Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 2/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
REIGN OF HENRY VII.
Though Henry Tudor had conquered Richard III. on the field of Bosworth, and released the country of a tyrant, he had no title whatever to the crown of England, except such as the people, by their own free choice, should give him. He was descended, it is true, from Edward III., through John of Gaunt, but from the offspring of not only an illicit, but an adulterous connection. When the natural children of John of Gaunt, therefore, were legitimatised by Act of Parliament, that Act expressly declared them incapable of inheriting the crown. Still more, the true hereditary claim lay in the house of York; and had that line been totally extinct, and had the bar against his line not existed, there were several persons of the line of Lancaster living, whose title was infinitely before his own. Farther still, he stood attainted as a traitor by Act of Parliament, and could not, therefore, assert a Parliamentary right. Yet, as we have said, for years public expectation, overlooking the claims of all others of both the contending lines, had turned towards him, as the individual destined by Providence to put an end to the sanguinary broils of York and Lancaster, and unite them in peace. It seemed a silent but overruling expression of the will of God, that Henry Tudor, the grandson of a mere yeoman of the guard, should, like David the shepherd boy, come forward in due time to establish a new line and a better state of things; and Henry himself, on the field of Bosworth, received the acclamations of the army, and the imposition of the fallen crown of Richard, as if they occurred quite in the natural order of affairs.
The quiet, gentlemanly, and prudent conduct of Henry Tudor during his youth and exile had, no doubt, had much to do with the leaning of public opinion towards him. He appeared just the man to avoid farther quarrels, and to rule the realm in peace. And, probably, had he remained in the uneventful and circumscribed rank of a nobleman, he might have maintained the character of a good sort of man—very prudent, very prosperous, and therefore deemed very wise and good. The world is always ready to heap all kinds of praises on your cold, cautious, and therefore undoubtedly highly respectable character; but when a man is elevated out of the mass of society, and placed on the artificial and be-worshipped pedestal of kingship, his temptations become too powerful even for the most consummate prudence; the flatteries of courtiers teach him that for him neither human nor divine laws are binding; the beguiling doctrine of expedience soon triumphs over the more welcome whispers of conscience; and the prudent, respectable man soon develops into the tyrant and the murderer. Through all the career of Henry VII. we scarcely see a single gleam of anything like generosity or nobility of mind, and his very first act as a sovereign showed that his prudence was wholly oblivious of justice, and was not likely to wear the mere gilding of kindliness.
The only son of the late Duke of Clarence, who, next to the children of Edward IV., was the heir-apparent of the line of York, had been confined by his uncle, Richard III., in the castle of Sheriff Hutton, in Yorkshire. Richard had at first treated this poor boy with kindness; he had created him Earl of Warwick, the title of his illustrious grandfather, the king-maker. On the death of his own son, he had at first proposed to nominate him his heir; but, fearing that he might be too dangerous a competitor, he had omitted that favour, and conferred it on the Earl of Lincoln, John de la Pole, the son of his sister the Duchess of Suffolk, and therefore nephew both of himself and Edward IV. He then carefully confined the unhappy youth, who now fell into the hands of as relentless, if not as reckless, a tyrant. He was still only fifteen years of age; he had been cut off in his joyous boyhood from all the freedom and pleasures of that age by his dangerous proximity to royalty; and that fatal gift of a princely birth was destined to make him a miserable captive for life, his mind totally neglected, and his death a bloody one, accelerated by the same cause. Henry, the very first day after the battle of Bosworth, dispatched Sir Robert Willoughby to take the young earl from Sheriff Hutton and convey him to the Tower of London. It was an act which fell with a strange presaging feeling on the public, in whose mind the murder of the poor boy's two cousins in that dungeon still vividly lived.
At Sheriff Hutton there had been at the same time another prisoner. This was Elizabeth, the princess royal, the undoubted heiress of Edward IV. When Richard had been deterred from marrying her, his own niece, not by any conscientious sense of its impropriety, but by the undisguised expression of public abhorrence, he had consigned her to the same distant prison as his nephew, the Earl of Warwick. Henry, who had pledged himself to marry Elizabeth if he succeeded in deposing Richard, now sent, and taking her from Sheriff Hutton, had her conveyed to London, with an attendance of noblemen and honourable matrons, befitting the future queen and the present head of the royal house of York. She was conveyed with much state to the house of her mother.
Henry then put himself at the head of his victorious troops, and commenced his march towards the capital. Everywhere he was received, not as a conqueror, but a deliverer. The Lancastrians regarded him as the only one of their princes who had the talents necessary to maintain a disputed crown; and the Yorkists, relying on his pledge to marry Elizabeth, the princess of their party, equally rejoiced in the prospect of a union which should at once restore peace and admit them to a share of favour. The few remaining adherents of Richard consulted their safety by keeping out of sight. Everywhere on his progress the country people hailed him as king, clapping their hands and shouting aloud. On his approach to the capital, on the 28th of August, six days after the decisive battle of Bosworth, the mayor and aldermen, all clad in violet, met him at Hornsey Park, and, after being permitted to kiss his hand, conveyed him through London to St. Paul's. The people crowded the streets to welcome the new monarch, from whom, in the usual witching influence of change, they hoped for every good thing, and were greatly taken aback at finding their champion not coming riding on his charger, as was the wont of our English kings, but closed up in a clumsy sort of close carriage, as if afraid of being seen. This first introduction to his capital betrayed in Henry Tudor more pride and reserve than the prudence and policy for which he had so long had credit. While he thus eluded the gaze of his expecting people, before him were borne in triumph the trophies of his victory, the three standards taken on the field of Bosworth, the one bearing an image of St. George, another a red fiery dragon, and the third a dun cow. These were deposited on the altar of the church, Te Deum was sung, and Henry then took up his quarters at the bishop's palace.
Great Seal of Henry VII.
Notwithstanding the ungracious demeanour of the new king, the people everywhere in the city celebrated plays and all sorts of pastimes in his honour. But their rejoicings were scarcely over, when London was alarmed by the re-appearance of the fatal sweating sickness, which was supposed to be revived and spread by the contact of the crushing crowds. It commenced on the 21st of September, and did not abate its ravages till about the end of October. As soon as the withdrawal of this virulent disease permitted, Henry prepared for his coronation. He set out from Kennington, and after dining with Thomas Bouchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, he proceeded, with a splendid attendance of lords, both spiritual and temporal, towards the city. The nobles, imitating the absurd custom of France, rode two together on one horse, to show how completely the rival parties had amalgamated, and in this ridiculous style they passed through the city to the Tower, where Henry for the present took up his residence.
There, on the 28th of October, he made a number of promotions. Jasper Tudor, his uncle, Earl of Pembroke, was made Duke of Bedford; Thomas Lord Stanley, who had put the crown upon his head at Bosworth field, was created Earl of Derby; and Sir Edward Courtney, Earl of Devonshire. Sir Gilbert Talbot, Sir John Cheney, Sir Humphrey Stanley, and nine others who distinguished themselves on that field, were made knights-bannerets. On the 30th he was crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he immediately appointed a body-guard of fifty archers to attend constantly upon him. This was another indication of distrust in his subjects, or of the state of a conqueror, which astonished and dismayed the public; but Henry assured them that it was merely the state which, on the Continent, was now deemed essential to a king; and such an argument is all-powerful with the bulk of mankind.
The Parliament assembled on the 7th of November, to settle the new order of things. Before proceeding to business, they found themselves in a great dilemma. No less than 107 of the members were persons attainted during the two last reigns, and were therefore disqualified for acting. They were the most zealous partisans of the house of Lancaster, and immediate application was made to the judges for their decision on this new and singular case. They came to the conclusion that the attainted members could not take their seats till their attainders were reversed, and a bill was passed by the remaining members accordingly. The judges, who noticed the king's displeasure at their requiring a bill of reversals, did not dare to recommend a reversal of the attainder of Henry himself, but they broached the convenient doctrine that the possession of the crown clears the fountain of blood, and takes away all attainders and corruptions. A very comfortable reflection for all successful usurpers! The simple interpretation of this great legal maxim, amounted to nothing more than the ancient proverb of the people, that Might makes Right. Separate bills were passed, clearing the king's mother, the Dukes of Bedford, Buckingham, and Somerset, the Marquis of Dorset, the Earl of Oxford, the Lords Beaumont, Wells, Clifford, Roos, Hungerford, and others.
When Henry met his duly qualified Parliament, he informed them that "he had come to the throne by just title of inheritance, and by the sure judgment of God, who had given him the victory over his enemies in the field." In this declaration he was careful, while he asserted what was not true, to avoid what would alarm the pride and the fears of the nation. He had no just title of inheritance, as we have shown, and he dared not use the words "right of conquest," for such right was held to imply a lapse of all the lands in the nation to the crown, since they had been held of the prince who had been conquered. Lest he had, in even speaking of victory, gone too far, he immediately added, that "every man should continue to enjoy his rights and hereditaments, except such persons as in the present Parliament should be punished for their offences against his royal majesty."
The just judgment of God he grounded on the common belief of the times, that God decided the fate of battles, and even private duels. Edward IV. had used the same language, as we find in Rymer's "Fœdera," xi. 710. "In division and controversy moved betwixt princes upon the high sovereign power royal, more evident proof or declaration of truth, right, and God's will, may not be had than by the means of reason, authority, and victory in battles." There was another right which he might have pleaded—that of the choice of the people, and of the three estates of Parliament; but this was a plea that the pride of kings made them especially reluctant to admit. They would base their elevation on the will of God, in conquest, or usurpation; but the will of the people, over whom they wished to sit as demi-gods, was peculiarly abhorred by them, and never was admitted till the reign of William of Orange in England.
Another claim to the crown which Henry was still more careful to ignore, though it was one on which he secretly placed confidence, was the right of Elizabeth of York, whom he had pledged himself to marry, and who was the undoubted owner of the throne. But as Henry would not owe his throne to his people, so he would not owe it to his wife. He therefore took every means to establish his own title to the throne before he in any way alluded to hers, or took any steps towards fulfilling his pledge of marriage. He renewed that pledge, indeed, on arriving in London, to satisfy the York party; but he proceeded to have his claims to the throne acknowledged by Parliament without any reference to hers. If he had mentioned the right of Elizabeth of York, his extreme caution suggested that he would be held to possess the throne, not by his own claims, but by hers—an idea which equally offended his pride, and alarmed him for the security of the succession in his offspring. Should Elizabeth die without children, in that case the right would die with her; and any issue of his by another marriage might be accounted intruders in the succession, and they might be removed for the next heirs of Edward IV. If she should die childless, and even before him, even his own retention of the throne might be disputed. All these points the mind of Henry saw clearly; and in a moment, and as if no such person as Elizabeth existed, and as if no pledge to marry her had helped him to his success, he procured an Act of Parliament, which provided that "the inheritance of the crown should be, rest, remain, and abide in the most royal person of the then sovereign lord, King Henry VII., and the heirs of his body lawfully coming, perpetually with the grace of God so to endure, and in none other."
These last words went even to exclude the children of Elizabeth, should he not marry her, and the children of all her sisters. It cut off the line of Edward IV., as well as every other, under all circumstances, except that of a union with himself. It made him essentially the fountain of right and honour, and the marriage even of Elizabeth, the true heir, became not what he in his own mind knew to be that of the only sure policy, but on his part towards her and her family and party, an act of grace and favour. So cunningly and proudly did this descendant of an illegitimate line—this grandson of a common yeoman of the guard—go to work.
But whilst he put the Princess of England thus, as it were, under his feet, he was equally careful, without directly acknowledging her title, to secure it. He therefore at once refused to revive the Act of Henry IV., which entailed succession in the line of John of Gaunt, his own line, or to repeal that of Edward IV., establishing it in the line of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, that of Elizabeth. In his own favour, he cancelled and removed from the file all mention of his own attainder, and annulled the Act of Edward IV., which had pronounced Henry IV. and his successors usurpers and traitors; and in favour of Elizabeth's claims he annulled the Act of Richard III., which pronounced the marriage of her mother with Edward IV, invalid, and she and her brothers and sisters illegitimate. When this bill was passed through Parliament, the body of it was not read, out of respect to the future queen; but the Act of Richard, containing the grossest scandals on the family of Elizabeth, was ordered to be burnt; and any one possessing copies of that Act was ordered to deliver them in to the chancellor before Easter, to be destroyed, under penalty of fine and imprisonment. The mother of Elizabeth, the queen-dowager, was also by Act of Parliament restored to her title, but not to her dower.
But this excess of caution and this nicely-balanced policy had not been carried through without alarming all parties, and greatly disgusting that of York. The whole nation looked to the union of the houses by the marriage of Henry and Elizabeth as the only means of putting an end to the civil wars which had so long rent the nation. But when Henry was seen thus carefully barricading himself, as it were, on the throne without proceeding to that union, there grew great uneasiness, and this was much heightened by the king demanding "the punishment of those who had offended his royal majesty." This was a piece of assumption which astonished his very friends. How, it was asked, could any one offend his majesty before he was admitted to majesty? Those who fought under Henry VI. against Edward IV., and under Edward against Henry VI., fought against a king, and were liable to a charge of high treason in case they failed; but Henry of Richmond was no king, he was a mere pretender when the followers of Richard III. fought against him; and, therefore, they could offend no majesty, and commit no treason. Yet Henry proceeded on this ground to pass attainders on Richard III., the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Surrey, the Lords Lovel, Zouch, and Ferrers, Sir Walter and Sir James Harrington, Sir William Berkeley, Sir Humphrey Stafford, Catesby, and twenty other gentlemen who had fought against him at Bosworth.
By this means Henry put himself in possession of the vast estates of these attainted noblemen and gentlemen, and filled his coffers, a thing which he never neglected. But this did not prevent him seeking supplies from Parliament, and they granted him during life the duty of tonnage and poundage. Besides the possession of estates by attainder, he passed an act of resumption of all crown lands which had been alienated since the thirty-fourth of Henry VI.; and as these were chiefly in the hands of the Yorkist party, he thus placed all the holders of them at his mercy, and could eject or leave them in possession according as they conducted themselves. All this being done, he issued a general pardon to those followers of Richard III. who should come in before a certain day, and take the oath of allegiance. This he did, however, as an especial act of royal grace by proclamation, not allowing the Parliament to advise him, or to participate with him in the favour. Many of the late adherents of Richard accordingly left their sanctuaries and hiding-places, and submitted to the new king. In one or two instances, Henry's resentment overcame his honour; though the Earl of Surrey, the son of the Duke of Norfolk, who had so stanchly supported Richard at Bosworth, came in, he was excepted from the general pardon, and sent to the Tower. Others, as Bishop Stillington, of Bath, who had written Richard's artful proclamations, were at first thrown into prison, and severely treated; but they soon found means, by their humble and courtier-like crawling, to make their peace with the king; and this bishop, Sir John Tyrrel, the murderer of the princes in the Tower, and other like characters, wore soon found to be active agents and emissaries of the court.
Still Henry, though now securely seated on the throne, evinced no haste to fulfil his pledge of placing Elizabeth of York upon it. With his cunning, prudential temperament, he was at the same time sensitively resentful, and could not forget or forgive the long course of ill-treatment which he had suffered from the house of York. His banishment, his youth spent in foreign courts and under foreign dependence and surveillance; the attempts of Edward IV. to get him into his hands, when a dungeon, and probably secret murder, or a public one, on some trumped-up pretence, would have been his fate, still lived and rankled in his memory. He could not forget that the queen-dowager, after having plighted Elizabeth to him, had submitted to the dictation of the monster Richard III., who had murdered her two sons, and usurped their throne, had gone again to his court, had consented to his marriage with Elizabeth, had put herself and her other daughters wholly into his power, and had written to her son, the Marquis of Dorset, at Paris, to withdraw from Henry and abandon his pretensions. He could not forget that Elizabeth herself, however justly or unjustly, had been declared to have favoured Richard, and expressed impatience at the lingering remains of his wife's life, which kept her from the throne.
Modern historians have endeavoured to prove that much of the dislike of Henry to his wife, and still more to her mother, was unfounded; but the historians of the time are unanimous in their assertion of it, and nothing is more certain than Henry's lasting hatred of the whole Yorkist party—of his pleasure in mortifying and depressing the members of it—and his harsh treatment of the queen-dowager, if not of the queen. It was not, therefore, till the feeling of the public became strongly manifested at his neglect of the princess, and till the Commons presented him a petition praying him "to take to wife the Princess Elizabeth, which marriage they hoped God would bless with a progeny of the race of kings;" and till the Lords, spiritual and temporal, had testified their participation in this wish, by rising simultaneously and bowing as it was uttered, that Henry consented to the celebration of the marriage.
But even in this late and ungracious compliance, Henry took care to have his own personal claims to the crown reiterated, and made independent of those of the proposed queen. For this purpose he was not satisfied with the dispensation which had been granted by the Pope's legate, on account of the relationship of the parties, but he applied to Pope Innocent VIII. himself, and he took care to have the Pope's bull so worded that it should render Henry the sole arbiter of the crown, and his acceptance of Elizabeth a royal favour. This papal act presumed to sanction and confirm the act of settlement passed by the British Parliament; and declaimed, in stronger language than Henry in his own person had dared to use, that the crown of England belonged to Henry by right of war, by notorious and indisputable hereditary succession (which was, in fact, a most notorious falsehood), by the wish and election of all the prelates, nobles, and commons of the realm, and by the act of the three estates in Parliament assembled. Yet, nevertheless, to put an end to the bloody wars caused by the rival claims of the house of York, and at the urgent request of the three estates, the king had consented to marry the Princess Elizabeth. Never surely did a man more studiously and bitterly seek to humiliate the woman he was about to make his wife, or a woman accept a hand which thus degraded her with a more tame compliance. But the hope of a crown is too apt to extinguish all the natural sentiments of honour or shame, resentment, or self-respect.
The marriage took place on the 18th of January, 1486, and the rejoicings in London, Westminster, and other cities were of the most lively kind. They were heartfelt, for now all parties concluded that there was a hope of peace and comfort. They were far more ardent than at the king's accession or coronation, and the mean-souled monarch saw it with sullen displeasure, for it seemed to imply that though he had taken such pains to place foremost his right to the throne, the people recognised, spontaneously, the superior title of the house of York, and that of his beautiful, and by him superciliously treated wife. "If," says Lingard, "the ambition of the princess was flattered by this union, we are told (on what authority I know not) that she had little reason to congratulate herself on the score of domestic happiness; that Henry treated her with harshness and with neglect; and that in his estimation, neither the beauty of her person, nor the sweetness of her disposition, could atone for the deadly crime of being a descendant of the house of York. Lord Bacon, who is the great historian of this period, and who may be supposed to be sufficiently informed, does not hesitate to add that the manifest affection of the people for the queen produced in him towards her additional coldness and dislike.
Henry VII.
Henry, before dismissing his Parliament, conferred favours and promotions on many of his friends. He restored Edward Stafford, the eldest son of the Duke of Buckingham, who had lost his life and fallen under attainder by espousing his cause in the late reign; nor did he forget Morton, the sagacious Bishop of Ely, who had planned the conversion of Buckingham to his cause, and embarked himself in the expedition. Chandos of Brittany was created Earl of Bath; Sir George Daubeny, who had been one of his most successful generals, was made Lord Daubeny; and Sir Robert Willoughby, Lord Broke. The two persons, however, whose counsels and administrative services he chiefly valued, were Bishops Morton and Fox, the latter of whom he raised to the see of Exeter. They had shared in all his adversities, and were now admitted to participate in his high fortune. Morton was, at the death of Bouchier, made Primate of England; and Fox was entrusted with the Privy Seal, and successively made Bishop of Bath and Wells, Durham, and finally, Winchester. These two able prelates were Henry's ministers and constant advisers. "He loved," says an historian of the time, "to have a convenient number of right grave and wise priests to be of his council; because," adds Bacon, "having rich bishoprics to bestow, it was easy to reward their services," thus sparing his beloved coin; for the only two things which Henry Tudor really loved were power and money.
Simnel presented to the Earl of Kildare.
Having dismissed his Parliament, and left all in order, Henry set out on a progress through the kingdom. The people of the northern counties had been the most devoted to Richard, and he sought, by spending some time amongst them, to remove their prejudices and attach them to his interests. No means could have been so effectual as that of carrying with him, in honour and affection, the head of the house of York—his own queen; but here again his jealous disposition showed itself. He dreaded the superior homage which she was sure to elicit, and determined to owe nothing but to his own merits and measures. He therefore left Elizabeth with a small court, including her mother and sisters, and his own mother, the Countess of Richmond. He had advanced as far as Lincoln, and was there keeping his Easter, on the 2nd day of April, when he learned that Lord Lovell, formerly chamberlain to Richard, with Humphrey and Thomas Stafford, had left the sanctuary at Colchester, and were gone with dangerous intentions, no man knew whither. The news did not seem to give him much concern, and he proceeded towards York. At Nottingham, more pressing and alarming intelligence reached him, that Lord Lovell was advancing towards York with 4,000 men, and that the two Staffords were besieging Worcester with another army.
At Nottingham, Henry received an embassy from the King of the Scots; and dispatching his uncle, the Duke of Bedford, with about 3,000 men in pursuit of Lord Lovell, on the 6th of April he quitted Northampton in the same direction. At Pontefract he was met, on the 17th, by the news that Lovell had passed him on the road, had raised a force in the neighbourhood of Ripon and Middleham, and was preparing to surprise him on his entrance into York. Henry's courage did not fail him; he was now surrounded by most of the northern and southern nobility, who had brought up considerable forces. But the man who always trusted more to his shrewd knowledge of human nature than to arms, now hit on a means of dispersing the insurgent army without a blow. He sent on his uncle, Jasper of Bedford, to offer a free pardon to all who would desert Lovell's standard, and the whole host dispersed as by magic. It was, in fact, the magic of the right incentive applied at the right moment. Lovell, who was as much affected by the proclamation of pardon as his followers—for it instantly struck him with the fear of universal desertion—fled at once to the house of his friend, Sir Thomas Broughton, in Lancashire; and, after lying concealed there some days, contrived to escape to the court of the Duchess of Burgundy, in Flanders. Some of his followers, as it would seem, in defiance of the king's offer of pardon, were seized and executed by the Earl of Northumberland.
On hearing of this dispersion of the northern division of the insurgents, the brothers Stafford abandoned the siege of Worcester, and fled for sanctuary to the church of Colnham, a little village near Abingdon. They were taken thence without ceremony, on the plea that Colnham had no right of sanctuary—a decision which all the judges confirmed—though expressly claimed by the Abbot of Abingdon. Humphrey Stafford was executed at Tyburn, but Thomas, the younger brother, was pardoned, on the plea that he was only acting under the advice of his elder brother.
After this success, Henry entered York with great magnificence. The effect of his victory was seen in the inhabitants of that city flocking out to meet him, with the mayor and aldermen at their head on horseback, and a great procession of the clergy. The populace clapped, hurrahed, and cried, "King Henry! King Henry! our Lord preserve that sweet and well-favoured face!" A piece of flattery which Leland seems to think was peculiarly appreciated, for Henry dropped the yearly rent paid by the citizens to the crown from £160 to £18 5s.; and when he was willing to relinquish money, he must be in a very happy mood indeed! He spent three weeks there dispensing favours, conferring honours, and redressing grievances. Great pageants and feasts were held in his honour, and were given by him in return; and he opened his heart to pay certain flattering poetasters for their verses in his praise, and also distributed money amongst the populace. In fact, Henry was there for the purpose of winning good opinions; and he did it so effectually that during the invasion of the following year he found Yorkshire, instead of one of the most adverse, the most loyal of counties.
This is a very rare instance indeed of anything like liberal conduct on the part of the king, and it shows that he was not so miserly as to lose sight of his interest in other directions besides that of money. It was unfortunate that he did not more frequently put a curb on his ruling passion, and receive more often, as in this case, that affection from his subjects which such conduct naturally drew forth. Unfortunate, indeed, for England and for himself, that a mind of such astuteness and penetration should be allied to a soul whose sole passion was this wretched self-aggrandisement.
Henry returned slowly through Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, and Bristol, and thence to London. During his progress he was numerously attended through each county by the sheriff and the resident nobility and gentry. On Sundays and festivals he was careful to attend divine service in public, and he made good worldly use of these heavenly opportunities. He dictated himself the subject of each sermon preached, which was generally by a bishop, who was ordered, after it, to read to the people the Pope's bull in Henry's favour, and to explain to them its full meaning and bearing. At Worcester he did not neglect to show his displeasure at the late countenance given to his enemies; but at Bristol he was particularly gracious, consulting with the inhabitants on the causes of the decay of their trade, and promising to cherish their city by the sunshine of his patronage.
Arriving in London on the 5th of June, he there received a distinguished embassy from James III. of Scotland. James entertained a great liking for the English; a fault, as it was considered by his own nobility, so prominent, that it was urged against him as a principal charge when they afterwards pursued him to the death. He had sent a deputation to congratulate Henry on his coronation; he had followed this by fresh envoys, who met him at Nottingham, while in pursuit of the rebels; and now a more formal and dignified embassy arrived to renew the truce which was supposed to expire between the countries at the death of Richard. Both monarchs were most willing to enter into a fresh one for the term of their respective reigns, but the turbulent Scotch nobles insisted on limiting it to three years. A promise, however, was exchanged that it should continue till the death of one of the sovereigns, and that matrimonial alliances should take place.
On the 30th of September the queen was prematurely delivered of a son, who, however, was pronounced a strong and healthy child, and was christened by the name of Arthur, after Prince Arthur of the ancient Britons, from whom Henry pretended to derive his descent. It may be doubted, however, whether the young prince was so strong in constitution as was supposed, for we shall find that he died at about the age of fifteen. Henry, on his return from the north, had not taken up his residence with the queen and his court at Winchester, but had located himself at a convenient distance in the New Forest, where he amused himself with hunting. On the birth of the prince, he attended the christening in the cathedral of that city, which was conducted with great pomp. Many high-flown panegyrics on the infant prince were published by the adulatory writers of the time, in prose and verse, in Latin and English; and Prince Arthur was predicted to become more glorious than the hero of the Round Table, after whom he was named.
But the birth of an heir-apparent tried too severely the temper of the numerous malcontents who still existed. Though Henry had put himself to much trouble, and to some cost, to win over the people of the northern counties, his conduct in general had not been such as to conciliate the enemies of the Lancastrian line. His treatment of his queen, and her friends and party, whatever may be the opinions of some modern writers, had left them greatly mortified and discontented. He had maintained a constantly cold and repressive mien towards the Yorkist party, who, on his marriage with Elizabeth, naturally expected bygones to be bygones, and that they should be admitted to their share of power and office. So far from this, he refused them every benefit and courtesy. They had seen with resentment his selfish attention to the securing of his own claims on the throne, and his silent rejection of those of the Princess of York. They had watched indignantly his long delay before completing his marriage with her; and to this day, though she had brought an heir to the throne, uniting the interests and hopes of both lines, not a movement had been made towards her coronation. This was a position in which no queen-consort had ever been permitted to remain; and the insult was proportionably felt.
But the Yorkist party, though roused to disturb the quiet of the haughty prince, prepared their measures of annoyance with a lack of acumen which was more likely to irritate than overturn. Perhaps they did not want to dethrone him, because that would overturn also the head, and most popular representative of their own party—Elizabeth; especially as she was now the mother of a legitimate prince, capable of uniting all interests. Perhaps they wished rather to show the cold and unforgiving monarch that he was more at their mercy than he supposed, and that they could embitter, if they did not proceed to terminate, his reign. Such, in fact, whether this was their purpose or not, was the character and tendency of the plots and impostures which, for so many years, kept Henry in disquiet and anxiety.
The first attempt was to bring forward a youth as the Earl of Warwick, the son of Clarence, whom Henry was keeping confined in the Tower. So little depth was there in this plot, that at first it was evidently the plan to bring the impostor forward as the Duke of York, the younger of the two princes supposed to be murdered in the Tower. It was given out that though his elder brother had been murdered, the younger had been allowed to escape. Had this story been adhered to, and well acted, it might have raised a most formidable rebellion; but, for some unknown reason, it was as speedily abandoned as adopted, and the Earl of Warwick pitched upon as the preferable impersonation. Nothing, however, could be more absurd, for the true earl being really alive, Henry could at any moment bring him forward. Probably the conspirators might calculate on that, and with the object of compelling Henry to do this, by which they hoped to burden him with the odium of keeping in captivity that innocent victim of his selfishness. This would appear the more credible, because we shall soon find that the queen-dowager herself was mixed up with this plot, who, though she had her own deep reasons for hating Henry, was not so short-sighted a woman as to wish to depose her own daughter and grandson. Hence the original idea was speedily changed, the Earl of Warwick was adopted as the person to be fictitiously brought forward, and the Duke of York was withdrawn to a future occasion, when he was made to appear on the scene with an effect immensely diminished in consequence of his first temporary rôle.
Towards the close of the year 1486, there appeared at the castle of Dublin a priest of Oxford named Richard Simons, attended by a boy of about fifteen years of age. The boy was of a peculiarly handsome and interesting appearance; and Simons, who was a total stranger in Ireland, presented him to the lord-deputy, the Earl of Kildare, as Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, who, he represented, had fortunately escaped from his dungeon in the Tower of London, and had come to throw himself under the protection of the earl and his friends. Thomas Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, was a zealous Yorkist; his brother was chancellor, and almost all the bishops and officers in the Irish Government had been appointed by Edward IV. or Richard. It is most likely that the lord-deputy and the party were already cognisant of the whole scheme of this agitation; for it is neither likely that Simons the priest should have originated so daring and arduous an enterprise as that of presenting a new claimant for the throne in opposition to the astute and determined Henry Tudor, nor that he should have so particularly singled out Ireland as the opening ground of his operations, and the lord-deputy as his patron and co-adjutor. This very selection implied a nice knowledge of political circumstances and parties. Ireland was the weak point in Henry VII.'s administration. Either because he had been too much engaged by his affairs and antagonists at home, or that he feared giving additional and deep-seated offence to the Yorkist party, he had left Ireland and its government very much in the hands in which he found them. This circumstance was thus seized upon, and it was far more likely by the keen eye of a body of influential conspirators than that of an obscure individual.
What sufficiently proved this was, that simultaneously the Earl of Lincoln, of whom we have lately made mention, son to the eldest sister of the two late kings, had disappeared from England and gone over to his aunt Margaret, Duchess-Dowager of Burgundy, Henry's most inveterate enemy. This satisfied the king that the plot which showed itself in Ireland was produced in England, and was fomented by the Yorkist party at large. It was soon found that Simons had been diligently instructing the young pretender, before he produced him in public, in all the arcana of the character he had to support. As we have said, the first pretence was that he was the Duke of York; that was abandoned for causes which, no doubt, appeared sufficient to the secret movers of the machinery. The boy, who was really the son of one Thomas Simnel, a joiner of Oxford, was taught to play his part as a prince, and he soon acquired an address which seemed to testify the nobility of his descent. He could tell a good and plausible story of his life at Sheriff Hutton, his captivity in the Tower, and of the mode of his escape. All this was sufficiently captivating to the lovers of the marvellous, and was zealously fostered by those who had their own objects.
The loyalty of the lord-deputy had been already questionable. Henry had sent him a summons to attend in London, but he evaded that by a petition from the spiritual and temporal peers of Ireland, stating strongly the absolute necessity of his presence there. No sooner did Simons present his protégé to Kildare, than that nobleman received him without any apparent reluctance to put faith in his story. He asked, indeed, various questions of Simnel, as to his identity and the means by which he had escaped and come into the hands of a priest, himself only twenty-seven years of age. But he was easily satisfied, and, without waiting to ascertain whether the real Earl of Warwick was still in the Tower, he introduced the youth to all his friends as the genuine heir of the Plantagenets. His brother, Lord Fitzgerald, the Chancellor of Ireland, took him by the hand, assembled about him the nobility of the island and the citizens of Dublin, and promised him his protection against all his enemies and the enemies of his family. The people were enthusiastic in his favour. They conducted him in great pomp from his lodgings to the castle of Dublin, where he was attended as a prince, and was there proclaimed King of England and France and Lord of Ireland, by the style of Edward VI.
When Henry received this news, he hastened to do what he ought to have done long before. He took the Earl of Warwick out of the Tower, conducted him publicly to St. Paul's, so that all might see him, and all who desired it were allowed to approach him, and converse with him. The nobility and gentry were personally introduced to him, and the king then took him with him to Sheen, where he held his court, and gave familiar access to all those who had seen or known him before. By this politic act he completely satisfied the people of England, who laughed at the impostor in Ireland; but the Irish, on the contrary, declared that Henry's Warwick was the impostor, and theirs the real one.
To consult on the best measures for defeating this plot, Henry called a great council at Sheen; but at its breaking up, the public were thrown into still greater surprise and perplexity by the king, who, instead of offering to crown the queen, seized her mother, the queen-dowager, confiscated her property, and consigned her to the custody of the monks of Bermondsey. The reason assigned was, that the queen-dowager, in the last reign, had promised her daughter to Henry, and then put her into the hands of Richard. Such a reason, if really put forward, was a simple absurdity, because since then Elizabeth Wydville had been living at court as the queen-mother, in all public honour. The real cause was undoubtedly connected with the business in hand—the Simnel conspiracy. This has been treated as highly improbable, seeing that it would have been an act of madness in the queen-dowager to dethrone Henry, with whom must fall her own daughter, her grandson, the heir-apparent, and the fortunes of the whole family. But on the supposition which we have ventured to suggest, that there was no real intention to dethrone Henry, but by showing him the insecurity of his position to compel him to act more generously to the members of the York party, what was so natural as the conduct of this lady? She had been all her life a woman fond of state intrigues, restless and ambitious, and especially zealous in promoting her family and friends. Here she saw the king the cold and settled enemy of all those friends and that party. Though he had married her daughter, he had done it with the utmost reluctance, if not the most marked aversion. He had delayed the marriage; had never associated the queen in his public life; and still left her uncrowned, though the mother of the heir of England. For herself, though he tolerated her at her daughter's court, he had deprived her of her dowry, or rather, neglected to restore it to her, and allowed her a paltry pittance out of his own coffers. All these circumstances were likely to gall the sensitive and proud mind of the widow of Edward IV., and to render her willing to engage in anything which might mortify her oppressor, though her own son-in-law, while it stopped short of ruining him, and yet compelled him to a more honourable course of treatment.
That something like this was really the truth appears the more probable because Elizabeth Wydville never again resumed her position at Henry's court, and died in poverty and neglect. What has been advanced, as her own choice, that of retiring from court, and to the convent of Bermondsey, where, it is represented, she had a sort of right of retreat, is far from being in keeping with the character of Elizabeth Wydville; and we may rest assured that she would never have suddenly quitted the court of her daughter, and the proud position of queen-mother, unless there had been some urgent reason not originating in her own will. She was sent there now, at this crisis, as the result of a council on the plot of the Yorkists, and she never again, except on a rare and casual visit, returned. That speaks for itself. And, after all, her conduct was little less strange than that of Margaret of Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV., the aunt of Elizabeth the queen, who, with an openness and promptness which no one has ever questioned, supported both this plot and the subsequent still more formidable one of Perkin Warbeck. The secrets of royal houses are such as continually contradict all our ordinary reasonings, and baffle all ideas which are based on the general principles of social life. Not only was the queen-dowager put into confinement, but her son, the Marquis of Dorset, brother to the queen, uncle to the heir-apparent, was arrested and committed to the Tower. If the conduct of the queen was contrary to belief in engaging in such a conspiracy, certainly that of Dorset was scarcely less so. This is the opinion of the great Lord Bacon, who had certainly much better means of knowing the truth than writers of our time, and whose powerful mind penetrated far below the surfaces of things. Speaking of Simons, he says:—"It cannot be but that some great person, that knew particularly and familiarly Edward Plantagenet, had a hand in the business, from whom the priest might take his aim. That which is most probable out of the preceding and subsequent acts is, that it was the queen-dowager from whom this action had the principal source and motion; for certain it is that she was a busy, negotiating woman, and in her withdrawing-chamber had the fortunate conspiracy for the king against Richard III. been hatched, which the king knew, and remembered, perhaps, but too well; and was at this time extremely discontented with the king, thinking her daughter—as the king handled the matter—not advanced but depressed; and none could hold the book so well to prompt and instruct this stage-play as she could."
But the most formidable and unwearied enemy of Henry VII. was Margaret, the Dowager-Duchess of Burgundy. As the sister of Edward IV. and of Richard, no circumstance could induce her to tolerate Henry Tudor, in her eyes a low-born man, who had thrust that line from the throne. It mattered little to her that he was the husband of her niece Elizabeth, or the father of a prince in whose veins flowed Yorkist blood. She abhorred the mingling of the blood of York and Tudor, and yearned only to see it thrown down from the throne of England, and that of York, pure and undivided, set up in its place. Such a person was the Earl of Lincoln—such was the real Earl of Warwick. Then why, it may be asked, did she successively set up such puppets as Simnel and Warbeck? They were, undoubtedly, regarded by her and all her party merely as stepping-stones, or stalking-horses, by which to bring a real aspirant to the foot of the throne, when they could have been sacrificed without remorse. Margaret of Burgundy was, at the same time, regarded as a woman of high principle and amiable mind. As the wife of Charles the Rash, she seemed to have caught some of his daring spirit—as the stepmother of his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, her kindness to her and her children, Philip and Margaret, had won all hearts. She ruled the provinces which she held as her dower with great ability, and was highly popular all over the Netherlands. To her Lord Lovell had fled, and to her also fled the Earl of Lincoln. To her the Irish party sent emissaries for aid; and she dispatched 2,000 veteran German troops, under a brave and experienced general, Martin Swartz, accompanied by the Earl of Lincoln.
On the 19th of March, 1487, Lord Lincoln, with this strong reinforcement, landed at Dublin, and, no sooner was he introduced to the pretended Earl of Warwick, than he advised that he should be crowned. Lincoln had often seen and conversed with the real Earl of Warwick. He was intimately acquainted with his person, had recently conversed with him in London and at Sheen, for he had not set out for Flanders till after the great council of Henry, where, of course, he had learnt all the royal plans for defeating the plot. Yet, knowing all this, he at once proposed the coronation of Simnel as the true prince. This is sufficient to show us what was the scheme of the party, and that they were only putting forward puppets for ulterior purposes. The impostor was, accordingly, crowned as the true prince by the Bishop of Meath, with a diadem taken from a statue of the Virgin Mary. After the ceremony, in accordance with the Irish fashion, the new king was carried from the church to the castle on the shoulders of a chieftain of the name of Darcy. Writs were immediately issued in his name, convoking a Parliament, in which legal penalties were enacted against the Butlers and the citizens of Waterford, who were old and staunch Lancastrians, and stood out firmly for King Henry.
The moment that Henry Tudor learned the flight of the Earl of Lincoln, he set out on a progress through the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, in which the chief interest of the earl lay. He was anxious to ascertain the feeling existing there, and to repress any symptoms of revolt. He was courteous to the gentry, and many of them proffered themselves to do him service. Both he and his lieutenant in those parts, the Earl of Oxford, appeared well satisfied with the state of things. As it was supposed, in order to please the people of Norfolk, he went on a pilgrimage to "Our Lady of Walsingham," and sought her aid in his behalf. Thence he proceeded, by Northampton and Coventry, to Kenilworth, at which castle he had placed his queen, his mother, and his son. He was still at Kenilworth when news was brought him that the Earl of Lincoln and Lord Lovell had lauded with the pretended Edward VI., supported by Martin Swartz and his German legion, at the pile of Foudray, an old keep in the southern extremity of Furness. They pitched their tent at Swarthmore, near Ulverstone, where they were soon joined by Sir Thomas Broughton and his tenantry. Being now about 8,000 strong. Lord Lincoln, who was commander-in-chief, marched boldly towards York, expecting to be joined by the discontented of that district. But the Yorkshire people had not only been won over by Henry's late visit and politic proceedings, but they had seen how Lord Lovell had fled before him without a blow. They were greatly impressed with ideas of the superior tact and fortune of Henry, and lay still; and they were the more disposed to this from the invading army consisting of Irish and foreigners.
Disappointed by this, Lord Lincoln considered it only the more necessary to push forward, and strike a blow while the king was unprepared. He therefore marched rapidly down towards the midland counties, and Henry, on his part, set forward to meet him. He issued the strictest orders for the government and conduct of his camp. It was made a capital offence to rob or ravish, to take anything without paying the market price for it, or to arrest or imprison any one without direct orders from head-quarters. Thus Henry protected his subjects at once from the license of the soldiery, and the arbitrary will of the officers, as far as in him lay. Every soldier was to saddle his horse at the first blast of the trumpet, bridle it at the second, and mount at the third. All vagabonds and common women were banished the camp under menace of the stocks or imprisonment. Such a discipline, most unlike that of the past civil wars, was calculated to produce a great effect on the people.
Henry advanced by Coventry and Leicester to Nottingham; Lincoln had already approached Newark. The royal army advancing to oppose the whole force lost its way between Nottingham and Newark, and there was such confusion in consequence, and such rumours of the enemy being upon them, that numbers deserted. But five guides were procured from Ratcliffe-on-Trent, and soon afterwards the vanguard of Henry's army, led by the Earl of Oxford, encountered the forces of Lincoln at Stoke, a village near Newark. The battle lasted for three hours, and was obstinately contested. The veteran Germans, under Swartz, fought till they were exterminated almost to a man. The Irish displayed not the less valour; but, being only armed with darts and skeans—for the English settlers had adopted the arms of the natives—were no match for the royal cavalry. The whole of the troops of the insurgents, expecting no mercy if they were taken, seemed prepared to perish rather than to yield. Four thousand of the insurgents and 2,000 of the king's best troops are said to have fallen in this desperate engagement; but nearly all the leaders of the rebel army, the Earl of Lincoln, Sir Thomas Broughton, the brave Swartz, and the Lords Thomas and Maurice Fitzgerald, having fallen, the victory on Henry's part became complete.
The pretender Lambert Simnel and the priest Simons were captured by Sir Robert Bellingham, one of the king's esquires; but nothing was seen of Lord Lovell. He was believed to have escaped, but no traces of him were discoverable; many thought that he had perished in attempting to swim his horse across the Trent. But nearly two centuries afterwards a subterranean chamber was discovered accidentally by some workmen at Minster Lovell, in Oxfordshire, the ancient seat of his family. In this chamber was seated a skeleton in a chair, with its head resting on a table; and this was supposed to be the remains of this same Lord Lovell, who had reached his house, and secreted himself in this apartment, where he had perished by some unknown cause. In West's "Furness" it is also stated that there is a tradition that Sir Thomas Broughton also escaped, and lived in concealment amongst his tenants at Witherslack, in Westmoreland.
After the battle, Henry travelled northward to ascertain that all was secure in the tract through which the insurgents had passed, and to punish such as had aided the rebels, and those who just before the battle had spread the rumour of his defeat. The royal punishments did not consist in putting his enemies to death, but in fining them severely, for Henry Tudor much preferred making a profit of a man to killing him. On his return he gave his thanks to "Our Lady of Walsingham," for having listened to his prayers; and from Warwick he sent orders to prepare in town for the coronation of the queen. The late insurrection had taught him that if he did not wish for a repetition of it, he must concede something to the Yorkist party, and must pay some respect to the queen. Accordingly, on the 25th of November, 1487, Elizabeth was crowned with much state at Westminster.
The crowd which attended her from the Tower to Westminster was immense. It was the first time of her appearing in public in London as queen. She was not yet twenty-two years of age. She was tall, and of a fine figure, like her father, and her complexion brilliantly fair. She was clad in a kirtle of white cloth of gold, damasked, and a mantle of the same, furred with ermine, fastened on the breast with a great lace or cordon of gold and silk, with rich knobs of gold and tassells. Her fair yellow hair hung plain down her back, with a caul of pipes, that is, of pipe network over it. Her train was borne by her sister Cicely, who was still fairer than herself. She was carried on a rich open litter, over which was held a canopy by four of the new knights of the Bath. Henry had created eleven on the occasion. Before her rode four baronesses on grey palfreys, and the king's uncle, Jasper, Earl of Bedford, who had lately married her aunt Catherine, the widow of the Duke of Buckingham. Behind her came six baronesses on their palfreys, and her sister Cicely, the Duchess of Beaufort, the Duchess of Suffolk, mother of the Earl of Lincoln, who lately fell at Stoke: such was the barbarous policy of the time, when private sorrow, however poignant, gave way as nothing to royal pageantry. These rode in one car, and the Duchess of Norfolk in another. The king, that the queen might appear the first person at her own coronation, did not present himself publicly, but beheld the scene from behind a lattice. After the ceremony, she dined in Westminster Hall, on which occasion, we are told, "the Lady Catherine Grey and Mrs. Ditton went under the table and sat at her feet while the Countesses of Oxford and Rivers knelt on each side, and at certain times held a kerchief before her grace."
Having thus made this amende to public opinion, Henry, instead of giving Simnel consequence, by putting him to death, or making a state prisoner of him in the Tower, turned him into his kitchen as a scullion, thus showing his contempt of him. "He would not take his life," says Lord Bacon, "taking him but as an image of wax that others had tempered and moulded;" and considering that if he was made a continual spectacle, he would be "a kind of remedy against the like enchantments of people in time to come. The priest Simons he shut up in a secret prison, saying he was but a tool, and did not know the depths of the plot. He even professed to regret the death of the Earl of Lincoln, who, had his life been spared, he said, "might have revealed to him the bottom of his danger." In his peculiar way he threw much mystery over the matter, for mystery was one of his greatest pleasures.
Having settled these matters, which he did on his own authority, Henry summoned a Parliament to grant him supplies, and to increase those supplies by bill of attainder against all those who had been engaged in the late conspiracy. To prevent similar risings, he demanded that the law should be rigorously put in force against the practice of maintenance. This maintenance was the association of numbers of persons under a particular chief or nobleman, whose badge or livery they wore, and to whom they were bound by oath to support him in his private quarrels against other noblemen. But the instrument was too convenient not to be turned on occasion against the crown, whenever rich chiefs took up the opposite party, and by this means it was that such numbers of troops could be brought at the shortest notice into the field against the monarch. Various laws had been passed on this subject, and heavy penalties decreed; but now it was ordained that, instead of calling such offenders before the royal council, as had been the custom, a particular Court should be established for the purpose. The chancellor, the treasurer, the keeper of the privy seal, or two of them, one bishop, one lay peer, and the judges of the King's Bench and Common Pleas, were empowered to summon all such persons before them, and to punish the guilty just as if they had been convicted by ordinary course of law. This was the origin of what came to be called the Court of the Star Chamber, from the walls or ceiling of the room where they met being decorated with stars. It grew, as we shall find, under the Tudors and Stuarts into a most arbitrary and terrible tribunal—an actual Inquisition, in which whoever offended the reigning monarch came to be punished at will, without any regard to justice or the constitution; for all pretence of trying a man by his peers was then done away with, and the monarch's will, through his officers and through venal judges, thus dependent on the crown, was the sole law. So long as this odious Court of the Star Chamber existed, England may be said to have lost its constitution, and the monarchy to have been absolute.
The internal peace of the kingdom being restored, Henry addressed himself to his foreign relations. The truce with Scotland concerned him most nearly, therefore he sent Fox, now Bishop of Durham, to the Court of James III. This monarch was most amicably disposed towards England, and engagements were entered into, not only for the prolongation of the existing truce, but for marriage alliances. James was a widower, and Henry proposed that he should marry Elizabeth Wydville, the queen-dowager, and that his two sons should marry two of her daughters. The days were fixed for the ambassadors' meeting to determine the marriage settlements; but this was prevented by the rebellion of the Scottish nobles, to which we shall advert anon, and the scheme was finally rendered abortive by the tragic death of the king. That Henry was thus ready to advance the queen-dowager to the Scottish throne, and to place one of her daughters upon it hereafter, has been held by some modern historians as clear proof that his alleged dislike of the queen-dowager could not be real. But we may rather suppose that the king was glad of a means to remove her from his own court, and, at the same time, to conciliate by such an act of honour the Yorkist party—a policy which we see he was now pursuing. This is the more likely, because he never restored the queen-dowager to her former position in his own court—where she only appeared on particular state occasions—or restored her dower, which had been forfeited in the former reign.
Elizabeth Queen of Henry VII.
The affairs on the Continent were now in a state which demanded the most serious attention, but which were by no means likely to be settled to the honour of the country by a monarch of the penurious character of Henry VII. If ever a monarch was bound by gratitude to succor another prince, it was Henry VII. He had been protected in Brittany from all the attempts of the Yorkist monarch for years. The Duke Francis, who had been his host and friend during his long exile, was now growing old. He appears never to have been of a very vigorous mind, and now mind and body were failing together. He had two daughters, and the hone of securing the patrimony of the eldest, Anne, drew the attention of many suitors, the chief of whom were Maximilian, King of the Romans; the Duke of Orleans, the first prince of the blood in France; and the Count D'Albert, a powerful chieftain, at the foot of the Pyrenees. But hostile alike to all these wooers was Charles VIII. of France, who, though he was under engagement to many the daughter of Maximilian, and therefore apparently debarred from the hand of Anne of Brittany, was resolved, if possible, to secure her territory. It was the bounden duty of Henry of England to support the Duke of Brittany against the designs of France, on both private and public grounds: on private ones, from the personal obligations we have referred to; and on public ones, because Brittany was now the only independent province of France which had not been absorbed into the French monarchy, and therefore the only point on which we could maintain a check on the ambition of France; a friendly power capable of affording us aid, and accessible ports in protection of our vessels in the channel, and often of our own coasts.
To attain a clear idea, however, of the relative positions of France and Brittany at this period, we must go back five or six years. Louis XI. died on the 30th of August, 1483. His son Charles was then only fourteen years of age, and Louis had left him subject to the tutelage of the Princess Anne, his elder sister. Anne was married to Pierre de Bourbon, Lord of Beaujeu. The Duke of Orleans though he had himself not reached the age of four-and-twenty, resented this regency of Anne of Beaujeu, thinking himself more entitled to it. He attempted to assert that pretension by arms; but he was defeated, and driven to seek protection in Brittany. The historian, Philip de Comines, to whom we have been so greatly indebted for information on these times, was involved in the reverse of Orleans, whose cause he had espoused. He was shut up for eight mouths in one of those celebrated iron cages of Loches, which had been constructed by Louis for the preeminent punishment of particular victims.
The flight of the Duke of Orleans to the Court of Brittany was seized upon by that of France to promote its own views. It declared war on Brittany, with the avowed purpose of compelling Francis to surrender the duke; and, farther, of obliging him to pardon and restore several noblemen who had murdered Pierre de Landois, the favourite minister of Francis, and had fled to the Court of France. The regency of France was jealous of the presence of the Duke of Orleans at the Court of Brittany, because, though already married to one of the sisters of Charles VIII. and of Anne of Beaujeu, he was desirous to repudiate the French princess, and secure Anne of Brittany and the province. France had resolved to obtain that province, and include it in the kingdom at all costs.
The Duke of Orleans was induced to reconcile himself to the French Court, but soon began to conspire again, and was obliged to return to Brittany. That unfortunate country was now rent by contending factions, and one of these parties, to oppose the Duke of Orleans, committed the fatal error of inviting Charles of France to send them aid. They stipulated that this aid should not exceed 400 men-at-arms and 4,000 foot; but Anne of Beaujeu, who acted in the king's name, possessing a good deal of the craft of her father, Louis XI., poured into the province 16,000 men. In May, 1487, at the very time that Lambert Simnel was threatening Henry VII. from Ireland, the French troops were advancing into Brittany in three divisions. One of these took Ploermel, the second Vannes, and the third besieged Nantes, in which lay the Duke Francis and his daughters.
Maximilian, the King of the Romans, had sent a body of 1,500 troops to assist Francis, and these, now joined by a body of Bretons, under Count Dunois, cut their way through the French lines and relieved Nantes; but the French troops went on and took Aurai, Vitré, and St. Aubin-du-Cormier. Fresh troops were still pouring in from France, and Maximilian was unable to contribute any further assistance. In this dilemma, Francis sent repeated importunate entreaties to Henry to come to his rescue. France, at the same time, sent to him, praying him to be neuter, alleging that Charles was only seeking to drive his revolted subjects out of Brittany. Henry was bound by honour to give prompt succour to his old friend; he had received from Parliament two-fifteenths for the purpose, and was actually urged by it to send efficient succour to prevent France seizing this important province. But Henry could not find in his heart to spend the money in active service; he proposed to mediate between the parties. This suited the views of France exactly, because while Henry was negotiating they could continue to press on their victories.
Henry sent over to the French Court Christopher Urswick, his almoner. Urswick found the lady of Beaujeu, now Duchess of Bourbon, engaged in the siege of Nantes. That able woman professed to be delighted with the mediation of King Henry, and sent Urswick to the Breton Court at Rennes, by which she gained further time to prosecute her operations, well knowing that what Duke Francis wanted was help, not talk. The duke, on hearing what Urswick had to say, replied, with great chagrin, that having been Henry's protector during his youth against all his enemies, he had looked for some more effectual aid from him in his distress than a barren proposal of mediation; that if he would not act from gratitude, he ought to do it from policy, for Brittany was the only province now left which could give him an entrance into the heart of France; and that, if obtained by France, it would prove a thorn in the side of England, and render great damage to its power and commerce.
This reply was conveyed by Urswick to the French Court, and he was then recommended to send a messenger with it to London, while they themselves continued pressing on their campaign against the Duke of Brittany.
When the English saw this pitiable conduct of their miserly king, they began to lament the glorious days of Creçy and Azincourt. Sir Edward Wydville, the uncle of the queen, indignant at the disgrace of his country, sailed from the Isle of Wight with a brave band of 400 men; and landed at St. Male, in Brittany. No sooner was this heard of at the French Court than Urswick and his embassy had a narrow escape of being assassinated by some infuriated courtiers; but Henry sent speedy word that these adventurers had passed over without his cognisance or consent. To satisfy them further, he assured the French that he would forbid further adventures of the kind, and he did so; but he watched every turn of affairs to make a penny by it. He therefore now seized on the generous enthusiasm of the nation to coin money out of it. He professed to coincide in the public feeling, and his minister, the wily Archbishop Morton, talked of the necessity of resorting to strong measures to repress the French. Parliament, in its patriotic zeal, fell into the snare, and, strongly representing the necessity of preventing France seizing a province of so much importance to the security of our traffic, granted a large supply.
No sooner had this false monarch got the money than he contented himself with sending Urswick to warn the French that he should be compelled by Parliament to send troops to Brittany, but to let them know secretly that the number would only be limited, and that they would be restricted to operations within Brittany itself. The consequence was that the French, in July, 1488, attacked with a powerful army the united forces of Brittany and its allies—the soldiery of Wydville and Maximilian. Sir Edward Wydville and his brave 400 were cut to pieces; the Duke of Orleans was taken prisoner, and Brittany lay prostrate at the feet of France. The poor Duke Francis was compelled to submit to a treaty, in August, at Verger, by which he surrendered to the French all the territory they had conquered, and was bound never again to call in assistance from England or any other country, nor to marry either of his daughters without the consent of the King of France. Having signed this humiliating treaty, the poor duke sank and died of a broken heart, on the 7th of September, only three weeks afterwards.
The people of England received these tidings with undisguised indignation. Twice had they voted large sums to enable their ungrateful and pusillanimous king to aid his old benefactor and the ally of England; twice had he put the money in his coffers, and sold the honour of the country and the fortunes of the unfortunate ally to the French, wholly insensible to honour or shame. But whilst the public were foaming in wrath over this despicable conduct, the indefatigable French were pressing on. Anne, the young orphan duchess, was a mere child of only twelve years of age. Around her were only contending rivals and their adherents. One of her suitors, the Count d'Albert, seized her and attempted to carry her off. He was intercepted by the Count Dunois, who brought the princess back to Rennes behind him on his war-horse. But all this time the French were seizing town after town. Pontrieu, Guingamp, Concarneau, Brest, and other places of importance, had fallen into their hands. The news of this awoke such a fermentation in England, and Henry was upbraided in such vehement terms for thus, as the sovereign of a great people, sacrificing the honour of the nation, and permitting the helpless orphan of his benefactor to become the prey of France, that he was compelled to rouse himself. He determined to send ambassadors to Maximilian, to his son, the Archduke Philip, to the Kings of Spain and Portugal, inviting them to act in concert with him for the repression of French ambition. Having taken this magnanimous, and, if it had really been intended to follow it up rigorously, most admirable step, Henry called a Parliament, and demanded more money to carry on the war.
The pretences of this huckstering king were now become too transparent to deceive any one. All the money hitherto voted for a war that never took place was still in Henry's coffers. The people thought that he ought first to bring out that before he asked for more. Parliament, therefore, made strong opposition, and finally reduced his demand of £100,000 to £75,000. But, when they had voted, the indignant people refused to pay it, considering that the selfish monarch had their cash already in hand. Great disturbances arose in the endeavour to enforce the collection of the tax. This manifested itself especially in the north, where Henry had used such endeavours to soothe and win the inhabitants.
The Earl of Northumberland directed the collection to be enforced, accompanying the command with such menaces as he deemed necessary to procure obedience. But these had a contrary effect. The people flew to arms, and, turning their vengeance first against the earl, as the rigorous instrument of an imperious monarch, they stormed his house and put him to death. They then declared war against the tyrant, as they termed Henry, himself. Their leader was a fiery fellow of the common order, named John à Chambre, but, as they assumed a formidable aspect, Sir John Egremont, one of the Yorkist faction, put himself at their head. Henry lost no time in dispatching Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, who soon suppressed the insurrection, and hanged John à Chambre and some of his accomplices. Sir John Egremont escaped to Flanders to the Duchess of Burgundy.
Henry now sent over to Brittany a body of 6,000 men under Lord Willoughby de Broke; but he limited their service to six months, which was, in fact, to render them nearly useless, and he would not even afford that aid until he had exacted from the poor orphan girl, the young duchess, the surrender of her two best sea-ports in security of payment. He moreover compelled the duchess to bind herself by the like oath to him as she had taken to the French king, not to marry without his consent. These pitiful demands conceded, the English force landed, and a Spanish band about the same time advanced through Roncesvalles to create a diversion in the south of France. Maximilian found himself too much engaged in Flanders by the French and by his own rebellious subjects, whom the French stirred up, to send reinforcements to Brittany, but the success of the two English commanders, the Lords Daubeney and Morley, at the head of 2,000 archers, and about three times that number of Germans, effected a decided diversion in their favour. They fell on the insurgent army, besieging Dexnude, and slew 8,000 of them, the fury of the English soldiery being roused by the death of their favourite general, Lord Morley. The Spaniards on one side, and this defeat on the other, kept the French in check, more especially as it was known that Henry was continually sending to caution Lord de Broke not to risk his soldiers. The French, therefore, were quite willing to wait events, knowing that the English troops would be withdrawn by the stingy English king at the end of the fixed term; for the Bretons were too poor to find them provisions, much less to discharge their pay. Neither provisions, carriages, artillery, nor military stores could be obtained. The Court of Brittany was torn by contending factions, the great object being not to defend their country from the French, but to secure the hand of the duchess each for their own leader, and thus to secure to themselves the favour in her Court.
Henry of England was in all haste to evacuate the country where he was thus wasting his beloved money. The troops were recalled, and then commenced one of those extraordinary schemes with which the plots of princes occasionally surprise the world. The same scheme appears to have occurred, almost simultaneously to Charles of France and Maximilian of Austria, to be carried out by different means. This was to marry Anne of Brittany, and thus secure her province. Neither party wished the other to know of its intentions, and both worked secretly towards its own end. Charles VIII. was already affianced to Margaret, the daughter of Maximilian, who, though yet a mere girl, was educating at Paris, and already bore the title of Queen of France. She was to receive a rich dowry, and as she was, next to her brother Philip, heir to all the dominions of the house of Burgundy, Louis XI. had deemed her the most desirable wife in Christendom for his son. But now Charles beheld Anne of Brittany, not the possible heiress of large possessions, but the actual mistress of the only province wanting to complete and render compact the great kingdom of France. The opposition of England, Flanders, and Spain, raised the value of this possession in his eyes, and he resolved at all costs to relinquish Margaret of Flanders and secure Anne of Brittany. To this end a treaty was entered into through Maximilian himself, by which Charles agreed to return to the Duchess of Brittany all the towns the French had taken from her, only placing, as a guarantee of the duchess's allegiance, the towns of St. Malo, Fougères, Dinant, and St. Aubin, in the hand of an indifferent party, till Charles's claim on the duchy was satisfactorily decided.
But Charles had come to the secret conclusion, in order to secure the Duchess of Brittany, to pounce down upon the duchy. Maximilian, meantime, was resolving to marry the duchess, and was seeking to strengthen himself with England. Henry of England was scheming to make all the money he could, and therefore, for the present and the greater part of the next year, he was publicly making treaties with Spain and Maximilian to repress the power of France, and collecting all the money he could from his subjects under the same pretence. His £75,000, through the determined opposition of his subjects, had diminished to merely £25,000; but Parliament the next session granted him a tenth and fifteenth, which he carefully collected and deposited in his coffers.
The three contracting monarchs, like many others both before and since, were each trying how much he could deceive the other; and meantime Charles was stealing a march on them all. Maximilian was hoping to regain through this alliance his lost territories in the north of France, and to obtain Brittany by wedding the duchess. The King of Spain was aiming at the restitution of Roussillon, which he had formerly mortgaged for 300,000 crowns; and Henry of England was revelling in the idea of obtaining a good round sum from Charles of France, for holding back the allies from Anne of Brittany, for the payment of his troops; and from his own subjects, for the continuance of the war, in which he should continue to profess everything and spend nothing.
Maximilian made the first move. His generous support of the interests both of the late Duke Francis and of Anne, had made him a favourite; and when he sought the hand of the young duchess, it was promptly accorded. But in Maximilian's case, the old proverb of "Faint heart never won fair lady" was only too well verified. The seditious spirit of his Flemish subjects, and the fear of falling into the hands of enemies at sea, deterred him from going to Brittany and accomplishing his marriage in person. The Prince of Orange married Anne by proxy. To make the engagement as binding as possible, the proxy, baring his leg to the knee, put it into the bed where the young duchess was lying. This singular marriage took place in the month of April, 1491. No sooner did it reach the ears of the rude discarded suitor, the Count d'Albert, than he informed the King of France; and he engaged to betray the city of Nantes to the French.
No time was lost by Charles in his endeavours to defeat this fancied success of Maximilian. He sent his agents to the Court of Brittany, who, by many and great promises, soon corrupted the chief persons about Anne. The Count Dunois, who possessed great influence in Brittany, the Duke of Orleans, the Prince of Orange—so late the proxy of Maximilian, and cousin-german to the Duchess—the Marshal de Rieux, Montalban, the Chancellor of the Duchy, and all the great ladies of the court, were very soon in the French interest. They wore taught to believe that the union with France was the only means of securing peace and prosperity to the country. Thus the young duchess, who regarded herself as the wife of Maximilian, and had assumed the title of Queen of the Romans, was wholly surrounded by people bent on marrying her to the King of France.
When the subject was broached to Anne, she repelled the proposal with scorn and indignation. Besides considering herself the actual wife of Maximilian, she was proud of her country, and was anxious to preserve its independence. She hated Charles and the French as the enemies of her father, of her country, and as the authors of all its calamities. Charles, though of a more suitable age than Maximilian, was ugly and illiterate, whilst Anne was eminently handsome and highly educated, possessing a knowledge of Latin and Greek. But while she was treating the representations of her ladies and courtiers with unmeasured scorn and rejection, Charles was steadily marching upon her capital, through a betrayed country. Before the end of the year she found herself invested by the French army in Rennes; and rather than fall a helpless and humiliated captive into the hands of Charles, she consented to marry him, having not a single soul left to stand by her in her resolute opposition. She was married to Charles on the 13th of December, 1491, at Langais, in Touraine, was crowned in the abbey church of St. Denis, and made her entrance into Paris amid the acclamations of the multitude, who regarded this event as one of the most auspicious which had ever happened to France.
So artfully had the French Court kept concealed the real design of securing the duchess, that to the last Margaret of Flanders was treated in Paris as the queen, and fêtes were celebrating in her honour at the very time that Charles was forcing Anne of Brittany to wed him. The farce and the insult were conducted to such a pitch, that an order was issued permitting Anne of Brittany a safe-conduct through France to join her husband, Maximilian. Instead of that, the deluded King of the Romans found his own daughter sent back to him, and Anne, his wife, proclaimed the wife of Charles, and Queen of France.
The rage of Maximilian may be imagined. He now cursed his folly in not going himself and consummating his marriage in Brittany. He had lost that province, his daughter had lost the throne of France, and he was duped and insulted in the most egregious manner before all Europe. He made his complaints ring far and wide, but they were only echoed by the laughter of his enemies, and he proceeded to vow revenge by the assistance of Spain and England.