The king’s great triumphs were the conclusion of the Intercursus
Magnus of 1496 and the Intercursus Malus (so called by the
Flemings, not by the English) of 1506. The former
provided for a renewal of the old commercial alliance
with the house of Burgundy, on the same terms under
Commercial treaties.
which it had existed in the time of Edward IV.; the
rupture which had taken place during the years when Maximilian
was backing Perkin Warbeck had been equally injurious to both
parties. The Malus Intercursus on the other hand gave England
some privileges which she had not before enjoyed—exemption
from local tolls in Antwerp and Holland, and a licence for
English merchants to sell cloth retail as well as wholesale—a
concession which hit the Netherland small traders and middlemen
very hard. Another great commercial advantage secured
by Henry VII. for his subjects was an increased share of the trade
to the Scandinavian countries. The old treaties of Edward IV.
with the Hanseatic League had left the Germans still in control of
the northern seas. Nearly all the Baltic goods, and most of those
from Denmark and Norway, had been reaching London or Hull
in foreign bottoms. Henry allied himself with John of Denmark,
who was chafing under the monopoly of the Hansa, and obtained
the most ample grants of free trade in his realms. The Germans
murmured, but the English shipping in eastern and northern
waters continued to multiply. Much the same policy was
pursued in the Mediterranean. Southern goods hitherto had
come to Southampton or Sandwich invariably in Venetian
carracks, which took back in return English wool and metals.
Henry concluded a treaty with Florence, by which that republic
undertook to receive his ships in its harbours and to allow them
to purchase all eastern goods that they might require. From
this time forward the Venetian monopoly ceased, and the visits
of English merchant vessels to the Mediterranean became
frequent and regular.
Nor was it in dealing with old lines of trade alone that Henry Tudor showed himself the watchful guardian of the interests of his subjects. He must take his share of credit for the encouragement of the exploration of the seas of the Far West. The British traders had already pushed far English navigators. into the Atlantic before Columbus discovered America; fired by the success of the great navigator they continued their adventures, hoping like him to discover a short “north-west passage” to Cathay and Japan. With a charter from the king giving him leave to set up the English banner on all the lands he might discover, the Bristol Genoese trader John Cabot successfully passed the great sea in 1497, and discovered Newfoundland and its rich fishing stations. Henry rewarded him with a pension of £20 a year, and encouraged him to further exploration, in which he discovered all the American coastline from Labrador to the mouth of the Delaware—a great heritage for England, but one not destined to be taken up for colonization till more than a century had passed.
Henry’s services to English commerce were undoubtedly of far more importance to the nation than all the tortuous details of his foreign policy. His chicanery need not, however, be censured over much, for the princes with whom he had to deal, and notably Ferdinand and Maximilian, Foreign policy of Henry VII. were as insincere and selfish as himself. Few diplomatic hagglings have been so long and so sordid as that between England and Spain over the marriage treaty which gave the hand of Catherine of Aragon first to Henry’s eldest son Arthur, and then, on his premature death in 1502, to his second son Henry. The English king no doubt imagined that he had secured a good bargain, as he had kept the princess’s dowry, and yet never gave Ferdinand any practical assistance in war or peace. It is interesting to find that he had for some time at the end of his reign a second Spanish marriage in view; his wife Elizabeth of York having died in 1503, he seriously proposed himself as a suitor for Joanna of Castile, the elder sister of Catherine, and the widow of the archduke Philip, though she was known to be insane. Apparently he hoped thereby to gain vantage ground for an interference in Spanish politics, which would have been most offensive to Ferdinand. Nothing came of the project, which contrasts strangely with the greater part of Henry’s sober and cautious schemes.
On the other hand a third project of marriage alliance which Henry carried out in 1503 was destined to be consummated, and to have momentous, though long-deferred, results. This was the giving of the hand of his daughter Margaret to James IV. of Scotland. Thereby he Marriage of James IV. of Scotland and Margaret Tudor. bought quiet on the Border and alliance with Scotland for no more than some ten years. But—as it chanced—the issue of this alliance was destined to unite the English and the Scottish crowns, when the male line of the Tudors died out, and Henry, quite unintentionally, had his share in bringing about the consummation, by peaceful means, of that end which Edward I. had sought for so long to win by the strong hand.
All the foreign politics of the reign of Henry VII. have small importance compared with his work within the realm. The true monument of his ability was that he left England tamed and orderly, with an obedient people and a full exchequer, though he had taken it over wellnigh Character of Henry’s internal rule. in a state of anarchy. The mere suppression of insurrections like those of Simnel and Warbeck was a small part of his task. The harder part was to recreate a spirit of order and subordination among a nation accustomed to long civil strife. His instruments were ministers of ability chosen from the clergy and the gentry—he seems to have been equally averse to trusting the baronage at the one end of the social scale, or mere upstarts at the other, and it is notable that no one during his reign can be called a court favourite. The best-known names among his servants were his great chancellor, Archbishop Morton, Foxe, bishop of Winchester, Sir Reginald Bray, and the lawyers Empson and Dudley. These two last bore the brunt of the unpopularity of the financial policy of the king during the latter half of his reign, when the vice of avarice seems to have grown upon him beyond all reason. But Henry was such a hard-working monarch, and so familiar with all the details of administration, that his ministers cannot be said to have had any independent authority, or to have directed their master’s course of action.
The machinery employed by the first of the Tudors for the suppression of domestic disorder is well known. The most important item added by him to the administrative machinery of the realm was the famous Star Chamber, which was licensed by the parliament of 1487. It The Star Chamber. consisted of a small committee of ministers, privy councillors and judges, which sat to deal with offences that seemed to lie outside the scope of the common law, or more frequently with the misdoings of men who were so powerful that the local courts could not be trusted to execute justice upon them, such as great landowners, sheriffs and other royal officials, or turbulent individuals who were the terror of their native districts. The need for a strong central court directly inspired by the king, which could administer justice without respect of persons, was so great, that the constitutional danger of establishing an autocratic judicial committee, untrammelled by the ordinary rules of law, escaped notice at the time. It was not till much later that the nation came to look upon the Star Chamber as the special engine of royal tyranny and to loathe its name. In 1500 it was for the common profit of the realm that there should exist such a court, which could reduce even the most powerful offender to order.
One of the most notable parts of the king’s policy was his long-continued and successful assault on the abuse of “livery and maintenance,” which had been at its height during the Wars of the Roses. We have seen the part which it had taken in strengthening the influence of those Suppression of livery and maintenance. who were already too powerful, and weakening the ordinary operation of the law. Henry put it down with a strong hand, forbidding all liveries entirely, save for the mere domestic retainers of each magnate. His determination to end the system was well shown by the fact that he heavily fined even the earl of Oxford, the companion of his exile, the
