Henry's Foreign Policy 132
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Ctoelbe HENEY THE SEVENTH HENKY THE SEVENTH" ! o' * a * - a i i BY JAMES GAIKDNER MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1909 ..,* First Edition printed 1889 Reprinted 1892, 1899, 1902, 1906, 1909 CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAOE EARLY LIFE 1 CHAPTER II ATTAINMENT OF THE CROWN . .18 CHAPTER III SETTLEMENT IN THE KINGDOM 30 CHAPTER IV REBELLION OF LAMBERT SIMNEL 48 CHAPTER V ' THE WAR IN BRITANNY . .62 CHAPTER VI THE WAR WITH FRANCE ..... 87 VI CONTENTS CHAPTER VII PAGE PERKIN WARBECK AND HIS FRIENDS 102 CHAPTER VIII IRELAND 120 CHAPTER IX HENRY'S FOREIGN POLICY 132 CHAPTER X DOMESTIC HISTORY 149 CHAPTER XI PROSPERITY AND ALLIANCES 164 CHAPTER XII HENRY VII. AND CASTILE 184 CHAPTER XIII CONCLUSION . 208 CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE NEVER was king so thoroughly disciplined by adversity before he came to the throne as was King Henry VII. Without a father even from his birth, driven abroad in his childhood owing to the attainder of .his family, more than once nearly delivered up to his enemies and owing life and liberty to his own and his friends' astuteness, his ultimate conquest of the Crown was scarcely so much a triumph of ambition as the achievement of personal safety. He could not help his birth, and in spite of the imperfections in his title he could not help being regarded as head of the House of Lancaster after Henry VI. and his son had been cut off. He could not help, in short, being an object of suspicion and jealousy to Edward IV. and Richard III. succes- sively, even if he had made no effort to dispossess them of the in he seems throne ; and, truth, against Edward to have done nothing for his own part, though the Earl of Oxford's expedition to St. Michael's Mount must have been with a view to advance his claims. He might, indeed, for anything we know to the contrary, have remained an exile and a refugee to the end of his days, had not the of Richard III. drawn towards tyranny ' 2 HENRY VII CHAP. him the sympathies of Englishmen in a way they were not drawn towards him during Edward's reign. It was through his mother that he derived his claim for his father traced his descent to the Crown ; though from Cadwallader, and the Welsh were pleased with his pedigree, it was only spoken of when he came to the throne as conferring some additional lustre on his title. Nor could the fact that his paternal grandfather, Sir Owen Tudor, a simple knight of Wales, was bold enough to marry the widow of Henry V., daughter to Charles VI. of France, in any way advance his pretensions, though it made his father a half-brother to Henry VI. and allied him besides with the royal family of France. But standing as he did in such close relations with the king, Edmund Tudor, the son of Sir Owen by the Queen-dowager Katharine, was raised by Henry VI. to the dignity of Earl of Richmond; and the title of course descended to Henry, who was his only son. This was all that he could claim by right of his father. But his mother, Margaret Beaufort, only daughter of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was the lineal heiress of John of Gaunt. It is true that her grandfather, John de Beaufort, was only a natural son, born before his father's, John of Gaunt's, marriage with his mother, Katharine Swynford. But the Beauforts had been legitimated by Act of Parliament in the reign of Richard II., and though a reservation of the royal dignity was introduced into the patent when it was confirmed by Henry IV., it is now well known that there was no such exception in the original grant or in the Act of Parlia- ment of Richard II. 's time. So that, failing the issue of John of Gaunt by his two previous marriages, his de- I EARLY LIFE 8 scendants by Katharine Swynford, even by sons whom she bore him before marriage, were the true representa- tives of the House of Lancaster, and could claim the throne itself if that House had any claim to it at all. It is by no means certain, however, that Henry knew he had this advantage, and the silence of the Act of Parliament declaring his right to the Crown, as to its true hereditary character, seems rather to imply that the ground was not thought safe. No doubt there was another reason for reticence in the fact that the assertion of Henry's own hereditary claim would have discredited that of his wife as heiress of the House of York, and alienated his Yorkist supporters. But it seems probable, in the nature of things, that the reservation inserted by Henry IV. in the original patent of Richard II. was regarded as a true legal obstacle which it was better simply to ignore than expressly to overrule it in the parliamentary confirmation of Henry's title. Such, then, was the nature of Henry's ancestral claims. We come now to his personal history. He was born at Pembroke Castle on the feast of St. Agnes the Second (28th January) 1457. In after years, when " he was king, his mother dated a letter to him, At Calais town thys day of Seynt Annes, that y dyd bryng ynto thys world my good and gracyous prynee, kynge and only beloved son." St. Anne's day falls in July; but we have ample evidence that Henry was born in the " " beginning of the year, and that Seynt Annes means St. Agnes. The circumstances of his birth were peculiar. His father was already more than two months dead, and his mother, incredible as the fact may seem, was only fourteen years old in fact, had not quite completed her 4 HENRY VII CHAP. fourteenth year when the event occurred. At least this was distinctly stated in her own and her son King Henry's presence in a set speech delivered by Bishop Fisher at Cambridge as Chancellor of the University, so that its truth can hardly be questioned. The orator added, "And she, as we perceive, is not a woman of great stature." The birth was probably not unattended with danger to the sole living parent, and her very early maternity no doubt interfered with her growth. Pembroke Castle, in which Henry was born, was the property of his uncle, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke. It is an imposing ruin at this day wonderfully perfect still, in spite of the battering Oliver Cromwell gave it and is thus described by the antiquary Leland, who visited it in Henry VIII. 's reign : "The Castel stondith hard by the waul (the town wall) on a hard rokke and is veri larg and strong, being doble wardid. In the uttei ward I saw the chaumbre wher King Henri the VII. was borne, in knowlege wherof a chymmeney is new made with the armes and badges of King Henri the VII." In this strong fortress, while England was con- vulsed with civil war, the child and his mother remained in tolerable security under the protection of his uncle and after attainted as a Lan- Jasper ; even Jasper was castrian, when Edward IV. obtained the Crown, young Henry being then four years old, both this and other fortresses for some time held out against the conquerors. But not for for even Harlech surrendered many years ; in 1468, and it was the last stronghold that remained in Lancastrian hands. And it was doubtless in Harlech Castle, though our informant does not give the name of the fortress, that young Henry was at length besieged ! EARLY LIFE 6 when the place fell into the hands of the victorious York- ists, and he found himself a prisoner among strangers. The winner of Harlech Castle was William, Lord Herbert, who had been created a peer by Edward IV. at his coronation, in recognition of his staunch devotion to the House of York. Just after this achievement he was advanced to the title of Earl of Pembroke, forfeited by the attainder of Henry's uncle, Jasper. An*d that it was into his hands that young Henry fell by the fortune of war we may look upon as certain, for in his hands we actually find him not long after. On the 16th of July 1468 the new Earl of Pembroke made his will, in one part of which he says : "I will that Maud my daughter be wedded to the Lord Henry of Eichmond." He thus exercised the rights of a feudal guardian over an unfor- tunate lad who was now parted from his own relations. Harlech Castle, built upon a steep rock overhanging the sea in those days (though a mile of sand has since accumulated between it and the shore), had been sup- posed impregnable, and must have appeared the safest place in which the young earl could be kept. It was also the key of the country, and just before its capture " Earl Jasper had been holding many sessions and 'sizes " in King Harry's name throughout Wales. The castle, however, surrendered by composition, under what circum- stances we do not quite know. Young Henry became a prisoner and his uncle was now an attainted refugee. His new guardian, we see, had the most friendly intentions towards him, and though he was now only eleven years old, the match would probably have taken effect in due time but for further disturbances. But his new guardian was put to death in the following 8 HENRY VII CHAR year by the insurgents under Robin of Redesdale, and in the year after that Edward IV.