obtain the best intelligence for Henry; and to perpetrate any atrocity that was within his power, either by corruption or violence. From the letters of this accomplished spy we may judge how difficult must have been the part which the young adventurer had to play at the court of Scotland. Whatever be the contradictory evidence which prevents us yielding an unqualified belief that this was the son of Edward IV., it is manifest that for years he sustained his part, without betraying by a single accident of self-consciousness that he was a deceiver.

The winter was approaching, when James IV. and his adopted ally advanced with an army into England. A proclamation signed R. R. was issued in the name of "the king of England;" which set forth the escape of the son of Edward IV. from the Tower, through the compassion of a certain lord who had been commissioned to kill him; and his residence abroad for eight years. It denounced Henry Tydder as a false usurper of the crown of England; called upon the people to arm in the cause of the true king; and promised rewards to such as should take or distress his mortal enemy. The king of Scotland had come to aid his righteous quarrel, and after the usurper was subdued would return peaceably into his own kingdom. This appeal to the people of England was wholly unsuccessful. Eleven years of almost unbroken peace had enabled them to settle down in the quiet pursuits of industry, under a king essentially pacific. They would fight for their own liberties, but not for a barren title. Moreover, the alliance of the king of Scotland was most unpropitious to the cause he had taken up. James and his friend marched back to Scotland, their army having done much mischief, but having produced no political result.

The invasion of England offered a fit occasion for Henry to demand a The people of Cornwall were instigated by large grant from parliament. one Flammock, an attorney, and by a farrier, to resist the payment of the tax. Sixteen thousand insurgents commenced a progress to London, to demand the punishment of the king's ministers, archbishop Morton and Lord Audely placed sir Reginald Gray, as the promoters of the tax. himself at their head, when they had reached Wells. At Blackheath they encamped. A battle took place on the 22d of June. At the bridge at Deptford they obstinately defended the passage against the king's troops. But the bridge was forced; and they fled in consternation. There was a great slaughter, and many hundred prisoners were taken. Audely was beheaded, and the attorney and the farrier were hanged. Henry treated

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