Chapter 2

PRINCE HENRY AND HIS ENVIRONMENT.

The Prince, who now succeeded to the position of heir-apparent, was nearly five years younger than his brother. The third child and second son of his parents, he was born on 28th June, 1491, at Greenwich, a palace henceforth intimately associated with the history of Tudor sovereigns. The manor of Greenwich had belonged to the alien priory of Lewisham, and, on the dissolution of those houses, had passed into the hands of Henry IV. Then it was granted to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who began to enclose the palace grounds; on his death it reverted to the Crown; and Edward IV., many of whose tastes and characteristics were inherited by his grandson, Henry VIII., took great delight in beautifying and extending the palace. He gave it to his Queen, Elizabeth, and in her possession it remained until her sympathy with Yorkist plots was punished by the forfeiture of her lands. Henry VII. then bestowed it on his wife, the dowager's daughter, and thus it became the birthplace of her younger children. Here was the scene of many a joust and tournament, of many a masque and revel; here the young Henry, as soon as he came to the throne, was wedded to Catherine of Aragon; here Henry's sister was married to the Duke of Suffolk; and here were born all future Tudor sovereigns, Edward VI., Mary, (p. 016) and Elizabeth. At Greenwich, then, through the forfeit of his grandmother, Henry was born; he was baptised in the Church of the Observant Friars, an Order, the object first of his special favour,[31] and then of an equally marked dislike; the ceremony was performed by Richard Fox,[32] then Bishop of Exeter, and afterwards one of the child's chief advisers. His nurse was named Ann Luke, and years afterwards, when Henry was King, he allowed her the annual pension of twenty pounds, equivalent to about three hundred in modern currency. The details of his early life are few and far between. Lord Herbert, who wrote his _Life and Reign_ a century later, records that the young Prince was destined by his father for the see of Canterbury,[33] and provided with an education more suited to a clerical than to a lay career. The motive ascribed to Henry VII. is typical of his character; it was more economical to provide for younger sons out of ecclesiastical, than royal, revenues. But the story is probably a mere inference from the excellence of the boy's education, and from his father's thrift. If the idea of an ecclesiastical career for young Henry was ever entertained, it was soon abandoned for secular preferment. On 5th April, 1492, before the child was ten months old, he was appointed to the ancient and important posts of Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle.[34] A little later he received the still more honourable office of Earl Marshal; the duties were performed by deputy, but a goodly portion of the fees was doubtless (p. 017) appropriated for the expenses of the boy's establishment, or found its way into the royal coffers. Further promotion awaited him at the mature age of three. On 12th September, 1494, he became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland;[35] six weeks later he was created Duke of York, and dubbed, with the usual quaint and formal ceremonies,[36] a Knight of the Bath. In December, he was made Warden of the Scottish Marches, and he was invested with the Garter in the following May.[37]

[Footnote 31: _L. and P._, i., 4871.]

[Footnote 32: Fox's own statement, _L. and P._, iv., 5791.]

[Footnote 33: Herbert gives Paolo Sarpi as his authority.]

[Footnote 34: G.E.C [okayne], _Complete Peerage_, _s.v._ Cornwall.]

[Footnote 35: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, Rolls Ser., ii., 374.]

[Footnote 36: _Ib._, i., 388-404; _Paston Letters_, iii., 384-85.]

[Footnote 37: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, ii., 57.]

The accumulation of these great offices of State, any one of which might have taxed the powers of a tried administrator, in the feeble hands of a child appears at first sight a trifle irrational; but there was always method in Henry's madness. In bestowing these administrative posts upon his children he was really concentrating them in his own person and bringing them directly under his own supervision. It was the policy whereby the early Roman Emperors imposed upon Republican Rome the substance, without the form, of despotism. It limited the powers of mischief which Henry's nobles might otherwise have enjoyed, and provided incomes for his children without increasing taxation or diminishing the privy purse. The work of administration could be done at least as effectively, much more economically, and with far less danger to internal peace by deputies of lower rank than the dukes and earls and barons who had been wont to abuse these high positions for the furtherance of private ends, and often for the levying of (p. 018) private war. Nowhere were the advantages of Henry's policy more conspicuous than in his arrangements for the government of Ireland. Ever since Richard, Duke of York, and George, Duke of Clarence, had ruled as Irish viceroys, Ireland had been a Yorkist stronghold. There Simnel had been crowned king, and there peers and peasants had fought for Perkin Warbeck. Something must be done to heal the running sore. Possibly Henry thought that some of Ireland's loyalty might be diverted from Yorkist channels by the selection of a Tudor prince as its viceroy; but he put his trust in more solid measures. As deputy to his infant son he nominated one who, though but a knight, was perhaps the ablest man among his privy council. It was in this capacity that Sir Edward Poynings[38] crossed to Ireland about the close of 1494, and called the Parliament of Drogheda. Judged by the durability of its legislation, it was one of the most memorable of parliaments; and for nearly three hundred years Poynings' laws remained the foundation upon which rested the constitutional relations between the sister kingdoms. Even more lasting was the precedent set by Prince Henry's creation as Duke of York; from that day to this, from Henry VIII. to the present Prince of Wales, the second son of the sovereign or of the heir-apparent has almost invariably been invested with that dukedom.[39] The original selection of the title was due to substantial reasons. Henry's name was distinctively Lancastrian, his title was no less distinctively Yorkist; it was adopted as a concession to Yorkist prejudice. (p. 019) It was a practical reminder of the fact which the Tudor laureate, Skelton, celebrated in song: "The rose both red and white, in one rose now doth grow". It was also a tacit assertion of the death of the last Duke of York in the Tower and of the imposture of Perkin Warbeck, now pretending to the title.

[Footnote 38: See the present writer in _D.N.B._, xlvi., 271.]

[Footnote 39: An exception was made in the case of the late Duke of Edinburgh. It was designed if Henry VIII. had a second son, to make him Duke of York (_L. and P._, vii., 1364).]

But thoughts of the coercion of Ireland and conciliation of Yorkists were as yet far from the mind of the child, round whose person these measures were made to centre. Precocious he must have been, if the phenomenal development of brow and the curiously mature expression attributed to him in his portrait[40] are any indication of his intellectual powers at the age at which he is represented. Without the childish lips and nose, the face might well be that of a man of fifty; and with the addition of a beard, the portrait would be an unmistakable likeness of Henry himself in his later years. When the Prince was no more than a child, says Erasmus, he was set to study.[41] He had, we are told, a vivid and active mind, above measure able to execute whatever tasks he undertook; and he never attempted anything in which he did not succeed.[42] The Tudors had no modern dread of educational over-pressure when applied to their children, and the young Henry was probably as forward a pupil as his son, Edward VI., his daughter, Elizabeth, or his grand-niece, Lady Jane Grey. But, fortunately for Henry, a physical exuberance corrected his mental precocity; and, (p. 020) as he grew older, any excessive devotion to the Muses was checked by an unwearied pursuit of bodily culture. He was the first of English sovereigns to be educated under the new influence of the Renaissance. Scholars, divines and poets thronged the Court of Henry VII. Margaret Beaufort, who ruled in Henry's household, was a signal benefactor to the cause of English learning. Lady Margaret professors commemorate her name in both our ancient universities, and in their bidding prayers she is to this day remembered. Two colleges at Cambridge revere her as their foundress; Caxton, the greatest of English printers, owed much to her munificence, and she herself translated into English books from both Latin and French. Henry VII., though less accomplished that the later Tudors, evinced an intelligent interest in art and letters, and provided for his children efficient instructors; while his Queen, Elizabeth of York, is described by Erasmus as possessing the soundest judgment and as being remarkable for her prudence as well as for her piety. Bernard Andre,[43] historian and poet, who had been tutor to Prince Arthur, probably took no small part in the education of his younger brother; to him he dedicated, after Arthur's death, two of the annual summaries of events which he was in the habit of compiling. Giles D'Ewes,[44] apparently a Frenchman and the author of a notable French grammar, taught that language to Prince Henry, as many (p. 021) years later he did to his daughter, Queen Mary; probably either D'Ewes or Andre trained his handwriting, which is a curious compromise between the clear and bold Italian style, soon to be adopted by well-instructed Englishmen, and the old English hieroglyphics in which more humbly educated individuals, including Shakespeare, concealed the meaning of their words. But the most famous of Henry's teachers was the poet Skelton, the greatest name in English verse from Lydgate down to Surrey. Skelton was poet laureate to Henry VII. Court, and refers in his poems to his wearing of the white and green of Tudor liveries.[45] He celebrated in verse Arthur's creation as Prince of Wales and Henry's as Duke of York;[46] and before the younger prince was nine years old, this "incomparable light and ornament of British Letters," as Erasmus styles him, was directing Henry's studies. Skelton himself writes.--

The honor of England I learned to spell, I gave him drink of the sugred well Of Helicon's waters crystalline, Acquainting him with the Muses nine.

[Footnote 40: This is an anonymous portrait of Henry at the age of eighteen months or two years belonging to Sir Edmund and Lady Verney.]

[Footnote 41: Erasmus, _Epist._, p. 1182; _L. and P._, iv., 5412.]

[Footnote 42: This testimonial was written in 1528 before Henry VIII. had given the most striking demonstrations of its truth.]

[Footnote 43: See _D.N.B._, i., 398. Erasmus, however, described Andre as being "of mean abilities" (_L. and P._, iv., 626).]

[Footnote 44: _D.N.B._, xiv., 449; _cf._ _L. and P._, i., 513. On Henry VIII's accession D'Ewes was appointed keeper of the King's library at Richmond with a salary of L10 per year.]

[Footnote 45: Skelton, _Works_, ed. Dyce, vol. i., p. xiii.; the white and green still survive as the colours of Jesus College, Oxford, founded by Queen Elizabeth.]

[Footnote 46: _Ib._, p. xxi.; a copy of the latter, which Dyce could not find, is in _Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 26787_.]

The coarseness of Skelton's satires and his open disregard of the clerical vows of chastity may justify some doubt of the value of the poet's influence on Henry's character; but he so far observed the conventional duties of his post as to dedicate to his royal pupil, in 1501, a moral treatise in Latin of no particular worth.[47] More deserving of Henry's study were two books inscribed to him a (p. 022) little later by young Boerio, son of the King's Genoese physician and a pupil of Erasmus, who, according to his own account, suffered untold afflictions from the father's temper. One was a translation of Isocrates' _De Regno_, the other of Lucian's tract against believing calumnies.[48] The latter was, to judge from the tale of Henry's victims, a precept which he scarcely laid to heart in youth. In other respects he was apt enough to learn. He showed "remarkable docility for mathematics," became proficient in Latin, spoke French with ease, understood Italian, and, later on, possibly from Catherine of Aragon, acquired a knowledge of Spanish. In 1499 Erasmus himself, the greatest of the humanists, visited his friend, Lord Mountjoy, near Greenwich, and made young Henry's acquaintance. "I was staying," he writes,[49] "at Lord Mountjoy's country house when Thomas More came to see me, and took me out with him for a walk as far as the next village, where all the King's children, except Prince Arthur, who was then the eldest son, were being educated. When we came into the hall, the attendants not only of the palace, but also of Mountjoy's household, were all assembled. In the midst stood Prince Henry, now nine years old, and having already something of royalty in his demeanour in which there was a certain dignity combined with singular courtesy. On his right was Margaret, about eleven years of age, afterwards married to James, King of Scots; and on his left played Mary, a child of four. Edmund was an infant in arms. More, with his companion Arnold, after (p. 023) paying his respects to the boy Henry, the same that is now King of England, presented him with some writing. For my part, not having expected anything of the sort, I had nothing to offer, but promised that, on another occasion, I would in some way declare my duty towards him. Meantime, I was angry with More for not having warned me, especially as the boy sent me a little note, while we were at dinner, to challenge something from my pen. I went home, and in the Muses' spite, from whom I had been so long divorced, finished the poem within three days." The poem,[50] in which Britain speaks her own praise and that of her princes, Henry VII. and his children, was dedicated to the Duke of York and accompanied by a letter in which Erasmus commended Henry's devotion to learning. Seven years later Erasmus again wrote to Henry, now Prince of Wales, condoling with him upon the death of his brother-in-law, Philip of Burgundy, King of Castile. Henry replied in cordial manner, inviting the great scholar to continue the correspondence. The style of his letter so impressed Erasmus that he suspected, as he says,[51] "some help from others in the ideas and expressions. In a conversation I afterwards had with William, Lord Mountjoy, he tried by various arguments to dispel that suspicion, and when he found he could not do so he gave up the point and let it pass until he was sufficiently instructed in the case. On another occasion, when we were talking alone together, he brought out a number of the Prince's letters, some to other people and some to himself, and among them one which answered to mine: in these letters were manifest signs of (p. 024) comment, addition, suppression, correction and alteration--You might recognise the first drafting of a letter, and you might make out the second and third, and sometimes even the fourth correction; but whatever was revised or added was in the same handwriting. I had then no further grounds for hesitation, and, overcome by the facts, I laid aside all suspicion." Neither, he adds, would his correspondent doubt Henry VIII's authorship of the book against Luther if he knew that king's "happy genius". That famous book is sufficient proof that theological studies held no small place in Henry's education. They were cast in the traditional mould, for the Lancastrians were very orthodox, and the early Tudors followed in their steps. Margaret Beaufort left her husband to devote herself to good works and a semi-monastic life; Henry VII. converted a heretic at the stake and left him to burn;[52] and the theological conservatism, which Henry VIII. imbibed in youth, clung to him to the end of his days.

[Footnote 47: _Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 26787._]

[Footnote 48: _Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 19553._]

[Footnote 49: F.M. Nichols, _Epistles of Erasmus_, i., 201.]

[Footnote 50: Printed in 1500 at the end of Erasmus's _Adagia_.]

[Footnote 51: F.M. Nichols, pp. 423-24; _L. and P._, iv., 5412.]

[Footnote 52: _Cotton MS._, Vitellius, A., xvi., f. 172.]

Nor were the arts neglected, and in his early years Henry acquired a passionate and lifelong devotion to music. Even as Duke of York he had a band of minstrels apart from those of the King and Prince Arthur;[53] and when he was king his minstrels formed an indispensable part of his retinue, whether he went on progress through his kingdom, or crossed the seas on errands of peace or war.[54] He became an expert performer on the lute, the organ and the harpsichord, and all the cares of State could not divert him from practising on those instruments both day (p. 025) and night. He sent all over England in search of singing men and boys for the chapel royal, and sometimes appropriated choristers from Wolsey's chapel, which he thought better provided than his own.[55] From Venice he enticed to England the organist of St. Mark's, Dionysius Memo, and on occasion Henry and his Court listened four hours at a stretch to Memo's organ recitals.[56] Not only did he take delight in the practice of music by himself and others; he also studied its theory and wrote with the skill of an expert. Vocal and instrumental pieces of his own composition, preserved among the manuscripts at the British Museum,[57] rank among the best productions of the time; and one of his anthems, "O Lorde, the Maker of all thyng," is of the highest order of merit, and still remains a favourite in English cathedrals.

[Footnote 53: _Hist. MSS. Comm._, 5th Rep., App., p. 549.]

[Footnote 54: _L. and P._, i., 4314.]

[Footnote 55: _L. and P._, ii., 410, 4024.]

[Footnote 56: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 780; _L. and P._, ii., 2401, 3455.]

[Footnote 57: _E.g._, _Add. MS. 31922_.]

In April, 1502, at the age of ten, Henry became the heir-apparent to the English throne. He succeeded at once to the dukedom of Cornwall, but again a precedent was set which was followed but yesterday; and ten months were allowed to elapse before he was, on 18th February, 1503, created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, the dukedom of York becoming void until a king or an heir apparent should again have a second son.[58] The first sign of his increased importance was his implication in the maze of matrimonial intrigues which formed so large a part of sixteenth-century diplomacy. The last thing kings (p. 026) considered was the domestic felicity of their children; their marriages were pieces in the diplomatic game and sometimes the means by which States were built up. While Duke of York, Henry had been proposed as a husband for Eleanor,[59] daughter of the Archduke Philip; and his sister Mary as the bride of Philip's son Charles, who, as the heir of the houses of Castile and of Aragon, of Burgundy and of Austria, was from the cradle destined to wield the imperial sceptre of Caesar. No further steps were taken at the time, and Prince Arthur's death brought other projects to the front.

[Footnote 58: The next prince to hold the title was Charles, afterwards Charles I., who was created Duke of York on 6th Jan., 1605.]

[Footnote 59: Afterwards Queen of Portugal and then of France. _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, i., 285, 425.]

Immediately on receiving the news, and two days before they dated their letter of condolence to Henry VII., Ferdinand and Isabella commissioned the Duke of Estrada to negotiate a marriage between the widowed Catherine and her youthful brother-in-law.[60] No doubt was entertained but that the Pope would grant the necessary dispensation, for the spiritual head of Christendom was apt to look tenderly on the petitions of the powerful princes of this world. A more serious difficulty was the question of the widow's dower. Part only had been paid, and Ferdinand not merely refused to hand over the rest, but demanded the return of his previous instalments. Henry, on the other hand, considered himself entitled to the whole, refused to refund a penny, and gave a cold reception to the proposed marriage between Catherine and his sole surviving son. He was, however, by no means blind to the advantages of the Spanish matrimonial and political alliance, and still less to the attractions of Catherine's dower; (p. 027) he declined to send back the Princess, when Isabella, shocked at Henry VII.'s proposal to marry his daughter-in-law himself, demanded her return; and eventually, when Ferdinand reduced his terms, he suffered the marriage treaty to be signed. On 25th June, 1503, Prince Henry and Catherine were solemnly betrothed in the Bishop of Salisbury's house, in Fleet Street.

[Footnote 60: _Sp. Cal._, i., 267.]

The papal dispensation arrived in time to solace Isabella on her death-bed in November, 1504; but that event once more involved in doubt the prospects of the marriage. The crown of Castile passed from Isabella to her daughter Juana; the government of the kingdom was claimed by Ferdinand and by Juana's husband, Philip of Burgundy. On their way from the Netherlands to claim their inheritance, Philip and Juana were driven on English shores. Henry VII. treated them with all possible courtesy, and made Philip a Knight of the Garter, while Philip repaid the compliment by investing Prince Henry with the Order of the Golden Fleece.[61] But advantage was taken of Philip's plight to extort from him the surrender of the Earl of Suffolk, styled the White Rose, and a commercial treaty with the Netherlands, which the Flemings named the Malus Intercursus. Three months after his arrival in Castile, Philip died, and Henry began to fish in the troubled waters for a share in his dominions. Two marriage schemes occurred to him; he might win the hand of Philip's sister Margaret, now Regent of the Netherlands, and with her hand the control of those provinces; or he might marry Juana and claim in her right to administer Castile. On the acquisition of Castile he set his mind. If he could not gain (p. 028) it by marriage with Juana, he thought he could do so by marrying her son and heir, the infant Charles, to his daughter Mary. Whichever means he took to further his design, it would naturally irritate Ferdinand and make him less anxious for the completion of the marriage between Catherine and Prince Henry. Henry VII. was equally averse from the consummation of the match. Now that he was scheming with Charles's other grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian, to wrest the government of Castile from Ferdinand's grasp, the alliance of the King of Aragon had lost its attraction, and it was possible that the Prince of Wales might find elsewhere a more desirable bride. Henry's marriage with Catherine was to have been accomplished when he completed the age of fourteen; but on the eve of his fifteenth birthday he made a solemn protestation that the contract was null and void, and that he would not carry out his engagements.[62] This protest left him free to consider other proposals, and enhanced his value as a negotiable asset. More than once negotiations were started for marrying him to Marguerite de Valois, sister of the Duke of Angouleme, afterwards famous as Francis I.;[63] and in the last months of his father's reign, the Prince of Wales was giving audience to ambassadors from Maximilian, who came to suggest matrimonial alliances between the prince and a daughter of Duke Albert of Bavaria, and between Henry VII. and the Lady Margaret of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands.[64] Meanwhile, Ferdinand, threatened on all sides, first came to terms (p. 029) with France; he married a French princess, Germaine de Foix, abandoned his claim to Navarre, and bought the security of Naples by giving Louis XII. a free hand in the north of Italy. He then diverted Maximilian from his designs on Castile by humouring his hostility to Venice. By that bait he succeeded in drawing off his enemies, and the league of Cambrai united them all, Ferdinand and Louis, Emperor and Pope, in an iniquitous attack on the Italian Republic. Henry VII., fortunately for his reputation, was left out of the compact. He was still cherishing his design on Castile, and in December, 1508, the treaty of marriage between Mary and Charles was formally signed. It was the last of his worldly triumphs; the days of his life were numbered, and in the early months of 1509 he was engaged in making a peace with his conscience.

[Footnote 61: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, ii., 158; _Ven. Cal._, i., 867.]

[Footnote 62: _Sp. Cal._, i., 458; _L. and P._, iv., 5791.]

[Footnote 63: _L. and P._, _Henry VII._, i., 241-47; ii. 342-43.]

[Footnote 64: _Sp. Cal._, Suppl., p. 23.]

* * * * *

The twenty-four years during which Henry VII. had guided the destinies of England were a momentous epoch in the development of Western civilisation. It was the dawn of modern history, of the history of Europe in the form in which we know it to-day. The old order was in a state of liquidation. The mediaeval ideal, described by Dante, of a universal monarchy with two aspects, spiritual and temporal, and two heads, emperor and pope, was passing away. Its place was taken by the modern but narrower ideal of separate polities, each pursuing its own course, independent of, and often in conflict with, other societies. Unity gave way to diversity of tongues, of churches, of states; and the cosmopolitan became nationalist, patriot, separatist. Imperial monarchy shrank to a shadow; and kings divided the emperor's power (p. 030) at the same time that they consolidated their own. They extended their authority on both sides, at the expense of their superior, the emperor, and at the expense of their subordinate feudal lords. The struggle between the disruptive forces of feudalism and the central power of monarchy ended at last in monarchical triumph; and internal unity prepared the way for external expansion. France under Louis XI. was first in the field. She had surmounted her civil troubles half a century earlier than England. She then expelled her foreign foes, crushed the remnants of feudal independence, and began to expand at the cost of weaker States. Parts of Burgundy, Provence, and Brittany became merged in France; the exuberant strength of the new-formed nation burst the barriers of the Alps and overflowed into the plains of Italy. The time of universal monarchy was past, but the dread of it remained; and from Charles VIII.'s invasion of Italy in 1494 to Francis I.'s defeat at Pavia in 1525, French dreams of world-wide sovereignty were the nightmare of other kings. Those dreams might, as Europe feared, have been realised, had not other States followed France in the path of internal consolidation. Ferdinand of Aragon married Isabella of Castile, drove out the Moors, and founded the modern Spanish kingdom. Maximilian married Mary, the daughter of Charles the Bold, and joined the Netherlands to Austria. United France found herself face to face with other united States, and the political system of modern Europe was roughly sketched out. The boundaries of the various kingdoms were fluctuating. There still remained minor principalities and powers, chiefly in Italy and Germany, which offered an easy prey to their ambitious neighbours; for both nations had (p. 031) sacrificed internal unity to the shadow of universal dominion, Germany in temporal, and Italy in spiritual, things. Mutual jealousy of each other's growth at the expense of these States gave rise to the theory of the balance of power; mutual adjustment of each other's disputes produced international law; and the necessity of watching each other's designs begat modern diplomacy.[65]

[Footnote 65: _Cf._ A.O. Meyer, _Die Englische Diplomatie_, Breslau, 1901.]

Parallel with these developments in the relations between one State and another marched a no less momentous revolution in the domestic position of their sovereigns. National expansion abroad was marked by a corresponding growth in royal authority at home. The process was not new in England; every step in the path of the tribal chief of Saxon pirates to the throne of a united England denoted an advance in the nature of kingly power. Each extension of his sway intensified his authority, and his power grew in degree as it increased in area. So with fifteenth-century sovereigns. Local liberties and feudal rights which had checked a Duke of Brittany or a King of Aragon were powerless to restrain the King of France or of Spain. The sphere of royal authority encroached upon all others; all functions and all powers tended to concentrate in royal hands. The king was the emblem of national unity, the centre of national aspirations, and the object of national reverence. The Renaissance gave fresh impetus to the movement. Men turned not only to the theology, literature, and art of the early Christian era; they began to study anew its political organisation and its system of law and jurisprudence. The code of Justinian was as much a revelation as the original Greek of the (p. 032) New Testament. Roman imperial law seemed as superior to the barbarities of common law as classical was to mediaeval Latin; and Roman law supplanted indigenous systems in France and in Germany, in Spain and in Scotland. Both the Roman imperial law and the Roman imperial constitution were useful models for kings of the New Monarchy; the Roman Empire was a despotism; _quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem_ ran the fundamental principle of Roman Empire.[66] Nor was this all; Roman emperors were habitually deified, and men in the sixteenth century seemed to pay to their kings while alive the Divine honours which Romans paid to their emperors when dead. "Le nouveau Messie," says Michelet, "est le roi."[67]

[Footnote 66: The conclusion of the maxim _utpote cum lege regia quae de imperio ejus lata est, populus ei et in eum omne suum imperium et potestatem conferat_ (Ulpian, _Digest_, I., iv., 1), was conveniently forgotten by apologists for absolutism, though the Tudors respected it in practice.]

[Footnote 67: _Hist. de France_, ed. 1879, ix., 301.]

Nowhere was the king more emphatically the saviour of society than in England. The sixty years of Lancastrian rule were in the seventeenth century represented as the golden age of parliamentary government, a sort of time before the fall to which popular orators appealed when they wished to paint in vivid colours the evils of Stuart tyranny. But to keen observers of the time the pre-eminent characteristic of Lancastrian rule appeared to be its "lack of governance" or, in modern phrase, administrative anarchy.[68] There was no subordination in the State. The weakness of the Lancastrian title left the king at the mercy of Parliament, and the limitations of Parliament were never (p. 033) more apparent than when its powers stood highest. Even in the realm of legislation, the statute book has seldom been so barren. Its principal acts were to narrow the county electorate to an oligarchy, to restrict the choice of constituencies to resident knights and burgesses, and to impair its own influence as a focus of public opinion. It was not content with legislative authority; it interfered with an executive which it could hamper but could not control. It was possessed by the inveterate fallacy that freedom and strong government are things incompatible; that the executive is the natural enemy of the Legislature; that if one is strong, the other must be weak; and of the two alternatives it vastly preferred a weak executive. So, to limit the king's power, it sought to make him "live of his own," when "his own" was absolutely inadequate to meet the barest necessities of government. Parliament was in fact irresponsible; the connecting link between it and the executive had yet to be found. Hence the Lancastrian "lack of governance"; it ended in a generation of civil war, and the memory of that anarchy explains much in Tudor history.

[Footnote 68: Fortescue, _Governance of England_, ed. Plummer, 1885.]

The problems of Henry VIII.'s reign can indeed only be solved by realising the misrule of the preceding century, the failure of parliamentary government, and the strength of the popular demand for a firm and masterful hand. It is a modern myth that Englishmen have always been consumed with enthusiasm for parliamentary government and with a thirst for a parliamentary vote. The interpretation of history, like that of the Scriptures, varies from age to age; and present political theories colour our views of the past. The political development of the nineteenth century created a parliamentary legend; and civil and religious liberty became the inseparable stage (p. 034) properties of the Englishman. Whenever he appeared on the boards, he was made to declaim about the rights of the subject and the privileges of Parliament. It was assumed that the desire for a voice in the management of his own affairs had at all times and all seasons been the mainspring of his actions; and so the story of Henry's rule was made into a political mystery. In reality, love of freedom has not always been, nor will it always remain, the predominant note in the English mind. At times the English people have pursued it through battle and murder with grim determination, but other times have seen other ideals. On occasion the demand has been for strong government irrespective of its methods, and good government has been preferred to self-government. Wars of expansion and wars of defence have often cooled the love of liberty and impaired the faith in parliaments; and generally English ideals have been strictly subordinated to a passion for material prosperity.

Never was this more apparent than under the Tudors. The parliamentary experiment of the Lancastrians was premature and had failed. Parliamentary institutions were discredited and people were indifferent to parliamentary rights and privileges: "A plague on both your Houses," was the popular feeling, "give us peace, above all peace at home to pursue new avenues of wealth, new phases of commercial development, peace to study new problems of literature, religion, and art"; and both Houses passed out of the range of popular imagination, and almost out of the sphere of independent political action. Parliament played during the sixteenth century a modester part than it had played since its creation. Towards the close of the period (p. 035) Shakespeare wrote his play of _King John_, and in that play there is not the faintest allusion to Magna Carta.[69] Such an omission would be inconceivable now or at any time since the death of Elizabeth; for the Great Charter is enshrined in popular imagination as the palladium of the British constitution. It was the fetish to which Parliament appealed against the Stuarts. But no such appeal would have touched a Tudor audience. It needed and desired no weapon against a sovereign who embodied national desires, and ruled in accord with the national will. References to the charter are as rare in parliamentary debates as they are in the pages of Shakespeare. The best hated instruments of Stuart tyranny were popular institutions under the Tudors; and the Star Chamber itself found its main difficulty in the number of suitors which flocked to a court where the king was judge, the law's delays minimised, counsel's fees moderate, and justice rarely denied merely because it might happen to be illegal. England in the sixteenth century put its trust in its princes far more than it did in its parliaments; it invested them with attributes almost Divine. By Tudor majesty the poet was inspired with thoughts of the divinity that doth hedge a king. "Love for the King," wrote a Venetian of Henry VIII. in the early years of his reign, "is universal with all who see him, for his Highness does not seem a person of this world, but one (p. 036) descended from heaven."[70] _Le nouveau Messie est le Roi._

[Footnote 69: Magna Carta may almost be said to have been "discovered" by the parliamentary opponents of the Stuarts; and in discovering it, they misinterpreted several of its clauses such as the _judicium parium_. Allusion was, however, made to Magna Carta in the proceedings against Wolsey for _Praemunire_ (Fox, vi., 43).]

[Footnote 70: _Ven Cal._, ii., 336.]

Such were the tendencies which Henry VII. and Henry VIII. crystallised into practical weapons of absolute government. Few kings have attained a greater measure of permanent success than the first of the Tudors; it was he who laid the unseen foundations upon which Henry VIII. erected the imposing edifice of his personal authority. An orphan from birth and an exile from childhood, he stood near enough to the throne to invite Yorkist proscription, but too far off to unite in his favour Lancastrian support. He owed his elevation to the mistakes of his enemies and to the cool, calculating craft which enabled him to use those mistakes without making mistakes of his own. He ran the great risk of his life in his invasion of England, but henceforth he left nothing to chance. He was never betrayed by passion or enthusiasm into rash adventures, and he loved the substance, rather than the pomp and circumstance of power. Untrammelled by scruples, unimpeded by principles, he pursued with constant fidelity the task of his life, to secure the throne for himself and his children, to pacify his country, and to repair the waste of the civil wars. Folly easily glides into war, but to establish a permanent peace required all Henry's patience, clear sight and far sight, caution and tenacity. A full exchequer, not empty glory, was his first requisite, and he found in his foreign wars a mine of money. Treason at home was turned to like profit, and the forfeited estates of rebellious lords accumulated in the hands of the royal family and filled the national coffers. Attainder, the characteristic instrument of Tudor policy, was employed to (p. 037) complete the ruin of the old English peerage which the Wars of the Roses began: and by 1509 there was only one duke and one marquis left in the whole of England.[71] Attainder not only removed the particular traitor, but disqualified his family for place and power; and the process of eliminating feudalism from the region of government, started by Edward I., was finished by Henry VII. Feudal society has been described as a pyramid; the upper slopes were now washed away leaving an impassable precipice, with the Tudor monarch alone in his glory at its summit. Royalty had become a caste apart. Marriages between royal children and English peers had hitherto been no uncommon thing; since Henry VII.'s accession there have been but four, two of them in our own day. Only one took place in the sixteenth century, and the Duke of Suffolk was by some thought worthy of death for his presumption in marrying the sister of Henry VIII. The peerage was weakened not only by diminishing numbers, but by the systematic depression of those who remained. Henry VII., like Ferdinand of Aragon,[72] preferred to govern by means of lawyers and churchmen; they could be rewarded by judgeships and bishoprics, and required no grants from the royal estates. Their occupancy of office kept out territorial magnates who abused it for private ends. Of the sixteen regents nominated by Henry VIII. in his will, not one could boast a peerage of twelve years' standing;[73] and all the great Tudor ministers, Wolsey and (p. 038) Cromwell, Cecil and Walsingham, were men of comparatively humble birth. With similar objects Henry VII. passed laws limiting the number of retainers and forbidding the practice of maintenance. The courts of Star Chamber and Requests were developed to keep in order his powerful subjects and give poor men protection against them. Their civil law procedure, influenced by Roman imperial maxims, served to enhance the royal power and dignity, and helped to build up the Tudor autocracy.

[Footnote 71: The Duke was Buckingham, and the Marquis was Dorset.]

[Footnote 72: See a description of Ferdinand's court by John Stile, the English envoy, in _L. and P._, i., 490.]

[Footnote 73: See the present writer's _England under Protector Somerset_, p. 38.]

* * * * *

To the office of king thus developed and magnified, the young Prince who stood upon the steps of the throne brought personal qualities of the highest order, and advantages to which his father was completely a stranger. His title was secure, his treasury overflowed, and he enjoyed the undivided affections of his people. There was no alternative claimant. The White Rose, indeed, had languished in the Tower since his surrender by Philip, and the Duke of Buckingham had some years before been mentioned as a possible successor to the throne;[74] but their claims only served to remind men that nothing but Henry's life stood between them and anarchy, for his young brother Edmund, Duke of Somerset, had preceded Arthur to an early grave. Upon the single thread of Henry's life hung the peace of the realm; no other could have secured the throne without a second civil war. It was small wonder if England regarded Henry with a somewhat extravagant loyalty. Never had king ascended the throne more richly endowed with mental and physical gifts. He was ten weeks short of his eighteenth year. (p. 039) From both his parents he inherited grace of mind and of person. His father in later years was broken in health and soured in spirit, but in the early days of his reign he had charmed the citizens of York with his winning smile. His mother is described by the Venetian ambassador as a woman of great beauty and ability. She transmitted to Henry many of the popular characteristics of her father, Edward IV., though little of the military genius of that consummate commander who fought thirteen pitched battles and lost not one. Unless eye-witnesses sadly belied themselves, Henry VIII. must have been the desire of all eyes. "His Majesty," wrote one a year or two later,[75] "is the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on; above the usual height, with an extremely fine calf to his leg; his complexion fair and bright, with auburn hair combed straight and short in the French fashion, and a round face so very beautiful that it would become a pretty woman, his throat being rather long and thick.... He speaks French, English, Latin, and a little Italian; plays well on the lute and harpsichord, sings from the book at sight, draws the bow with greater strength than any man in England, and jousts marvellously." Another foreign resident in 1519[76] described him as "extremely handsome. Nature could not have done more for him. He is much handsomer than any other sovereign in Christendom; a great deal handsomer than the King of France; very fair and his whole frame admirably proportioned. On hearing that Francis I. wore a beard, he allowed his own to grow, and as it is (p. 040) reddish, he has now got a beard that looks like gold. He is very accomplished, a good musician, composes well, is a capital horseman, a fine jouster, speaks French, Latin, and Spanish.... He is very fond of hunting, and never takes his diversion without tiring eight or ten horses which he causes to be stationed beforehand along the line of country he means to take, and when one is tired he mounts another, and before he gets home they are all exhausted. He is extremely fond of tennis, at which game it is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play, his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture."

[Footnote 74: _L. and P., Henry VII._, i., 180, 233, 319.]

[Footnote 75:_L. and P._, ii., 395.]

[Footnote 76: Giustinian, _Despatches_, ii., 312; _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1287; _L. and P._, iii., 402.]

The change from the cold suspicious Henry VII. to such a king as this was inevitably greeted with a burst of rapturous enthusiasm. "I have no fear," wrote Mountjoy to Erasmus,[77] "but when you heard that our Prince, now Henry the Eighth, whom we may well call our Octavius, had succeeded to his father's throne, all your melancholy left you at once. For what may you not promise yourself from a Prince, with whose extraordinary and almost Divine character you are well acquainted.... But when you know what a hero he now shows himself, how wisely he behaves, what a lover he is of justice and goodness, what affection he bears to the learned, I will venture to swear that you will need no wings to make you fly to behold this new and auspicious star. If you could see how all the world here is rejoicing in the possession of so great a Prince, how his life is all their desire, you could not contain your tears for joy. The heavens laugh, the earth exults, all things are full of milk, of honey, of nectar! Avarice is expelled the country. Liberality scatters wealth with a bounteous hand. Our (p. 041) King does not desire gold or gems or precious metals, but virtue, glory, immortality." The picture is overdrawn for modern taste, but making due allowance for Mountjoy's turgid efforts to emulate his master's eloquence, enough remains to indicate the impression made by Henry on a peer of liberal education. His unrivalled skill in national sports and martial exercises appealed at least as powerfully to the mass of his people. In archery, in wrestling, in joust and in tourney, as well as in the tennis court or on the hunting field, Henry was a match for the best in his kingdom. None could draw a bow, tame a steed, or shiver a lance more deftly than he, and his single-handed tournaments on horse and foot with his brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk, are likened by one who watched them to the combats of Achilles and Hector. These are no mere trifles below the dignity of history; they help to explain the extraordinary hold Henry obtained over popular imagination. Suppose there ascended the throne to-day a young prince, the hero of the athletic world, the finest oar, the best bat, the crack marksman of his day, it is easy to imagine the enthusiastic support he would receive from thousands of his people who care much for sport, and nothing at all for politics. Suppose also that that prince were endowed with the iron will, the instinctive insight into the hearts of his people, the profound aptitude for government that Henry VIII. displayed, he would be a rash man who would guarantee even now the integrity of parliamentary power or the continuance of cabinet rule. In those days, with thirty years of civil war and fifteen more of conspiracy fresh in men's minds, with no alternative to anarchy save Henry VIII., with a peerage fallen (p. 042) from its high estate, and a Parliament almost lost to respect, royal autocracy was not a thing to dread or distrust. "If a lion knew his strength," said Sir Thomas More of his master to Cromwell, "it were hard for any man to rule him." Henry VIII. had the strength of a lion; it remains to be seen how soon he learnt it, and what use he made of that strength when he discovered the secret.

[Footnote 77: F.M. Nichols, _Epistles of Erasmus_, i., 457.]