and Isabella, whilst his sister was sent to Spain to be married to their only son, Juan. In 1497 the death of the young prince led to consequences unexpected when the two marriages were arranged. Philip, who held Franche Comté and the Netherlands, and who was through his father Maximilian heir to the German dominions of the House of Austria, would now, that his wife had become the heiress of Spain, be able to transmit to his descendants the whole of the Spanish monarchy as well. That monarchy was no longer confined to Europe. Portugal at the end of the fourteenth century had led the way in maritime adventure, and Portuguese navigators discovered a way to India round the Cape of Good Hope. Spain was anxious to do as much, and in 1492 Columbus had discovered the West Indies, and the kings of Spain became masters of the untold wealth produced by the gold and silver mines of the New World. It was impossible but that the huge power thus brought into existence would one day arouse the jealousy of Europe. For the present, however, the danger was less than it would be after the deaths of Ferdinand and Isabella, as the actual combination of their territories with those which Philip was to inherit from Maximilian had not been effected. In 1499 France gave a fresh shock to her neighbours. Charles VIII. had died the year before, and his successor, Louis XII., invaded Italy and subdued the duchy of Milan, to which he had set up a claim. Naturally the powers jealous of France sought to have Henry on their side. There had been for some time a negotiation for a marriage between Henry's eldest son, Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Catherine of Aragon, the youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, but hitherto nothing had been concluded. 1499.—Perkin had 17. Execution of the Earl of Warwick. long been eager to free himself from prison. In 1498 he was caught attempting to escape, but Henry contented himself with putting him in the stocks. He was then removed to the Tower, where he persuaded the unhappy Earl of Warwick (see p. 343) to join him in flight. It is almost certain that Warwick was guilty of no more, but Henry, soured by the repeated attempts to dethrone him, resolved to remove him from his path. On trumped-up evidence Warwick was convicted and executed, and Perkin shared his fate. 18. Prince Arthur's Marriage and Death. 1501 - 1502.Warwick's death was the one judicial murder of Henry's reign. To the Spaniards it appeared to be a prudent action which had cleared away the last of Henry's serious competitors. The negotia King's College Chapel, Cambridge (looking east). Begun by Henry VI. in 1441: completed by Henry VII. The screen built between 1531 and 1535. tions for the Spanish marriage were pushed on, and in 1501 Catherine, a bride of fifteen, gave her hand to Arthur, a bridegroom of fourteen. In 1502 the prince died, and the attempt to bind England and Spain together seemed to have come to an end. 19. The Scottish Marriage. 1503.-Another marriage treaty proved ultimately to be of far greater importance. Henry was sufficiently above the prejudices of his time to be anxious to be on good terms with Scotland. For some time a negotiation had been in progress for a marriage between James IV. and Henry's daughter, Margaret. The marriage took place in 1503. To the counsellors who urged that in the case of failure of Henry's heirs in the male line England would become subject to Scotland Henry shrewdly replied that there was no fear of that, as 'the greater would draw the less.' 20. Maritime Enterprise.-Henry's chief merit was that he had re-established order. Commercial prosperity followed, though the commerce was as yet on a small scale. It is probable that the population of England was no more than 2,500,000. London contained but 130,000 inhabitants, whilst Paris contained 400,000. There was no royal navy, as there was no royal army, but merchant vessels were armed to protect themselves. The company of Merchant Adventurers made voyages to the Baltic, and the men of Bristol sent out fleets to the Iceland fishery. Henry did what he could to encourage maritime enterprise. He had offered to take Columbus into his service before the great navigator closed with Spain, and in 1497 he sent the Venetian, John Cabot, and his sons across the Atlantic, where they landed in Labrador before any Spaniards had set foot on the American continent. England however, was as yet too poor to push these discoveries farther, and the lands beyond the sea were for the present left to Spain. 21. Growth of the Royal Power. The improvement in the general well-being of the country had been rendered possible by the extension of the royal power, and the price paid for order was the falling into abeyance of the constitutional authority of Parliaments. The loss indeed was greater in appearance than in reality. In the fifteenth century the election of members of the House of Commons depended more upon the will of the great lords than upon the political sentiments of the community. In the first half of the sixteenth century they depended on the will of the king. The peculiarity of the Tudor rule was that its growing despotism was 1502-1505 MATRIMONIAL SCHEMES 357 exercised without the support of the army. It rested on the goodwill of the middle classes. Treading cautiously in the steps of Edward IV., Henry VII. recognised that in order to have a full treasury it was less dangerous to exact payments illegally from the few than to exact them legally from the many. Hence his recourse in times of trouble to benevolences. Hence, too, the eagerness with which he gathered in fines. The Cornish rebels were fined individually. The great lords who persisted in keeping retainers were fined. On one occasion the king visited the Earl of Oxford, and found, when he went away, a band of retainers drawn up to do him honour. "My lord,” he said, “I thank you for your entertainment, but my attorney must speak with you." If there was a man in England who had deserved well of Henry it was Oxford, but Oxford had to pay 15,000/., a sum worth perhaps 180,000l. at the present day, to atone for his offence. No services rendered to Henry were to excuse from obedience to the law. 22. Empson and Dudley.-As Henry grew older the gathering of money became a passion. His chief instruments were Empson and Dudley, who under pretence of enforcing the law established the worst of tyrannies. Even false charges were brought for the sake of extracting money. At the end of his reign Henry had accumulated a hoard of 1,800,000l., mainly gathered by injustice and oppression. The despotism of one man was no doubt better than the despotism of many, but the price paid for the change was a heavy one. 23. Henry and his Daughter-in-law. 1502-1505.-On the death of Prince Arthur in 1502, Ferdinand and Isabella proposed that their daughter Catherine should marry her brother-in-law, Henry, the only surviving son of the king of England, though the boy was six years younger than herself. They had already paid half their daughter's marriage portion, and they believed, probably with truth, that they had little chance of recovering it from Henry VII., and that it would therefore be more economical to re-marry their daughter where they would get off with no more expense than the payment of the other half. Henry on the other hand feared lest the repayment of the first half might be demanded of him, and consequently welcomed the proposal. In 1503 a dispensation for the marriage was obtained from Pope Julius II., but in 1505, when the time for the betrothal arrived, the young Henry protested, no doubt at his father's instigation, that he would proceed no farther. 24. The Last Years of Henry VII. 1505-1509.-Circum stances were changed by the death of Isabella in 1504, when her sonin-law, the Archduke Philip, claimed to be sovereign of Castile in right of his wife Juana. Philip, sailing from the Netherlands to Spain in 1506, was driven into Weymouth by a storm, and Henry seized the opportunity of wringing from him commercial concessions as well as the surrender of Edmund de la Pole, a brother of the Earl of Lincoln who perished at Stoke, and a nephew of Edward IV. Henry was himself now a widower on the look-out for a rich wife, and Philip promised him the hand of his sister, Margaret, who had formerly been betrothed to Charles VIII. see p. 337. Once more, however, the conditions of the game changed. Philip died a few months after his arrival in Spain, leaving a mad widow, and as Ferdinand regained his authority Catherine's marriage was again discussed. Other schemes were also proposed, amongst them one for marrying Catherine, not to the young prince, but to her old father-in-law, the king. In 1509, before any of these plans could take effect, Henry VII. died. He deserves to be reckoned amongst the kings who have accomplished much for England. If he was not chivalrous or imaginative, neither was the age in which he lived. His contemporaries needed a chief constable to keep order, and he gave them what they needed. 25. Architectural Changes and the Printing Press. -Architecture, which in England, as upon the Continent, had been the one great art of the Middle Ages, was already, though still instinct with beauty, giving signs in its over-elaboration of approaching decadence. To the tower of Fotheringhay Church (see p. 311) had succeeded the tower of St. Mary's, Taunton. To the roof of the nave of Winchester Cathedral (see p. 276) had succeeded the roof of the Divinity School at Oxford (see p. 319), and of the chapel of King's College, Cambridge (see p. 355). Art in this direction could go no farther. The new conditions in which the following age was to move were indicated by the discovery of America and the invention of printing. New objects of knowledge presented themselves, and a new mode of spreading knowledge was at hand. the reign of Edward IV., Caxton, the earliest English printer, set up his press at Westminster, and the king and his nobles came to gaze at it as at some new toy, little knowing how profoundly it was to modify their methods of government. Henry VII. had enough to do without troubling himself with such matters. It was his part to close an epoch of English history, not to open a fresh one. In |