the prisoners with a politic mercy, and they returned home. During this insurrection James again crossed the Border and besieged Norham Castle. But he retreated before the earl of Surrey. The ambassador of Ferdinand of Spain now undertook to mediate between James and Henry; and a truce was finally concluded. Henry required that the adventurer, whom he called Perkin Warbeck, should be given up, but without success. The disappointed pretender to the crown of England now quitted the court of James, having received a safe-conduct from his chivalric supporter. He departed from Scotland with four ships, and a small body of followers. Once more he addressed himself to his old friends at Cork, but received no encouragement. He then sailed to the coast of Cornwall; and in September landed at Whitsand Bay. The Cornishmen, still disposed for revolt, flocked to the standard of Richard the Fourth. He seized St. Michael's Mount; and there he left his wife, Catherine, the faithful sharer of his fortunes. The enterprise now began to wear a more serious aspect than at any former period. Before the adventurer had reached Exeter he had six thousand men under his command. After two unsuccessful attacks on Exeter, the insurgents and their leader proceeded to Collumpton, where many of his followers deserted the pretender. On the 25th of September, the king himself writes to one of his nobles: "Cousin, trust for certain that upon Thursday about midnight, Perkin fled from his company at Taunton, and took no leave nor licence of them." The forsaken adventurer rode to the monastery of Beaulieu. Here he demanded sanctuary on the 21st of September. The privileged retreat was quickly surrounded by the king's forces; and in a few days Perkin surrendered, upon a promise that his life should be spared. Henry secured the wife of the captive, and placed her under the protection of his queen. Fabyan briefly relates that, on the 28th of November, "Perkin was brought through the city unto the Tower, and there left as prisoner." The degraded captive is stated to have made a confession, which was then dispersed abroad. It was to the effect that his father was one John Osbeck, who was comptroller of the town of Tournay; that he travelled in various countries under Flemish, Portuguese, and Breton masters; and that landing at Cork, in some of his master's fine silken clothes, the people of the town laid hold of him; and maintained, first, that he was the son of the duke of Clarence; next, that he was the illegitimate son of Richard III.; and lastly, called him duke of York, "and so against my will made me learn English, and taught me what I should do and say." During seven months' imprisonment of Henry's captive, he was not treated with indignity. He was not concealed; but there was little chance that he could have been identified as the real duke of York, who purported to have escaped from the Tower fifteen years before, or ascertained to be an impostor, through casual glances at his person. Elizabeth, the widow of Edward IV., died in the very year when this adventurer first landed at Cork. The queen of Henry VII., and her sisters, probably never saw him. In June, 1498, he escaped, and fled towards the coast. Being re-captured, the Tower became his close prison. He was exhibited, fettered, to the Londoners, and made to read openly his confession.

Edward, earl of Warwick, had been a prisoner in the Tower for fourteen

A.D. 1499.

CATHERINE OF ARAGON.

years. In March, 1499, another pretended earl of Warwick appeared in Kent, and was announced from the pulpit by a friar of the order of St. Augustine. The poor tool, Wulford, was hanged, and the friar was imprisoned. A negotiation was now proceeding to marry Arthur, prince of Wales, to Catherine, the daughter of Ferdinand of Spain. "Ferdinand,"

says Bacon, "had written to the king in plain terms, that he saw no assurance of his succession as long as the earl of Warwick lived; and that he was loth to send his daughter to troubles and dangers." The suggestion was not thrown away upon such an unprincipled schemer as Henry VII. On the 21st of November, 1499, an indictment was preferred before the Lord High Steward and the Peers against the earl of Warwick for high treason. It set forth that two men, Thomas Astwood, one of Warwick's keepers, and Robert Cleymound, had, in August, conspired with him to make him king. But it was also averred that it was intended to make "Peter Warbeck, of Tournay," king. Two of the keepers were hanged; but Cleymound, who was probably a spy of Henry's, vanished. Upon this tissue of contradictory charges, the two young men were convicted. The earl of Warwick, wholly ignorant of the ways of the world, was induced to plead guilty. His companion in misfortune went through some form of He was arraigned as a foreigner. The trial, of which there is no record. doubtful Plantagenet was executed at Tyburn on the 23rd of November. The earl was beheaded within the Tower on the 28th of the same month. In 1499, when prince Arthur had reached his twelfth year, he was married to the Spanish princess to whom he had been betrothed since he was four years old. Catherine, who was a year older than her bridegroom, In 1501, the princess came to England, and was represented by proxy. the ceremonials were again gone through at St. Paul's on the 6th of November. In April, 1502, only four months after his marriage, Arthur died. The two kings, who were wonderfully matched in their ability at bargain-making, now negotiated for the marriage of prince Henry, then eleven years of age, with his brother's widow. At last a dispensation was obtained from the pope; and the marriage-contract was completed in 1503, with a solemn ceremonial.

In January, 1502, a treaty had been concluded between England and Scotland, in which a perpetual peace was to be cemented by the marriage of James with the eldest daughter of Henry. The marriage took place by proxy; but, on account of Margaret's youth, her departure to Scotland was deferred till July, 1503. Elizabeth, the queen of Henry VII., died in February of that year. The widower soon sought for an advantageous alliance for himself; and he tried his fortune in three quarters, in each of which there was a prospect of a large marriage portion. There Meanwhile the Spanish monarch withwas disappointment in each. held that part of the portion of Catherine which was promised to be paid upon her marriage with prince Henry; and the English king, to annoy her father, treated the widow of one son and the betrothed of another with a harshness which indisposed her for the completion of her second marriage. At length two instalments of that marriage-portion were extracted from Ferdinand, according to an agreement that they Henry the Seventh died before the third and should be paid half-yearly.

fourth became due. That event took place at Richmond Palace on the 21st of April, 1509.

66

According to Bacon, Henry is reported to have died worth one million eight hundred thousand pounds. The annual revenue from the royal estates, and the properties which had lapsed to the crown, was estimated at about one hundred and seventy thousand pounds, of which forty thousand was derived from customs. The chief extortions which Henry VII. practised, through two lawyers, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, were carried on by prosecutions against persons of substance, especially the rich merchants of London, under obsolete laws, in which false witnesses, called promoters, were systematically employed. Henry's great instrument for reducing the pride and power of the nobles was by fine and forfeiture. All retainers were held unlawful, but those who received wages as household servants; and for each retainer a fine of 57. per month was enforced. Henry VII. was frugal, even when he meant to be generous, except in two particulars: His desire for the acquisition of jewels knew no bounds; and on them alone he spent 110,0007.* In architecture, also, he disbursed large sums. His palace at Richmond, and his chapel at Westminster, were of the most costly of these works. He saw the policy of encouraging navigation and discovery, if such encouragement should be without cost to himself; and in March, 1496, he granted letters-patent to John Cabot and his two sons to sail at their own cost and charges, with five ships, for the discovery of new countries, upon condition that the king should have a fifth of the profits. The great maritime discoveries effected during this reign by Columbus, Dias, Vasco de Gama, and Cabot, gradually influenced the growth of English commerce, although the parsimony which forbad the king directly to support any adventurers, gave little encouragement to the English merchants to embark in the direct trade to the East or the West. The commercial enterprises of the country were also necessarily restricted by its contracted legislation. Although the material wealth of England had been decidedly increasing during the reign of Henry VII., we have abundant evidence that its natural resources were very imperfectly brought into operation. The tillage of the land was so unprofitable that it afforded no return for the employment of capital; and such statutes as that against bargains grounded in usury," resulted in the wealth of the country being hoarded and unemployed.

During the reign of Henry VII., there was little opportunity afforded to parliament to demand remedy of grievances. There were only seven parliaments called under this king, who was twenty-four years on the throne. In dispensing with subsidies, Henry got rid of the privilege which was the sole check upon prerogative. The Lords and Commons appear to have surrendered the Constitution into the king's keeping when it was enacted that he should have power to reverse and annul all attainders, and pardon all forfeitures, and that his letters-patent should be as valid as acts of parliament. One of the early statutes of this reign was: "An Act giving the Court of Star-Chamber authority to punnyshe divers mysdemeanours." This court was probably useful and necessary in many respects.

"Excerpta Historica," p. 125.

Its

A.D. 1509.

HENRY VIII. MARRIES CATHERINE.

167

objects were limited to offences by maintenance, liveries, and retainers; untrue returns of sheriffs; taking money by juries; and great riots and unlawful assemblies. Its members were to consist of the chancellor, treasurer, and keeper of the privy seal, with a bishop and temporal lord of the council, and the chief justices of the King's Bench and Common Pleas, or two other justices in their absence. But it is easy to see that the esta blishment of this court by statute was a step towards depriving the subject of the right of being tried by his peers. That Henry wielded this instrument for oppressive purposes we may easily believe.

At the end of the reign of Henry VII., the monastic establishments were at the culminating point of their wealth and luxury. Their profligacy was the subject of papal admonition in 1490. Some acts were passed in this reign which in a degree interrupted the long immunity of the clergy from any interference of the legislature with their course of life. Some attempt was also made against the two great abuses-"benefit of clergy,” and the privilege of sanctuary.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE first act of Henry VIII. and his council was the arrest of Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, the ministers of the extortions of Henry VII. They declared before the council that they had acted according to the commissions with which they were entrusted, and had conformed to precedent and the letter of the law. The charges against them failed. But it was expedient to punish them; and a ridiculous charge of treason against the reigning monarch was got up against them, it being pretended that they conspired to seize the person of Henry on the death of his father, and to assume the functions of government. Empson was convicted on this charge by a jury at Northampton, and Dudley by a jury in London. The parliament passed a bill of attainder against them at the beginning of 1510; and they were executed in the following August. Many of the false witnesses, or promoters, who were employed by these criminal agents of a greater criminal, were also apprehended, and put in the pillory.

Catherine of Aragon remained in England, under the peculiar circumstance of being contracted in marriage to the young king, against which contract he had himself protested. Her doubtful position was, however, soon relieved by the determination of Henry to complete the contract of marriage. They were publicly united by the archbishop of Canterbury on the 7th of June, 1509. Catherine was dressed in white, and wore her hair loose, the fashion in which maidens were customarily married. Their coronation took place at Westminster on the 24th of June.

Archbishop Warham, the chancellor; bishop Fox, lord privy seal; and Howard, earl of Surrey, lord treasurer, were the king's chief ministers. The parliament of the first year of Henry's reign granted a subsidy of tonnage and poundage, for the defence of the realm and the keeping of the

sea.

There were then no circumstances to call for an especial provision beyond this ordinary revenue. But in the third year of his reign King Henry was preparing for war with France and Scotland, and a subsidy was granted of "two whole fifteenths and tenths." From the statute by which this subsidy was granted we gather that the intended war was for the maintenance of the Balance of Power in Europe. In the possible success of Louis of France against Ferdinand of Spain, was to be dreaded "the inestimable loss and damage of this realm." But in 1512, the object of this war was differently defined. It was to be a war for the "reformation of the schismatic demeanour" of the French king against "our holy father the Pope," who had placed France under an interdict, which the said French king "despising, will not thereby reform himself." At the commencement of the reign of Henry VIII., the papal throne had been filled, during six years, by Julius II., -a pontiff who united the characters of the priest and the warrior. His real policy was to render Italy independent. He had joined with Louis of France, Ferdinand of Spain, and the emperor Maximilian in curbing the power of the Venetians by the League of Cambray, in 1508. He now openly defied Louis by the invasion of the territories of his friend the duke of Ferrara. The French king sent an army from Milan to the support of his ally. Julius retired to Bologna, where in 1510 he was besieged by a French army, but without success. In 1511 that papal city was taken; and Louis took the bold step of calling a General Council "for the reformation of the Church, both in its head and its members." He had the support of his own clergy and of five cardinals. But the pope invited the princes of Christendom to join the "Holy League" for the defence of the Roman Church and the extinction of schism. The impetuous king of England eagerly rushed to enrol himself amongst the supporters of the pope, who gratefully flattered him with the promise that the king of France should no longer be "the most Christian king," and that the orthodox Henry should bear that honoured title.

There were at this time reasonable causes of complaint on both sides between England and Scotland. A famous Scotch privateer, Andrew Barton, with his two brothers, had conducted a naval war against the Portuguese, under letters of marque from James IV. The Bartons had captured some English vessels, and the earl of Surrey fitted out two ships to repress these assaults, which were not the less obnoxious that they were under colour of search for Portuguese goods. In a desperate engagement, the daring privateer was killed. Another cause of difference was Henry's refusal to pay to his sister, the queen of Scotland, the legacy which her father had bequeathed to her. The family alliance, which should have ripened into a national alliance between England and Scotland, was broken; and in May, 1512, James IV. concluded a league with France.

Henry's almoner, Wolsey, was essentially the war-minister at this time. This extraordinary man was born at Ipswich. There is a tradition that his father was a butcher. The son was educated at Oxford, where he took his degree of bachelor of arts at the age of fifteen. He became a priest and a fellow of Magdalen College; and having been tutor to the sons of the marquis of Dorset, received from him the benefice of Lymington, ir