READING HALL DOORS OF WISDOM

DOORS OF WISDOM

ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS.

KING HENRY VII

(1485-1509).

CHAPTERS

II. Foreign Complications : France, Brittany, Spain Commercial Policy

IV. Relations with Foreign Powers, 1495-1503; the Spanish and the Scotch Marriages. Commerce and Discoveries

VI. Henry’s Matrimonial Schemes. Relations with Rome, Scotland, and Ireland

VII. Monarchical Policy. Commerce, Industry, Agriculture, Labour Laws. Judicial Reforms. Administration of Finance. Establishment of an Enlightened Absolutism—Henry’s Personal Character and Death

BY

DR. WILHELM BUSCH,

TRANSLATED BY ALICE M. TODD.

INTRODUCTION.

The whole development of the English State throughout the last six centuries has been indissolubly bound up with the growth of its Parliamentary Constitution: both advanced together. Like an island in the midst of this stream of steady and uninterrupted progress, stands out the epoch of personal government under the House of Tudor. The Parliament had but a small share in the great onward movement and mighty revolutions of that remarkable century; rather it lost much of the position which it had won for itself in the English State before the close of the Middle Ages.

Her Parliamentary Constitution had been England’s chief creation during the Middle Ages, and was peculiar to herself. Her isolated position, surrounded by the sea, had afforded a possibility of development, undisturbed by outside influences, such as had been granted to no other country. The sea, however, had *not served always as a bulwark to England, for, in the first centuries of historic times, one foreign race after another poured as conquerors into the country, and a long struggle ensued between various nations for the lordship and possession of the land. These struggles became the more wild and bloody, because it was difficult, if not impossible, for the vanquished to be dislodged; or for the invaders to draw back from the island.

The Keltic Britons, whom Caesar encountered as the aboriginal inhabitants of the country, did not exercise any appreciable influence on its future development, and even of the Roman rule, which gave to the Britons culture, political order, and Christianity, only fragmentary relics remain. The history of the English nation begins, in fact, in the fifth century, with the occupation of the country by the North German tribes, who, under the collective name of the Anglo-Saxons, after a war of conquest lasting for two hundred years, made themselves masters of the land. But the political institutions, which they originated, were not destined to endure. In the year 1066, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, already falling to pieces under a degenerate monarchy, was overthrown by a new conqueror, the Norman duke, William.

With this powerful founder of a kingdom the history of the English State begins. The long war of races was drawing to a close. The vanquished Anglo-Saxons still, indeed, confronted the Franco-Norman invaders, but, instead of one race seeking to supplant and destroy the other, a period of national fusion set in. The result was that the conquered race remained almost intact in its national peculiarities, and absorbed the more pliable conqueror, whilst, on the other hand, the Anglo-Norman State became a perfectly new creation, into which were engrafted only those institutions of the ruined Anglo-Saxon polity, that were suitable to it.

Over these nationalities, standing side by side, but at first in hostility, arose the autocratic monarchy of William and his successors, dominating and holding them together. It was the beginning of a united State under a monarchy, without a homogeneous people, and without a national king. And whilst, favoured by the ruler, national unity soon began, the hope that the monarchy itself might become a national one seemed to recede still further into the background. When Henry II, in 1154, began the glorious line of princes of the House of Anjou-Plantagenet, England formed only one part of the great Angevin kingdom on both sides of the Channel, the continental possessions of which comprised more than half of France. England was threatened with the fate of being compelled to expend her powers on a task contrary to her national interests, that of supporting the imperial policy of her kings against the not unreasonable claims of the French Crown. But this dangerous imperialism lasted only a short time; the rule of such a miserable monarch as Henry’s younger son John was destined to confer upon the country a blessing which cannot be too highly valued. Under him the greater part of these continental possessions fell into the hands of France, and the kingdom, till then half French, confined more and more to England alone, began to become entirely English.

The short period during which the Angevin kingdom lasted was also of the highest importance from another point of view: to it belongs the internal development of the Constitution, which throughout the whole Middle Ages was being defined by the struggle between two powers in the State—the monarchy and the aristocracy. In the place of the Germanic monarchy of the Anglo-Saxons, ruling in conjunction with a national assembly, the Norman conquerors, with their own peculiar form of the feudal system, had substituted a completely autocratic feudal monarchy, which made every effort to keep in check ambitious vassals. We are reminded of the struggle of the German sovereigns with the aristocratic constitutional party in the Empire. It was to the quarrel which had broken out between the Crown and the Hierarchy that the English magnates also owed the great change which took place in their own position. In the struggle between Henry IV and Gregory VII the German monarchy received its death blow; a century later King Henry II of England called his vassals to his assistance in his struggle with the Church, and in return found himself obliged to give them a joint participation in the government.

In Germany the success of the nobility had involved an increase of power for individual territorial lords, and at the same time the inevitable disruption of the empire as a whole; whereas it was the incomparable good fortune of England that, from the very beginning of the new movement, the increase of power benefited not the individual, but the whole body of vassals together. In the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom, whenever the monarchy was weak, disruption and disintegration were at once imminent—never more so than on the eve of the Conquest; now, after the amalgamation of the two races had been accomplished, the new aristocratic revolution, which began in England, offered in conjunction with the monarchy, not disruption, but a fresh guarantee for the unity of the kingdom; the destructive power of individualism was here no longer known.

Again, John’s unhappy reign was rendered memorable by that confirmation of their new position, which the vassals, in coalition with the ecclesiastical lords, wrested from their tyrannical ruler in the Great Charter of 1215. This important document marks the first stage in the early development of the English Constitution.

No peace, however, was brought about by this means; the great struggle went on without interruption, and occupied the whole reign of John’s weak son, Henry III. The contending parties endeavoured to enlist allies, and sought them far and wide in the various ranks of the nation. After some imperfect assemblies had already been called, it was Simon de Montfort, the leader of the nobles, who, in 1264, formed a precedent by summoning, together with the barons, knights from each shire and burgesses from various towns, an example which later was followed by Edward I in 1295.

The reign of this monarch marks a memorable epoch. In it the legal system of the England of today and England’s present Constitution had their origin. His distinguished predecessors, the Norman William I, the Frenchman, Henry II, were foreigners; Edward was the first great English king. Henry II had led the way to the conquest of Ireland; but far more important were the new advances made by Edward, in subduing Wales and establishing England’s feudal supremacy over Scotland. The unity of Great Britain could not be accomplished without a struggle of many centuries; the same also was needed for completing the structure, and establishing the constitutional position of the Parliament founded under Edward I.

Henceforth it was recognised that the Estates of the realm assembled in Parliament—the prelates and barons as a body, the borough and county constituencies through representatives drawn from the propertied classes—should, by their constitutional rights to a share in the government, limit the power of the Crown. The union of the lower vassals, the knights of the shire, to the burgesses representing the towns, and the fact that, to enable any Act of Parliament to pass, the concurrence of all three Estates was necessary, prevented the separation of those Estates, which might otherwise easily have taken place. Though the Lords and Commons sat in two separate Houses, the common voice of the State was nowhere so clearly heard as in the Parliament representing the nation.

Parliament still continued to be the representative of the national interests, when the Crown once more indulged in the imperialistic ideas of the Angevins, when Edward III put forward his claim to the French throne, and that unhappy hundred years’ war against France began. No doubt in this war of conquest was displayed the power of the kingdom, which, under a national monarchy, had been gathering strength and unity both in constitution and nationality. No doubt it was a time of outward splendour and warlike glory for the Crown, but the enduring benefits remained with the Parliament; the sacrifices made by the country for this policy of war, which only served the personal ambition of the king, had to be paid for ; royal prerogatives were given up one by one to the Parliament in exchange for grants of money.

When, in 1399, the usurper Henry IV, belonging to the collateral branch of Lancaster, had, with the assent of Parliament, succeeded in deposing the elder Plantagenet, Richard II, the period of a purely parliamentary rule began. The conflicts with Scotland, Wales, and France, the arduous task of preserving his usurped throne against serious revolts of the nobles, consumed the power of this gifted monarch, and at the same time kept him in dependence upon the assistance of the Parliaments he was forced to summon. Thus they were enabled to make conditions as to the employment of the money granted, and with regard to the appointments of the great offices of State. Henry found himself compelled to yield with prudent submissiveness to the demands of the Estates; to the Church, which had also helped him to gain his throne, he was obliged to surrender the heretic Lollards, and under his rule blazed the first fires at Smithfield.

His son, Henry V, preserved the same attitude towards Parliament and Church. He had not, like his father, to defend a usurped throne; but he needed the generous support of his subjects when he carried on to its fullest development that policy of imperialism which Edward III had revived, and obtained the formal recognition of his right of succession to the French throne. The utter collapse under John of the empire Henry II had created, and the failure of the policy of conquest of Edward III during the last years of that prince and under Richard II, were evidences of the fate which always attends such efforts after imperialism. How would it have affected England’s future if Henry V. had reached the very summit of his ambition? For his kingdom’s sake, his early death (in 1422) was perhaps not too much to be lamented.

But at once disruption set in under his young son, Henry VI who, even after he had reached manhood, never laid aside the helplessness of the child. The result, so disastrous for kingdom and throne, was, not that the untenable continental possessions were lost, but that a period of fearful anarchy in England began.

That England could be great without a great monarch was not yet conceivable; the decay of the monarchy would inevitably involve the ruin of the State. But what in this fifteenth century had become of the monarchy, which William the Conqueror had grounded so firmly, and with which the glorious times of Henry II, Edward I, Edward III, and Henry V were so closely bound up? The usurpation of the Lancastrian prince, and the deposition of the lawful king, had set an ominous precedent; the murder of Richard II was to be avenged in blood on Henry VI and his son. With the security of the throne, respect for its dignity also vanished. Each man, who was conscious that some drops of royal blood were in his veins, could aspire to possess the throne, if only he had strength enough to struggle for it and to keep it. England was then to learn to her cost that a crown which sinks into a mere prize for personal ambition, is no longer a blessing to the country, but a curse.

With Richard II the old line of the Plantagenets had come to an end; with the House of Lancaster a younger branch ascended the throne, sprung from John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III. But Duke Richard of York, the grandson of Gaunt’s next youngest brother Edmund, had, through his mother, inherited also the rights of the third branch of Edward’s children. As the Lancastrian prince had raised the claims of the younger branch to the throne against the Plantagenet Richard II, so now this Duke of York raised the claims of the elder branch against the House of Lancaster.

Scarcely more than a quarter of a century after the death of Henry V nothing was left of the great continental conquests except one poor remnant, the town of Calais. Personal squabbles among the leading men were occupying the reign of the feeble Henry VI, when the ambition of Richard of York let loose civil war upon the country: the thirty years’ war of the Two Roses—the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster. The war devoured its originator, and it was Richard’s son, who, having succeeded to his father’s claims, assumed the crown as Edward IV. But the throne thus usurped stood on shaky foundations. Edward had temporarily to give way before his rival, and it was not till 1471 that he definitely made his power secure by the victories of Barnet and Tewkesbury. Henry VI, whose son had already fallen, came to a mysterious end in the Tower.

But where was the Parliament all this time? Might it not have been expected that the Commons, who under Edward III and Henry IV had stepped forward so firmly, would now offer their support to the State, when the Crown no longer performed its duty, when the party conflicts of the nobles, and the struggle of the powerful for the throne had brought disorder and confusion into the country? Yet nothing of the kind happened. The outward structure of the Parliamentary Constitution was indeed completed, but its powers had not yet gathered strength enough for independent action. However contradictory it may sound, it was the great epochs of the monarchy that had also been the chief epochs for the development of the Constitution, especially of the House of Commons. The powerful nobility, once the old rival of the Crown, became also the most dangerous opponent of the Commons. Only when the monarchy was victorious in its great conflict with the aristocracy did the Commons step forward, and succeed in making use of the king’s need of money to augment their own power. But no sooner, under a weak monarch, had the nobility gained the upper hand, than the Commons relapsed into silence; and this had been especially the case in the unhappy times of the Wars of the Roses. If the party in the ascendant called a Parliament, the Upper House, with the assembled peers, represented the party itself; the Commons always bent before the storm, for the Lower House, which in its composition had already been subject to the strongest possible influences, followed obediently almost every command, recognised each successful competitor as king, proscribed each vanquished foe, and was ready to reverse every previous attainder just as the victor desired.

Neither the constitutional government of the realm, nor the courts of justice asserted themselves in this time of personal feuds; law and justice alike became instruments in the hand of the powerful. Possibly because the Constitution showed itself so pliant to everyone, no one at such a time thought of threatening its existence; it was enough merely to suppress its independent utterances. One thing the years of disorder showed very plainly; that in spite of all that had been achieved in the construction of the English constitutional system, nowhere, and least of all in the Constitution itself, did a force exist, which could take the place of a strong monarchy. The monarchy had brought ruin; on it alone depended the hope of a revival.

It seemed as if this hope were about to be fulfilled in Edward IV. For a while England was able to breathe again under the leadership of this strong and masterful king; some accordingly see in Edward the founder of the new despotic form of monarchy in the English State, but have thereby attributed to him an achievement which does not properly belong to him. We find in his reign, felicitous and promising ideas and new departures; the first Tudor in after years in many of his laws and in many a feature of his financial and parliamentary policy could do no better than revert to measures of Edward, but Edward did not understand how to construct; he was able to bring about a truce in the struggles, but not a lasting peace.

The cause lay in the existing circumstances, it lay also, however, in Edward’s own character, for in spite of his ability, he was not the man to create a new and stable condition of society out of the chaos in England. He possessed, no doubt, the power to will and to do, but work was always to him a distasteful interruption to the enjoyments of life; excesses and pleasures occupied his thoughts more than all else, and brought him to an early grave. He was able to win the love of his subjects by his handsome person and attractive manners; but all the sharper is the contrast presented by that cruelty with which he climbed through streams of blood to the throne, and ruthlessly destroyed everything which might be to him a danger, sparing none, not even his own brother.

How can Edward be regarded as the founder of the new monarchy, when he was not even able to make his dynasty endure? Even after his coronation, a ten years’ struggle was necessary to establish his throne, and then he only made it firm for his own lifetime ; the boy whom he left behind him was not able to carry on a sovereignty thus won. Edward’s youthful sons fell victims to the same cruel selfishness which had been his own guiding motive. As if the evil deeds of this wicked century were finally to be summed up in one person, the monster Richard III appears on the scene at its close.

In his choice of a wife Edward IV had acted, as he often did, from sudden caprice. In September, 1464, the world learnt that the king had married Elizabeth, the youthful widow of Sir John Grey, and daughter of the Earl Rivers, one of the Woodville family. The rise of this family was viewed with disfavour, and when after Edward IV’s death on April 9, 1483, Elizabeth and her partisans, in opposition to the views of the Privy Council, laid claim to the guardianship of Edward V, a boy of twelve, the dispute became publicly known. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the younger brother of the late king, and one of his ablest and most successful supporters, was then on the Scottish border. He came south, and in conjunction with the Duke of Buckingham, by a clever stroke snatched his nephew from the hands of Earl Rivers, and took prisoner the Earl and his principal adherents. Queen Elizabeth fled for protection into a sanctuary.

Richard did not stop here; one hideous crime after another paved for him the way from a Protectorate over the young king to the fulfilment of his own designs on the throne. Lord Hastings, who had opposed him, was seized after a sitting of the Council and beheaded without trial; the Archbishop of Canterbury and John Morton, Bishop of Ely, were thrown into prison; Lord Rivers and three adherents perished on the scaffold. On the 25th of June, 1483, Parliament met, without a very exact observance of forms, and on the 26th of June, Richard accepted the crown offered him by the Lords and Commons, the youthful Edward and Duke Richard of York were declared bastards, the pretext of a previous betrothal of their father serving to make his union with Elizabeth appear invalid ; and on the 6th of July followed the coronation.

The blackest stain which indelibly clings to Richard’s memory is the murder of his two nephews, who stood between him and the throne. He had induced Elizabeth to give Prince Richard also into his hands, and kept both brothers in the Tower, where they eventually disappeared. At the time, and also subsequently, attempts were made to dissipate the horrible suspicion which was at once cast upon the king, a pretender even rose up against Henry VII in the character of Richard of York, but all attempts to clear Richard III have been in vain.

A formidable danger soon threatened the usurper. Already a movement had been set on foot in the south, in favour of the captive princes, and the widespread rumour of their murder gave special vigour to a great insurrection which broke out in October, 1483, at the head of which was none other than Richard’s former colleague and abettor, the Duke of Buckingham. The duke, in spite of the rich reward he had received, is said to have been bitterly annoyed that all his demands were not satisfied. It is clear that his assistance had never been given in loyal earnest, but that he had sought thereby to acquire power and riches for himself, and for the same end was quite ready to abandon the cause he had once espoused. Though, as being nearly allied to the House of Lancaster, he may possibly for a time have entertained an idea of putting in a claim for the Crown, he soon perceived that another descendant of the Lancastrian branch stood nearer to the throne than he did; and the ample reward which he might expect in return for participation in his enterprise seemed a more sure gain than the doubtful prospect of acquiring the throne for himself. This other descendant was Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond.